Haunted (44 page)

Several shapes moved toward Dachev, while others headed farther off, beginning to hunt. I waited until the lights dimmed, then began to creep away. There was no sense continuing west. If Dachev had come that way with the torch, that meant that he’d come from the village. This world was spherical. Keep walking in any direction and you’d end up back where you started. The deepest part of the woods, then, would be that strip to the north and south. That’s where I headed.

I moved as fast as I dared. Once I was far enough, I’d find a tree and try that trick again. At least that would make it impossible for one of the searchers to stumble into me and snap my cover spell. But what if they bumped the tree? Would that vibration be enough to break my cover?

I should stop and fight. Lure them away, one by one, and disable them. Sure, great plan…provided I could outwit and outfight every last one of these bastards, with my spell-casting still drained from the fireball spell.
Don’t be stupid. Just find a tree and hide
. But what if the bird-man had seen me jump from that tree, and told Dachev my trick?

In the midst of this internal debate, a hillock appeared in my path and, only a few yards to my right, a boulder blocked a blob of darkness deeper than that of the hillside. Some kind of hole. I walked over and peered in the narrow slit above the boulder. Beyond it, the darkness stretched as far as my light-ball illuminated. Not a hole, but a cave. Oho. Now, that’s what I needed.

I moved to the side of the boulder and pushed. My pierced hand flared again. I grabbed a handful of leaves from the nearest tree and, using them for padding, put my hands back on the boulder, dug in my feet, and heaved. The rock didn’t budge. Okay, not so perfect. Or was it? If I couldn’t move the rock, they’d never think to look behind it. With proper leverage and a telekinesis spell, I should be able to shift it aside enough to squeeze through.

I found a thick branch and used it to pry the rock as I pushed and cast a telekinesis spell. The spell was intended to displace small objects, but many witches used it as an added muscle boost for moving heavy objects, like pushing out the fridge to clean behind it. Practical magic.

With the spell, my pry-bar branch, and a hefty dose of push power, I managed to move the rock about a foot, giving me an eighteen-inch gap to squeeze through. Problem was, the rock had been there so long, it had sunk into the ground, so I was prying it up from a hole. The moment I let go, it would roll back into place—and block the entrance again. I could try pushing it right out of the depression, but that meant going inside and leaving the door wide-open. First guy who walked by and saw the cave opening would know exactly where I was hiding.

So I squeezed through, yanked the branch in with me, and let the boulder tumble into place. Then I recast my light-ball spell and looked around.

The tunnel extended as far as I could see, the floor angling downward, like the entrance to a subterranean passageway—like the one that had linked the two castles. Had someone dug this one, too? Maybe that would explain the rock, put there by the Fates to keep the inmates of this dimension in the village where they belonged.

I looked from the entrance into the cave depths. The deeper I went, the safer I’d be, so no one passing by would see the glow of my light-ball. If I didn’t have to cower under a cover spell, I wasn’t about to. Better to find a place, hunker down, and take stock of my injuries. Pushing that rock had set my punctured hand and shoulder ablaze. Then there was my ear. I could feel the half-severed lobe tickling my neck as I moved, but hadn’t yet reached up to assess the damage, not really sure I wanted to know how close it was to falling off.

If I could stop, I could tear strips from my shirt and bind that ear and my hand. Nothing was bleeding—one advantage to being a ghost—but I’d be able to use my hand better if the wound was covered and cushioned. As for the ear, while losing a lobe would solve the problem of misplacing half a pair of earrings, I’d really rather keep it intact and hope the Fates could stitch it back up.

About twenty feet down the tunnel, what looked like a room branched off the right side. The main passage continued back as far as I could see. Was there an exit under the village? A chill ran through me, but I dowsed it with common sense. First, the village was at least a quarter-mile away. Second, even if the tunnel did extend that far, it wasn’t being used—that entrance boulder had been in place long enough to grow moss. Still, best to play it safe and duck into this room, rather than continue on.

As I walked into the room, the floor dipped and my light-ball dimmed. Great. It must be a subterranean effect of the anti-magic barrier on this place. I hoped I wasn’t going to lose the light altogether, like I had in Dachev’s crawl space. I really didn’t relish sitting in the dark for hours.

