The Devil's Labyrinth

moment he thought he must be going crazy. Ice flowed in his veins, and he felt a terrifying power surge through him, chilling first his hands, then his wrists, moving steadily up his arms and into his chest.

Then it reached his heart.

He wasn’t going crazy at all — he was dying.

He knew he was dying — knew it with a certainty as strong as the agonizing pain that tore at his body.

Then it was over.

But he wasn’t dead.

Instead he was glowing.

The same pale, greenish light that had come from Jeffrey Holmes only a moment ago now seemed to be emanating from the flesh of his own body, and when he looked over at Melody, she, too, was surrounded by the pale aura.

Whatever had been in Jeffrey Holmes’s body was now in theirs.

Leaving the stone casket cover askew, Ryan took Melody’s hand and together they left the empty body in its stone coffin and began walking back through the darkness, guided only by the cold light that now dwelt within them.

CHAPTER 54

RYAN QUIETLY SAT in the library. The nausea of the morning gone; after he and Melody had come back up from the tunnels he’d felt much better. His mind felt far sharper, too, and even his senses seemed keener than they ever had been. Indeed, as he stared at the neck of the boy who sat at the next table — kind of a geeky guy named Peter Wise — Ryan could almost see right through his skin to the muscles, arteries, and veins that lay beneath the skin. Now he envisioned a blade…

A razor blade?

No. The blade of a knife.

A long, thin blade tapering to a point so sharp it would slip through Peter Wise’s skin so easily it would be almost as if nothing were happening at all. Maybe a little trickle of blood, but not much.

Not much until the knife sank deeper, cutting through the thick cords of muscle supporting Peter’s head, then slashing into the carotid artery.

Then the blood would gush, spurting through the wound as Peter’s head pitched forward. As the life began to bleed out of him, Ryan would plunge the blade deeper still, jabbing the point between two of the vertebrae and cutting the spinal cord. Peter would collapse then, but would still be alive, maybe even still conscious. Then—

“Ryan?”

Ryan’s face flushed hot and he jerked his gaze away from Peter Wise’s neck. Jesus! What had he just been thinking? What was the matter with him?

The librarian was glaring at him, almost as if she knew what he’d been thinking about. But then he saw the headmaster’s secretary standing near the door.

“You’re wanted in Father Laughlin’s office, Ryan. Right away.”

Ryan felt every eye in the room on him as he gathered up his book, notebook, and pen, and zipped them all into his backpack. What could Father Laughlin want? Did he know where he and Melody had been a few hours earlier? What had happened in that little room deep in the subbasement?

“Some people are here to talk to you,” Sister Margaret said as they crossed the courtyard.

“People?” Ryan echoed. “Who?”

Sister Margaret shrugged and opened the door to the administration building. “Go on in,” she said, nodding toward Father Laughlin’s office.

Two men in police uniforms were waiting with Father Laughlin, and they both rose to their feet as Ryan came in, and just the looks on their faces were enough to tell Ryan that whatever they had to say was something he wasn’t going to want to hear.

“Ryan McIntyre?” one of the men said. “I’m Officer McCain. This is my partner, Officer Morgan.”

Ryan looked uncertainly from one to the other. What was going on?

“Come on in and have a seat,” McCain said, indicating an empty chair.

Ryan dropped his backpack to the floor and perched nervously on the edge of a chair.

“Ryan,” Father Laughlin began, then nervously cleared his throat.

“Ryan,” McCain took over. “We have to tell you that your mother was assaulted last night.”

The words seemed to hang in the air, and for a moment Ryan wasn’t sure what they were saying. But as the meaning of the words slowly sank in, he finally spoke. “Assaulted? What do you mean assaulted?” His eyes shifted from McCain to the other policeman, then back to McCain. “Is she all right?”

“We hope she will be,” McCain said. “She’s in the hospital in Newton, and we’ll be happy to take you to see her.” He glanced at Father Laughlin, who nodded. “But first, we wanted to know if you had any idea who might have done such a thing?”

A single name instantly rose in Ryan’s mind. “Tom Kelly,” he said. “Her boyfriend.”

The two policemen glanced at each other now, and this time it was Morgan who spoke. “Why would you suggest him? Has he ever done anything to her before?”

Ryan hesitated, but then shook his head.

“Then why do you think it might have been him?” McCain pressed.

Ryan shrugged. “I just don’t like him, you know?”

“Do you know where we can find him?”

Ryan shook his head. “Is my mom going to be okay? I mean, is anyone making sure he doesn’t show up at the hospital?”

“Believe me, we’re on that,” Morgan assured him. “Now as for this Tom Kelly character — he never mentioned where he lived, or where he worked?”

Ryan tried to think of a single thing he actually knew about Tom Kelly, and suddenly realized he couldn’t come up with anything. Nothing at all. Had Tom Kelly actually been that secretive about himself, or had Ryan himself just been that uninterested? Or could he just not remember? “Seems like I should know,” he finally said. “But I just don’t.”

“You might remember something later,” McCain said. “Hearing about your mom kind of takes away your concentration.” He handed Ryan a business card. “Keep this in your wallet, and if you remember anything about him, call me, okay?”

Ryan took the card and nodded.

“Ready to go see her?”

“Yes, please,” Ryan said.

† † †

Ryan sat in the backseat of the police car on the short ride to the hospital. He wanted to be afraid for his mom, he wanted to be incensed, furious even, at that jerk Tom Kelly, but something was pressing down on his emotions. He felt like a zombie, just going through the motions of being worried, upset, and angry, without actually feeling any of those things.

Maybe that was the effect of hearing that his mom was in the hospital. Maybe he was in shock.

Or maybe it was something else.

At the hospital, a nurse showed them into a big glass room filled with beeping machines. It wasn’t until he looked carefully that he saw the small, pale face of his mother amid all the wires and tubes and flashing lights.

Her head bandaged in white seemed to merge with the pillow behind her. Dark circles hung under her eyes all the way to her hollow cheeks. Her thin body barely made a lump under the blanket.

She didn’t look real.

“She’s still in a coma,” the nurse said. “The doctor will decide tomorrow morning if the swelling in her brain is