Through the Black Veil

by Steve Vera

  The stormy night at the Bastion was gone. In fact, Earth was gone.

  She heard a splash and looked to her left. He was here too. Of course he was. He was the mastermind of this entire catastrophe, the one who had opened that grave in the first place and initiated this little metaphysical tumble across realities onto Theia, Earth’s magical twin. The creepy stranger who hit as if he had rocks in his knuckles. She watched him cut through the wavelets with a picture-perfect side stroke, hauling something beneath the surface of the water she was treading.

  And somehow, he was still wearing those damn sunglasses. Were they welded to his head?

  On instinct she opened her mouth to yell for help but quickly corrected herself; he wasn’t the helping kind. In fact, that bastard had hit her—her face still felt like raw chicken from his little Gestapo interrogation yesterday.

  I don’t need your help.

  She extended her body, kicked out her legs and carved through the water, ignoring the magma seeping out of her shoulder blades with every motion.

  By the time she got to shore her body was on fire, her breaths reduced to ragged gasps. Donovan offered no help as she collapsed on the gravelly sand bank, her legs still half in the water. He looked around, his eerily beautiful face emotionless, unfazed by their trek across the universe. Amanda eyeballed him—her chin anchored in the moist, pebbly sand that composed the river bank, arms splayed in front of her, wondering just who the hell he was. She knew his name, Donovan, but that was all.

  He moved like a panther, a perfect blend of rippling power and feline fluidity mixed with a little cyborg. Not only had he retained his sunglasses, but he still had that long rifle on his shoulder—that was what he’d been hauling under water.

  She watched him study their surroundings with the deliberation of a tracking computer. Whatever these trees were, they weren’t anything she’d ever seen. They were a strange hue of white, the color of freshwater pearls, bursting with lavender and citron blossoms. Just one reality ago, it had been autumn in Connecticut. If she hadn’t been so exhausted she might have murmured something in awe; there was something mystical about their beauty that resonated deep in her core. Like coming home. Or Gavin’s arms. But she was too damn tired to place it. And the pain...her flesh had been punctured and torn by Asmodeous the Pale, Lord of the Underworld. She shivered at the memory of his black tongue sliding across her cheek, the feel of his claws piercing her skin and the muscle beneath.

  Donovan set aside his rifle and kneeled in front of one of the trees, studying its bark with dispassion. Whipping a strand of damp hair from his eyes, he scooped up a handful of sand and sifted it through his fist, smelling it as it slid through his fingers.

  She closed her eyes. We are way the hell out of Kansas now, Amanda Kasey.

  A breeze rustled the flaps of her torn skin; she could practically feel legions of bacteria setting up camp in her body.

  This has to be a dream. When I wake up, Gavin will be lying right beside me. I’ll lay my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat and fall right back to sleep.

  One, two, three!

  Amanda cracked her left eye open. Nope. Instead of Gavin, it was Donovan standing over her, a long-haired, sandy-blond god wearing red-tinted designer Ray Ban Aviators and black military fatigues.

  “You’re bleeding all over the place,” he said in that awful rasp of his. She wondered if his voice was naturally that creepy or if it had something to do with the scar smiling across his neck.

  “That’s because there are lacerations in my back,” she said wearily. She was rather enjoying sprawling here like a beached whale.

  “Get out of the water.”

  Amanda opened her other eye. “Are we in some kind of rush?”

  There wasn’t so much as a flicker from his unrealistically beautiful face, but she felt as if the pin to a grenade had just been pulled.

  “I know you are not stupid, Amanda,” he said little louder than a whisper. “Your blood is in the water.” He looked to her right and pointed. “And those are tracks of nothing I recognize from the natural world.”

  A random memory of some biology class floated through her memory...a shark can follow the trail of blood in the water for miles...

  With another groan she pulled herself out of the river and stood on shaky legs, looking upon this new cause for apprehension. Nope. Those were definitely not squirrel tracks.

  “Bear?” she offered hopefully.

  “Maybe you are stupid.” He kneeled by the tracks.