I took another step and kicked something—softer than a rock, but solid enough to nearly trip me. I glanced down to see a long pale cylinder. A tree branch. I went to step over it, then stopped. There was something covering the branch, and it didn’t look like bark.

I swung my light-ball over and saw an arm lying in front of my foot. A human arm, still encased in a sleeve. I hunkered down for a better look. The arm had been ripped from its socket. Not that I’ve seen a lot of that sort of thing, but the torn and jagged flesh around the uncut bone certainly looked more like a rip than a saw job.

I hadn’t noticed any of the men in the village missing an arm, but I hadn’t taken a good look at a couple of them. Wouldn’t surprise me if one of them had done this to a fellow villager. Put a group of killers together and eventually someone’s going to start losing body parts. It kind of surprised me that they hadn’t done worse.

I started to straighten, then stopped. A half-dozen paces away lay a jean-clad leg. Okay, now
that
I would have noticed. They looked about the same size, probably from the same person. Maybe they weren’t real. They certainly didn’t look real. The torn flesh was clean and bloodless, like a movie prop before someone splashes on the fake gore. I bent to touch the hand. Cold, but definitely flesh.

As I took a step toward the leg, I let out an oath. A second leg lay behind the first, and, a few feet away, the other arm. Okay, now I was creeped out. What the hell had happened down here? I was better off not knowing, not thinking about it. And if I stayed in this room, that was exactly what I would do. Time to find a new hiding place.

Turning to leave, my gaze swept the left side of the room. A bowling-ball-shaped rock rested by the wall. Yeah, a rock, that’s it. Bullshit. I knew exactly what it was. And I knew what had happened here. They’d done this—the villagers—turned on one of their own and ripped him apart. Then they hid the body in here, and sealed it up, hoping the Fates wouldn’t notice.

With a shiver, I turned away. As I did, I heard a faint clacking. It came from the direction of the head. I turned, more instinct than intent, swinging the light-ball that way. The head of a dark-haired man lay there, blue eyes staring at me, blank and unseeing. Then he blinked.

“Jesus fucking—!” I yelped, jumping back.

The man’s eyes focused and his mouth opened wide, as if to scream, showing a bloodless stump where his tongue had been. He clacked his teeth together. Beneath his neck, something long and white snapped against the dirt—his spine, the only thing still attached to his head, twisting and jerking like a macabre tail.

I ran out of that room faster than I’d ever run from anything in my life. Once back in the tunnel, I leaned against the wall and rubbed my face, trying to rub the image from my mind. I couldn’t, of course, no more than I could stop my brain from churning through the implications of that image. I should have known he was still alive. He was a ghost. He couldn’t die. The true horror of that hadn’t struck me until now. If you couldn’t die, but you could feel pain, you could be ripped apart and still live.

With a growl, I shook the picture from my head. I had to concentrate on staying hidden and safe, not on what they could do to me if I failed.

I looked along the tunnel. Staying in that room was out of the question. I needed to go deeper, find a better place to—

A noise cut my thoughts short. Even as I glanced back toward that room, I knew it hadn’t come from there. The sound came again, a dull
thump.
Then a harsh whisper, like something being dragged through the dirt. Another thump, and another drag.

Without thinking, I wheeled around the corner, back into the room. As I moved, my brain screamed for me to stop, stay where I was, and cast a cover spell. Whatever happened, I did not want to be stuck in the same room as that
thing.
But it was too late. By the time I ducked into the room, the noise in the tunnel was too close for me to risk going back out. Time to cast a cover—Shit! The light-ball. I dowsed it, then cast my cover spell.

As I recited the incantation, I could feel
it
watching me. Was it watching? Could it still think, feel, a full consciousness trapped within—

Goddamn it, stop that! He’s a fucking psychopath. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been down here. I’d do the same to the rest if I could. But it wasn’t him I was worried about; it was the thought of him, what it could portend for me. When the Fates said I was in danger, I sure as hell never thought—

Don’t think. Turn it off and pay attention.

