For the first time since the night before, she thought of the thing she’d seen—or thought she’d seen—lurking out in the storm. Between the lightning, the dark, and the rain, there were a thousand things down there that might’ve cast a shadow that could’ve looked like a monster. She’d been tired and frightened and her brain had simply misinterpreted some bit of debris as a human-shaped thing in the dark.
Still, the unnatural silence of the town was creeping her out. It was time to scavenge whatever provisions they could find and move on. Daniel was still out there somewhere.
Celine’s and Corbbmacc’s muffled voices drifted up to her from beneath her feet. It sounded as though they’d decided to explore the upper rooms before joining her on the roof. It was an endeavor far more likely to be fruitful than her own had been. What was she thinking? Who was she kidding? There was nothing out here. There was nothing left of her world. It’d been a bug in the software or some other kind of crazy anomaly that had made that bar appear on her phone. How could there be anything like that out here now, after all this time? …After the merging of the worlds.
She was reaching again for her phone, resolved to turn it back on and prove to herself that the connection was gone, when she heard the deep animal roar and the tremendous, deafening crash of splintering wood behind her.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Before she realized what she was doing, Emily was sprinting across the rooftop, kicking the bits and pieces of a forgotten world out of her way as she ran. There was a howl, like that of the wolves she’d heard the day before, but this sound was lower, more guttural. It shattered the silence with a harsh, angry music that left only a single thought pounding in her head in time with the frantic beating of her heart: she had to get to the others.
She started down the stairs, feet skidding on the damp boards, and scanned the narrow alley below over the worn and weatherbeaten rail. She felt the cold steel of her sword’s hilt beneath her fingers before she’d even realized she was reaching for it, and she tensed, preparing to draw the blade. These were new instincts, she realized distantly, born out of necessity, and not motions guided by some mystical power. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that, and there wasn’t time to explore her emotions.
For an instant, she caught sight of the creature—the very one she had been thinking of just moments before. In the shadows between the buildings, it looked much as it had the previous night—huge and hulking, a mass of dark fur and muscle. As she flew down the stairs, it turned, almost as if it had been waiting for her to catch sight of it, and sprang around the far corner of the tavern, moving far more quickly than any human could. It let out another raging howl that echoed off the mountainside and through the streets of the empty town, a sound that spoke of pure menace.
And then, all at once, Emily wasn’t thinking about the creature anymore; she wasn’t thinking about her tangled emotions, either. Her feet, which had been carrying her down the steps at a breakneck pace, took her from the last step onto the landing at the second level—only the landing wasn’t there.
Time slowed, stretching and warping into something almost malleable—something elastic. She hung, staring down at the pile of splintered wood and boards that had been the lower portion of the stairs and the landing to the second floor, and then the knowing crashed over her in one immense tidal wave that picked her up and swept her away.
This was not the gradual build of electricity and power she’d felt before; this wasn’t like anything she’d felt before. It swept through her body with the unnatural speed of a bolt of lightning, burning her muscles, searing her tendons, filling her veins with liquid fire that was one part heat and two parts pleasure.
With strangely protracted motions, she twisted her body around like that of a swimmer, her fingers reaching with agonizing slowness for the old decaying banister before it had even entered her line of sight. She didn’t think. As it always had, the knowing simply guided her hands, doing what needed to be done.
Her palms slammed against the damp wood with incredible force, the sting of the impact reaching her mind in a languid swell. Everything was preternaturally clear; she could feel every minute detail in the woodgrain beneath her fingers; she could see the tiny droplets as they gathered at the railing’s underside; she could smell the wet and the dust and the age of this place; she could hear the last reverberations of the creature’s cry as it rolled out across the desert sands; she could taste the terror of the unknown and the ecstasy of the knowing, each at odds with the other in glorious discord.
The portion of the banister in her left hand broke away from its support with the muffled crunch of rotten wood, but the fingers of her right had closed on the support itself.