  A hard breeze came off the water, slicing through her damp jeans and shredded top, and transformed the world into snowing petals and groaning branches.

  “Biped. Three hundred pounds.” He looked closer. “Non-retractable claws.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring,” Amanda said, rubbing her crossed arms. “No wonder he lied.”

  Donovan swiveled his head toward her. “Who lied?” He stood, suddenly right next to her. “What do you know?”

  Amanda stepped backward. He mirrored her movements, keeping exactly the same distance from her with every step.

  She swallowed when she ran out of room and winced as he pinned her against a tree.

  “Remember what happened to you the last time you defied me?” he asked.

  A memory-burst of his backhand lit up behind her mind’s eye. “We’re on Theia. Earth’s twin.”

  “The mother of the moon?”

  “Ah, somebody knows their mythology.”

  “Amanda.” There was just enough inflection in his raspy voice to conjure yet another memory-burst. She ran the tip of her tongue over the split lips he’d given her. They still hurt. He leaned forward and lightly encircled her jaw with his fingers—skin hot, as if he had a fever. “Tell me what you know.”

  Chapter 2

  This was not how it was supposed to be. Gavin couldn’t say for sure what it was supposed to be like, but burning the body of Jack Nyx to ashes sure as hell wasn’t it.

  The Three Seers themselves should have been delivering this ceremony, incense and blue smoke burning from their staves, all the Magi from their homeland gathered around, paying the proper homage to a hero who’d literally sacrificed his life for them, bought them the time they needed with his blood...with his face.

  Instead, it was just the five of them on an island no bigger than an apartment kitchen. They’d placed Jack’s body at the base of his monument—an eight-foot obelisk that rose from the moist, pebbly sand like a dagger in mourning embraced by the supple branches of a young willow tree. His blue armor glittered in the morning sun, a coat of mail beneath intricate plates of blue steel, his breastplate emblazoned with the Everwillow.

  A whisper of magic made it appear as if Jack’s hood was empty, blurred out of focus so that the last impression of their childhood friend would not be so macabre—a sort of half-open casket, but Gavin knew what was there. The only part of Jack’s face that wasn’t a mass of bloody congealing flesh and splintered bone was his left eye, although it was bright red, like a hemorrhaged cherry. There was something monstrous in its lifelessness. It was all Gavin saw when he closed his eyes, another horror inducted into his Hall of Tragic Memories.

  His voice cracked as he spoke in his old language. “Though the tides of your breaths have ceased, my brother, and the Great Silence enfolds you, speak my name at the Gates of Eternity and know that I will avow you. By my blood and by my tears I swear this.”

  He’d said the somber verses so many times during the First Drynnian War, when the Drynn had first been released, that the stanzas of the Shardyn Death Rites were burned forever into the lining of his brain, even after seventeen years of peace on Earth.

  With ceremonious reverence, Gavin drew his sacred Quaranai from its scabbard on his hip and opened his left palm. Slowly, with measured deliberation, he pulle
d the silver-rippled blade across the heel of his hand and separated his flesh. His blood welled and dribbled onto the ground like crimson pearls.

  You weren’t supposed to die, you asshole, he thought numbly. This was all was wrong. Like the sun setting in the east—Jack Nyx doesn’t die.

  Gavin stepped back, and Noah stepped forward. Her normally pert, heart-shaped mouth was slack from grief, shoulders weighted down as if they’d set anchor. It was unsettling to see her stripped of her serenity, to see her face bloodless from sorrow. He wondered if she felt the same dread he did, lurking at the fringes of his emotions. Even through this pall of sadness, the same thought kept beating in the back of his mind like some unholy heart—Asmodeous the Pale, Lord of the Underworld had returned to Theia.

  And they were Paul Revere.

  “Though the tides of your breaths have ceased, old friend,” Noah said listlessly in their native tongue of High Common. “And the Great Silence enfolds you, speak my name at the Gates of Eternity and know that I will avow you. By my blood and by my tears I swear this.” A shudder went through her and a half strangled moan emerged from her throat, only to be sucked back in—cut off like the head of a snake. “I shall miss your crooked smile.”

