Twisted Sister of Mine (Overworld Chronicles)

by John Corwin

  She flicked the wand with an annoyed look, and the numbers vanished. "Clearly it doesn't measure Daemos accurately."

  "Can I see the patient?"

  She narrowed her eyes. "I suppose. Perhaps he can clear this up."

  We walked into the back. I noticed two young kids, faces pale, eyes sunken. "What's wrong with them?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "A very good question. Their dorm resident assistant found them passed out. He said they'd been practicing non-stop in the hopes of making it into the Arcane Tourney junior division. I'd assumed they overworked themselves, but…" she trailed off.

  "But what?"

  A troubled look crossed her face. "Nothing I do is helping them. It's like the most severe case of magic poisoning I've seen."

  "Oi, what a blasted headache," said a man in a distinct Scottish brogue from a bed across the room.

  The healer and I flicked our gaze to see Professor MacLean rising unsteadily, a hand pressed to his temple.

  "Feels like the mornin' after a bit of fun went a wee bit too far." He looked at the two of us. "So what the bloody hell am I doing here? Did you find me passed out with an empty bottle of spirits?"

  My heart sank. He didn't remember?

  The healer studied him for a moment. "We think you were attacked by something."

  "Attacked? I should bloody hope not. This is a school, for heaven's sake."

  She held her palms out to him in a calming gesture. "You're fine though. Are you sure you don't remember anything?"

  He shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Healer Hutchins." MacLean headed for the door.

  "Wait," Miss Hutchins called. "You'll need to talk to someone in security. We don't want this happening to anyone else."

  MacLean turned and gave her a steady look. "If I remember anything, I'll be certain to tell them. Now, if you'll excuse me, I really must get to work." He left.

  I gave Miss Hutchins an apologetic look. "I gotta go." The exhaustion plaguing my body had all but vanished. "Thanks for the pill. I'm feeling a lot better now." Before she could get out another word, I dashed into the hallway and followed MacLean.

  While I wasn't exactly a walking lie detector, something in the man's eyes told me he wasn't being completely truthful about his memories. I couldn't put my finger on why I thought so, but my gut feeling was too strong to ignore. I also had another reason for following him. Bigglesworth would probably try to kidnap the man again. A spike of helplessness stabbed my stomach. The shifter could flow through cracks and crevices in his liquid form. For all I knew, he could fit anywhere water could.

  How do you protect yourself from something like that?

  The Scottish man eventually entered a tall, arched doorway adorned with stained glass and fiendish looking gargoyles guarding either side. I peeked inside and a library of epic proportions unfolded before me. MacLean headed down an aisle between rows upon rows of tables. I stepped into the library and stopped in slack-jawed amazement. The walls stretched high above, curving into a sparkling glass dome. A shaft of golden sunlight streamed through the crystalline roof. Staircases spiraled up the walls, leading to landings lined with countless bookcases. Just beneath the glass dome far above, people scurried about like ants.

  Animal-shaped chandeliers floated serenely around like giant parade balloons, some of them orbiting beneath the crystal dome, positioned to catch sunlight and refract it to every corner of the library. Smaller animal light fixtures hovered above the rows upon rows of tables where industrious students worked, preparing—I supposed—in advance for classes.

  Duty aroused me from my stupor. I looked ahead as MacLean vanished into one of many rectangular wings jutting off the main dome, each one lined with bookcases several stories tall. I jogged toward his last position. People glided about the towering bookshelves on flying carpets of all shapes and designs. A bin at the end of the shelf overflowed with them. Patrons grabbed a rug, stood on it, and soared to the level they wanted. I'd just passed the bin when I saw MacLean gliding down the aisle on one, disappearing around a corner. I tried to blur after him, but even with the pill to make me feel better, I still hadn't regained enough energy. So, I grabbed a rug that looked like a sheep, tossed it on the floor and stood on it.

  Nothing happened.

  I imagined it going up.

  Still nothing.

  A dude nearby must have sensed my noobishness because he walked to me and said, "These rugs are so basic, you need to verbally tell them where you want to go."

  "Up," I said and the rug lifted from the floor. I gave the guy a thumbs-up. "Thanks!"

