There were dim lights along the walls as we climbed flight after flight of stairs, but I had a feeling, if I were human, they wouldn’t provide sufficient light to see by since they were so used to living in full, bright light. There was a creepy, crawling feeling from the walls around us, separating us from the rooms and their occupants. But I didn’t want to think what was going on in those rooms if they could give off such a chilling aura.
Ronnie and I were nearly out of breath by the time we finally rounded the last flight of steps and stood on the tenth floor landing. Joey, on the other hand, looked as bright and ready to go as she had before taking the first step on the ground floor. Damn pixies.
We stared down the dark hallway, feeling the pressure of the night all around us. There were fewer sconces up here, and I wondered if Jackson had something to do with that. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Joey reach out for Ronnie’s hand, and for a moment, I thought about taking her other hand, but I wanted mine free in case I needed to get to one of my weapons. I motioned with my head for them to follow and went down the hall.
The carpet felt squishy under my feet up here instead of threadbare as it had on the stairs. The air was musty, almost moist, and I could feel it coating my lungs. I kept my mouth closed, my lips pressed into a tight line, hoping to keep the worst of the toxic air out of my system.
Room 1013 was much farther than I expected it to be, the spaces between doors letting me know just how big the rooms must be. It was just so damn depressing to realize how far this place had fallen. A true testament of how far the entire city had fallen in the past few years as humans and supernaturals fought and supernaturals, like the Dunhallows and Theo, fought their own kind. If we couldn’t find a way to coexist, the rest of Havencrest was going to end up looking like the Blackhaven: dank, dark and dying.
I stopped in front of 1013 and held my breath as I slipped the key into the lock and turned it. We waited a moment, listening for any movement inside, suddenly terrified of the idea that Jackson had an accomplice and we were walking into a trap. Ronnie and I shared a look and I knew the same thought had just occurred to her as well. She pulled Joey with her as she took a step back, to the side of the door. I placed my hand on the doorknob and turned it as slowly as possible, grateful when it didn’t squeak. I threw the door open and darted away to the other side of the door as Ronnie, holding my breath as I waited for some sort of reaction from inside, but it remained eerily quiet.
I glanced at Ronnie again, and she just shrugged at me. I stepped forward, pulling out my knockout powder as I went, feeling better just having it in my hand and ready to throw.
The front room looked like any other front room of a suite except it was obvious the owners didn’t even bother to have maid service in the rooms either. The only deference to the dust were the sheets thrown over the furniture; they were once white and crisp, but now were dull and gray. Jackson hadn’t removed one sheet since he’d been here. There were lost will-o-wisps floating in the dark corners of the room, their flickering light the only thing to see by. I wasn’t exactly surprised to see them here.
There was a small wet bar on one wall, and nothing there had been touched either. What was Jackson doing here then? I motioned with my empty hand for Ronnie and Joey to follow me as I made my way across the room to the doorway in the far wall, figuring it lead to the bedroom. I heard Ronnie shut the door behind us, locking it and setting a freezing spell on the doorknob for good measure. I said another silent prayer that the small dose of knockout powder I’d hit Jackson with would keep him out long enough for us to get out of here.
Once in the bedroom, I risked turning on the light. I blinked in the sudden flood of light and missed whatever made Joey gasp in horror. I dropped to the floor, expecting an attack before my eyes adjusted to the new light. There was no attack, but I stumbled when I saw what made Joey gasp. I braced myself against the doorframe to push back up to my feet, holding onto it, feeling the paint chip away under my nails.
Cages. There were cages everywhere. Inside the cages were supernatural creatures. There was a leprechaun in a cage set on top of a cage that held a gremlin that glared at me with hard, gray eyes. I wasn’t the least bit surprised to see him. Beside the gremlin was a cage full of tiny pixies fluttering excitedly, squealing as they tried to reach out Joey, but whenever they got too close to the bars, there was a spark of light, the sound of something sizzling, and they would scream, flying away from the bars. And there were wisps everywhere. They darted from one cage to the next, feeding off one cramped form to another. They were so bright and happy you didn’t even need the electric lights to see by.
