He moved stealthily, lightly stepping on the ground as he walked forward. He concentrated on looking for signs of movement near the tree, ignoring the hissing sounds. He was a few feet away—almost there. He looked on the ground, anxious to avoid stepping on a branch that might reveal his location. He had to ensure the professor didn’t know where he was. The key to his entire plan relied on being as quiet as possible.
And that was the moment when Soren’s cell phone rang.
“Son of a...” Soren whispered before the professor sprang from behind the tree, his shotgun aimed at Soren’s chest.
Soren leapt into the air directly at the professor and managed to tackle him before the gun went off. The two fell onto the ground and Soren fought to wrest the shotgun away from Peterson. His own gun fell to the forest floor, but he knocked the shotgun out of the professor’s hands to the ground a few feet away.
Soren’s cell phone fell out of his jacket and must have accidentally connected with the call. Soren could hear a loud, annoying voice saying, “This is an important announcement and is not a sales call.” He wanted to reach through the phone and strangle whoever was on the other end of the line.
Instead, Soren concentrated on overpowering the professor. But though Peterson might have been out of shape, he was strong and apparently determined. He caught Soren with a right hook that felt like he’d been hit with a sledgehammer. Soren’s own blows connected, but didn’t seem to do much damage.
Soren changed tactics, trying to hit the professor’s shoulder, where Soren had wounded him in the tent. Peterson managed to knock the first punches away, but Soren finally succeeded in digging his hand into where the professor had been shot. The man screamed in pain.
Soren used his left hand to search the ground for his gun even as he kept the pressure on Peterson’s shoulder. The professor writhed in agony on the ground.
His left hand scraped by something hard and metal, but he couldn’t quite reach it while still hurting Peterson. He took a risk, pushing away from the professor and trying to grab for his gun.
Before he could, Soren saw movement from Peterson’s unhurt arm, and had time to realize the man had grabbed a rock and was swinging it at Soren’s head. He jerked back, but not fast enough. The blow connected with his skull, sending Soren sprawling to the ground.
The world teetered around Soren. He knew he was lying on the ground and the forest shouldn’t be spinning, but it did anyway. As it whizzed by, he saw the professor pick himself up and step over to his shotgun on the ground.
Soren had to get up or he was a dead man, but when he tried to raise his head, the world spun faster. He watched helplessly as the professor picked up his weapon. The professor opened his mouth like he was saying something, but Soren couldn’t hear him over the buzzing sound in his own head.
It wasn’t until the first snake slithered over Soren that he realized the white noise blotting out all thought wasn’t actually in his mind. The snakes had finally arrived.
Soren lay there as Peterson raised his gun and fired. But the professor didn’t shoot at him. Instead, he was blasting the forest floor. Soren dimly realized the professor was firing at the snakes.
But that didn’t make sense. The blow to Soren’s head must have been harder than he thought. The professor had brought his students here to unleash the gorgon, which controlled the snakes. He’d been working with the thing. It shouldn’t be attacking him.
Several other snakes crawled over Soren’s body, oblivious to him. Instead, they moved as one towards the professor, who was backing up, firing at the ground in front of him.
The world stopped spinning for Soren just as the first snake reached the professor. Peterson was out of ammunition, but he used his shotgun to knock the serpent away. The next one bit him on the leg, causing him to cry out. Not that Soren could hear it. He couldn’t hear anything over the hissing of the snakes. He looked at the forest floor to see them covering it like a thick carpet. He struggled to get to his feet, but still felt too dizzy.
He watched as two more snakes bit Peterson. The man was screaming now, a sound he could barely hear. Peterson was furiously beating at his legs as several snakes tried to climb up. He got a few off, but there were simply too many of them. Within a matter of seconds, the snakes covered his legs in a slithering mass.
Peterson simultaneously tried to run away and tear the snakes off his body. Soren saw him fling several into the air, but more kept coming, beginning to cover his waist. The professor was still screaming when he fell over, landing on the ground. Soren saw the shotgun fall next to him.
For a minute, Peterson’s hands flailed, still trying to tear the snakes from his body. But they soon went still, falling to his side. Soren couldn’t see the professor’s face anymore and for that he was enormously grateful. What he’d just witnessed was one of the worst deaths he’d ever seen. The serpents covered the professor’s body, making a makeshift hill where he lay.
Soren slowly got to his feet, still staring at the professor. He belatedly realized he too was very much in danger from the snakes around him. They had been ignoring him so far, but Soren didn’t know why, nor could he count on that lasting.
He turned to run back toward the tents, still hopeful of finding Glen and Emily.
But almost on cue, the snakes turned their attention away from the professor and toward Soren. When he started to move, a tangled, slithering knot of them reared their heads in his direction, hissing. Soren started to run the other way, but the same thing happened on that side as well.
There were no snakes around his feet, and they made no move to attack. But they formed a circle around him. There were too many to jump over and after what he’d just witnessed, he had no urge to try and wade through them. There was no way out.
