“Ian. Hey, Ian!” I snapped my fingers, and when that brought no alertness to his vacant stare, clapped my hands as hard as I could. “Ian, you have to help me here. I need you to count for me. Count the number of steps I take, and remember the directions I turn. You can do that, right?”
He cocked his head to the left, but the glassy look was slowly returning to his eyes.
“Ian?” I yelled, which had him blinking again.
“I—I don’t know.”
My gut tightened. I couldn’t do this alone. “I need your help if you want me to get you out of here. I’m going to be too dazed from hitting walls I can’t see. I won’t remember the path to the center of the maze, and I sure won’t remember how many steps I took along each corridor. I need you to focus for me, okay?”
His brows knit together and his eyes welled up as his head jerked. No. I sighed. “I can’t.”
“You can, Ian. Just concentrate on the numbers.” But I was losing him. I could practically feel the icy fear rending him immobile, freezing his thoughts, causing him to anticipate death. “Look, what’s math, anyway, but one mental pathway leading to another? Follow the path, and you get to the answer, right?” He nodded, and I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, well,
you’re
the answer. I’m coming to get you. Just keep track of how my footsteps add up.”
And before he thought I was giving him a choice, I paced to my right, keeping my steps as uniform as possible. I hit my next wall only three paces away, and this time controlled my direction as I was repelled away from it. An ache started in my jaw, an old filling I’d forgotten was there until now. I pressed my tongue to it, hissing through my teeth when I burned the top of it. I knew I was going about this all wrong—there was another way around this maze, something I was supposed to remember or know how to do—but I couldn’t jump as the walls obviously arched all the way to the ceiling, and I didn’t know how to anticipate what I couldn’t see.
My only comfort was in the electric snaps, followed by curses, coming from Joaquin’s direction. So I stood, found the spot I’d been in right before my last point of impact, waited until Ian returned my nod, then stepped toward him, sighing with relief when I didn’t fry. From the corner of my eye, I caught Joaquin watching.
“Guess the Tulpa changed things up a bit on you,” I said,
sounding more confident than I felt as I inched forward. Jaw clenched, Joaquin mirrored the movement from his position. “What’d you do to piss him off? Must have been pretty severe to have him turn on you this way.”
“He hasn’t turned on me,” he snapped, and stepped right into a wall.
I followed the crackle of electrical current as it arched past me, gained another three steps, and waited until Joaquin was sitting up. I shot him a smile as I rounded a corner. “You were saying?”
Next thing, I was staring up at the ceiling, Joaquin’s laughter echoing in my ears. “Guess blood isn’t any thicker than water, is it?”
I raised myself to my elbows, grunting. “Well, I won’t take it personally.”
“He’s your father,” Joaquin said, clearing another foot.
“He’s a stranger,” I replied, standing.
“You mean a stranger like…” He gained two more feet. “Your daughter?”
I bounced off another wall, and this time momentarily lost consciousness. I awoke to find him yards closer, and whipped myself up despite the ache coursing through my marrow. It wasn’t just physical pain, though; there was something akin to the rush of adrenaline pouring over me, but instead of receding on a wave that left me jumpy and alert, it left me feeling sluggish and unwilling to rise from the floor. Given time, and enough direct contact with these walls, I knew I’d be unable to rise at all. But not yet. I had enough determination left to stand this time, but I wondered how much energy I’d already transferred to the Tulpa, and what new powers it would afford him. It’d be nice if I could live long enough to ask.
Nicer still to pummel the sly smile snaking over Joaquin’s cruel, sneering face.
“Oh yes, I know all about little Ashlyn, thanks to Ian over there.” He shot Ian a wink and a kiss, and the mortal’s concentration faltered. I clapped my hands to gain his attention again. Joaquin seemed content to wait. When my
eyes returned to his, he smiled innocently. “She lives in the southwest part of town. She has wavy brown hair that curls into ringlets when it’s wet. She likes riding her bike and is quite the competitive swimmer.”
My hands balled into fists, and I gritted my teeth to keep my eyes from stinging. I hadn’t known any of that. And this man shouldn’t be the one telling me. “You stay away from her,” I said, my voice thick and too low. He heard anyway.
“You mean like you?” he said pointedly. “No, I could never just abandon my own child.”
“I didn’t abandon her,” I said, knowing I shouldn’t bother defending myself against him, but doing it anyway. “She was adopted.”
