The Maze The Lost Labyrinth - By Jason Brannon Page 0,71

prayed he had neglected to check the sliding glass door leading into the laundry room. Before I tried the door, I peered through the window in the den, searching for any clue as to what was happening.

The first thing I saw was blood.

Chapter 35

The minotaur blinked his eyes once, twice, three times. No matter how many times he blinked, the sight before him remained the same. Things were different this time around- they were worse.

“Again?” He grumbled, still reeling from defeat. “So soon?”

The hallways smelled of sewage and rot. The walls weren’t comprised of flashing luminescent signs and symbols but of oxidizing sheet metal. Rusty chains hung from the rafters like streamers at a gothic birthday party. Bare light bulbs dangled from the ceiling, winking on and off periodically like eyes readying themselves for sleep. Dark, shadowy creatures with bodies like quicksilver chattered from unseen places, speaking in languages that had been dead for thousands of years. The hallways were filled with screaming; agony, not guilt, was now the currency of the realm, and this was a place of wealth.

Clouds of mosquitoes drifted from one passageway to the other, looking for fresh blood to dine on. Even the flies that swarmed around Asterion’s head were agitated by them. He waved them away and surveyed his new home, noting every ounce of pain that was infused into this place. This was what it must feel like to mainline pure, uncut misery.

Imps with stilettos for teeth worked tirelessly on new and more gruesome facets of the maze. One coated blowgun darts with poison it extracted from the back of a small red frog. Another dug holes in the ground; newly sharpened stakes would be buried there, waiting for some unsuspecting victim to fall in. Some of the other imps hauled in torture devices that were in perfect working order from frequent use. Iron maidens. Cat’s claws. Whips. Thumbscrews. Guillotines. Judas cradles. Beds of nails. Dunking tubs.

It looked like they were preparing for a witch trial, but, Asterion thought any self-respecting witch would be frightened of a place like this.

Asterion himself was even a little bit afraid. This maze was darker than any he’d ever inhabited before, even the one Daedalus had constructed so many centuries earlier. The bleak landscape had as much to do with the new Architect as it did with him.

The trials and tribulations in this labyrinth would be more vicious, more gut-wrenching, and involve more pain and blood than any Asterion had ever participated in before. Even the imps chattered nervously to themselves as they constructed new and terrifying perversities that would haunt this place. They weren’t used to this level of sadness and anguish either.

Some of the labyrinths allowed random rays of light in here and there. Some, like the one Jamie had constructed, had an inner source of illumination that suggested reasons for hope and prayer. In this one, the darkness swallowed light whole. It was like a black hole in the shape of a maze.

Unlike most of the traps, which were largely empty and desolate and devoid of life, this one was brimming with arch demons. The hallways were full of their sulfurous smoke and their black laughter. The shadows created by their outstretched wings were enough to snuff even the most resolute flame. The air was alive with the scratching of their claws on cement and the clicking of talons scraping up and down the sheet metal walls. They waited, just like Asterion.

Asterion spoke aloud to calm his nerves. “We’ve got our work cut out for us with this one, don’t we?”

The voice of the maze sighed. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Chapter 36

Seeing the pool of blood was enough to make me panic, and I nearly charged through the sliding glass door right then and there. Knowing what I know now, that might have gotten everyone killed.

Thankfully, I waited just a fraction of a second longer and strained my neck to see where the blood was coming from. The moment I saw Carl Beckett lying there on the floor, bound with telephone wire, was the moment he saw me. His eyes went wide and so did mine. I wasn’t sure what Darrell Gene had done to him, but it didn’t look good. Carl had lost a lot of blood.

He rocked back and forth, making imprints of himself in the coagulating puddle. He was trying to get free. I weighed the risk of trying to help him versus the risk of leaving him and