Soren was completely trapped.
Chapter Twelve
Glen covered his head with his hands, tucking himself into a ball, and waited to die.
He could hear the snakes all around him, still landing on top of the table he was cowering under. Every time he thought they must have finished, there was a loud thump above him. He kept expecting the table to collapse, but it managed to hold firm.
The snakes, meanwhile, appeared to be ignoring him completely. They slithered off the table, landed in front of him, and then moved away, still headed after Soren and the professor. Glen kept waiting for one of them to turn around and come at him, but none so much as flicked a tongue in his direction.
After what felt like several minutes of waiting, still prepared for the parade of snakes to turn in his direction, Glen noticed there were far fewer snakes streaming past. He might live after all.
He slowly pulled himself out of his near fetal position and scanned around him. There wasn’t much to see. The fallen tent covered his table and he could see a few silhouettes of straggler snakes still moving around him. Emily must be similarly trapped underneath her table.
“Emily?” he called. “Are you okay?”
There was no response. Given her phobia of snakes, Glen couldn’t blame her. He’d always hated spiders and if he’d just had thousands of them crawling around him, he doubted he’d be able to say anything either.
But he couldn’t stay here forever. Soren was out there somewhere, hopefully dealing with the professor. He crawled out from underneath the table, pushing the cloth tent out of his way. He approached the table where he’d hidden Emily and pulled off the remains of the tent. She was sitting underneath it, staring forward. Her hazel eyes were glassy and unfocused.
Glen crouched down and looked at her.
“Emily?” he asked. “You can come out now. The snakes weren’t interested in us. I think they’re gone.”
Whether they would come back was the question. When Soren had initially run off, Glen had been angry. But now he was worried for his partner. Those snakes looked like they were headed after him. They moved so quickly, he wasn’t sure Soren could get away.
But he’d left Glen with a directive—get
Emily and himself to safety. So that’s what he was going to do.
“Emily?” he said again.
He snapped his fingers in front of her face.
“Listen, I don’t want to scare you more, but I don’t want us to be here when the snakes come back.”
The comment seemed to jolt her, and her eyes focused on Glen.
“Hey,” Glen said, trying to sound comforting. “There you are.”
She smiled grimly at him. Her face was streaked with blood and dirt, but at least she looked alert again.
“He almost killed me,” Emily said.
It took Glen a second to realize she was repeating herself from before the snake attack.
“The professor? Yeah,” Glen said.
Maybe she was blocking out the memory of all those snakes on top of them. Was it possible to repress something immediately?
“He’s paid for what he’s done,” Emily said.
Glen’s comforting smile faltered and a chill ran up his spine. The smile on Emily’s face grew even wider. All at once it didn’t seem grim anymore, but cold and malicious.
“Uh, what?” Glen said.
And then the smile was gone again, falling off her face like it’d never been there. Instead, Emily looked confused.
“What did I say?” she asked.
“You said…” Glen drifted off. “Never mind. Look, we’ve got to go.”
He didn’t know what was going on, but he didn’t like it. It was possible Emily was suffering from shock and talking nonsense, but that smile was imprinted on his memory. He also didn’t like the words. She’d said, “He’s paid for what he’s done,” not “he will pay,” or “I’ll make him pay.” Her statement had been very definitive.
Still, he extended his hand, helping her off the ground.
“We should go after them,” Emily said, pointing in the direction the snakes had gone.
It was Glen’s turn to look confused. A minute ago she’d just been catatonic under the weight of all those snakes, and now she wanted to head in the direction where they’d gone? It didn’t make sense.
He inadvertently took a step backward, his intuition screaming at him that something was wrong.
“Emily, we need to get away,” Glen said. “Soren can handle himself.”
Emily stared back at him and seemed about to argue. Then she nodded her head.
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. Sorry, that whole experience has kinda freaked me out.”
She smiled again, a normal, calm smile. Glen knew he was supposed to be reassured, but it didn’t quite work.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll follow the road back to town.”
She nodded again, and then began rummaging around the fallen tent, clearly looking for something. Before Glen could ask what it was, she produced the lantern he’d seen earlier.
“Good point,” Glen said. “We might need it when it gets dark.”
“That’s not why I need it,” she replied.
He opened his mouth to ask why, but never got the chance. She swung the lantern quickly, catching Glen off guard. It hit him on the side of the head and the world went dark.
*****
It wasn’t until he saw Emily walking toward him that Soren understood just how badly he’d miscalculated the situation.
The snakes had hemmed him in, forming a small circle around him. They appeared to want to keep him in place rather than attack him. When he tried to move forward, they hissed and reared back as if to strike. But if he stayed where he was, they left him alone.
It wasn’t hard to assume that someone was coming for him, and probably not so they could give him coffee and a donut. It just hadn’t occurred to him that the someone would be Emily.
