Korbin awoke in the dark. He was on a bed, he realized, the room faintly illuminated by a hearth, fire down to its embers. Without moving, he looked around to see a chamber made of perfectly fitted asymmetrical stones, no windows, only a single door. In the back of his head, a voice tried to call out, to tell him something was amiss. The bed, though, was comfort beyond compare, a luxury akin to anesthesia.
Trying to find some balance between the bed’s sensuous slumberousness and his mind’s pleading, Korbin stretched. He reached his arms above his head, then swung them down to his hips, interrupted when his left arm encountered a solid object that rose from the bed’s otherwise perfect form.
The subtle change caused the voice in Korbin’s head to jump several decibels. His kind mated for life and he hadn’t shared his bed in years. He shot up, head roiling so he couldn’t quite make it to placing his feet on the floor.
“Korbin,” the form next to him spoke, “what are you doing?”
The voice, soft, feminine, and unfamiliar, caused Korbin to push through his nausea to stand. He placed his hand on the wall to balance himself, finding that the stone was intensely warm. He blinked, trying to locate the door he had seen only a moment ago. It was only then he realized he was naked.
“Are you leaving so soon?” the soft voice asked from the bed. The question left an impression in Korbin that he had a choice in being here, that perhaps he had arrived of his own volition. His mind felt heavier than a rock with a hangover, though. He could remember an old friend, Temur, an earth elemental that loved mead, and that their hangovers were calamitous events akin to earthquakes. But he couldn’t remember how he arrived.
Balanced by the wall, Korbin risked a look over his shoulder. On the bed was a woman, lit like a waning harvest moon in the firelight, with smooth skin, a strong figure, and beautiful, dark hair. Like the embers, her eyes glowed a reddish gold. She spoke, “You just got here.”
Korbin shook his head, but it didn’t dislodge the cement around his brain. He could only mutter, “You’re not my Zuri.”
The woman stood up, sheets sliding from her. Even in his current state, Korbin was struck by her magnificence. She smiled with the same easy confidence his wife had possessed, a certainty she would have her way. With her black hair and curvaceous figure, he could almost convince himself that this was his Zuri, that her death had been a terrible dream.
He might have been able to persuade himself of this if the figure hadn’t responded, “Who’s Zuri?” He felt the question pull at his mind, wrapping around the memories of his wife and pushing them toward the same dark well where the memories of how he got here now dwelled.
He struck her then, fast and hard with the back of his hand, all the anger and loss snapping out in the blow. With the focus Zuri had taught him he was able to transform his hand into the Black Talon and grab this impertinent stranger by the neck. “If you don’t know who Zuri is, then I know I shouldn’t be here.”
Even through the tough skin of the claw that was now his right hand, Korbin felt the softness of the figure’s flesh quickly giving way to an unyielding warmth not unlike the room’s stone. The confidence fled from the creatures eyes, replaced with a burning anger. The golden red there, Korbin realized, was not a reflection of the fire, but from whatever magic this thing, this place, possessed.
Tightening his talon around its neck he asked, “What are you and what is this place?”
The thing in front of him began to change, becoming taller and thinner, a forked-tongue rolling out of its mouth as its legs lengthened, threatening to pull Korbin from the floor.  The raven hair curled away from its face, skin pulling tight until its nose disappeared and its mouth stretched wide.  A sound like steam escaping from a grave became its rancid breath as it spoke, “We could have had so much fun, you and I.”
Korbin wasn’t beyond fear, but he wasn’t naive to the ways of transformation. He might not have expected this, but this simulacrum certainly hadn’t expected him. He extended his metamorphosis into both hands and feet, digging into the stones with his talons to keep his stance, raising the other arm as to stab this creature’s eyes from its face. “Ravens eat lizards, thing.”
The rend he put across its face only widened its smile, tongue slipping out in sibilant syllables. “We’re much more than that, here in the house of Naugle.”
“Not for long,” Korbin replied before growing his sharp beak to snap the tongue out Naugle’s beast.
###
Korbin was covered in viscera by the time he heard the knock at the door. Blinking away the burning in his eyes, he looked to see McPherson peeking through the Judas hatch. Presumably standing on her tip-toes, she was barely able to get her chin up to the portal. The inspector, lit from behind, was identifiable to Korbin by her stature and voice. “Oh, good. It’s you.”
Korbin blinked, trying to clear his head. Looking down at his bloodied hands, he remembered he was naked. “I seem to have lost my clothes.”
