Fallen Angel of Mine (11 page)

"Who are you?" I asked. "Who in the hell are
you?" My limbs trembled in fear and revulsion.

The nearest creature stopped and regarded me,
tilting its head slightly to the side like a curious animal. Then
it whispered. As it did, writhing darkness poured from its mouth
like a foul cloud of pollution from burning oil. I almost expected
to smell that very odor, but sensed only a cold sterile absence. I
tuned my ears to the whispers but couldn't understand a
thing.

"You're not making sense," I said, trying to
calm the rapid-fire beat of my heart. I spun, keeping an eye on the
thing's companions. They reminded me eerily of the cherubs, though
those little creeps didn't whisper. Cherub voices sounded like a
mix between a wet cat and a screech owl and their oily skin seemed
to emanate a dark ultraviolet light of their own as opposed to
throwing off black smoke like my new friends.

These things were also adult-sized with flesh
of various sickly shades: white, olive, and ebony. The ragged
remains of a dress hung from one. Another wore the barest remains
of what might have been a pair of shorts and a hat. They couldn't
be vamplings. The stench from the putrid flesh of one of those
zombie-like creatures would have alerted me well before they even
got close. And their skin wasn't rotting, unlike most of their
clothes.

As I tried to understand yet another whisper
from the creature before me, I sensed a spike of cold at my back. I
ducked and rolled just as a tendril of shadow speared into the
space where I'd been.

The darkness exploded into motion. A group of
shadow people rushed from my right. I knew if I hesitated, I'd be
surrounded. Another dark tentacle lashed at my chest. My panic
turned into pure adrenalin. I leapt far over the shadow in front of
me and almost collided with another group of them as they shambled
from the trees at the border of the ancient building.

At least they're slow,
I thought.

Then the insidious figures blurred with
speed.

Despite all the scary crap I'd been through in
the past few weeks, I shrieked at the top of my lungs and ran for
all I was worth. Even with my night vision and my supernaturally
acute reflexes, branches whipped into my face and I stumbled over
branches, rotten logs, stones, and just about anything else in my
path. After nearly colliding with a tree—a move that would've
knocked me senseless long enough for the shadows to catch me—I
decided it might be smarter to dodge back into the crumbling city.
At least it had pathways for the tourists.

I zipped to my left just as a shadow blurred
from the dark and smashed into the trunk of the tree I'd narrowly
avoided. Bark and splinters exploded, but the creature merely
ricocheted like a pinball and veered straight at me. It was then I
noticed the lack of ambient background noises in the jungle. It was
as if every animal had fled or hidden. Now all I could hear were
the whispers of the shadows.

A chain sectioning off the tourist pathways
took my legs out from beneath me. I tumbled through the air for a
helpless moment before bouncing off the ancient stones of a nearby
building and rolling several yards. I scrambled to my feet and
raced down the path, dodging around buildings and hoping,
eventually, the blasted thing would lead me to a road or some way
out of this haunted maze.

Instead, I stumbled into an open square
surrounded by tall stone slabs. It reminded me, for a fleeting
moment, of the massive square in the middle of the Grotto. Except,
in the place of statues of the founders, this one had engravings on
the slabs. On one, a grinning male looked down from a pyramid at a
woman wreathed in flames, her mouth wide in agony. Another
intricately detailed a woman perched atop another pyramid as a
priest sacrificed an infant. Each slab bore horrendous images of
human sacrifice in grisly detail and vivid colors. It took me only
a split second to take in my surroundings, but I sensed death
closing in with every passing nanosecond.

I couldn't stand around gawking at mosaics. I
had to find a way out. Paths branched out in all directions from
the square, each one leading to its own gargantuan pyramid at the
terminus. I might be able to reach the top of one and spy the exit.
Before I could launch myself down a path, however, shadows melted
out of the night. The whispering grew louder and before I could
bolt away, they surrounded me.

