Madhouse (Cal Leandros, #3)(80)

We walked on and the tunnel seemed to get more and more narrow, but I thought that was more me than actual reality. We'd been underground a lot lately and it reminded me … of what, I wasn't really sure. Abbagor's cave? Although we'd almost died there more than once, I didn't think that was it. It was deeper than that, an abscess aching from a long time ago. No, not Abbagor, but maybe something more terrifying than even he had been.

The Auphe had had me for two years. I couldn't recall a single moment of those years spent in a world separate from this one. But there were times I woke up to the feeling of rock beneath my fingers and the sense of tons of the same hanging overhead. Caves, the monsters loved the goddamn caves.

"Cal."

I drew in a breath of tainted air, trying to clean away what barely qualified as the shadow of a memory, and moved past Promise and Robin to stand beside Niko. "Yeah?"

"We have a room." He indicated the door almost fifty feet down the hall. I couldn't make out any details. It was at the edge of the flashlight beam.

"Okay. I'm ready." With the Desert Eagle and the explosive rounds, I was designated distraction of the day. I needed to keep Sawney's attention on me while Niko put his plan into play. As the Redcap had already acquired a taste for me, it shouldn't be that hard. I went on ahead with Niko close at my back. When I reached the door, I noticed the faded printing on it. hydrotherapy treatment room. I wanted to ask Nik what water had to do with the treatment of mental health, but kept silent as I moved a hand toward the handle. He could be there. Sawney could be right there, and I wasn't going to tip him off. I was ready for this to be over.

The element of surprise was lost with the screech of hinges almost rusted into a solid whole. That didn't mean it hadn't been opened recently. The metal was so old; it would never open easily again. Grimacing, I shoved at the door hard and with Niko's help got it open enough to let a person slip through, and through I went. The room was small and empty except for a water-filled square in the filthy tiled floor. Five feet by five feet, it was too small to be a pool and a little too early in plumbing history to be a whirlpool tub.

"Why is there water in it?" I mused aloud. It was murky and impenetrable and it shouldn't have been there. Whatever it had been used for in asylum days, I would think it would've long dried up over the past hundred years or so. "And what the hell was it for?"

"In less educated days, mental health workers used to plunge people over and over underwater. It was some time before they came to admit that near drowning didn't seem to improve anyone's mood disorder." Niko regarded the flat surface of the water with disdainful repugnance. "I doubt Sawney is using it for a reason any more enlightened."

He was right.

A hint of white swelled under the water, breached, then sank again. An arm, it had been an arm. Christ. You'd think I'd be getting used to finding body parts littering the landscape in Sawney's wake. I wasn't. As we continued to watch, a leg appeared and disappeared, followed by a hand. All were disembodied, all white and drained of blood. The hand was a woman's, delicate with nail polish the exact color of a rose I'd once seen at a flower stand. Pink with the faintest touch of peach—the color of spring. It was beautiful and it was awful and I wondered if the ring belonged to her.

"Goulash," Robin said beside us. "Lovely. I'll never eat again."

"I have seen worse. So have you." Promise nudged him into motion.

"So I have," he exhaled. "Although I could've done without the reminder."

We all turned to exit the room. I'd taken one step when the cold hand fastened around my ankle and I was suddenly breathing water—black water that served as the broth for body parts. I choked and held my breath as I kicked at the iron grip that pulled me down. I felt the random bump of decaying flotsam and jetsam and kicked all the harder. It didn't help. There was the sharp scrape of a tile-edged opening at my waist just as I felt fingers on my wrist from above. Warm fingers. Niko. But as suddenly as his grip had appeared, I was yanked from it. I passed through the opening that I could only feel, not see. After that there was more water, the burning of my lungs, and that implacable grasp on my ankle.

Finally just as my breath threatened to give out, I was dragged out into the air feet-first. Not unlike my birth, I came out kicking and screaming. Or kicking and spitting waterlogged curses. A revenant had his teeth buried in my thigh. I kicked him off with my other foot and he looked up, grinning at me with a mouthful of mottled yellow and green teeth. I aimed the Desert Eagle there and blew his head off. There was more splashing of water and I twisted to see another revenant rising from the water. I fired again and the pieces of him sank beneath the surface.

Now alone on the tile floor—except for one dead revenant—I coughed up water and did my best not to think about what had been in that water. Around me was a room that was identical to the one I'd been yanked from. Great. More cutting-edge mental health care. I looked at the water one more time and then shook my head dog-fashion, sending the water flying. Nik wasn't coming. If he were, he'd have been here already. The other revenant must have closed some sort of hatch in the passage that connected the two tanks of water. Closed and locked it.

I set the flashlight on the floor to prop against my leg, which wasn't bleeding too badly, wiped at my face, and rolled up my sleeve. On my arm the map of the tunnels sprang into view. Niko's anal-retentive ways paid off yet again. I mentally traced a path that would connect the tunnel this room was off back to the tunnel where the others were. I knew Nik would be doing the same. Hopefully, I'd meet them in the middle. I grabbed the light and scrambled to my feet. The door to the room was half open and I slipped through into the hall, turning left.