  She then lowered herself to a knee and picked up a fistful of dirt she’d set aside. Within that clump was a slender green seedling wisping up toward the morning sun. Even in his despair Gavin laughed, which morphed into a sob. It was a jalapeño plant. Of all the foods they’d discovered on Earth, nothing made Jack smack his lips louder; he’d put it on everything—pizza, rice and beans, fried eggs. He’d even put some on his ice cream on a dare. And liked it.

  Still kneeling beside his cloak-shrouded body, she dug her fingers into the moist dirt of the tiny island, scooped out a handful and set the fledgling pepper plant into it. The others waited in silence. Somewhere on the riverbank a tree lark warbled cheerfully, ignorant of its blasphemy.

  Noah leaned forward and whispered something to the three little leaves, and they trembled in response, in a way no breeze could evoke.

  When done, she stepped back and took her place beside Gavin, bowing like the others, hands clasped on forearm bracers beneath her cloak. Only Skip stood out in his American garb—jeans, brown Timberlands, dark green varsity Philadelphia Eagles jacket. The police chief simply folded his hands behind the small of his back and watched somberly at parade rest.

  Cirena stepped forward.

  Precious few on either world could ever say they’d seen Cirena so unguarded. Her marble mask had been put aside, replaced with a tender sadness that transformed her haughty beauty and vicious mouth into something angelic. She kneeled carefully beside the seedling and traced her fingertips over the silver threads woven into the sapphire blue embroidery of Jack’s cloak, right up to his stiffening fingers. She encircled his with hers.

  “Thank you for teaching me how to laugh,” she whispered in English and then in a soft, mechanical monotone, uttered the last stanza of the Forever Farewell.

  “Though the tides of your breaths have ceased, my brethren, and the Great Silence enfolds...”

  When she was done, Tarsidion stepped forward like a mountain.

  Of the original seven, with the exception of the twins Gavin and Lucian, nobody had been as close as “Tarsy” and Jack. Even on Earth they’d never lived more than a day’s ride away from each other, forever partners in crime—Tarsy on his Harley, Jack on his speed-demon BMW HP2 Sport.

  For a long moment Tarsidion said nothing. His body was ramrod, rigid to the point of snapping, long sable hair blowing in a breeze around the hardened angles of his face. In a halting, broken staccato, the great southern plainsman began to speak. “Though the tides of your breaths have ceased, my brother—” his nostrils flared, he licked his lips, “—and the Great Silence enfolds you, speak my name, brother—” a crack, “—at the Gates of Eternity and know that I will avow you. By my blood and by my tears I swear this.”

  The world took a breath and all went silent, even the song of the tree lark. Tarsidion held his bleeding hand outstretched what for what seemed like an hour, watching the steady beading of his blood dripping from the meaty bottom of his hand onto the gray-pebble ground, water lapping thirstily against it.

  He wasn’t done. His voice hardened and the tremble in his words turned to steel. “By my blood and by my tears—” English now, “—I swear to you, my brother, that I will know no rest until every last one of those motherfuckers are lying headless in a field, and I have fed their steaming entrails to the ravens. That to you I swear,” he growled.

  “I second that.” It was Skip. His eyes were serious and gritty.

  Tarsidion gave the police chief a hard nod and then stepped back, eyes burning as if they could set stone on fire.

  Now came the hard part. Gavin picked up Jack’s Quaranai, which had been lying across his chest, blade short in repose, and freed it from its scabbard.

  With shoulders back and chin straight level, Gavin held Jack’s sword ceremoniously in his right hand, pommel to his stomach so the blade was parallel with the ground, and sprinkled the blood from his left hand onto the fragment of Shardstone encapsulated in blue diamond just beneath the circular guard separating hilt from blade. That tiny shard, the namesake of their order, was the source of the Quaranai’s power, a superconductor of magic and the most precious substance on this world. A piece of the shattered moon. Gavin’s blood steamed as it hit the fragment and a thin plume of scarlet vapor rose. The others followed suit.

