Insidious Winds (27 page)

I shoved him away, picked up the stone, and continued
down the tunnel. The rock wasn’t any lighter than before, but I was angry and
that made it easier. Twenty minutes later, I dropped the rock on the trigger
plate and took a minute to rest. One minute was all the time I allowed myself.
Fortunately, John didn’t speak again. The gate was raised when I reached it, so
I continued on to the next set of doors. The door closed shut behind me and
everything was black.

Black, but not silent.

There were some sounds in this world that any person
would know instinctively, and one of those sounds is the hissing of snakes. I
was in a room full of snakes. I felt some of them wrap around my boots. They
were big, but I couldn’t be sure if they were serpents or constrictors, so I
didn’t move except to pull out my penlight and gun. I snapped my penlight into
the bracket I made on the gun, aimed it frontward, and clicked on the light.

About two feet away was a creature that towered over
me. It had the body of a three-headed snake with three human heads. Instead of
hair, the back of the heads were scaly and raised up like the hood of a cobra.
At first, I thought it was paralyzing fear that kept me from pulling the
trigger, but when I looked into the eyes of each of the heads, the tension in
my shoulders faded.

“Devon Ssssanderssss…” the middle head hissed, “there
issssss an enemy very clossssse to you. You musssssst beware.”

It was almost ironic that Watson’s first lesson of
the year was to not make an enemy out of a friend, and here I was about to
shoot a snake monster who only wanted to warn me of danger. I lowered the gun
and clicked the safety on. I wasn’t about to turn off the light with the snakes
slithering all over the floor. “Keigan Langril.”

“He isssss dead,” the left head hissed.

I froze. “Langril’s dead? How?”

“To get the key, you mussssst sssssee without your
eyesssss,” the head on the right hissed.

I sensed something moving behind me, but before I
could turn, the snake creature’s ginormous tail wrapped around me and squeeze.
When I felt a sharp sting in my left shoulder, I dropped my gun.

Although pain radiated through my body in tune with
my heartbeat, it wasn’t crippling. Instead, it was my eyes that really bothered
me. As the sharp spike withdrew from my shoulder, my vision became fuzzy and
dimmed until I couldn’t see anything. Only then did the snake creature let me
go.

I felt around on the ground, found my gun, clicked
off the light, and slipped it back into its harness. “How am I supposed to do
this blind?”

“You mussssst sssssee without your eyesssss.”

The hissing faded and I knew I was alone. At least, I
was for a few minutes. “Are you going to stand there all day?”

“Dad?” I would recognize Joseph Sander’s voice
anywhere, despite the fact that he was very much dead. The man was a hard-ass,
drunk, and abusive bastard most of the time, but he had his moments. When he
wasn’t drinking, working, or judging me, he sometimes acted human. He was still
not the kind of man I wanted to be.

“You know I’m not your father. Now get your ass
moving before I beat some sense into you. Do you want your girlfriend to die
because you’re afraid of the dark?”

“I’ve never been afraid of the dark.” My first few
steps were hesitant, but then I got the hang of it… and walked straight into a
wall.

Joseph laughed. “You were always a weird kid,” he
said. “Who else only made friends with a vampire?”

“You were always a moron,” I said. “You had no more
than I did; even your wife hated you. At least Astrid always loved me and
always will. My mother would have left you in a heartbeat if she didn’t think I
needed a father. What happened to you wasn’t your fault, but I never cried over
you. My mother, yes, but not you.”

No answer.

I listened to the silence for a moment before I
noticed a difference in temperatures around me. My instincts told me the warmth
was good and I needed to find it. As I searched it out, I was reminded of the
“getting warmer” game Astrid and I would play as kids. Actually, it was
hide
and seek
, but Astrid didn’t know many games that other kids played and
always insisted on yelling out when I was getting closer or further from her
hiding place by saying that I was getting warm or cold.

I felt my way through several hallways until I
finally knew I was getting close. I followed the heat away from the wall and
hit a table. It was then that light started seeping back into my eyes. It was
also then that my instincts warned me I was surrounded. Since I couldn’t see anything
anyway, I moved my hand over the table, looking for whatever I was after…
carefully. If it was another snake, I was going to be pissed. If it was the
chalice, the last thing I wanted to do was accidentally spill it.

