No Darker Fate

by John Corwin

  Greg whistled. "Want to bet Andre knows more about this than he's letting on?"

  "There are several possible reasons why he met with Martin," Lucinda said. "Arbiters are often in short supply. Maybe he wanted Martin back in the faction."

  "Yeah, but this guy was Andre's predecessor. Knowing how Andre thinks, he'd regard Martin as competition. He'd be happy to get him out of his hair."

  Vish slapped his hand against the wall. "Don't be blind, Luce. Andre's got his hand in the pot. I'll bet he's been in on this from the start."

  "Given how badly he wants to get rid of the rogues, it adds up," Greg said.

  "Does it matter right now?" Lucinda narrowed her eyes at the two men. "We're stuck. I can't break a probe through these walls. Even if I could voice our suspicions to someone outside, I doubt it would do much good. Nobody wants to go up against a grand arbiter."

  The metal door clanked. It swung open. Marissa stood outside. "Come here." She motioned Tollee to join her.

  "You have no right to hold us," Vish said.

  "Andre will hear your complaints later," Marissa said.

  Vish charged her. Two executors stepped in front of Marissa. He skidded to a halt and glared at them.

  "Assholes."

  Tollee didn't want to go with Marissa. What if they'd found out about her already? Another executor entered the room. He walked over, grabbed Tollee by the arm. His grip clamped her bicep painfully tight. She pulled away. He didn't seem to notice. Her feet skidded across the tile floor. Vish moved to intercept. The other executors blocked him. He hurled a string of curses at them. The executor pulled Tollee into the hallway. Marissa secured the door then led the group to another door at the end of the hallway. Tollee gave up her struggle and let the executor guide her. His grip loosened. Blood started to circulate through her arm again.

  She considered hopping. A quick study of the hallway made her realize it would be futile. The door at the end was probably locked. She'd lose the element of surprise. Then again, these guys probably had seekers keeping an eye on things from within the Blight.

  The hallway walls were made of the same slick concrete as the rooms. Several metal doors lined the walls. Tollee wondered if Mikhail and his group were behind one. What about Lucas? Martin? What had happened to Alexia? They passed through the door at the end of the hallway. The floor here was carpeted. Stained oak doors replaced metal ones. Marissa opened one. The executor led Tollee inside. Andre sat at one end of a conference table. There were a lot of chairs, but nobody else using them. Her escort pulled out a chair, pressed her into it, and left.

  Why was she here? Andre knew about her involvement. He had no other reason to meet with her. Tollee's teeth chattered. She sensed threads of static in her hair and stifled a scream. Switching sight, she looked for threads. Saw none. Most arbiters kept at least one or two active threads. Andre wasn't using any at the moment.

  "You've grown," he said. "Turned into quite a pretty young woman."

  Tollee opened her mouth to speak. A squeak emerged instead.

  "I guess our little experiment spun out of control, didn't it?"

  "Experiment?"

  He laughed. "Come, now. I know you recognize me. I'm the one who found you for Martin."

  "Found me?"

  "Let's cut out the pretenses, girl." His face darkened. "I don't need to probe you for answers. Your eyes, your untrained body language give you away."

  "Are you going to kill me then?"

  "Kill you?" He raised an eyebrow. "It would be simpler to kill you, Martin, and Lucas. But the old man found something, didn't he?"

  "I don't know."

  "Don't lie, girl. Tell me everything."

  "Seriously, I don't know. He was looking for the afterlife. If you want my opinion, I think he's crazy."

  Andre leaned back in his chair. His face grew thoughtful. "Guess I'll have to wait 'til the old man wakes up. Too bad."

  Goosebumps crept up Tollee's arms. "What does that mean?"

  A tanned woman with brown straggly hair entered the room. Her simple dress was brown too. A pale man followed behind her.

  "Tollee, this is Kate and her seeker, Phillip. She's going to get to know you very well over the next few hours. Unfortunately, that process won't work both ways."

  Tollee gasped. "A truthing session?" Not again.

  Andre smiled. "Exactly. If you cooperate, you might come out the other end with your brain intact."

  "I told you I don't know what Martin found. Can't you dig in his brain while he's unconscious?"

  "Not in his current weakened state."

  "Splash some water on his face. Slap him! Please, Andre, I don't know anything."

