on and saw a much less organized scene than before: bones had tumbled out of the walls and littered the floor, and in some cases they were mounded up in piles with no effort at arrangement at all. Unlike the ones in the main corridor, these looked like they'd just been thrown around any old way. I'm not usually sentimental about the dead—I meet too many of them—but it still seemed wrong. Friends and enemies, parents and children, all jumbled up, with nothing to give a history, a date of death, even a name.
"It would help if you shone the torch on the map," Pritkin commented caustically. I obliged, and the beam lit up his face, too. Its expression wasn't reassuring. "Are your ghosts here?" he demanded.
"No. They wouldn't follow us beyond the cemetery limits." And it felt like we'd left those behind a while ago.
"What about others?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because this map is less than adequate! Some directions would be helpful."
I shook my head. "These bodies were disturbed. I think they were brought here from their original resting places."
"Meaning?"
"That their ghosts would have stayed behind." Not to mention that if it was mages buried here, they wouldn't have left ghosts anyway. Supernatural creatures just didn't, as far as I knew.
"But their bones are here."
"Doesn't matter. Spirits can haunt a house, even when their bodies aren't there. It's all about what was important to them in life, the place where they felt a connection." I looked around and repressed a shiver. "I don't think I'd feel real connected to this place, either."
Pritkin finally settled on a direction and we took off again, sliding through gaps in the rock that, at times, were barely big enough for me. I don't know how he got through, but based on the muttered comments that drifted back, it wasn't without the loss of some flesh. Finally we came to a slightly wider corridor, meaning that we still had to go single file but could pick up speed. For a minute, I thought we'd succeeded in losing our pursuers, but as usual, Murphy's Law caught up with us.
We came barreling around a corner only to run almost directly into a party of dark shapes. There were yells and bullets and spells, with one of the last exploding against Pritkin's shields, popping them like heat on a soap bubble. "Run!" he snarled in my face. I heard rumbling, like distant thunder, and then the ceiling came down with a roar that consumed the world.
Chapter 2
It took me a few seconds to realize that I still wasn't dead. I was in a crouch, my hands protecting my head, expecting an attack, but the corridor was as silent as the tomb it was. The only people besides us were cemented into the walls or buried under the pile of rubble that their own spell had brought down on their heads. I collapsed back against the floor, breathing raggedly, and tried not to scream.
After a minute, I felt around for the flashlight and my hand closed over a cool plastic cylinder. I clicked it on, relieved to find that it still worked, and saw Pritkin lying on his side. He wasn't moving, and he had blood smeared through the stubble on his chin, bright and frightening. Murphy and his little law can go to hell, I thought furiously, shaking him frantically.
"Would you kindly stop doing that?" he asked politely.
I stared. I wasn't entirely sure, but a polite John Pritkin might be a sign of the apocalypse. "Did you hit your head?" I tried to move closer to get a better look, and my knee accidentally knocked a shower of stone pebbles onto the oozing gash on his forehead.
"If I tell you I'm all right, will you stop trying to help me?" Every muscle in my body relaxed at the familiar tone, all ruffled feathers and crisp impatience. That was better; that was solid ground.
"So, still alive?" I croaked.
"Damn right."
He just lay there, though, so I shone the beam around, giving him a minute. It took a few seconds to realize exactly what I was seeing. Pritkin had apparently gotten his shields back up, because they glowed blue and waterlike, rippling slowly in the yellow beam. But the cave ceiling wasn't above them anymore. Or, to be more accurate, it was there—it was just no longer attached to anything.
Huge, half-quarried blocks, some still bearing ancient chisel marks, lay on top of the suddenly very thin-looking shields. Every time