by Tim Akers
“Do you really think that’s Eric?” Chesa asked, staring at the headlights. It looked like he was circling Gravehome, rather than coming straight at us. She glanced at me. “Do you think he’s behind all this?”
“I can’t imagine it,” I said. “Not Eric.”
“Well. He’s up to something,” Esther said. “Let’s go.”
The ground just inside the archway was littered with loose bones. These were smaller and looked like they belonged to the dogs that had chased us here. I peered at them nervously.
“So apparently those monsters tried to get inside at some point. What do you think killed them?” I asked.
“Gravehome itself,” Esther answered. “Look at how they’re laid out. Legs and pelvis by the arch, spine stretched out, shoulders, then skull ten feet later. They come apart as they run through.”
“And that didn’t happen to us because...?” I asked.
“I wasn’t sure it wouldn’t,” Esther said. “So this is starting off well.”
I swallowed my protest. Esther was probably used to throwing herself into situations that might get her killed. It was still a novelty for me. But I was determined to not show my concern.
Beyond the dead bones, the enclosure opened up. The pillars and henges I had seen earlier spread throughout, arranged in complicated patterns. It felt like being inside a maze, except there weren’t really any walls or doors, just increasingly complex structures that led nowhere. Thankfully, Esther led the way.
“I thought the portal was just inside the archway. Shouldn’t we already be there?” I asked.
“Big elephant men tend to forget how long it takes little human feet to walk somewhere,” Esther said. “Bethany! Don’t get too far ahead!”
“You’re slow,” Bethany called. The rogue was just at the edge of my vision, sometimes disappearing in the swirling dust that blew through the bone maze. “I have to admit, I’ve got new respect for Tem. This place is epic.”
“Epically creepy,” Chesa muttered behind me. I glanced back at her. She was walking backward, bow held nocked in her hands. The archway had already been swallowed by the dust. “This isn’t where I want to die.”
“Really? Seems kind of perfect,” I said. “Maybe a little dustier than I imagined, but you really can’t beat the bone pillars and archways of death.”
“Cut the chatter,” Esther said. “There’s something coming.”
We froze. A low droning sound cut through the air. It was uncomfortably familiar.
“That’s the Viking bitchwagon,” I said.
“Your mom’s car?” Chesa asked. “But how—”
“I found the portal!” Bethany’s voice called out from the gloom ahead.
“Get Matthew through,” Esther said, pushing me forward. “Chesa, you and Bethany follow. I’ll hold the gate.”
“What do we do on the other side?” I asked.
“You’ll have to summon the angels,” she said. “But don’t go through his door yourself. And don’t talk to them. And don’t—”
“Guys!” Bethany shouted. “He’s in front of us!”
Sure enough, the sound of the car was coming from somewhere ahead. Headlights cut through the dust.
“How did that happen?” I asked.
“No time! Move!” Esther shouted. When I didn’t immediately run blindly into the darkness, she slapped me on the shoulder. “Move move move!”
I moved, running toward the sound of Bethany’s voice. I caught a glimpse of her form just as her twin blades flared to brilliant life. She was crouched in the lee of an archway. The space between the bone pillars was utterly black. Matthew’s limp form slapped against my back as I ran.
Mom’s car loomed out of the dust, windshield wipers flapping back and forth, headlights stabbing through the gloom. The bitchwagon drifted sideways, kicking up clouds of dust as it spun toward us. I caught a glimpse of Eric behind the wheel. We locked eyes for a brief moment. Eric’s face was lined in deep shadows. As he passed, he leaned out the window, as if to wave. Instinctively, I raised my hand to wave back.
He had a gun. A short, stubby, black as hell and twice as real semi-automatic of some variety. Fire blossomed from the barrel. The rest of the team scattered, dropping to the ground and covering up, but I was too stunned to move. Bullets pinged off the ground at my feet, kicking up dust and flakes of bone. I stared in horror.
And then he was gone, barreling past us, the clouds of dust kicking up from the wagon’s fishtailing back-end swallowing him like a bad dream. I heard squealing tires. Headlights flashed back toward us as he flipped the car around and punched the accelerator.
