House of Darken (Secret Keepers #1)

Then he was gone, walking out of the egg; the walls snapped into place with a twang, like a rubber band flinging back into place. Some of the relief at seeing Sara and Michael returned to good health – through some sort of alien magic obviously – faded away as I realized that I could no longer stall Laous. He wanted to know where this key was, and apparently I was the only one who could help him. It might have been a little easier if I had an idea what sort of object it was. Was it a literal key, or something less obvious?

I could not remember a single time my mom had mentioned a key or secret keeping, or anything like that to me. How could they do this? A burst of anger had curses flying from my mouth, one after the other.

Energy boosted me to my feet, and using my temporary rush of emotion, I kicked out at the walls again. Again they shifted away so I couldn’t touch them. “Come on!” I shouted. “You stupid piece of crap, open the hell up. Let me out!”

By this point I’d clearly lost all semblance of sanity, morphing into a screaming banshee. There was no real reason for it, I knew that, but it felt cathartic all the same. I’d had a really long, shitty in some ways – amazing in others – week, and I really needed a release.

When I got that out of my system, I decided to stand and glare at the walls for a good twenty or thirty minutes. Then I started to sing. I chose the most annoying, ear-piercing song I could think of, humming it at first, then breaking into a full-on ballad. High notes included.

The truth was, fear was eating me up inside. Fear. Worry. Pain. So I would just sing my songs and pretend I wasn’t being held prisoner in hell.

Literally Overworld hell.

My song died off as the walls burst open. Laous stood on the other side, beady eyes drilling a hole through my face.

“Yes, can I help you?” I asked, like he’d just popped in for a chat.

“Do you have the location of the key?”

Sucking some air through my nose, I shook my head. “I’m trying to figure it out, but I’m almost positive that there was nothing like that in our house. We didn’t collect things.”

His face was going red, the tattoos blending into his skin tone. I wondered briefly why his marks were red while Daniel’s were black. It didn’t really matter, it just struck me in that moment as odd.

He took a step toward me, so I quickly said, “Is it a literal key? Did you check the house before you burned the damn thing down … you probably destroyed it.” That would be a nice sort of karma.

“This object would not burn.” That was all he said, before he turned and flicked his head. A guard appeared at his side. Whatever joy I’d gathered from singing vanished in a puff of terror. The guard, again one I had never seen before, held chains in his hands. Before I could blink, or fight back, he was on me, trussing my hands behind my back.

“I’m telling you the truth!” I said to Laous.

He nodded. “I know you are. I’m very good at discerning truth from lie, but that doesn’t change the fact that the information is within you … somewhere. Trainer here is going to see if he can’t give you a little incentive to figure it out.”

Incentive? Everything clenched in my body; my legs seized up and wouldn’t move. This didn’t bother Trainer. He lifted me with one arm, half dragging my body out of the egg and across the room. I started struggling as hard as I could with my arms restrained.

I could not move him at all. I might as well have been fighting a rock. He was silent as he hauled me between what looked like hundreds of egg prisons. I kicked out, aiming for the back of his knees. He avoided the strike with ease. Shit, I really needed to work on my self-defense skills, even though something told me I wouldn’t have much hope of beating this guy, even if I were the best trained fighter in Earth.

I tried to calm myself, tried to think again of what this key could possibly be. Keys were designed for locks, right? So it had to be something which could be used in that manner. Something metal, maybe…

Could the answer be hidden in the stories mom told me? Like the one about the boy and his dragon. Did they hide it here in Overworld? My frantic trip down memory lane was interrupted when we reached an arched doorway, stepping from the white egg room out into … the underworld.

I had a perfect view from where we stood. The egg level, was sitting right above everything else. Then there were multiple … platforms … dropping down like a giant staircase, each step spanning off into the distance. I could barely see the ends of most of them, and yet somehow I could still see some detail from all the different levels.

Each level had a different version of hell on it. One was a land of fire and flame, red slashing across black, ringing with screams of pain and panic. Another was a land of monsters, giant beasts screeching in the air and on the land, ripping into each other and Daelighters. Right at the very bottom I was catching glimpses of an oasis, but it looked like you had to get through six or seven levels first before you had a shot at the oasis.

The Cascading Justices. It had to be.

Lexen had briefly explained it to me, but I couldn’t remember if everyone who came here had to fight for their peaceful existence. Had he said something about good and bad deeds being weighed?

The guard startled me by growling in my ear: “Laous thinks you are our salvation, but you’re our curse. The treaty cannot fall. I’m giving you a chance. If you make it through the justices, you will find escape.”

He released me, and since I hadn’t been prepared for it, I tumbled forward. Then a heavy boot into my back sent me flying right over the edge into the step below.





17





I couldn’t tell you how long I fell for, my screams echoing in my ears. After an eternity, trees caught me, my body slamming into them with enough force to knock all breath from me. At some point the restraints holding my hands behind my back were torn free, almost taking my arms with them.

My body ended up wedged in the branches of a tree, my dress shredded, along with half my skin. I didn’t move for many long moments, trembling, struggling to draw breath into my lungs. A branch had pierced my shoulder; the pain was muted as adrenalin coursed through me, but just trying to tug myself free was enough to send sharp jabs of agony through me.

Knowing I couldn’t just hang there and starve or bleed to death, I sucked up every ounce of my bravery, gave myself multiple pep talks, and wrenched my arm off the branch with a loud scream. Panting breaths were my sole focus for a few moments as I waited for the stabbing sensations to die down. It didn’t. Eventually I just sucked it up and dragged my pained and broken body further up the branch. My blood made everything slippery, and I was athletically challenged, so it took longer than it should have to reach the trunk. Once I was pressed against it, I wrapped my hand over the wound in my arm, applying pressure. I was losing way too much blood. There was no way I’d survive if I didn’t get that under control.

A burst of hysterical laughter left my lips, followed by a sob. Who the hell was I kidding? There was no way I was making it out of here alive. Six lands of terror. Six! Before I would find freedom.

Still, I was never one to give up. I would fight until there was no more fight left.

I tore a strip off the bottom of my dress. It was pretty much in shreds at this point. I kept tearing until it was thigh level – the long dress would hamper my ability to run and climb. The heels would have to go too, but since I had no idea how my feet would hold up in this sort of terrain, I’d remove them when I had no other choice.

Searching for what looked like the cleanest part of the material, I pressed a bundle against my wound, and then used another long strip to wrap round and round my shoulder, compressing the blood flow the best I could. Once I had done everything I could to staunch the bleeding, I focused on the land I was in.