by S. M. Boyce
Oops.
Fyrn led them down a side tunnel to the left she wouldn’t have even seen on her own. The two glowing crystals were like wisps in a forest, and the surreal effect of being able to see nothing else began to grate on her nerves.
Just stick together, she told herself.
It would be okay if they just stuck together.
***
A finger ran along the back of Audrey’s neck.
She jumped, cussing as she spun instinctively around. Though it was dark, she couldn’t help wanting to look for whoever was touching her.
Or what was touching her.
The rope around her waist tightened as the party continued ahead of her, and she stumbled as Victoria’s new inhuman strength pulling her along like she weighed nothing. Her body grazed the wall, and something yanked the cotton out of her ear.
Audrey slapped one hand firmly over her exposed ear and scanned the darkness, doing her best to reach for Victoria. She swung her arm frantically, and when she couldn’t find her friend she turned her head in search of the glowing crystals that led their small party.
She saw only darkness.
“Audrey,” a sweet voice said, echoing down the hall.
Master, please, the koi said in her mind. The voice was faded, as though he were trapped in a box.
Audrey shook her head. “Victoria! Where are you?”
“Audrey?” someone asked, the voice echoing down the hall.
Master, no! the koi said. So distant. So weak.
Victoria had been here mere seconds ago. Audrey just had to catch up to her. She ran through the tunnel, breath heaving in her chest as she tried to keep one hand on her ear to block out anything the sirens said.
Then she tripped.
Audrey tumbled to the ground, the rock scraping her legs as she fell. Out of instinct, she reached out with both hands to catch herself.
“Audrey, come here!” a familiar voice shouted. It echoed, ethereal and unnerving.
Audrey ran.
***
Victoria followed the two crystals ahead of her, determined not to let them out of her sight. They gave her a sense of calmness, despite the fear building in her chest at being surrounded by the intense darkness.
She couldn’t even see a foot behind her. It freaked her the hell out.
Behind her the rope tugged once again and she reached out, searching for Audrey’s shoulder to help her stand.
Her hand met empty air.
Panicking, she reached again.
Nothing.
The rope loosened and she grabbed it, pulling on it as fast as she could, only to reach the end.
No Audrey.
“Guys, stop!” she shouted at the men ahead of her.
The two glowing crystals continued forward. With the enchanted cotton in their ears, neither of them could hear a thing.
She halted and spun on her heel, knowing full well that the rope would tighten and stop them. That was the point, after all.
Victoria retraced her steps, arms outstretched as she searched for Audrey’s body. She couldn’t be far.
The rope didn’t tighten, and she looked again at the glowing crystals leading the way.
They were gone.
At most Victoria had turned her head for three seconds, and now she stood alone in the deepest caves beneath Fairhaven, surrounded by sirens who wanted to kill her and her friends.
To make it worse, they could be yelling for her and she wouldn’t even know it. The enchanted cotton blocked out everything.
“I should have come alone,” she said breathlessly.
***
“Audrey.”
Audrey felt blindly through the darkness, following the sound of Victoria’s voice. It had to be her, but the voice echoed. It seemed as though she were far down the hall, though Audrey couldn’t understand how she’d gotten so far away.
The warm glow of a fire flickered to life in a nearby tunnel, casting an orange glow along the painfully dark walls. Audrey ran toward it, eager to find her friends, eager to be done with this, eager to be—
“Home?” she asked the empty air.
Though she had been in a dark tunnel seconds ago, she now stood in her living room. The television flashed images from her favorite reality show, though the volume had been muted.
“No, this…this is…”
She had tried to say wrong but a sickly-sweet sensation combed through her brain. It was like the fuzzy fog that came with a migraine, too powerful and heavy to shake.
One hand on the back of her neck, she scanned the room again for clues. She had forgotten something.
Hadn’t she?
The clink of dishes in the kitchen sink caught her attention, and she inched around the couch to get a view through the doorway. Two figures hovered over the stove, one with short blond hair and a stocky frame. The other chuckled and lifted a spoon with red sauce to her mouth, her long black hair almost identical to Audrey’s.
“Mom? Dad?”
They spun, erupting into smiles as Audrey entered the kitchen. She walked toward them, her head fuzzy as she fought to remember how she had gotten here. A dull worry pressed in the back of her mind even as they pulled her into a hug.
She had forgotten something. Something big, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember what it was.
***
The siren combed her thin fingers through Audrey’s hair, her magic feeding her all the tidbits of information she needed to know—the girl’s name, her fears, her greatest desires. In the middle of a small cave, Audrey stared blankly at the wall, fully lost in the hypnotic spell the siren had cast upon her.
With a warm and soothing hum, the siren spun her tale to her little victim. To her delicate and light-starved eyes, a dim blue glow illuminated the edges of everything in the cave. An underground river rushed nearby, eager to swallow anyone foolish enough to jump in. With every twist of her spell, she inched Audrey closer to the edge. It wouldn’t be long now.
It wouldn’t be long.
***
“You came for me, Fyrn,” a sweet voice said in his ear.
“Maria?” His heart broke at the sound of her voice, a voice he hadn’t heard in decades.
