Soulstice Read online

  They came to a clearing where the massive elms and oaks receded. Some rusted and vine-tangled sections of an iron gate surrounded it. Only a few saplings sprouted from a moonlit field. Among the weeds stood a scattering of mossy stones. Reggie shined her flashlight on one of them, and realized it was a grave marker.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “Potter’s Field. It’s where the asylum used to bury the dead patients if no one claimed their bodies,” Quinn said. “Half of these graves are from botched lobotomies.”

  A ruined building not much bigger than a shed slouched in the dark meadow’s corner. Quinn headed toward it. “The access point is over here.”

  “If I even think you’re up to something funny, I’ll shoot you in the head,” Reggie said, though she prayed she wouldn’t have to pull the trigger. Machen’s gun felt weighty and awkward, and meant for a larger hand than hers.

  “I got it, I got it.”

  Years of neglect had sagged the building’s roof, and the bars over its windows were brown with corrosion. Lichen webbed its bricks, and tall grass rose from its cracked steps. A door made of rotting planks lay on the ground. The doorway stood open, and Quinn walked inside.

  Reggie hesitated. She felt eyes on her, as if someone was watching her from the abandoned graveyard. She looked over her shoulder but saw only the shapes of the gravestones and nighttime forest beyond.

  “You coming?” Quinn called back.

  In horror movies, Reggie thought, this would be the point where she would yell at the screen for the heroine to just shoot the guy already and run. But she had come too far, and there was too much at stake.

  She stepped inside the crumbling building and swung the flashlight’s beam around. The floor was dirt, and a filthy puddle covered most of it. A rusty old mower leaned against the wall beside some broken rakes and a crumbling scythe. She tensed, half-expecting Quinn to run for one of them and come at her with it. He didn’t.

  Near the wall, under one of the barred windows, he squatted down and pulled back the locking bolt from a hinged manhole cover. Grunting and gasping, he yanked on the lid and swung it up off the concrete lip so that it stood vertically against the hinge.

  “Presto,” he said, gesturing at the hole. “Welcome to Hell.”

  Reggie cautiously waked over to him and looked into the hole. A ladder led down into darkness, moored into the walls of a concrete tunnel. It reminded her of the cavern in Keech’s fearscape. She shuddered.

  “I couldn’t believe it when I found it. There are miles of access tunnels down there, a whole underground labyrinth,” Quinn said, scratching his head. “You could get lost and never find your way out again.”

  “I wish for once the mad scientists would do their experiments at the beach. I could get a tan and fight evil.” Reggie gestured to the hole. “You first. I’ll be right behind you, so don’t do anything stupid.”

  “I think we’d both agree going down there is pretty stupid,” Quinn replied, but he lowered himself into the hole and began to descend.

  Reggie realized she would not be able to climb down the ladder holding both the gun and the flashlight, so she slid the pistol’s safety on and secured the flashlight in the waistband of her pants.

  She hurried down after him, resting the wrist of her gun-hand on the rungs to steady herself as she grabbed them with the other. It was dark and getting colder. The passage’s mouth was a deep gray circle against black, shrinking overhead as she went down.

  “Ow, my fingers, watch it!” Quinn snarled. “You’re right on top of me.”

  The air grew damper, and the rungs became slippery as they went deeper.

  “How much farther?” she said.

  “About ten feet or so,” he panted from below. “I hate this place. Wet and cold.” He grunted. “Okay, I’m at the bottom now.”

  Reggie thought she must have just a few rungs left, but then her boot slipped off the ladder and she pitched backward. She tried to hang on with her empty hand, but the bar was slick and her feet couldn’t find the next rung. Her fingers slid off and she fell to the ground, jarring her knee. The gun clattered out of her hand and skidded across the floor. She heard Quinn chuckle, and his footsteps echoed in the darkness. Reggie scrambled to her feet.

