Chapter Thirty-Six
The ghostly fog glowed with paranormal energy, but as far as Owen could tell, it was background psi—the kind of radiation that occurred naturally in soil and rocks and was especially strong underground in high-energy locations like the coast.
The scene at the bottom of the spiral staircase was surreal.
“Bizarre,” Alice said. “I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this isn’t it.”
“The voice did say that we had been invited to a ball,” he reminded her.
The ballroom was a heavily mirrored chamber drenched in shadows. A large circular mirrored platform covered most of the floor. Eight couples dressed in gowns and tuxedoes stood, motionless, on the dance floor.
The large trapdoor overhead closed with a violent clang. Bolts slid home. Owen saw Alice flinch and reach up to touch Sebastian. The dust bunny was sleeked out, all four eyes wide open. Searching for the enemy.
So am I, Owen thought. But there was no single, obvious threat. Instead, the entire chamber reeked of the vibe.
“The game has begun,” the disembodied voice said. “Your objective is the door on the other side of the room. To get there you must cross the dance floor.”
“I can see the door,” Alice said. “It doesn’t look like it would be hard to get across the dance floor, but I’m guessing that would be too easy.”
He studied the shadows on the far side of the room.
“Yes,” he said. “This is the work of a madman who did not intend for any of his victims to survive.”
“I know,” she said quietly.
He gave her a quick, assessing glance. She was back in what he had come to think of as her professional Ballantine Method mode—back in control.
Amazing. He knew there had to be a lot going on under the surface.
A few minutes ago, she had attacked her mother’s killer and forced him to travel into a nightmare.
He knew she’d had to make the journey with him.
No one could survive such an experience without some PTSD.
Now they were facing a life-and-death escape game designed by a serial killer whose goal had been to watch his victims suffer before they died.
But there was no time for a therapeutic debriefing.
They had to focus on surviving the lethal game.
He could see that she knew that. There was a lot of shit to worry about in that moment, but the one thing he knew he did not need to add to the list was the possibility that she would fall apart on him.
“Partners,” he said softly.
She looked at him, distracted. “What?”
“We’re partners. We’ll get through this together.”
“Absolutely,” she said. Sebastian chortled. She smiled briefly, then reached up and touched him. “You, too, pal.”
Owen gave Sebastian a quick pat. “A team. All right, let’s see what we’ve got here.”
He considered the circular platform. It stretched wall to wall, leaving no way to skirt the edge and walk around it.
The only route was across the no-doubt-slippery mirrored surface.
He switched his attention to the features of the motionless couples.
They were disconcertingly realistic but only the male mannequins were smiling.
The female figures appeared frozen with dread.
“Are they waxworks?” Alice asked.
“I don’t think so, but they are human-sized dolls.” Cautiously he moved closer to the platform and examined the nearest couple. A name was embroidered on the back of the woman’s dress. “Fenella Fordyce.” He took a beat to remember why that sounded eerily familiar. “Shit.”
“Do you recognize her?” Alice took a step forward to get a better look at the name on the gown.
“That’s far enough,” he said. “I don’t trust the dance floor. There is some energy in it. I think it’s the source of the music.”
Alice stopped. “What do you know about Fenella Fordyce?”
“She was believed to be the Gamer’s first victim.”
“This is going to be bad, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Who is she dancing with?”
He shifted position to get a look at the male figure.
“There’s no name, but I recognize the face.
It’s the Gamer.” He studied the next couple, careful not to step up onto the dance floor.
The name on the gown was also familiar. “Jolina Brown. Another one of the Gamer’s victims. The male figure is the Gamer. ”
“All the male figures have the same features,” Alice said.
“The Gamer is dancing with each of his eight known victims.”
As if sensing his presence, the lights came up in the ballroom and the platform began to rotate slowly, a carousel from hell.
The distorted music swelled as the chords of “The Underworld Waltz” grew louder and more ominous.
The eight couples on the dance floor began to move in a stiff funereal waltz.
“If it starts spinning too quickly, it won’t be possible to cross it,” Alice said.
“Stand back, I’m going to run an experiment.”
“We should probably talk about this.”
“No time,” he said. “We need to know exactly what we’re dealing with.”
He stepped onto the slowly revolving platform. The reaction of the eight couples was immediate. The figures ceased waltzing and turned toward him. Each of the Gamer mannequins raised a hand. For the first time he saw that they gripped syringes.
The dancers glided toward him.
“Get off the platform,” Alice said. “They’re closing in on you.”
“I noticed.” He stepped off the dance floor.
The figures resumed waltzing as if no longer aware of him.
“It’s a relatively straightforward motion-activated device.
When the figures sense someone on the platform, they automatically turn toward it.
The victim is forced to try to make it across the platform by dodging the syringes. ”
“That would be impossible. There’s no way to win.”
“The Gamer was not concerned with fairness. He fed off the panic and terror of his victims. But to get the results he wanted, he needed them to have some hope of winning.”
“Hmm. Do you think we might be able to push the couples off the platform as they go past?”
“Maybe. But that’s risky. We don’t know how they’re attached. If the Gamer used strong magnets, we won’t be able to move them off the dance floor. Let’s try something more basic first.”
He took the mag-rez out of his jacket. “Lucky for us, this thing has a silencer. Otherwise it would get really loud in here.”
“Are you going to shoot the dancers?” Alice asked uneasily. “The bullets will probably go straight through them. It won’t stop them. They’re nothing more than animated dolls.”
“Not the dancers,” he said. “The dance floor.”
He activated the silencer feature on the pistol and fired three rapid shots into the platform. The high-powered weapon was not completely silent, but the harsh spitting sounds were tolerable in the confines of the chamber.
The mirrored floor cracked but the music did not stop.
Neither did the dancers. He was about to try another shot when one of the Gamer-and-victim couples glided over a damaged section.
The weight of the figures caused a series of smaller fractures that fanned out across the platform in a furiously expanding spiderweb.
The strains of the waltz continued but they rapidly became more warped and discordant.
Abruptly, the music cut off altogether. The dancers stopped moving. The ballroom lights faded, leaving the scene in shadows.
Sebastian chortled. Taking that as a good sign, Owen stepped onto the fractured dance floor. Shards of mirror crunched beneath his boots but the underlying platform that supported the dance floor held.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He reached for Alice’s hand. She gave it to him without any hesitation and stepped up onto the dance floor. Sebastian raised no objections when they started weaving their way through the now-frozen dancers. Once again, Owen took that as a good sign.
They reached the far side without incident and stepped down.
“Can I breathe now?” Alice asked.
Owen grunted. “I was holding my breath, too.”
“Looks like Rose Ash’s clue was genuine. ‘Ignore the obvious. It will lead to your death.’ ”
“Congratulations on winning the first of the three games,” the disembodied Voice said. “You are now invited to the Museum of Perfect Crimes.”
The door marked The Only Way Out slammed open.