Forbidden Magic: The Complete Collection

by Anya Merchant

  It worked, for the most part. The tip of it cut into the muscle of his shoulder, drawing blood from underneath his shirt. The core mass of the chain, however, continued onward, slamming into the other man, who’d been standing behind Victor at the wrong place and time.

  The man let out a scream, and then dropped to the ground as Kiara bound her azure aura to him and his chain throwing friend. Victor squeezed his wounded shoulder once and grimaced.

  “Not bad,” said Kiara. “But don’t rush it next time.”

  “I didn’t exactly have much choice,” said Victor. He smiled to himself, a little proud of what he’d managed. Ella materialized next to him and made a show of examining his wound, though Victor knew well enough that there was nothing she could do.

  “Do you think these guys might be responsible for some of the disappearances?” asked Kiara.

  Victor frowned.

  “Maybe some of them,” he said. “But I doubt we’d be down here if it were just them causing trouble. Let’s keep moving.”

  Kiara nodded, and the two of them continued into the tunnels.

  CHAPTER 10

  The darkness of the tunnels wasn’t the most unsettling aspect of the journey. Victor adjusted to the lack of light with relative easy. It was the air that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up straight.

  It was stale in a sinister way, like the smell of an old library devoted entirely to books on satanic rituals and biographies of mass murderers. It was also warm, and the further into the Labyrinth they went, the warmer it became.

  I have to stay focused. We’re underground, that’s not unusual.

  “There,” said Kiara. “Up ahead.”

  With the assistance of his onyx aura, Victor could see right up to the edge of the current tunnel they were walking through. It cut off a few hundred feet ahead of them, and the space behind it was jet black, like the edge of a cliff on a cloudy, moonless night.

  “Stay close,” said Victor. “I think this is the cavern that Cassandra mentioned.”

  They walked forward side by side, shoulders bristling against one another. Ella was nowhere to be seen, and even though Victor knew that she wouldn’t be in any physical danger, he was glad for that fact. He and Kiara slowed to a stop at the end of the tunnel, neither of them daring to step immediately beyond the threshold of the room.

  Kiara pulled out the flashlight she’d brought with her and turned it on. The beam extended for a few feet, and then seemed to disappear into nothingness, as though she was shining it into an invisible cloud of smoke.

  “I still can’t see anything,” said Kiara. “I get that it’s dark down here, but it shouldn’t be this dark… should it?”

  Victor sighed.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Be ready for anything.”

  Kiara reached her hand over to his and gave it a quick squeeze, which Victor reciprocated automatically. They walked forward into the darkness.

  Even after walking a couple dozen feet into the room, it remained. It was almost as though it had shape and form, like ethereal, airborne ink, filling every cubic inch of the space they were in. Victor felt a mixture of frustration and claustrophobia, enough to push him into action.

  “Stay close,” he said. “I’m going to try something.”

  He held out his right hand and focused his energy, binding his scarlet aura to a point just over his palm. A small sphere of flame appeared there, giving off enough light to illuminate the two of them and not much more.

  “Neat trick,” said Kiara. “And you can keep it balanced there?”

  Victor nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I don’t use it much. It’s a lot less practical than the onyx-“

  A scream came from deeper within the room. Victor turned in the direction of it and increased the size of his torch sphere. Kiara spun around, swinging the beam of her flashlight around like a sword.

  “Here, take my hand!” Victor grabbed hers even as he spoke. “We can’t get separated, no matter what.”

  “Right!”

  They took off in the direction of the scream, moving at a cautiously fast pace. Victor started noticing other details that were off about the room. The floor was smooth, as though someone had sandblasted and then polished the concrete to a perfect sheen. His footsteps echoed in a way that made it seem like something was amplifying them, rebounding off distant walls and the ceiling.

  “There!” Kiara pulled hard on his arm and pointed at a crumpled pile of a person to their left. The two of them rushed over, Kiara crouching down to help while Victor kept watch.

  “Run…” The man began speaking in a terrified, childlike voice. “Get to safety! Don’t stay in the dark! Don’t stay in the dark!”

  A noise came from deeper within the room, full of a strange, wet sounding snarls and changes in pitch. Victor balled his hands into fists, even though every fiber of his being was screaming at him to turn and run in the other direction.

  “Victor!” Kiara was helping the man to his feet and pulling him off in the direction they’d come from.

  “Get him out of here, Kiara!” shouted Victor. Another alien sounding snarl came from the darkness, closer this time.

  “But-“

  “Just go!” screamed Victor. “Get him back to the town. I’ll catch up with you.”

  Yeah, I’ll catch up. Right after I square off against the devil himself.

  Kiara stared at him for another second before turning around and disappearing into the darkness. Victor heard her footsteps moving away from him, and then nothing, as she moved out of range of his ears.

  He strained, trying to listen for whatever was the source of the sinister sounds. The darkness felt as though it was increasing in strength, sapping away at his mental fortitude. Victor took a deep breath and tasted something metallic and evil in the air.