  "Take her to an examination room."

  Tollee jumped from her chair and ran to the opposite side of the room. She looked for a way out. Switched sight. Kate was going to mind-lock her at any moment. The conference room door opened. A dark-haired young woman stepped in, holding the door open behind her. She glanced at Tollee.

  "What the hell?"

  "Dara, I told you not to disturb me," Andre said.

  Tollee hopped. She ended up in the hall. The hallway to her left led back to the cells. She couldn't help Lucinda or her friends. Instead, she ran right. The hall branched. This time she went left. Someone yelled at her. The corridor opened into a reception area. Brown leather couches and a coffee table decorated the room. A steep staircase seemed to be the only exit. She remembered bouncing on the man's shoulder as they came down stairs when she'd first arrived. This had to be the way out. She looked up. Hopped to the door at the top. She shaved it too close. Her nose bumped the door. There wasn't much of a landing at the top and her balance was off. She started to tumble backwards.

  A bar held the steel door closed. She grabbed it. Regained her balance. Jerked the bar up and open. The morning air greeted her as she crashed outside. She wanted to cry as familiar odors entered her nose. The door led into the back of a small theatre. A parking lot with cracked asphalt lay before her. It was deserted at this time of day. More shouting sounded behind her. It wouldn't take long for her pursuers to catch up.

  She felt the air behind her displace. A split second later an arm gripped her shoulder.

  "Gotcha," said someone.

  Chapter 39

  Out of a cacophony of voices, his name emerged. The voices were strange. The pitch and timbre differed from normal human speech. But they were somehow familiar. An eerie laugh emerged. He knew why the voices didn't sound human. They weren't. They belonged to the mynas. What did they want? Why were they tormenting him? Why couldn't he see them?

  Lucas tried to open his eyes. In truth, he wasn't sure if they were opened or closed. It remained dark. The birds' calls echoed around him. The beating of their wings thundered in the cavernous void. Was he blind? What had happened to him? He vaguely remembered Martin and the ghouls. Martin had done something to him. He'd blinded Lucas. He'd enclosed him in an envelope of night. Claustrophobia gripped his heart. He tried to move his arms but couldn't feel them. He couldn't feel his legs. He tried to suck in a breath but couldn't feel the air rush into his lungs. Was he dead?

  His only choice, if anyone could call it that, was to listen to the birds. Another voice joined their calls. It said his name as well. This one sounded definitively human. Real. He trained his one remaining sense on that sound. The voice grew louder. It seemed closer. Soon it drowned out the calls of the birds. At its crescendo it became a scream.

  The voices went silent.

  A pinprick of light broke the darkness. It hovered above like a dim star. Another speck joined it. A shaft of starlight lanced downward from the first star. More pinpricks appeared. Their own shafts shattered the dark. Pain stabbed into Lucas's head. Despite the knifing agony in his skull, he was happy he could feel something. The darkness vanished. A low electrical hum filled the silence. Lucas realized he was staring at a ceiling through a grid of silver bars. Banks of bright florescent fixtures glared down.

&nb
sp; He felt his arms, his legs, and the rest of his body reconnect as if parts of his brain were reuniting them. His hands trembled. Tears welled in his eyes. Immense gratitude lifted his spirits. He could see. He could move. After sitting up, his gratitude all but vanished. Gleaming silver bars caged him. Beyond the bars, white concrete walls formed another unyielding barrier. A surge of anger caught fire in his veins. Lucas gripped two bars and pried them in opposite directions.

  The bars groaned. One bent a hair. They were thick, probably three-quarters of an inch in diameter. They definitely weren't made of silver. It reminded him all too much of the prison Philip and Kate had put him in. His arms ached. His hands trembled violently. They lost their grip on the bars and slipped off. His stomach rumbled. Hunger and fatigue had drained his strength. He wasn't bending any bars today. Lucas dropped his hands to his sides.

  Then the obvious occurred to him. He didn't need to bend bars. He focused on the metal door and Blight hopped. Except he didn't. He was still caged. He tried to shift sight.

  Nothing happened.

  Tried to open a scar.

  Nothing.

  Martin had done something terrible to him. Mangled his brain. Since his sight had returned and the paralysis had vanished, maybe his abilities would return as well. On the other hand, Martin or another arbiter might have mind-locked him.