What I actually touched, however, was not anything I
expected; wood. More specifically, I felt what I knew to be a raw wizard’s
staff. I ran my hands up and down the wood and felt the crude carvings. “You’ve
got to be kidding me.”

I moved out of the way just in time to avoid the
claws that tried to take a swipe at me. When I turned, my vision was clear
enough to see a blur of something short and flesh-colored. I pulled out my gun,
but I wasn’t going to shoot until it either attacked again or I saw what I was
up against.

The creature moved towards me again and I pulled the
trigger.
Fucking safety
! I pressed the button on the side, but it was
too late. Blunt teeth dug into my arm. I beat it off with the gun, aimed at the
blurry creature, and shot it.

It bit me again.

I shoved it off once more and ran around the table to
buy myself a few seconds, which was all I needed for my eyes to finish clearing
up. The creature I saw was horrible enough that I regretted having my vision
back. It was dead to say the least; there was flesh hanging from its bones and
organs, dried blood inside and outside of its body, and sludgy blood oozing out
of the bullet hole I had just made. Worse still were the light blue irises of
its bulging eyeballs.

Actually, the worst part was that the creature I had
shot wasn’t the only one; I was surrounded by five of them.

There were many plans that went through my head at
that moment, many of which involved running away as fast as I possibly could,
followed by getting a voodoo doctor to make sure my wounds weren’t infected. Unfortunately,
that wasn’t going to happen any time soon as I found myself completely
immobile. I couldn’t move a muscle.

Instinctively, I closed my eyes. It wasn’t my normal
reaction to danger, but I understood why I did it, because I was able to move
the second my eyes were closed. I grabbed the staff off of the table and swung
it, hitting three bodies. Then, not wanting to fight blind, I opened my eyes
again.

And again, I was rendered motionless.

I could be slow, but I wasn’t an idiot. I closed my
eyes again and opened myself up to my instincts. There was no way in hell I
would try to get into their heads. My motions were jerky at first, but I could
somewhat feel their approaches and after a few minutes, I was able to fend them
off easily.

Fend them off? Yes. Defeat them with a stick? No.

I shaped the magic inside me into fire and let all
the training I did with Langril form the fire into something much darker. This
time, my magic was drawn out of me, through the staff, and into the enemy. I
struck five times and heard five bodies hit the ground. When I didn’t hear
anything else, I opened my eyes.

The ghouls were dead, and the staff had changed.
There were now elegant, almost creepy magic sigils all over the wooden surface.
A crystal was almost seared into the top of the wood. It was almost completely
clear with a dark, blood-red spot in the center that resembled a little heart.

“You probably don’t want that getting any darker,”
Remy said, startling me. She was standing in the doorway, looking completely
normal.

“Are you my subconscious again?” I asked.

“Even if I was technically a part of your mind, that
doesn’t mean I belong to you---” Instead of letting her finish, I imagined her
in a baby-pink bikini top and school-girl skirt, because I knew she hated pink.
Instantly, her attire changed to the outfit I had in mind. She sighed. “Yes,
I’m your subconscious.”

“Well, you did try to get me to open up to love and
emotion. I’ll show you my girly side if you show me yours.”

She rolled her eyes. “You want me to open myself up
to you?”

“Well, this is my head.” I stepped over a dead ghoul
body and she met me halfway. “I can do this whole obstacle course with you
naked any day.”

“I bet you would.” She snapped her fingers and was
fully dressed.

I groaned. “Why? I was about to enjoy myself.”

“It was distracting you. Saving Astrid is more
important than playing with me.”

I nodded. “You’re right.” Unlike the other avatars of
my subconscious, Remy took the lead, having known my intended direction and not
about to take no for an answer.
Damn. I can’t even
fantasize
a
Remington who isn’t feisty
.

I followed her through several tunnels until I heard
a voice in the distance. I stopped and listened. “We must be getting close,”
Remy said, starting to take a side hall, where the sound was coming from.

