Pat moved off again with a new urgency and after jogging only a short distance, she slowed to a walk. She was physically tired and not able to run any further.
A quick glance behind revealed a deserted tunnel, nothing pursued her.
Maybe I lost it?
Ahead, the ceiling fungi revealed a passage branching off the one she traveled. This secondary tunnel was really just another crawl space, a yard wide and little more than a yard high. Deep gouges marked the walls around the opening, evident that large, powerful claws tore into the ground here, ripping out stone and earth to create the side tunnel. Pat shuddered.
What manner of beast could make this?
Anticipating the burrowing creature’s appearance, Pat crept forward, her gun trained on the dark opening. She edged closer, and then squatted to peer inside. The low passage was a black pool of emptiness as no fungi grew there.
Too scared to move past the side passage, Pat waited and watched. Eventually, she worked up the courage and moved a little closer. She couldn’t see a thing in the dim passage or smell anything foul. There was a faint sound coming from the darkness, like an indistinct metallic click.
“Anyone there?” Pat whispered.
There was only silence.
Then…
“Is that you, Miss Garrett?” said a heavily-accented voice.
“Yes, Kate, it’s me.”
“Praise the Lord.”
Pat holstered her revolver and crawled blindly into the tunnel. The tunnel was short, going less than a half a dozen yards before it felt like it opened into a larger area with a higher ceiling.
She stopped there, in the chamber’s entrance. “Where are you?”
“Opposite the tunnel.”
Something is wrong. “Can you come to me?”
“No. I am chained.”
Somewhere in the darkness, chains rattled.
“Sit still, I’ll find you.”
Pat stretched out her hands and moved away from the safety of the wall. After several cautious steps, her fingers contacted something solid, covered in hair. Soft hair.
“Kate?”
“Yes.”
Thank goodness, I thought it was a trap.
A hand found Pat’s wrist in the dark and gripped it with surprising strength. “Thank you, thank you,” Kate whispered quickly. “We must leave. Before he comes back.”
“Who?”
“The demon-man.” Her voice was strained, as though it pained her to speak about him.
“Let’s go then,” said Pat.
Chains rattled. “I can’t.”
Pat knelt, feeling for Kate’s arms. The woman was shaking, she was terrified. Pat ran her hands gently down Kate’s shoulders to her wrists. One was secured with a heavy chain.
“It is no use,” said Kate. “The chain is attached to the wall.”
“We shall see about that.”
Pat felt for the locking mechanism and placed her hands on it. She closed her eyes and concentrated, her mind turning inward. Energy trickled down her arms and tingled into her fingers. A moment later, there was an audible click and the lock sprung open.
A simple mechanism.
“How did you…?”
“Just an old family trick. Come on, let’s go.”
Pat assisted Kate to her feet, and then placed an arm around the shorter woman’s shoulders.
“Where’s Doc?” Kate asked.
“He and the marshal are…are near,” Pat lied. She didn’t know where they were. “We’ll meet them outside.”
The fungi beyond the chamber offered only the faintest light, but it was enough to see the way out. Pat guided Kate across to the low tunnel and they crouched to enter. Suddenly, they froze. A dark shape moved across the passage, blocking out the light.
No, we’re too late!
Chapter 22
Fuming, Holliday glanced upward, searching for his adversary. But the drifter was concealed by the darkness at the top of the lift shaft. The gambler growled and clenched his jaw, barely able to control his anger as he flicked black blood off his sword blade. The knowledge that somewhere above, the hell-spawned man might be looking down on him made him even more furious.
We will meet again, demon…
The thin man turned away. There was a greater task at hand than killing the drifter. Kate was here somewhere and she would need him. After gathering up his weapons, Holliday sped through a narrow fungi-lined tunnel which exited the bottom of the lift shaft. The fungi gave off a strange yellow hue with which he could see almost as well as in the daylight. There was no time to ponder this oddity, he left the lift shaft and sprinted down the tunnel like an avenging angel.