  She swung the flashlight back and forth, but the beam didn’t go very far, and Quinn was nowhere in sight. Her breath quickened. A tunnel of moldering cement stretched out in either direction, with dank water dripping from the ceiling and pooling on the floor. A creaking, followed by an echoing boom, came from above. Reggie shone the light up the ladder. The manhole cover had fallen back into place. She willed herself to believe it had happened on its own, and not that someone else had pushed it.

  Black terror blossomed in her chest. She heard a noise and whirled around, shining the flashlight down the left tunnel. Quinn stood ten feet away with the gun in his hand, pointing it at her.

  They’d had to wait until the nurses were distracted, then Aaron helped Eben to the elevator. He was about to press the ground floor button, but Eben stopped him.

  “Lower level parking lot,” he grunted. Even with his cane he had to lean against the wall to stand. His broken arm rested in a sling.

  “Uh, you didn’t drive yourself here, Eb. Your car’s at home.”

  “But there must be a car in the parking lot, don’t you think? How did you expect to get us out to Thornwood? I can’t very well ride on the back of your bicycle.”

  The doors opened and Eben limped out. The lot wasn’t full since it was evening, but a black sedan was parked down the ramp, out of sight from the cashier’s stand.

  “That will do,” Eben said, and holding Aaron’s arm for support, they walked slowly toward the car.

  “Do you have anything heavy in that backpack of yours?” Eben asked.

  Aaron swallowed guiltily.

  “Er… well…”

  Faster than Aaron would have thought possible for a man with one good arm, Eben had grabbed the pack and unzipped it. He shook his head at Aaron.

  “Eben, I’m sorry. I thought maybe something in your apartment would help us—”

  “Later.” Eben cut him off. “As it turns out, this wasn’t the dumbest move you’ve ever made, by a very slim margin.” He took out the 9mm, checked that the safety was on, and smashed the butt against the back window behind the driver’s seat. The window shattered, but louder than that was the beep beep beep of the car’s alarm.

  In an instant Eben had reached his uninjured hand through and unlocked the driver’s door, then slid into the seat and pulled out the car alarm wires beneath the steering column. The beeping stopped. The whole thing had taken about seven seconds.

  Eben leaned back in the seat and looked in the rearview mirror. No one was coming. He reached down and fumbled around with more wires, and the car engine roared to life.

  Aaron was slack-jawed.

  “You’re going to teach me how to do that someday, right?”

  “Aaron, get in the car.”

  Quinn started walking toward her, holding out the gun. Reggie stood completely still, her jaw set. He was going to shoot her, and she deserved it for her stupidity.

  But then he took the gun with his other hand, grasping it by the barrel. He held it out to her again, this time with the butt facing her. He waved it at her.

  “Go ahead, take it.”

  Reggie’s eyes darted back and forth. Was this a trick? She reached out and grabbed the gun, expecting Quinn to pull it away, teasing her, but he let it go as soon as her fingers were wrapped around it.

  “I told you you could trust me, Reggie,” he said. “Now let’s stop wasting time. They should be this way.”

  He started down the tunnel, and Reggie followed, her heart pounding.

  The tunnel wound dizzily through the underground, and divided often in sudden forks. When they came to these Quinn would hover by each branch before choosing one of them. Reggie had lost all sense of direction.

  “Ho
w do you know which one to take?” she asked after the fourth or fifth divergent path. “Can you sense other Vours?”

  “I can sense fear,” he answered, “and we’re getting close to some pretty petrified humans.”

  Are you sure that’s not me? Reggie thought, but she didn’t say anything.

  She could hear new noises now, besides the constant dripping water. Far off groans and wails. It could be wind through the tunnels, or it could be something more alive…

  “How much farther?”

  “Not much. Look.”

  Quinn pointed, and Reggie could see dim lights protruding from the cave walls. Quinn put his hand over the flashlight, shielding its beam.

  “Better turn that off.”

  Reggie nodded and clicked off the light. They went forward more slowly now, and the moans got louder. Reggie started to gag on the air: a new, wretched odor lingered with the scent of moisture and mildew. It was the smell of rotting flesh.

