by A L Hart
“Back in Skashora, their wards didn’t work on me. I can teleport out of them.” I looked her over. “But you already know this,” I guessed. “So something else is bothering you. Why won’t you tell me?”
She shook her head. “Because it’s selfish of me, and because I know you. I know how you’ll react.”
“Jera, I’m suspended in a cage, who knows how many feet high, who knows what’s at the bottom. I’m in another world. For you—”
“Because of me.”
“—Wouldn’t you say we’ve reached the point where we can trust one another?” I asked this, but what kind of hypocrite did it make me seeing as I wasn’t being completely honest with her either?
But that helplessness I’d felt before, the ignorance to what had caused her transformation and how to calm her, I didn’t want to go through it again. Or, to be more pragmatic, I couldn’t have her go through it again should we find ourselves in a dangerous situation—such as this one.
“You can trust me,” I said softer.
“I know I can,” she grated, then shook her head again. “You’re the only one left I know that I can trust.”
Disgust moved within me. Disgust at myself. Trust? I didn’t deserve it. Not hers. While I’d never hurt her physically, if it came down to it, if Lia/Jinxy needed to be killed, I would do it. For everyone’s sake, and live with her hating me.
“Then tell me, what’s wrong? What happened to you back there?”
She blew out a harsh breath, brows creasing beneath her fringes. “Peter . . . you went through the portal.”
“I did.”
“Alone.”
I nodded.
“Inoli had planned for the four of us to go together. Because you and I are bonded, because you have light energy and I have dark energy, we could have escaped the price. Traveled through the portal undetected due to our energies cancelling out, but we didn’t. And your price . . . I’m fairly certain I know what it is.”
Something that made her lose it the way she had? “Tell me,” I said gently.
“Me,” she said. “Us. For succubi, passing through the gateway curses us to one male, our lives depending on intimacy. For you . . . it was the opposite. I kissed you at the faeries’ estate. Moments after, you felt pain. I kissed you on the path from Skashora. Moments later, you were coughing up your own blood. Peter, we can’t do anything because it will kill you.”
My lips parted, stun and disbelief leaving me cold. “That . . . that was my price?”
She chuckled humorlessly. “No . . .” Another laugh, another hollow sound. “No, your price is the honorary pleasure of watching me die.”
It sank in then. She needed me to survive—but even something as small as a kiss would hurt me. Sex? That would kill me.
I’d spouted to Neer how devastating the price of crossing the gateway was, how the price always outweighed the objective. My objective had been to save the world. I glanced away from her, reluctant for her to read it on my face, the blatant truth: she meant more to me than the world itself, because the moment she’d walked into my coffeeshop and turned my world from grey to the color of her, she’d become my world.
And the Shatters was taking her away.
“Jera, I didn’t know. I’m sorry . . .”
“Sorry? Why are you sorry? For the longest you’ve all but thrown your heart at me; I’d say this is a fitting route for us, hm? The moment I’m receptive, there’s nothing to be done. I’m getting what I deserve.”
“No—”
“Yes, Peter, now how about we let it rest. We have bigger things to worry about.”
As if spoken into the universe, a piercing screech sounded from above, filling the tunnel. Followed by a gust of freezing wind, devouring the former heat.
I gasped when the second wind turned icy, rushing through the tunnel at high speed, but Jera was on her feet, backing towards me, her hands automatically reaching to her back only to realize her weapons had been stripped from her when we were unconscious. She huffed incredulously.
“What is that?” I managed, throat dry, chilled.
“Do you remember those dragons I mentioned?” she asked coolly, collected.
I narrowed my eyes, hoping this was all some joke but sadly, I knew better. Giants, talking dogs, why not a dragon?
The cage began to move, the heavy hook it was attached to groaning as the chains ascended up towards the light. I braced myself on my hands and knees, hearing as the sound of wind slowly began to mix with that of . . . cheering?
“It would seem they’re ready for a show,” she murmured sarcastically.
“I’m not exactly excited to give them one.” I managed to come to my feet, jolted by the moving cage as it climbed higher. “Here.” Barely keeping my footing, I clamored over to her and took her hand.
But when I tried to teleport, I was met with a black, vacant sensation at the pit of me. My dark energy was motionless, nonresponsive. Panic set in, my hand tightening around hers. “Something’s wrong.”
Jera tilted her head, studying me in the low lighting for a moment, before a sound of frustration ground through her. “Those unseelie. Whatever was in the tranquilizers must have neutralized your ability to teleport, dampened your energy”
I closed my eyes again, directed the dark energy moving through the rocks and air into me. When I tried to teleport again, there was nothing, but when I willed that same dark energy into the palm of my hands, a long blade took form.
“I can still make things,” I said, handing over the sword, the weight of it heavier than I’d imagined.
She took it effortlessly, testing it in her grip before squinting up at the enlarging circle of light. “Your wings, can you extract them?”
“I can’t fly,” I warned her, but still, when I beckoned the enormous things out, they obeyed, folding and curling in around us to keep from touching the cage’s bars.
“I know,” she said, that look of calculation returning to her eyes. The cage was near the opening now, the sound of the crowd becoming deafening. Did they know who we both were? And if so, were they that eager to see us put down?
