Storybound

by Emily Mckay

  But whatever. I won the building in a card game and, since I don’t have anywhere else to live that’s free, this is it. Besides, when I say I “won” it, I’m being generous. I cheated.

  So if the chaos demons eventually do enough damage to kill me, I probably have it coming.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Three bolts later, I’m ready to skip the ass-kicking and go straight for the brutal murder. My hand muscles are so cramped, I can’t even straighten out my fingers, my knees have what feels like a permanent grid etched into them, and my back muscles are spasming. Oh, and I smell like dog snot.

  All in all, not my best day.

  By the time I slide the last bolt out and gently lower the side grate to the ground, I feel like I’ve been trapped in that damn cage for hours.

  I climb out, cringing as I stretch. So maybe I won’t be kicking his ass after all. But it sounds good in theory.

  Okay, I have two options: either I can go confront him in his workshop and try to figure out exactly what’s going on, or I can sneak out of his apartment and… And what?

  I’ve been reading about this world for years, but that hasn’t prepared me for being here. Only luck and Kane have kept me from becoming a hellhound’s Scooby Snack.

  Since Master Flores and the princess were dragged off by hellhounds, I have no way of getting home.

  In the books, the princess is kidnapped and carted off to Gull Veston Island, where Kane rescues her. Incidentally, Gull Veston Island is also where hellhounds bring any Dark Worlders they catch. There’s a whole Sleeker detention center there. It’s very Alcatraz.

  So maybe the story isn’t too far off track. Maybe I just have to get Kane to go rescue the princess from Gull Veston Island. Then they can fall in love and I can rescue Master Flores. I mean, the Curator. She’s the one who got me into this mess, so she can send me home. After I save Kane’s life. And hopefully convince him he should be king, thus preventing a civil war that would tear apart the world I love.

  It’s a good plan. Probably impossible to execute, but still a good plan.

  One problem: it assumes I still think Kane is worthy of being King.

  You know, since he locked me in a frickin’ cage!

  And, since he locked me in the same crate the princess was in, there’s definitely a possibility that Kane locked up the princess to begin with. Asshole.

  That’s right. My book boyfriend is an asshole. Which is a huge frickin’ disappointment.

  I blow out a breath.

  Okay, I need to calm down and back up a step.

  Kane is gruff. Taciturn. A truly reluctant hero.

  I know that.

  Sometimes, he acts like a jerk. He tries to be selfish and self-serving, for his own preservation. But at the end of the day, when shit goes bad, he always does the right thing. The selfless thing. Always.

  There has to be a reasonable explanation. There simply has to be, because…

  God, I’ve loved Kane for most of my life. Before Wallace messed up the story in the last book, I read those books over and over. I practically lived in that world. They made me believe that shitty, horrible things could happen to someone but that person could still summon the strength to do the right thing.

  That is what I have always loved about Kane. The fact that no matter how much he wanted to give up on the world, deep inside, he still had hope. Because of Kane, when shitty, horrible things happened to me, when I wanted to give up, I was able to dig deep and find hope, too.

  Which is what I have to do now. I have to find the hope. In me and in him.

  So I’ll just go to him and demand an explanation.

  After I arm myself with some kind of weaponry. Just in case I’m wrong.

  If the books are right, all the iron in Kane’s world comes from the Dark World. None of the magical creatures here like iron much. If a metal has enough iron in it, it can burn their skin.

  So no cast-iron pans. And that’s why the cage was made out of that funky metal. And also why the hellhound freaked out when I shoved the pepper spray up his nose. If iron burns, then that probably hurt like hell. In my world, iron is in everything, including steel cans. And nail files.

  Score.

  I dig through my purse for the nail file. And just for good measure, I go back and collect the bolts and nuts off the floor. To me, they feel different from the metal of the cage. They feel like the normal steel hardware you’d find in my world. Which would mean they have iron in them.

  I figure the bolts may prove useful later, so I stuff them into my jeans pocket and creep over to the laboratory door. The room is almost as long as his living space, but narrower. Shelves crammed with books and equipment line the far wall. A work bench as long as a bus dominates the center of the room. That’s where Kane is. He’s bent over a shallow bowl filled with a shimmering silvery liquid. His blasting rod is maybe four feet away, left carelessly on the table by a collection of bottles.

  He looks up when I push open the door. In the same instant, he holds out his hand, palm down, and his wand flies into it. He flicks his wrist and the blasting rod slides back up his sleeve just like, well, just like magic.

  At the sight of me, his lips curve into a smile that’s as hard and cold as the fire slate his workbench is topped with. “Well, aren’t you a clever girl. How’d you break out?”

  “Shoddy design work at the cage factory.” I reach into my pocket, pull out the nuts and bolts, and show them to Kane. “You just can’t find a well-designed cage capable of holding a human captive these days, can you? What with us having brains and opposable thumbs and all.”

  For a long moment he just stares at the nuts and bolts in my hand.

  “What?” I ask. When the silence gets really awkward, I ask again. “What?”

  Finally, he looks up at me, but there’s something soft about his eyes. Like I’ve surprised him. Or maybe amused him.