  Since I was at the far end of the aisle from where MacLean had vanished, I scooted back to the main row and went around the side. No sign of him. I continued gliding past aisles, looking down each row for some sign of him. My super vision still worked okay, thankfully, or I would've had to roam up and down each of the monstrous rows. The experience reminded me of the time I'd gotten separated from Mom at a grocery store and spent twenty minutes hunting the aisles before finding her in the meat department, talking to Bertha Jankowski about sausage recipes.

  I'd gone halfway down the chamber when I spotted my target flit from behind a bookshelf ahead and ascend into the main dome. "Up. Way, up," I told my flying rug. It responded sluggishly, building speed as it went. "Follow that rug." I pointed at MacLean's, and the rug shifted course to follow. It might be a basic rug, but it seemed pretty good at following instructions.

  My quarry approached the topmost level in the dome and vanished into the maze of bookshelves on the landing. I urged my faithful steed faster and reached the same landing a few seconds behind. After dropping the rug in a nearby bin, I jogged down the narrow aisle. Here, the bookshelves stood normal height, and the glass dome hovered close overhead. I didn't even want to look over the balustrade at the long drop to the floor below. After following a rat's maze of shelves, I hit a dead end. No MacLean. I retraced my steps, taking another branch I'd skipped, and ended up at another dead end. Still no dice.

  I walked back to the beginning of the shelves, examining every twist and turn, before deciding I couldn't have missed him. But where else could he have gone? I went to the first dead end and examined the books. Glowing sconces lit the way every other shelf. I tried moving each one in a variety of ways, but no secret passages opened. I ran my fingers along the books, testing to see if one seemed odd or out of place. It took several minutes just to check one shelf. At that rate it would take forever and a day to examine all these books unless I simply tore them all off the shelves. I tugged at one of the shelves to see if a secret passage lurked behind but, in my de-energized state, only managed to shake it a bit.

  The only thing left to do was sit and wait for MacLean to reappear. On the bright side, it was evident the man was up to something and definitely knew more than he'd let on. If I were some innocent dude who'd been kidnapped and tortured by a shape shifter, I'd be freaking out, calling the supernatural cops, and anything else I could think of to make me safe. Instead, he'd shunned help and vanished behind a bookshelf somewhere.

  In the meantime, I desperately needed to feed. I closed my eyes and reopened them in incubus feed mode. Reaching out with my senses, I searched for a female presence. The first thing I bumped into was male. He was furious. Fear bubbled beneath his fury. I was just about to move on when it occurred to me that nobody should be feeling that in a library. Not unless they'd just narrowly escaped a torture chamber or felt unholy hatred toward a particular book.

  Normally, I wouldn't be able to sense a lot from a male unless his emotions were strong. Concentrating on these emotions, I circled back around the shelves. The sensation weakened until I headed toward the other dead end. The sensation grew stronger than ever. I still couldn't tell how far away the source lay. The emotions began to fade. Was the person calming down, or physically moving away from me?

  Abandoning decorum, I swept books off the shelves, heedless of the mess. Within minutes, the shelves were clear and not a
one of them had opened a hidden passage. I twisted, pulled, and levered all the sconces. Nothing. Ready to roar in frustration, I threw back my head and growled. One of the unusual chandeliers floated above my head. From the side, it looked like a bronze platypus with a unicorn horn. From the underside, however, I noticed something different engraved in the bottom—a circle with a triangle inside it. The outline of an eye complete with an iris and pupil stared from within the triangle. Unless someone stood right underneath the light fixture, they probably wouldn't notice the symbol. Something about the symbol tickled my brain. I'd seen it somewhere before, but couldn't pin it down.

  Unfortunately, the lamp was a bit too far overhead to reach without a nice super jump. The solution, thankfully, didn't take long to kick me in the brain. I jogged back to the bin, grabbed my magic rug, and laid it beneath the eye symbol. "Up, up, and away," I said, and the rug rose dutifully into the air. I told it to halt when the fixture was within reach. Gripping each side with a hand, I tugged down on the chandelier. Unlike the ones noms used in their buildings, this one didn't have a chain or wires connecting it to anything, and my tug simply made it float a little lower before hovering back to its previous level.