  He tried to open a scar again. No good. Lucas stared at the metal door set in the concrete walls. Even if he escaped from the cage he probably wouldn't have the strength to open the door by force. And there was no telling what lay beyond the door. Martin had obviously convinced the ghouls to bring him to this prison. Well, if Martin really wanted to visit the afterlife, Lucas was prepared to grant it. Maybe by snapping the old man's neck. He wouldn't mind opening a scar to the afterlife and kicking the lot of them inside. Unfortunately, he had no idea how he'd managed to access the hellish domain in the first place.

  The mynas had something to do with it. They'd been present both entering and leaving. Lucas wondered if God really lived there. If he did, he had to be insane or evil. That, of course, meant the Devil lived there. A smile cracked his dry lips. In spite of discovering that super beings and a place like the Blight existed, the existence of a god or a devil still seemed inconceivable. He'd have to open his mind to the possibility, though. Maybe the birds were God. Maybe they were his messengers.

  Then again, they might belong to a crazy coot who'd trained them to scare the crap out of Lucas.

  He returned his attention to the cage. Four thick bolts jutted from the concrete floor. Large nuts secured the bottom of the cage to the bolts. He knelt. Braced both hands on the nut. Twisted. His hands slipped. He rubbed hands to pants to dry the sweat. Tried again. He couldn't budge the nut even a fraction. This was no good. Anger and frustration filled him to bursting. He backed up against the back of the cage. Charged the short distance forward. Slammed against the cage door.

  Sharp pain tore into Lucas's shoulder. He bit back a cry and slumped to the floor. No good. He had no choice but to wait for Martin and the ghouls to come to him so he sat back and stared at the wall.

  The wait felt eternal. Without a clock he couldn't be sure if an hour or more had passed. Lacking anything else to do, he ticked off five minutes before growing bored. The cage was only four feet or so squared and didn't offer much pacing room. He focused an ear on the metal door. He thought he picked up a faint noise, but couldn't be sure. With all the concrete, sounds were sure to be muffled. He tried to sleep. The bright florescent lights turned the backs of his eyelids red. He covered his eyes with a hand. The resulting darkness brought a shock of claustrophobia.

  Lucas jerked his eyes open.

  "I'm awake you idiots," he said, yelling at the top of his lungs. "What do you want with me?"

  His voice echoed off the walls.

  More time passed. His stomach rumbled on empty. Pasty mucous built in his mouth. If they didn't come soon, the thirst would torture him. Maybe to death. He wouldn't go out that way. He'd bash his head in on the bars first.

  During the wait, he occasionally tried to open Blight scars but nothing worked. Not even a little. He was pretty sure his technique wasn't flawed. It would've been dumb for Martin to leave that ability intact anyway, Lucas reasoned. Somehow, Martin had inhibited that ability.

  More time passed. Lucas hurled insults at the metal door until his voice went hoarse. Had they abandoned him? And what had happened to Alexia? He was amazed the thought of her hadn't occurred to him until just now. They might be doing terrible things to her. Nauseating thoughts percolated in his mind. The ghouls tearing her apart. Turning her into a ghoul. Raping her. She needed him. He might be too late already. The thick bars taunted him. The metal door in the concrete walls mocked him.

  Lucas braced his feet against a corner bar. Gripped the adjacent one with both hands. Bent his knees into a half squat. He gritted his teeth and tightened his joints. His muscles corded. Hot energy flushed into his legs. He pictured her, bound, bloodied, surrounded by ghouls, Martin leering in the background. He had to save her.

  The corner bar groaned. Lucas hadn't realized he was already straining against it. The thick bar warped. He pushed with his feet and pulled with his arms until his head felt ready to burst from excess blood pressure. The bar in his hands seemed to move a fraction. He blacked out for an instant and fell to the floor, exhausted. He was afraid to look, to see if his effort had been futile. He looked anyway. A gap was there, but was it wide enough?

  Lucas poked his head into the gap. It caught partway. He wriggled his head, shifted it back and forth. An ear caught on the bar. He struggled to angle his head up so the ear would flatten against the bar but only managed to move a little. Now his head was firmly wedged. Panic gripped his mind. His heart fluttered and his bowels threatened to let loose.

