Urban Enemies (Cainsville 4.5)
When he came to a second--third?--time, he found that though his leg was still broken, his pain had settled into a low-grade hum in the back of his mind. He wondered, briefly, if he was dying. Had he perhaps lost so much blood that his body no longer had the capacity to feel the pain? If that was the case, then why was he thinking so clearly?
It didn't make sense, and so, with no facility to puzzle it out, he just let it go.
He focused instead on the cavern around him, which, he realized with no small shock, he could actually see. A thin shaft of moonlight was shining into the chamber from a hole in the ceiling high above. He glanced upward to its source and then followed it down as it slashed through the darkness to land on the face of a figure seated on the other side of the room. Logan jerked in surprise at the sight and was struck with such an overwhelming sense of danger that he raised his hand in front of his face to shield himself.
When several seconds passed and the figure failed to move or speak, he sheepishly lowered his hand and gave the other a longer look.
Whoever he'd been, it was clear he'd been dead a long time. Like the warriors in the hall of the necklace, this man's corpse had shriveled and blackened with age. His lips had pulled back from his teeth in a death's-head rictus, and his eyes had sunk so deep in his skull that they were all but invisible. He was dressed in the remains of some kind of primitive robe, and a necklace of small round stones hung across his chest.
Logan stared at the necklace, a suspicion growing in the back of his mind.
Those aren't stones . . .
The notion that he'd found the missing eyeballs of the dead Mayan warriors in the hall above wouldn't go away.
His gaze drifted from the necklace to the throne on which the man sat. What he'd first taken as whitish stone revealed itself in the moonlight to be a massive collection of human skulls. Iron bands, looking strangely fresh after what was certainly ages beneath the surface, bound the man's extremities to the throne itself.
He might once have been a king, but he ended his life as a prisoner, Logan thought, trapped down here where the darkness dwells, just like I am now.
He must have drifted off for a bit, for when Logan came to again he found that he was a bit closer to the throne than he'd been before. Had he crawled forward in his sleep?
The idea was a bit unnerving, he had to admit, but not as unnerving as the sense that the man--thing?--on the throne seemed to have moved since he'd last looked at it. Where before it had appeared to be sitting up and staring straight ahead, now it appeared to be leaning forward, its head cocked a bit t
o the side so that it could look directly at him.
It's a trick of the light, he told himself, but deep in his heart he didn't quite believe that.
Not really.
But as with his injuries, his mind didn't really want to dwell on who, or what, he thought the thing on the throne really was.
Logan was looking about in the dim light, searching for another way out besides the hole in the ceiling three stories above, when he heard the voice.
Simon . . .
It was faint, almost at the edge of his hearing.
At first he thought he'd imagined it, but after a moment he heard it again.
Simon . . .
"Who's there?" he called out, and was shocked at how weak his voice sounded even to his own ears. It was little more than a whisper itself.
I'm here, Simon.
"Hale? Is that you?"
No. That murdering bastard deserted you, Simon, left you to suffer for his own mistake.
The thought sent a spike of red-hot anger pouring through Logan's frame, jolting him a bit into greater awareness.
"That fucking bastard," he mumbled to himself, no longer wondering just who he was talking to, but focusing instead on the subject of the conversation.
Yesssss. He must be punished for what he's done to you, stranding you here.
Logan laughed, a high, cackling sort of laugh with more than a touch of madness in it.
"Punished?" he said. "I'm not going to punish him. I'm going to rip his lungs out and kill him."