I jetted toward a crack in the circle. The
shadows closed the gap just before I reached it. I jumped, hoping I
could escape this circle of darkness with another feat of
athleticism. A shadowy wisp lashed out and gripped my foot as I
sailed over their heads. A familiar, cold sensation bit straight
through my flesh and into bone. My forward progress stopped. The
tentacle slammed me back onto the hard stone of the square. A shout
of pain tore past my lips, momentarily drowning out the
whispers.

Screams echoed in my mind. A man cried out as a
crude knife ripped into his stomach. A woman wailed as a priest
ripped a child from her arms and presented it to one of their gods.
Frenzied shrieks of pure agony tore from the throat of a burning
woman. More scenes of horror piled upon the first, each more brutal
and terrible than the last, and I realized I had joined my screams
with theirs.

The dark tendril still had me by the ankle. It
had to be the reason I was seeing this, some rational part of my
mind realized. Something orange had fallen from a pocket on the
side of my backpack after the shadow had slammed me to the ground.
A flare. Using every last ounce of control left to me, I grabbed
the slender rod. At the very least, I could light it and hold it
against the smoky tentacle, possibly burning it loose. My
desperation made any action—no matter how feeble—preferable to
dying at the hands of these beings.

My leg felt numb with cold. An icy sensation
crept up my calf, my thigh, and started for my chest. My limbs
barely moved no matter how hard I pushed them. Another wave of
savage images washed over me and the flare faded from my view.
Somehow, my numb fingers found a plastic cap.

I snapped it off.

A brilliant orange light exploded against my
closed eyelids. The whispers turned into high-pitched shrieks, like
violins in the hands of morbidly depressed, candy-fueled five year
olds. The cold grip on my foot vanished. These things couldn't
handle light, I realized, watching their forms retreat.

I tried to run, but my legs wouldn't move. They
were as unresponsive as slabs of meat. I couldn't even drag myself
more than an inch. The flare burned bright, but it wouldn't last
long. And even so, I didn't know if it'd be enough to hold off the
shadows for long.

I jammed my hand into the backpack, searching
desperately for something, anything that might save me. Elyssa, the
OCD planner she was, had crammed in a load of stuff before we'd
dived into the icy depths of the lake at the center of Thunder
Rock. I thought back to the oily black shadow, which had dragged me
away from her as we tried to swim to an underground river beneath
the caves. The sensation had felt very much like this one. Except I
hadn't seen any visions and the cold hadn't progressed past the
point of contact.

Either these things were not quite the same, or
they were even darker and more twisted than the underwater monster.
My hand found a rounded shape, dusty and dry against my skin. I
pulled out a thick piece of chalk and suppressed a crazed laugh of
hopelessness. Chalk? Seriously? What in the world was I going to
use this for? Maybe I could draw some stick figures illustrating my
horrific demise should any other fool come across this place. I
uttered a prayer to karma and dug deeper into the pack.

In a side pocket of the waterproof backpack, I
found two more flares. Nothing else. The only thing standing
between dark insanity and me were these last beacons of light in a
pitch-black world.

The first flare burned on but it had dimmed
considerably, giving me only a small circle of radiance. Outside
this circle, the shadows tightened around me, slim tendrils
drifting from their darkly shimmering figures like cold nooses
poised to drag me into eternal night. Were these things anything
like the tiny wailing cherubs? I thought back again to the ones
from Thunder Rock. They might have killed me if I
hadn't—

"You moron!" I said to myself, foregoing a
face-palm only because I needed to grab the chalk, which I'd
stuffed into my pocket.

As the circle of light grew dangerously small,
I struck another flare and held it above my head. My legs had
regained feeling but it was all I could do to stagger to my feet.
At the center of the square was a chest-high platform of stone,
possibly a podium. I didn't know what its purpose was, but it
suited my immediate needs. I grabbed the backpack, took the
original flare in the other hand, and hobbled the several yards to
the center of the open area. The shadowy figures followed, staying
precisely outside the cone of light given off by the flare. I threw
the original flare at a group of them. Several didn't react in
time. The smoky shadows drifting from their bodies blazed like
gunpowder as they shrieked and blurred away from it.

