The Beholder Page 6

  She landed without effort, transforming instantly into her regular human form. In that moment the pain rushed in, and she stumbled towards Jason. The luminous veil lifted as she returned to the ordinary world, and she saw his silhouette looming in the dark. She was so close. Just a few more steps and she would see what was hidden beyond his light. Then she froze, forgetting her pain. His sky-blue eyes looked expectantly at her, waiting for some kind of answer. Though she was about to collapse, though her heart pounded, she managed to maintain a calm countenance.

  I’ve found you, she thought, and smiled weakly. For a heartbeat she forgot about the Evil One, still lurking and still dangerous, spying on them from above. Then her instincts returned.

  “We need to get away before he regains his power,” she told Jason, her voice shaking a bit.

  She was afraid. She’d been afraid of so many things for so long, but this was the most paralyzing fear of all. The possibility that she might lose the person she had sought for so long terrified her to the marrow of her bones.

  Chapter 10

  Her voice couldn’t have been human. Her words rang like tiny bells, and their notes, though tainted with exhaustion, formed the sweetest melody to Jason’s ear. She spoke with a slight accent that fascinated him, and he wished she’d keep talking so he could listen.

  “It’s too dangerous to go to your place, or to your friend’s place,” she shouted over her shoulder as the motorcycle roared through the night. “Pariah might already be there.”

  Jason leaned forward, wanting to make sure he heard her correctly. “What?” he yelled over the wind. “What about my friends? Are they in danger?”

  “No. Matthew and Debbie will be fine,” Emily replied. “They are being taken care of. My people are transporting them to a hiding place.”

  “How do you know their names?”

  She laughed, and even above the engine’s roar, the magical sound filled his heart. “I know more about your trio than you do. Besides, I was in your office an hour ago, remember?”

  He remembered. He remembered seeing through her eyes as she ran through the building, he remembered sensing her panic, then there was the miracle of seeing her face for the first time, reflecting in the mirror. It was impossible to forget.

  Emily. Her name was Emily.

  They left the boundaries of New York as she insisted, and after a while he took over the driving, since she seemed to slump a little lower with every passing mile. A Sunday sun rose above the horizon, caressing the slumbering sky, and Jason drove towards the rose-colored spectacle. They left the city far behind, and the road became lined on both sides by a sand-filled horizon. He had no idea where he was headed, but knew he was going in the right direction. The light, assuring weight of Emily’s hands on his back gave him confidence.

  Eventually the purr of the motorcycle lulled Emily to sleep, and she leaned against him, warm and trusting. Jason drove for a while, not wanting her warmth to ever go away, but he needed to wake her. He’d reached a crossroads and needed to ask for directions. Reluctant to lose the sweet presence of her against him, he pulled up at the side of the road and carefully turned to her, trying to wake her gently.

  She stirred at his voice and slowly opened her eyes. The sun filled them with a dazzling beauty, and all Jason could do was stare. It was a face of an angel, pure and heavenly. Flawless, Jason thought.

  With a deep breath, Emily sat up and looked around, blinking in a daze. “We’re nearly there,” she said and pointed to the right, off the pavement. “Go that way.”

  They swerved from the road and plowed through the sand. Dust rose in their wake in massive clouds, transforming to gigantic moving statues in the air.

  As Jason drove, he looked around and noted there had once been buildings in the area. Here and there bricks, wooden frames, and pieces of roofing slate lay in ruins, and foundations of nonexistent buildings stuck out of the sand.

  Emily nudged Jason’s back and told him to stop. She climbed off the bike and led him to a round old hatch covered in sand which looked large enough to hold one person. He never saw her touch anything, but the hatch began to open, and the newly-formed hole dilated like a pupil in the dark, gaping fixedly at the sky. From inside the hatch came a platform, onto which Emily stepped. She held out a hand and Jason stepped up beside her.

  “What about the motorcycle?” he asked.

