“Then you better make sure I stay alive.” He grinned, enjoying having the upper hand. For about five seconds.
An unearthly howl pierced the air. The guttural sound picked up volume quickly as it headed straight for them.
He yelled, “Ah, hell.”
“What is it?”
“The spirit of some guy with a pitchfork who thinks everyone is trying to steal his pigs.”
“Can he hurt us?”
“No, but the damn pitchfork can. Don’t use your kinetic power in here.”
“Why?”
“Been there, done that and got the claw marks to prove it doesn’t work.” Tristan swung around and cursed ghosts, tunnels and the day he was born.
She turned around and saw why.
The tunnel behind them had vanished, hidden by a brick wall that had formed right down to where it cut across the middle of a rug.
The bellowing got louder and echoed everywhere.
She spun back around, and the corridor they’d been walking through originally had now split into two directions. What the . . .
Evidently this maze changed shape and direction at the will of the ghosts down here.
Each length before her appeared identically black, endless and filled with the blood-curdling banshee sound of the spirit racing toward them.
With a pitchfork.
TWENTY-FIVE
In order to be heard over the bellowing spirit, Evalle yelled, “Can’t I even throw up a wall of protective energy?”
They had to do something to stop the crazy ghost she expected to burst into view any minute holding a pitchfork like a weapon.
“Kinetics won’t stop him,” Tristan shouted. The high-pitched screeching could make a human’s ears bleed. “Energy just ricochets and hurts like hell when it hits you.”
Hesitation got you killed. She stared down the long corridor to where in thirty yards the tunnel split like a Y into two directions. “How do we tell which tunnel he’s coming at us from?”
“We can’t.”
“Then what do we do?” Where was a ghost buster when you needed one?
“Run.” He grabbed her hand and ran straight toward the split for the tunnels, dragging her with him.
She jerked her hand away and kept up with him.
Shrieking drilled the air with the power of a warning siren cranked to high in a small space.
Ten feet from the tunnel divide, Tristan veered off into the left vein.
Splitting up would be of no help if either one of them got stabbed. She followed him. Fifty feet into the dark void, gas lanterns started appearing on the wall. Flames danced into view, lighting a passage draped in flowering vines.
Thick patches of clover covered the ground.
Peacefully silent.
