Touch the Dark

Page 26

I looked around, but it was still just me and the chorus line. I didn't know what to do. I was used to my visions behaving in a predictable way: they came; they hit me like a freight train; they left; I cried; I got over it. But lately, my psychic abilities were branching out into new and uncomfortable areas, and I was feeling resentful that the universe had suddenly decided to change the rules. Especially since, if I had to get stranded anywhere, I sure wouldn't have picked this place. A cold wind slapped my face—they were getting impatient.
"What do you want?" I barely whispered it, but you'd have thought I'd taken a stick and stirred a hornet's nest. So many spirits descended on me at once that I got only flashes of color, flickers of images and a roaring in my ears like a hurricane had decided to blow through the hall. "Stop! Stop it! I can't understand you!"
I backed against the wall and realized only when I fell through it that I didn't have a body, at least not a corporeal one. After a stunned instant I recognized the torture room I'd visited before, but this time only the victims were there. I got up and took a few tentative steps forward. I felt very solid. My feet didn't disappear into the stone as I'd half expected, and I could see my arm. Thankfully it was mine instead of Tomas'; at least my spirit knew which body was mine. I felt the arm and it was solid, too. I could take my pulse. I was breathing. And yet none of the prisoners seemed to notice me.
The woman I'd freed at the casino was lying right in front of me, back on the rack as I remembered, except she wasn't burnt. She didn't look good, but I could see a faint rise and fall of her chest and an occasional flutter of her lashes, so I knew she lived. I heard a noise behind me and looked back over my shoulder to see a couple of thousand people, all standing quietly, watching me. The room couldn't possibly hold that many, but they were there anyway. And, unlike my experience with Portia's brigade, that didn't seem to be playing havoc with my senses. I could see them without my eyes crossing or trying to crawl out of my head; maybe I was getting used to it. "I don't know what to do," I said, but no one gave me any hints.
I turned back to the woman and saw with surprise that she was looking straight at me. She tried to say something, but nothing came out of her cracked lips except a thin croak. Someone handed me a dipper of water. It was slimy and vaguely green, and I looked at it dubiously. "This stuff is gross."
"I know, but there doesn't appear to be anything else." It shows you how out of it I was that it took me at least five seconds to connect the voice to the person.
I looked up slowly, then jumped back, sending the slimy water sloshing across the room in a wide arc. "Shit! Tomas!" I swallowed my heart back down to where it belonged. "What are you doing here?" He was holding a bucket with more of the disgusting water in it. He looked solid, but that didn't mean anything. So did I, and I'd just fallen through a wall.
"I don't know." I was inclined to believe him since he looked as shaken as I felt. I suppose even for a vampire this counted as strange. The water in the bucket was trembling in a grip that wasn't entirely steady, and neither was his voice when he spoke. "I remember you taking control of my body, and being unable to speak or react. Then, suddenly, we were here." He looked around in amazement. "Where is this place?"
"I'm not sure."
"Is this where you went before?" Something that looked like eagerness came over his features. "Is that Franchise?" He saw my surprise. "Raphael told me about the vision that upset you. Is this the woman you saw?"
"I guess." I was still staring at the bucket he was holding, because it had occurred to me that he shouldn't have had it. If he'd somehow piggybacked onto my vision, we should both be bound by the usual rules. We weren't actually here; this was a record, an image of something that had happened long ago. We should be nothing more to it than the viewers of a movie are to what happens onscreen. But there he stood, holding a heavy wooden bucket like it was no big deal. "Where did you get that?"
He looked bemused. "It was in the corner." He gestured with his free hand to a spot where the condition of the straw made it obvious that it doubled as a latrine. Of course, the whole room smelled like a cross between an open sewer and a butcher shop, one where the meat wasn't too fresh and unused bits were allowed to rot in the corners. I thought irrelevantly that it was unfair that I had to smell this when I didn't even have a body. My old visions had never come complete with scents and sensations, and I vastly preferred it that way.
"I can't give her that." Screw the metaphysics; I'd figure them out later. If Tomas could hold a bucket, obviously we could interact with this place, at least a little. And if that was true, maybe we could change a few things that had gone—or were about to go—seriously wrong. My first priority was to get the woman out of here, but she wasn't going to last long without something to drink, and she kept sending longing glances toward the filthy bucket. I wondered how thirsty you had to be before something like that looked good.
