Chris Mooney - The Soul Collectors

She lay on top of him and smashed the back of her head against his face, breaking his nose. Not much room to manoeuvre, but the one now on top of her had no idea how to fight at close quarters. He seemed confused. Scared. His neck was inches from her mouth and without hesitating she sank her teeth into the thin, foul flesh and bit down hard like a rabid dog, tearing. An arterial spray of blood exploded against the wall and the thing howled, a ragged sound, and she slammed her forehead into his nose, pushed him to the side and got to her feet. Rolled back against the dirt floor, swept the chains from underneath her legs, brought her hands up as the bottom one scurried to his feet, clawing the walls for purchase and slipping on the blood. A quick snap of the neck and the bleeding thing dropped. The other one tried to scrabble away and she wrapped the chains around his neck and went to work on strangling him, some boy who had been brought to this place and turned into a monster.

With the things dead and lying on the floor, she found the keys. Four of them. She tried the first one and it worked.

Darby wiped her bloody mouth on her sleeve and ran.

A sepulchral tomb of twisting halls leading left and right and forward, some lit by sconces holding candles, some dark, almost every wall lined with bones. Some dirt floors dipped down and some rose, and Darby paused at each one, thinking about Jack Casey and his daughter and the decision she would have to make.

Up, she thought. Towards the surface.

She ran with the keys gripped in her fist to keep them from jingling and each hall led to a circular area of dirt, some with barrels decorated with skulls and bones and holding water. She saw no one and heard nothing but her ragged breathing.

Another circular area, one that held a granite sarcophagus placed in front of a stone altar. Latin words and phrases cut into the dusty stone and she recognized only one, the name on the sarcophagus: Iadabaoth.

To the right of the altar, a staircase made of ancient brick. She saw it curved and led only one way, up. She climbed it, her bare feet sliding across the smooth stone, and it seemed to go on for ever. It was cool and dark in here, musty and dank, and she was sweating. She paused when she heard the screaming.

Not screaming. Roars of approval and delight and triumph, like a Red Sox crowd at Fenway Park on opening day. Darby kept climbing, only more slowly, eyes wide and searching the cool and musty-smelling dark, the roars growing louder.

The staircase ended and led to another smooth-bricked hall. She found a ladder. Ahead, maybe twenty feet, an archway lit up by candlelight coming from somewhere far below. No floor beyond the archway, just the candlelight and the cool air throbbing with roars and screams. She moved towards it, had to see, needed to see, and when she reached it she got on her hands and knees and looked down and down.

A great hall, full of manacled children and the manacled pale things with shaved heads and scarred bodies, a crowd of at least a hundred down there. Some were shackled to the walls; others were shackled by only one wrist, and they picked up rocks and threw them at the person in the centre of the big space: Jack Casey, his massive body tied to a giant, raised wheel that was opposite his kneeling daughter. Sarah Casey had been chained to some contraption that wrapped around her throat, the stiff metal bars leading to rings that encircled her knees. Hooded figures stood behind her and others were gathered near their leader, the Archon Iadaboath, sitting high on a perched throne.

Darby stared at the sailing rocks; the roars were like slaps across her face. Even from this height she could see the tears on Sarah Casey's face, the look of abandonment and hopelessness on Casey's. He had been broken. Shattered. Physically and mentally. He looked dead on that wheel — a medieval wheel used as a torture device. St Catherine of Alexandria had been tortured on such a device, and when the wheel broke, they beheaded her on a guillotine.

Darby looked at the table set up at the end of the Archon's throne, a table stocked with strange and ancient torturing devices. She saw a metal-framed helmet with blades on each side that sat right above the ears. Saw spiked instruments and whips and metal vices used to crush bone. Collars lined with metal teeth.

You can't save them, a voice said.

She knew that, logically. She couldn't take them on without weapons. Without a small army at her back. And yet she didn't move, because the crowd gathered below was waiting for her to enter the room — waiting for her to kill Casey or his daughter. Or both.

You can't take on these crazies by yourself. You'll need help.

Yes. That made perfect sense. She couldn't do this by herself, but if she left now, what would happen to Casey and his daughter? They could be dead by the time help arrived.

If you want to save them, you need to save yourself first. You're their only chance for survival now, so get moving.

Darby backed away and climbed the cold metal ladder that stretched high into darkness. At the top she found a hatch.

It was locked.

Panic fluttered through her limbs and then vanished when one of the keys worked on the padlock. Darby pushed the hatch open and climbed outside, into woods lit up by a bright moon.

She eased the hatch shut and started moving through the cold air, telling herself she had done the right thing. She hated running away — she had never run from anything in her life — but she knew this time she had no choice. She breathed in the cold air, trying to ignore the primitive part of herself that rejoiced at being free. At being alive.

Darby ran.

The wind was cold and raw and kept shaking the tree branches and limbs high above her head. Most of the terrain was flat, nothing more than freshly shed leaves, and she kept running straight, figuring, at some point, she'd hit either a road or a clearing.

She covered a lot of ground and had a lot of speed despite the fact she was barefoot. Then her thoughts became consumed by traps — trapdoors and bear traps hidden underneath all these leaves, things with steel jaws and clawed metal teeth ready to tear flesh and snap bone — and she traded pace for caution. The Archons would have planned for something like this. Get a foot stuck in a trap, and she'd be dragged back under the earth and set up on one of those operating tables for an amputation, maybe even an emergency lobotomy.

Were they already out here looking for her? By now they had discovered the bodies. They knew she had the keys. They were searching every hall, every room, every hidden area. The staircase. She imagined one of them poking his head out of the hatch, looking around and seeing her footprints in the damp earth. Saw him climbing out and releasing the ghouls, sending them off into the woods like dogs to follow her scent, and she knew she couldn't slow her pace and ran faster.

The woods never ended; like something from a nightmare, they stretched on and on.

She ran until she was rubber-legged. She paused and leaned forward, gripping a tree as she sucked in air, her hair wet and matted against her face. Her skin felt hot and wet but her mouth was bone-dry and she couldn't get any moisture into it.

She pressed on, jogging this time. She had almost given up hope, thinking she would die out here of dehydration, her flesh picked apart by crows and animals, when she saw a path straight ahead and bolted for it.

Not a path but a dirt road that broke into different directions, some leading into new sections of trees. She looked up at the sky and searched for the Big Dipper. There. The Pole Star was located directly off the Dipper's top and she turned slightly to her left. Now she was facing north, the way the road led. She took it, noticing how the air had turned cooler.