“I’m… I’m… I’m a soldier,” I sputtered. I was, wasn’t I?
Her mouth curled downward in rage, her teeth bared.
Oh no, I accidentally made her mad. I tried to remember what she wanted to know, anxious about disappointing her.
Her anger consumed her, so much so that she failed to notice the oncoming attack before it was too late. Laini and Roxy’s redbill streaked across the field, smashing into the hunter’s shoulder with its razor-sharp beak.
I broke out of my trance immediately, swinging my knee up. The hunter lurched forward, and my knee connected with her tough chin before the two of us hit the ground. The resounding contact sent a numbing tremor down the entire length of my leg. Her hand left my shirt as we tumbled together down toward the lake. When we rolled to a stop, she halfway straddled me. She wheezed, pained, and I shoved her off me with so much force she rolled almost into the water. She and her armor were bizarrely light, maybe twenty pounds at the most. My bicep curls were heavier.
I scrambled back, and the hunter looked up at me, dazed for a moment, before she leapt to her feet. She flexed her fist again and pointed her palm toward me. Her arm shook slightly. I dove out of the way, but nothing happened. The warm breeze swept over us. The scent of sulfur and spilled blood burned into my nostrils.
“What?” The hunter stared at her palm. She shook her gloved hand as if hoping to dislodge the magic. It was strangely satisfying to see the arrogance drain from her for the first time. Instead of sick delight, a genuine shadow of confusion passed over her face.
“Sucks for you,” Kane snapped as he wrapped his arm around the hunter’s neck and pulled her backward to let Arlonne leap on the hunter as he dragged her away. The female hunter snarled and swung her blue blade through the air, but the vampires had the upper hand now that her glove no longer worked.
The body of the flying goblin creature plummeted from the back of the shrieking decay, Dorian’s knife lodged in its throat. Looking up, I saw him still trading blows with the other hunter. Dorian would be at full strength after feeding, and he wasn’t a mild opponent. But it appeared neither was the hunter. Laini, circling close to the monster’s back, dropped Roxy off to join the fray with Dorian, which she did with a fierce whoop, trying to find a gap in the black-and-gold armor for her knives to slip through.
I left Arlonne and Kane to their revenge and Dorian and Roxy to their fight, and rushed toward Sike. His crumpled body on the ground reminded me of my original orders: get to Sike and Bryce and get them out of harm’s way. I hadn’t done such a good job of that.
My stomach turned as I fell to my knees at his side, surveying the damage. He bled from multiple wounds across his skinny torso where the hunter had slashed him. His nose also appeared to be broken, and I suspected his arm was snapped in several places. Digging into my pack, I brought out pads of dressings, finding the worst slash and applying pressure to slow the flow of blood.
He took a shaky breath and opened his bleary brown eyes.
“Sike, are you with me?” I asked, leaning down toward him.
He nodded slowly and painfully grinned up at me, blood coating his teeth. “Worth it,” he croaked weakly.
I shook my head, part of me wishing I’d stepped in earlier to save him this pain but the rest of me knowing I’d at least done what was needed in time to save his life. “Not worth it, you idiot! You could have died before any of us could do anything.” But the relieved smile on my face belied my anger.
“I saw you with your gun out,” he said between gritted teeth. “Knew you’d take the shot when you needed to.” He glanced toward the fallen redbill, grimacing as he tried to move toward it. “You should check for Bryce. I’m worried he might be pinned.”
I glanced around quickly, unwilling to leave the badly wounded vampire vulnerable even to go and find Bryce. The tide of the battle had turned as Kane and Arlonne overtook the magicless hunter. Was it safe to leave Sike to fend for himself for a few minutes?
Laini’s redbill swept low, and she dismounted before it landed. Her pale face boiled with anger at the hunter. “Monster,” she breathed before joining the fight. She darted forward and nearly succeeded in knocking the knife away from the hunter.
The hunter’s blue hair, now torn from its fancy arrangement, splayed around her beautiful face as her panicked gaze moved between the three vampires. She knows she’s screwed. Good. I never wanted to hear her echoing voice compulsion again.