“Oh gods,” I whispered behind a hand. There were three other cages. A small fairy girl huddled in the middle of one, clutching her knees to her chest as she watched us with wide blue eyes, never blinking, and tears running freely down her tiny face. The next cage was large enough for two people to stand in, but it was empty. In the final cage, I saw Roane, or at least who I thought was Roane.
He was emaciated and pale, his skin nearly gray with circles under his eyes so that he looked like he had two black eyes. He was very obviously dying, having been drained of all power and energy. Wisps hovered around him, casting an eerie glow on his sallow skin.
“By the gods,” Ronnie gasped behind me when she finally came in. I felt her hand on my arm as she gripped me, trying to steady herself just as I had with the doorframe.
“How did he catch so many?” I asked, knowing Ronnie couldn’t answer me. Joey rushed into the room, falling to her knees before the cage with the trapped pixies. She tried to touch the cage, clawing at the locks, but the magic on the cage zapped her, shocking her fingers and making her cry out in pain as she snatched her hands away, pressing her fingers to her mouth.
“Mattie! Do something!” she cried, twisting around to face me. Her terror pulled me out of my shock, and Ronnie and I started forward. Ronnie went to help Joey and the pixies, and I went to Roane’s cage.
“We’re gonna get you all out of here,” I said when I caught the angry look of the gremlin again. His eyes narrowed and he glared at me, his distrust plain on his face, but I didn’t have time to argue with his silent anger. I grabbed the lock on Roane’s cage, set my finger to the keyhole, and zapped it like I had at Jackson’s house, but I didn’t hear the answering snap I expected.
“It’s enchanted,” Roane said in an empty voice so soft I almost couldn’t hear him. He picked up his head and opened his eyes. I was taken aback by the lack of light and life. Instead when I looked into his eyes, I saw defeat, a resignation to his fate. Roane was teetering on the edge and was ready to welcome the fall.
“Frogs!” I yelled, throwing the lock against the cage, making it rattle and startling the pixies so they zoomed around their cage, their squeaking cries loud enough to make Ronnie cringe as she fought with her own lock.
“Where are the keys?” Ronnie asked the room at large.
“The human has them,” the gremlin said in a thick Bavarian accent as he batted away one persist wisp.
“Wait, why can’t you get out?” I demanded, turning to the steely-eyed gremlin. Gremlins had an affinity with metal, able to work with it like an artist shapes clay. It was thanks to their magic that the Allied Forces had been able to build tanks that withstood Gatling Gun fire in World War Two and had developed new ammunitions that had finally turned the tide and eventually won the war. A stupid pad lock should be child’s play for him.
“It. Is. Enchanted,” he said, biting off each word. I could see his anger and embarrassment that he’d been bested by a human dabbling in magic. I knew how he felt.
“So what? We go back to his house for the keys?” Ronnie asked. Heat rushed through me as I remembered holding the keys in my hands as I searched for the room key. I had them in my hand, the answer, the easy way out, and I had left them all behind. I closed my eyes and shook my head. We would have to go back.
“No need,” a rough voice answered Ronnie before
I could open my mouth. My head snapped up, and I saw Jackson standing in the doorway, gun in hand, pointing at all of us. “Don’t fucking move.”
I still had the canister of knockout powder in my hand and I flung it at Jackson, ignoring his demand. The canister hit the wall by his head, bursting open, the powder exploding everywhere. Jackson ducked instinctively and pulled the trigger, the gunshot resounding like cannon fire in the confined space.
“Hold your breath!” I screamed at Ronnie and Joey as the cloud billowed out, but my voice sounded far away, the shot ruining my hearing. To my horror, Jackson didn’t collapse. I almost didn’t see his dark form rushing through the white cloud just before he barreled right into me, shoving me against Roane’s cage and knocking the breath out of me. I cried out as his fingers dug into my arms, gripping hard enough to bruise. He spun me around, throwing me into the cloud. I hit the ground with a gasp, sucking in the powder, feeling it coat my mouth and throat as it settled into my pores.
