Taken

by Benedict Jacka

  I let myself think about the fact that if Crystal was going to be uncooperative it would be faster just to slit her throat and find Vitus’s lair myself.

  “Oh, Vitus Aubuchon,” Crystal said hurriedly. “You’re looking for his sanctum?”

  “Yes I am. Start walking.”

  Crystal did. I matched pace with her, keeping the knife pressed against her throat and keeping my divination focused on the short-term chances of her trying anything. As long as I kept the knife there, they were very low. I’d spent enough time around Crystal to get a fairly good handle on her personality and I’d pegged her as the cautious type. I didn’t think she’d try to attack on her own, not as long as she thought she could get out of this some other way. “What is this place?” I said.

  “I don’t actually know the details—”

  I let myself think of cutting Crystal’s throat again.

  Crystal changed gears quickly. “—it’s a shadow realm of Fountain Reach. It’s a copy, slightly out of phase with reality. The wards link the copy with the original.”

  “And that key is a focus that lets you go between the two, right?”

  “. . . Yes. But it’s not easy to use, you have to—”

  “I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

  “Please don’t tell Vitus I let you know any of this,” Crystal said. She sounded afraid, fearful. “He’ll kill me.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I’ll help you. I’ll take you to him. Is that all right?”

  “That’s great. Down these stairs?”

  “Yes . . . Could you take the knife away?”

  “I don’t think so.” I started down the stairs, keeping the knife to Crystal’s throat.

  “Look, I didn’t have any choice,” Crystal said anxiously. “He brought me here the first time. If I didn’t help him he was going to—”

  “He was going to do what?” I said. “Vitus can’t do anything outside this house. In fact, I don’t think he can even leave this house. So what exactly was stopping you from walking away as soon as you got out that first time?”

  “There are—things he can do,” Crystal said with a little catch in her voice. “You don’t understand. He’s—”

  “Oh, spare me the bullshit,” I said. “I’m not as gullible as Lyle. If you’re going to lie at least make it interesting.”

  Crystal was silent for five seconds and when she spoke again the pretence of fear was gone from her voice; it was precise and cool. “I’m going to enjoy watching Vitus kill you.”

  “You know, that might be the first honest thing you’ve ever said to me.” Following Crystal’s lead, I turned down another hallway; we were descending towards the lower regions of Fountain Reach. “While we’re on this truthful streak, why don’t you tell me why you signed up with Vitus?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because you’re hoping to kill me before we leave, so where’s the harm?”

  “That’s an interesting perspective.”

  “Okay, let’s try another question. How long has Anne got before Vitus kills her?”

  “That is the question, isn’t it?” Crystal said calmly. “Let’s just say that if I were you I wouldn’t wait around.”

  A flash of anger went through me but I kept my voice level. “You’re very funny.”

  Crystal suddenly came to a stop. We’d reached an intersection, corridors stretching away in all four directions into darkness. When Crystal spoke, her voice was suddenly high and frightened again. “No, please don’t hurt me! I’ll do whatever you say!”

  I growled. “Stop that.” I was watching Crystal’s future actions closely and I could sense she was coiled, ready to strike. “I told you—”

  The attack came from behind: a chaotic surge of fear and emotion and confusion that scrambled my thoughts. Crystal reacted instantly, ducking away from the knife as she struck at me with a wave of agony. But I’d had an instant’s warning and I was already moving, my instincts sending me diving to one side around the corner and out of line of sight while my conscious mind struggled to catch up. The backwash of Crystal’s spell sent pain up and down my nerves but a moment later I had my back pressed up against the wall.

  “Lyle!” I heard Crystal gasp as I collected my thoughts. “You made it!”

  Anger drove out the aftereffects of Lyle’s spell. “Lyle, you idiot!” I shouted around the corner. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Look, Alex,” Lyle called back. “Just put the knife down and we can talk about this.”