“Look around,” a male voice made unrecognizable by fear and uncertainty. “All the other men had their clothes on when they left. They might still be with you.”
Misunderstanding the last sentence, Korbin swiveled his head to look for other men in the room, but only found the corpse of the thing he’d dismembered. The strange chunks wriggling on the floor in a pool of black liquid made him feel he was likely to vomit. Refocusing on something else, he asked, “Who is that?”
“We’re going to get you out of here,” McPherson replied.
“We?” Korbin barely got the question out before light streamed in from the torch-lit hallway. McPherson was there, lock picks still in hand, kneeling next to the door’s mechanism. Next to her, head frenetically searching up and down the hall, was a scrawny, bespectacled man, sweat covering his pale pate. He was, in absurd contrast to his flannel shirt and jeans, carrying a hot pink backpack.
McPherson stood, slipping her lock picks into the interior pocket of her blazer. “This is Oliver Derby. I believe you’ve met.”
Half-and-again as tall as McPherson, Oliver peeked around the doorframe and saw the carnage. If possible he became paler, glasses sliding down his nose.
With nothing cogent in his mind Korbin said, “I didn’t know you could break locks.”
“I don’t think reality is a factor in this place.” McPherson pushed Oliver into the room and closed the door behind her. “Let’s pretend this will give us some privacy.”
Korbin looked over his shoulder at the thing he had massacred. “I think we might be safe in here for awhile.”
McPherson guffawed, banishing any realism of the idea. “Korbin, we’re in a ghost house created by a deal with the Ogru Dem. This whole place is an open throat.”
“The Ogru Dem?” That got Korbin’s attention. “What? How did this happen?”
McPherson hooked a thumb at Oliver. “Ask the professor here.”
“I—” Derby began to answer, then stopped, sliding off the pink backpack. He set it on the floor by the fire, away from the still wiggling pile of parts. “I took this from the house.” Out from the bag he pulled a perfectly round, nearly flat stone. “I mean, there wasn’t a house here when I look it, but I dug it out of the park.”
“Why in the name of the seven winds would you do that?”
Oliver cringed, retreating from Korbin’s harsh tone. “I was being blackmailed.”
“You didn’t think to tell me that when you hired me?”
“Oh, it gets better.” The mischief in McPherson’s voice grated on Korbin. She elbowed Oliver. “Tell him by who.”
“A student, I, uh, was having inappropriate relations with.” McPherson poked Oliver, egging him on. “Her name was Etenia.”
Korbin found his head swimming again. “Etenia? Etenia Ephraim?”
Shock raised Oliver’s eyebrows. “You know her?”
Korbin dragged Derby to standing, pulling the smaller man closer. “Do I know her? Do I know the First Sorceress of Kek?” Korbin shook Derby, rattling him until his glasses sat askew. “I will eat your eyes for this, little man!”Â
With an unusual disregard for her dress, McPherson placed her hands between the two men. “Korbin, stop. He didn’t know. It’s your own fault for not recognizing the portrait of Naugle. You should have listened to Zuri more.”
Korbin dropped Oliver to turn his anger onto the analyst, “How dare you – “
“How dare I what?” McPherson’s question was as solid as the floor they stood on. “I’m not what the one ashamed of my own heritage.”
Eagerly seeking to steer the conversation away from his own wrongs, Oliver asked, “What heritage?”
“Korbin is X’Komish.” McPherson turned to Oliver to wipe the gore on her hands off onto his shirt. “Or part X’Komish, I should say.”
In a surprised tone that would have gotten him thrown off faculty staff, Oliver responded, “With a name like Korbin Halvorsen?”
Like straightening a child’s dress, McPherson set Oliver’s glasses straight on his face. “For a professor of local history, you’re pretty ignorant. Naugle wasn’t the only one interested in destroying X’Komish culture. Or did you think the chief’s ancestral name was Francis?”
Korbin burned with his own anger as he remembered meeting Zuri in the state boarding school that had branded him with the name of his father. Zuri had refused to give up her name for the Anglo one that they had tried to force on her. Despite everything; the starvation, the beatings, the shackles. By the time she escaped and then returned for him, he couldn’t even remember what little X’Komish he had known.
Korbin turned from this to search for his pants. Trousers in hand, he said, “Fine, we’re in a house that shouldn’t exist that sits on a hole that wants to swallow mankind. What do we do about it?”
“You can’t be serious,” Oliver spoke. The only thing that kept Korbin from throttling him was the look of utter contempt that McPherson leveled at the professor.
