"You"re weak!" Barabbas spat the insult at me like something offensive to the tongue. My flaws, it seemed, were going to be the death of me after all. It wasn"t the outcome I"d wanted or expected.
I stretched both arms and tried to push Barabbas off of me, but he weighed too much and was far too strong. I wasn"t going to win this fight by brute force.
Dark shapes danced before my eyes, and the world around me swam in and out of focus. As my grip on reality loosened, I had one last-ditch idea. I knew that Barabbas was a physical embodiment of the sin nature that was present in every human. I also knew that one of the first steps to conquering the sinful streak which runs rampant in each of us was to be truly repentant. That meant feeling guilt and realizing that we"d done wrong.
While Barabbas was busy choking the life out of me, I fumbled one of the little amber guilt pills out of my pocket and shoved it in his mouth. The result was instantaneous. Barabbas recoiled as if he"d been slapped. His face was a twisted mask of horrid self-loathing.
"No," he said softly. "No."
I scrambled to my feet, clutching at my abraded throat, gasping for air. Barabbas was just as frantic and disturbed, pacing the floor in circles, weeping, beating at his breast.
"Make it stop!" The guilt washed over him in waves. "Please, make it stop!"
He rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands, and gritted his teeth to fight against the memories of his past. But the past also had teeth and wouldn"t let him go.
"Make it stop!"
I knew exactly how to make it stop. Before Barabbas could defend himself, I grabbed him by the tunic and used all my weight to hurl him backward. The swinging razors rocked back and forth behind me, making loud swooshing sounds as they sliced through the air. Barabbas didn"t even have time to scream before they cut him down like wheat.
Once I was sure he was dead, I turned my back to him, unwilling to look at the mess I"d made. Midnight limped toward me, favoring his left front leg slightly over the right. His movements were a little stiff; but otherwise, he seemed okay. We were both bruised and banged up, but alive.
For the moment, that was enough.
Chapter 13.
The latter half of the Hall of Barabbas was dark. It looked like some of the illuminated characters on the walls had burned out or dimmed. There was a portion of the corridor that looked almost completely unlit, and I resolved to move through that patch of darkness as quickly as possible. I was just about to enter the shadows when Midnight jumped in front of me, growling and snarling. The dog wore a certain, lop-eared goofy expression when he wasn"t mad. That changed in the blink of an eye. Saliva dripped from Midnight"s muzzle, and his eyes burned with an internal fire.
What now?
I glanced back once to make sure that Barabbas was truly dead. His body was right where I left it.
I heard the flies buzzing nearby and smelled something that reeked of rot and sulfur and malice. I knew that smell.
The minotaur stepped out of the shadows and made a deep lowing sound that caused the hair on my arms to stand at attention. Although the creature was fearsome, I couldn"t help noticing the deep gashes in its upper thigh and the scratches across its face. Midnight had held his own with the minotaur and jumped in front of me, preparing to do so again.
The two creatures squared off against each other, baring teeth and snorting ferociously. The minotaur sc.r.a.ped its horns against one wall, delighting in the sparks it made. It repeated the ritual on the opposite wall to show how mighty it was. Midnight didn"t seem deterred or intimidated by the creature"s show of bravado. Instead, he seemed ready to fight.
"Be careful."
The dog turned and gave me a dubious expression that would have seemed almost comical under different circ.u.mstances. When he turned to face his opponent, he was all business again. The deep, menacing growls coming from the back of his throat were enough to scare me. The minotaur, however, didn"t react as I expected. Instead, he did something that surprised me.
He spoke.
"I have no quarrel with your dog. You are the one I"ve been sent here to deal with."
The creature struggled to form human words with a bovine tongue, but I understood it.
"You speak?"
"Among other things." The minotaur"s voice was a low rumble. "I"m not sure how that dog found its way in here. It doesn"t belong. It"s not in the blueprint."
I didn"t know where the dog was from either, but I wasn"t going to tell the minotaur that. "Where am I?"
"You are trapped inside of a maze that I preside over. Think of this as a set of trials and tribulations tailored specifically for you."
"But why me?"
The bull snorted, briefly disturbing the halo of flies that circled its head. "You ask me that as if you don"t know."
"Karen." The minotaur nodded.
"Sin isn"t free. There is a price for everything."
"I thought that was for G.o.d to judge."
"Who"s to say that G.o.d didn"t commission the building of this place?"
"You say that as if you don"t know."
The minotaur snarled. "My knowledge of this place isn"t all-encompa.s.sing. I only know what I"m meant to know, and those are the rules."
"Rules?"
"The rules of your maze. You would do well to remember them. Number one: You have the power to save or to condemn. Number two: Entire worlds will be built or destroyed based on the choices you make. Number three: One way or another, you will die here."
"I"m going to die." I spoke softly as the implications of that statement set in.
"The rules say so, but there are reasons to persevere."
"What kind of reasons?"
"You will be subjected to a series of tasks. Your family will suffer or not depending on how well you do here inside the labyrinth."
"Not my family," I whispered. "They haven"t done anything wrong."
"You are the head of your family. They pay the price for the decisions you make."
"What kind of tasks do I have to complete?" I feared the answer.
"Have you ever heard of the Roman Emperor Trajan?"
I shook my head.
"Are you familiar with the kind of fighting that took place in the Roman Coliseum?"
I didn"t like the way this conversation was going. "Gladiators battled to the death," I said. "But I don"t know much about them."
"You"ll know more when we"re through."
"I"m not a fighter," I protested.
