Sighing with relief, Ian guided me the rest of the way through. When I was a mere ten feet in front of him, he looked up at me expectantly.
“That’s it?” I asked. “I’m in?”
He shrugged as I wondered where the bells of victory were, the cheering crowds, the clouds parting from the heavens.
“That’s not it,” Joaquin snarled, lifting himself to his feet once again. He’d been trying to move too fast, and it comforted me that he was finally rattled. “Didn’t you hear the Tulpa? You have to save him too.”
And in order to save him, we’d have to wind our way back out, past Joaquin. “One hurdle at a time,” I muttered, and set about freeing Ian.
Aligning my conduit with the ropes binding him, arrow pointing down through the center of the knots, I fired. Nothing happened. I made sure the safety was off, and compressed the trigger to draw back the bow again. Still nothing. Only twenty feet away, Joaquin was splayed on his back, but this time he got up laughing.
“Conduits don’t work in the maze, Archer, or didn’t you know?”
The answer was obvious, so my reply was a mere curse as I bent to unravel the knots by hand. Five minutes later Ian’s hands were free, but I was no closer to figuring out how to get him past Joaquin. And it seemed Ian hadn’t been the only one paying attention to my progress through the maze. Joaquin was making fast progress; either he’d managed to retain his faculties while getting zapped off his feet or the Tulpa wasn’t as angry with him as I’d come to believe. Either way, Joaquin would find the center in the next few minutes.
“Listen,” I said, kneeling at Ian’s feet, fingers working furiously over the knots there. I glanced up. He wasn’t listening. He was watching Joaquin’s progress with mounting terror. I slapped his leg. “Ian! You have to listen to me. He’s going to take us both out if he can, but stay behind me no matter what happens. We’ll circle around him, and that’ll give you a chance to exit.”
His eyes darted back to Joaquin. I slapped him again, harder, to regain his attention.
“Just make sure you remember the number of steps in each of the pathways out there,” I told him as he rubbed his arm. “And round the corners exactly. If you hit a wall, even once, you won’t survive it. Got it?”
He swallowed hard, but nodded. “What about you?”
I handed him my conduit and stood, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. “I’m going to make him bleed from every orifice.”
We lined up then, Ian behind me, both of us as far from the entrance as we could get without being deep-fried. Joaquin was moving faster, meticulously counting off steps, and I marshaled my flagging energy by thinking of a young girl I’d never known. Ben’s child.
He rounded the last corner, eyes bright with anticipation as he tracked me through that final barrier. The bolted chair was all that lay between us, and Joaquin feinted first to one side, then the other; he was testing us, teasing, trying to draw us forward. Ian whimpered behind me, and I patted him reassuringly. Unfortunately there was no one to do the same for me.
Body tense, I followed Joaquin with my eyes. Neither he nor I had a conduit, but he still had an advantage. If he touched a hair on Ian’s head, I’d lose this contest. More, I was sure I’d knocked into more walls than he had, and the energy loss had made me shaky. I wasn’t as agile as normal, and it felt like the entire world was shuddering under my feet as I sidestepped first one way, then the other, an unwilling snake to Joaquin’s flute.
Pull it together, Jo, I told myself. If only for the next five minutes. No sooner did I have the thought than Joaquin lunged. I dove forward, wanting to meet him away from the electrified walls surrounding us, but he did a quarterback pivot around the bolted chair, slipping away from me and reaching for Ian, who yelped and bolted. A squeal, half terror, half pain, rose from him as he scraped the invisible barrier on his left, and the scent of burned flesh reached my nose. Joaquin sucked in a deep breath, a closed smile on his lips, and lunged again.
“Run!” I yelled at Ian as I launched myself over the seat of the chair and tackled Joaquin from above. We skidded across the room, and Ian leaped awkwardly over us to clear the entry. Joaquin, struggling and swearing beneath me, managed to lift a hand and grab the other man’s ankle. This time Ian didn’t squeal, but stomped down hard on Joaquin’s arm, twice, while I pummeled him from the top. Joaquin let go with a murderous howl, and as Ian escaped, turned the full force of that rage on me.
This time we were more evenly matched. I was grown now, my warrior skills honed first as a mortal and now as a heroine of Light. The passage into the center of the maze had taken a toll on both of us, though, and neither of us were throwing our best blows. I reached up to his greased head, fisted my hand, and pummeled his skull into the ground. My body was pressed so firmly against his that the reverberations sounded in my breast.
It sounded like a choir of angels.
Joaquin bucked beneath me, scrambling for purchase against the ground, my body, the nearby chair. What he found was an invisible wall. Unfortunately, the maze didn’t discriminate between bodies locked so closely together, and raw power shot into me, exploding in my brain in a shower of stars and pretty lights. I flew backward and crumpled against the bolted chair, head torqued awkwardly.
Joaquin, though, had taken the brunt of the blow. I rose first; grasping the base of the seat, I heaved with everything left in me. Biceps straining, lungs aching, I was rewarded only by a faint creak. I glanced back. Now he’d found an elbow and was propped up, almost sitting. I strained against the base again, and the cement ruptured beneath my feet. But the fucking chair held.
If I’d been fresh, this wouldn’t have been a problem, and I wondered if the Tulpa was enjoying all the new power my stolen energy was allowing him. All that kept me on my feet was knowing he’d zapped quite a bit of Joaquin’s as well, and I strained again, groaning with it, and this time was rewarded with a resounding crack. My cry turned victorious, and I steadied myself, pivoted, and sent the chair plowing into Joaquin’s face.
Or where his face should’ve been. A hand locked on to a chair leg, then another. I pushed, but Joaquin was quicker, a forward kick catching me in the sternum beneath my makeshift weapon. Tumbling backward, doubling over, I anticipated the chair cracking over my back.
Anticipation didn’t make the reality any less painful. The breath flew from my body as I ate cement, and I could’ve sworn I heard vertebrae collapsing in my spine. Sprawled, the line of agony concentrated in my core before burning itself out in my limbs, I screamed in pain and frustration as my hands and feet went numb and useless.
I heard the chair clatter, then crackle as it sparked against a wall, then Joaquin was on me, flipping me over.
“This is familiar,” he taunted, and though he didn’t exactly look fresh, he was straddling me, propping his weight on the center of my spine, bearing down. When I’d finished screaming-and that only because there was no more breath left in my lungs-he spoke, words liquid and smooth, his face glazed over in satisfaction. “Look at you. You’re exhausted. Burned so badly your skin is peeling…probably sensitive to the touch.”
He plowed his fingertips into the burns along my neck, but this time I couldn’t even spare the breath to scream. Pain was a constant, but so was the rapid thudding of my heart. Which meant I was alive.
“You don’t look…any…better,” I told him, and he whipped his hand across my face so hard, my cheek ricocheted off the cement.
He propped himself up on my waist, sitting so straight I could’ve toppled him if I’d still had the use of my limbs. Instead I had to wait until I recovered, or thought of something better. Nothing was coming to me right now. “I’ll never understand why you guys do that,” he said, running his hand through his hair, smoothing all the ends back into place. “Expending all your excess energy protecting a mere mortal. You might’ve had me if not for that. And now”-he shook his head in mock sadness-“you’re my victim again.”