  “Oh, come on, my quip about the opposable thumbs wasn’t that funny.”

  He leans back, eyeing the bolts in my hand. “So then, you really are a Dark Worlder.”

  “Why?” Slowly pieces of the puzzle slip into place. “Because I touched the bolts?”

  He holds up my phone. The Traveler app is open to an excerpt from the books.

  “The books got it wrong. Tuatha can touch iron, but it’s definitely not comfortable. It wouldn’t”—he turns the phone around and reads aloud—“‘sear the skin right off his face,’ but it would definitely leave red welts. So…”

  I look down at my palm. “So no welts means I’m not Tuatha.”

  His lips curve into a smile, which make his dimples wink. My stomach dips, and I have to force my mind back to work.

  “So this was just another test?” I ask, sliding my nail file into my back pocket. “Like when you nearly killed me out in the alleyway to see if I would break and use magic?”

  “Pretty much.”

  I step forward and snatch my phone out of his hand. “You’re a jerk.”

  A jerk, but apparently not a murderer.

  “Are all Dark Worlders this prickly?”

  “You tried to kill me and then you locked me in a cage. The fact that I’m upset about that is not my personality flaw.”

  “Look, Cupcake, I haven’t stayed alive this long by not asking questions. If someone shows up, attracts the attention of hellhounds, and gets the Curator kidnapped, it’s only reasonable to ask if they summoned it.”

  “I didn’t summon the hellhounds! I don’t even know—”

  “So you keep saying.”

  “You know I’m a Dark Worlder!” I slide my phone back into the pocket inside my messenger bag. “You saw me bleed.”

  “Blood can be faked.”

  “Blood can’t be faked.”

  He picks up the ceramic knife from the table beside him and he slices a shall
ow half inch cut into his left forearm. Blue drops of blood bead at the cut.

  I gasp and take a step backward. “You’re Tuatha!”

  He holds up his hand so the blue blood rolls down his arm.

  The Kane of the books is a child of the Dark World. Like me. His blood should be red.

  Before I can stop myself, I reach out, catching the drops of blue blood on my fingertips. The blood on my fingers feels real. It is bright blue and viscous and warm. It even smells like real blood.

  He reaches out and takes my hand in his. With his other hand, he draws a quick rune in the air. The blood seeping from his arm turns a warm, deep red. As does the blood on my fingertip. With another wave of his hand, the cut seals itself, but the blood on his arm remains.

  I look from his face to the blood and back again. “I don’t understand.”

  For a second, he just holds my gaze, searching for something. His hand suddenly feels too warm on my skin. He drops my hand and turns away. “Like I said, Cupcake. Blood can be faked.”

  When I glance down, the blood on my fingertips is blue again.

  “What… How? Which is your real blood?”

  Instead of answering me, he uses a towel to blot the blood from his arm. And then from my finger. Then he takes the rag with the blood on it to the sink. He drops it in, gives it a jolt with his blasting rod, and a second later, it’s a pile of ash.

  Instead of explaining, he starts packing his bag, loading it up with tools and bottles. The knife gets sheathed and stuffed in, along with a flask and a round gold object, like a compass. In fact, by the time he’s done, almost nothing is left on the table. He’s clearing out.

  “Wait. Where are we going?”

  He flashes me another smirk. “We aren’t going anywhere. I’m leaving. You’re on your own.”

  On my own?

  I won’t last ten minutes on my own.

  I was out on the streets unprotected for less than five minutes when the hellhounds tracked me down the last time.

  I have to convince Kane to bring me with him or I am dead.

  I throw myself in front of him. “You can’t leave me here. You need me.”

  “No. I don’t. Even if I believed in prophecies, even if you are an Untethered Sleeker, even if you could find the lost Oidrhe, that’s the Curator’s mission. Not mine.”

  “It’s not mine, either,” I say, holding my hands palms out. “I just want to go home. And I can’t do that without the Curator.”

  He gives me a how-is-this-my-problem look.

  “I get it. I am not your problem. But here’s the thing—you need me. I read your books. I know everything you’re going to do in the next four days.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  But I can see the flicker of indecision in his eyes. He is cocky, but he has doubts.

  “You’re going to rescue the princess from the Sleeker detention center, right?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because it happens in the book.” I don’t add a “duh” at the end. See how mature I am?

  “In this book of yours, why do the hellhounds drag her off? I read about the book on that app of yours. It doesn’t mention a Dark Worlder or an Untethered Sleeker.”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then why do the hellhounds drag her off?”

  “In the book, she’s not dragged off by hellhounds.” He turns and walks away again, so I hastily add, “She is kidnapped by Smyth. He’s the one who brings her to Gull Veston Island. But that’s where the hellhounds bring anyone they capture, right? So that’s where she’ll be.”

  “The detention center is impossible to break into. Nobody even knows where it is.”

  This makes me beam. Finally, an ace up my sleeve! “I know where it is.”

  Surprise flickers in his eyes.

  So I keep talking. “I can get you there. You need to rescue the princess. I need to rescue the Curator. We both need to figure out what Smyth is up to and stop—”

  “What do you have against Smyth anyway?”