The shrieking decay let out an alarmed cry as it attempted to retreat, but the golden hunter tried to pull on its reins. He rammed an elbow into Roxy’s face as he and Dorian struggled for control of a long, curved knife.
“Inkarri, we need to retreat!” the young hunter bellowed.
Inkarri. A fitting name, since it was beautifully exotic with a rough edge.
Inkarri scowled as she tossed her knife into her other hand, weighing her options. She could choose to fight three vampires with zero help from magic. The wildling was dead. The winged goblin was dead. The shrieking decay wailed as it contorted, trying to escape and remaining only through the control of the hunters. The golden Immortal pulled hard on the reins, causing the creature to jerk upward in a nearly vertical movement.
Dorian leapt from the shrieking decay’s back just in time to avoid falling into the bubbling lake, taking Roxy with him. The creature swung back around, its spiny jointed legs hanging down. Inkarri snarled and ran toward the monster, trying to join her companion. Arlonne, Kane, and Laini pursued her, all of them moving almost too fast for me to track.
“Where are you going? We’re not done playing!” Kane yelled and attempted to lunge at her, but Inkarri was too quick.
She moved with blinding speed and caught up to her mount. Dorian tried to cut her off, but she hit him in the face with her armored elbow and spun away from his grasp. In moments, Inkarri successfully scrambled up the trailing legs and onto the saddle of the shrieking decay. It fled, its whipping tail soon a distant shadow in the sky. Laini glanced at her redbill hovering nearby. If she pursued the hunters, there was the risk she would end up flying solo into a group of Immortal reinforcements. It was too dangerous. Besides, we needed to leave as soon as possible.
“I almost had him,” Dorian growled in frustration. He dragged his nails through his hair and shook, the adrenaline and dark energy still coursing through his body. “If it hadn’t been for that magical armor and those stupid protection charms…” He trailed off, his face swarming with fast-moving shadows. I was struck again by the rugged beauty in the lines of his face. The desire to reach out and touch him came right up alongside a small voice reminding me that Dorian had just fed. I shifted, and his gaze immediately flickered to me and then Sike.
“He’s alive,” Dorian said, a fierce smile spreading over his face.
He rushed toward Sike, and I stepped forward to meet him halfway without thinking. He was five yards away when the throbbing buzz began in my chest.
The ache tugged at me like a hook had been jammed between my ribs and my sternum. I opened my mouth to warn him, but the burning quickly overtook me. I might as well have jumped headfirst into the steaming lake. All that came out was a choked gasp. The pain burned white hot in my chest. I steeled myself for the oncoming lightheadedness.
Suddenly, Dorian faltered. Surprise turned to confusion, then his mouth twisted in pain, and he fell to his knees. He clutched his chest, releasing a wild snarl.
“Dorian!” I wheezed. What was—? No, he was hurting too. How was this possible? It was only supposed to be me.
The pain seared my chest, flaring out into every nerve of my body. One leg buckled, and I braced myself on the remaining one. I couldn’t collapse onto Sike and hurt him even more. I tried to angle my fall with the last bit of my strength. Someone caught me and lowered me to the ground, but I wasn’t sure who.
My vision crawled with darkness. I struggled for consciousness. Not Dorian, too! Why was this happening? I curled into a fetal position, my body w
orking instinctively to cope with the pain.
“Those idiots,” Kane shouted somewhere in the distance. His voice echoed, reminding me of Inkarri’s terrible power. “Someone drag them away from each other before they kill themselves!”
“Got it,” Arlonne said with a grunt.
I felt a strong hand wrap around my upper arm and drag me over the ground. Everything seemed to float away from my body. The sensation of the dirt and rocks and grass beneath me faded. I slipped in and out of darkness. My vision began to bleed over with white and flashes of color.
“The hunters are out of range.”
Was that Laini? The voice was soft.
Kane snorted, frustrated. “For now. How long until they’re back with reinforcements?”
Water splashed. Where? You’re near a lake, Lyra. Don’t forget. The edges of my thoughts frayed. The pain washed over me with a terrible promise. I struggled against the agony.
I tried to mumble something, to ask if Dorian was okay, to ask if Bryce was beneath the redbill, but darkness swallowed up the white light around me.