  None of the bookshelves opened.

  This was really starting to tinkle me off. I examined the symbol, running my fingers along it, and then, on a hunch, decided to poke a finger in the eye. One of the bookshelves slid soundlessly back into the wall and to the side.

  "Bada-bing, bada-boom!" I said, high-fiving myself and feeling slightly better about my mental capacity for logical reasoning. I landed the rug and hurried through the super-secret entrance. The bookshelf closed behind me. A big red button on the wall, however, offered a way out.

  Before me lay a curving corridor of granite about wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side. Something stinky tickled my nose. Looking down, I spotted a crushed cigarette. At least now I knew why MacLean had stopped.

  He probably wanted a nicotine hit to calm his nerves.

  I followed the curve of the passage until I reached a door with yet another of the circle-triangle-eyeball symbols, though this one wasn't an engraving but an actual three-dimensional hunk of metal embedded in the iron of the door. An eyelid covered the eye. I stepped to the door and gripped the handle. The eye blinked open with a metallic click, revealing a faceted green gem with a black stone centered where a pupil should be. I nearly screamed and wet my pants all at the same time. I tried to back away, but my hand was stuck to the handle. In fact, my entire body froze in place, as though an electric current incapacitated me.

  The eye blinked again, rotating up and down as if examining me. It gazed at my eyes for a long moment before the iris flashed red, nearly blinding me. My body unfroze. Before I could topple backwards, a wall of steel sprang up from the stone floor behind, blocking the corridor. Even at full strength, breaking through the wall or the formidable steel door didn't seem likely.

  I reached out with my senses and tried to draw in magic. I might as well have been trying to suck a watermelon up my nose. Nausea swelled inside my stomach, and I gagged. I knew from experience, trying to absorb aether so soon after magic poisoning wasn't pleasant.

  "What the bloody 'ell," said a familiar Scottish accent from behind the door. The eye blinked in a very humanlike way. "Who the bloody hell are you, and how did you get in here?"

  I gave up on my attempts to energize and took deep breaths to ward off the sick feeling in my guts. "I'm the guy who saved you from Bigglesworth," I said. "My name is Justin."

  "Who are you with?"

  "Nobody. It's just me."

  MacLean sighed, and the gemstone eye narrowed. "Bloody shame."

  "That I saved you?" I leaned closer to the eye. "Look, I know you're probably proud of your super-secret hideout and all, but these things are a dime a dozen to me. My friend Shelton has a gazillion of these—"

  "Who did you say?"

  "Shelton?"

  "Harry Shelton." His voice went flat.

  "Um…yeah?" I remembered Shelton's split lip and his propensity for making enemies and quite suddenly realized mentioning him might have been a horrible mistake. "But—"

  The eye clicked shut. The light in the corridor winked out. And the sound of crushing death grated against the stone floor.

  Chapter 17

  For the second time in a short while, I wanted to scream bloody murder. A light appeared as the iron door before me flung open and the huge frame of MacLean stood there.

  "Well, why didn't you say you were with Harry?" he said in a booming jovial voice. His ham hand gripped mine and shook it until my bones rattled. "Paul MacLean. Pleased to meet you, Justin."

  "Y-you like Shelton?" I was genuinely surprised.

  He released my hand and shrugged. "Well, 'like' is such a strong term with Harry." He laughed and motioned me forward. "Come on in. Welcome to my secret abode." He waved a hand around the small stone room. A bunk bed stood in a corner and a table in the middle of the room.

  I spotted a hallway leading away from the room and figured the entire library must be riddled with them.

  MacLean reached into a box and pulled out a brown bottle with cold vapors steaming from it. He popped the top with a thumb, settled into a chair, and propped his boots atop the table. "Grab an ale if you'd like, lad. It's brewed on campus by the best potion masters." He took a long draw and sighed. "Bloody hell, I really needed one of these."

  "Why did Bigglesworth kidnap you?" I asked, ignoring his offer of alcohol.

  MacLean smiled. "Direct and to the point, eh?" He narrowed his eyes. "How do you know about the Flark?"

