by John Corwin
Max vanished into the aisles and returned with a box of empty glass spheres. He opened the jar with his still frozen potion.
"How in the world hasn't it thawed?" Ambria peered closely at the black ice. "It's been nearly two hours now."
Max carefully sliced a chunk of ice and tossed it several feet. It shattered and vaporized into black gas. "I don't know, but it sure is neat!" He carved the ice with an enchanted heat knife and traced a symbol on a glass sphere. The side split open wide enough for him to drop the ice inside and then closed up again. He continued the process until he had at least a dozen potion bombs.
I continued searching the spell index until Max jabbed a finger at the screen. "Right there."
The category read, Neuro Magics. I touched it and found a list of individual spells in alphabetical order. Hypnosis spells were right where they should be. Some of them were for hypno-therapy, and at least five of them were designed to play jokes on specific individuals. Max downloaded those to his arcphone.
Ambria narrowed her eyes. "I hope you don't mean to use one of those on me, Max."
Max grunted. "Don't worry. I'll only use these on my brothers."
I opened the spell titled Hypnosis Memory Therapy. The code looked complex, but Adam Nosti had simplified the execution of the spellgram to a simple button touch. I handed the device to Max. "Don't scramble my brain, okay?"
Max chuckled. "I'll try not to mess you up too badly."
"I'll make certain he behaves," Ambria said.
I handed her my arcphone. "Can you record everything?"
"Yes." Her hand lingered on mine. She blinked rapidly and pulled it away. "Recording." She held the phone camera toward me.
"It says in the instructions that you have to be relaxed," Max told me. "Take deep breaths and clear your mind."
I leaned back in the chair and did as instructed. "I'm ready—I hope."
Max pursed his lips and fiddled with the arcphone. Forehead furrowed in concentration, he flicked the screen and frowned. "I think this is it."
"It's just a button, right?" I blinked and the world changed in a heartbeat.
I stood in a grassy clearing, tall trees all around me. Sunlight shone on my face. Birds chirped and something rustled in the bushes at the fringe of the meadow. I gasped and backed up a step. My heel caught on something soft. I fell and landed in a puddle.
Crimson splashed around me. Dead eyes stared from a pale face—the face of a young woman.
Chapter 19
Burn marks covered the woman's flesh. Blood dripped from a gash in her throat. Horror squeezed my heart. I tried to shout, but my throat closed with terror.
Is this a dream? Am I still under hypnosis? I held up my hands. A wand clenched in my right, the left, open and empty but for mud and blood. My shoulder ached and I quickly discovered why. My shirt was charred, the skin beneath blistered and raw.
"This isn't a dream," I rasped. I stood up and instantly regretted it. Daggers of pain stabbed into my head. I staggered, recovered. My shoulder hurt so much, I could barely think straight. I saw another huddled form in the grass not far away.
Dread swelled in my chest, but I stepped closer. A middle-aged man splayed on his back, a gaping hole in his midriff. A third body lay not far from his. I didn't understand what I was seeing. Had I been in a fight? Had these people attacked me?
Did I kill them?
The breeze blew a rotten stench in my face. I gagged and put my shirt over my nose to block the assault. A long mound of dirt near the edge of the meadow caught my eye. I walked toward it. The stench in the air and the dread in my chest grew stronger with every step. I walked up the mound and fell to my knees.
So many! I heaved and emptied my stomach, unable to hold it in any longer. Flies buzzed around a pile of bodies, horrified faces frozen in death, bodies lying haphazardly where they'd been thrown.
Voices echoed from the forest.
"This way," a deep male voice shouted.
I bolted like a panicked cat and tripped over my own feet. The world spun. I rolled down the mound and into the corpses at the bottom of the trench. The empty eye sockets of a rotting old man gazed back at me. I stifled a scream. My stomach heaved, but I had nothing to throw up this time. The voices grew closer.
Scrambling out of the trench, I rolled into the bushes at the fringe of the meadow and lay on my belly in a blanket of pine needles. Two men in black robes emerged from the opposite side. I recognized them from the riot in the Grotto. They wore thick beards and held gnarled staffs, pale imitations of their master, Garkin.