"You must learn to become one and quickly."
"You said yourself that I"m going to die in here anyway. What"s the point?"
"You may interpret what I said in any way you want," the minotaur said. "But the fight is one you will want to win. There is much at stake here."
"I don"t understand."
"Do you remember anything leading up to your arrival in this place? Did anything strange happen to you?"
I thought about that for a moment. "Someone started sending my wife communications accusing me of adultery. I"m pretty sure that same person shot me at point blank range right outside her apartment."
The minotaur smiled. "And wouldn"t you like to know why someone would do such a thing?"
"Of course, I would. They"re indirectly responsible for my being here."
The minotaur laughed. It was a sonorous, throaty sound that reverberated off of the walls of the labyrinth. "I"m not a bit surprised that you want to blame your shortcomings on someone else."
"Tell me about the person who"s been sabotaging my life, and tell me how winning this battle will help my family."
I was getting to the point that I thought nothing would surprise me. But the minotaur did something next that set me back. With a quick flick of its wrist and a few subtle manipulations, it extracted one of its eyeb.a.l.l.s. The ocular tissue was red and striated with burst capillaries. An image was frozen in the pupil.
"See for yourself." The minotaur held the eyeball out to me.
It was a little like watching television after I got past the fact that I was holding an eye in my hand (and one that was still attached to its stalk, no less).
The man I saw in that eye was a man I had seen on and off for the past year and never thought much about. Only this time he wasn"t wearing an angel mask.
"Darrell Gene Rankin?"
I was both enraged and mystified. I had never said much to my neighbor across the street other than a pa.s.sing "h.e.l.lo" or a "How"s it goin"?"" I had certainly never done anything to warrant the systematic targeting of my family for destruction.
"I don"t understand."
"Watch," the creature said. "You will."
Like a movie advancing frames, the scene shifted to show Darrell Gene sitting alone in his living room, staring out the picture window, watching my family. We were happy. He obviously wasn"t.
The next sequence showed Darrell Gene surrept.i.tiously stuffing a folded note into our mailbox. Abruptly, I saw Darrell Gene with a cellphone camera, watching me through a set of binoculars, then back in his house listening to demons who were speaking to him through his electronic devices.
"Is this for real?"
"Your true enemy can be very subtle in his manipulations, but he can also be very overt. The serpent"s temptations are diverse and varied."
"None of this makes sense. You"re a creature from mythology and you"re talking about Christian principles. What does a character from a Greek fairy tale know about the serpent?"
"What you see is a representation. Nothing more. I could put on a different face if you"d like. Maybe I"d be more effective if I masqueraded as Kali, the Hindu G.o.d of death."
In a flash, the minotaur transformed itself into a haunting tanned figure with six arms, all of which held sabers that could cut me down just as effectively as the scythes in the Hall of Barabbas.
I shook my head. "No. That"s not necessary."
"Osiris then?" The minotaur changed himself from a six-armed G.o.d of death to one resembling an Egyptian pharaoh.
"I don"t care what you look like. Death is death regardless of the form. I could die just as easily from anthrax as I could a couple of rounds from a Smith and Wesson."
Suddenly the bull-creature stood before me again. "As you wish."
"What should I call you?"
"I"ve gone by many names. Asterion is the one that best fits this masquerade. Of course if this appearance stops being effective, I"ll change faces until I find the one that makes you quake."
"I"m not sure I could ever get used to something like you, but the way you look isn"t important. Right now I want answers more than anything. You still haven"t told me what any of this has to do with my family?"
"Do you love your wife and son?"
"Of course I do! More now than before."
"Do you think your wife feels the same way about you?"
I was taken aback by the question. To be honest, I wasn"t sure how Amy felt about me anymore.
The minotaur"s eye shifted away from Darrell Gene Rankin and focused on Amy. She knelt at the foot of her mother"s bed, rocking back and forth on her knees and sobbing profusely. She was praying. Had I been there, I would have wrapped my arms around her and told her that everything was going to be all right. Of course, it"s difficult to be a source of solace to your wife when you"re also the source of her pain.
I thought back to the mirror image of Barabbas then fast-forwarded to this most recent image of Amy crying her eyes out. Suddenly it wasn"t so difficult to see myself as a cold, heartless murderer. I hadn"t physically harmed my wife, but I had effectively killed her spirit with my actions.
In the blink of an eye the minotaur held my heart in his hand instead of his own extracted eyeball. He made a fist and squeezed until tears streamed down my cheeks. My chest felt like it might explode at any moment. I gasped for breath as I shared Amy"s heartbreak.
"That"s because of me." My lower lip quivered. Then I thought about what I"d said and realized I was wrong. My voice became steel. "No, that"s not because of me. Darrell Gene manipulated things to hurt her. He made it look like I was cheating. He drove that wedge between us."
"And he kidnapped you and drove your car to Karen"s apartment?" The minotaur had a small amount of mirth in his voice. "Isn"t that correct?"
That hurt. Badly. But it was true. "No," I admitted. "I did that on my own."
The minotaur nodded, satisfied. "You know the score now. You know who one of your enemies is, but there are others who aren"t confined to prisons of flesh and bone. Your family is in jeopardy now. That much should be apparent. The task I have for you may affect this."
"A fight to the death."
The minotaur nodded again. "The stakes are these. You will fight an opponent of my choosing. Your canine friend may help you. If you win, someone on the side of light will pay a visit to Darrell Gene Rankin and implore him to consider his actions. That will buy you some time."
"And if I lose?"