“You forsook her,” he said with genuine disgust. He looked me over, up and down, like I’d committed a crime he couldn’t even fathom. Yeah, that’d be the day. “You gave her over to the care of strangers, and lost the chance for a relationship with the child of your blood. All because of the sins of her father.”
I took two steps forward in quick succession, almost willing myself into a wall just so the physical pain would drown out the ache brought on by his words. An ache, I realized, that’d been living inside me for years. “You’re no father,” I managed, my face hot, blood pounding in my temples. Even I could smell distress issuing from me in giant bulbous waves.
“As much as the Tulpa is yours.” He shrugged, unaffected, and I heard disdain in his words; for me, for the Tulpa, for everyone that wasn’t directly useful to Joaquin…which left only himself. And men like that were the most dangerous, I knew. Unleashed from care or concern about consequence outside his own world, Joaquin was a loose cannon at best, and a suicide bomber at worst. One who’d take out as many victims as he could in the search for his own twisted salvation.
That child, I swore, wasn’t going to be one of them.
“I’m only going to say it one more time,” I said, spacing my words evenly, fire burning in my core. Suddenly I found I had energy in reserve. “Stay away from her.”
“The concerned mother act doesn’t suit you at all,” he said, and sniffed at the air mockingly as his lip curled back. “And I’ll do exactly as I please with my
daughter
.”
And that word, coming out of that corrupted throat, was the vilest sound I’d ever heard. I opened my mouth, ready to rage, the bones beneath my face pressing against my skin and pulling it taut when—
“She’s not his daughter.”
“You!” Joaquin shouted, whirling on Ian. “Shut up, puppet!”
Red cleared from my vision, and I turned to Ian to find frightened determination had replaced the stark terror from before. Joaquin snarled, strode forward, and was sent barreling to his back. I listened for the whistling of energy as it whipped past me, gained another painless few feet from it, then looked back to Ian.
“She’s not his daughter,” he said again, licking his bruised lips, and swallowing hard. “The blood type’s all wrong. It was on her birth certificate…and the DNA doesn’t match up either.”
Relief flooded through me like a breached dam, as if something lodged in my chest for a decade had suddenly been jostled free. I closed my eyes as a shiver stole over me.
Dark hair that curls into ringlets when it’s wet.
Ben.
I remained frozen where I was, my thoughts tumbling across my mind, and from Ian’s sympathetic reaction, my face as well. So Ashlyn wasn’t divided evenly between Shadow and Light? She was only of my lineage? Mine…and Ben’s?
“You’re going to die, mortal! You’ll bleed from every orifice before I’m done with you!” Joaquin snarled, lifting himself to his knees. “And you! Does it make you feel any better
knowing you gave up a relationship with your lover’s child because of me? Because it makes me feel damned fine. I took your innocence—what was left of it, anyway—and then I took your lineage. And when I finish killing you, that girl is mine.”
The idea of this man’s hands on my child, mine and Ben’s, made my stomach pitch. I barged forward…and rammed directly into a wall. This time I didn’t recover as fast. Even Joaquin’s laughter seemed to come from a far-off place, and I felt myself shaking, shoulders jerking uncontrollably as nerves misfired inside me. But I still lifted my head. I’d endure a thousand lightning bolts into my flesh if it meant keeping him away from her.
Ashlyn. Oh God.
I sat up slowly, got my bearings, and wiped the blood from my nose where it’d begun to run. Somewhere in the soft tissue of my head, something was going very wrong. A buzzing had set up shop in my left ear, like I was losing my hearing, but I ignored it and focused on preserving my mental energy, on not being so stupid and careless, though when the time came, I knew I’d need my physical reserves too. “And you think the Tulpa would let you lay a hand on his granddaughter?” I said more evenly as I wobbled to my feet.
“Now why would I ever tell the Tulpa about Ashlyn?” I winced as he said her name, and catching it, Joaquin smiled.
“Stop!”
I whirled, thinking Ian saw something I didn’t; that danger was circling me from another angle. But he was looking square at me.
“Back up a step. Be careful not to lean left or right.”
I did as he said, though I asked why.
Ian licked his lips, and his breathing picked up. Excitement was rushing off him in waves now, and I turned my full attention on him, momentarily forgetting Joaquin. “I know where you are. I saw the other man leave. Turn to your
left and take three steps forward.”