The first stopped at the dead woman and nudged her with a foot. "She's definitely dead, so it wasn't her I saw."
"Two measly days, Chachi," the second said. "The last pair took us a week of camping and hunting to track down."
"These idiots tried to circle around," the first, Chachi, said. "They must think we're stupid." He looked expectantly at his companion. "So, Jonas, if it wasn't one of these you saw running through the woods a moment ago, then who the hell was it?"
Jonas shrugged. "I saw something running through the bushes at me so I hit it with a spell. When I went over to find the body, nothing was there."
"Something or someone?"
"Um, I didn't really get a good look."
"They wouldn't release another candidate from the white boxes without telling us. Probably just an animal." Chachi scowled at the bodies. "Let's get these in the trench then head back and tell Garkin."
Garkin, a familiar female voice growled in my head. Jonas and Chachi must die.
I almost gasped. Della?
Hatred. Fear. Seething rage.
Emotions that were not my own roiled inside me. My fist clenched around my wand. I crawled from cover, slithered onto the grass and along the mound of dirt on the backside of the trench.
No! Stop! I couldn't control myself. Couldn't fight off the inferno of hate burning in my heart.
Jonas and Chachi each carried a body slung over their shoulders. I sneaked around behind them as they joked about easy kills, about the hunts to come and the fun they would have tracking down helpless unarmed prey.
I stood, feeling taller, more powerful, and seething with the uncontrollable urge for revenge. "Looking for me?" My voice hissed with a feminine quality.
The men dropped the bodies and spun, hands reaching for wands. Two quick blasts from my wand severed their hands at the wrists. They screamed, hands clutching cauterized flesh, mirroring each other in a dance of pain.
"Who are you?" Chachi shouted. "Who the hell are you?"
I walked closer, wand out, a cruel smile stretching my lips. "Remember when your master made me your prey? Remember what you did when you caught me? How he allowed you to torture me?"
Jonas's eyes widened with surprise even as he nursed his stump. "That's Conrad Edison!"
Recognition flared in Chachi's eyes. "But we never caught him."
"Conrad?" My voice hissed with derision. "I am Delectra, you fools."
Their mouths dropped open, eyes blank with incomprehension.
"But—but you're dead," Jonas whispered.
"You hunted me," I hissed. "You caught me."
"That was years ago," Chachi said. "Victus told us to punish you!"
"And you did." My voice cackled madly even as I struggled to overcome whatever possessed my body. My arm thrust out the wand. "Now it is my turn."
"Impossible!" Jonas said. "He's just a boy. Delectra is dead!"
"How would this kid know anything about—" Chachi's sentence ended in a scream of pain. Sizzling light from the tip of my wand sliced through his arm just below the shoulder. Rage burned through my veins, matched only by the energy surging through my body. The spell flicked off an instant, just long enough to switch to the other side of Chachi's body and slice off his other arm.
Jonas bolted to his feet and tried to run. Another laser blast lopped off a leg below the knee and he went down in a heap. My possessed body butchered Chachi, cutting off
his legs above the knees, leaving cauterized stumps behind. His torso wriggled in the grass, his screams abruptly ending as he lost consciousness.
Jonas rolled on his back, whimpering and looking up at me. He was a burly man, but he looked helpless as a little boy in that instant. "Perhaps I should dismember the offending bits first," the angry spirit within me said. "Perhaps emasculation is enough."
"God, no! Victus told us to punish you!" Jonas held up his arms defensively. Two angry swipes with the wand sliced them off at the elbows. He screamed in agony.
The wand slashed back and forth, burning orange rays carving Jonas from a man to a squealing pig. Flesh sizzled, instantly cauterized. Not even a drop of blood was spilled as the ghost of Della delivered what she believed was justice.
STOP! I screamed over and over again, struggling to take back control. These men were terrible, inhuman creatures, but butchering them like this was just as bad as their crimes. My knees went weak and my vision flickered. I stumbled forward, fell.
