by Tracy Korn
"Should be easy enough to track her down with a title and a location, don't worry," he said. "But we'll need to get in and out. We can't afford to have all of us turn up missing tomorrow for the closing of honing week."
I nodded. "That's fine. I just want to let Max know so he can stay close to her, help her keep that Knox guy safe so the veil stays down."
"All right, we'll find him too. I'm going to tell Bryce to keep Alita close." He angled his head toward the front of our group, then raised my hand to his lips and kissed it before he walked ahead.
I took a deep breath and tried not to think of Max, of the danger he and my aunt and uncle were in now because of me. If this didn't work, Uri and Sylvie would kill them, and they would never know the truth about anything.
I wasn't sure how long I was caught up in those thoughts, but I was startled out of them by Bryce's excited shouts.
"It's there! Just ahead!" he barked, holding out a hand to stop everyone's progression.
"What's on the other side?" Rhea asked. "Water, what?"
"I don't know, Halsey said woods?" Bryce answered, glancing at me with raised eyebrows for confirmation.
"If a tear is supposed to feel like the one we went through back there, where all noise is swallowed up, then yes, this will come out in the woods."
"All right, then look out," Alec said, making his way to the front of the group. "Wait, unless...is it like, a drop out of the sky?"
Rhea rolled her eyes. "Come on," she said, extending a hand. "We'll go together."
Alec bounced his nearly white eyebrows at us and took her hand. They started walking slowly, but didn't seem to be getting anywhere.
Rhea turned back to us. "Where is it supposed—" She didn't even have the chance to finish the sentence before they both disappeared into the ground in a swirling cloud of fog, which made the rest of us jump.
"Oh my god," Alita gasped. "Are they all right?" We all exchanged glances until Rhea's head and shoulders appeared near the ground in exactly the place she'd just fallen through.
"No wings necessary. It opens about a foot off the ground next to a giant rock wall," she said, then disappeared again.
"All right," Bryce blew out a breath. "Shall we?" He offered an arm to Alita, who flipped her long, red braid off her shoulder and gave him a huge smile. She took his arm, and in a few more steps, they, too, disappeared into the ground.
"Our turn," I said, moving toward the spot where everyone else went through.
"I'll go first and catch you," he said, smiling.
"It's just a foot off the ground..." I trailed off, wondering why Leo was already several steps in front of me.
He turned to look at me. "I'm sorry, Halsey..." he said, his expression falling.
"For what?"
He sighed. "We aren't leaving in a week. This is the strike team...here, now. We just needed you to find Eve."
I swallowed hard to push down the tightening feeling in my chest as my heart pounded in my ears.
"What the hell are you saying?"
"We can't risk warning Eve. You said it yourself, everyone has hurt the earth. They all need to go, Halsey," Leo shook his head. "Humans had their chance."
The pieces finally started coming together, and panic welled in my chest. "No, Leo, you're still human. What about your tribe!"
"My tribe…" He laughed, but without humor. This laugh was full of regret and pain. He scrubbed his hands over his face and pushed them back through his loose, dark hair. "Halsey, I already killed most of them…all of the ones I loved. I'm not human anymore. I'm a monster."
"What? But the cave?"
"Oh, I did leave to go there…" he added, his eyes searching the ground before he found mine again. "But then I went back. I tried to stop myself, but it was like I was just watching from the outside—a passenger in my own body." I stared at him as the scene played out in his expression, his eyes distant and vacant. "Sylvie found me back in the cave, covered in their blood. She took me in as I was then, a monster. She saved me. Eden's Bluff saved me. And now I need to save the others like us."
"Leo, listen to yourself! You're just perpetuating more violence, don't you see that? They'll kill all those people! You heard what Ghob and Uri said. You know what will happen if they lift the veil. The rest of the Elemental Fae and whatever else is behind it will—"
"Look what they've all done with what they've been given." Leo interrupted, unblinking and soulless. "Maybe they deserve to die. Goodbye, Halsey."