I think I cried out for Ronnie and Joey to run, but I couldn’t be sure. I blinked slowly, trying to will myself to my feet, but my arms and legs became too heavy to move. All I wanted to do was curl up into a little ball and sleep, and then the world became black.
Chapter 18
The first thing I was aware of was an intense throbbing in the back of my head. I opened my eyes to a blinding white light, making me cringe away from it. Curling in on myself, I covered my face with my hands and groaned.
“Mattie?” Ronnie’s voice was entirely too close, her anxiety biting at my skin and the heat of her body making my stomach roll. I peeked through my fingers and saw her terrified face hovering over me. Her cheeks were streaked with red tear tracks and her eyes were puffy from crying. Tiny curls had come loose from her braids, springing up around her head in an orange mist.
“Back up,” I whispered, but she only furrowed her brow at me, my words muffled behind my hands. “Back up,” I repeated, swallowing against the bile that rose in my throat.
“Oh,” Ronnie said, finally understanding me, and suddenly her face wasn’t hovering over me. In her place, three wisps appeared over me, drinking in my pain. I took the moment I needed to compose myself, closing my fingers and cutting off the light. In that moment, I would have killed for a pain amulet or a healing potion.
I rolled to my hands and knees, pausing as my stomach lurched. Sitting back on my heels, I managed to open my eyes, letting them slowly adjust to the light, and I was able to look around without my head spinning. I waved my hands around, sending the parasitic wisps flying. The throbbing was consistent enough that I was able to pull my attention away from it and look for Ronnie.
She was only feet away from me since we were locked in the same cage. It was the large empty one I’d noticed earlier, before Jackson came in.
“Oh, right,” I said, shaking my head as my memory caught up with me, and I remembered what had happened. I’d taken a face full of my own knockout powder. How embarrassing.
“You with us now?” Ronnie asked.
“Yeah, I’m here,” I answered. Running my hands through my hair, I forced it out of my face and tucked the ends behind my ears. I could see my stuff against the far wall by the door and so far out of my reach it wasn’t even worth thinking about. He’d even taken my scarf, the paranoid bastard.
I glanced around at the other cages and saw that nothing else had changed; even the old gremlin was still glaring at me through the bars of his cage. I had to stop myself from blowing him a kiss just to give him something to be pissed about.
“Where’s Joey?” I asked. My voice didn’t convey the worry that had taken root in me when I realized the absence of her bright pink hair.
“She got away,” Ronnie said, nodding to the broken window beyond the cages. “When you threw the powder and Jackson fired the gun, she made a break for it. She is one fast little pixie.”
“Yes, she is,” I agreed. “Well good, at least she got away and some one knows where we are. Maybe she’ll go get help.”
“If she really got away.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jackson,” Ronnie said. “After he locked us up, he left to go find her.”
“How did he manage to get you in here? Did you get hit with the powder too?”
“No.” Ronnie glanced away from me, and I felt a cold and clammy hand grip the base of my spine, terrified about what she might say. “He threatened to kill you if I didn’t listen. You were passed out, so it wasn’t like you could fight back, right? So I just complied like a coward.”
“Not like a coward,” I said. “Like a friend.”
“I guess.” Ronnie’s eyes flickered to my face and then dropped to my neck before she looked away again. I touched my neck and felt the sting of the cut, my fingertips coming away wet with blood. A knife to the neck. What a classy guy.
“Thanks,” I said and, after clearing my throat, added, “Sorry I got us into this damn mess.”
“You didn’t.” Ronnie shook her head, sending one heavy braid to slide over her shoulder. She flicked it back with a huff.
I felt the circular argument coming, neither of us wanting to lay blame on the other while wanting to take responsibility for messing things up. I didn’t have the energy for it, so I kept my mouth closed and climbed to my feet. I was more than a little relieved when the room didn’t spin and my stomach remained where it belonged.