When I opened my eyes, the screaming had stopped. The sun hung lower on the horizon. Bushes rustled, leaves crackled. I heard murmurs near the tree line and staggered to my feet. Two figures burst through the bushes. I threw up my wand hand, but it was empty. I looked down in confusion and saw it poking out of the mud.
"Conrad!" The shadows hid the face, but I knew Ambria's voice instantly. She sprang forward, embraced me. "You're injured! What happened?"
Max lurched from the bushes. His eyes locked onto something behind me and went wide as dinner plates. He made retching noises and dropped to his knees.
Ambria looked in the direction and shrieked. "What happened?" Wild emotions flickered in her eyes. "My god, what's that smell?"
"Where am I?" I rasped. "How did I get here?"
Max tried to speak, but bent over and heaved again.
Ambria took my hand and led me into the forest. Tears brimmed in her eyes. "Conrad, something went horribly wrong with the hypnosis. Max and I asked you questions about the foundry, but you kept saying you didn't know. Then Max asked if Della was still inside your soul."
"She's not." At least her soul fragment wasn't. "But she left something behind. Memories, I think."
"Well, whatever she left you with, it took over." Ambria winced. "At first, she answered our questions, but then Max asked her to show us where the foundry was. He meant for her to show us on a map. Instead, you ran out of the vault and vanished. We looked everywhere, but couldn't find you."
I looked around at the trees. "This isn't the Dark Forest."
Ambria shook her head slowly. "No, it's not. We realized that you might be travelling to the foundry, and the quickest way would be through the omniarch."
"I took a portal here?"
She nodded. "Yes." Ambria held up my arcphone, a map on the screen. She tapped a finger on the blue dot indicating our location then pinched to zoom out. We weren't in England or even Europe anymore, but all the way across the pond in the United States—Montana to be precise.
"We're in the middle of nowhere." I flinched as Max gasped for air.
"What in god's name happened to that man?" he asked.
I blinked as Jonas and Chachi's earlier discussion echoed in my mind. "We're near the foundry now." I turned toward the trench. "All those dead people are somehow connected."
"Did you say people, as in plural?" Max shuddered. "I'm feeling sick again."
"Two men hunted down unarmed people and killed them." Gory images of their mutilated flesh flashed before my eyes. "I was hiding from them, but something up here"—I tapped my temple—"snapped. Della took control of me and attacked them."
"Attacked is a mild term for what you did to that man," Max said. "He's got no arms or legs!"
Ambria shivered. "Della killed them?"
I looked back over my shoulder, but the bushes obscured a view of Jonas. "They weren't dead earlier. Her spell cauterized the wounds."
"You said something about dead people," Max said.
"There's a trench where Jonas and Chachi dumped them." A faint rotten odor ticked my nose, or was it just my imagination?
"Chachi and Jonas?" Ambria raised an eyebrow. "I didn't realize you were on a first-name basis with them."
"I overheard their names." I choked down my rising gorge. "Apparently, Victus let them punish Delectra after she disobeyed him some time ago. They did something so terrible to her that Della took revenge." I took a deep breath to ward off the nausea. "I don't want to think about it anymore."
"Neither do I." Max squeezed his eyelids shut and opened them.
"I take it the foundry is nearby?" Ambria said.
I nodded. "Yes, but I don't know where."
Max peered into my eyes. "Is Della still lurking in there?"
I took a moment to evaluate my mental state. My shoulder hurt. My knees ached. I felt sore all over. But the presence I'd felt earlier was gone. "I think I'm more or less back to normal."
"You look awful," Max said. "Percival needs a look at you."
"Can he help me unsee what Della made me do?" I looked down at my filthy hands. Even now, they seemed like foreign appendages.
Ambria put a hand on the side of her face and stared out at the meadow. "We should get Conrad patched up, then come back and find the foundry."
"No." I shook my head. "Let's find it now."
"You sure?" Max put a hand on my good shoulder and peered into my eyes. "I don't want Della taking over again."
"She won't." I wished I felt as certain of that as I sounded.
