Wes' heavy breathing almost covered the sound. Then: Stomp stomp stomp.
The blood rushing in his ears made it harder to hear more than that. It was getting closer. So Wes moved further.
As he tiptoed, he stopped every now and then. He held his breath, listening. Footsteps, still. Approaching still. Wes stepped away from the wall he leaned against.
The sound of the footsteps was louder now than it had ever been. Boots?
Wes went left, then right, then right again, then forward, then left and left and up. He made choices randomly, having no other idea how to go about this maze.
After he went straight five times in a row, he veered off left, then climbed up a tunnel in the ceiling. Wes still heard his pursuer's footfalls. Wait, footsteps?
Ghosts don't have footsteps. Who could be following him? Would it be a foe, someone wishing him harm? Wes didn't think so. Everyone here was united under the common flag: Humans hiding from Plant Guy and Weather Boy. But, still: Wes couldn't rid the queasiness he felt, the anxious thought that maybe he or she who was following Wes was there to harm him. Wes didn't think he had any enemies, but he had been pretty vocal about his trying to oust Danny as the ghost boy. But Danny wasn't the kind to hold a grudge, right?
His friends might, though. Tucker and Sam were as loyal to Danny as he was to them. Insanely.
Wes saw a four-way fork ahead and decided he'd go down the third from the left.
Then, Wes stopped dead in his tracks. He could see! Moments ago, it'd been pitch black. Where he could see nothing previously, now he noticed a flickering greenish hue, like fire, but green? Why would there be light so deep down here?
He could hear a warbling sound, like birds singing underwater, and playing through a radio. Weird.
He followed the light, moving toward where it was brightest. At the end of a tunnel, he saw a rippling field of something the same color as the light. The music was clearer and louder now. And so were the footsteps.
Right behind him.
Then a hand on his shoulder, pulling him, turning him.
A girl's hand, he saw, attached to an arm, then a shoulder, and a body.
The body of Jazz Fenton. Danny's older sister.
"There you are!" she said. Wes tried to slow his heart's pitter-patter of terror. He threw his paranoia aside and sighed so hard it almost hurt.
"Jazz," he gasped in relief. "How'd you find me? I tried really hard to not be caught, I thought you were a ghost!"
"You're bleeding." She pointed to his nose.
"So?"
"Your blood is glowing gold, Wes." So it was. Strange, alarming (his paranoia came back. Was he dying?), but-
"I didn't see it glow," he said.
"It's almost clear as day!"
"It was pitch dark the whole way until this green thing lit up." He poked his thumb over his shoulder.
"I don't-" The revving of a motorcycle interrupted her. They both spun toward the sound. It got closer and closer.
"Do you have any ghost-hunting weapons?" tried Wes, seeing as her parents were Amity's resident ghosthunters.
She shrugged. "Sorry," she muttered, raising her fists.
"Are you crazy? What are your fists gonna do against a ghost? We have to run! If my blood is glowing, it means they can follow it here! Hang on!" He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other. "The nurse turned into a ghost and fought the mummy ghost. He said something about… Ichor? I think he called it."
"Ichor! Are you sure?" Her eyes were wide.
"No. I'm not sure! I'm freaking out here. We're being chased by ghosts in a tunnel with a dead end and they can track us because I'm bleeding fricking glowing gold blood that may or may not be ichor, whatever that is, and I'm running on no food for apparently a month!" Wes' breathing was fast again. Great.
"Well…" she said slowly. "There's always that." She was looking at the floating green blob circle.
"Oh no! No, no, no. Nuh-uh. No way, no how." Wes' hands waved in the air between them, as if he were trying to ward off her crazy idea (and he was, in fact, trying to, a part of his mind whispered to him). "No way in Hell am I going in there. Are you crazy?"
"I prefer the term genius," she corrected and grabbed his arm. Dragging him behind her, she jumped through the grass-colored dinnerplate of death. Death.
Before he passed fully through, he saw the motorcycling ghost. He'd seen him before. "Johnny Thirteen," they'd called him. He'd fought Phantom. Good on him.