He strode through a dim cave, the one he had lost her in so long ago. The tunnel to the beast, a failed promise to protect her from its hunger.
The greatest mistake he had ever made, and now he could set it right.
But he couldn’t recall how he had arrived. He simply knew with all his heart that she was here. Finally he had figured out how to find her, and his nerves hummed with anticipation at seeing her once more. The sickening haze of a headache clawed at the back of his mind, but he fought to keep it at bay.
“I knew you loved me,” she said, her voice echoing through the tunnel.
“Forever,” he said softly. He limped forward, desperate to find her again.
***
Diesel pressed his back against the cold, rocky wall with one hand covering his left ear to block out any siren song. Keeping his staff tucked in the crook of one arm, his eyes scanned the darkness. He waited for the creature hiding in its shadows to swipe at him again. It had grabbed one of the cotton swabs from his ears, but this time he was ready for it.
Fingers crept up his neck, cool and soft ,and he inched his hand closer, letting it think it had him until it was close enough to grab. The creature moved painfully slowly, almost leisurely in its pace until its hand had reached his right ear.
When he knew he wouldn’t fail, he pounced.
The figure before him gasped, and he triumphantly lit the light at the tip of his staff.
Victoria stood in his arms, eyes wide.
He hesitated. He had covered his ear the moment the swab had been pulled out, so he didn’t think this could be siren magic. Of course, there was the risk that when the swab had come out he had succumbed.
Victoria said something, her voice muffled by the cotton in one ear and his hand covering the other, an
d he gritted his teeth in frustration. If this was her he needed to hear what she said—but this could all be a ploy.
Of course, if he had already succumbed to the siren song, covering his ear wouldn’t do any good.
Gingerly, he lifted his hand only a little. “What?”
“I lost the others,” Victoria said, breathless. “I’m so grateful I found you, Diesel. I’m so scared. What do we do?”
She leaned her head against his chest, and his heart involuntarily skipped a beat at her touch. He relaxed slightly, grateful she trusted him so completely. “I’ll get us out of this, Victoria. I’ll—”
His gaze drifted down to the woman holding him, the woman he wanted more than anything in this world. She wrapped her arms around him tightly, body trembling slightly as she asked him to save her.
This was what he wanted—to save the woman he loved—but Victoria would never cower like this. She didn’t tremble. It was an insult to her strength, and the sirens had taken his wish too far.
He grabbed her neck and pinned her against the wall. The woman struggled, gasping for air. “Diesel, my darling! You’re hurting me!”
“You are a liar, siren,” he snapped.
The fearful, panicked expression on Victoria’s face bled away in an instant to a smug smirk. “That I am, darling. That I am.”
The siren vanished beneath him, and he scrambled to find the second piece of cotton to protect his ears.
He had to find the real Victoria before he lost her forever.
***
Victoria sucker-punched yet another face in the darkness.
For the last ten minutes invisible hands had crept along her body, all of them reaching for the cotton in her ears. Her strength alone had kept them at bay, but in her frustration she had taken up swinging wildly into the darkness.
Not the best attack strategy, but so far it was working.
Victoria.
She snapped her head up at the voice, panicking. Her hands shot to her ears in the fear that the sirens had pulled out the cotton, but both pieces were there. She scanned the darkness, desperate to know where the voice had come from.
Victoria, damn it, turn around.
She spun to find Shiloh in the middle of the tunnel, his body illuminated by a dull white glow. He pointed to the pitch-black wall.
What are you doing? she asked.
Leading you to the Rhazdon Artifact. I can feel it. It’s close.
Victoria hesitated as another pair of hands wound around her waist. She grabbed one and bent the fingers back until she felt a satisfying crack. The hand twisted in her grip until she let it go, and it disappeared into the darkness. If she didn’t still have the cotton in her ears, she imagined she would have heard a sharp wail of pain.
Good. That’d teach the shadow monsters to feel her up.
Shiloh impatiently pointed to the tunnel again, rolling his eyes. I’m not a hallucination. Your cotton balls are firmly seated in that dense head of yours.
Ah, there we go. An insult, so it was definitely the real Shiloh.
She jogged behind him as he led her through the tunnels. The hands continued to touch her, and with each step they became more forceful. They sometimes pulled on her shirt and other times tried to trip her.
They didn’t want her going this way.
She smirked, running faster as Shiloh sped through the tunnels. Almost there.
Elle appeared beside him, laughing and clapping her hands. Oh, are we racing? First one to that set of doors up there wins!
You are absolutely useless, Elle, he muttered.
Wait, what doors? Victoria asked. She squinted, trying to make out anything more than the sheer blackness of the dark tunnels but could only see Shiloh’s form a few feet ahead of her.
With a sudden rush he disappeared, and a second later Victoria slammed her head against something hard. The force knocked her on her ass and she groaned in surprise.
Two brilliant metal doors swung open from the force, and light streamed from somewhere overhead. A single pedestal sat in the middle of the room.
This was it…had to be.
She jumped to her feet and rushed inside. There was a golden amulet on the pedestal, and a dull green glow emanated from its center like an iris in an eye.
