by Steve Vera
Her bladder pushed against her stomach. Shouldn’t she have become immune to fear by now? Dripping a cascade of water onto the river-bank, the creature stalked out of the water, its clawed, flipper-ish feet crunching softly into the gravel as it approached. Tall, gangly and knotted with muscles, it moved with surprising grace.
And it had opposable thumbs. Spiked with talons. Carrying a club made out of bone.
She felt Donovan’s hand suddenly on her shoulder. It was hot, scorching.
“Do not look it in the eyes,” he whispered so softly that she swore the words appeared inside her head instead of out.
She looked away immediately and stared at a twig. In the silence it seemed as if its phlegmy breathing was right next to her ear.
Twig, twig, twig. It was small, maybe the length of her pinky, and had a small bud attached to its milk-white tip that would never blossom. The odor of rotting algae and pond scum swelled in her nostrils, the sound of monstrous breathing like the panting of a nightmare. She closed her eyes to mere slits and focused on nothing but the twig and the bud. She could still see the creature in her peripheral vision.
It stopped several body lengths away from the trees with its mouth open, a dim silhouette against the moon on the river behind it. Its head moved slowly as it searched for a scent that it had lost, nostrils working, peering into the darkness of the forest. It came no closer. It seemed leery of the forest.
After several eternities, it finally moved on, crunching upriver, probably looking for something else to eat.
“I don’t want to play anymore,” Amanda sobbed when it was gone, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes. I just wanna go home... The image of Gavin’s brave face lit up dimly in the back of her mind but was submerged by a crashing wave of nausea-inducing fear and the pain of the lacerated flesh in her back, gifts left by the claws of Asmodeous the Pale when she’d been abducted back on Earth. I just wanna lay in my own bed and pull the covers over my head...
Donovan’s sudden release of her shoulder produced a tilting sensation; she almost fell backward but grabbed on to the tree. The bark shocked her like static electricity. He bent down and looked her full in the face. The cold light of the shattered moon seemed warm by comparison.
“Talking will get you killed.”
Amanda swallowed and shut her trembling mouth, wiping futilely at the tears spilling down her face.
“Stand up. Follow me. Time to hunt down your boyfriend.”
* * *
Skip felt as if he had two aliens punching their way out from behind his eyeballs. Evidently being invisible didn’t agree with his temples. At first, it was merely uncomfortable, like having a couple of dryers on the spin cycle attached to his head while listening to a dog whistle, but after just a couple of minutes, pulses of light began stabbing his brain and the spinning dryers gave way to an angry, rattling Chinook transport helicopter.
The bright spot was they got away. Cloud Girl (a Sylph, he later learned) never left the river’s edge, just hovered by Jack’s memorial as if it were some kind of beacon. Ten minutes into the forest, they’d all been jerked back by an earsplitting crackle of thunder that reverberated through the trees like a crashing volcano. There’d been a pause, an invisible exchange of stares, and then they were running again, each step an earthquake inside his head.
Sometime in the night, a couple of hours past twilight, they arrived, and when they did, Skip collapsed into a shameless heap of groans and splayed limbs.
“I hate you all,” he moaned. The others were already efficiently making camp. “Why aren’t any of you dying like me?”
Noah kneeled beside him and smiled, her cheeks pleasantly flushed as if she’d just gone on a light run. “Because you’re out of shape.”
“Bite me.” Gasp, gasp. “You guys are cheaters is what it is. Why don’t you spread the happiness, or are all Magi as stingy as you?”
“Sorry,” she said, patting his head. “Club members only.” She fished out a protein bar from somewhere beneath her cloak, unpeeled it and crammed three quarters of it into her mouth. “Wont w’n?” she asked, holding the wrapper out to him.
Skip pushed himself to his knees with a groan. “I was thinking more along the lines of a nice pepperoni pizza.” Waves of pressure throbbed through his feet and legs, and the crimp he had in his shoulder would dog him for weeks. “Think you guys could presto one up?”
Noah smiled, stuffed the rest of the bar in her mouth and shook her head. “S’rry.”
Gavin came over. He looked down at Skip with serious, thoughtful eyes. His cloak eddied silently behind him. “You gonna live?”
“That’s the plan,” Skip said and coughed.
A weak smile. “When we were here last, these trees,” he said, pointing at the forest around them, “were extinct.”
“No kidding?” he said, not giving a flying rat’s furry butt about stupid trees. What he needed right now was a couple of Percocets—wait a minute, didn’t he have some of those? He shook his jacket and was rewarded with the rattle he’d been ignoring the whole run. There you are...
“Do you know what that means?” Gavin asked.
“Not a clue.”
“It means that we’re very, very, very far away from where we need to be.” His eyes were moist and black and cryptic but they seemed to catch a glint of light from the trees, turning his expression into something not quite human.
“I think your eyes might be glowing,” Skip said, making a play at sitting up.
“It’s the bark,” Noah said. “Look.”
Skip peeled his head off the ground and lo and behold, right there in front of him were ribbons of gentle, iridescent cobalt trapped within the grain of the tree, like the bioluminescence of jellyfish in a night-sea. It was dim, but once he was aware of it, he saw it everywhere.
