Dark Lies: Chapter 54

Savannah

My breath caught as I looked around inside the tower. The walls were all glass, and I could see out into the prison cells perfectly. I’d known what to expect, but seeing it in person was unnerving.

The practical reality of zero privacy.

Every time I looked at the glass, it rippled with magic and magnified the world outside. Everywhere I looked, it was like having binoculars.

I could see some of the orange- and gray-clad inmates curled up in their cells, hiding from the echoes of the ritual below.

A helical ironwork stairway spiraled down around the inside of the observation tower. It was easy to imagine unsleeping demons walking up and down the stairs with their relentless eyes trained on the inmates.

I peered down over the railing, and my stomach lurched with vertigo. The bottom of the control tower was glass as well, allowing observers to continuously watch activity in the courtyard below.

Looking back at Ethan, I asked, “What do you need me to do?”

He and the agents were busy going over a pile of notes and fiddling with the computer systems. “We just need to override the system. Give us a minute. I’m an archmage, not tech support.”

I immediately descended the stairs.

Jaxson followed. “Where are you going?”

“This tower overhangs the courtyard with all the chanting freaks, and I’m betting that Dragan’s still down there. I want to see what he’s doing for myself, and in here, I can do it without him knowing I’m watching.”

I moved down the spiraling stairwell quickly, then paused and looked up at Jaxson behind me. “I’m practically stomping, but my boots aren’t making a sound. Why is that?”

“The stairwell is probably enchanted, so creatures with acute hearing—like werewolves—can’t tell when people are moving inside.”

“This place is so creepy,” I said as I continued down the stairs.

“It has a reputation,” Jaxson grumbled.

I wondered how many members of the pack had spent time in there. Or how many members of my family, for that matter.

If Casey had been here, he would have asked if the guards had to watch everybody do their business, or something equally inappropriate. Sorrow and loss twisted through my heart as I stepped out onto the all-glass floor.

I reached for Jaxson’s arm. “Whoa, this is freaky.”

You could see everything below. It was like flying. What I saw, however, disturbed me far more than the vertigo.

The base of the tower was on level with the third ring. Below us, the perimeter of the second ring and the courtyard were lined with prisoners, far more than I’d seen in my hazy vision. They were chanting, and their collective voices buffeted the building as magic sparked in the air.

The highly polished courtyard floor was covered with strange symbols and radiating lines that reminded me of my aunt’s workshop, but these had been crudely written in red with broad, sloppy strokes.

Blood.

The source was obvious. The dismembered corpses of two guards were crumpled off to the side. Dragan had apparently used their arms to write with.

Without hesitation, my stomach unloaded itself onto the glass floor.

Jaxson touched my shoulder lightly, but I shook him off and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “I’m going to destroy that fucker.”

He wasn’t hard to find.

A massive man stood in the center of it all, his arms raised and chanting. The Crusher, possessed by Dragan.

He must have been eight feet tall, and his shoulders were twice as broad as Jaxson’s. He wore no shirt, revealing muscles that were inhumanly swollen and distended with bright blue veins. The video cameras and my vision hadn’t done him justice. Seeing him in person, I had no doubt that he could crush my skull with a single hand.

As I looked on in horror at the monstrous man, his head wrenched back and shifted into that of a wolf. His left arm sprouted hair, and claws erupted from his hands. He howled, then reverted to human form.

Dragan couldn’t control his host.

The grotesque image made me think of something I’d heard about Dragan—that he’d had a split soul, each half vying for control.

My skin went cold. Wolfie and I had fought for control at the start. Could that have been our fate?

The sickening transformations didn’t stop Dragan from continuing his spell, however, and I shook my head to focus. How close were they?

Wild energy crackled through the room, and dark shadows spiraled along the walls. Even as we watched, I felt the intensity building.

The chant of Dragan’s possessed cultists reverberated through the walls of the prison—dark, grating words that felt like they were gnawing on my skin.

“Ethan? How close are you?” I shouted up at him.

“Working.”

I clenched my fists with worry.

Then the tower shuddered as a shockwave erupted from the courtyard below.

When I regained my footing, I could see that some of the chanting prisoners had collapsed, and the dark shadows swirling around the room had multiplied. My skin prickled. Were those faces in the shadows?

I ran to the bottom of the stairs and started ascending. “Ethan, we need to do something now! Shit is getting wild down there.”

Devi leaned over the railing above. “We’ve got it. We’re going to initiate riot suppression procedures to interrupt the ritual. Then Ethan will let the archmages in to deal with Dragan and the more powerful prisoners.”

The tower shook again. “We might not have that long!”

An alarm horn blared, and the sound of a woman’s soothing prerecorded voice echoed though the prison. “All inmates must return to their cells. Inmates who do not return to their cells will be incapacitated and subject to isolation procedures.”

“You think they’re going to comply?” Jaxson roared incredulously as he vaulted up the stairs behind me.

“Of course not!” Ethan shouted from above. “That’s just an automated recording. But this might get them to listen up.”

The tower reverberated with a drone that made my stomach churn and head spin. I reached for a railing to keep from falling, and I was glad I’d already emptied my stomach.

I could tell the effect was far worse down below. The prisoners looked around in wild confusion, and those still in their cells on our level threw up.

“What the hell was that?” I screamed.

“Vibrations to disorient. It won’t hurt their ears, but at least we’ve stopped them from chanting. Now we put them to sleep,” Devi shouted to us as we returned to the platform.

Plumes of pink-gray gas began pouring from vents along the edges of the tiers. Some of the haze lingered in the walkways, but most cascaded down like a waterfall to pool in low clouds in the open space below.

The Order team had the cameras working again, and the chaos played out on the array of monitors.

A few prisoners ran for the doors. A couple made it through the exits, but more began to stagger and drop to their knees in the clouds of gas, quickly passing out. But the werewolf cultists regained their balance and continued their chant.

Dread twisted along my spine. “It’s not strong enough! They’re not stopping!”

“It’ll take longer for werewolves. The gas needs time to build up,” Ethan muttered as he flipped through a notebook of instructions.

I looked down in horror at the scene below us. A dark storm was brewing, whipping the clouds of gas into a spiral around the walls. Ethereal ghosts swirled along with the wind, their mouths open in silent cries.

This was bad.

“Can you see the ghosts?” I asked Jaxson.

He nodded.

Okay, really bad.

I returned my attention to the cultists on the monitors. One werewolf’s head lolled to the side, but his mouth kept moving, and his arms remained raised in the air.

“Shit!” I shouted. “They’re like zombies or automatons or marionettes. They’re not going to stop, even as they fall asleep!”

Jaxson grabbed two gas masks from a locker with riot gear and turned Ethan. “Can you vent the gas? We’ve got to go down there to stop this ourselves.”

“Yes, but we need the other archmages,” Ethan shouted as he held up a pile of notes and some prison schematics. “This place isn’t meant to be reopened once it’s locked down. I need to take the defenses down one by one to get them in without letting the prisoners escape.”

“Well, we’re out of time.” I took one of the gas masks from Jaxson and tugged it down over my face. “It’s up to us to disrupt the ritual.”

As we darted for the door of the control room, Devi and one of the agents joined us. “We’re coming with.”

I nodded. “Thanks. And good luck.”

Jaxson pressed the button on the blast door. It flew open, revealing two white-eyed werewolf inmates with their claws out, waiting for us.

Well, no one said it was going to be smooth.