A Life Less Ordinary (32 page)

Bracing myself, I stepped forward.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The stench hit me at once, a mental feeling that seemed to crawl through my eyes and into my brain. It was a warning, I realised, a field intended to warn anyone foolish enough to enter the building that they were confronting incredible danger. I braced myself against the feeling and kept walking, unwilling to allow myself to be deterred by the field. The aversion field was, I knew, the merest of the defences surrounding the building. As I walked on, feeling the building opening up in front of me, I sensed the presence of countless other defences. They were unlocking themselves one by one, allowing me to enter without trouble. They were so complex that I knew that, if they had been designed to keep everyone out as well as one specific person in, I would never have been able to unravel them.

I heard, or thought I heard, voices at the back of my mind as I pushed on.
Unless I mistake his nature quite, he is the merry wanderer of the night; may the lord have mercy upon our souls; what do you call an elf with no name...?
I tried to block them out as I walked onwards, unable to decide if the voices were warning me, taunting me or simply quite mad. I wondered, suddenly, if they were ghosts, impressions of others who had walked the same pathway and never returned. The Nameless Elf welcomed all to his domain, but rarely allowed them to leave. I thought, suddenly, that I was making a big mistake, yet I couldn’t turn back. Something was pulling me onwards, deeper into the tangled web that served as the Nameless Elf’s home and prison.

My eyes opened – I hadn’t been aware that I had closed them – and I saw the interior for the first time. It was horrific. I felt as if I was walking through a human body, splashing my way though pools of blood and avoiding pieces of flesh and bone. Blood poured from somewhere high overhead, pooling on the floor before being absorbed and reappearing somewhere else. The smell was unpleasant and I had to force myself to breathe through my mouth. The stench might have driven me from the building, if I had been able to flee.

Ahead of me, I heard high-pitched laughter, a sound that sent chills running down my spine. It was joined, moments later, by voices screaming for help, a symphony of the damned. I realised that the Nameless Elf – not unlike Robin’s master – had stolen the voices of his victims and pulled them all together into a hellish instrument. The howls and shrieks echoed in my ears, reminding me that few left the Nameless Elf’s territory alive.

I stepped through a door and found an antechamber. There were thousands of bodies within the room, all dead. They were displayed in dozens of horrific poses, from crucified men and women to bodies that had been cut open and spread out on a table. It was a horrifying sight, all the more so when some of the bodies came to life and started pleading with me for help. Their maddened eyes showed just how long they’d been kept at the mercy of the Nameless Elf, always on the verge of death, but held back from the final merciful release. I caught sight of a small boy and girl – they couldn’t have been older than seven – who had been literally cut in half and joined together, creating two strange hybrids. I couldn’t understand how they were still alive, yet somehow they lived and breathed, mounted on the wall like a butterfly trapped within a specimen box. They had to have gone completely out of their minds.

“I’m sorry,” I said, quietly. There was nothing I could do for them, at least not at once. Maybe there would be a way to convince the Nameless Elf to free them, even though it would mean their deaths and those of most of the other people in the room. They wouldn’t last long without his magic to support them. “I am truly sorry.”

A glint of stone caught my eye and I turned to see a statue of a little girl. I swore aloud as I realised that it was the missing statue, the final girl Mr Pygmalion had kidnapped...it felt like years ago now. We had never been able to trace her until now. Someone working for the Nameless Elf, someone capable of walking between the mundane and magical worlds, had bought her and brought her to his master. The Nameless Elf probably enjoyed looking at her and watching her staring back at him. Or maybe she was dead. Trapped and helpless for so long, her mind might have merged with the stone and effectively vanished.

There was another high-pitched giggle up ahead and I turned, feeling a presence at the back of my mind. Just by existing in the human world, the Nameless Elf warped it out of shape. I took one last look at his room of horrors – if only to remind myself not to fall into his hands, although I had the terrible feeling that it was far too late – and stepped out of the door. The blood-stained corridors seemed to be closing in as I walked further into the building. The sound of laughter didn’t seem to grow any louder.

