Twisted Secrets: Twisted Magic Book 6, page 3
I reached for the vial, Sasmita and Randall on my heels. The woman lunged forward, ripping the vial from Creed’s hand. She downed it in one shot, then tossed the vial to the side. It landed on the floor with a clank and rolled across the stone to meet the wall.
A white line of magic shot across the floor, towards her. I followed the line back to where the cloaked man stood. He flinched, but gave no other indications from under the hood.
The woman grinned up at me with blood-stained teeth. Creed groaned, pushing up on his elbows. Reality of what I had done fluttered onto his face, and his lips pulled into a snarl.
“Are you—” he began.
The woman rose, the skin on the back of her legs tearing from the throne, but in the same instant, her skin melted and thickened as her body contorted.
Creed stared up at her, wide eyed, and delight spread across his expression. “She is returning.”
Against the far wall, the cloaked figure dropped into a heap. He did not move further.
I took a step back, standing shoulder width apart, as the woman splayed her hands out at her sides. White magic coursed through her, her limbs extending, her torso expanding, as she grew larger. Her facial features blurred, became less prominent, less human.
From the top of her skull, enormous horns like that belonging to a bull sprouted to life. She started to lift her arms toward the sky.
Then the horns toppled forward off her head, falling to the floor with a clatter. She dropped her gaze to them, jerking her head back and forth, her breath coming in heavy pants.
Her legs twisted and her spine pushed forward as her arms elongated to meet the ground on all fours. Her lips thinned as fangs protruded from her mouth.
Still on the floor, Creed skittered away from her. “What…what the fuck did you do to her?”
We stumbled backwards as she continued to crack and reshape into a hideous formation that was neither werewolf nor arachnid, but somewhere in between. This was not the goddess painted on the wall.
With a snarl, she lunged toward us.
We turned and bolted down the hallway. Creed scrambled after us. The ground and walls shook as she shoved her way through the hall, scraping the face off the mural as she pushed through. We stumbled out of the corridor, back into the main area of the cavern lit with the overhead lights, aiming for the doorway back to the ramen shop.
A scream cut through the still air.
Sasmita came to a halt, and I tripped over my feet, crashing into her back. I grabbed her arm to steady us from hitting the stone floor.
“Sachin,” she said, spinning back and forth to locate the direction of the scream. “He’s here, nearby.”
The ground bounced under us as the monster goddess galloped our way.
Sasmita turned, calling to Sachin, and then took off on a run, farther into the cavern. Randall and I raced after her, and I gasped in sharp breaths. The monster closed the space between us. She swiped at me, but I ducked to the ground and rolled out of the way. I leapt to my feet, unleashing blue magic across the floor in a wave. It slammed into her, and she stumbled to the side.
I bolted after Sasmita and Randall. The cavern seemed to go on forever with no end in sight. Unless Sachin gave us another clue, we had no real chance at finding him around here. I wasn’t even sure we were headed in the right direction.
The goddess continued after us. I had long laot track of Creed, but also, who cared? Judging by the mangled bloodthirsty beast behind us, he had done quite enough. I wasn’t sure what to make of all the talk of a goddess of the Indus Valley—hadn’t Sasmita mentioned her ancestors had been blessed there?—but now was not the time to go on an archaeological expedition. Besides, something told me there was a lot more happening here than a simple resurrection spell gone wrong, though that would be bad enough.
Regardless, we had screwed up, bad, by lying about the contents of the vial. Or maybe his plan had been flawed from the beginning.
“Sachin? Where are you?” Sasmita called out, and her voice echoed around the cavern.
Around us, the walls trembled in time with the pounding footsteps of the monster goddess. The lights above shook and swayed with increasing vigor, and the creaking sounds punctured the noise of my heartbeat in my temple.
“Saf!” Randall grabbed my arm, yanking me out of the way as a lamp broke free from the ceiling. It plummeted to the floor and shattered where I had been standing.
Farther in the distance, another lamp crashed. I jerked my head back, staring up at the ceiling as it shook, threatening to drop more lamps on us.
Sasmita had pulled far ahead, and her silhouette paused.
“There’s a stream,” she said, her voice carrying to us. “It must lead out somewhere.”
Her shadow veered toward the right and was swallowed by the darkness.
The monster goddess closed in. My legs ached, my lungs hurt, as I headed after Sasmita. The monster goddess had barely responded to my magic, but I had to try again. We needed a chance to search the cave to find Sachin, and we couldn’t do it so easily with a spider-werewolf on our heels.
I grabbed Randall’s arm. “Go ahead, find Sasmita.”
“What are you planning?” He reached for his sword, but then seemed to remember it had been confiscated by the employee of the ramen shop. I wondered how many times he had absently checked for it.
“I’m going to try to kill her,” I said. “Or at least momentarily stop her, buy us some time.”
“That’s probably not the best idea,” he said. “And where the hell is Creed?”
“Hiding, if he’s smart,” I said, and offered him my best beseeching look. “Please, Randall. Let me do this alone.”
The monster goddess charged down the cavern at us, like a bull, snorting and huffing.
