The Magpie Effect - The Magpie Chronicles Book 1 (#Wattys2015)

Chapter 24

For the second time in less than twenty-four hours, I found myself standing before the abandoned monument that was The Ritz. The fresh hole in its roof served as a blackened remnant of yesterday's storm, and the puddle that now constituted the car park had become a fully-fledged lake, its shores gently lapping at the steps that led up to the entrance in the idle breeze.

The stillness was eerie. It was hard to imagine that, only decades ago, the crowds would have been rushing up those steps on a Friday evening, dressed to the nines and fat on the silvery gossip that they'd spent the week harvesting; the Magpies of the nest.

Now, it stood as dead as its occupant.

Carefully, I picked my way around the makeshift lake until I reached the side-entrance that we'd used before, the boarded up doorway with the missing panels. Cold air leaked out like an icy breath, warning me to stay away.

Every fibre of my being wanted to heed that warning. I would gladly have succumbed to cowardice, even if it meant a lifetime of shame and disgrace hereon. But there were so many things resting on the balance, so many truths that I wanted to uncover, that I had no choice but to go on. I felt like I'd uncovered the protrusion of a rare fossil, only to dig further and discover not only that it was false, but that it was part of an ambush to lure me in.

What exactly was Mona's motive? Why had she lied to me about so much? My need to understand overrode everything else. Something niggled at my brain like a leech. There was something dark at work here, and part of me felt like it already knew.

After a deep breath, I ducked through one of the empty slots. Instantly, the darkness absorbed me. It became me. Like a duplicitous trickster it stepped forward and claimed to guide me. It was going to deliver me to her, not stand as a shield between us. The darkness was Mona's friend, not mine.

But options were meagre, so I fumbled through the black. The corridor seemed much longer than before. Water dripped on me from above, stagnant rainwater that had yet to find its way to the ground. I tried to use the walls as a guide, but what my fingers touched was cold and slimy.

The journey seemed to last forever. This dark, cavernous corridor felt like a tunnel taking me deep into the bowels of the earth. I didn't dare take out my phone and use it as a torch. I barely even allowed myself to breath. I needed to be as invisible as it was possible to be.

I sensed that the corridor was coming to an end even though I couldn't see a thing. If I focussed, I could just about make out the fire-exit door before me, the one that lead to the main auditorium.

I stopped in front of it. My heart hammered inside my chest. What did I do now?

Almost as though in response to my confusion, Mona's voice impaled the void.

"This is taking a lot longer than I thought," she said.

I froze, at first thinking that she was speaking to me, that she'd reached out with some sinewy tendril of intuition and groped for me in the darkness. But then, when somebody answer, I seized up and pressed myself against the wall.

"It'll be worth it," the voice said. I couldn't see who it belonged to, but it sounded to me like a young man. "It feels so good. Better than I could ever have imagined."

"Does it?" Mona asked. Her tone was different, somehow, ripened. "Tell me how it feels. It's been so long, almost as if I was never alive at all."

"It feels..." the man paused and let out a hiss, "godly. I feel like I've been elevated. I don't even care that his vision isn't perfect. I can flex my fingers, I can feel the hairs on the back of my neck. I don't remember ever stopping to think about these things before, but now I can feel each and every pulse of blood through my veins. I can feel it feeding my flesh, distributing it in the perfect doses required to keep me alive. It's a masterpiece."