Pain exploded through her shoulder as her fall was suddenly broken, her right arm bearing all her weight, and the knowing winked out again. The slow-motion progression of time snapped back to full speed, and the world lost its unnatural luster.
Her vision doubled with the pain that sliced through her back, and she let go of the broken bit of railing. It tumbled to join the splintered mess below, and she groped wildly for something else to hold on to.
Her fingers found the step, the last one left before the yawing chasm where the landing had been, and closed around one edge of the damp board.
The pressure on her right shoulder eased as her left took up some of the slack, but even that relief was like agony. She could feel her arm going numb.
The door to the second floor flew open, and Corbbmacc appeared, framed by the dim interior.
“No!” she shouted at him as he started forward. He paused, taking an unsteady step backward, and then he looked down. She saw the shock register in his face, but she didn’t have time to say anything else.
She pulled hard with her left arm, sending her body into a swing, then pushed with her feet against the door frame. Her right arm howled with fresh pain as she moved back and forth, pushing and pulling her body like a pendulum and increasing her momentum and widening the arc her body was drawing through the air with each swing.
And then, with one last enormous effort, she flung herself at the open door in the wall beside her with all the strength she had left.
Her feet connected with Corbbmacc’s stomach, and he let out a low grunt of mingled surprise and pain. He toppled backward into the dark interior, and she heard the dull thump as he hit the floor.
She landed on the edge of the threshold, and for a moment, relief flooded through her as she felt the rough wood slide beneath her legs, but then her momentum gave out and her body tilted backward out over empty space. The world whirled crazily around her head as the sky and ground swapped places.
“Corbb!”
But he already had her. His hands closed, vice-like, around her hips, and he yanked her away from the drop and inside. Fresh pain bloomed up the length of her spine as her jerkin rode up and the rough boards scraped skin from her back. She gasped, but then the broken edge of the door frame hit the side of her skull, making the edges of the world blur for just a moment before swimming back into focus.
And then it was over.
For a long moment, they only lay there in the gloom, breathing heavily. From somewhere nearby, Emily heard the familiar sound of Rascal’s hiss. Every inch of her ached, and her head throbbed dully where her temple had connected with the edge of the doorway.
But there was something else, too; a comforting sort of warmth that filled her body like the echo of the pleasure that came with the knowing. It enveloped her, held her close, and slowed her thudding heart and gasping breaths.
Suddenly, Corbbmacc snatched his hands away from her legs as if they’d been burned. He got unsteadily to his knees, then to his feet, looking everywhere but at her.
“Are you okay?” he asked gruffly, reaching down and offering her his hand.
Emily took it and slowly rose to her feet. She was shaking, though whether it was from the remnants of the knowing’s power or the dull pain from her back and shoulder,
she wasn’t sure. She reached up to her temple, and her fingers came away stained with a few drops of blood.
“I’ve…” she paused, “been better. I guess I’ve been worse, too.”
“What the hell happened? What was that—”
“Where’s Celine?” Emily asked, ignoring his questions and turning away from him toward the shadows at the end of the hall. As if in reply, Rascal mewed discontentedly from up ahead.
Not waiting for a response, Emily made her way toward the sound. Cobwebs brushed her cheeks, and dust muffled the creaking floorboards beneath her boots. A few watercolor paintings of desert vistas hung crookedly on the walls in dingy frames, their muted hues seeming obscenely bright in the gloom.
“What the hell happened?” Corbbmacc repeated, a note of frustration in his voice. She heard his footsteps behind her as he followed.
The door at the far end opened into a tiny chamber, and she found Celine and Rascal locked in a kind of battle of wills just inside. Beyond them, a bed with a bare straw mattress was shoved against one wall, a copper basin not unlike the ones they’d had at Seven Skies near its foot. The walls were bare of decoration, though a single small window looked out over the street at the front of the tavern.