The snakes parted for her automatically as she strolled towards him, clearing her way forward and then closing in behind her. Her entire body language was different than earlier. She didn’t look scared or anxious—and certainly not the least bit afraid of the snakes. Instead of a tentative walk, her stride was calm and confident, even slightly seductive with her hips swaying side to side. She smiled at Soren and it should have lit up her face. Instead, Soren wanted to take a step back. But he couldn’t. There was nowhere to go.
“Where’s Glen?” he asked as she neared him.
“That’s your first question?” Emily said, raising an eyebrow. “Not why the snakes are letting me through?”
“I want to know if my partner is alive,” Soren said.
“He is,” Emily said.
She didn’t add “for now”—she didn’t have to. The addendum was written all over her face.
“It wasn’t the professor who controlled the gorgon,” Soren said. “It was you. When he came into the tent, he wasn’t trying to kill all of us—just you. Because he knew.”
Emily scowled at the mention of the incident.
“Something like that,” she said. “I don’t know how he knew. I’ve been trying to find him for two days and I assumed he’d welcome me as another survivor when he saw me. He must have figured it out while he was hiding. Still, I have to thank you. You and your friend helped flush him out for me. It’s why I’m going to add you to my collection, unlike poor Andy there. He had to pay for trying to kill me.”
She nodded in the direction of the professor’s body, still fortunately buried under a pile of snakes.
“Your collection?”
“Haven’t you heard?” Emily said. “I’m reopening the Carnival of Stone. It’s going to be magical. You saw the specimens in the church—the mother and child, the butcher. They’re magnificent, aren’t they? So lifelike, so beautiful. I’m going to be famous.”
“You’re mad,” Soren said. “People will know what you’ve done.”
Emily laughed.
“I think you’re overestimating how smart people are,” Emily said. “And underestimating their gullibility. In your experience, how likely are people to believe I had dozens of people turned to stone? That’s crazy.”
Soren knew she was right. People’s capacity to deny the existence of the supernatural was almost limitless.
“Besides, it’s not like I’ll open the Carnival here,” Emily said. “That would be a tad risky, even for me. I’ll do it in Europe. I’ll play the American ingénue, so innocent. I’ll have them eating out of my hand. A new statue every other month. They’ll hail me as a great talent.”
Soren could see it. He hadn’t suspected her; why would anyone else? He was as paranoid as they come. He should have been on to her the second he found her cowering in the store. She was a survivor, and those were the first suspects. But he’d been roped in by the way she looked and acted. Just like her friends had been.
“You planned this whole thing,” Soren said. “You brought the professor here.”
Emily laughed again. She held up her hands in a “who, me?” gesture.
“You’re not even a student, are you?” Soren said.
“I wormed my way into Jay’s life, then all I needed to do was convince the professor there was a real gorgon out here. It was easier than you’d think. The professor considered himself a bit of a supernatural buff on the side and I helped him figure out Cleary’s game. He was almost desperate to come out here to find it. He thought he’d be making the discovery of the 21st century. He had no idea what he was really dealing with.”
Soren looked down at the snakes at her feet.
“And so what? You tricked the professor into freeing the gorgon? How did you know that you could control it? How did you know it was even alive?”
“Has anyone ever told you that you make a lot of assumptions?” Emily asked. “And once made, you seem so attached to them. It’s a very dangerous habit. It might get you killed one day.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, I’ll give you credit,” she said. “You jumped to the correct conclusion that someone was helping the gorgon fairly quickly. I was surprised and a little alarmed by that. Your f
riend wasn’t smart enough to go that far.”
Soren felt unexpectedly defensive of Glen.
“He’s new at this,” he said.
“The problem was that you picked the wrong person,” she said. “I was never sure why you fixated on poor Professor Peterson.”
“I thought he was the one running the show,” Soren said. “He was the guy who led you all here. Then there was the entry in his journal that he knew where to find the gorgon. It made sense he’d be the one behind it.”
“Exactly,” she said. “You made an assumption and ran with it. And what’s your thinking now? That I’m just some co-ed who found out about the Carnival, convinced my professor to come here and somehow learned how to control a gorgon?”
“You made it your pet,” Soren said, but her self-confidence made him doubt himself.
“Ah,” she said. “And where is my ‘pet’? Still hiding in the mine?”
Soren felt his stomach sink. The more she talked, the less sure he was. Emily wasn’t acting like some arrogant college student; she had the poise and confidence of someone far older than she appeared to be. He replayed what he thought he knew about the case and kept coming up short.
“Starting to wonder what you missed?” she asked. “I’m going to let you live a little bit longer until you sort it all out. It’s far more fun.”
He took a step backward only for the snakes behind him to begin hissing again. He thought he’d understood what was happening, but that was clearly wrong.
“I can’t decide if you are very brave or very stupid,” Emily continued. “It takes guts to come down here after seeing what happened to the town. And the way you were so confident earlier. ‘I’m the one who’s going to kill this thing.’ Seriously, who are you?”
Carnival of Stone: A Novella (The Soren Chase Series) Page 9