  “Your psycho girlfriend is the one I need the knife to protect me from!” I shouted. “Along with all the apprentices she’s—”

  Crystal moved in fast. I saw her coming, knew she was about to attack, and turned and ran. I might have been able to take Crystal one on one, but not with Lyle helping her. I sprinted down the hallway and ducked into a side passage a moment before Crystal made it around the corner. Crystal tried to chase me, but I was faster than she was and those heels didn’t do much to help her running speed. It didn’t take long before she gave up and went back towards Lyle, whom I could dimly hear calling in the distance.

  I slowed to a jog, searching through the futures ahead as I mapped out a route to meet up with Variam and Luna. All the time I’d been interrogating Crystal she must have been talking telepathically with Lyle, convincing him that I was the bad guy and that she needed his help and directing him in to intercept us. And she’d done it while keeping up a second conversation with me and while reading my thoughts, all at the same time. I’d underestimated her.

  I intercepted Variam and Luna at a landing leading off into a T junction. “Variam, Luna,” I called softly around the corner. “It’s me.”

  “Alex?” Luna asked. She sounded relieved.

  “Wait,” Variam said sharply. “Come out where we can see you.”

  Luna was about to protest, but I stepped out with a shake of my head. “It’s all right.” I held my hands up for Variam to see; he was in the shadows around the corner, where he thought I couldn’t see him. “Okay?”

  Variam studied me suspiciously for a moment, then nodded. “It’s him.”

  Luna, Variam, and I gathered on the landing and I gave them a quick once-over. “You two okay?”

  “We’re fine, we met up a couple of minutes ago,” Luna said. “Are you all right?”

  I led Luna and Variam in the direction they’d come from and as I did I caught them up on my brief encounter with Lyle and Crystal. “Lyle’s working with her?” Luna said indignantly.

  “Much as I’d love to blame this on him, probably not. I think Crystal’s using him as a patsy.”

  “You’re keeping tabs on them, right?”

  I nodded. “We’re about two minutes ahead of them. Crystal had to spin Lyle a story and it looks like it slowed them down.”

  “Is Anne okay?” Variam asked.

  “I think so.”

  “What do you mean, you think so?”

  “I think so.”

  “Is she alive or hurt or in trouble or what?”

  “Look, Variam, I’m navigating us a path, monitoring Crystal, watching for danger, and talking to you guys all at the same time. I’m a little—”

  Fountain Reach shook. It was only a slight tremor but it was enough to make us stop in our tracks. Dust trickled from the ceiling and somewhere in my head I felt the ripple of a psychic scream, scraping along my nerves and making my hair stand on end.

  “What was that?” Luna said.

  “Trouble,” I said with a sinking heart. “Don’t slow down!”

  The corridor ahead came to an end in a crooked door. Variam shoved it open to reveal a wide, dark space. There was a ceiling above but it was cracked and bumpy. Skeletal bushes rose before us, long dead. I led us in and mud squel
ched under our feet; the floor was earth, not wood or stone. “Where are we?” Luna asked quietly, glancing from side to side.

  “Hedgemaze,” I said. I’d already mapped the route and led Variam and Luna through at a fast walk. “But Crystal called the whole place a ‘shadow realm.’”

  Variam looked over with a frown. “We’re in a shadow realm?”

  “You know what one is?”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t really the time,” Variam said. “Someone else just came in, right?”

  The hedgemaze must have been quite a sight once. Now it was a petrified ruin, the dead wood fading into the darkness as we wound our way towards the centre.

  “Onyx,” I said. I’d been searching ahead and the futures where we ran into him were very hard to miss.

  “How did he get in?” Luna said.

  “From the sound of it I think he figured out how we got here and did a repeat performance.” Probably he’d shot up the house the same way Variam had. This wasn’t looking good—I’d been ready to deal with Vitus, but not Crystal and Onyx as well.

  “Are we going to get to Anne first?” Variam said.