And then I was gone.
Chapter Twenty-One
I couldn’t find Dorian.
Everything was shifting mist and fog. All I could feel was the distant pulse of a heartbeat, though I wasn’t sure if it was mine or someone else’s. Maybe it was the Immortal Plane itself? Each beat, each thump-thump, triggered my training, my soldier’s instinct. Move faster. Look harder. Do better.
Broken walls and ruptured cobblestones slid between banks of gray clouds. My foot struck a hairline crack in the street that ripped open into a crevasse filled with smoke and bubbling yellow water. I flung myself backward but landed on nothing, falling… I blinked and found myself standing in front of a partially collapsed building. A shutter hanging crookedly off a window repeatedly smacked against the wall as a breeze passed by, clearing the fog. My surroundings came into focus—Vanim, in all its ruined glory.
I was looking for Dorian, right? I had to find Dorian. He was hurt. I had to help him. I pushed forward. My limbs were heavy, as if encased in cement. Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t move in a straight line. It was like I’d forgotten how to walk.
The ground lifted and undulated, as if I were trying to run across a pool when the cover was on. I blinked and tried to rub my eyes, but my hands were too heavy to lift. As if the city pushed me back with an invisible force, my vision tunneled, and I was pulled back through the winding streets.
“Dorian?” I called, scrabbling for purchase with feet that didn’t feel like my own. The desperation in my cry echoed back from the foggy landscape, his name unfurling from my lips like smoke to drift in the air in scraggly written text. It wrapped around my throat like a noose, then disappeared.
I needed to find him. We needed to rescue Bryce and get Sike some help. Wait… why did Sike need help? What had happened? I only remembered a bluish knife and flashing light, writhing vines and gurgling screams.
With a yell, I flung my arms out, stopping my rushed backward travel by clinging to the corner of a halved building. For a moment, my body flew horizontally, like a flag in a gale. Then I was on my knees, my fingers bloodied from holding onto the rough stone for purchase. As I watched, the wrecked building began to morph back into a fully formed structure beside me. The walls sucked up the surrounding chunks of stone and wood and mortar dust, growing into perfect supports, and the roof blossomed like a flower to stretch and cover the top of the home.
I stared at the homey little cottage, so out of place in the devastation of the city. Beside it, another building began to develop—returning to its original state—then another and another. The city was rebuilding itself, yet it all felt unreal, like another glamor effect. The perfect buildings crackled and shifted as I watched them grow, snapping between destruction and creation.
I hurried backward, the two simultaneously occurring phases of existence sending a wave of nausea through me. Turning, I began to run, the weight of my limbs still unnaturally heavy but reduced enough that I could move. When I pressed on, the road began to turn sideways, but I followed it, my feet never leaving the ground, even as it flipped me completely upside down, sending bones and bricks and a curtain of dust plummeting away into the upside-down sky with a dreadful whispering like the redwoods. Gradually, the road became flat once more, though whether I was the right way up was impossible to tell.
In the distance, a figure stepped onto the cobblestone path ahead of me. Something about the shape of his shoulders, the dark hair, the alertness of his posture made me think of Dorian.
He turned to face me, but it was not the face I knew so well. His eyes were dark, like a Scottish peat river, and the black hair was cropped shorter, furling into soft curls. He was leaner, almost to the point of emaciation. His shoulders, which I knew had carried so much weight during our journey, were much narrower. That’s not Dorian.
Next to him was a vampire woman with long dark hair. I could only see a sliver of her face, but it was enough to see that she was beautiful. Had she always been there? I hadn’t noticed her appear.
She lifted her hand to brush his cheek, the movement soft, sweet, intimate. I blinked, and she vanished. This didn’t seem to worry him. His only reaction was to stare into the open space ahead of him, but not vaguely. He was looking at something. Stepping closer to him, I followed his gaze and saw that the horizon burned red. The smell of sulfur haunted me.
