Shadow Realms

by M K Mancos

  It took a total of three days before they'd let us back down. In that time, the golems were absent, and no wells reappeared. Despair was a nagging parent at my back. The longer Kells was lost to me, the more I worried. Where was she? What was she going through? I couldn’t even imagine. I only hoped she had found someone to help her as I had, or she went back to the 1920s.

  However, as I later found, the truth was so much worse.

  Twenty-Six

  Kells

  I didn’t know how long I’d been tucked in that chamber with the gate. All I knew was if it didn’t look like I was working, they’d hit me with a bolt of energy that made all my muscles twitch. Pins and needles rode up and down my arms, making it hard to hold the crude rock I used to write sigils on the dirt floor.

  They could zap me until the second coming, but it wasn’t going to help open the gate no matter how much voltage they used. Unless…

  I turned and held out my hand. “Give that here.”

  The being looked down to the metal appliance in his hand and gave a grunt. I figured it meant “this one” but had no way to know. He gave me a look of infinite shrewdness and stepped farther away.

  “Come on. A little jolt from that might open the gate. Unless you aren’t interested in that and only meant to separate me from the others.” I gave a shrug and sat back on my heels then wrapped my arms around my bent knees. “Suit yourself.”

  I pitched the rock I’d used to draw the sigils into the dirt. The being failed to notice I’d drawn them around me in a circle of protection. Maybe he did, and that was why he was skeptical to hand me the zappy tool.

  I touched the talisman at my throat, still hidden behind my shirt. The whispered words were from a chant I’d remembered from childhood—one Rallie had taught me while out in her garden. It had to do with light and sun and waking nature in the spring. I remembered speaking it near Ostara—the Vernal Equinox. We had walked the labyrinth, hands clasped.

  Energy swirled from the magic in the pendant. Blue light seeking release out to the world. Whether made by Malachi or myself, I had no idea. It could have been a combination of both.

  Power shot down my arm and exited my fingers. I smiled as I touched my fingers to the sigils, lighting up the circle around me.

  The being jumped back into the wall as if to hide from my crude magic. I’d never shown an aptitude for creating spells of this type. A lot had changed since I’d come north to do research. Now I wondered if that was my intent at all.

  Perhaps destiny had thrown me into this path without my consent or knowledge. It didn’t matter how I came to be there, only that if I dug really deep I might be able to extricate myself from my predicament.

  A growl rose from behind me. I stood and turned. With one hand on my pendant and the other outstretched, I spread the blue energy all the way around me, until a wall of it separated me from the thing that came near. I had no name for it, but it looked more animal than the others. This one walked on all fours and snarled with all the aggression of Cujo.

  Dogs in their non-magical, non-shadow realm form didn’t scare me. To be blunt, this one kind of freaked me out. And he didn’t come alone. I saw others peeking out of the darkness with their beady eyes glowing yellow as flames.

  A brave one came close, biting and pawing at the ground. Dirt scattered over some of the symbols, obscuring them. The light on the space dimmed and died. Cleverness flared in the beast's eyes, as if it knew the earth neutralized the magic.

  Shit.

  I bent down and tried to write another sigil. The dogs of the dark war weren't having it. They followed their alpha and started to flick dirt onto my precious drawings while the being in the corner laughed.

  If I was going out, I was going to do so with style and fight. If they ended up pulling me limb from limb, I'd just pick up my arm with my other hand and commence to beating them with it. Hell, if it came to that I'd do anything to defeat these…whatever they were. I still wasn't even sure what they were or where they'd taken me. I'd been in this particular room so long I'd forgotten my way back to the other chamber. Worry whether the others remained there filled my head with all kinds of wild imaginings.

  The pack fanned out around me, all of them scratching dirt across the magical spells. I fought a losing battle trying to uncover them. I had no idea what I was going to do to save myself, but I needed to do something.

  I started to chant again, calling on all the witches of my blood and the magic in my veins. The pendant heated against my skin as if it knew the words and responded in kind. I raised my hand and power spread across my fingers. Not just one, but all of them, until my hand glowed with energy.

  Malachi. If he were near, I'd kiss him a long, wet one. That brilliant war mage had infused my pendant with his power and allowed me to use it to battle my foes, no matter their origin.

  I turned my hand in a circle and made a ball with the energy, then threw it straight at the alpha. All right, maybe not a fast-pitch, but I chucked that ball for the good witch Hazel and all her descendants.

  The light burst bright and blue. The beast yelped and screamed. It shook its head violently trying to get the spell from its hair and ears, but the power stuck. It slid over the thing's skull, dripping like slime from a kid's television game show.

  It tried again to shake it loose, to rid itself of the sticky substance.

  "Well, well." I looked down at my fingers and wound up my hand to throw another one. This time I didn't aim for the beasts, but the dick with the shock rod.

  His uneven eyes widened as the ball of light energy soared straight at him. He raised the rod and swatted the ball away as if he were well acquainted with neighborhood games of stick ball circa 1930.

  An explosion of lightning crackled as the energy sphere splintered into hundreds of fragments. The beasts screamed in pain as the shards passed through them like magical shrapnel. I covered my ears at the terrible noise. My heart thumped so hard I thought it might break free.