  I blink in surprise as his question takes me aback. “He’s the bad guy.” Kane makes a keep-it-coming gesture with his hand. “Well, he killed your mom.”

  My dad read the first book aloud to me when I was eleven. That was back before all that stuff happened, when he was still a sane and loving father. In a book full of demons and monsters, the moment that kept me up at night was the moment Smyth killed Kane’s mother. “He murdered her right in front of you. When you were just a kid.”

  One night, I woke up screaming because I’d dreamed Smyth had my mom, his long, black, Sleeker arms wrapped around her body, his embrace almost loving. His expression was gaunt and sad as he plunged one pointed Sleeker tentacle straight through her heart. But that was after my dad had been carted off. I had all kinds of nightmares then. The monsters had become real for me.

  “That’s why I hate Smyth,” Kane says sharply. “He killed my mom. Why do you hate him?”

  “I just…” I shake my head to free myself from the memory of that dream. Why had it seemed so real? “He’s the villain of—”

  “You said that already.”

  “Well, stop interrupting me. If you want answers to complicated questions, you have to let me think about them.”

  He smirks and gestures broadly, as if yielding me the floor.

  “There are some villains we love to hate. Or even just love. Villains like Darth Vader. Or Ursula, the sea witch.” Kane probably isn’t much of a fan of animated movies, so I add, “She’s from The Little Mermaid.”

  “I know who Ursula is,” he says dryly. “And Darth Vader. In case you’re worried.”

  “Smyth isn’t like that. He isn’t a fun villain. He’s just horrible. Power hungry. Controlling. Willing to do things he knows are wrong to get what he wants.”

  “You know a lot about him.”

  I shrug. “Just what’s in the books.”

  “What is it he wants? In the books, I mean.”

  “He wants to control everything. He’s obsessed with ridding the Kingdoms of Mithres of all influence from the Dark World. He’s spent the last five books hunting down every Dark Worlder he can find and destroying every artifact that makes it across the threshold between worlds. It’s one of the reasons he hates you so much. Because you’re an expert at finding thresholds and at tracking Dark Worlder artifacts once they’ve come through. You import things and sell them on the black market. They disappear into private collections before he can destroy them.”

  Kane chuckles.

  “What?”

  “That’s what you think I do?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” He gives a diffident huff. “The way you describe it, it sounds like a business.” He rubs his hands over the back of his neck. “Sure, sometimes I’m able to sell the stuff I find. Sometimes, what I find is a piece of crap no one wants and it sits down in The Volume Arcana until Gus throws it out.”

  “Oh. It sounded more glamorous the way Wallace described it.”

  “Every once in a while, someone will hire me to find something special, but that’s pretty rare. It’s certainly not a business.”

  I’m still mulling over this new information, but Kane must take my silence for disapproval, because he sounds offended when he declares, “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m only nineteen. I don’t have any formal education. I live my life entirely off the map. I haven’t exactly had time to launch a career.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “Most days, I think I’m doing pretty good just to keep us alive. So don’t—”

  “Us?”

  He breaks off his rant and just blinks at me for a second, like his own words are only now sinking in. Then he gives one of those sarcastic smirks of his. “Yeah. Us. Gus and me. You wouldn’t believe how much th
at guy can eat.”

  “Oh. So you guys, like, hang out a lot?”

  “Yeah,” Kane says sharply. “He’s like a father to me.”

  “Huh.” Okay, sure. I liked it better when I thought my book boyfriend’s best friend was a suave millionaire time traveler (i.e., Morgan Geroux, of the Nawlins Court), but who am I to judge a fatherly old man on appearance alone? Well, appearance and smell. And dental hygiene.

  “Just out of curiosity, do you get a lot of toothpaste from the Dark World? Because that maybe seems like something some people might need more of.”

  The look Kane gives me would knock a lesser woman to her knees. A woman who hadn’t already fought a hellhound and survived. Mostly.

  Whatever I’m going to say to convince him to bring me along, I need to say it now.

  “Look, the point is, you hate Smyth. I hate Smyth. He’s tried to kill you in the past. He’ll very likely try to kill me, too, merely because I’m a Dark Worlder. So there’s no reason we can’t help each other.”

  After a long moment, he shakes his head, slings his bag over his shoulder, and heads for the door.

  “Even if I trusted you, even if I wanted your help, I’m not going to take a kid with me.”

  “I’m not a kid. I’m almost as old as you are.”

  He raises an eyebrow.

  “You said you were nineteen, right?” I ask.

  It takes him a beat to admit, “Yeah.” He frowns. “Why? How old are you?”

  Technically, I’m seventeen, but I fudge for the sake of winning the argument. That’s legit, right? “I’m eighteen.”

  “In what? Dog years?”

  “I’m eighteen,” I lie again.

  “You can’t be. You’re so…short.”

  “I am a perfectly normal height in the Dark World.”

  “Dark Worlders are all this short?”

  “No, I just… Five four is well within normal range.”

  He smirks. “I doubt that.”

  “My point is, I’m a legal adult.” -ish “I could join the army. Not that I’m going to, but still.” Kane looks stunningly disinterested in my pacifist views. “I can make rescuing the princess so much easier.”