Clown Wyrm - 16. Chapter 16 - In the Belly of the Beast

“What do you mean he got away?” Mercury squawked. “Where’d he go?!”

Morwinna was in a fury, but he was clutching his jaw, and fresh blood was streaming from his bottom lip. “He kicked me in the face and slipped into a secret exit in this panel of the wall, and it sealed behind him!”

Mercury looked at the empty doorway that led out of the room. “Periwinkle,” she breathed. She rushed to help Norjia out of the cuff around the ankle of her uninjured leg, and Mercury did her best to be careful as she released the binding that held the other; Norjia’s thigh was bleeding badly. “We need to wrap…” Mercury began.

“Use this,” Norjia grunted through her gritted teeth as she yanked her shirt up over her head, and her dreadlocks thudded against her powerful shoulders.

Mercury tried not to blush as she helped get Norjia’s shirt around her thigh.

“You’ve got to tie it tight,” Norjia managed to say. Her pain was overwhelming.

Mercury grabbed the two ends of the fabric, and she twisted them around each other in a simple knot. She made eye contact with Norjia, who nodded, and Mercury wrenched the shirt as tightly as she could. Norjia let out a cry of anguish, but her leg was temporarily secured, and Mercury needed to leave.

“Norjia, I have to go find Periwinkle.” She shoved the dagger’s handle into the warrior woman’s hand. “Here, in case that fucker comes back.”

Mercury grabbed for herself a little surgical knife off a metal cart, and she wondered what horrible thing Geometry had planned to do with it as she raced out the door and down the hall. She came to a set of stairs and descended them. They led to another hallway, and at its end was an open door. Mercury could see Periwinkle and Geometry through it. The vicious man had both his hands around Periwinkle’s throat, and he was throttling the clown, who seemed on the verge of losing consciousness.

“Oh, fuck,” Mercury whispered.

She ran with all her might, and she did not let out a scream or a battle cry of any kind as she crossed the threshold of the room’s door. With the tiny surgical blade leading the way, she plowed into Geometry, plunging the little knife into the soft flesh of his side. He winced at the shocking pain and released his grip on Periwinkle, who collapsed, coughing and sputtering.

Geometry staggered away from Mercury and fell against one of the walls. His feet slipped out from under him, and he collapsed to the floor. He was freely bleeding from Norjia’s bite wound in his face, and he let out a cry as he pulled the blade from his side.

Mercury realized Periwinkle had located the room that was holding the Mechanic, who was still unconscious, and Periwinkle was sobbing and trying to catch his breath, but Mercury needed to stay focused on Geometry; he was trying to escape. He was pulling himself in the direction of the room’s door, and Mercury rushed over to it, but as she turned around again, Geometry had disappeared. Mercury let out a growl of frustration, and she rushed to kneel by Periwinkle’s side.

“He’s gone again. Are you okay?”

Periwinkle managed to wheeze out the words, “He tried to kill me!”

“I know, and I’m so sorry I sent you off alone to find the Mechanic, Periwinkle! I’m so sorry.”

Mercury jumped to her feet and stuck her head out into the hall. Morwinna was helping Norjia hobble down the secret passageway.

“Periwinkle found the Mechanic,” Mercury called out to them, “but Geometry is still on the loose! I fucking stabbed him though!” She spun around to help Periwinkle with the Mechanic, and they released the straps that held her down. “Come on, Mechanic, wake up,” Mercury said, gently patting her cheek. Norjia and Morwinna appeared at the door. “Keep watch for that fucking asshole,” Mercury ordered. “At least if we’re all together, he’ll have a harder time sneaking up on us,”

Periwinkle was rubbing his throat. “Where is he?” he managed hoarsely.

“That fucker’s gone again,” Mercury growled.

“How do we get out of here?” Norjia asked through her gritted teeth. Her leg was a mangled mess.

“I don’t know,” Mercury admitted.

“This hotel is like something out of a nightmare,” Periwinkle added in a weak voice.

On the table behind them, the Mechanic groaned.

“Oh good,” he whispered, turning to her. “We need to get out of here,” he added as he and Mercury helped her sit upright. “Are you okay?”

“I think so,” she mumbled. The Mechanic brought her feet to the floor and rose on unsteady legs. “I’m alright,” she confirmed.

“Let’s go!” Mercury said to the others as she headed back out into the secret passageway with Norjia and Morwinna behind her, and Periwinkle and the Mechanic at the back. Ahead of her, Mercury saw a light coming from beneath the crack of a door, and she snuck up to it. She held a finger to her lips for the others to stay quiet as she leaned her ear against the door and listened. She did not hear anything, and she gingerly tried the handle. The door did not have a switch next to it that engaged or disengaged the bars, and it was not locked, so Mercury pushed it open. “What the fuck?”

Norjia and Morwinna stepped up behind her, and he asked, “What is this?”

Periwinkle and the Mechanic also looked in, and he declared, “It’s a command center!”

Multiple glass viewing windows granted access to whoever was in the room, enabling them to look into many other chambers throughout the twisted hotel.

“We found a bunch of these viewers in a few of the hallways,” Mercury informed the others, but everyone fell silent, and they all focused on one specific glass.

It looked in on the room with the four mutilated corpses.

Morwinna let out a wail and collapsed to his knees.

The Mechanic took Periwinkle’s place at Norjia’s side, helping her wife stand, and Periwinkle got down onto the floor beside Morwinna to try and comfort him. Mercury turned away and focused on a series of large handles set into one of the walls with the words open and closed beside them. Each was numbered, but their numeric designations meant nothing to Mercury, and she decided to shift every handle into its open position.

“I hope that clears a path for us out of this maze,” she stated, but then she made a skewed face, and she repeated herself. “Maze? Isn’t this place called the Labyrinth Hotel? Let’s get the fuck out of here!”

In the hallway, a hidden door that had not been visible before was now open. Mercury peeked through it and saw another secret passage, and what she saw at the end of it made her light up.

“The lobby! I can see the fireplace! This way!” She rushed in with the others close behind her, and at the hall’s other end, she paused again to peer out. There was no sign of Geometry. “Now!” Mercury shoved the secret door open, ran into the lobby, and made a beeline for the hotel’s front entrance. As she reached it, she turned back for the others. The four of them were in the middle of the grand room, when the whole hotel suddenly rattled and shook. All five of them fell to the floor.

“What the fuck is happening now?!” Mercury squawked. “Move it, you lot, move!”

“Is it an earthquake?!” Periwinkle cried out as he stumbled to his feet and assisted the others to the door.

The shaking grew more intense as Mercury, Periwinkle, Morwinna, and Norjia with the aid of the Mechanic, clambered out of the hotel and onto solid ground. To their surprise, the earth outside was not shaking. The group staggered back from the structure, and to their shock, the entire building began to rise up away from the earth.

“Is it flying?!” Mercury asked no one in particular, but her question was made moot as the hotel continued to rise. “Okay, what in the actual fuck?”

A pair of spindly bird-like mechanical legs were revealed, and they lifted the structure many stories into the air. The bottom of the hotel raised up until it was higher than the tops of the trees. The enormous thing suddenly strode forward, and in a matter of gargantuan steps, it was gone.