I balanced the new flare atop the platform.
Pulled the chalk from my pocket and traced a circle several feet in
diameter around the base of the structure, thanking whoever built
the place for using such smooth massive tiles. Smaller tiles would
have had spaces between them and I might not have been able to draw
a circle without breaks in it. I thought back to all the little
things Shelton had told me about circles. He hadn't told me much,
but I remembered him saying certain ones could act as barriers
against specific entities. The silvery rings surrounding the arches
at Thunder Rock had kept out terrifying cherubs. I had to hope a
circle would keep these things out as well.

Just in case, I thought extra hard about my
extreme desire to keep these creeps out of my safe
place.

Circle close and keep these shadows
out. Keep them out!

A familiar crackle in the air told me the
circle had indeed closed, and the static pressure of magic washed
over me in an intense wave.

The incredible concentration of magic made me
realize this place was directly over ley lines as powerful as those
at Thunder Rock.

As the flare died down over the next few
minutes, I tried to force back the fear that my pitiful chalk
circle wouldn't work. "Moment of truth," I said, trying to comfort
myself as the flare dimmed enough to allow the shadows past the
edges of the circle if it didn't work as desired.

They flowed inward like a sea of black
malevolence. And broke against my circle.

"Yes!" I shouted, pumping a fist in the air.
"Go back to hell, you shadowy ass wipes."

Some screeched. Some whispered. One of them
whirled like a black tornado.

"You mad bro?" I said, taunting and giving them
the finger.

As the flare died down, so did my exuberance.
After my night vision kicked back on a moment later, I leaned
against the stone column and slid to the ground. My hands shook and
my teeth chattered. Half the shaking was probably from fear, the
other from fatigue and hunger. After the challenging swim through
the lake at Thunder Rock and the extreme fear and adrenalin I'd
burned through from tonight's activities, I had not been ready to
deal with this kind of garbage.

Why couldn't the forces of darkness leave me
alone?

Bunch of inconsiderate
jerks.

I stared at the massive engravings throughout
the square. Each was poised before one of eight paths leading to a
particular deity's pyramid. I strained to make out the engravings
from my position at the center, but the range of my night vision
wasn't quite strong enough to reach across the expanse.

One of the pyramids appeared larger than the
others, from what I could make of the hulking shadows in the
darkness, lit only by a tapestry of stars and a nearly full moon.
It seemed to be the north-most pyramid, if my limited knowledge of
the North Star was actually paying a dividend.

I strained my eyes against the dark, peering
past the shadows and toward the engraving marking the north path. I
discerned the very detailed likeness of a woman with a stern
expression on her face. I couldn't determine if there were any
sacrifices illustrated on the stone, but something seemed oddly
familiar about the woman's features. The harder I focused on the
engraving, the more my eyes adjusted, zooming in like binoculars
until I had a much clearer view.

What I saw nearly stopped my heart.

Elyssa

Elyssa struggled against the two Templars
holding her, one by either arm. "You can't do this to me, Father!
Are you insane?" Another twenty or more Templars stood in the woods
near the riverbank where she and Kassallandra had emerged only
minutes before. The river offered her only chance at escape if she
couldn't talk her father out of his plans to wipe her
memories.

Thomas Borathen regarded his daughter, his face
etched deep with the scowling lines of disappointment. "You,
daughter, are the insane one. Forming a romantic relationship with
one spawn and conspiring with yet another are not only signs of
mental unbalance, but are actions of treason as well." He turned
his dark look on Kassallandra, who stood between her two remaining
hellhounds, one of them the pony-sized monster she called Malkesh.
Though formidably strong, they'd have no chance against this many
Templars. She returned his gaze with a cold stare, broken only when
the wind tossed her flame-red hair into her face.