  Suddenly the narrow tunnel widened; candle sconces provided weak light and flickering shadows on the wall. The stench was almost unbearable as they came upon a cage built into the side of the passage.

  “This is pure fear.” Quinn pointed to the cage, and Reggie peered between the bars, trying not to breathe in. She need not have worried; the horror closed her throat.

  Lying on the ground in putrid rags was a middle-aged woman. Her head was shaved and a large scar ran up across her forehead and over her crown. It looked like it had been stitched up hastily, and greenish pus oozed from the wound. She rocked back and forth on the wet earth, and Reggie saw a tube extend from her arm up into an IV bag hanging from the wall. The bag was filled with black sludge, and it was pumping into her veins. Where the needle was injected on her forearm a black rash spidered across her skin.

  Quinn was looking in a folder attached to the bars of the cage.

  “It’s her medical chart,” he said.

  “What are they doing to her?” Reggie gasped.

  “They’re feeding her… ew… they’re feeding her Vour essence.”

  “They’re what?”

  “Like that thing you ate. To get your powers? They’re feeding a liquid version to her. Only it’s having rather worse effects, I’d say.”

  Suddenly the woman hopped to her feet and started screaming incoherently. She ran at the bars of her cage, and before Reggie could jump back, she grabbed her hands and clenched them tightly. Reggie tried to pull away, but the manic woman’s grip was too strong. She shrieked, opening her mouth so wide it looked like her jaw was unhinged, and Reggie saw that her teeth and tongue were black, and the whites of her eyes were crisscrossed with dark lines. She tried to bite Reggie’s thumb, but Quinn grabbed Reggie by the shoulders and heaved her away. They fell back onto the ground, and the woman started banging her head on the iron bars so hard it lacerated her skin. With blood dripping down her temples, she collapsed onto the floor again.

  Reggie gasped for breath as Quinn stood and helped her to her feet.

  “I guess that’s what happens to some people when they eat Vour,” he said. “Consider yourself truly blessed.”

  They continued down the tunnel, which Reggie realized was a corridor in a kind of dungeon. They passed cell after cell, all filled with victims of the Vours’ cruelty. Some had electrodes strapped to their bodies and were intermittently shocked with electricity; others were, like the first woman, being fed various concoctions of Vour and other toxins. Many were lobotomized; Quinn read a couple charts that showed human brains being partially replaced with Vours’. These patients were mostly catatonic, lying in a state of stupor; however, Reggie could see their eyes darting back and forth behind their closed eyelids, and she wondered what horrors their minds were seeing and could not escape from.

  “This would mean that they’re sacrificing Vours as well as humans,” she said to Quinn.

  “Of course,” he replied. “Omelets and eggs, you know. The greater good.”

  Reggie almost laughed, though it was far from funny. The greater good had been Eben’s and Machen’s excuse for the atrocities they’d committed, as well.

  The cages went on and on. Men, women, the elderly, the young. They were so starved some had eaten their own tongues, and all of them smelled like death. Reggie wanted to close her eyes but she forced herself to look, forced herself to know what her enemy was capable of, and how high the stakes were should they succeed.

  Each cage had its own chart and pictures like the ones Quinn had shown her of the brain. In some the amygdala remained small, in some it was larger, but none that were dated recently showed it as big as it was on the winter solstice. So far, all of the Vours’ experiments had failed. Reggie took what comfort she could from this.

  She thought she saw something move out of the corner of her eye, and she glanced at the wall. It seemed to oscillate in and out, pushing in toward her and then pulling away again. The effect made her dizzy, and she felt herself sway. She saw veins and sinews pop out of the sides of the tunnel, and the ground suddenly felt squishy beneath her feet, like she was walking on muscle tissue instead of earth.

  She reached out to Quinn to steady herself.

  “What’s happening?” she asked.

  “You’re in the belly of the beast,” he replied. “What’d you expect to see?”