I led the others around the edge of the meadow, determined to avoid the trench of bodies and the unfortunate Chachi and Jonas. I heard moaning and tried to ignore it. Apparently, one of the men was still alive.
"It would be a mercy to kill them," Ambria murmured. She gasped. "Is that an evil thought, Conrad?"
I shook my head. "You don't have an evil bone in your body." My body trembled as I suffered another flashback to the butchery.
"You don't either," she said quickly. "It wasn't you who did that, Conrad."
"I wonder what they did to Delectra," Max wondered aloud. "Must have been awful."
"Maybe she was justified." Ambria looked back and forth at us as if seeking agreement.
Max shrugged. "All I know is that I'd have to be insanely mad to cut off someone's arms and legs for revenge."
I let the conversation die, since talking about it served as a constant reminder. Thankfully, a well-trodden footpath caught our attention and drew us back into the forest, this time on the opposite side of the meadow. We remained quiet and alert, keeping a steady pace through the woods. The path widened and the trees thinned until we stood at the edge of a field of towering mud buttes, their steep sides riddled with holes.
Most rose the equivalent of three stories. I ran a finger along the rough surface as we followed the path inside a tunnel. Grit sprinkled down the side. We emerged from the other side and wended our way through a sandstone canyon. Small caves and dead-ends provided the only hiding places, should anyone come.
We listened for voices, heard none, and continued down the path until it ended at a sprawling butte with a gaping cave mouth. I hesitated outside and cocked an ear toward the opening. The ache in my shoulder grew with every passing minute, but I didn't want to leave without seeing the foundry. Della had imprinted the memories, burned them into my mind, for a reason.
Faint noises emanated from within, but I couldn't tell if they were voices, or simply the susurrus of wind blowing through an empty space.
Ambria gave me a worried look, quickly joined by Max. I steeled my nerves and pushed onward. The air cooled noticeably the moment I crossed the threshold. Small glowballs provided dim, yellow light. The tunnel curved and ended less than fifty feet later in a large, empty room. It looked circular at first, but I picked out edges and corners. Nine walls in all. The dim light glinted off faintly glowing lines in the floor.
I edged toward the center and my perspective changed, revea
ling an intricate pattern carved into the bedrock. My vision swam when I tried to follow even one line, like looking at a three-dimensional painting designed to trick the eyes.
Ambria knelt and looked sideways. "It hovers off the floor," she whispered.
Max dropped next to her and gasped. "I've never seen anything like it."
"It's a demon summoning pattern." In all the demon patterns we'd seen in Emily Glass's demonomicon, none of them looked quite like this. It seemed to be several patterns all drawn into one intricate diagram by a master. Victus did this. "Demon flesh, soul fragments." I darted my eyes toward the others. "This must be the foundry."
"This is where Victus makes the infernus?" Max hugged himself and shivered. "What kind of demon does this pattern summon?"
Ambria backed away from it. "Something powerful."
An open doorway on the opposite side of the room drew my attention. I started to walk over the pattern, changed my mind, and skirted around it. I had a feeling that even touching the pattern might alert the demon it summoned. I wasn't sure if my caution came from my own thoughts, or one Della had left behind.
Max and Ambria caught up with me. Neither looked eager to keep going, and both had their wands out at the ready. I reached down to draw mine, and realized it was already in my hand. I reached the doorway and peered through. A narrow passage stretched for only ten feet before ending in an exit.
I crept through, ears and eyes alert, poked my head around the edge of the exit. Another large space stretched out before me, but this one wasn't empty. Coffins ranging in appearance from plain to ornate occupied most of the floor space. They're not coffins. Della had described them as preservation chambers. I still couldn't help but feel like I was in a morgue or a funeral home. I'd been to a lot of funerals, seen a lot of people die due to the living curse Victus had put on me. This place felt no different.
Dozens of plain white coffins were piled in a corner, some stacked atop one another in lopsided fashion. Shiny black coffins occupied much of the middle of the room, most bearing white stickers with names on them. Isolated from the others in the far corner sat ruby-red preservation chambers shaped like flat-topped ovals and covered in intricate runes.