  After Tarsidion’s blood had hissed, he handed the Quaranai back to Gavin with reverent ceremony. Gavin’s head felt as if it were tied to a string bobbing ten feet above his shoulders. His nose prickled and his eyes burned. The suppressed beast in his chest threatened to break free; it wasn’t until Tarsidion flashed him a quick, reassuring nod that Gavin was able to continue.

  “Until we meet again on the Fields of the Evermist, beyond the Gates of Eternity, Sur Juekovelin Nyx, of the House of Nyx, Knight of the Shard, First Rune...” Gavin cleared his throat, bit back a sob and offered the blade to the dark crystal obelisk. “I bid thee farewell.”

  Like a magnet Jack’s Quaranai fused to the crystal with a snap of metal on stone, point down. The hum of magic swelled in his ears. In unison the four Shardyn Knights placed their right fists into their left hands, brought them back to touch the emblem of the burning Everwillows emblazoned on their breastplates and kissed the knuckle of their left forefinger.

  “I have something to say.” It was Skip again. He didn’t wait for their permission but approached Jack’s arm-crossed body and stood over it, looking down at their fallen brother with eyes that were uncharacteristically heavy and somber. After a long moment the police chief kneeled beside him. “I only knew you one day, paisan, but my life is better for it. I’m alive because of your sacrifice—hell, we’re all alive because of you, Jack Nyx.” Skip swallowed and fished inside his jacket. “If I had a medal of honor I’d pin it on you, but all I got is this.”

  Skip opened up his worn leather wallet and carefully detached the star-shaped badge from the front flap. He breathed gently on it and polished it against his chest. It was a simple badge, a seven-pointed star, with three circles. The top arch read: Chief of Police; the bottom: Rolling Creek, State of Montana; and engraved proudly across the middle: Badge number 5752.

  Skip placed it carefully under Jack’s right hand, curled the stiffening fingers around its points and stood. He tightened his lips, brought his heels together and snapped off a smart salute, holding it long enough for the tree lark to sing its song. When it was done, he released crisply and stepped back. “Thank you,” he whispered without meeting any eyes.

  Gavin looked at the rest of them, nodded and in perfect synchronization, each of them brought their hands to their mouths and blew into them. They opened their hands gently as if releasing a captured butter
fly.

  What emerged from the curl of their warm, unfurling fingers were not delicate wings but small globes of flame that floated toward Jack’s body like dandelion puffs, leaving shimmering trails behind them. When they neared Jack the spheres streaked forward and in a whoosh of combustion his body burst into flames.

  Like statues, they all watched the once-beloved flesh of their childhood friend be consumed. His hair. His half-eaten face, visible now in the flames that were reflected in their eyes. When it was over, only his armor and cloak remained, untouched, as well as the fledgling jalapeño plant in front of it. The badge had blackened, but not enough to distort it. The numbers in the middle were still visible. 5752.

  “His Quaranai has not blackened,” Noah observed, furrowing her brows. Instead of diminishing, the blue flames that had consumed his body continued to simmer around the obelisk and willow tree, emanating from the metal of his blade.

  “I’ve never seen that before,” Tarsidion said, equally as baffled. “What does it mean?”

  “Perhaps his soul has not yet departed,” Noah said.

  “Leave it to Juekovelin to be stubborn even in death,” Cirena said with a smile bordering on a smirk, Jack-style. “Burn for as long you want to, Jack.” She even used the American name he’d grown so fond of.

  “I would have bet both my balls that Jack would have made it here,” Skip said.

  “He did,” Noah said. “He’s home.”

  A long, somber and heavy silence followed.

  Gavin would have stayed there for days, but that wasn’t an option. They had a task to perform...the most important of their lives.

  “Gear up everybody. We leave in five minutes. From this point on we have one purpose only...victory or death.”

  “Oh, and Stavengre?” It was Tarsidion.

  Gavin paused mid-turn. Why did hearing his true name sound so ominous?

  “Yes?”

  “You might need this.”