“Pretty.” Skip tried to rub the pain out of his eyes with his fingertips. “I was thinking. If we’re lost, couldn’t that mean that Azmo-face might be lost too?”
Gavin’s eyes got blacker. “No. The Pale Gate would call to the Overlord like a lighthouse on a clear night. There’s no way he’s lost.”
“Couldn’t you guys do that too, then?”
It might have been Skip’s imagination but it seemed to him that a ripple went through the four of them. Tarsidion and Cirena paused their camp-making, just for half a heartbeat, then resumed.
“We should,” Noah finally said, licking the last remnants of protein bar from her teeth. All levity had been blow-torched away. “But we can’t. All I’m getting is...static.”
Skip rolled his head to her. “Which means what, exactly?” Skip didn’t think he liked the sound of that. Gavin wiped the corners of his mouth and rolled whatever he found there between his thumb and forefinger.
“It means that come tomorrow...we’re splitting up.”
Chapter 7
Donovan never tripped. He never faltered or stumbled, just flowed through the forest like he knew exactly where they were going.
Amanda herself possessed no such grace. She stumbled through the trees, cursed silently as roots conspired to trip her and was constantly avoiding branches intent on gouging her eyes.
It was a strange thing for her future to be so closely tied to somebody she hardly knew. And hated. What she did know about him was horrible; he’d broken into her house, beat the crap out of her in her own bedroom (her face was still swollen) but he’d also saved her life. Twice.
What exactly was she supposed to do with that?
Her dignity demanded that she hate him. What other way was there to feel? And yet he possessed something she needed now more than she’d ever needed in her whole life...strength. Power. Fearlessness.
A root pounced on her ankle. She tripped, fell forward but without even looking, Donovan speared his arm backwar
d and stopped her plunge with the flat of his hand, mashing her upper left boob. He removed it the moment her equilibrium was restored and continued forward as if it hadn’t happened. He was creepy-like.
His fist went up. Amanda froze. His index finger spiked up and came quickly to his lips.
Something was moving through the trees. Something big and ponderous. And hooved.
Not a peep, not a peep, not a tiny little peep.
Now that her eyes had adjusted she could see the glow of opal moonlight splashed with red wine seeping from petals and bark. The effect was subtly spectacular, reminding her of Christmas lights in a sleeping house. And a monster roaming through it.
All she could do was crouch behind Donovan and watch him aim through the trees, pray that whatever was out there was the Theian equivalent of a wandering water buffalo.
A stick snapped not twenty feet away. A big stick. Fingers of panic encircled her entrails. Just don’t be Asmodeous, please don’t be Asmodeous...
No longer did unfamiliar, strange sounds emanate from the forest. The trees had gone still. She could hear Donovan’s nostrils working. Her body was wound so tightly her bones could have cracked. Her wounds felt crusty and inflamed.
Maybe it was a minute, maybe an hour, but one by one, like a control room slowly coming back online, the trees began to breathe. A cricket chirped, sounding the all-clear, and then his friends joined in. A high-pitched whistle in staccato announced itself close by and was answered by a much eerier cry that sounded like a screaming child. Donovan lowered his rifle.
“What was it?” she whispered.
“How the fuck should I know?” his voice floated back.
Amanda was too unnerved to be bothered by his acerbity—they were alive and that was good enough for her.
“You walk like a five hundred pound sloth with no eyes.” He was right in her face, his licorice, herbaceous breath filling her nostrils. There was a hint of musk in his breath, something virile.
She stepped back from him. “A simple elephant comparison would have done just fine.”
“It’s what attracted whatever that thing was. Watch where you’re walking. Bare patches of grass, stone, earth—good. Dried leaves, twigs and dead foliage—bad. Got it? And don’t clop like a horse. Roll your strides from heel to toe. Feel.” He planted the tip of his index finger right in the middle of her forehead and gave it a shove. “Learn or be left.”
At that, he turned and continued through the forest.
Amanda stood for a second, jaw agape, the spot he’d shoved burning like a coal. Yup. I hate him.
After two long seconds she started after him, rolling her feet instead of just stepping. Not that it made a difference.
“Walk into that clearing,” he said not three minutes later, and she nearly collided with his back.
“Huh?” she whispered, returning from her thoughts.
He pointed ahead, and sure enough, if she squinted her eyes just right she could see a break in the trees.
“Walk into that clearing,” he repeated.
She looked and then blanched. “By myself?”
He nodded.
She swallowed, pressed her hands together and brought them to her mouth in an attempt to stem the nausea bubbling up her throat. “Could I have a gun?”
He reached down and without hesitation pulled the pistol strapped to his left thigh—a 9mm by the looks of it—and handed it to her, grip first. “You know how to use it?”
“Point and shoot?”
“Safety?”
She looked. “It’s a Glock. Doesn’t have one.” That almost looked like a smile. She hit the magazine release, verified she was loaded (she was), re-inserted the magazine with a solid click, pulled the slide back and released to cock it laying her index finger parallel to the barrel. Thank you, Uncle Billy.