  A noise came from his right. Victor’s onyx aura wasn’t strong enough to let him make it out, and he didn’t want to take the chance of attacking and having it turn out to be a defiant Kiara, returning to back him up. So instead, he felt through his awareness for his scarlet aura, holding it at the ready, and began moving in the direction of the noise.

  The next few seconds played out in a slideshow of terrified life or death moments. A long, grotesque arm whipped out of the darkness at his legs, dark enough to blend in with the shadows and almost appear to be part of them. Victor jumped over it and inadvertently threw himself into the path of another attack.

  He was struck across the chest by a wet, slimy tentacle arm, hard enough to knock him to his ass. Victor rolled and scrambled as the creature closed in on him. He could see the outline of it through the darkness, just enough for him to get a sense of what he was facing while leaving room for his imagination to run wild with terrifying images.

  It was huge, at least twelve or thirteen feet tall, with dozens of arms the length of its body jutting out from its center. It scrambled across the floor like a gigantic octopus, its entire form stepping with supple movements.

  It had a head, or rather, an abdomen and a head, that looked almost human. The skull was deformed, and most of the chest expanded outward to an impossible radius where it joined with the rest of the mass of tumors, tentacles, and terrors that served as its body.

  Victor screamed. It was a monster, the kind that horrified him in bad dreams as a child. He was an adult now, with abilities far beyond that of a normal human. And he was still scared. The fear created a feedback loop, where the fact that the terror existed inside of him fed back on itself, speeding his heart rate and clamming up his palms.

  He bound his scarlet aura, his hand shaking wildly as he aimed it, and blasted a jet of flame at the monster. It reared back onto its tentacles and took the blast directly in the chest without flinching. Victor might as well have scratched an itch on it, if such a thing were possible.

  It moved with nightmarish speed, circling around him and getting in between Victor and where he’d entered the room from. Victor attacked with
fire again, and again, his survival instincts kicking in and telling him that he was about to die.

  The speed at which the monster dodged his attacks was incredible. It became clear to Victor that it was likely that the first attack had been allowed to make contact, a show of strength on behalf of the creature. It was twenty feet away, and then ten, and then it had one of its arms around him.

  Victor let out a surprised shout as he was lifted into the air. He bound his scarlet aura with all the strength he had, directing the flames downward at the monster’s arm. It wasn’t enough to burn through it, but the creature’s grip loosened slightly and he fell to the ground, hitting the concrete hard.

  He scrambled across the ground in a rush of desperate movement. The monster let out a roar, immediately followed by a wet, disgusting noise. Victor wasn’t binding his onyx aura, and didn’t see what was flying toward him until it was too late.

  Hot, wet slime struck into his face and neck. Victor gagged and spit disgusting tasting liquid out of his mouth. He felt light headed, and only managed to take a few steps before his legs went numb and collapsed underneath him.

  Not like this… Please.

  CHAPTER 11

  Victor snapped back into wakefulness. His arms and legs were shackled into a massive iron torture frame. He was in a dark room, and could sense a presence there with him, watching him.

  Where am I?

  The air was stuffy and claustrophobic, just as it had been in the tunnels. It was almost pitch black, and his eyes tried to make sense of blurry shapes that he wasn’t sure were really there or not.

  “Hello?” he called, into the darkness. “Where am I? What’s going on?”

  He was panicking, and he knew it was the wrong thing to do, but there didn’t seem to be any other option. He struggled against the shackles, feeling rusty, cold metal digging into the skin of his wrists and ankles. Something moved across the floor, and Victor looked down in time to see dozens of spiders approaching his feet.

  “No!” He pulled the foot closer to them back sharply, but all of them shifted, focusing instead on the foot still on the ground. “No!”

  They slowly made their way up Victor’s leg. He wasn’t sure if they were biting him or not, but it didn’t matter. They seemed to represent his fear, and the lack of control he felt. There was nothing he could do.

  A hooded figure appeared in the space in front of him, slowly walking over. The figure brandished a knife in one hand that gleamed with light, its curved blade shining, highlighted against the darkness of the room.

  “Help me,” said Victor. “Please!”

  The spiders were up to his chest, closing in on his head with terrifying speed. The man reached out with the knife, bringing it to Victor’s cheek and slowly tracing a cut into it even as he tried to flinch away.

  “No!” he shouted. “What are you doing?”

  The man laughed, and then disappeared. Suddenly, there was light in the room. A small fire had burst into life over in the far corner across from him. Victor watched as flames slowly began to spread out across the floor. The spiders crawled through his hair and face, and he gritted his teeth as his skin literally began to crawl.

  “No…” The word came out in a terrified, defeated whisper.

  The room his was in was apparently made of dry, dusty wood, and the flames approached with sickening speed. He could feel the heat even from several feet away. The spiders began to bite, their fangs tearing into his skin with the strength of daggers, rather than tiny arachnoid teeth. The flames came closer, and closer, and Victor felt it the instant they spread onto the sleeve of his coat, searing the flesh on his arm. He began to scream.

  “Victor!” Ella appeared in front of him, standing untouched amidst the flames. “Listen to me, Victor. None of this is real!”

  Victor answered her with another tortured scream.