  The being threw his head back and howled in rage. He'd not meant to kill his creatures, but it had happened, nonetheless.

  While he was otherwise engaged, I inched toward the entrance. The more space I put between me and him, the better I'd feel about the situation. Self-preservation won out. I wasn't about to stick around and watch his mourning when my feet might be put to better use by getting the hell out of there.

  Once I cleared the main chamber, I ran. I didn't even care which way I went, I just ran. A litany of numbers began to run through my head as I moved. Left twenty. Right thirty-eight. Right seven.

  I came to an intersection of four chambers. Indecision clogged my throat. I had no idea which way to go. The voice in my head quieted. No more hints for me.

  I put the pendant against my lips and kissed it again.

  "I wonder if you can light the way for me?"

  Far from being a reliable compass, I figured it was easier to try and gain power and direction out of it than to sit there and second, third, and fourth guess myself. Well, maybe not fourth since I had no intention of going back the way I'd come.

  I held my breath and listened. So far, I didn't hear anything else in the tunnels with me. No telltale stomp of feet, or heavy breathing.

  Honestly, my heart might have calmed if I'd heard something down those lonely and dark corridors. As it was, I'd run blind and the light—what there was of it—had started to dim.

  "Please, please, please. I need to know which way to go." The pendant heated against my skin, but it didn't show me the way.

  I picked a direction and walked. How did the shadow beings ever find their way in the dark? I mean, I know they were beings who dwelled in the absence of light, but didn't they need light to maneuver through their underground world?

  The more I learned the more I didn't know.

  Actually, I'd never known anything. Not about what was really important. I'd spent my life digging into the lives of the Doran family because I felt mine hadn't taken our powers seriousl
y. Rallie had, and she'd known. She'd prepared me for this to the best of her ability. Scholarship hadn't done it for me in the least—but it had brought me to Malachi.

  I bent over at the waist and rested my hands on my thighs. Panic coiled up from my belly. To think I'd been with him only days before and now I was stuck in holes, hollowed out by some extra-dimensional assholes whose only want was to suck the life out of humans.

  Feeling sorry for myself wasn't going to find me a way out of the mess, so I started walking. Every twenty or so paces I'd stop and listen.

  What if I turned the wrong way and only went deeper into the shadow realms? Would I continue to walk forever and never reach the end?

  My shoes weren't made well enough for such a journey. As it was, my feet were killing me.

  At one stop, I leaned against the wall and lifted my foot to rub where a painful blister had risen on my heel. As my butt rubbed against the wall, a rock fell to the ground with a thud. I bent over and picked it up and turned to the wall. Inspiration built a fire in my belly.

  All witches knew that power came in words, names, and symbols. Even the shadow beings hadn't liked seeing them as I cast the circle around me and had taken steps to eliminate them. Yet, they needed them to break the spell on the gate. What if I used those same sigils against them?

  In a frenzy of every possible charm, symbol, or spell I could possibly remember, I began to mark the passage walls. The more I wrote, the more I remembered. They came to me in flashes so powerful I had to bite my lip to keep from sobbing from the pain they caused my head.

  By the time I finished, my eyes were watering so hard the tears dropped off my chin onto the ground.

  Damn it. I didn't want to give them anymore of myself than they already had. No telling what they could do with tears. Any hair I'd shed while down in the tunnels was dangerous enough. In magic, it only took a hair, an eyelash, a toenail, or tooth to control a person.

  Once I finished, I raised the pendant and my right hand and let the energy fill the space around me. The magic attached to the sigils and made an energy barrier across the passage that would take the shadow beings some time to deconstruct.

  It might not have saved my bacon, but it would slow them down long enough for me to put some greater distance between us.

  Provided no more came out of the walls ahead.

  Hellfire, I really just wanted to find my phone and get out of there. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t done. Not by a long shot. I owed it to Bea, Matilda, Gemma, Jane, and all the others to end this. I owed it to Malachi—wherever he’d ended up. Most of all, I owed it to myself to prove I was as worthy as all the other witches in my bloodline. We might not have been the Doran witches, but we were pretty damn remarkable all the same.

  I stumbled around the corridors, painting them with as much magic as I could muster. It wasn’t easy. The more I walked, the faster I ran out of energy. Magic and spells take an awful lot of it in order to raise any kind of power. The entire situation was getting direr. I hadn’t eaten in I don’t know how long. Water? None to be had though I was somewhere under the Hudson River. Not only that, but I hadn’t seen anyone in so long, I didn’t even remember the last time—time had ceased to mean anything.

  A decided blue glow filtered from the area of the spells I’d laid. Comfort came in the familiar hue. Warmth and knowledge came that I did the only thing I could and if that wasn’t good enough, so be it. But I failed to believe that I had been put in this situation if it was hopeless.

  I came to the end of a corridor and looked down. A phone lay in the dirt. I reached down and picked it up. It wasn’t mine, but it had battery life left and no security code. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d lost a phone while being pulled through a time well. No doubt I wouldn’t be the last either.