  “Don’t worry. You can leave it here. No one’s going to steal it.” She smiled. “Besides, now that we’ve met,” she told him, “you have no choice but to come with me.”

  Jason was about to say he would have come with her even if offered another choice, but Emily raised her hand to stop him. “You are the first Unsighted to consciously step onto the other side,” she said. “I have to warn you about something before we go any farther. It is very important that you do not doubt your sanity over the next while. You will soon see things that you never believed could be true.”

  Jason nodded and didn’t ask questions. What was there to ask? A flutter of anticipation danced through his chest as the platform slowly descended into a sunless void, sliding smoothly underground. Once they were safely hidden away, the hatch closed, shielding the sky from their eyes. The platform continued to travel deeper into the earth, and the air filled with clouds of dust surging up from below, making breathing more difficult. Pure, silent blackness combined with thick air began to overwhelm Jason, closing in on him from all sides. Just as he was starting to panic, a shimmering light passed through the platform from below, illuminating the walls and revealing a hidden world. Even Emily herself had changed and was now robed in a mantle of the silver shimmer.

  Emily saw all his questions and answered before he could ask. “It’s an uninhabited city built upon many levels that go deep underground. Right now we are at the upper levels. These were mostly used to hide the Unsighted in case of threat from the Evil Ones.

  “The lower levels are much deeper and accessible only to the chosen few: those with the gift of the Sight. Unsighted people would never be able to find them, even if they knew where the secret rooms and entrances were located. Now we’re heading for the Hall of Refuge. It’s located at the very bottom of the city, so we’ll have to speed up a bit.” Emily’s mouth curved into a smile. “There is only one way to get there, and there are hundreds of false turns and passages that would lead trespassers to dead ends.”

  Tunnels whizzed by, black holes in the even blacker space. Jason stared in awe, wondering how any of it could be possible. Again, Emily seemed to sense his questions before he could voice them.

  “There are thousands of tunnels, lined by thousands of doors. From the side it looks like this.” She waved her index finger as if it were an invisible paintbrush, and it emitted a fine silver line which resembled the fluid webs of a spider. She indicated a round object at the bottom of her sketch. “Here is the Hall of Refuge.”

  Jason frowned, trying to follow everything she was saying, and Emily smiled. “This is where we entered,” she told him, prodding at a dot at the top, far away from the Hall. “The entrance to the tunnel moves to a new place every three days. We had to start doing that after the evil side found out about its previous location and attacked us.”

  “The entrance moves?”

  “Yes. If you know where it will pop up, you just enter there and end up here,” Emily replied, matter-of-fact. With a simple wave of her hand she stirred the picture, and it dissolved into a misty haze. “Now it’s protected in the most secure way, both from evil and common people.”

  “Common people? Like me?”

  Emily’s eyes widened. “Oh no! You aren’t common, Jason. You are so not common.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  Emily pressed two warm fingers over his lips and shook her head lightly. “I know you need answers, but not now. A bit later. I promise.”

  Jason thought they’d already been moving quickly, but the motion suddenly changed and the platform accelerated. Soon the source of the
shimmering light he’d seen before—massive searchlights—came into view, revealing a huge tunnel with two rows of doors to the left and to the right. The searchlights reminded him of silver blue fireflies twinkling in the fog. The air here was thicker, making it even more difficult to breathe.

  “Who built this?” Jason wondered aloud.

  “No one knows exactly,” Emily replied. “Whoever they were, they passed the information of its whereabouts to us, and made sure the structure remained inaccessible to unwanted guests. Legends tell of hundreds of gifted people coming to this place and building room after room. When they died, it is said they left their souls inside so each room could serve a particular goal. Several hundred rooms here possess a particular aura, each one a spectacular creation filled with mysteries.

  “After fourteen years of being Sighted I’ve been to fewer than thirty of the rooms. If you are ready to sacrifice part of your soul to them, they will reciprocate and share the knowledge of those who created them.”