  “Remember what was happening before you were here,” she said. “Remember where you are.”

  The flames were all over him now, searing his nerves and causing pain beyond what the human body should be able to endure. Victor screamed and screamed, feeling his skin melting off like a thick wax covering. The spiders were impervious to the heat, and began to dig into his flesh, burying themselves inside of him and implanting eggs that Victor instinctively knew would hatch within seconds.

  The Labyrinth. The monster.

  “Victor!” Ella was screaming now, too. “Take my hand!”

  Victor pulled against the shackles. He couldn’t get his arm far enough over. Ella’s hand was just out of reach.

  “My hand, Victor!”

  He focused his will, focused every part of his being into being lucid. The scene in front of him shattered into pieces, and he tasted something acrid in his mouth and saw the pitch black darkness of the tunnel.

  Victor flailed his limbs, confirming their mobility in a miniature seizure of movement. He stood to his feet as quickly as he could and whirled around in a circle, searching the darkness for his opponent.

  “The creature took off after you went down,” said Ella. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

  “I’m going after it,” said Victor. “Kiara’s in danger!”

  Ella didn’t say anything to that. Victor bound his onyx aura. The stuffy, unnatural darkness was gone, and he could see the shape of the cavern properly. It was huge, the size of a small stadium.

  Or an ancient arena.

  He could see the subway entrance that he’d come in through originally, along with several others. The old, deteriorating subway tracks crossed with easy curves , creating a pattern of arches across the ground.

  Victor took a few shaky, uneasy steps, and then broke into a full on run. The only sound in the air was of his own footsteps and their echo. He sucked in stale air and pushed his legs like parts of a machine.

  Kiara had been carrying the map. Victor hadn’t considered the implications of that small fact when he’d sent her away. The first few turns were familiar enough, but with each one, his doubts grew ever so slightly, until by the fifth intersection, he was picking almost at random.

  “Kiara!” Victor put every fiber of his being into shouting. His lungs hurt, and his body was tired from the sprint and the fight before that. He slowed as he approached the next turn, the identical paths holding nothing to suggest the right way.

  Dammit! I need to find her.

  “Kiara…” he said, his throat hoarse from shouting. It was as much for him, as it was for her. A sinister feeling was running down the edge of Victor’s back. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever leave the Labyrinth, not as a mouse fiddling its way around in the dark, with a cat on the prowl.

  “Take the one on the right,” said Ella. “Trust me.”

  Victor didn’t need to be told twice. He hurtled down the subway tunnel, his feet aching from rough, repeated slaps against the concrete. The sight of the light in the distance, small, flickering, and insubstantial, was enough to make his heart skip a beat.

  “Kiara?” he called. There was no response. Victor was at the edge of the shanty town. The people were all in the makeshift town center, gathering around something.

  A sensation rolled through the tunnels behind him, shaking the ground with the force of a localized earthquake. Victor spun around just in time to dodge out of the way of falling concrete as the tunnel behind him caved in. The noise was enormous, and fine particles of dust exploded into the air, making him cough.

  “You came back.” Johnathon was standing a short distance away, watching him. “I can’t believe it.”

  “You… you knew!” Victor gritted his teeth and closed on the man. “You knew what was down there!”

  Johnathon didn’t say anything, but his silence was as condemning as any words could have been. He turned away from Victor and looked at the current center of attention. It was a man, or, as Victor immediately realized, it was the man, the one Kiara had escaped with.

  “Where is she?” he demanded. “My friend. The girl with me. Where did s
he go?”

  “She left here and then took back off into the tunnels,” said Johnathon. “After you.”

  Victor shook his head slowly, a feeling of dread spreading across his awareness.

  “How can I get back there?” He gestured to the now caved-in tunnel. “There must be another route!”

  Johnathon smiled faintly.

  “As far as I know…” He shook his head. “There isn’t. At least some good came of this tragedy. Whatever is on the other side of that cave-in can’t reach us anymore.”

  Victor wanted to punch him in the face. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. It wouldn’t save Kiara, and it wouldn’t make him feel any better for failing to protect her.

  CHAPTER 12

  “I need you to tell me what happened.”

  Victor knelt down next to the man Kiara had brought back. Most of the other people in the shanty town had gone back to their hovels for the night. It was just him and the man, who stared out aimlessly, with vacant, soulless eyes.

  “Hey…” Victor shook his shoulder lightly. “You were talking before. Please, tell me what happened.”

  The man said nothing.

  “He’s been like that since the girl brought him back,” said Johnathon. “She practically carried him into town. A lot of good it did for this one, in the end.”

  Victor sighed and looked up.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Don’t know his first, but he had us call him by his last. Perkins.”

  Victor took the man by both shoulders and pulled him so that they were facing each other directly.

  “Perkins, listen to me,” he said. “I’m trying to save my friend’s life. I need to know if she said anything to you about what she was planning on doing, or how she was planning on doing it.”

  “He’s not going to tell you anything, boy,” said Johnathon. “I know well enough when a man is absent. The lights are on, but nobody’s home, you know what I’m saying?”