“Get through!” Bethany shouted.
“What about the others?”
“They’ll follow,” she said. “They better.”
I hesitated, looking up at the archway. The opening was nothing but darkness. I still hadn’t quite gotten over my fear of stepping into gaping voids of emptiness. Call it instinct.
Chesa appeared, sprinting past me at top speed. She vaulted into the archway and disappeared. Esther was a step behind.
“Didn’t I give you an order, Rast?” she yelled.
“But...but...” I looked around in confusion. “He has a gun!”
“Reason enough for me,” Bethany said. She turned and ran into nothingness.
Holding tight to Matthew’s still form, I squared my shoulders and stepped into the void. There was a moment of weightlessness, falling but not falling, and the weight of Matthew’s unconscious form was briefly removed from my shoulders, even though I could still feel his arm in my grip. The next breath my foot was on the stone floor of the barrel-ceilinged room, and my momentum carried me into the table. I swung Matthew’s limp body onto the table, wincing as he gave out a low groan. Blood bubbled from his lips, and the wound in his chest reopened. His eyes shot open, and his hands crawled across the ruin of his robes to grab at the dagger still protruding from his ribs.
“Jesus Loving Christ, Rast, what did you do to me?” he gasped.
“I think maybe you should stay still,” I said. I looked around. The others weren’t here. Where had they gone? “Esther said there would be help once we—”
“Present!” Gabrielle shot through the far door, escorting a pair of nurses. Owen followed close behind. He was carrying a full stretcher like it was a skateboard. Gabrielle looked around the room. “Where’s everyone else?”
“I was just wondering that myself. They went through the portal in Gravehome right before me. Tembo stayed. I’m not sure what happened.”
“Tembo will be fine,” Gabrielle said. She went to Matthew’s side, undoing the complicated webbing Esther had created. “Not sure about the others. Let’s get him stable and try to summon the girls. We’ll start with the knife.”
“We can’t fix this here,” one of the nurses said. “That blade isn’t real.”
“Sure it’s real. It’s sticking in him,” I said. “Seems real enough to me.”
“She means that it’s not part of the mundane world. It’s magic.”
“Where did Eric get a magic dagger?” I asked.
“Eric? Your friend Eric? He’s the one who stabbed the saint?”
“I guess. It’s complicated. Look, what are we supposed to do?” I asked.
Matthew gave out a low, rattling moan that drew Gabrielle’s complete attention. The medics started their work, which led to an entire symphony of misery and pain.
“Definitely a cursed blade,” the medic said finally. “It needs to come out.”
“Can we do it here? Without killing him?” Gabrielle asked.
“Yes and no, in that order. But it has to be done. Just having the thing in this place risks compromising MA’s cordon.”
“I can’t make that decision,” Gabrielle said. “I don’t have the authority to risk the life of an elite.”
Esther emerged from the door to my domain, followed closely by Chesa, then Bethany. She slammed the door once everyone was through. I looked at h
er in confusion.
“Why did you...how...”
“He screwed up the portals. Not sure how, but I’m pretty sure he was hoping to trap us in Tembo’s domain. We need to seal these doors.”
Gabrielle nodded and pulled something out of her tactical vest. She started sprinkling the doors with water and muttering incantations. Owen helped her. The doors hissed with steam as they worked.
“We need a decision!” the medic snapped. Esther took in the situation, got a brief update from Gabrielle, then nodded sharply.
“Do it,” she said.
“It’ll kill him,” I protested. “I didn’t carry him through all that just to see him die on a table.”
“Neither did I,” Esther said. She walked to Matthew’s door and hammered on the iron sun. The echo carried through the walls like a giant bell. “But it’s out of our hands now. Start praying.”
Chapter THIRTY-ONE
BRUSH WITH THE DIVINE
The medic nodded and bent to her task. The business of removing a cursed dagger from the ribcage of a living (and screaming) human being is complicated and brutal. There was a lot of blood. Mercifully, Matthew passed out about halfway through, but I carried on screaming in his place, just in case that was a critical part of the operation. When the blade was free, the medics packed the wound with gauze and drew some kind of runes around the bandage. Then they stood back and looked at Esther expectantly.
