Twisted Sister of Mine (Overworld Chronicles)

by John Corwin

  A golem delivered our food—some kind of beef in a rich white sauce with a side of mushrooms and asparagus. I made a note to avoid the bathrooms after this, because the odor of stinky asparagus pee promised to be epic after lunch.

  I looked at Morgana. Her head lay on the table, and she seemed to be asleep. Her complexion so pallid, the rings under her eyes so dark—I drew in a sharp breath as a sudden realization hit me like a knife. "Morgana!" I smoothed her hair out of the way, and felt for a pulse in her neck. It felt strong.

  She moaned. Looked up at me. "Lunchtime?" she said in a slurred voice.

  "Morgana, who was your other friend? The one you said got sick."

  A tired smiled crept across her face. "So sweet. She was our RA, Lina." She sighed. "She showed me a secret place to go when I wanted to be alone. I didn't tell her, but I stole a mattress and blankets and started sleeping down there."

  My heart felt like it stopped beating. I scooped Morgana into my arms and blurred from the lunchroom, never slowing until I reached Healer Hutchins's office. "She needs help!" I said.

  The healer bolted out of her chair, a wide-eyed look on her face. "What is it with you?" she said, directing me toward the back room without pause, and had me place the girl on a bed.

  "Morgana? Are you still awake?" I asked.

  The girl nodded, smiling faintly. She made a choking sound, gasping for air. Her eyes went wide and terrified. She looked at me, as a final breath rattled from her throat.

  And then she lay still.

  Chapter 35

  "Morgana!" I screamed, feeling hot tears burn my eyes.

  "Out of my way," Hutchins said, shoving me so hard, I almost fell down. She took out a wand, ran it up and down the girl's body. The tip glowed bright, and she pressed it against the girl's ribs. Morgana's body lurched, back arching hard before dropping back. She drew in a long shuddering breath, rasping like sandpaper on wood for several seconds, before settling into a shallow, but steady rhythm. I wiped tears from my eyes, my heart pounding against my chest with fear and pain.

  Hutchins turned to me. "She'll be okay."

  "I think she has the same thing Lina does," I said without preamble. "She's been secretly sleeping in the Burrows, probably near where Lina was going. Something down there must have poisoned them."

  "And them," Hutchins said, waving a hand around the room.

  I followed the course of her hand, suddenly taking notice of five more sleeping forms, their sunken eyes and pallid skin tone all the evidence I needed to convince me.

  "What happened?"

  "They found the open entrance to the Burrows, and had been playing hide and seek down there, apparently for several weeks." She sighed. "None of them woke up yesterday morning, and their resident administrators brought them in."

  I ground my teeth. This was turning into some sort of epidemic. "If I found the source, do you think you can fix this?"

  Hutchins wrinkled her face, eyebrows pinching. "If you bring it up here you might poison the entire school." She shook her head. "Young man, whatever is doing this is obviously dangerous. If the former administrators couldn't find it, what makes you think you can?"

  I knew the answer almost immediately. "Trust me."

  Her lips pressed together with disapproval. "More than likely you'll just add yourself to the tally."

  "Is Lina any better or"—I took in a deep breath—"worse?"

  "About the same. I take it as good news, however, that she hasn't worsened."

  I nodded, the sliver of hope prying away the dread trying to clamp itself to my heart. "Thanks, Miss Hutchins."

  I called my secret weapon as I made a beeline for the library where he was hopefully still hiding.

  "You're still alive and ticking, eh?" MacLean said, voice thick with Scottish brogue.

  "Sort of." I told him why I needed his help.

  After a long pause, he sighed. "Truth be told, I'm going stir crazy hiding in these tunnels. It might be nice to get out for a while." Another pause. "Where do you want to meet?"

  I chose a nearby hallway, told him, and headed that way after ending the call.

  I'd just reached the area, when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stiffen. Trying to act casual, I slipped from the stream of students in the corridor, and took a seat on a bench near a window overlooking a wide plaza with the statue of a person in robes raising their hands overhead.