Understandable, considering both the Maker and Jera’s history.
Suddenly I understood why she wanted my wings out. When the next roar and explosive gust of cold air blew past us, my body felt it all, goosebumps rising—but not the wings, their leather skin unfazed, the feathers rustling gently in the after-breeze.
“I need you to stay very close to me, understand?” she commanded.
“Of course.”
“All of the earth, fire, shadow and spirit dragons escaped to another world eons ago. Water and ice dragons are the only ones remaining in the Shatters. The good news, they’re all blind. The bad news, a male by the name of Peter refused to assert his wicked ways on my body and therefore all I have is a steel sword that will hardly penetrate the thing’s scales.”
She seemed to think about this as the cage finally rose above the tunnel and the audience came into sight. Sand, lots of it, compacted around us, forming one large colosseum. Sandstone rose in a circular arch, the crowd standing by the thousands, all of them making sounds that were easy to distinguish as despise, confirming their hatred. Were they all faeries? Or were there other immortals here just for the thrill and brutality?
The questions died the moment I spied the thing across the arena. It took up an eight of the arena, its body massive, reptilian. Dark blue scales reflected the purple daylight, its beastial form stretched long. A snout twice the length of my arm ran back into curved, jagged horns, nostrils flaring, a blue fog trailing. Its tail whipped back and forth, faded blue eyes seeming to look right at us.
“We’re going to die,” I breathed, fear replacing my blood, but my mind was racing as I opened myself to the dark energy around me.
Not everyone in the crowd was fae, I discovered, only half, the others pulsing with their own ribbons of dark energy of various immortal species, but it was the beast opposite of us whose energy
pulsed the loudest, strongest, a massive reservoir I couldn’t fathom attempting to drain.
With a smirk, she said, “Knowing what we do about your price, I suppose it’s a good thing you rejected me. Pointless, however, seeing as we’re both going to die here.”
“You know it’s not like that—”
The moment the cage bars lifted, Jera charged at me, sending us flying back into the sandstone. We smashed into the hard material, sand combusting around us, my wings absorbing most of the impact.
I sputtered up dust, vision blurred, yet I heard it. The cage we were once standing in, it crackled as a glacial blast corroded a path towards it, icing it in its entirety.
“Are you alright?” Jera asked, peeling herself from me.
I gave one feeble nod, eyes stuck on the scaled beast. Its head was gigantic, and when it sniffed the air and stalked towards us, the crowd went ballistic, throwing things from the ledge to rile the creature.
“I need a clear shot of his head. Unfortunately I’m not as impervious to ice as I am fire.”
“How . . . how are we supposed to get close enough for that?”
We both winced when an ear splitting bay tore across the field, the ground trembling, the roar of the crowd drowning out whatever it was Jera said to me.
I tried to take deep breaths to assess the situation, but the noise, it was too loud, the cold sinking into my thoughts. I couldn’t fly, couldn’t teleport. Only create things whose makeshift was composed of basic elements, those in which I knew.
A wall, maybe? A titanium wall of protection—
A torrent of glacial frost shot from the dragon’s mouth. I twisted my back to it not a moment too soon, Jera secured against me. Ice splattered against the sandstone, outlining the shape of my wings, crystal shards clattering from them.
The crowd cheered, walls trembling.
The dragon marched forward, each of its steps jolting the entire colosseum. It’s jowls stretched wide then and I could practically hear the ice particles forming. The sudden frigidity to surge around us . . . it was going to ice the entire arena. My wings may have been bulletproof, invincible to hazardous conditions, but they when snapped closed, they weren’t airtight. It wouldn’t keep the frost at bay.
“Jera . . .”
“I know,” she said.
I extended my search for dark energy farther, consuming all in which I touched, the world seeming to brighten, my skin raising gooseflesh. I didn’t stop. I drank it all in; it was teleport or die here.
Pink-yellow ribbons brushed against me. I froze, looked up.
Amongst the crowd, there was a platform sanctioned off above the rest of them. Seated there were two figures whose face I didn’t recognize. One, a man whose tusks reminded me of the bouncers at Niv’s club, his skin lumpy and porous, eyes half the size of his head, but the immortal beside him—was nothing more than a teen, fifteen at most. Due to the long fall of partially dreaded, partially silken blond hair, I couldn’t get a hint on the gender. Only the bright golden eyes, ethereal honeydew skin, regal attire of white and bronze, beads and jewels woven into its mane, battling with the spark of amusement found in its gaze—
“Peter!”
Jera tackled me again, sending us flying across the arena as a nimbus, deadly frost exploded from the dragon’s mouth, sucking the humidity and heat from its path, turning the daylight blue. Some of those seated close to the arena’s edge—the last thing I saw was their cheering faces freezing, ice consuming them where they stood.
And then we were falling before the explosion reached us.
The pit. She’d launched us into the pit only for us to meet another end. Wind whipped past us as we spiraled.
“Open your wings,” she shouted, her grip on me vice.
I tried, but I was beneath her, the direction of the air directing them closed, compressing. “You have to turn over and be on the bottom,” I managed.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
What?!