As quickly as it came, the shadow vanished from the opening, leaving Pat wondering if anything was there moments before.
“Has it gone?” whispered Kate. The Hungarian crouched so close to Pat that she could feel the woman’s breath against her neck.
Pat let time pass before she answered. “I think so.”
“What was it?”
“Something big.”
They waited in silence, huddling in the dark and imagining the horrors beyond the chamber.
Time ticked by and nothing appeared at the entrance.
We can’t wait all night. The longer we stay in one place, the more chance of being discovered.
“Should we go?” whispered Kate in a croaky voice, echoing Pat’s own thoughts.
“Yeah. Stay close and be prepared to run.”
Kate didn’t respond and Pat took the silence as the other woman’s acceptance of their situation. No doubt living with Doc Holliday, Kate had already seen unusual and unexplainable things and now she could add demons to her list. Kate was brave, but flesh-eating demons was enough for anyone’s fortitude to dissolve.
Pat guided Kate’s hand to the back of her gun belt and the Hungarian woman grasped it firmly. Then, she pulled her Colt and moved forward, bending over so as not to bang her head against the low ceiling. Kate followed behind like an elephant calf, holding on tight. They stopped once they neared the main passage and Pat tensed, half-expecting something to leap on them. But after a minute of nothing happening, she exhaled a long breath and crept forward again. Peering into the main tunnel, she was relieved to find it empty.
Cautiously, the two women moved out into the tunnel, stretching and straightening their backs. Pat assessed Kate. Signs of captivity wore heavily on her. She was dirty and her eyes were puffy. Her long dress was torn in several places and stained by grime. The Hungarian woman’s smile faded fast as she took in her surroundings. Unconsciously, she looped strands of wayward hair behind her ear and stepped in closer to Pat.
The tall marshal rested a gentle hand on Kate’s shoulder and tried to give her a reassuring smile. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it out of here.”
Kate looked up at Pat. There was fear in her eyes. “The twisted man will find us.”
“Twisted man?” said Pat. “The hunchback?”
“He is the devil—”
Her sentence was cut short as a bestial howl echoed along the tunnel. Pat went rigid and the hairs on the back of her neck bristled. The sound lingered in the air for a few seconds before fading. It sounded like the howl from a large hunting animal, but not like any Pat had ever heard before.
Whatever made that terrifying call sounded close.
Too close.
“We better get moving.” Pat glanced in the direction the call came from. “But not that way.” Pat grabbed Kate’s hand and pulled her in the opposite direction.
Hopefully, this is the way out.
Firelight flickered around the chamber’s stone walls as Broken Nose watched the bent shape of his master leaning over an unconscious man. The comatose man lay on a grey stone table. He was a blacksmith, whom Broken Nose had seen in the local saloon a few times. What the hunchback was actually doing to the man he didn’t know, but he had learned not to ask any questions. It was safer that way. Once, his master termed these rit
uals as ‘magic.’ The only magic he had heard of before meeting the hunchback was performed by Indian shamans or carnival magicians and he wasn’t sure if either of them were real. This was real. He had seen…things.
Eight people stood in a line opposite the stone table. They were the folk that he and his boys kidnapped from the local town and brought out to this mine. One was the mayor, the others were unknown to him, but they looked like ordinary people. They stood silent and motionless like statues, staring blankly ahead. They were possessed, the hunchback said and he wasn’t going to ask by what.
The hunchback’s hand hovered over the blacksmith’s head and a moment later, faint red tendrils extended from his bony fingers and encircled the man’s head. Suddenly, the light intensified, and the man’s limp body jerked then lay still again.
The hunchback cursed softly under his breath and a shiver ran up Broken Nose’s spine. He had faced down and killed many men in his violent life, but this crippled, fragile-looking man scared him more than any other man he had ever met.
Broken Nose turned from his master and looked back to the possessed townsfolk. He had never pitied weak people before, but he did feel sorry for what was happening here.
