"I'll beat the crap out of anything else," Beck said, pacing impatiently at the edge of shadow and light.

And so we headed onward with the Gandalf wannabe and Beck's endless supply of testosterone. With that combination, how could anything possibly go wrong?

The place was quiet as a tomb without the whispers to accompany us. The occasional groaning of stone or the echo of falling bits of debris were the only noises penetrating the pressing silence. Some fifteen minutes later, we finally drew within sight of a tunnel on the opposite wall. The path inside spiraled downward.

"This thing goes deeper?" Elyssa said.

Beck shrugged. "Looks that way." He tossed a handful of pebbles down the tunnel where they skittered and slid. He obviously didn't trust Pokito.

We walked down the winding ramp for what seemed like an eternity, finally reaching the end only after I'd made myself dizzy and a bit nauseated from going round and round and down and down. The tunnel widened into a chamber. I strode across the room, still keeping well within Bella's light when a fluctuation in the smooth floor caught my eye.

Jerking to a stop, I held out a hand, motioning the others to halt, and examined the floor. Intricate etchings ran along the stone floor from one side of the room to the other. The four sorcerers knelt to examine it as well.

Curtis shook his head and grunted. "You know what it is Pokito?"

The untalkative sorcerer didn't break his silent streak with an answer at first, apparently thought better of it, and decided to speak. "I sense no illusion." His voice was deep and rich despite his petite frame. "Perhaps it is decoration."

"In this place?" Fausta said with a laugh. "I haven't seen any decoration or carvings down here until now."

"It looks really suspicious," Elyssa said, examining the length of it. "Almost like a line drawn to keep this side barricaded from the other."

"I will probe it," Pokito said, going for broke and uttering a whole sentence without being prompted.

He pulled out his wand. Did a swirly move with it. Muttered something. A spark of blue energy drifted from his wand and toward the etchings.

Bella gasped. "Stop! Stop! I just recognized this thing!"

Pokito wiggled his magic wand, but it was too late. The blue cinder crossed the woven channels carved in the stone and spilled across them like azure, glowing water. A bright red light burst from the lines. Bella's globe of light warped and distended like a sun being sucked into a black hole. White energy poured from the other staffs and wands. The sorcerers slumped and fell to the floor, puppets with cut strings. A slight dizzy spell hit me and I suddenly felt a strange vacuum in my body. But it wasn't anything I'd experienced before, not the ravenous hunger I felt when my supernatural stomach craved sustenance.

I had no idea what I'd just lost, or if this trap we'd just fallen into was sapping strength from all of us. The etching absorbed the last whirling dot of Bella's light globe. For a second, the glow from the trap bathed us in a surreal, bloody light. Then it winked out and pitch black claimed us like an infinite ocean.

All around us, whispers rolled in with the dark tide.

Chapter 28

It sounded like we were surrounded. The echoing whispers seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. The dark pressed into my body like a physical force, blocking and choking all my senses. My heart turned to ice while my bowels seemed to liquefy. I fumbled on the ground where Bella had fallen and found her, warm and breathing. For now. She gripped my hand.

"My staff," she said, her voice high-pitched with worry.

I scraped my hands blindly along the smooth stone floor until they touched carved wood. I grabbed it and handed it to her. She spoke a spell. A tiny spark lit the room for an instant, just long enough to hurt my eyes. A brief screech went up from somewhere nearby and I suppressed a girlish scream.

"The rune drained us," Bella said. "I only recognized it at the last moment because I remember seeing one in pictures taken at Thunder Rock just before the Arcane Council interdicted it."

"Light, we need light!" Elyssa said, somewhere off to my right.

"We can't make any," Curtis shouted. "My internal well of energy is empty. My staff and wand are completely dry."

"We have all we need," Beck said in a mocking voice. "Who needs flashlights when you have sorcerers. You idiots!"

I unslung my backpack.

"Something has me!" Curtis said, his voice rising in pitch. "Oh god, it's so cold." His teeth chattered so loudly I heard them over the whispers.

"I've got you," Alejandro said.

"Let go of me, you bastard," Fausta shouted, presumably at a specter and not Alejandro—unless Beck had decided to make a move and pinched her butt.

