Tricks for Free (InCryptid #7)

I dropped into the darkness, my skates suddenly soaked through again as I hit the artificial lake at the bottom. It wasn’t deep, designed to kick up water and delight guests, but it was there.

And it gave me an idea. I threw myself to the side, abandoning the track for the water, and splashed down hard, sliding a few feet before the water finished absorbing the shock of my landing. I came up gasping, no longer bound to the structure of the track—and no longer aided by its merciless progress, either. That was fine. I needed some control over where I was going, given what was likely to come next.

From here, the track rose up into the darkness, the flashes of rainbow light becoming less frequent, while never quite stopping altogether. Total darkness was terrifying: near darkness was exhilarating. I wiped my wet palms against my wetter jeans, and started climbing.

I was almost to the top of the first hill when my hand hit something that wasn’t metal. It was soft, yielding, and mammalian. I paused, considering the silence of the something, and touched it again, more intentionally.

“Fern?” I whispered.

“Annie?” She sounded hopeful but wary, like she knew this couldn’t possibly be anything but a trick. “Is it really you?”

“Why didn’t you make a sound when I touched you?”

“I thought you were them, and I thought they’d leave me alone if they thought I was still knocked out.” Fern’s voice was even wispier and softer than it usually was. She was clearly fighting to remain calm. “Are you here to save me?”

“Well, of course, I am. Couldn’t leave a teammate, could I? Slasher Chicks forever.” I felt along the edge of her body, finding the ropes that bound her to the track. I had knives. What I didn’t have was a good way of catching her. “Fern, I need you to reduce your density as much as you can, all right? When I cut you loose, you’re going to fall. You need to be ready to fall.”

“I’m ready,” she said bravely, and I had never loved her more, or felt worse about sucking her into my fight.

It only took a few seconds for me to slice away the ropes that bound her. Fern dropped immediately, knocking against me as lightly as a balloon before slinging herself over the track’s edge and hanging on by her fingertips.

“Now what?”

I took a breath. “Now I find the others.”

I couldn’t see Fern, but I could hear her concern as she said, “I don’t know where they are. I woke up here.”

“I know they’re on this track.” I knew that Colin wanted their deaths to be painful, swift, and grouped together—but when I was talking about something that moved as fast as a roller coaster, as long as hitting Fern didn’t derail it, it would be able to finish climbing the hill in a matter of seconds. “Sam’s outside. Go help him.”

“But I—”

“Please.” The coaster would finish powering up soon. I needed Fern clear.

She lightly touched the top of my hand. “Be safe,” she said, and was gone, drifting down to the dark waters below.

I resumed my climb.

I hadn’t gone far when a new sound entered the equation: a faint but steady hissing. Megan was tied to the tracks in front of me. I stopped where I was, unwilling to reach out when I didn’t know where those snakes were. “Megan.”

No response.

“Megan.”

A faint moan, this time, like a larger snake stirring in its nest. (Not that snakes actually moan, outside of SyFy Original Movies.)

“Wake up and tell your hair not to bite me, before the roller coaster crushes us both.”

There was a sharp gasp then, before Megan asked warily, “Annie?”

“It’s me. Where’s your head? Keep talking so I can cut you free.”

“What the hell is going on? Where are we?” The snakes continued to hiss angrily as she spoke. At least now I could tell where they were. That was a nice, potentially nonvenomous change.

“You know the Midsummer Night’s Scream?” I asked, as I started to cut.

“Of course, I know the—no. No.” Megan sounded rightly horrified. “You are not telling me that.”

“I am.” I cut another rope. “You’re going to need to climb down once you’re loose. I still have to find Cylia, and their trainspotter is working on getting the coaster moving.”

There was a pause. “I hate that that was a sentence.”

“I’m getting that a lot today. I think this is the last rope. Hold onto something.”

“It is.” There was a rustle as Megan grabbed the track. I sliced through the rope. “You humans need better night vision.”

“I’ll put it on the mad science wish list. Can you get down?”

“Do I have a choice?” Megan began climbing past me. I felt a snake’s tongue caress my cheek, light as a whisper, and then she was gone, descending toward the water. That would have been the smart thing to do.

I started climbing up instead.

Light was beginning to seep into the tunnel, flowing through the hole where the train would emerge, triumphant, from the animatronic underworld, when I found Cylia. Her eyes were open, scanning the darkness below her. She relaxed slightly when she saw me.

“I was wondering whether the cavalry was coming,” she said.

“We don’t have much time,” I replied, and grabbed the first loop of visible rope. “Hold on, I’m getting you out of here.”

From behind us, the sound of a train whipping along the track made it clear how little time we actually had. Cylia closed her eyes.

“Wake me when we’re dead,” she said.

“No,” I snarled, and kept cutting. “No, and no, and no.” We were maybe thirty feet above the artificial lake, which I knew got deeper around the tracks, for the sake of the illusion. If we fell right, if we were lucky—

The rope gave way. I grabbed Cylia, flinging both of us away from the tracks, dropping like rocks into the dark below. Cylia shrieked. The Midsummer Night’s Scream passed by harmlessly overhead, a great rocketing mechanism of sound and steel and mayhem. And we were falling, and there was nothing I could do but close my eyes and let it happen.

The shock of hitting the water knocked my eyes right open. Cylia and I were driven below the surface, and my feet hit the bottom before I kicked and pushed us up again, sputtering and soaked, into the drier dark. Cylia clung to me. I clung to Cylia. Then, in relief and surprise, we started to laugh.

“We’re alive!” she shouted.

“Yes!”

“We didn’t die!”

“No!”

“We . . .” Cylia stopped. “Is this over?”

“No,” I said again, my own levity fading. “But it will be soon. Come on. Let’s find a maintenance door.”

Dripping, shaking, and exhausted, we made our way toward the edge of the lake, moving one step closer to safety. We had a long way yet to go.



* * *





When we emerged from the maintenance door in the side of the structure, we found ourselves faced with the usual nest of tangled landscaping and complicated design, intended to keep guests from stumbling over anything they shouldn’t. We climbed over it all, Cylia helping me when my skates made it difficult to balance, until we reached the fence to the queue area. After hopping that, it was a simple matter to head back to the front of the ride.

Sam was still there, standing on Emily’s shoulders, keeping her pinned down. Fern and Megan were behind him, looking warily at Colin and Joshua. I didn’t know why they hadn’t run away. I would have run, if one of my enemies had been planning to come back with reinforcements.

Maybe they had more loyalty in them than I’d expected. Maybe they had stayed for Emily.

“It’s not too late,” said Colin, his eyes clearly fixed on me. “I hurt you; now you’ve hurt me. With your power, and my skill, we could find a cleaner way to accomplish all our goals. You could help me truly realize Lowry’s dream.”

“Okay, one, if Lowry was a sorcerer, I don’t want to know,” I said. “Two, I am not working with you. And three, I don’t have any power to offer. I sold it for the chance to beat you.”

I’d sold it for so much more than that, but my little white lie was absolutely justified by the look of horror and disgust that crossed his face. “Impossible. No one would give up that kind of power.”