I jumped back in alarm as something burst out of the wall and slid past me. It was a giant worm, carrying what looked like a bazooka, followed rapidly by two more. Their eyes, almost human, looked focused and determined, but they completely ignored me. I wondered if they’d been human once, or if they were just another of the Nameless Elf’s experiments, or if they were just another set of weird creatures in the magical world. The space where they’d come from had already sealed up neatly. The Nameless Elf had no intention of allowing me to go anywhere except where he wanted me to go.

The sound of laughter faded away as I kept walking, to be replaced by a sudden inhuman silence, broken only by a distant thumping noise. It took me a moment to realise that it was my own heartbeat, so loud that I was surprised the Nameless Elf couldn’t hear it, or perhaps he could. The corridor came to an end suddenly and I found myself standing in a large room. The Nameless Elf – there could be no mistaking him – was standing at the other end of the room.

He was shorter than I’d expected, wearing an outfit that appeared to have come from Revolutionary France, complete with tri-cornered hat and fancy jacket. His features reminded me of the male elves I’d seen back in the Elfish Kingdoms, but there was a strangeness to his expression...something in his eyes that sent shivers down my spine. His jacket appeared to be moving of its own accord, as if there was something hidden under his clothing. I doubt that he was pleased to see me. I suspected, rather, that he had another form that kept threatening to burst out into the open. The Nameless Elf was far more than he appeared.

His eyes locked on mine and it took everything I had not to run. The elves I’d met in the Elfish Kingdom had been arrogant, convinced of their own superiority, but the Nameless Elf was clearly insane. I could sense raw magic flaring out over him, bursting into existence like fireworks and then being absorbed into his body; the links he’d created to his prison, turning it into his own world. He hadn’t been able to interfere with the spells holding him inside, thankfully, but what he’d done had been quite bad enough. The Thirteen of that time had probably just been relieved to have managed to seal him inside a prison, where he could only hurt people stupid enough to walk inside. People like me.

“Well, well, well,” the Nameless Elf said. His eyes travelled over my body. It wasn’t a sexual gaze, more the gaze of a scientist considering where to start the dissection. The men and women I’d seen earlier, kept alive and suffering by his magic, had to have been his test subjects. I wondered if that had been why he’d been stripped of his name and exiled to our world, but I doubted it. The Queen would probably have considered exterminating the entire human race to be a hoot. “Won’t you come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly...”

He giggled again, an utterly inhuman sound. It was unsettling, but I held my ground somehow. I had no intention of running, if it were possible to run. He’d managed to gain control of the interior of his prison and he could probably turn it against me with little effort. His other form seemed to shimmer into existence, a strange translucent network of tentacles and eyes, before it faded away again. I saw enough of it to know that I didn’t want to see it again. What I’d seen so far was already disturbing to the imagination.

“And you walked in of your own free will,” he added. He let out a cackle that started to turn into a hiss. “You belong to me now.”

He held out an inhumanly long hand and flexed, producing long claws and needles that seemed to be part of his body. “And we are going to have so much fun together,” he said. He looked back at me. “I wonder how you would look with two heads.”

I very nearly commented that two heads were better than one, but that metaphor wouldn’t be so effective in real life. My mind was screaming at me to run, yet somehow I held my ground. The Nameless Elf hadn’t attacked me yet, so maybe there was a chance to reason with him. Of course, being nameless, there was no force ready and waiting to punish him for breaking his word.

“I come in peace,” I said. The Nameless Elf greeted this declaration with another giggle, which became a fit of high-pitched laughter. “My master visited you and vanished. Are you holding him prisoner?”

“Yes, no, three bags full,” he chanted. His giggle was starting to hurt my ears. I could feel the magic in the room shifting, turning against me. The chances were good that he was planning to do something amusing to me. He had so much raw power that he could probably do anything he could imagine. “Why do you think I would help you? You’re nothing, but a mere human. I can penetrate your reality at any point and alter it at my whim. What do you think I cannot do to you?”