I moved to the door of the cage and stared at the lock. The bars were too close together for us to slip through, but the lock looked simple enough. Closing my eyes, I concentrated on the power inside of me, calling it forward, directing it to my hands until the power was snapping at my fingertips and buzzing through me.
“Mattie, wait,” Ronnie said, but I had already lifted my hands and let the power go, aiming at the lock. Tiny bolts of dancing lightning burst forward, striking the metal. There was a powerful boom that reverberated through the room and the bolts of power rebounded into me, throwing me back, making me fall to the floor. A sound of pain escaped me, and for one moment, I thought my head would split in two.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Ronnie said. “The cages have been enchanted against our various powers. Roane can’t even touch his because it’s iron. The gremlin’s cage has been spelled to be impervious to his powers, and our cage has been spelled with an unbreakable charm and electrified.”
“Tricky bastard,” I said, pushing back up to my feet. My fingers were tingling, and I could feel tiny hairs floating away from my head as the static electricity zipped around me.
“Pretty clever for a human, right?”
“I’m not going to compliment a murderer,” I said between gritted teeth. “You really can’t do anything?” I demanded, spinning to face the angry face of the gremlin.
“Been here a month. You think I’m here on vacation? I like being crouched in a cage for weeks?” he spat back at me. He mumbled something in Bavarian I didn’t understand, but I was sure it wasn’t flattering.
“A month? What could he want you for a month for?”
“He’s been catching creatures, figuring out what we can do for him,” the sweet-faced fairy girl spoke up. Her voice sounded like ringing bells, and something inside of me warmed at the sound of her voice.
“Didn’t know gremlins don’t grant no wishes,” the gremlin said.
“Why did he catch you if he’s got Roane?” I asked the fairy girl. She’d come closer to the bars but was careful not to actually touch them, and I figured they were iron like Roane’s. Her cage wasn’t much bigger than Roane’s, but she was so tiny, probably not much older than eleven or twelve, she was able to stand in her cage.
“He caught me first,” she said, shaking her head. “But I don’t have a lot of power yet. I couldn’t do what he wanted, so he went after the prince.” She bowed her head quickly when mentioning Roane, almost curtseying.
“Then why keep you?” I didn’t ask why he didn’t kill her because looking at her fair face
, I couldn’t bring myself to be so coarse. But it was the real question I was wondering.
“He said he wanted to keep me, so when I was older, more powerful, he’d have me at his disposal,” she said, her eyes filling with tears so that they shimmered in the light. “But he doesn’t understand.” She closed her eyes and the tears spilled over, running down her cheeks and splashing to the floor.
“He hasn’t figured out keeping you all caged and locked up is killing you?” I asked as I turned to look at the different prisoners and watched as they all shook their heads. The cage of pixies had gone quiet as they all drifted to the bottom of the cage, huddling together, squeaking sadly.
“Why the pixies?” I asked, unsure why I was letting my curiosity get the better of me.
“Because they are clever little thieves,” Jackson answered as he walked in, startling all of us. The fairy girl jumped, hitting the edge of her cage and shrieking in pain as the bars singed her arm. “Clever little thieves that can get into places other people can’t, and so long as I have enough of them to threaten, none of the rest will refuse what I ask. Isn’t that right?” Jackson crossed the room and flicked the cage with his finger, making it rattle, sending the tiny winged creatures crashing into each other as they fought for balance. They squeaked and squealed in terror, their tiny voices like knives in my ears as my head continued to throb. I covered my ears and glared at Jackson.
“I see you’re finally awake,” Jackson said, coming to stand in front of my cage. His lips were pursed as he looked at me, his eyes roaming from the top of my head, down to my feet, and back up again. A slimy feeling slid up my back as his eyes tracked my body. My hands fisted at my side and I was overwhelmed with the desire to punch him right in the face. Power snapped at my hands, the electric energy snapping along my skin, drawing Jackson’s attention. His eyebrows crawled up his forehead as he watched me rein in my temper, pulling the energy back into me, knowing it would be futile and wasteful to try to use it.
Wytchcraft: A Matilda Kavanagh Novel Page 26