Emily sensed Corbbmacc’s presence behind her but did not look around. She watched the strange sort of dance step that Celine and Rascal were engaged in, the kitsper matching every step Celine took toward the door and neatly blocking her advance.
“Well, now it don’t ma’er none, yeh damn troublemaker,” Celine was saying. She looked between Emily and Corbbmacc, scowling. “The little bastard wouldn’t let me outa ’ere, he wouldn’t.”
“That’s because I told him not to,” Corbbmacc said.
“And who’s his bloody mistress, eh?”
“There’s something out there,” Emily interrupted, stepping around Celine and moving to the window. “I saw it last night during the storm. I thought it was my imagination. But it was out there.”
She looked down into the street below. There was no sign of movement anywhere.
“What do yeh mean, somethin’s out there? What kind o’ somethin’?”
Celine came up to stand beside her, and Emily heard Corbbmacc close the door. That was good; Emily wanted as many barriers between them and whatever that thing was if it came back for them.
“I’m not sure. It walked upright like a man, but it was much bigger. I didn’t get a good look at it.” She closed her eyes and tried to bring the brief glimpse of it she’d had back into focus in her mind. “It was a bit like a cross between a bear and a gorilla.”
She opened her eyes. Both her friends were looking at her blankly.
“What?” she asked, feeling a surge of annoyance. She knew what she’d seen. How was a bear and gorilla hybrid any crazier than anything else in this fucked up world?
Corbbmacc and Celine exchanged a glance.
“I know what a bear is,” Corbbmacc said slowly.
“Yeah, yeah,” Celine cut in impatiently. “But what’s a gorilla?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Emily said. “It’s big, with a lot of hair and long arms.”
“Sounds like a Sarqin,” Corbbmacc said.
“And what’s a Sarqin?” Emily asked, sighing.
Corbbmacc shrugged. “It’s a race of people. There aren’t many of them, but we’ve had a fair few in the Dragon’s Brood.” He paused for a minute and seemed to be debating.
“What?” Emily prodded warily.
“There are stories about some of them having gone…well…wild, I guess you’d say, east of the mountains. Which is more or less where we are now, isn’t it? I always dismissed them as tales to frighten children…” He trailed off.
Emily sank down onto the edge of the bed. “Well, one of them is out there, waiting for us, and I don’t think it’s very happy we’re here.”
Celine sat beside her. “I heard a crash out there. Sounded like the bleedin’ stairs were fallin’ down.”
“They were,” Corbbmacc said.
Celine paled. “How the ’ell is it that yeh keep gettin’ me in these fixes where I’m crawlin’ on boards over bloodthirsty trees and crawlin’ on giant stone walls and crawlin’ down bleedin’ mountainsides and the like, eh?”
Emily smiled wanly. “I’m not sure, Cel. Trouble seems to follow me.”
“Maybe we could find some sheets to tie together into a rope,” Corbbmacc said. “Emily and I could probably jump, but I’m worried about you, Celine. You’re in no condition to jump.”
“I’ve never been in any feckin’ condition to jump, thank yeh muchly.”
“The bigger problem is that thing out there,” Emily cut in, and the others looked at her. “Didn’t you hear it? It’s angry, and I don’t think it’s just going to let us waltz out of here.”
“We’re just going to have to fight it,” Corbbmacc said. “What other choice do we have? If it’s gone wild, maybe we can frighten it off.”
“It, yeh keep sayin’,” Celine said. “But it ain’t an it. I played with Sarqin kids on the streets, and they was as nice as anyone else.”
“Does it matter?” Corbbmacc asked, a hint of exasperation creeping into his voice. “I doubt he—she—means us any good if they’re trying to trap us in here.”
“It does ma’er. They’re a person still. Mayhap they can’t ’elp goin’ wild.”
Emily turned toward Celine. “You played with Sarqin kids. What were they like?”