She shuddered.
The sensation of being watched crept over her skin, and she looked over her shoulder expecting to finally see the bodies those hands belonged to. Instead, she saw the open doors and inky darkness hovering just outside. It was as though the doorway were a portal to space itself, and taking one step beyond would mean being lost.
For whatever reason, the creatures that had tried to keep her at bay wouldn’t walk into the room’s light. They huddled outside, perhaps waiting for her to leave.
“You can’t stop me,” she said to the shadows.
As if on cue, a dozen hands shot from the darkness in the hallway. They grabbed her arms, and she kicked them back as forcefully as she could. Unseen assailants started to pull her back into the hallway, the sheer number of them almost overwhelming her.
But she was so close.
With her right hand, she grabbed the amulet off the pedestal, and when she touched it her skin blistered as though burned by fire. She grimaced, wondering if the wizard who hid it here had charmed it to burn whoever touched it.
Didn’t matter.
As the amulet burned her, the magic tied to the dagger embedded in her arm healed her. For each second of pain, she was given a second of relief.
The wizard’s charm couldn’t stop her.
With her left hand, Victoria summoned her sword and hacked through the pale gray hands reaching for her. Each slice produced black blood, and she could imagine the screams.
Thank goodness the cotton blocked them out.
“Enough!” Victoria shouted. She stabbed the shadows beyond the door, driving her blade as deep as it would go. The hands stopped and fell limp, disappearing one by one into the intense darkness beyond the small room.
As the world around her stilled, Victoria heaved. Riddled with nerves, she waited for something to happen, for another hand to reach out and try to grab her.
Instead, pain ripped up her right arm and clear into her teeth. She screamed in agony and fell to her knees, and the world swirled around her as the familiar agony reminded her how much she hated fusing with Rhazdon Artifacts.
Apparently she had in fact killed at least one of the creatures that had attacked her.
She held on, trying to stay awake through the pain in case any of the monsters had survived.
But she couldn’t.
Her sword disappeared as her vision went dark, and before long she collapsed onto the ground.
Chapter 18
Victoria woke to a very angry pair of eyes glaring down at her.
She yelped in surprise and threw a punch at the strange woman, only to have her hand sail through the delicate nose.
A ghost.
Victoria sat on her heels, tense and nervous as she sized up the woman glowering down at her. A rich white cape covered her shoulders, and its fur lining swept the floor. The stranger lifted an elegant chin and her mouth moved, although Victoria couldn’t hear her through the cotton still in her ears.
“What?”
The regal woman rolled her eyes. You woke me up. Why?
“Sorry,” Victoria said, standing. “I need the Rhazdon Artifact you’re tied to.”
Nonsense! Your needs don’t matter. Let me sleep once more.
Victoria chuckled. “Fine. Go to sleep.”
The woman gestured to Victoria’s hand. Take it off and return it to the platform.
“Removing the Artifact would kill me.”
And?
Victoria laughed, shaking her head. “As charming as you are, I have things to do. Go away.”
Ridiculous! I won’t let you—
“Enough.” Victoria snapped her fingers, focusing the full force of her bear artifact’s power into dismissing the ho
rrible woman from her presence. The ghost disappeared, leaving only the silent room in her wake.
Victoria peeked into the hallway, where the oppressive darkness had lifted. On the ground was a dark pool of what could only be blood, and streaks indicating that someone had dragged a body down the tunnel.
“Why didn’t they kill me while I was unconscious?” she asked the empty room.
They seemed terrified of the light, Shiloh said.
Victoria peeked through her hair at Shiloh, who was leaning against the nearby wall. He sighed deeply as though he weren’t talking about sirens nearly murdering her.
We waved and hollered, too! Elle said, skipping through the tunnel just outside.
Victoria smiled and her shoulders relaxed. “You saved me, didn’t you?”
Shiloh shrugged. I didn’t want to be trapped down here with those two.
“Thanks, Shiloh.”
Her right hand ached, and Victoria lifted it to find the golden amulet embedded in her palm. She gulped, stunned at the green glow radiating from what used to be skin. It lit the air around her like a beacon, the grim eye of the amulet forever a part of her now.
And its powers were hers as well.
In the silence of the deep tunnel, Victoria did her best to come up with a plan. Yes, she had found the Rhazdon Artifact, but at what cost?
Audrey, Fyrn, and Diesel were roaming the tunnels at this very moment, lost and probably alone.
Well, not alone. They likely had sirens to keep them company.
Victoria bristled, gritting her teeth. “Shiloh. Elle.”
What do you want now, woman? Shiloh snapped from behind her.
Good old Shiloh.
Without turning around, Victoria pointed into the tunnel. “Can you find my friends?”
Elle’s giggle echoed in Victoria’s mind. Oh, a searching game?
Shiloh rolled his eyes. Victoria, we found the Rhazdon Artifact because we have similar magic. We can’t go on quests for you willy-nilly.
She frowned. “Then how—”
Victoria stared at the glowing green amulet fused with her hand. Fyrn didn’t know much about its powers, but he had told her it bestowed divination magic. She could read possible outcomes.