“As soon as we find Sachin, we can leave,” I said. “Let me handle this, and you help Sasmita with that.”
His expression warred with how he wanted to stay at my side, and how he knew he could not offer a fighting chance against the incoming monster.
He squeezed my arm and then turned and bolted in the direction Sasmita had gone.
I spun around to face the onslaught. Her head was low, and she covered ground in long strides.
I braced for impact, ready for my plan to fail. But I had to try. I would knock her off her feet, and then take her out. She was much too fast, much too angry, for me to be able to stay out of her way while on the offense. I needed to slow her down.
As she neared me, I released magic that rolled across the ground, building like the tide, growing larger. The wave of magic lifted up, higher and higher, blocking her from view, as I fed into the tsunami. It crashed into her, wiping her off her feet. She flailed and roared, struggling against the tide, as it ushered her down the cavern.
She grabbed at the walls, finding purchase. With a snarl, she heaved herself from the current and scrambled up the rock side, her legs and arms extended as if she were a spider. She scurried to the ceiling and looked over her shoulder at me, eyes narrowed.
Well, crap.
I cut my magic, and the tide dissipated into nothingness.
The goddess monster was not going to be an easy beast to defeat. She was a goddess after all, whatever that meant anymore. I just needed a way to stop her long enough for us to find Sachin.
Perhaps I could put up a shield, but I wasn’t sure how much that would help. I would have to block her behind it and keep the shield up while Sasmita and Randall searched the cavern. As big as this place was, we needed all three of us to cover any real ground. Plus, what happened if they ran into something else monstrous lurking here? Who knew what other creepy things Creed had created.
Putting up a shield that required my constant attention wasn’t a solution. What I needed was to put her behind a—
She flung herself off the wall, aiming for me. I scampered out of the way and darted back the direction I had come. The ground shook when she landed, and then rumbling filled the cavern as she homed in on me.
Apparently, she was taking the deception with the blood personally.
My breath caught in my chest as I beelined for the rock hallway that led to her throne room. My legs seemed to be running of their own accord, as my brain tried to make sense of what I had already planned.
The magic current had rushed and moved like water, had nearly behaved as such. What would have happened if I had forged it just a bit differently? What if I had made it real water, instead?
I slipped into the hallway, and the tunnel vibrated as she squeezed her bulk through, her jaws snapping, her breath warming the immediate air.
If I could have turned the magical wave into real water—and I was sure I could have, had I tried—then I could forge something real from the shield, too. The logic resonated with me, as if my magic told me I was on the right track.
I stumbled into the throne room and watched, with my back to her chair, as she barreled toward me. As she neared, she lowered to the ground and lunged forward. I ducked low, covering my head, her torso dragging over my back as she sailed over me. Before she had even landed, I scrambled from the room and then turned as she sprung off the far wall back toward me.
I could make a shield of magic, so I could make a shield of—
Rocks.
I flung my arms out, unleashing the magic not denied to me in the pocket worlds, even this one. The ground rumbled and shook as blue magic rolled across the doorway, leaving behind a rock wall.
From the throne room side, she slammed into the wall with a hard thud. A roar, seething with rage, filled the space on the other side. A crash followed, probably the throne being hurled at the barricade walling her in. She was a monster, but she had no magic of her own.
As she beat against the opposite side, unable to reach me, I stared at the wall. The sounds of her ire drowned out as I took in the nuances of the stones. They were not magic, not anymore. They were real, just as real as the ones found at the creek where Jada and I played Capture the Flag with the neighboring kids.
Just as real as any rock.
I wasn’t a hunter, not really. Not like Joseph and Kadar or Otilia, people who had been called to serve a higher purpose, even of the consortium’s design. They had trained, probably spent grueling decades, centuries, learning how to be fierce opposition to the dark ones.
For me, it had come naturally, so much so it had surprised me. I had not been prepared for such abilities, but they had manifested with little more than a thought from me.
I could hunt, but I wasn’t a hunter.
I had defied physics.
I had defied death.
And now, I had built my first wall. Trestle by trestle, Otilia had said. That was how the pocket worlds were created.
I had put up my first trestle.
I wasn’t a builder though.
Reality settled onto me as the math added up to the same value over and over again. Despite the circumstances, I dropped to the ground and sat, legs folded, staring up at the real, solid wall that I had created.
My beautiful wall that terrified me with its significance.
Rubbing my palms on my jeans for the comfort of touch, even if just my own, I sucked in a short breath. Then, I spoke aloud, though no one was around to hear, the words that Kadar had hinted at but had been too afraid to come out and say.
They were undeniable, even if I could not explain how it could be true:
“I’m a dark one.”
4
I didn’t know the specifics of what made a dark witch or mage, except for enormous power. The kind I had been manifesting exponentially since before Haven Rock. The kind I had not been aware of, and that I had so little control over, I barely bothered to consider it a tool in my arsenal.
Mostly, I had been afraid to admit the truth that was growing every day, that had lingered so long in my mind. Now, it would not be ignored.
For all intents and purposes, I was a dark one. A dark witch. It was the only reason the pharaoh mage had treated me as an equal instead of squashing me like he had Kadar. By that account, it also explained the necromancer failing to kill me, and a whole slew of other surprises I had run into along the journey over the last few weeks.