"No!" I shouted.
"Seal it!" Leo took a step backward and dropped through the ground. I rushed into the cloud of swirling fog he left, but nothing happened.
"Leo!" I dropped to my hands and knees feeling around for an opening, but all I felt was more of the same cool, rocky terrain. "Leo!"
***
I walked back and forth over the space where the others had disappeared, half-convinced that any second I would fall through like they did into the eye of the woods. I could almost hear the chirps and rustles all around it, almost felt the anticipation I always had that everything would stop suddenly, and I wouldn't be able to pinpoint when.
Bryce had said there were no other tears between here and the one back at Eden's Bluff, but he didn't say anything about there being more from this point forward. I was suddenly careful where I stepped, not wanting to accidentally fall onto the front porch of Hell, or who knew where else.
Maybe I could make my way back to Eden's Bluff? Take my chances with flying to the coast of Florida? If I crashed through another tear, couldn't I just fly right back through it like Leo and I did in Limbo?
Leo... The pain that tore through my chest at the thought of him again flooded me. Feathers appeared quickly all up and down my arms, and at first I just let them come. I sat on the ground and felt the stabs of heat race up and down my back, over my lips and throat until it became harder to breathe. I knew if I just waited a few more minutes, I'd breathe easier than I ever had just like before, but I didn't want to change. I didn't want to be something else. I just wanted to be myself, in my own body, in my own world again.
I took a long, strangled breath and tried to channel the prickling sensations to the tips of my fingers and toes, to push the Sylph in me away because I didn't want to have anything to do with them...with any of the Elemental Fae who would rush through the lifted veil and slaughter the human race.
And it was all my fault.
I'd led them right to Eve.
I raised my knees, buried my head in my arms and just let the tears come. It was pointless, but so was everything else I was doing right now. I was lost, and so was anything I'd ever loved.
Chapter 30
I jumped and scrambled to my feet when I felt something huffing next to my ear. As the fog cleared, Fate and Draco, the huge, black guard dogs from Mr. Burke's grocery in The Grind were both sitting there staring at me.
"What…" I gasped, then tried to rub my eyes to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Out of shock, I wound up poking myself in the face with the feathers that had emerged over my hands again. I shook them immediately and let the water flow through my fingertips and out into the nothingness all around us. Was I back? Was I back in The Grind somehow? I dropped to my knees and held my hands out for the dogs. "Come here, guys…" I said, expecting them to nuzzle my hands like they had outside Mr. Burke's store.
But that's not what they did.
"All is not lost." A low, male voice came from one of the dogs.
"Wh—Are you talking?!" I pushed backward from them. "OK…OK what's happening…is this a raven bird trick or something?"
"We are Foo guardians," a female voice came from the other dog. "Do not fear us, Halsey Rhodes."
"You're really talking to me…I saw your mouth move."
They exchanged looks and at the same time, began growing until they both towered over me. Their heads morphed into that of lions with tightly curled manes and thick, downcast eyebrows. Their arms and chests both became rippled with mu
scles, and I stumbled backward. I squinted as a bright light reflected off the gold pendants that had been their dog tags, now hanging like clock pendulums from thick, intricately woven chains that were also made of gold.
"This is our spirit form, Halsey Rhodes. Our true form," the male lion said. "We are entities of the spirit world. You know us as Draco and Fate, and may call us this still."
I opened my mouth to say something, but it was as if I'd forgotten how to speak standing before them. Their faces were full of expression with kind, enormous gold eyes and wide, smiling mouths, though each of their teeth were easily the size of my entire arm.
My wings flew out behind me, making me fall to the ground. Feathers had completely covered my hands and arms, and I forced my eyes closed to push them away.
"You are more than you know yourself to be," the female voice, which must have been Fate's, said, her voice gentle and maternal. I noticed in that moment her glinting medallion was actually a miniature lion, a baby curled into a little, sleeping ball. Tears pricked my eyes, and I blinked them back.