He held out his hands, pressed them together and then pulled them apart, revealing a thread of life. I saw, to my horror, images from my past hovering in front of him. My birth, my first day at school and the first boy I’d kissed, moving in with my ex, being disowned by my mother...I realised, to my horror, that his madness gave him access to power beyond that of any normal elf. His view on the universe, shaped by madness, allowed him to do so much more than anyone who was even remotely sane. There was no way I could match him, at least in raw power. The only hope was to trick him.

I pulled back and studied him through my own senses. Staring at him was like staring into a blinding light – with the added danger that the madness that had infected him would jump across to me – but somehow I held my gaze. He was a blur of magic, enough magic to reshape the world if he ever managed to escape; a pattern that seemed to twist and turn in front of me. I understood, now, why there was only one weapon that could be used against an elf. I’d planned for it, yet...could I use it?

The Nameless Elf chuckled and started to poke at the thread of life. I felt my body change as he altered parts, giggling all the time. I was taller; I was shorter; I was black, Chinese or brown...just for a few seconds, I was a man. My hair grew long and then fell out. Old age raced through my system, only to be reversed and cancelled a split second before I would have died. There was no pain, just a growing sense of helplessness and dependency.

“You’re no fun,” the Nameless Elf proclaimed. He looked as if he’d bitten into a lemon. “For all of your power and potential, you’re no fun at all.”

I shrugged. The changes he’d wrought on my body weren’t transfigurations, not in the sense that Circe had transfigured me when she’d encountered me for the first time. In a very real sense, the changes he’d caused in me had always been there; they hadn’t been imposed on me. The Nameless Elf seemed to be twisting time and space into a pretzel in a manner that would have shamed Doctor Who, but he wasn’t actually hurting me. Of course, that could change the moment he realised his mistake.

“I need answers,” I said, as calmly as I could. My voice felt odd. I looked down and realised that I was standing on all fours; the Nameless Elf had transformed me into a donkey. I had no idea if that had been a possible course of life for me or not, but I forced myself not to let it get to me. “Are you the one holding my master prisoner?”

The Nameless Elf ignored me, still peering down at the thread of life. A second later, I was human again, just in time for the first of the false memories to hit. My mother had abused me as a child. My stepfathers had raped me when I started to mature. My first boyfriend had beaten me to within an inch of my life...the memories raged through my mind, confusing me and warping my grip on reality. It seemed to be less effective than changing my physical form, yet, given time, it would overcome me. And then the Nameless Elf would
really
start having fun.

He giggled and looked up at me. The false memories faded away, yet I would always remember having had them. Perhaps enough of them would remain to leave me wondering if they were real...his poisonous gift to me. I hated him at that moment, hated him for what he’d done to me and all of his other victims.

“So...you want answers,” he said. “I can give you those answers.”

The Nameless Elf smiled. I saw razor-sharp teeth inside his smile. The invisible form seemed to shimmer back into existence, casting an eerie shadow over his body. I recoiled in shock. He seemed to sense that and cackled in amusement, throwing back his head and laughing outright.

“All you have to do is stay ahead of me for an hour,” the Nameless Elf said. He leered at me, somehow freezing me to the spot. “If you survive that long, I will answer all of your questions and free my captives into the bargain. If you fall...you will become mine.”

He reached out and placed a hand on my throat. I would have flinched if I could have moved, but my body refused to obey me. His hand trailed down towards my breasts, stroking them gently and then down towards my crotch. There was nothing sexual in it, I realised in a flash of horror; he was inspecting his new possession. I knew that I had no choice, yet...if my plan failed I was going to die – or suffer a fate worse than death.

“Go,” the Nameless Elf ordered. The universe seemed to tilt around me and I was somewhere else within his complex, stumbling as my body unfroze. There was so much raw magic around that all of my senses were useless. I couldn’t even hear anything over the sound of mad laughter. A moment later, I heard his voice. “Ready or not, here I come...”