  “Yeah, but not by much.” I glanced through the futures in which we turned back. Crystal was still pursuing with Lyle trailing after, Onyx was behind them both but catching up fast, and I still couldn’t pick Vitus out of the tangle. “Okay, this is going to get messy real fast. Vitus is up ahead and he wants Anne, but he’ll be going after us second. Crystal wants to silence us, make sure we don’t get out to spread the story. Lyle probably has no idea what’s going on, so he’s sticking next to Crystal. And Onyx . . . my guess is he’s here to kill everyone. Vitus, Crystal, me, and anyone who doesn’t get out of the way fast enough.”

  “What’s the plan?” Luna asked.

  “There isn’t one,” I said.

  Luna and Variam looked at each other. I realised they were waiting for me to tell them what to do and felt a flash of frustration. Couldn’t they tell I was making this up as I went along?

  But they were looking to me to lead them, and even if I didn’t know what I was doing I had to act as though I did. I tried to think of what would put Luna and Variam at the least risk. “All right,” I said. “I’ll go in and get Anne. You two hold the entrance as long as you can, then fall back. If we get separated work your way out of the maze back to the top floor of the house to the long corridor where we entered. I’ll meet you there and we can get out.”

  “I’m going with—” Variam started to say.

  “No,” I said instantly. “Look, if these guys all attack us at once we’re finished. Our only chance is to hold them as far away as we can. If we can keep them busy with each other, we can get away in the confusion. Crystal’s key will get us out if we can make it to the door.”

  A shape loomed out of the darkness ahead of us and a moment later the skeletal bushes opened up into a clearing. Before us was a small building, its foundations sunk into the ancient mud and its upper level reaching up into the shadows. We’d reached the centre of the hedgemaze.

  There was only one way in: a crosshatched metal door, stiff from long disuse. “Hold this door until you’re in danger and then get out,” I said as I got to work on it. “Try to delay Crystal long enough for Onyx to catch up, but if you can’t, or once the fighting gets serious, run.” The door scraped open and I turned to look at Luna and Variam. “Got it?”

  Luna looked around nervously at the dead clearing. “Okay.”

  “Fine,” Variam said. “But if you’re not back in five minutes, I’m going after—”

  “If I’m not back in five minutes it probably means Anne and I are both dead. In that case, get out. There’s a second way out through the hedgemaze around the back.”

  Variam scowled. Luna was watching the clearing. There was maybe thirty feet of muddy ground between the edge of the hedgemaze and the building, and the air was ominously silent. With my divination I could sense Crystal hurrying closer with Onyx on her heels. If Luna and Variam hid inside the door they’d have some cover, but not much.

  “Alex?” Luna said. The clearing was quiet, but I knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long. “Hurry, okay?”

  I walked into the darkness.

  * * *

  The inside of the building was cramped and decaying. Pieces of wall crunched under my feet and I had to turn sideways to squeeze through the single corridor, yet somehow as I picked my way through the debris I knew this little old building was the heart of Fountain Reach. All the space and luxury outside were just for show. The corridor bent around, then inward.

  The room within was lined floor to ceiling with cracked grey tiles, and it stank. The air was heavy with a kind of sickly rich coppery smell that made me hold my breath. My foot slipped underneath me as I took the first step in, and I put my hand against the wall to steady myself. The tiles were cold. The place seemed to be darker than outside and only as my eyes adjusted did I start to make out the features of the room: the bathtub in the corner, the counters along one side, and the metal table in the centre. Lying on the metal table was a body.

  As soon as I saw that I rushed to the table, my shoes skidding on the floor. The body on the table was Anne, and as I saw her my heart sank. Her head was hanging back off the edge of the table, and her throat had been messily cut open. “Oh no,” I whispered under my breath. I touched Anne’s skin to find that it was cool. I looked into the futures in which I put my ear to her chest and listened and couldn’t find anything. I’ve seen people with cut throats and I knew Anne’s wound had to be fatal, but I still clung to a sliver of hope. I’d seen her survive lethal wounds before. There were straps holding Anne to the table and I started pulling them open. “Come on,” I whispered to myself. “Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead . . .” The straps were sticky, but I was able to get them off. “Anne, if you can hear me, now would be—”

  Anne sat up with a gasp and I nearly jumped out of my skin. She looked blindly from left to right in a panic and I caught her. “Easy! It’s okay, you’re safe.”