“Now?” Gabrielle asked.
“Now we wait.”
“Wait for what? Wait for him to die?” I asked.
“Wait for them to notice,” Esther said, and looked to the quiet iron sun on Matthew’s door. “Probably takes a while for them to put the suit on.”
It didn’t take long, though every second felt like a lifetime. I had to call an ambulance for a friend once, and the fifteen minutes it took for them to arrive dragged on for hours. This wasn’t fifteen minutes, but it wasn’t fifteen seconds, either. I paced nervously at Matthew’s side, wishing there was something more I could do, anything at all. Bethany and Chesa stood nervously at the hearth. Minutes passed. Finally, Esther’s head perked up. There was a grating sound from the door to Matthew’s domain, and then a chorus of horns, low and downbeat, almost a dirge. A line of brilliant light outlined the doorway, traveling from the hinges to the lock, growing brighter and brighter until it was difficult to even look at. The music rose into a crescendo that shook the room.
“What the hell is happening?” I shouted at Esther. Then I noticed that Esther, Bethany, the medics, Gabrielle, even Owen, had all taken a knee. Chesa shrugged and followed suit.
“A little deference, kid,” Esther said without looking up. “They can be picky.”
I went to one knee, suddenly terrified by what I was about to see, the presence I was about to be in. I remembered the beauty of the Valkyries, and Tembo’s casual scorn when I mistook them for angels. Trust me, you wouldn’t like angels half that much, he had said. I bent my head toward the floor. The door opened.
A vaguely humanoid figure waddled into the room. It was black as night, and at first I thought its skin was shiny and smooth, almost like rubber. Its whole body squeaked as it moved, like a barrel of balloons rolling down a hill. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a face as featureless as a plate stare down at Matthew’s limp form. I dared to look up.
Whatever the angel looked like, this one was wearing some kind of outfit, a cross between a radiation suit and a diving rig. Dials and tubes bristled over the front, and an umbilical of about a dozen hoses trailed from the shoulders to disappear into Matthew’s portal. The light, so blinding a second ago, faded into the darkness. The helmet was bound in dark iron, with half a dozen small portholes sprinkled around the dome, none of them lining up with the traditional placement of eyes or faces. I could see the faintest glow through the tinted glass, but whatever was beyond the mask was constantly shifting, like a jar full of fireflies. The angel shuffled forward.
“Saint has a boo boo.” Its voice came out of a small grill in the palm of its left hand. “What boo booed Saint? You?”
“No, brilliance,” Esther said. “A villain foul and tricky.”
“Tricky,” the angel said. “Okay.” It turned and started shuffling back to the door.
“Wait!” Esther said, rising to her feet. “Can you help him?”
“Help? Help.” The angel stood stock still for the longest time, while Matthew slowly died on the table. Finally, it shrugged in a way that was utterly wrong in some unidentifiable way, as though it had too many shoulders, or not enough. “Okay.”
It picked Matthew up and went back into the domain. We waited breathlessly until the door closed, and the droning horns faded into silence. Esther rubbed her hands nervously, then stepped forward and locked the door to Matthew’s domain. We all let out a breath that I at least hadn’t realized we were holding.
“So that was an angel,” I said.
“At least one, maybe more. Those suits are bigger than you think. Thank the gods it didn’t get bored,” Esther said. “Okay, that was good. That worked. Let’s all...” she looked around the room, eyes lingering on the table, spotted with blood, and the dagger lying beside. “Let’s never do that again.”
“What do we do now?” Bethany asked. “If Eric was able to follow us into Tembo’s domain, then there’s no telling where he is, or what he’s doing.” It felt like she was saying this to me, even though she was facing Esther. I squirmed in my armor.