I hesitated, but Ian couldn’t possibly do any worse than I was. Nothing happened as I moved, unless you count Joaquin’s growl erupting behind me. I looked back at Ian expectantly. Maybe he really had seen the Tulpa exit the maze.
He swallowed hard, distracted by Joaquin’s detailed accounting of what parts he was going to rip from Ian’s body first, but finally managed a nod in my direction. “Another two steps to your left, three to your right.”
I followed his directions exactly. When I lifted my head off the ground thirty seconds later, he winced apologetically. “I may have gotten that one backward.”
I stood up, shaking now, both nostrils bleeding, and reversed the directions. This time I made it.
Sighing with relief, Ian guided me the rest of the way through. When I was a mere ten feet in front of him, he looked up at me expectantly.
“That’s it?” I asked. “I’m in?”
He shrugged as I wondered where the bells of victory were, the cheering crowds, the clouds parting from the heavens.
“That’s not it,” Joaquin snarled, lifting himself to his feet once again. He’d been trying to move too fast, and it comforted me that he was finally rattled. “Didn’t you hear the Tulpa? You have to save him too.”
And in order to save him, we’d have to wind our way back out, past Joaquin. “One hurdle at a time,” I muttered, and set about freeing Ian.
Aligning my conduit with the ropes binding him, arrow pointing down through the center of the knots, I fired. Nothing happened. I made sure the safety was off, and compressed the trigger to draw back the bow again. Still nothing. Only twenty feet away, Joaquin was splayed on his back, but this time he got up laughing.
“Conduits don’t work in the maze, Archer, or didn’t you know?”
The answer was obvious, so my reply was a mere curse as I bent to unravel the knots by hand. Five minutes later Ian’s hands were free, but I was no closer to figuring out how to get him past Joaquin. And it seemed Ian hadn’t been the only one paying attention to my progress through the maze. Joaquin was making fast progress; either he’d managed to retain his faculties while getting zapped off his feet or the Tulpa wasn’t as angry with him as I’d come to believe. Either way, Joaquin would find the center in the next few minutes.
“Listen,” I said, kneeling at Ian’s feet, fingers working furiously over the knots there. I glanced up. He wasn’t listening. He was watching Joaquin’s progress with mounting terror. I slapped his leg. “Ian! You have to listen to me. He’s going to take us both out if he can, but stay behind me no matter what happens. We’ll circle around him, and that’ll give you a chance to exit.”
His eyes darted back to Joaquin. I slapped him again, harder, to regain his attention.
“Just make sure you remember the number of steps in each of the pathways out there,” I told him as he rubbed his arm. “And round the corners exactly. If you hit a wall, even once, you won’t survive it. Got it?”
He swallowed hard, but nodded. “What about you?”
I handed him my conduit and stood, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. “I’m going to make him bleed from every orifice.”
We lined up then, Ian behind me, both of us as far from the entrance as we could get without being deep-fried. Joaquin was moving faster, meticulously counting off steps, and I marshaled my flagging energy by thinking of a young girl I’d never known. Ben’s child.
He rounded the last corner, eyes bright with anticipation as he tracked me through that final barrier. The bolted chair was all that lay between us, and Joaquin feinted first to one side, then the other; he was testing us, teasing, trying to draw us forward. Ian whimpered behind me, and I patted him reassuringly. Unfortunately there was no one to do the
same for me.
Body tense, I followed Joaquin with my eyes. Neither he nor I had a conduit, but he still had an advantage. If he touched a hair on Ian’s head, I’d lose this contest. More, I was sure I’d knocked into more walls than he had, and the energy loss had made me shaky. I wasn’t as agile as normal, and it felt like the entire world was shuddering under my feet as I sidestepped first one way, then the other, an unwilling snake to Joaquin’s flute.
Pull it together, Jo
, I told myself.
If only for the next five minutes
. No sooner did I have the thought than Joaquin lunged. I dove forward, wanting to meet him away from the electrified walls surrounding us, but he did a quarterback pivot around the bolted chair, slipping away from me and reaching for Ian, who yelped and bolted. A squeal, half terror, half pain, rose from him as he scraped the invisible barrier on his left, and the scent of burned flesh reached my nose. Joaquin sucked in a deep breath, a closed smile on his lips, and lunged again.