  Reggie’s heart lurched; his voice was low and sinister, like how he had sounded when he had kidnapped her last December. She struggled to push the visions away, to turn the esophagus she was in back into earthen tunnels. The veins began to turn back to rock, the fleshy ground to dirt. But then Quinn grabbed her by the arm and tossed her forward. She had the sensation of the room opening up around her as she stumbled to the ground, and then she heard the clanging of metal. Instantly the nightmare vanished, and Reggie saw that Quinn had locked her in her own cage.

  “You asshole,” she spat.

  “You idiot,” he retorted, and he grinned at her, the malicious sneer that she remembered so well. “I mean, I know I’m good, but even I wondered if you’d be so gullible.” He shook his head. “If it makes you feel any better, I did actually come to you for help initially. But when I saw how easy it was going to be to get you to trust me, I knew I had the ultimate bargaining chip to win back favor with the family.”

  “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

  Quinn laughed. “That was the genius of it! They never wanted you dead! That Gale thing? That was all for show. ’Course, they weren’t expecting me to kill her, but that was for your benefit.”

  “And Keech? Keech was a plant, too?”

  “Hell no.” Quinn held up the hand that was missing two fingers. It was still black from being doused in the river. “You think I would have let him do this? Keech was under orders to kill me, but after that day in the theater, I knew I had you. And then I made my deal. Bring you in, alive and screaming. And believe me, you will scream.”

  The gun was still in her hand. Reggie raised it, the barrel pointed directly at Quinn’s chest on the other side of the bars.

  “One for you and one for me,” she said. “They’ll have to take me dead.”

  She pulled the trigger. The gun clicked.

  She tried again, but again, no shot. She checked the safety—it was off. The gun had jammed.

  She heard Quinn’s low chuckle and looked up at him. He held out his palm, and in it was the gun’s clip.

  “Amateur,” he snarled.

  Heavy thuds sounded far away down the tunnel. The footsteps of an army. Quinn’s eyes twinkled.

  “They’re coming.”

  The candles blew out, leaving the cave in darkness. The footsteps grew louder, then Reggie felt a pain in her arm. Her legs grew weak beneath her, and she flopped to the ground in a deep sleep.

  The first thing she felt was a tremendous ache in her temple, like a drill bearing down over her left brow. She struggled to open her eyes, but it took several moments for her vision to clear. She tried to move her hands and feet, but she could not feel
them. Whatever drug they had given her had paralyzed her from the neck down.

  Slowly Reggie took in her bearings. She was in a larger space now, and she was strapped to a stone slab tilted at a sixty-degree angle. She saw that her wrists were lashed so tightly with cord that they were bleeding, but she couldn’t feel a thing.

  “Welcome back, my dear,” said a voice behind her. She thought it sounded familiar, but she could not place it. She tried to turn her head, but a searing pain shot through it from ear to ear. For the first time she realized a giant needle was sticking out of her forehead. She felt her breath constrict—what was this?

  “Ah, ah, careful there,” the voice continued. “It will hurt less if you remain still, Miss Halloway.”

  “I know you. Who are you?” Reggie croaked. Her vocal cords felt loose, and her lips had trouble properly forming words.

  “I’m someone who’s helped you. And now it’s time for you to help me.” A figure walked around the slab and his face came into view.

  “Dr. Unger.” Reggie’s addled mind tried to compute what she was seeing. It was the doctor, but he couldn’t be a Vour. Henry had been so sure. “I don’t understand. You’re not… not…”

  “Not one of them? No, I’m merely a human. I have not the gift to telepathically inspire fear. My methods are far more crude.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Why do all this? I’m a scientist, Miss Halloway. And the existence of Vours has proven to be one of the most fascinating discoveries in our world’s history. They want to know the same things I want to know, so it is a unique partnership, you see.”

  “Why didn’t they Vourize you?” Reggie rasped.

  “I think they find it, shall we say, advantageous to have a few like-minded humans in their fray. Tracers, for example, would not come after me—even the most cursory investigation would prove I was human. I can carry on my work, our work, with impunity. But that is enough chatter. The hour is getting late, and we have much to do.”