SWNOVELS Dark Lies: Chapter 52
Savannah
My pulse pounded in my temples, fogging my mind. A sea monster was headed our way. What had attracted it? Our sound? Our lights?
My lips were dry, and I tried to think. “Okay, nobody talk. I’m going to make a dome of darkness around us, and maybe it won’t be able to see us.”
Praying that the creature used vision and not scent or sound, I called my magic and shaped the midnight blue shadows around us. My muscles strained as I pushed the darkness outward. Instead of just creating a cloud, I created a dome—hollow like a bowl, so our headlamps would still work within.
Devi gave a start as the sunlight overhead faded, leaving us in blackness except for the anemic beams of our lights.
Everyone looked around frantically, but only I could see beyond the veil of darkness. And what I could see was beyond my imagination.
At first, a massive shadow formed in the deep blue-green of the water. Then it resolved into the long, sinuous form of an eel winding its way toward us. My heart clenched while my muscles ached from the strain of keeping the shadows around us. Its body was silver-blue and at least three feet in diameter. Two twisted horns sprouted from its head, and strange peaked plates ran along its back.
Most significantly, its jaws were open wide enough to swallow a person whole.
I stood frozen, concealed in the magical darkness. Please don’t notice us.
The serpent came within twenty feet, but it looked past us with its pale eyes and just kept swimming.
I pulled Jaxson close, trying to calm my beating heart. If only he could see it. Then I wouldn’t be the only one who had to stare death in the face.
Every part of me wanted to scream, but I stifled the sound as the enormous creature slowed and cautiously skirted the dome of darkness I’d created.
Waves of pressure pushed against us as its undulating body churned the water. Momentarily knocked over, Ethan looked up and uselessly scanned the darkness. I gestured frantically at the door with both hands, willing him to get it open now, damn it!
At last, the thing’s impossibly long tail passed us as it swam to inspect the remains of the wreck.
“Jaxson. I need a hand,” Ethan whispered over the coms.
Kicking powerfully, Jaxson jetted toward the hatch. He grabbed hold of the wheel, and together, they heaved against it. I could hear them straining over the coms.
Then there was a heart-stopping squeal of metal grinding as the wheel began to turn.
My blood turned to ice water, and I glanced toward the shipwreck. The creature was gone.
The crack of a breaking seal reverberated across the rocks, and the hatch groaned as Jaxson slowly forced it open.
A shadow appeared in the distance, and then the monster surged into view—no longer lazily winding its way through the water but barreling directly toward the source of the sound. Us.
“Everyone in now! Sea serpent coming right at us!” I yelled over the coms. In my panic, I inadvertently released my magic and the shadows around us dropped. “Go, go, go!”
In a frantic cluster, we swam to the hatch and slipped though one by one as the thing hurtled for us with jaws opened wide. Jaxson grabbed me roughly and shoved me through headfirst, then slipped in behind.
Our headlamps flashed around the chamber. Six swimmers. With all of us in, Jaxson and Ethan pulled the hatch shut. For one second, as it closed, I saw a brief flash of silver-blue scales pass through in the light of Jaxson’s headlamp. Then he and Ethan began to spin the wheel to seal the door.
Suddenly, the whole chamber shook as something huge slammed against the hatch from outside, buckling the metal.
Ethan and Jaxson strained to turn the wheel, but it barely budged. Ethan shook his head. “Okay, the door just became a problem for later. Let’s go.”
I grabbed his arm. “We need to get out of here fast. That hatch is almost the exact diameter of that thing’s body.”
He nodded and pushed between us in the crowded tunnel. “Point taken. Follow me.”
In single file, we swam down the tunnel. Every so often, Ethan stopped to do something, tracing runes along the side of the walls, and every so often, a dull shudder reverberated from behind us.
The corridor branched several times, and I was certain that I didn’t want to know what devious traps lay down the wrong passages.
At last, we reached a silo-like chamber that ascended into the gloom above. Ethan waved us forward, and we spiraled up as a group.
Finally, after what must have been a hundred feet, I broke the surface, Jaxson at my side. Our headlamps traced the walls with beams of light as we looked around. It was a small, rectangular concrete chamber.
Jaxson heaved himself out of the water onto the crumbling platform. Smiling through his foggy mask, he reached out his hand. “Well, we lived.”
I clasped his hand, and he hauled me out of the water. I stood, yanked off my mask, and pulled my hair into a dripping ponytail behind me. “Great. We’ll defeat Dragan, but we’ll die of hypothermia.”
Ethan was the last out of the water. He took off his mask, and then, using it as a flashlight, followed a pair of conduits to a metal box. He popped it open and flicked a breaker. “Welcome to Bentham Prison.”
Light illuminated the room.
It was wholly unimpressive—just a concrete tunnel with a pool at the end. After surviving a near devouring, I’d frankly hoped for a little more.
Ethan unzipped an agent’s bag as the rest of the group pulled off their masks. “Sorry, that was a little more harrowing than intended. But it makes a nice warmup for a prison riot.”
“What the hell was it?” Devi asked. “I couldn’t see anything.”
Still shivering from the cold, I shook my head. “I don’t know. It was like a giant eel or snake the diameter of a barrel. It had spiked ridges down its back and horns.”
Ethan let out a long breath. “Misiginebig.”
“Michigan what?” I asked.
“A horned serpent, one of the legendary beasts of the lake. Good thing we got out of the water when we did.” He pulled a map from the bag and looked straight at me. “Do you really talk to ghosts?”
I shrugged. “Yes, apparently. It’s new.”
“Well, it saved our life, so I’d keep at it.” He unrolled the map on a dry patch of ground, though it was immediately dampened by water dripping from his clothes. “This is a plan of Bentham. This corridor isn’t on the map, but we’ll pop out in a closed-off room, here.” He pointed to one of the many rings on the map.
With no time for pride, I said, “I have no idea what I’m looking at.”
He nodded. “Okay. They call Bentham the donut because it’s shaped like a ring. The prison cells are on the outside. There is the mirrored glass observation tower in the center. The guards in the tower can see into all the cells, but the prisoners don’t know whether they’re being watched.”
Right. I recalled seeing this in my vision when I used the onyx talisman.
Ethan looked up. “The design is called a panopticon. It dates from before CCTV and video camera were invented. It was manned by unsleeping demons who were always watching.”
Jaxson crossed his arms. “Considering recent events, it might be best to go back to demons.”
Ignoring Jax, Ethan traced his fingers over the map. “We have to get to the operations center in the control tower here. From there, we can end the lockdown and let the rest of the archmages and agents in. We’ll also be able to initiate riot suppression protocols.”
“Let me guess—Dragan has people guarding it,” I said.
Ethan nodded. “Someone would have had to overrun the guards in the tower to release the prisoners in the first place. You can bet the rioters have it secured.”
“So how do we get there?” Devi asked.
Ethan pointed to the control room. “Well, the problem is that the tower doesn’t actually reach the ground. It hangs on struts over the exercise courtyard so that watchers can monitor from above. We’ll have to cross a bridge on the eighth floor to get to it, but that means we need to go through one of the cell blocks to get there.”
“So fight our way there, and then fight our way in,” Jaxson grunted.
Ethan shrugged and rolled up the map, then passed us each a potion bomb. “With Savannah’s ability to shape darkness, we might be able to sneak in. I have a feeling that the place is going to be a madhouse.”