Chapter 40 #2
It hadn’t used words. Not all things spoke in words.
But it had made a noise that any being could recognize.
It was a fingernail tapping against a coffin lid from the inside.
It was an inhuman moan, the hiss of a mouthless thing.
It was the rattling knock of death come to seize you and carry you away screaming.
The wind squeezed itself against the woman’s thundering pulse. Her hands shook, and goose bumps rose over her arms and the back of her neck.
The woman’s frightened breaths were avalanche-loud in the silence that followed the thing’s wordless threat.
The woman turned in a slow circle, flaring her blue firefly lights. Her irises darkened to brown, and her hair shifted to black. Her fear made her let go of her illusion. She was herself as she faced the dark.
The wind moaned. It could sense the thing watching them. The thing’s attention clawed over the wind, scraping its sides. The wind wound itself tighter around the woman.
Go, it whispered. Go, go, go.
She hurried forward, jogging toward a split in the shelves. She looked back and then dove to the right. The wood closed behind her. She ran, and then the wind shrieked. The shelves had shifted in front of them, closing the woman’s path.
She stopped.
A noise scraped across the floor behind them, like a claw dragging over wood. The woman spun around. Nothing was there.
She twisted her hand and threw a violent spray of boiling water. It splashed against the floor and was swallowed by the cracks in the wood. She watched the water seep away, and then a hot breath blew across the back of her neck.
The woman gasped and spun, conjuring a swirling black mass.
Nothing was there.
To the left, the shelves split and opened another path.
The woman blinked and then let the black mass disintegrate. She tiptoed forward, her eyes scanning the illuminated dark.
The wind shrieked a warning. The thing skittered behind them. The woman twisted out of its path and conjured. She threw a full-grown jackaltooth down the aisle.
“Kill!” she shouted.
The jackaltooth roared and sprang forward. Its jaws were open, its claws extended. The woman held her arms high, directing its path.
The jackaltooth leaped into the air. It hit the spot where the noise had come from, where the pungent scent was strongest, and it—
The wind reared back.
The jackaltooth disintegrated. One moment, it was illusion made real. The next, it was a spray of blood and ash.
The woman’s face bleached of color, and she slowly stepped back. She backed away one step at a time. Behind her, the shelves shifted again. One path to the left. One path to the right.
“Jacob,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “Are you there? Jacob?”
The wind moaned.
The woman’s lights dimmed. They were a sallow, faint blue that barely lit the dark a hand’s width away.
She was weakening. Conjuring a jackaltooth was hard work even for a principal, and the woman was only his heir.
While she could make water mosasaurs or whirlpools all day long, conjuring a living, flesh-and-blood thing took rivers of power.
Had she already run dry?
The thing blew a pungent breath against the woman’s cheek. She ran, diving to left. The shelves closed around her. She dashed forward and dove down the right aisle. Row after row, she sprinted, trying to escape. But it was a maze, and it wanted her lost.
Finally, her limbs shaking, her lungs heaving, her legs weak, she stopped and dragged in a breath.
The wind bolstered her shaking legs and helped more oxygen into her lungs. Her heart beat with a painful, frantic lurching. There was the taste of blood on her lips.
The wind propped her legs and rubbed her arms. But what could it do? This thing wasn’t solid. It wasn’t wind. It wasn’t any sort of being the wind had ever seen.
What had the Smiths made to guard their treasure?
Where was the lyre?
The woman looked around, searching for the thing. She reached up and gripped the necklace, letting the crystal drop make an indent in her palm.
Then she stiffened as if she’d thought of something and quickly twisted her hand.
She conjured a small round mirror.
She clutched the object and held it so she could peer behind her and over her shoulder.
What was she doing?
Then she started forward, walking slowly, rotating the mirror so it caught the flickering lights behind her.
She veered to the left, and the wind crept next to her. Her pulse was still a frightened drumming. Her hand still shook, and the mirror with it. But she still moved forward.
Then the wind felt the thing again. It raced up behind them, darting at the woman.
In the mirror, the wind saw a black cloud, like smoke flashing by.
The woman whipped around and held out her hands. But the thing was gone.
She swallowed and then held up the mirror and walked forward again, choosing path after path. They crept deeper into the maze.
Black smoke played at the edges of the mirror. Each time it appeared, the woman spun around, hands out, but as soon as she did, the thing raced away.
The wind wondered why the woman wasn’t taunting the thing. Perhaps because it didn’t have hands to tear off?
She tiptoed forward. How long had they been in the maze? Long enough for night to die and a new day to be born? Time was nothing to the wind, and the maze was nothing to time.
The woman bit her lip. There was a noise. A shuffling, shifting, crinkled-shroud noise.
The wind shivered, and the woman looked behind her.
Nothing.
There was no one there.
She turned around.
No!
There!
The wind shrieked.
In the mirror, a man stood behind the woman.
His face was bone-white, his eye sockets hollow.
His skin was a mummified leather that tightened over his skull.
He’d been brined in evil and soaked in its flavors.
His lips pulled back gruesomely, baring rotten teeth.
His bone hands reached out. He’d almost wrapped his elongated fingers around the woman’s throat.
When she turned back to the mirror, her gaze connected with the empty sockets of the thing. For one second, she froze. She stared mute and horrified at the thing that could only be seen in her mirror.
She made a whimpering noise as its hands reached for her throat.
No!
The wind screamed and shoved at her knees.
Her legs buckled, and then she twisted around. She dropped the mirror. It cracked, lines splintering the glass. She conjured a wall of scalding steam and threw it behind her. She tossed waves of boiling water, and the wind rushed through them, pushing her on. Shoving her away from the thing.
She stooped down, grabbing the broken mirror. It sliced through her skin, and blood pooled on her fingers.
Run!
She sprinted, tossing water daggers and water piranhas after her. The creatures snapped their teeth as they flew through the air and then splashed to the floor.
Run! Run! Run!
The thing was still chasing her. It moved through water. It raced through steam.
The wind could see it in the shattered fragments of her blood-soaked mirror.
The shelves opened, and the woman dove down another aisle. She lifted her mirror, sprinting, tripping, gasping.
The wind propped her up. Don’t die. Don’t die, citrus and pearl dust scented one. Don’t die.
At a vicious rumble, the woman spun around again, holding her mirror high. Her hands shook. Her throat trembled as she swallowed.
Don’t die.
She turned in a slow circle. The shelves had closed around her. There was no opening.
The wind shoved at the wooden structures, but they didn’t move.
A hot rush of air blew over the woman, scraping her shoulders. She tensed and tilted the mirror.
A shadow-cloaked man was staring back at her.
She spun, breaking the mirror into a shard. She held it as a blade in her hand. Then she lifted her arm and screamed as she drove it toward his throat.
The boy grabbed her bloody wrist and smiled.