The noise was close enough now for me to hear something else accentuating the thumps and drags—a low, wordless mumble. A shape passed the doorway. With only the sliver of distant light from around the boulder to illuminate the passage, I saw little more than a shape, but I could tell it was human, a squat lump of a man, one leg dragging as he shuffled along.

He was midway past the room door when he stopped, head whipping around so fast I nearly jumped and broke my cover spell. His face hovered there, a thin pale streak in the darkness. He snuffled, as if sniffing the air. After a low mumble of unintelligible gibberish, he crouched and peered at the ground. He traced his fingers in the dirt, then chortled and clumped forward, still squatting as he followed something in the dirt. Followed my footprints.

I held myself still, but my thoughts whirred. Would my binding spell work yet? Could I outrun him? And run where? I’d locked myself in. Wait, there had to be another exit, the one he’d come through. The moment I thought this, I knew he hadn’t come through anywhere. If he could see my footprints in the dirt, in this darkness, that could only mean that his eyesight had adapted to this near-blackness. And that meant he’d been here a helluva lot longer than a few minutes.

The men in the village hadn’t ripped their fellow inmate apart. He had—this man—this creature lumbering toward me, mumbling in a language that had long since sunk below any standard of human communication. He’d ripped his victim limb from limb and they’d locked them both in here. And now I’d locked myself in with them.

Goddamn it, don’t just stand here and wait for him to bump into you! Cast something. Launch the damn fireball spell. No, better yet, the gouging spell, explode his eyes from their sockets, see how well he can track you without them. Blind him, then get that tree limb and beat the living shit—

Stop that! Stop and think.
I hadn’t recovered enough for a foolproof binding spell yet. Cast anything stronger and I’d end up in pieces on the floor, still alive, trapped in—

Stop that!

I could smell him now, a sickly sweet smell like rotting meat. Where was that smell coming from? His breath? Did he eat—?

I gritted my teeth and fought to shut my brain down, to concentrate on the moment. He kept shambling forward, still crouched, pale fingers glowing as they traced my steps in the dirt.

I’d have to risk the binding spell. It should hold for at least a few seconds, long enough for me to get past him and run like hell farther into the cave. With that bad leg, he couldn’t catch me.

He stopped. After a moment’s hesitation, he veered to the right, following my original tracks into the room. He scuttled to the arm where I’d first paused. At a noise across the room he leapt to his feet. He looked around, head low, sniffing the air. Another noise—the click of teeth. With a roar, he lunged forward and kicked the head into the wall. It hit with a
splat,
but rolled back again, spine still jumping. He kicked it again, still bellowing, frustrated by his inability to end its life.

After a few more kicks, rage sated, he looked around the room, then strode out. He’d forgotten me. Thank—

Grunts drifted from the main passage, near the entrance, as he tried to move the boulder. He hadn’t forgotten me, he’d just changed tack and gone to see how I’d gotten in…and whether he could get out.

How long had he been in this cave? How long had this other thing—this head—I couldn’t think of it as a man, that just started my brain spinning—how long had it been here? Like that?

This was the true hell of this dimension. Not the thing on the cave floor, but the never-ending possibility of it. Trapped for eternity in a world of other killers, any of whom could, at any moment, do this to you. All you can do is trust that they won’t, trust that if you don’t touch them, they won’t touch you, rely on honor and decency from men who have none. And when they do exactly what you fear they’ll do, you band together and lock them up with their victim, barricade them in and leave them there, alone…until some goddamn idiot walks up, goes, “Hmmm, what’s this boulder doing here?” moves it, and barricades herself inside with them.

I squeezed my eyes closed and chased the thoughts away. Panic. So that’s what it felt like.

After a few shoves on the boulder, the man gave a snarl that resounded through the cavern. Those dragging footsteps resumed and, seconds later, he appeared at the room entrance. He stepped inside and peered around, head low, snuffling and muttering. Then he wheeled and strode out the door, heading for the tunnel depths. Thank God. Now I could—Wait. Shit! When he’d turned, there’d been something in his hand. It was still too dark for me to see more than shapes, but I knew he hadn’t been carrying anything earlier, and the only long, narrow object he could have picked up on his way to the entrance was the tree limb I’d left there—the one I needed to get out of this place.