Although it sounded eerily like Astrid calling for
help, I only took a couple of steps before hesitating. “Wait. Something’s
wrong.” My instincts were screaming at me not to go that way. “We need to keep
going the same way we were going.”

Remington shrugged. “You’re the boss.”

“Why does that sound so much like you’re saying ‘Fuck
you’?”

We continued following my instincts, despite the
calls I heard to the right. In fact, it soon sounded like more than just
Astrid— it sounded like Darwin and Henry were calling out, too. That right
there told me it was a trick; Darwin would communicate in my mind and Henry
would never call for help.

We came to another door and Remington paused. “This
is it,” she said. “This is the end of the line.”

“How do you know?”

She ran her hand over the seal on the door. “Every
door had one of these, but they were all different. You’ve learned about these
in class; you just don’t remember. This final task will test your ability to
get yourself out of trouble. This isn’t going to be easy.”

“It never is.”

I pushed against the door and it opened easily.
Inside was a room about ten-by-ten. All of the walls were stone, but one of
them had a window, which was about four-foot wide and six-foot tall. Through
the window, I saw Astrid. I entered the room and didn’t look back when the door
closed. Astrid was waiting for me by the window and put her hand on the glass
as I approached

She looked even more pale and thin than usual, as
well as a little sweaty. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

“Sick. What’s going on? I don’t know whether I’m
awake or not.”

Just to make sure she was real, I imagined her
wearing a sexy red bikini. I concentrated so hard on it that I almost flinched
when she tapped loudly on the glass.

“Stop that!” she demanded. She was still wearing
jeans and a red leather jacket. “This is not the time to be picturing me naked.”

“This test is very simple, Devon Sanders,” Janus
said. I looked around for him, but he didn’t suddenly appear. “All you have to
do is escape. Both of you will find a lever beside the door.” There was a brass
lever angled upward to the right of the window. “In just a moment, the levers
will release and the walls will close in. Each of your levers will control the
walls of the other room.”

Astrid cussed.

“There is an altar on the opposite side of both
rooms. When the levers release, a key will appear on both of them. One key
opens the divider and the other opens the exit.”

“What the hell is this shit?” I asked. “This isn’t a
fucking test; it’s murder.” Janus didn’t answer me. I made a grab for the
staff, planning to use it to reach the key from the lever, but it vanished.
“Screw the entire paranormal world.”

“We’ll be okay. We’ll figure this out,” Astrid said,
her voice strained. She was always the wise, calm one.

Just then, I heard a sharp snap and the lever went
down. The walls instantly started closing in. Astrid and I grabbed our levers
and pushed them back upward, which stopped the walls. Unfortunately, they
didn’t retreat, so we had still lost a good foot or so of room. I looked at the
simple podium behind me and saw a round, metal disk, about an inch thick and
three inches in diameter.

“Are there any markings on the door or wall that
might indicate which key is which?” I asked.

She looked around and shook her head. “Nothing.” She
leaned heavily against the glass. “I don’t feel good.”

“Janus said you were poisoned. Please tell me that
was a lie.”

She shook her head. “He was right. I’m losing
strength, getting really dizzy, and my body hurts.”

“Be as quick as you can. Let go, run over to the key.
If it unlocks the door, I’ll know mine will unlock the divider.”

“If I let go, you’ll die.”

“You’re a vampire; you’re fast. If it doesn’t unlock
the door, grab the lever and unlock the middle door. I’ll hold down both levers
while you get the second key and unlock the door.”

She shook her head as her eyes slipped closed. “I’m
not letting go.”

“You’re a pain in the ass.”

I looked around the room as I patted my pockets with
my left hand. In particular, I was searching for the glass sphere Hunt had
given me. Not to my surprise, it was missing. I needed something, but I had no
idea what.

What the hell is that
?

Something stabbed my finger when I stuck my hand into
one of my pockets. I pulled it out to examine. It was the metal pen Ghost left
behind, which I had completely forgotten about. I jammed it into the side of
the lever and pushed until it was stuck hard. Then, very slowly, I let go. The
lever stayed up. “I love that damned cat.”