Whatever made the people that had been sentenced to the vault, whatever gave them such enormous power, we were of the same cloth.
I still had so many questions.
“Safiya!”
Randall’s shout carried through the cavern as footsteps jogged toward me. Behind me, he rounded the corner of the hallway, throwing himself against the side, panting hard. Sweat dripped down his face, and he wiped it off with his arm.
“Did you find Sachin?” I asked.
“No, not yet, but I heard a lot of banging and—”
His attention latched onto the new wall, and a little scowl creased the dirt on his face.
I raised my eyebrows as if all was right in the land.
“Yeah, uh, Saf, what is that?”
“A wall,” I said pleasantly.
“Right…Did you…trap the monster thing?”
“I did, indeed,” I said, pressing my palms to the ground and shoving to my feet. “We should probably pick up the pace finding the kiddo so we can get out of here.”
Randall followed me out of the rock hallway, stealing glances at my wall, then up at the ceiling. He had put together I had not caused a cave in, but the source of the wall was still not clear. He would figure it out. He was a smart man.
Besides, he had been the one who was so sure I could do more with my magic, long before I had known I could. Always my biggest fan, my biggest supporter.
I reached out and took his hand as we headed through the caverns to join with Sasmita. He smiled at me but said nothing, and I preferred it that way.
Up ahead, the stream trickled a path into the darkness, void of any light fixtures on the ceiling. As we followed the stream, I brought up magic to dance in my palm to illuminate the way. The bottom of the stream was visible, and I thought I saw occasional flashes of shadows, small fish darting away.
This was not a real world. Someone had brought those fish into existence with a thought.
If I could create a wall, could I create fish? What was the limit?
The idea settled in my chest like a weight. This was too much, too far. Too soon. Weeks ago, I had warmed coffee as my biggest trick.
What had happened?
A silhouette moved up ahead, and I pulled Randall back.
It was Sasmita. She had stopped, staring at something to her right.
I tucked the light in my palm close to my chest as we hurried to join her.
“I thought I saw movement,” she whispered without looking at us. “Something on the wall.”
“Another monster is down here?” I asked.
I had worried the goddess monster wasn’t the first of Creed’s experiments, but I had hoped it was just anxiety talking.
Her lips pressed together before she replied, “I’m not sure. I don’t think so…”
The rock wall, shrouded in darkness, offered no clues
My lips parted as I started to tell her we should keep moving.
“Mom!”
A sickly green light flashed above, revealing a small backlit chamber high up on the wall, a cave barely the size of a large dog crate. Metal bars secured the front.
Inside, a small boy knelt, clutching the bars. He reached out on hand toward us, toward Sasmita.
She gasped and started toward him.
“Mom,” he said, voice strong but his eyes darted wildly. “He will come for you, if he sees you here.”
“Nonsense,” she said, though she had seen enough to believe the warning.
We needed Sachin to at least believe we were in control, that we had come to his rescue. We were the adults. He’d been through enough.
Randall and I joined Sasmita a few feet from the wall, staring up at the barred cave and the boy hunched inside.
Creed was the real monster in all this. What sort of man separates a child from his mother and keeps him in a cage?
The wall was smoother than I would have liked, but if I had learned anything, it was that nearly any vertical surface could be scaled, given a little thought and a lot of upper body strength.
Still, was there a way I could use my magic to reach him? I couldn’t float up to him, but perhaps I could break the bars from the ground another way. Nothing came to mind—nothing I wanted to use, anyway—so that meant I would have to climb to the top. Then I could break out the bars with a little jolt from contact with my palm, and we would be well on our way.
I rubbed my hands together in a slow circle as I braced for the climb. There were so few holds that I was going to have to pick my path with care.
“I’ll go up,” I said, taking a step forward.
Metal spikes thrusted straight out from the wall toward me. I screamed, jumping backwards, falling into Randall. We scurried back out of the way before the sharp point gouged out a face.
The spikes were thicker than my arms and nearly a yard in length. While they could easily take out an eye, they also provided a way up.
Without further thought, I slunk forward, weaving among the spikes, and then stepped up on one while I reached to grab another above me. I worked my arm over it, blocking out the muttering and air-sucking from Sasmita and Randall as they watched me hoist myself up onto the next spike. I straddled it like a horse, before slowly pulling up my leg to press my sole against the top of the spike. In one movement, I lunged up and grabbed the one above me with both arms, crunching to bring my legs up. I wrapped them around the spike, so I hugged it upside down like a sloth. I inched along to grab the next.
The spikes sucked back into the wall. My feet slammed into the rock and I was falling through air. Another random order of spikes jutted out, nearly skewering me midflight. I flailed for purchase, my arm catching at the crook around another spike. My shoulder felt dislocated from the pull of gravity.
Grunting, I swung forward and up, wrapping myself around the spike. I was down a row from where I had been, but considering how close I had come to becoming a kebab, I couldn’t complain. My shoulder ached with a deep burning pain in the joint, but it seemed functional enough.