Tomas smelled it and dipped his finger in for a taste. I remembered how acute his senses were when he made a sound of distaste and spat it back out. "You're right. It is about a third salt. It is merely another form of torture." He threw it down and the noxious stuff soaked into the dry straw. "I will try to find something else."
"No! You need to stay here."
"Why? Am I not merely a spirit here? What could happen?"
I looked nervously at the thousands of ghosts quietly observing us and wondered whether I should tell him. Normally, spirits don't frighten me. There are rare examples who, like Billy, can feed off the energy of humans to a limited degree, but I have always been able to repel them at will. Besides, most find that it requires more energy to attack a human than they get from the process, so they usually don't bother unless you irritate them. But things had changed. Here, I didn't have the protection of a body and all the defenses that went along with it. I was a foreign spirit on their turf, and if they decided to be annoyed about it, I might be in big trouble. Billy had told me that ghosts can cannibalize one another for energy—apparently it's a lot easier than using human donors. He'd been mugged more than once, and one time it had been so bad that I'd had to donate some power quickly or he might have faded too far to come back. Now here I was, facing several thousand hungry ghosts who had every reason to be steamed that I was intruding on their territory. So far they hadn't made a move, but they might not like us roaming around their castle. I didn't intend to find out.
"You don't want to know," I told him shortly.
He didn't argue, but his brows drew together as he surveyed the woman. He appeared genuinely concerned about her, which thawed my attitude towards him a little. It also made me wonder whether he was in equal danger himself. Billy Joe was back in our time, babysitting my body, but Tomas currently had no spirit in residence—which was another way of saying he was dead. Of course, he died every day when the sun came up, but this wasn't the usual way. I hoped we weren't going to find a permanent corpse when we got back.
"Let's get her loose," I said, to distract myself as much as him. We began trying to pry the woman off the rack, but it was harder than it sounds. Although I tried not to hurt her, I did some damage. The ropes had eaten into her flesh, and blood had dried around them almost like glue; when I pulled them away from her wrists and ankles, bits of gory tissue came off, too.
I glanced around the room, hoping to see another source of water, but there was nothing except the men chained to the walls. One was hanging from a lip of stone about nine feet off the ground. His arms were bound behind him, pulled up at a terrible angle, and weights had been attached to his feet. He wasn't moving but swung there like a limp doll. Another was lying in the straw below, moaning softly. I did a double take; he actually looked like he'd been boiled. His skin was a horrible mottled red and was peeling away in strips. The other emaciated men showed signs that the torturers had already had some time with them. Backs were beaten raw, hands and feet were missing here and there, and pieces of flesh had been gouged out. I turned away before I was sick.
Something nudged my elbow and I looked down to see a flask floating in the air beside me. I took hold of it gingerly, eyeing the watching crowd with some suspicion. But none of them made any threatening moves, and the container smelled like whiskey. I'd have preferred water, but the alcohol might dull her pain. "Here, drink this." I knelt by the woman's head and held the flask to her lips. She swallowed a little of the contents, then mercifully passed out.
I left Tomas tending to her and went to try to free the men, but it soon became obvious that it wasn't going to happen. The woman had been tied with ropes, I guess because chains don't stretch well; but the men were in iron. I glanced at Tomas. I didn't want to talk to him, much less ask for help, but there was no way I could get them free on my own. "Can you break these?" I finally asked.
"I can try." He came over and we both gave it our best, but nothing happened. It was all we could do to lift the heavy chains, much less manage anything as strenuous as breaking them. We seemed to have lost a lot of strength in the transition. Just pulling the woman loose had felt like I'd spent three hours on a treadmill set on high.
Overall, I decided, things weren't looking good. I didn't know where I was, how I was going to get back or when the torturers were likely to show up. A rat in the corner twitched tiny whiskers at me and I kicked the ladle at it. Oh, yeah, and if I did get back where I belonged, I'd be in the middle of a fight that I wasn't completely sure we were winning. Even for me this counted as a really bad day.
"This is useless, Cassie," Tomas said after a few minutes. "I am as weak as a human here, and my strength is fading quickly. We should help the woman while we can. There is nothing to be done for the rest."
I reluctantly agreed. It seemed to be my night for rescues. I eyed the ghostly army that was staring at me patiently. "Um, does anybody know how to get out of here?"