“I’d like for us not to be mash potatoes.” But when I tried to turn us over, it was more difficult than the skydivers made it look, our bodies twisting upside down, throwing my sense of direction.
“No time, the bottom is close. Teleport us.”
“I can’t—”
“Try harder!”
My wings flapped uselessly, blades of wind jerking and hurtling us faster to our doom. I tried to focus on a place away from here, willing my energy to comply, willed us to vanish.
Nothing.
We both screamed then, the torrent of wind deafening, the ground fast approaching in the dark. Jera clung tight to me.
I threw my hands out, shielding my face, bracing for impact.
An impact that never came.
Ch. 11
My wings flared wide.
Then came the impact, much lesser than the fall should have dictated. We crashed to the ground, tucked within the safety of the wings around us. Skidding, breathless, I didn’t let go. I opened myself to all of the energy sources around me, a feeble attempt to cushion the fall.
I felt nothing.
Not one trace of the potent dark energy that’d surrounded me before. Only a stale, corrupted version. A familiar version.
When we came to a battered stop, slowly I unravelled us from the mesh of leathery skin and feathers, expecting to see the purple sky, but instead I saw a twilight blue one, dark. That was when I noticed the hush. No crowd cheering, dragon rumbling, wind rushing.
Had I teleported?
Jera coughed, pushing up from me and glancing around same as I. We were laid out on concrete. Familiar concrete, outside, surrounded by familiar structures. Street lamps and telephone beams extended to the velvet sky, wind whistling between the venues, lolling me in an odd way.
“What . . . the coffeehouse?” I whispered, beginning to question whether or not I was dreaming.
Jera seemed equally mystified. “No, that’s not possible—”
“I’d know this place anywhere, Jera,” I said, pushing us both to a stand.
The dumpster behind the building, that was my dumpster. The potholes and worn back door, that was mine. We were in the alley behind the shop and the window posted up on the second floor showed it was lights out. How had we gotten here?
“You didn’t teleport,” Jera said quietly, watching me with wonder. “You opened a portal.”
“I thought only elves and Imperial Beasts could—” I stopped myself, dropping the matter. The Maker, he could teleport and open portals to other worlds to study them. Maybe I had all of his gifts and in time, they would completely develop? Or maybe that was wishful thinking, because if I had his abilities completely, that would make me strong enough to take on Jinxy with ease. And yet here I was, back on Earth, in the small town of Wamego, while Jinxy was somewhere in the Shatters plotting something terrible.
Which reminded me.
“Jera, back in the colosseum, who were those two seated on the platform?”
“Who cares?”
“I do.”
“The one on the left is the coordinator of the matches, the owner of the Hallowgrounds. He’s a troll ancient as the dirt presiding in that land. Those seated on the right are the ones responsible for the capture of that day’s contestants. Why?”
I frowned. “There was only one person sitting on the right.”
“Then one person captured us.”
“I recognized their dark energy, Jera. It was Lia’s, only . . . there was another code there.” Yellow and pink whereas before Lia’s dark energy had been a bright array of fuschia. “I think the one who captured us was Jinxy.”
She crossed her arms. “I’d have recognized Lia.”
I shook my head. “No. Not if he didn’t look like her then. Tathri said he could make copies, but he didn’t say he could switch between looking like Ophelia and what I’m guessing was Jinxy’s true face.”
Which was startlingly . . . innocuous, young. The boy I’d seen up on that platform
looked like he’d never bring another harm.
“He must have been testing us,” she said. “Trying to scope out the extent of our powers.”
“You’d think he already knew since he was the one who helped me train all of those times.”
“Higher stakes in the Shatters, higher measures.” Jera tilted her head and looked up at the coffeeshop. “There’s only one person in there.”
One person?
Danny!
I ran to the back door then, Jinxy removed from my thoughts, but when I attempted to yank it open, resistance had me pulling harder. How long had I been gone, roughly four days?
The door wasn’t giving. I started to knock.
“Here, let me,” Jera said.
I stepped aside and watched her grab the handle and pull. Nothing happened. Her lips thinned, grip tightening as she threw more effort into it. Nothing.
Not only was she losing her powers, I accepted with a pang. She was losing her strength. Rapidly. The kisses, they had little effect.
“Jera—”
“I got it!” she rejected, yanking harder, teeth gritting. Was it dignity, pride, or denial? The frustration in her eyes made me look away, banish the thoughts that threatened to surface. Like how it would only get worse. She would fade and I would remain.
I pushed out a breath to fight the unknown emotions congealing in my chest.
I heard the knob give finally, the metal twisting and groaning as it was wrenched free. The irony was heavy when I heard the bolts give next, the same ones I’d installed to keep the twins out. Not that I could have predicted breaking into my own shop.
The door hung open, the hall leading to the lounge laid out before us. I hesitated, feeling as if I’d been away for far longer than four grueling days. The dragon may have had something or everything to do with that disorientation—but there was also the other thing. Facing Danny.
I’d left a minor alone. Not just a minor, but one I’d entrusted into my care, beneath the law. He may have given me the okay to go after the twins, but as an eleven year old, it was my responsibility to reject it, to stay behind and keep my promise.