"I don't want to be," I said, forcing my voice to stabilize. "I just want to go home and have everything go back to the way it was. They're going to kill everyone," I said, the tears coming too fast for me to blink them away now.
The medallion on Draco's neck detached itself and floated under his paw, slowly turning into a blue globe swirling with clouds. I was mesmerized as they slowly wove themselves into and out of each other like embroidery.
"There are many holes between our worlds," he said as I watched the clouds turn into cords and create patterns of perfectly knitted, hollow triangles. "But there are also many points that connect them." The hollow triangles almost disappeared from view as the woven strings of cloud became brighter, and soon, I saw those outlines instead of the hollow places inside.
"Like us, you are both the physical and the spirit." Fate's calming voice washed over me again. "Thus, you may travel as we do. But be warned. To embrace both your natures means you will see the dual natures in others. To pass through the realms, you must accept this as it is, and you must do what you can to restore balance where the scales have slipped. This is the charge of all those with Bright Natures."
"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head. "Are you saying I can just go back? I don't have to find the tear?"
"The veil is only as opaque as the strength of the denial we weave…" Draco said, his eyes lowering to the clouds stitching more tightly, covering the blue and green globe underneath until it was completely hidden. "We're in denial when we choose to see only our physical self, and only that of others."
"I still don't understand how accepting both parts of myself will help me get home," I said, studying the disappeared globe, swallowed by the woven cloud strands. Draco stepped back from the globe, and it started to grow as tall as he was.
"To accept your dual nature is to accept your Bright Nature," Fate said. "Not one or the other, but two in one. As two strands appear to exist from one. It becomes the filler of empty spaces." The cloud unravelled, revealing the globe again, and when the knitting was completely undone, there was only a single length of string. It folded over on itself, made loops and darted in and out of them again to create the same open triangles as before. The same connected points of solid triangles.
I understood.
"We don't need a tear…" I whispered, mesmerized by the fabric being woven before my eyes. "We can go between…through the weave." I looked up at Draco and Fate, who were both smiling at me as they spoke at the same time.
"If you accept that the two strands are an illusion, because they are one and the same. Just like you, Halsey Rhodes…The Moth and the Flame."
The tapestry globe shrank again and returned to the golden necklace that rested on Draco's chest. Both lions turned around and started walking away, with each step shrinking back down to the size of the dogs I'd come to know. I followed them, and my wings receded, though not because I was fighting for control over them. It felt more like they were healing something in me, just like when I'd burned my ankles on the beach with Leo, which seemed so long ago now.
When the fog cleared, I was standing on the sidewalk in the middle of The Grind. It was night time—the worst possible time to be in the valley, and snowing? I hadn't been at Eden's Bluff that long. It shouldn't be later than the end of summer here. How much time had gone by?
Draco and Fate walked in front of me, people made way in the distance, but as they passed me, some of their faces shifted on one side to brief flashes of snarling monsters with bared fangs.
I looked away and saw a shivering man with a normal face sitting near the edge of an alley. He took a small, red vial from his torn and dirty shirt pocket and removed the lid with a shaky hand, then brought it to his lips and drank the contents. When the liquid was gone, he shook the last drops onto his tongue just before throwing the empty vial into the dark. He sighed and closed his eyes, letting his head lean back on the stone wall behind him. Within seconds, half of his face, too, became that of a snarling beast, its eyes glowing red behind the man's skin. His shivering had stopped.
I sucked in a sharp breath and tried to fight the urge to run. You will see the dual natures of others… Fate's words came back to me, and I remembered the man in the woods who offered me the vials before I left The Grind.
This has to be what happened to Lauren. The vial gave her Red Fever, and it activated something else in her just like it had in that man back in the alley. But what about all these other people with half monstrous faces? Did they all have Red Fever but didn't know it yet? Had they all taken that drug in the vial?