“You idiot. The darkness the X’Komish were enslaved to is still down there. It’s been waiting for a chance to rise. It’s always been waiting. And you’ve given it to it.” McPherson nodded behind her at the door. “Or did you think the army of men we snuck past were imaginary? You saw the look in their eyes. The only reason you got past them is because you look like them.”
Korbin chuckled unkindly, wondering how McPherson had snuck Oliver past his own wife. “What’s your plan, McPherson?”
“I was hoping between the three of us we might be able to figure out how to use the stone to seal this place back into the Earth.” McPherson bent down to the round, flat stone that Oliver had pulled from the backpack. Korbin felt his disgrace again, knowing he couldn’t recognize the symbols on its face.
“It was brought in here before,” McPherson continued. “It sealed the mine and destroyed Naugle’s house. I say we use it like a depth charge.”
Both Korbin and Oliver responded in confusion, causing the inspector to point at the eviscerated, still wriggling corpse on the floor. “That thing had to come from somewhere. If we can find the hole it crawled out of, dropping the stone down it might do the trick.”
“Or without the proper incantations it might just drop like a rock,” Korbin countered.
“Do you know how to read the symbols on the stone?” Aggie asked.
“I do.” Oliver spoke quietly, but his tone washed over the rising anger between Korbin and Aggie. “The runes on the stone are for a sacrificial rite.”
McPherson spoke softly and slowly, as if to a frightened animal. “What are you saying, Oliver?
Korbin watched the smaller man’s Adam’s apple move up and down. “Castillo never left Naugle’s house. And neither did the stone. He must have been the sacrifice that sealed the mine.”
Before McPherson could speak Korbin found his anger again. “Well, guess who just volunteered.”
Oliver boggled at the pair, protesting before Aggie rose to place a calming hand on his shoulder. “Oliver, does the stone specify what the sacrifice has to be?”
“No,” he said uncertainly.
McPherson disappeared the stone into her coat as she stood. “Then let’s take this a step at a time.”
“I, uh, OK,” Oliver muttered, wiping the sweat from the bridge of his nose before resettling his glasses. “But then – “
The door rumbled in its frame, rattling the Judas hatch open to show a solid wall of brackish flesh, glistening greenish black in the firelight, moving past the door. A long quiet moment went with it, only broken by Oliver squeaking, “What was that?”
Korbin made to answer when a smell like boiling sulfur caused him to choke. He glanced at the bedmate he had dismembered. While their attention had been elsewhere its separate parts had bubbled into a single, dark green slime that oscillated, pushing at the edges of its boundaries.
With a pitch in his voice that hung by a very thin thread, Oliver asked, “Is it dead?”
“No,” Korbin answered. “Ogru Dem don’t die, they just…reassemble.”
Oliver shakily tried to pick up the backpack. “I’m going to find my wife and get out of here.”
Korbin felt no small amount of satisfaction as McPherson slapped him. “You looked her right in the eye when we came in here and she didn’t blink. We need to get rid of this place if you ever want her to see the light of day again.”
McPherson looked back at the door, its Judas hatch now empty of everything but the torchlight of the hall beyond. “OK, Korbin, we’ll lead the way. Oliver stay close behind us.” Bones fused and feathers bristled up the once pale skin of his arms, Korbin stepped forward.
Oliver, eyes wide and dodging between Korbin’s talons and the remains of the Ogru Dem, refused to move. Korbin pointed a claw at him. “This is nothing, little man. If you don’t move you’ll see how far I can take this metamorphosis. And then I will fly my way out of here and forget your name before the next sunrise.”
With this threat hanging over him, Oliver stumbled toward the now silent door. Regardless, Korbin and McPherson approached it as if the portal might spring open of its own accord.
Reaching for the handle, McPherson stopped and glanced at Korbin. “You were bluffing about flying out of here, right?”
Korbin could feel his ears beginning to disappear under a plume of black feathers. He croaked, “You left me down here first.”
“Oh, come on!” McPherson caused both men to jump as she stood straight, raising her voice. “You’re fine.”
Korbin stared at McPherson as he felt his eyes (rather painfully) change color and shape. “Do I look fine to you?”
McPherson gave her tiniest harumph, acknowledging Korbin’s superior position. “Fine. Just try to give me some warning if you decide to go it alone.”
“No guarantees, analyst.”
Using the title of her occupation seemed to placate McPherson, who reached for the door handle.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
See author’s published work here.
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