“Did you say something?” asked the hunchback abruptly, venom dripping dangerously from each word. He was in one of his moods.
“N-no, sir,” replied the hired gun. “It was…”
The hunchback ignored Broken Nose’s reply, turning his attention back to the unconscious blacksmith. “Why are people who work with iron more resistant to magic?” he muttered. “Why?”
Broken Nose opened his mouth to speak, but changed his mind. His master wasn’t speaking to him.
Unlike these townsfolk, Broken Nose still had full control of his mind and actions—but for how long, he wondered. He and his men were fortunate they had survived for long as they had. Everyone else in this mine was now under the influence of the demons.
The hunchback hired him and his men, he had cast a spell on them to increase their physical strength and harden their skin. Their new enhancements were due to magic and not mutations. He never felt better—he was now stronger than he ever thought possible or had the right to be. Deep down inside, he knew there would be consequences for throwing in with these demons, but he figured he wasn’t headed for heaven anyway. Not with the things he had done, even before he agreed to help this demon-mage. He feared and hated the twisted man, but this fear kept him and his boys in check.
“Hand me that.” The hunchback waved to pile of black rocks.
Broken Nose obeyed, scooping up a rock the size of a clenched fist. Fine red and green threads zig-zagged across the stone’s rough surface—it was a chunk of Sky Rock. These rocks made his skin tingle whenever he touched them. It unnerved him, but he wouldn’t admit it. Were the rocks reacting with his skin because of the spells cast on him? He didn’t know. Hopefully, the spells wouldn’t kill him and he could escape this place with his life, a pocket full of money and if he was really lucky, his soul.
“I’ll kill you first…” Broken Nose muttered.
“What’s that?” asked the hunchback, snatching the Sky Rock from the gunman’s callused hand.
“Nothin’.”
The hunchback locked eyes with the taller man. “And make sure it stays that way.”
“Y-yes, sir.”
The demon-mage returned to his work at the stone table and Broken Nose took a step back, re-evaluating his chances of surviving this. His odds weren’t improving.
He glanced back at the townsfolk and wondered why the hunchback needed his demons to look like regular humans. With the wealth the hunchback had, he could hire fifty or a hundred gunmen and do whatever he wanted. But how long would hired guns be loyal? They would most likely cut and run when they saw the things he had seen. These possessed people wouldn’t run. From what he had witnessed, their devotion was fanatical.
Broken Nose rubbed his arms. He felt strangely cold where these tunnels were normally hot and stuffy. He breathed out and water vapor formed in the air. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. The temperature was dropping fast.
In the space of a few heart beats, the room grew darker despite the blazing fire. The hunchback turned from his task and dropped down onto one knee. His torso and ugly head bowed low in submission, his hands resting together on top of his bent knee.
An irrational fear coursed through Broken Nose’s veins, his legs weakened and his body trembled uncontrollably. An intense feeling of impending horror flooded his senses, forcing him to take several unsteady steps backward. He stumbled into the wall in his haste to get away from the approaching dread he couldn’t see.
Slowly, his attention was drawn to the dark recesses of the room. In the shadows, a black shape was forming. It stirred and Broken Nose held his breath, unable to tear his eyes away. He knew he was risking his sanity if he stared too long, but he was powerless to move. Gradually, the oily blackness formed into a tall, man-shaped outline.
The hunchback remained motionless, kneeling and bowing his head low before the man-shadow. Then, out of the darkness the pale-faced man stepped, the black shadows clinging to his body to form long, flowing robes. He was impossibly tall, over seven feet in height and seemed to grow taller by the second. Without moving further into the room, the shadow man loomed ominously over the chamber’s occupants.
It was too much for Broken Nose. He cowered and clawed at the wall, drooling like an imbecile. On the brink of insanity, the gunman unknowingly relieved himself.