  Pulling off my shoe and making a show of emptying it of a bothersome rock, I glanced around the hall. Students, most of them clumped into groups as they made their way to other classes, walked and talked. I spotted a group of nerdy Arcanes levitating a toad down the hall and a clique of pretty girls changing each other's hair color with the touch of their wands. I imagined I could sit and people watch all day if I didn't have to worry about my friends dropping dead from bizarre magical poisoning.

  Whatever had tickled my sixth sense, however, was nowhere to be seen.

  I stood. Stretched. And felt the tingle again. My eyes jerked toward the source, but found only three girls across the hall talking, their faces animated, but the words of their conversation lost to me in the general hubbub. I took one last look around, and was about to move on, when something drew my eyes back to the girls. They were still talking—all at the same time, their expressions vacant.

  Wading through the crowd, I made my way toward the girls. They looked at me in unison, and a shiver ran down my spine at the eerie looks in their eyes. As one, they turned, and skipped down the hallway, taking the first turn. I paused for a moment, weighing the stupidity of following them, decided it was quite likely a trap, and followed anyway.

  Since I wasn't a complete moron, I sent MacLean a text message, telling him something was off, and to be careful when approaching, then told Nookli to update him on my coordinates.

  The first turn took me down a side corridor with only a smattering of students. The girls looked at me as they entered a door midway down. Another shiver ran down my spine. This is stupid. This is stupid! But I kept going. Peering in, I saw the girls holding hands in the front of an empty classroom. They smiled. I looked up and down the hallway, wary of a sneak attack, but nothing jumped from the shadows.

  "How'd you figure it out?" the girls asked simultaneously.

  I didn't know what I'd figured out, but decided to play along anyway. "Because of creepy stuff like the way you just talked."

  They smiled, their expressions perfectly mirroring each other with flawless timing. Their figures softened, faces drooping like melting wax. I gasped, a gagging sound escaping my throat as the girls melted into a soupy mass that reformed into a single figure.

  "Guess I need to work on that, eh, mate?" Bigglesworth assumed the shape of a man with a slight paunch, chubby face, and skin the color of biscuit dough. He looked a lot like the first time I'd seen him.

  I wasn't sure if I should run away or hold my ground. The last fight with the Flark hadn't remotely gone my way. Magic didn't affect him, and I couldn't punch him to death since his skin would literally eat me alive. Fire had worked. Maybe I could heat the room like an oven and turn him to ash. It would have been a wonderful idea if I actually had a clue as to how I might pull off such a feat.

  Instead, I glanced up and down the hall, spotting only a couple of students heading down the hall toward the main hall. "Why are you following me?"

  "Well, mate, it seems you've been talking to young Miss Ivy."

  "She's my sister."

  "True." The Flark offered a greasy grin. "But we can't have you bending her impressionable mind now, can we?"

  My jaw went tight. "You're one to talk. Your masters have been brainwashing her all her life." I clenched my fists, frustrated I couldn't do anything to whisk her away from them. Frustrated I couldn't hurt this bastard.

  My senses shrieked. I spun just as the two students in the hallway lunged for me. Pain raced across my skin like acid. I instinctively jerked, but their limbs stretched like rubber, clinging to me no matter how
I struggled. Bigglesworth slithered across the room, his lower half like a huge snake. His hand merged with one of my captor's shoulders, and the truth snapped on like a light bulb. These students were part of Bigglesworth too. The pain abruptly ceased, and I sagged with relief.

  The Flark laughed. "I lied earlier, mate. I don't need to work on this sort of thing at all."

  And I'd taken the bait.

  I tried to concentrate on a spell, when agony seared across my skin.

  "Now, now, none of that." His body melded into the two fake students until only he remained. "You know those little magic tricks don't work on me."

  "What do you want?" I gasped. The flood of pain cut off again, and ecstasy warmed my body at its absence.

  He chuckled. "Frankly, I'd enjoy torturing you for a few centuries, eating you a little at a time. Unfortunately, I ain't got the luxury."

  "Because your Seraphim mistress has you on a tight schedule?" I asked. "I know Flarks come from the angel realm. I know you don't really serve the Conroys."

  Bigglesworth pursed his blanched lips. "Seems you're a mite smarter than I reckoned." He leaned into my face. "I serve no one but my mistress. The bloody Conroys are human garbage we're using in the meantime."