“There’s hope for you yet,” he whispered. “Now go. Shoot only if you must. If you give away our position unnecessarily...” He didn’t finish.
Yeah, yeah, you’ll beat the crap out of me and leave me to die. Got it.
Without giving herself a chance to chicken out, Amanda raised her locked arms in front of her and started toward the clearing, rolling her feet as she crept.
What was she, anyway? Bait? Heel-toe, heel-toe. Cannon fodder? All she wanted to do was go to sleep.
When she got to the edge of the clearing, she peered in and felt a small flight of balloons rise out of her belly.
Spread before her was a glen of thick, lush grass burning softly in moon-glow. It was a secretive place, self-contained and silent, like an oasis nobody spoke of lest it be used up. In the center were three gigantic trees different from the rest of the forest, older and way bigger. They were fully leaved (as if they’d never lost them) and thick moss hung from their branches like overgrown beards. She raised her pistol and looked down the sight, took a breath and walked in. It was like stepping into another room. There was a stream babbling somewhere. Dewy grass soaked her toes and the air felt thicker. Older. She panned her pistol in a slow circle, all senses at the tips of her nerves.
Silence. Solace.
The three wizened trees in the center towered over her, branches dappled in pale moonlight kissed with garnet. In front of their trunks was a circle of grass denser than the rest but only half as tall—an island of thick, verdant vegetation no higher than her ankles. The circle was disc-like in its precision, punctuated by a cluster of fat red mushrooms with white polka-dots.
A single butterfly fluttered up from the copse, its delicate wings rimmed in the dim light of the forest. Looking down, she was tempted to brush a swath through them with her foot, maybe even kick at one to see what would happen, but her gut told her that would be...unwise. She could almost feel the energy of the trees pulsing around her. This place was holy to somebody. After a good long search, she backed up two steps and bumped right into the Donovan’s chest, which felt studded with rocks. At least she didn’t scream.
Impervious to the mystical sanctity of this little oasis, Donovan scanned it like a barcode. “Down there too,” he said and pointed left.
“Of course down there too,” she said, shaking her head. “Shouldn’t you be doing this?”
“No. I will use your cacophony to my advantage. Go.”
Oh, you’re gonna get yours, Donovan. She released a quiet sigh, followed his finger to a narrow, grassy path winding away into the black and started forward.
Just another night in a magical forest on the other side of the universe with a sociopath. The usual.
The trail was little more than packed grass and fallen petals and was hardly wider than her shoulders. Her pistol went up. The sooner she got this over with, the sooner they could rest.
It was like stepping into yet another room, only here it was cold enough to see her breath. And much darker. Slivers of moonlight peeking through the tops of the trees revealed centipedes of mist whirling around her soaking feet. Every time she took a step her left heel slid out of her shoe with a squeak; she could practically feel the blister growing with each step. Why couldn’t I have worn boots?
The trail weaved through trees, dipped below a rotting log studded with terraces of mushrooms, climbed a cluster of broken rocks and then opened up to a sprawling meadow. In the middle were the silhouettes of a giant jumble of ancient, moss-shrouded boulders that might have held shape in some distant time.
The light of both moons was just bright enough to reveal edges that were blunted and rounded by years of exposure. Vines and lichen had claimed much of its surface as their own. Still, she could see a subtle, rugged order in its arrangement. Pieces of a fallen tower? A broken statue? Some kind of monument? Two of the stones leaned against each other, forming a thick teepee of shelter beneath.
“We camp here,” Donovan said, materializing on her side.
Donovan took off his sunglasses so she could see his eyes. In the light of both moons she could have sworn she saw red, but of course, that would be impossible. Human eyes didn’t glimmer red.
“I have nothing for you,” he said. “You didn’t earn it.”
Chapter 8
“We making s’mores?” Skip asked and rubbed his hands together.
No smiles. Noah, Tarsidion and Cirena stood in a triangle around the bonfire, hoods drawn like dark angels. Behind them was the drop off to the river below. He could hear its babble and took comfort in it. At least it was familiar.
Unlike the sky.
This place didn’t just have one moon, it had two, and one of them had been blasted apart. It floated in the sky like a skull hit by a hammer; it must have taken him at least an hour to stop gawking. But he was good now.
He didn’t have a choice.
Noah stood at the center point of the triangle. The firelight licking what little of her face was not swallowed by her hood changed her eyes into wells. In that moment she seemed otherworldly. Cirena and Tarsidion loomed beside her, at three and nine o’clock, arms folded beneath their cloaks like monks in meditation. Hoods drawn.
There was something strongly ceremonious about it all.
“No jokes, please,” Gavin said softly. “If this goes wrong, my soul ends up wandering the Ancestral Plane for the next eternity.”
“Mine too,” Noah called out.
“And mine,” Tarsidion rumbled.
“Make that four,” Cirena said, rounding it out.
“All right. No s’mores. All I have to do is make sure you’re not disturbed, right?”
“Exactly. We’re not going to be gone long,” Gavin said. “But while we are, we’ll be vulnerable. If contact between us is broken for any reason or if we’re somehow disturbed...sad face. Comprende?”