More shouts joined hers, including my own, as icy tentacles latched onto my legs. Someone screamed bloody murder, as if he were being tossed into molten lava, but I couldn't tell who it was. The horrific, draining cold clamped into my muscles, sending waves of uncontrollable shivers vibrating through me. My teeth chattered like jackhammers. It was all I could do to unzip my backpack with uncooperative fingers. I dug inside and gripped my emergency provisions. Sorcerers could tell me all day long how great they were and how they could handle everything. I'd learned something valuable in my short but violent life—being prepared was much better than blindly accepting assurances other people give.

I had Elyssa to thank for that.

My hand closed on a flare as a female screamed in counter-harmony to whichever guy was still shrieking his lungs raw. I pulled it free from the backpack. More tentacles wrapped around my thigh. The whispers grew to an excited crescendo while my energy levels drained into cold oblivion. I squeezed shut my eyes. Jerked the plastic cap off the top. Blinding light exploded. Blinding and glorious. The brilliance hurt even through my eyelids. The awful screeches of the shadow people almost overwhelmed our own cries of pain. The numbing cold on my legs vanished.

Bella stopped mid scream. Curtis curled into a fetal position, shivering violently, while the others looked dazed. Pokito, however, kept screaming. His wide eyes focused on something only he could see and he sounded like a sharp-clawed wildcat had him by the balls. I shook him. Didn't help. I slapped him. His scream shut off like a dead radio.

I set the flare atop the rune trap to see what would happen. It didn't so much as flicker. Apparently, it only affected magic.

"I was blind," Elyssa said. "I couldn't see anything. My night vision never came on."

"Mine either," Fausta said, still shivering.

It hadn't occurred to me during the panic, but mine hadn't either.

"Some of your abilities use magic energy to work," Bella said. "The rune drained us."

Beck picked up a rock and crushed it in his hand. "But I still have strength."

Bella nodded. "Your strength doesn't rely solely on magic. Instead, magic altered your body, made it stronger. For some reason, night vision is one of those things that uses magical energy as opposed to your eyes being altered. Or so goes the theory."

Elyssa squatted next to me and touched my shoulder. "Thanks."

I almost took her hand in mine and kissed it. Somehow, I resisted the instinct before I lost a hand to her sword. "Someone close to me showed me the importance of always being prepared."

"Your father?"

I shook my head. "You."

Her lips tightened, but she didn't take my head off. Instead, she asked, "What else do you have in that backpack?"

I pulled out several clamshell LED lanterns, unfolded them from their almost flat state, and showed her the stash of flares in the bag. "Enough to get us out of here." I actually had Lina to thank for the supplies. Despite her town being full of Arcanes, it still relied on electrical power, and keeping a magical light globe lit during their frequent power outages wasn't always possible.

She smiled. "If I taught you, I obviously did a great job."

I thought about the recording on my phone. What if we didn't make it out of here? What if I died without ever kissing my beloved ninja girl again? I wanted to show it to her so badly, but by now, everyone else was staring intently at the two of us and now was definitely not the time. I cleared my throat and forgot whatever it was I'd been about to say.

Instead, I decided we should abandon our attempt to find Vadaemos before someone died. "Is everyone okay?"

Bella touched my arm and smiled gratefully. "I'm glad you decided to ignore my assurances, Justin."

I grinned back. "Maybe we should get the hell out of here now."

"Are you kidding?" Beck said. "We've come this far. I want to nail the son of a bitch who put this thing here." He jabbed his finger at the rune and spat on it.

"We seem to be well provisioned," Fausta said, looking over my stash. "I am fine with moving on."

Curtis took a look at Pokito who lay twitching in a puddle of his own vomit and shook his head. "We need to go back. I knew this was foolish."

Just lovely. We'd run into our first major problem and Ginger Gandalf was the crybaby who wanted to go home. I had to admit, I was a tiny bit impressed with Beck's desire to push on.

"Least we know why the survey teams never made it any farther than this," Alejandro said. "Or why the other ones never returned."

Bella shuddered. "I'm feeling better now, Curtis. Perhaps you and Alejandro can take a lantern and return to the top with Pokito."

"No way," Alejandro said. "I want to go on." His eyes blazed with anger and determination.

Curtis narrowed his eyes. "If you think for a minute I'm going to retrace our route while drained of magic and dragging Pokito along, you're crazy."

I opened my mouth to speak when I heard a snuffling noise from behind us, somewhere up the curving tunnel. All heads swiveled toward it. A roar like no other echoed down the passage and everyone except the catatonic Pokito flinched. Whatever we'd disturbed in the trap hole earlier was on our scent.