  My left eye twitched. "The what?"

  "That's what Bigglesworth—the nasty bugger—is."

  "A Flark?" I narrowed my eyes. "Did you just make that up?"

  He chuckled. "Nope. Don't know who did. Personally, I'd rather just call him a bugger and be done with it."

  "You're avoiding my question. Why did he kidnap you?"

  "You're ignoring mine, lad." He folded an arm across his stomach and took another draw of ale.

  After a moment of silence, I huffed. "Fine. I know him because he works for the Conroys, and they want me dead."

  MacLean nearly dropped his ale. Sliding his boots off the table, he leaned toward me, lips pursed. "You're bloody Justin Slade, aren't you?"

  A sigh escaped me. "Yes. Will you answer my question?"

  "But you're with the Templars, aren't you? Working for the Borathens."

  I was about to answer when shadows crept from the corners of the room. Deep cold bit into my leg. A shadow skull stretched from a corner behind MacLean. "Eat," it whispered in a raspy susurrus, seductive and demanding. "Devour. Consume." The cold in my leg intensified, and hunger like no other I had felt before hollowed my insides. MacLean's veins seemed to pulse and glow as my eyes settled on him. I smelled his blood. I wanted to bite his throat. Tear it out. Drink—

  "What the hell is happening to me?" I said balling my fists. More shadow skulls formed, taunting, talking, telling me to feed, their fanged mouths diving at MacLean's neck.

  The world flashed white for a brief instant, and my back slammed against stone. The shadows vanished like smoke, and the cold receded. MacLean towered over me.

  "They gone?" he asked.

  I flexed my jaw to make sure it wasn't broken. He reached down and pulled me to my feet.

  "You saw the shadows?" I asked, my head still reeling from his sucker punch.

  The large man downed the rest of his ale in a long gulp and grabbed another. "It's my bloody curse and gift." He sighed and dropped into the chair. "It's why the Flark wanted me."

  "You can read minds?"

  He laughed. "If only 'twas that simple. I have the Dark Sight. The ability to see the world within the world."

  I blinked. "Say what?"

  He shrugged. "I can see the psychic impact of events in the world around me. For example, if someone is killed, you can see the blood spatter, the body.
But what I can see with the Dark Sight is the trauma left from the murder. The negative stain left on the aura of that place." He looked at my leg. "When you froze up, I viewed you. Your leg pulses with a black curse. The shadows came from inside you."

  "A vampling infected me," I said, my stomach lurching with fear and regret.

  His nose wrinkled. "Something inside you is fighting it. Unfortunately, it seems trapped."

  My inner angel? I hoped that was the case. "Can I free it?"

  He shrugged. "I don't have the answer to that. The sight doesn't always provide answers. Sometimes it only makes for more blasted questions."

  "How is this sight useful to Bigglesworth?"

  MacLean took a drink of ale, crossed his arms, and stared at me for a long moment. "First, you need to tell me more. I've heard of you, true, but I don't know you, lad."

  "Can Shelton vouch for me?"

  A laugh boomed from him. "Are you bloody kidding me? Aye, Harry was a bloody good friend, but I haven't seen him in years and, from what I've heard, he ain't the sort of man to trust these days."

  I puffed out a sigh. "Can't argue with you there, I guess."

  He nodded. "So, Justin Slade. Tell me about yourself."

  "Oh, brother. Do you know how many times I've had to repeat my life story? Maybe I should just write a freaking memoir and get it over with."

  He laughed, one hand still gripping the ale.

  I noticed a symbol carved into the table, virtually identical to the circle-triangle-eye symbol on the door and the chandelier. The meaning suddenly kicked me in the head. I pulled Nookli, my faithful arcphone, from my pocket and ran a quick search. The answer flashed before my eyes.

  "What are you doing?" MacLean asked, giving me a suspicious look.

  I flicked my gaze back to him. "You're Illuminati."

  His mouth dropped open a fraction. "That's rubbish."

  "Dude, everything leading here has Illuminati symbols—the door, the chandelier, this table." I jabbed a finger on the carving. "Besides, any nerd worth his salt knows what that symbol means. I just had to run a quick search to be sure."