  Anne clutched at my arm. “Where is he?” Her voice was raspy but recovering and the ugly slash across her throat was healing as I watched, new skin growing across the wound with a flicker of green light.

  “He’s not here,” I said, trying to sound reassuring. “We’re . . .” I trailed off. Anne was staring past me and as I turned I saw that she was looking at the bathtub. Something flickered on my precognition and I suddenly realised what I’d slipped on earlier. The floor was covered in patches of that dark, sticky liquid and it was spread all over the room . . . and filling the bathtub. And it was there that the smell was coming from.

  “Oh,” I said quietly.

  The liquid in the bathtub stirred, dark ripples spreading and lapping at the edge. Something broke the surface, rivulets of blood trickling from the head as it turned slowly to face us. For a moment it held itself motionless and then the rest of the creature rose slowly and steadily out of the bath, coming fully into view as streams of blood splashed off the shoulders to splatter on the floor. It was a human body, wasted and twisted and skin pale from lack of light, but with pieces missing. The muscles were spaced unevenly around the spindly frame, too strong in places and too weak in others, and the arms were longer than they should have been, hanging below the knees. For all that, though, it could almost have passed as a man except for the face. There were no eyes in the sockets, only a pair of gaping black voids. The mouth opened, toothless, to let loose a hissing, sighing breath.

  The creature that had once been Vitus Aubuchon stared sightlessly at us.

  I moved first, half-dragging Anne in a rush for the door, but fast as I was Vitus was faster. There was a weird twisting, warping sensation and suddenly Vitus was standing blocking the exit, his breath making a cloud in the air as I backpedalled frantically.

  There was o
ne other exit, a doorway leading deeper into the building. I made a snap decision and bolted for it. Anne had found her feet again and followed me, and as we ran I heard a weird rasping, grating sound from behind us. Vitus Aubuchon was laughing.

  We burst into the next room only to skid to a halt, and as I looked around I felt my mouth go dry. The walls were lined with alcoves, each about three feet wide by three feet deep, and they were all filled with human remains. The older alcoves contained bones, neatly piled on top of each other with the skull placed on top, rows and rows of them each with the skulls grinning emptily outward. The newer bodies were . . . fresher. Most were desiccated and dark but the closest alcove, on the far right, contained what looked like the huddled form of a girl, black hair covering her face. But for an odd shapelessness she might have been alive. There were dozens of alcoves, hundreds. Most were full, but there was space for more—a lot more. At the far end was a furnace but otherwise there was nothing else in the room . . . including doors. We’d come to a dead end.

  From behind I could hear the dragging feet of Vitus drawing closer. I searched frantically through the futures, trying to find a way Anne and I could get out safely. I didn’t find one. It was getting harder and harder not to panic and I had to clamp down on my feelings as I tried to figure out what to do.

  “Alex,” Anne whispered, and I could hear the fear in her voice.

  “Can you do anything to stop him?” I said.

  Anne hesitated for just an instant, then I saw something flash across her face and she nodded. “If I get close.”

  I sized Anne up. She still looked wobbly on her feet, though at least she’d repaired the gaping wound to her throat. But while her eyes were afraid, they were steady. “Do it,” I said. “I’ll draw him in.” And let’s pray it works.

  Anne drew back to the corner of the room nearest to the door; she was weaving some kind of spell about herself but it wasn’t doing anything that I could see. A moment later a shadow fell over the doorway as Vitus Aubuchon stepped in.

  I stood facing Vitus, weight on the balls of my feet, tense and ready to jump. I was maybe thirty feet from him, between the alcoves filled with the bodies of those who’d died here in Fountain Reach. Anne was to Vitus’s right, less than half the distance away, but his sightless eyes were locked on me. I looked back into those empty sockets and felt a thrill of pure terror.