A smiling man knelt up ahead as Fate and Draco approached, startling me out of my thoughts.
"They're absolutely beautiful. What are their names?" he asked, blinking away the snowflakes falling into his eyes. He held a hand out to the dogs, and I had to consciously stop my mouth from falling open. Instead of the bones of a snarling monster, his eyes glowed a soft, light blue. The color extended all around his head and hands when I smiled back at him.
"Um, Draco and Fate…" I said, and both dogs nuzzled his hand. He pet the tops of their heads, beaming rays of warm, light blue and now pink light in every direction, and I was filled with a sense of ease and happiness I hadn't felt for a long time.
"Those are great names," he said as he rose to his feet. Thanks for letting me pet them. I'd say be careful out here, but these guys are probably keeping the riff-raff at bay. This weather is crazy, isn't it?" He smiled one more time at Draco and Fate before he nodded at me, then crossed the street and turned around a dark corner.
Not five seconds later, a group of younger men rose from the stoop of a building like shadows come to life. I couldn't see their faces right away, but when I channeled the tension I immediately felt upon seeing them to my eyes, my vision became twenty times stronger. It was as if they were just standing a few feet in front of me, even with the curtain of snow falling between us.
Behind half of each of their faces was a deformed, fanged beast with red-eyes—all except for one of them. His eyes and surrounding space just glowed a dark, muddy green, like a bruise trying to heal. I watched him walk backward in front of the others, his hands extended like he wanted them to stop. He started chuckling, trying to cajole them, but they just shoved him out of the way as they turned to follow the man who had just pet Draco and Fate.
"No…" I said out loud. "They're going to hurt him." Draco and Fate turned to me, and I could feel them restraining themselves, ready to sprint off the curb. They wouldn't move a muscle, but I knew they wanted to make sure I'd be all right if they left—that they wouldn't leave me if I felt I couldn't find Eve on my own. Though, I wasn't alone. I had the eagle. I was the eagle. There were magical, otherworldly things within this world, and I was one of them. "It's OK, help him!" I said, and in the same second, both dogs bolted across the street, snarling and barking like an entire pack of raging hellhounds.
Chapter 31
It was hard to see all the people on the streets of The Grind in the snowfall, but of the ones I did see, several had faint monsters inside them while a few had bright, vivid ones. I didn't know what that meant. Maybe the brightness correlated to when they might change, like Lauren did. Or maybe the monsters never came out and saw the light of day, and that's why most Feral attacks happened at night, when they could hide their true forms behind the thin skins of sick people. My blood ran cold as the idea that my parents may have had monsters like these inside sapping their lives away in their final days.
Occasionally, some people sleeping on benches or walking aimlessly didn't have any monsters behind their eyes at all. Only muted colors like the bruise-colored man, drab and cloudy, which seemed to pull the energy right from my bones when I saw them. Again, I thought of my parents and...hoped.
I shook the thoughts away and tried to focus. I needed to get behind The Citadel wall before Leo and the others could. As good of a hacker as Bryce was, I didn't think he'd be able to short circuit the entire system from his stupid tablet…but then again, he had managed to project an astral map of the supernatural tears between worlds into the sky from it.
I wrapped my arms around myself and scanned for Max's house, which wasn't far from The Citadel wall. I was tempted to run to it and pound on his bedroom window like I did when we were kids and I wanted him to come out and play. I'd lived just a few houses down from him then, with my parents before the wasting sickness took them. My mind slipped back to them again, to what their colors might have been, or if they had monsters inside because of Red Fever too.
I heard a pinging sound in my ear, and was confused for a second until I realized it was a queue notice. The communication block from the island was gone, of course! I tapped my temple and blinked to view my inbox. There were half-a-dozen messages from Max, more from my Aunt Alice. I was afraid to open any of them right now because if I did, I knew I'd lose my composure and I had to get behind the wall to warn Eve. When she was safe, I'd let myself read them.