Page 41 of Divine Oaths

I turned the corner. The figure followed. I hastened my speed. The figure did too. It was just us. Alone in these tunnels. Every corner I turned, he was close behind. And he would find me. No matter where I went, he would follow, like he had in the maze. I took a sharp left at an intersection, and for a moment, hope caught me. But then the figure was there, on the other end of the hallway, as if the intersection had looped in on itself. A snake like the one in the maze, eating its tail.

Pale skin, a buzz cut, and eyes the color of pearls. The Westfield blazer dripping with blood and caked in sawdust.

My breath caught. I covered my mouth to keep from crying out.

His pupilless eyes swept over me. Fear trapped me there.

I bit the inside of my mouth, hard enough that I could taste blood.

Against the dull hum and the cold grip of his gaze, the sound of my own voice was like glass shattering.

“Who are you?” I managed in a whisper.

The figure’s lips curled. And when it spoke, it sounded like a cursed chorus of voices merging together. It raised a hand. Blood dripped from its fingertips, and its nails were caked in dirt and dust. It was pointing to my hand, where Kasem’s bracelet was clasped on my wrist.

“Beware the mark of blood debts. A life for a life. Yours for his.”

I stepped back, fear coursing through every inch of me. This wasn’t my powers. This wasn’t a vision. This was something ancient and malevolent, something between the living and the dead. Something sinister. Faintly, a prayer emerged in my mind. When the fire had happened, my parents’ prayers for my safety, for my protection, were the last I heard before the screams and flames had engulfed everything.

“Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil—”

Laughter spilled from the figure’s lips, breaking me off from finishing the verse. But I was already running, sprinting at full speed in the other direction, back where I’d come again, down a corner, pushing against door after door.

Behind me, the figure was in full pursuit, its footsteps clicking and clacking even closer. The hum pulsing from the walls groaned louder, like engines heaving in the distance. The walls trembled at the force of the sound.

Finally, one door gave way. I threw myself inside, locked the bolt, and stumbled backward, desperate for somewhere to hide.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Dreams may come

THE ROOM WAS DARK, PITCH-BLACK almost. The only light came from the soft glow of an emerald ceiling lamp. Against its cool radiance, metal gleamed all around me: the outlines of machines. There was a table saw covered with blocks of wood and shavings. A line of rolling tracks led into it—a conveyor belt, I realized. For feeding wood into the machine. But the tracks were stained with rust, the color so deep it almost looked like—

I stumbled back again, knocking into a cabinet.

Handheld jigsaws sat discarded there, and a nail puncher tumbled to the ground as my back collided with the shelves. Across the room, there were more machines. A row of band saws—the metal lengths of their blades glinting and stained in the light—a wood processor, and others I couldn’t recognize.

At the center of it all, shining in the hypnotic gaze of the emerald light, was a long metal table saw. I realized that the humming and trembling I’d felt from earlier had been coming from the machines. Someone had turned them on. The roar of their blades made the whole room shake. Something living was here. I didn’t know how, but it was pulsing, shrinking and expanding with the groans and sighs of the heavy machinery that made up its organs. Outside, the figure’s laughter rippled from the walls.

“A life for a life. His numbered days are bound to yours.”

A force yanked my hand.

Kasem’s bracelet. It’d gotten caught on a notch. I lurched forward, trying to pull my hand away. But the more I tried to free myself, the harder it was to keep my balance. The force was anchoring me there, using my weight against me. It pulled me forward and pain ripped through my wrist as it yanked me along the track, toward the mouth of the table saw.

The ground rumbled beneath me. Lights flickered. Cold numbed my fingertips.

The table saw. It roared to life. A rusty blade emerged from its mouth. Its jagged edges were streaked with the same russet stains I’d noticed earlier. But now, with the lights flickering and the machine groaning, it was clear what the stains were. Blood. Not rust. Blood.

I screamed, clawing at the bracelet, yanking and pulling until blood streaked my nail beds. But it wouldn’t give way. And neither would the machine.

If I didn’t stop the machine, I was going to die.

Fear gripped me, blurring my vision and twisting my insides into a gooey pulp. I searched frantically, but there was nothing close enough for me to grasp that I could use to jam the gears or the blade. Helpless, I reached for my shoe, tearing off my loafer and sock and throwing them into the mouth of the machine. But the rusted blades tore them apart, relishing the brief taste of leather and cotton.

My terror gave way to despair. I’d thought that coming to Westfield would fix everything. I’d been wrong. So, so wrong. In the piercing screams of the engines, a refrain swallowed the room.

Beware the mark of blood debts. Beware, beware, beware…