  The platform came to a gentle halt, stopping at a rupture in the tunnel. Through the hole Jason could see the other side, shining like colored glass. It was only one step from where they were onto the other platform, but the distance between them was blocked by what appeared to be a thin black curtain. Jason hesitated and glanced doubtfully at Emily.

  “Let’s get to the other side,” she whispered, and the blackness before them rippled like water in the wind. Emily took Jason’s arm, and he felt immediately comforted, soothed by a warm wave that ran through his body. She took a step forward, hauling him through the curtain and out of the searchlights’ misty haze.

  Something seemed to have gone wrong with his eyesight. Once they passed through the curtain, all the colors became so vivid and bright it was almost painful to look. He glanced at his hands, then stared hard. They hardly looked like his own hands. In fact, they looked perfect. Flawless. Like the carved hands of a god.

  He glanced at Emily, wanting to ask what was going on, but the words stuck in his throat. He had thought she was gorgeous in his dream, but now … She was more than beautiful. She was a nymph radiating ripples of heavenly light. More than ever, he wanted to touch her, give in to the attraction that had been consuming him.

  “We need to hold on to the platform now.” Her voice streamed like a sweet melody, enchanting, and Jason knew he would do whatever she said. When she crouched and gripped the edge of the platform, he managed to tear his gaze off her long enough to do the same. The moment he did, a warm vibration passed through the platform to him, as if it held him there.

  The tunnel stretched for miles ahead. Jason couldn’t help thinking as an interior designer, marveling at what a grand project it all was. What Matt, Debbie, and he had created seemed insignificant.

  “Hold tight, Jason. The speed is tremendous here.”

  “Don’t worry.” He smiled. “I love speed,” Jason said and gripped the platform edge.

  But when the platform started to move, the jerk was so abrupt it almost caught him off guard. Fortunately, the warm connection passing between his hands and the platform held him steady. As they accelerated, his eyes streamed and his hair whipped wildly around his face. They rushed into a mosaic of unearthly lights, merging into a whirlpool of brightness. Just as he became used to the supersonic speed, the platform zoomed downwards, making Jason’s vision go fuzzy. He felt increasingly nauseous and was relieved when the platform started to slow.

  “Are we there?”

  Emily’s amber eyes stared without blinking at a huge, ancient-looking door to their right. She shook her head slowly. “I have a feeling,” she said, “and I don’t like it.”

  She approached the door and pressed one hand to a sphere, one of a number of identical spheres beside each door. The other hand she put on the surface of the door. Her musical voice lowered to indecipherable mumbling, then rose to a mantric incantation that chilled him to the core and left him almost afraid to move.

  The sphere under her hand—as well as all the others—flared suddenly like a sun, banishing darkness so that the walls twinkled like immaculate white marble. As the dazzling light began to fade, Jason’s eye was caught by a flicker of something on the sphere where Emily’s hand had rested: two Es superimposed. Like the W&T seal Jason had seen on the letter in his home. Like the mark on the dead bodies in the articles Debbie had come across.

  Emily’s expression tightened, and she backed away from the door, digging frantically in her pockets.

  “What is it?” he asked, but she didn’t seem to hear his question.

  “Emily?” Jason persisted.

  She stared at him with wild eyes. “I was the last to enter the door of the Hall. I was the one who closed it. Tyler and I had arranged to take you three and meet there. This door,” Emily indicated the nondescript arch, “shows the initials of the one who left the Hall of Refuge the last time.” She shook her head, frowning at the double Es before her. “Tyler, Debbie, and Matt should have arrived long before us. But the door shows my hand.”

  Jason swayed on unsteady knees as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. She clicked an automatic redial and pressed the phone to her ear, her face set with worry.

  Matt and Debbie were not in the Hall of Refuge. If Pariah had found them, they might already be dead.