  The phone was of good quality, but a few years out of date. Not that it mattered. It functioned. I pushed the flashlight function and trained the beam down the dark corridor.

  What in the hell was that?

  Twenty-Seven

  Malachi

  Days stretched on and I still hadn’t heard from Kells. Kendrick put me in touch with his supervisor with the local branch of the Convention. I apprised them of the situation in my time and they were suitably unimpressed—for all I knew, they were already aware.

  I took a job with Kendrick in the tunnel. Hard labor, yes, but I didn’t know what else to do that wouldn’t end up taking me farther away from the point Kells and I exited our time. Not that place seemed to matter, as we’d proven before. It did make me feel better.

  The inside of the tunnels was a world unto itself. It’s hard to describe with anything as mundane as words. The feeling I got whenever I’d go inside made it seem as if all my air was being sucked from my lungs and my throat closed. The first time it happened, I thought maybe I’d picked up an allergy and was having an anaphylactic reaction. No other symptoms presented. My tongue didn’t get thick, or lips tingle. I didn’t develop hives or a wheeze. Not that I’m a doctor, but I believed my symptoms stemmed from being close to the presence of locked magic.

  Why locked? What could possibly be hidden down in the tunnels that required a magical lock in order to ensure it was never used? Not to mention how in the hell it got down there in the first place.

  My supposition didn’t evolve because I found no physical reason for my odd affliction, but for the simple reason every now and then I caught an essence of energy.

  Here and there, wisps of stray magic floated on the air. Unable to determine its origin, I kept working and hoped that something in the tunnel might give me direction or inspiration. Anything to find Kells. By night, I walked the streets of Hoboken, or took the ferry into New York to search for her.

  The locket I gave her had stopped sending me signals about the time the well she’d fallen through closed.

  A week into this routine and things started to go a bit sideways. Nothing overt at first, simply an awareness that a new presence had breached the tunnels.

  My choking fits became more of a tight squeeze around my chest. I was too young to have cardiac disease, right? Not that I stood a chance of surviving a massive heart attack in the late 1800s, so I hoped that it stemmed from claustrophobia of being subterranean for so long.

  I’d never considered myself a squeamish person when it came to enclosed spaces or having tons of dirt and rock suspended above me by the power of wooden beams and strong prayers, but who knew?

  We continued to tunnel into the earth, making strides to reach the other side of the Hudson and in turn, the place where I’d lost Kells. Occasionally, I caught a stray bit of magic released from the soil as we broke new ground. That’s old magic. Elemental. Creation of the universe old.

  I leaned against the end of my shovel and removed my left glove—my receiving hand. Wisps of energy twirled around my fingers, coming from an area right in front of me. Since I stood at the very end of the tunnel, there was nothing in front of me, but more hard-packed earth.

  Holding the lantern aloft, I studied the wall in front of me. Striations of color marked the passage of decades, centuries, epochs. Something glinted in the light. A mineral, rock, I had no idea. I reached out and brushed the dirt away and revealed a purposefully carved stone.

  “What in the…”

  “You find something?” Kendrick came up behind me. He held his lantern in a similar fashion as me. The light on his hat reflected a brighter beam onto the area.

  He backed up a bit and gave my find the side eye.

  A sensation of being pulled centered in my chest. I couldn’t stop until I had uncovered the entire thing. And shit was it big.

  I didn’t think when I started the project that I’d stumbled on something so significant. The more I dug and brushed the more of the structure was revealed and I knew it had been sunk here on purpose. Below the water, the earth, the very world.

  My breath caught and held as runes—ancient and powerful— manifested around the perimeter. They were wards
of protection, to keep the seal closed. A door used to shut beings behind a walled prison.

  Kendrick and I exchanged glances. We knew what it was and who had placed it here, but how long ago to be buried this far down? That was some mighty elemental magic at work in order to accomplish such a task.

  No wonder the golems were stirred up. We were close to finding the doorway to the Shattered Lands. We couldn’t let the tunnel go through here.

  More of our coworkers came to stand in front of our find. Damn, I just wanted them to go away and not see this. Too hard to explain. People from museums would want to excavate it and bring it to the surface.

  Kendrick gave me a wink and turned toward them. He spoke a few words from the old language and they soon began drifting off as if they’d never seen the gate.

  “I’ll contact the Convention. They’ll need to intervene to get the track of this tunnel moved. We can’t disturb this.” He turned his shovel a few times as if closing a flywheel on a secured door. The colors and definition of the edges faded until it blended with the rest of the dirt. A neat trick, that. It would keep people from asking too many questions until the Convention made their claim.

  What were we supposed to do for the rest of the day? Pretend to shovel? I’d really rather monitor the gate and make sure only a stray tendril of energy was all that escaped.

  What I really wanted to know was where the damn golems had come from. They hadn’t emerged from the gate. However, there were different types of golems. Some had the uncanny ability to separate from walls of solid rock. It all depended on how powerful their makers. Certain laws of physics didn’t apply to beings from the shadow realms. Worse still were those from the Shattered Lands.

  The foreman walked into the tunnel and started yelling. “What in all the blazes are you idiots doing walking around like you’ve lost your blasted minds?”