Celine’s brow furrowed. Rascal jumped up onto the bed beside her, and she began stroking his fur, thinking. Finally, she shrugged.
“I dunno, Em. They’re just people, really. They’re powerful strong and can’t see much when the light ain’t good, but otherwise, they ain’t much different from you or me.”
Emily leaned back on her elbows, staring up at the ceiling. It had been covered in plaster once, but most of that had crumbled to dust, collecting in tiny drifts of flakes and powder on the floor and window sill and revealing the bare boards. Cobwebs hung thick in the corners, and there were water stains in places, but overall everything had remained remarkably well preserved.
“What if we just stay here for now?” she asked, not looking at the others. “We can wait until tonight and try to sneak out of the town when it’s dark. Maybe we can get away before it—” she glanced uncertainly at Celine, “uh…he—realizes we’re gone.”
“And what if it comes back between now and then?” Corbbmacc asked.
“Then we’ll have to fight it off,” Emily said, sitting back up and looking at Corbbmacc. “I think we have a better chance of that in here than trying to outrun the thing out there during the day. It’s fast, Corbb. I saw it run.”
Celine nodded. “Yeah. Sarqins can be fast when they want. They kinda jump sometimes.”
“And what if we end up having to fight it in the dark?” Corbbmacc persisted.
“If Celine’s right, and they can’t see very well in the dark, that might give us an edge. I think we’re better off avoiding a confrontation if we can, though.”
“Course I’m right,” Celine said.
Corbbmacc scowled, but he didn’t argue any further.
Emily turned to Celine. “Why don’t you rest for a bit, and we’ll go scavenge for something to help us get down from here, okay?”
“I’m a’right, Em,” Celine protested.
“You’re going to need your strength tonight,” Corbbmacc told her, his voice softening. “Take the rest while you can get it, Cel.”
Celine looked back and forth between them, then shrugged and flopped back onto the bed. The gesture was so much like the old Celine, before the power she wielded had sapped away her strength, that it brought a lump to Emily’s throat. She swallowed hard and looked away.
“C’mon, Corbb,” she said, her voice sounding strange in her own ears. “Let’s see what we can find.” She got back to her feet and crossed the room to the door, not looking to see if he was following.
He
was, though, and as the door swung shut behind them, she turned and stood facing him in the dim hall.
“Thanks,” she said awkwardly when the silence had spun out too long. “For pulling me inside.”
Corbbmacc shrugged.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, and for a moment, she thought he would say more, but then he pushed past her and started down the hall. “There’s a room full of stuff at the back,” he said over his shoulder. “We didn’t have a chance to look through it. Maybe there will be something in there we can use.”
Emily followed him to a long, narrow room that ran nearly the entire length of the back wall. Dim light slipped in through grimy windows and between the ragged remains of old curtains, painting everything in shades of muddy yellow. Boxes, broken bits of furniture, and mounds of discarded odds and ends were piled everywhere. Above them, near the ceiling, an enormous jade-green spider perched upon the strands of its web, surveying them indifferently through its faceted scarlet eyes.
“It looks like it’s been ransacked,” she said, sidling into the room after Corbbmacc and stepping carefully over the corpse of a ruined armchair. The upholstery and stuffing of its seat had been shredded and turned into a kind of nest for some sort of rodent, she supposed. Thankfully, there were no signs of its inhabitant, and judging by the layer of undisturbed dust covering everything, she guessed nothing had lived up here in years.
“It probably was,” Corbbmacc said, making his way carefully through the mess toward the window. “I’m going to get some air in here.”
As Corbbmacc worked to pry the window open, Emily began picking her way through the chaos. Most of it was little more than trash. Broken crockery, decaying upholstery, and chipped glasses were piled haphazardly. Crumpled papers, some half gnawed away by long gone animals, were scattered everywhere. In one corner, a pile of twisted bits of metal, caked with rust and grime, lay jumbled in a heap like the bones of a mechanical dinosaur.
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