The shadow man turned his cold gaze to the hunchback. His long, drawn face was pale and hairless, his ears ended in points. Two black orbs of nothingness stared unblinking at the small, deformed demon-mage for a few long seconds before he smiled, revealing long bestial teeth between his thin, cruel lips. There was no humor in his smile, in fact, the man’s features were devoid of any human emotion. He considered the prostrated mage, intertwining his long, black-clawed fingers in front of his chest like a stern school master.
Knowing the existence of this unholy being was blasphemy—Broken Nose’s mortal soul screamed out and he realized in that moment, he would never be whole again. From this day onward, he would only be an empty shell of flesh and bones. Bit by bit his soul withered and faded out of existence and he dropped to the ground as rigid as a board. Then he knew no more.
“How may I serve you, O Lord of Shadows?” asked the hunchback, keeping his eyes averted, not willing to risk a look at the shadowy being.
A long silence followed. Then, a voice formed in the demon-mage’s mind. Each word uttered was painful to hear and understand, but this was how the fallen angel preferred to communicate—directly into his servants’ minds. The hunchback’s master was cold, cruel and totally without mercy and his presence exuded hatred for life. God help anyone who gazed upon him.
“BY FOLLOWING MY ORDERS…”
The hunchback’s mind raced. What had he forgotten?
“E-everything is on track for Tombstone, my Lord.” He bowed his head a little lower. “I-I am converting the last human now…”
The shadow angel glanced at the man on the stone table as though he was nothing. A moment later the body burst into flames, filling the air with sounds of sizzling flesh and the smell of cooking meat. After a few seconds the fire intensified, engulfing the entire body in flames. The hunchback felt the fire’s heat against his cheek, but he remained motionless.
“DO NOT TRY MY PATIENCE.”
Even though the hunchback focused on the ground, he could feel the shadow angel’s eyes on him. It required all his strength and self-control to remain kneeling and not to give in to his desire to flee or collapse on the ground and weep like a baby.
“YOU WERE TO KILL THE MARSHAL AND HIS ASSOCIATES. THEY STILL LIVE…THEY ARE HERE.”
What? Here? thought the hunchback. How?
“They are of little concern, O Lord. I will send your best servants to dispatch them.”
“THEY ARE MORE RES
OURCEFUL THAN YOU GIVE THEM CREDIT FOR, PRIEST. DO NOT TRUST OTHERS WITH THIS TASK.”
The shadow angel stepped back into the darkness and gradually faded from view.
The hunchback’s mind ached to near bursting, the strain of communicating with his master almost too much to bear. He was close to collapsing, but by sheer willpower he remained kneeling—the essence of his Lord still lingered in the air. He was not out of danger yet.
“I WANT THE CHILD UNHARMED.” The air grew thick with tension. “SHE IS MINE.”
Blood trickled from the hunchback’s nose, dripping unheeded to the floor. “As you command, my Lord.”
Chapter 23
The section of tunnel Pat and Kate traveled down appeared to have been dug out by hand, human or otherwise, as there was no evidence picks or shovels were used in its construction. There were also no support beams holding up the low ceiling.
The tunnel ran in a straight direction, with smaller passages branching off periodically at differing heights in the walls. She imagined all sorts of creatures living in those black burrows waiting to leap out at them. So far, nothing emerged from the holes as they passed.
“Stop,” panted Kate. “I can’t run anymore.”
Pat too felt the day’s exertions catching up and slowed to a walk, then stopped to face her companion. Both women were breathing hard, sweat glistening on their flushed faces. Kate looked like she couldn’t go much further and Pat’s energy levels were depleted as well.
“We can rest for a moment,” said Pat, glancing across at a small hole in the opposite wall, half-expecting something to slither out of it.
“Are we safe?”
“It seems unlikely.” Pat locked eyes with Kate. The woman was scared. “We’ll only be safe when we’re standing in sunshine again. These bastards don’t seem to like the sun.”
Doc Holliday_The Sky Fire Chronicles Page 15