  "You like Ivy," I said, finding it hard to hold my head up. His touch had poisoned me somehow, or short-circuited my brain.

  "She's Seraphim," he said with an amused look.

  "So am I."

  He snickered. "You're a bloody Darkling lover is what you are. You're worse than garbage." A sigh. "Too bad I can't savor this. I ain't had a Seraphim in ages."

  The thought of him eating my essence, using my body like a squeeze bottle full of glowing mayonnaise, sent a shudder of revulsion through me. Magic might not work, but I had something else to rely on. As if the mere thought of manifesting into my half demon form was a welcome mat, the pulsing cold of the vampling virus sent an icy blast through my lower body.

  I had to hold back the monster. If it broke loose here in the middle of the school, the results would be catastrophic.

  Bigglesworth's hands melted over my arms, his goopy flesh flowing across me like animated slime. I couldn't do magic. I couldn't move. I had one choice left. I had to release the monster in me. But the pain made it impossible. It cut off all reasoning. The Flark's flesh covered my mouth, my nose. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. All I could do, a part of me realized, was die.

  The pain abruptly stopped. Bigglesworth's form writhed against me. Bubbling shrieks of agony screeched from dozens of tiny mouths all along his skin as he fell off me, and thudded on the floor like a wad of pizza dough. I stumbled backward, catching myself on the door frame, and turned to see Maclean in the doorway, his face a mask of fury as he held a rod against Bigglesworth's quivering mass.

  "Get out of here," MacLean said. "This won't stop the bloody monster for long."

  I didn't need urging, and raced past the wildly flailing creature.

  MacLean grunted, impaling the rubbery blob. "That'll keep him for a bit."

  "Can we kill him?" I asked.

  The Scot grabbed my arm and dragged me after him. "If I knew how to do that, do you think I'd be running my bloody arse off?"

  We ran through the maze of corridors for several minutes before MacLean made me stop, and looked me up and down for any sign of stray bits of the shape shifter.

  I thought back to the incident. "How did you do that to him? I didn't think magic worked."

  MacLean laughed. "That wasn't magic, lad. It was straight-up technology."

  "It looked like a wand."

  "Aye. It's called a cattle prod." He chuckled.

  I felt my eyebrows rise. "A dinky old cattle prod stopped that thing? How did you know it would?"

  "Research, lad. I've been stuck in the walls of the library for a bloody fortnight." He groaned. "Apparently, those nasty buggers conduct electricity almost as good as copper. Too bad it doesn't kill them."

  After glancing up and down the hallway for any signs of suspicious children or extremely pissed off balls of dough, I decided it might be safe to return to the matter at hand. "Are you still okay with helping me in the Burrows?"

  He snorted. "Might as well, since the Flark is temporarily taken care of."

  I waved him onward. "After you."

  MacLean led the way down a familiar flight of stairs until we reached the iron door guarding the tunnels where Bigglesworth had tortured MacLean. The big man didn't so much as glance down the hall toward the room, instead turned left and pointed out the iron grate with the hole I'd noticed the last time.

  "What are we looking for?" the Scot asked, sending a globe of light into the passage.

  "No idea. Whatever it is, I figure your Dark Sight should be able to pick it out."

  We walked through the pitch black, the light sphere casting creepy shadows along the tunnel walls, eventually reaching a banded iron door. I pushed it open, the hinges squeaking ever so slightly, and light spilled into the corridor. Magic lanterns, similar to the ones I'd seen in other parts of the castle, lined the walls, their yellow glow offering a welcome respite from the smothering darkness of the previous passage.

  MacLean snuffed his light, and we proceeded. Rusted gates, guard stations with levers to control the gates, shackles, and small cells with windowless doors offered a silent history of the dungeon. Unlike the winding corridors in the university complex above, the passages here formed a grid of stone-lined tunnels.

  The tall Scot, a strained look on his face, said very little, but swept every crevice with his gaze, even going so far as to stop and look over each cell. I kept track of our progress with my phone, marking off passages as we went. As we reached the dead end of the final passage, MacLean squeezed his eyes shut, pinched the bridge of his nose.