Fear filled his face, and he looked around frantically as if finally registering that the woman had disappeared. His fangs extended, and he snarled at something in the distance. Sensing the urgency, I drew parallel with him, following his eyeline. In the distance, a cluster of green, blue, and yellow lights grew like a thunderstorm on the horizon. They mirrored the lights I’d seen, which had pushed creatures through the tear when we first arrived in the Immortal Plane. Was it Inkarri returning to claim her revenge?
I tried to stay by his side, knowing we needed to work together as partners and soldiers in this coming conflict. I had to help protect the city. Dorian was in among its tangled streets somewhere, and I needed to keep him safe. We were survivors.
Letting him know I was here to help, I reached out to touch this wraith-like twin of Dorian. To my horror, teal energy seeped from my hand as I stretched it out. He reeled back, hollow, dark eyes widening with betrayal. More beams of light struck him from all sides, a barrage of beams that I couldn’t stop.
His skin bubbled and burned away, the flesh beginning to rot like he’d been struck by a shrieking decay. Bile rose in my throat as I watched him melt into nothing more than a pile of pearly bones scattered on the ground, like so many of the piles I’d seen around Vanim.
I rolled over, desperately swallowing as my eyes flew open. I retched onto the floor. Dim shapes came into focus—a bedframe, a three-legged stool made of soft green wood, an arched hole in the wall not covered by a door or a curtain. I pushed myself into a sitting position, squirming away from the vomit on the light brown, papery-looking floor. Disoriented, I clutched my pounding head, the scent of sulfur still lingering in my nose. My legs and waist were tightly wrapped in rough linens that tugged at me. They were nothing like the soft fabrics I was used to in the Mortal Plane.
Something rough dug into the palm clutching at my shirt. Well, it wasn’t my shirt. It was made of a heavy yellowish fabric and laced up the front with a green cord. It smelled a little like bog water. Opening my hand, I found it clutching the small leather bag that held Dorian’s stone. Even through the bag, it warmed my skin uncomfortably. I scooped out the stone and studied it. It was hot and glowing amber—I understood why I’d felt it warm against my chest several times since we’d arrived in the Immortal Plane.
The stone burned in my hand, the contact too much. I dropped the stone onto the covers, where it cooled quickly and darkened to its normal color. I took a long breath and wiped my damp forehead. Trying to calm my racing heart, I began to check in with all my senses in an attempt to
figure out where I was. The stone was the least of my problems to solve right now.
What did I remember last? A splash. I remembered water before I passed out. Dorian on his knees. Sike bleeding. The retreating Immortals. I was in the Immortal Plane.
I stilled, tuning into my senses to get an idea of where I could be, wondering for a terrible minute if I had found my way into the depths of some Immortal prison. Looking around, I took stock of my unfamiliar quarters. The most important detail was that another person was sleeping in a similar bed on the far side of the chamber. The broad body looked familiar in the soft light. Bryce?
I broke free of the constricting sheets to kneel on the bed for a better view, feeling a wave of weakness roll over me. His chest rose and fell beneath a cocoon of coarse linens that wrapped up to his waist. A light snore trickled into my ear. Bandages were wrapped around his chest and arms.
He’s alive. I pressed a grateful hand to my face. The sweat had mostly dried.
The rounded chamber had no windows and a ceiling that sloped gently downward, every surface the same brown as the floor, all with the same waxy, apparently papery texture. It was high enough that Bryce would be able to stand comfortably, but not much more. The upper parts of the plain walls and the ceiling were broken up by patches of pink, green, and blue lichens that lit the room with a soft bioluminescent glow. I marveled at the illumination. The stinking sulfur of my dream had faded, replaced by the smell of citrus and an earthy musk I couldn’t place, but the memory of my ghastly dream sent a tremor through me. Closing my eyes, I listened intently, trying to glean some clues about where we might be or whether there was anyone close by. There was almost nothing. A very faint buzz of what were possibly voices or maybe the wind in the strange trees, but very little else. It was as though the walls soaked up all external sound.
I shivered and pulled the sheets back around me—but the scratchy fabric made me itchy. My head swam and ached dully. The dream had left me disoriented. I rubbed my hand against my sternum, hoping to calm myself. I had a sinking feeling that I’d lost someone, but I couldn’t remember who.
Darklight 3: Darkworld Page 22