“First things first,” Esther said. “You guys have compromised this place more than a little. We need to start resecuring the unreal half of MA, get Gabrielle and the rest of the mundanes behind the barrier, and seal the heroes inside.” Gabrielle started to protest, but Esther held out her hand. “No, it’s okay, it was necessary. If you hadn’t broken protocol, Matthew would be dead, and who knows what would happen to the rest of us. You did the right thing. But we need to have this place clean before we start looking for Tembo.” She made a shooing motion toward the doors by the hearth. “Go on, get going. I want to see what the actuator has to say about all this before I decide what to do about Rast’s bastard friend.”
The medics hurriedly gathered up their stuff, wiping down the table and stuffing bloody bandages into their bags before rushing out of the room. Gabrielle and Owen left more reluctantly, but Esther was insistent. Chesa and I were about to follow them out when Esther turned on me.
“John, you and Chesa stay here. In case Tembo appears, or the angel, or...or anything else happens.”
“What else might happen?” I asked.
“Just...keep an eye out. Okay?” She glanced at Bethany. “Bethany, with me. I’ll need your help with sealing this section.”
Bethany snorted something about that being a job for a mage, then she and Esther were through the door. There was the distinct sound of a bolt being thrown. We were locked in here.
Chesa pulled a chair away from the bloody table and sat down. She folded her arms and set about ignoring me.
“Are we going to talk?” I asked.
“About what?”
“About what? About Eric,” I said. “And the fact that he just tried to kill Matthew. Hell, he tried to kill me. You have nothing to say about that?”
She sniffed and somehow managed to ignore me even more. I tossed my weapons on the least bloody part of the table and pulled up a chair, turning it sideways in front of Chesa and sitting down. I threw my arms over the back and leaned toward her.
“Because if you don’t have anything to say, I sure as hell do. See, I thought it was a little weird that the two of you were suddenly hanging out. But hey, people change. Who am I to judge? Then we get in here, and you’re already half a step into fairy land, while I’m still babbling about janitors and dragons. Didn’t really strike me at the time, but you didn’t seem too surprised by what was going on. Were you?” Chesa clenched her jaw and tried to scrape her chair away from me, but I put a hand on her knee and turned her back. “Were you?�
�� I asked again.
She looked at me angrily, but there was something more. Something scared.
“Chesa, you have to tell me what’s going on. Because if you were somehow involved in this—”
“No,” she said firmly. “Or, at least, not this. Not...” she gestured helplessly at the bloody table. “Not that. No one was supposed to get hurt.”
I leaned back, a little shocked.
“Hurt by what, Ches? What’s going on?”
“Eric said he found something. Something from his writing, something that let him make his stories real. I thought he was crazy.” Chesa glanced down nervously, wringing her hands. “Then he showed me. Little stuff, like, literally. He had a family of gnomes living in his backyard. He said he could make me a princess. Helped me design the new costume, wrote some backstory...even taught me some enchantments for my bow. Then you came home, and a week later Eric says he has a plan for getting into this world. That you were going to help, whether you knew it or not.”
“Holy shit. The favor. And then the dragon. Eric did that?”
“No, you did. Eric just helped it along. He said it would tear a hole in the real world, and we could just slip through. Like Narnia, only we’d be in control.” She folded her hands in her lap and sighed. “He promised. I should have known better.”
“Ches, this is bad. This is really bad.” I stood up and started pacing. “We need to tell Esther.”
“John, no. Please don’t. She’ll kick me off the team, and then I’ll never get back to the tree. You can’t do that to me.”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but Eric seems to be breaking that promise he made to you. Those were real bullets he was shooting at us. You’re not going anywhere if you’re dead. Tree or no tree.”
“But...but maybe we can fix this ourselves. Maybe we can talk to him, get him to undo whatever it is he’s trying to do. Right?” She was pleading, nearly to tears. I felt something twist in my heart. I pushed it down.
“Sorry, Ches. Esther needs to know.” I marched to the door. “If anyone can fix it, it’s her. Maybe she’ll be lenient.”
I grabbed the handle of the door and immediately regretted it. Smoke hissed up from my hand, and pain shot through my arms, spreading like lightning through the rest of my body. I jumped back, too surprised to even yelp. I stared at the door.