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Siroun reached out and touched a congealed dark drop on the floor. “Blood,” she whispered. Her nostrils fluttered. The orange fire in her irises darkened once again to near red. “Her blood.”
She rose and pointed to the middle of the hallway, where red glyphs bloomed, like poppies. “That’s where he killed her.”
“What’s the purpose of all this?” he asked.
“An illusion.” The fire in Siroun’s eyes died to almost nothing. Her voice held profound sadness. “Give me your hand, Adam.”
He offered her his palm and watched as her slender fingers were swallowed by his huge hand. Siroun reached out with her other hand. Her thumbnail flicked across her index finger. A single drop of blood dropped from her hand into the glyphs. The glow vanished like a snuffed-out candle. The hallways went completely dark. A single tiny spark flared at the far end and expanded into a figure of a small boy. He stood on a stool, barefoot, large eyes opened wide. A chain hung from his throat. His mouth opened, and the high voice of a young child echoed through the hallway. “Please let me go, Mommy. Please let me go. I’ll be good…”
The stool shot out from under the boy’s feet, as if knocked aside by someone’s brutal kick. The child hung, on the chain, choking, his eyes bulging.
Adam lunged forward and stopped, pulled back by Siroun’s hand.
“It’s not real,” she told him. “It’s only an illusion.”
The child struggled. They watched him kick and die. Slowly, one by one, the glyphs ignited. The body, the chain, and the s
tool faded.
Adam remembered to breathe. His chest refused to expand, as if someone had dropped an anvil on it.
“She made her husband think she had killed their son,” Siroun said. “And then he killed her. She sacrificed herself. Whatever dark thing she prayed to now inhabits her body. She made a bargain, you see? Her body for revenge on her husband.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. We have to keep going. We’ll find answers when we find Sobanto.” She pulled him gently, and he followed.
* * *
The last door loomed in front of Adam. Wood reinforced with steel. No matter. He crashed into it, and it burst open, unlocked. Adam stumbled forward, into the huge chamber. He had barely enough time to take in the domed ceiling, half-lost in the gloom, the bare walls, and the lonely figure sitting motionless under a column of blue light; and then heat seared his left hip. He saw nothing, felt nothing save for that brief fiery slice, but his leg gave, and he crashed to the floor, catching himself on his bent arms and rolling onto his side to diminish the impact.
A dark stain spread across the leg of his pants. He still felt no pain. Adam pulled back the sliced fabric, revealing a slash across his muscle. The edges of the wound fit so tightly together, it might have been made by a razor blade.
Numbness claimed his hip. He took a deep breath, and, suddenly, he couldn’t feel his legs.
Poison. He was cut by a poisoned blade, coated with some sort of paralyzing agent, probably containing anticoagulant. Adam froze. His body regenerated at an accelerated rate. It would overcome most poisons, given time. But time was in short supply. The less he moved, the faster he’d heal, but prone like this, he presented too good a target.
Come on. Take a shot. I’ll snap your neck like a toothpick.
Adam scanned the chamber.
Nothing. Only the gloom and a man seated in a metal chair. John Sobanto, wearing the slack expression of a man caught in some sort of spell. A ring of small pale stones surrounded his chair. He knew this spell. If he could remove the stones, the ward would disappear.
A hint of movement made him glance right. Siroun stood next to him. Her eyes glowed like two rubies.
Her lips parted. “I see you, sirrah,” she whispered, her hiss carrying to the farthest heights of the chamber.
A blur struck at her from the gloom. The cloaked bodyguard attacked. She parried, blades clanging together, and the bodyguard withdrew. A shred of dark fabric fluttered to the floor.
Siroun laughed, an eerie sound that shot ice down Adam’s spine. “I’m coming, sirrah. Face me!”
The blur landed on the floor at the far wall, solidifying into a cloaked man. Soundless like a phantom, he pulled off his cloak and dropped it onto the floor. Chiseled, each muscle cut to perfection, he stood nude, save for muay thai shorts. His bare feet gripped the floor, his toes bore curved yellow claws. Colored tattoos blossomed across his legs, stomach, and chest, muted against the faint green tint of his skin. A striking cobra on one arm, a crouching monkey king on the other, tortoise on the abdomen, elephant on the chest, iguana under the right collarbone, tiger under the left. Faint outlines of scales, tattooed or real, shielded his shaved skull. His eyes were yellow like amber, luminescent with cold intensity, reptilian in their lack of feeling.
The bodyguard raised a knife with a yellow blade that looked as if it were carved from an old bone.
Siroun looked at him. “You need to turn now.”
He leaped across the room. They clashed and danced across the chamber, preternaturally fast, slashing, parrying, kicking, and finding purchase on the sheer walls.