  "No!" His scream sounded like a yelp. Like an injured dog. He thrust forward. Pain flared on the left of his face. Something slicked down his cheek. His head moved a fraction. The pain intensified but his head slid through.

  He panted and hung his head outside the bars and groaned. Droplets of crimson blood splashed on the floor. Somehow, he'd cut himself. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered now but finding Alexia. He turned sideways and slid the rest of his body through the bent bars. With a thud, he landed on the concrete. Blood pooled on the floor like raspberry sauce on white frosting. Lucas slid a hand up his face. His ear hung loose. The bar had torn it halfway off.

  Acid burned a trail up his throat. Lucas took deep breaths and beat the nausea down. His esophagus felt raw. He remembered how quickly his kind was supposed to heal so he pressed the ear back in place. Hoped he wasn't holding it crooked. That would look stupid, rescuing Alexia with his bloody crooked ear. After a few seconds, the blood stanched. The ear felt connected. Then again, it might be glommed on with dry blood. As long as it held and didn't completely fall off.

  The metal door loomed a few feet away. Lucas slumped against the outside of the cage and gave himself a few minutes to recover. In the meantime, he attempted to open more Blight scars. This time he thought he saw a glimmer of silver. He hoped it wasn't a hallucination. If he pounded the metal door open, a Blight hop might be his only avenue of escape. The ghouls must be out somewhere. Surely they would've heard him screaming earlier.

  Lucas approached the door and ran a hand over its polished surface. He rapped his knuckles against it. It was solid, not hollow as he'd hoped. The latch was hidden on the other side of the metal jamb. His hands shook and his knees felt like jelly. With a full charge of energy, he could probably knock the door off its hinges. In his current condition, he'd be lucky to put a dent in it. One carrot, a stalk of celery, anything might be the difference. In all the time he'd been here, he hadn't even seen water. Martin didn't want him at full strength. He wanted Lucas weak and pliable. That was definitely how he felt.

  Focusing on Martin built the rage. A few shreds of energy seemed to concentrate in Lucas's belly. He backed across the
room. Took aim. Pushed off the back wall like a racer in the hundred meter dash and sprinted at the door. A hoarse yell escaped his throat. At the last second, he angled his shoulder to the door, bent his knees, and launched his body. He hit the door dead center. The metal shrieked. Lucas's head clanged against the door. He wobbled backward and fell on his butt.

  When his vision cleared, Lucas examined the door. The middle was warped, concave. The concrete on the hinge side had cracked. Part of the latch was visible. He pushed himself up unsteadily. A dizzy spell dropped him again. One side of his head felt like it'd split open. A fresh trickle of blood funneled through the caked mess on his ear and dribbled off his chin. He straightened his head and felt the stream redirect down his neck. The ghouls might not recognize him. He probably looked like them now. Or like one of their victims.

  A few deep breaths cleared the remaining fog in his head. Lucas pushed himself up, walked to the door. Kicked it. It groaned. Dust fell from the top of the jamb. He kicked it again. Chunks of concrete thudded down. The door toppled. The clang sounded like a warped bell and echoed down the hallway. Lucas poked his head out. A long line of similar doors broke the monotony of the hallway to his left.

  Where in the hell had Martin taken him?

  A few feet to the right, a blank wall ended the corridor. Maybe fifty yards at the opposite end sat a door. With so many cells to choose from, why had they put him in the last? It explained why no one could hear him.

  He crept down the hall a few feet. Tested the first door he came to. A simple twist lever on the outside inserted a bolt into the jamb. This door wasn't locked. He peered inside. There wasn't a cage inside. Otherwise, the room mirrored the one he'd vacated. Martin must have specially prepared the place for him. As he walked, he noted none of the other doors in his half of the hallway were locked. He checked each cell anyway in the dim hope that Alexia might be inside one.

  A murmur caught his attention. He stopped. Listened. Someone was cursing up a storm. Other voices, fainter, chimed in. He continued down the hall until he was right on top of the voices. They emerged from a locked door about a quarter of the way down the hall from the door at the end. Someone pounded on the door so loud that Lucas jumped away. Who else besides Alexia had Martin locked up? Whoever they were, he needed allies. Surely they'd be willing to help.