  Chapter 11

  Matt snapped from a sound sleep when the house jolted violently. He sat bolt upright, thinking either a wrecking ball had hit the house or someone had driven a car into the wall. When the foundation jerked again, Matt leapt from his bed and threw on his clothes. He found Jason’s room empty, and though he called out a couple of times, his friend was nowhere to be seen.

  The lights flickered then went off, so he had to run downstairs in near darkness. A bloodcurdling scream sent Matt racing to Debbie’s room. They bumped into each other in the corridor, and Matt clutched her hand so as not to lose her in the dark.

  “What’s going on?” she shouted.

  Matt could feel her hand shaking in his. He squeezed it gently. “I have no idea, but we need to get out of here.”

  “Where’s Jason?”

  “Not here!”

  The floorboards rippled and snapped under their feet at another impact, and Matt yanked Debbie out to the street. They ran through blinding light, and though Matt worried he might crush Debbie’s hand in his grip, he was even more afraid to let it go. Self-preservation and adrenaline pushed them forwards. It didn’t matter where they ran, as long as they were moving it meant they were still alive.

  Lightning flashed around them, followed by echoing peals of thunder, and Matt saw the impossible. The earthquake, the storm, the deafening noise—it was only happening at Debbie’s house. The neighbors slept peacefully on, their homes untouched.

  Then, as if someone dropped a curtain, impenetrable darkness fell. It was impossible for them to move even one more step, so they stopped, and Matt pulled Debbie tightly against him, comforting them both.

  As Matt’s eyes adjusted, from out of the blackness appeared something even blacker. A shadow in the night. Matt was paralyzed with terror and couldn’t move when the thing wrapped what seemed to be its hands around their shoulders. But he clutched Debbie even harder in his arms, keeping her small body safely against his, afraid to let go.

  “Close your eyes,” the creature ordered.

  Matt swallowed hard, then obeyed. The next moment he couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet. He couldn’t keep his eyes closed forever, despite his fear. He squinted as cold morning air stung his face, then gawked with disbelief. They were flying. The shadow hovered behind them, its grip cold and hard on his shoulders as they rushed above a straight line of a highway flanked by scopes of barren sand. The wind wailed, and Debbie pressed her face harder against him so that her hair tickled his face. He tried to turn away from the wind, but his muscles wouldn’t move.

  He was caught by surprise at the bizarre sound of a phone ringing somewhere within the Shadow’s cloak. After a moment, the
ir captor released them, and they plummeted to the ground in a free fall. To Matt’s horror, Debbie slipped out of his hands and drifted apart from him.

  “No!” he screamed, watching helplessly as the wind grabbed her body and whirled it around like a lifeless doll.

  The ground sped towards them. When collision became inevitable, Matt shielded his face with his hands and tried to curl into fetal position. He hoped Debbie, wherever she was, could do the same. But when he crashed, he found the land wasn’t as hard as he’d expected it to be. In fact, it reminded him of cushions stacked together to break his fall.

  So this is what heaven feels like, he thought.

  But when he opened his eyes he discovered he lay facedown on pavement, and he was very much alive. Debbie lay nearby, unmoving. Before he could slide closer to her, Matt turned his head and spotted the creature who had captured them. The tall, cloaked figure hid his face under a cowl as he strode, unharmed and confident, towards Matt. Then he reached within the cloak and pulled out his ringing cell phone.

  Chapter 12

  Jason watched Emily expectantly, feeling as worried as she looked. The phone had been ringing a while, and hope seemed to wash from her eyes with every beep. Finally, Jason heard a click and a hoarse male voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “Tyler! Where are you? Why aren’t you in the Hall yet?”

  “There was a trap,” the voice answered, sounding calm.

  Jason listened hard, relieved that he could hear what was going on. If he was kept in this state of confusion for too much longer he was sure he’d lose his mind.

  “Pariah, in propria persona,” the voice continued, “wished to destroy Jason Walker’s friends. I got there just in time. Managed to leave the bastard behind. Don’t worry.”