  "I've got a bloody headache," he said. "And not a thing to show for it."

  Disappointment deposited a heavy load into my chest. "I was so sure you'd be able to see something."

  He shook his head. "Sorry, lad. Didn't see a thing—well, except for a few nasty stains of magic here and there left from a particularly brutal execution or torture."

  "Are you sure those couldn't have been the cause of the sickness?"

  "Unlikely," he said, dismissing it with a shake of his head.

  I sighed, and looked at the map I'd made. "I never saw anything like a gauntlet room either. Lina told me she'd been using one down here."

  "A gauntlet room?" MacLean raised an eyebrow. "There's nothing down here but prison cells and guard stations."

  I nodded. "And did you see any mattresses down here? Because Morgana told me she brought hers down." Biting my lower lip, I headed back up the passage toward the central section. "We must have missed something."

  The big Scot blew out a breath, but kept pace even as he rubbed his temples. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

  "Positive."

  I stopped at the first guard station we came to, examining the small box of a room where one person could turn a wheel with chains wrapped around it to raise and lower the portcullis which blocked the only exit out of the section we were in. I tinkered with it, but rust held the portcullis in place, and it showed no signs of someone having opened it. We stepped into the original section of the dungeons, the central hub, and made our way toward one of the annexes. I suddenly wished I'd invited Zagg along.

  "You look like you just tasted haggis for the first time, lad." MacLean squatted on a stone bench near a guard station. "I'm sorry, but I think we've done about all we can at this point."

  I pulled out my phone and stared at it. "That's odd," I said, noting I had a signal. "We must be a mile underground, and I still have four bars."

  "Aye, because we're right next to ley lines." He rubbed his forehead. "Or didn't you know that's how these phones work?"

  "I didn't know." But it sure was handy. I called Cinder. He answered on the third ring. "Justin?"

  "I'm in the Burrows," I said without preamble. "And I'm looking
for a gauntlet room."

  "I believe that would be Zagg's area of expertise. Please hold."

  The sound of someone's fingers brushing across the phone preceded Zagg's confused voice. "Justin? Where are you?"

  "Down in the Burrows."

  "Why are you down there?" the historian asked, his voice full of concern. "That place is really dangerous."

  "Well, there are these really sick kids, and…"

  He sighed. "Give me a moment." I heard him say something indistinct which may or may not have included swear words, and Cinder replied in his calm voice. "Cinder is grabbing an ASE for me."

  "I'll wait." As if I had a choice.

  "Who are you talking to?" MacLean asked.

  "Professor Zagg. He's a historian, and I hope he knows something about this place we don't."

  "Aye, I know the man."

  "There is a gauntlet room down there," Zagg said a moment later. "I remembered archiving a diagram of the Burrows a few years ago when I began my project to convert old texts to ASE format." He paused. "Which section are you in—no wait, better yet, have your phone send me coordinates."

  "Nookli, send my coordinates to Cinder's phone."

  "I will find all Indian restaurants and make the reservation, Justin," my phone replied after a moment.

  I groaned, and repeated myself twice more until the phone did what I wanted while MacLean looked on with an amused expression.

  Zagg made some thoughtful noises of his own as he did whatever he was doing on the other end, and then said, "Ah. You'll need to go to the guard station in the central hub, and head right. You can't miss it."

  Obviously we had.

  I jogged to the station, and looked right. A blank wall greeted me. "Zagg, there's nothing but a wall here."

  "Unless the diagram is wrong, you should be standing at a door leading into another series of passages where the prison guards bunked."

  MacLean furrowed his brow, staring at the wall for a moment before letting out a groan. "A bloody illusion." He regarded it for a moment longer. "And it's a recent enchantment."

  I looked at the floor and noticed shoe scuffs and disturbed dust which cut off abruptly at the wall. I'm a horrible detective. I tentatively touched the wall, and felt only thin air. Poking my head through revealed an open door and another lit corridor. I went through with MacLean right behind, his eyes focused intently on our surroundings. We hadn't gone more than a few steps when I found the gauntlet room on the right. I turned to make a comment to MacLean when I saw him staring down the corridor.