Smoke & Mirrors

by C. L. Schneider

  Prior to the rumors of waste-dumping, the old industrial district had been plagued with a string of accidents and fatalities, safety violations, and poor working conditions. But those deaths happened in the early years across the entire district. Not all in this building or this room. Yet with nearly each step, a cold streak of trauma nipped at my heels. Multiple scars hung low to the floor. There shouldn’t be this much.

  I counted the chairs crammed in around the table. Ten. Had we really gone from one suspect to a whole damn gang? And: ten what? The figure who led me here appeared human, or something close to it. Food didn’t seem to be their primary motive. Not if the glut of Chinese takeout containers meant anything.

  The flooded sewer washing their dirty deeds into view might have been accidental. Ditching evidence at the river, when they had a working crematorium at their disposal, wasn’t. And if they’d been at it a long time, as their setup suggested, why call attention to themselves now? What changed? And where the hell did they all go?

  Frustrated, I eyed the many ways out. Two sets of stairs led to an elevated walkway, both with doors at the end. A third stairway led to a dark, open hall. All were quiet with no signs of movement. But someone was coming back. They’d left the oven on.

  Feeling the time tick with my racing pulse, I eyed the splattered, dark stains on the floor and on the gurneys. If a peek at one of the victim’s last moments showed me their killer, I might be able to identify what type of creature I was dealing with.

  I chose a puddle near the main furnace. The floor beneath it was scarred; ethereally and physically. The abundance of trauma might confuse the reading. Or the surplus of psychic energy could give it a boost. I crossed my fingers on the latter and placed a hand flat in the blood.

  Chilled and slightly congealed, as the moisture sunk in, the basement blurred. Grime-coated walls spun with an eerie howl. A wind that existed for no one but me, blasted through the room, as time seized my consciousness and carried it away.

  Restraints bit into my limbs. Fear choked my throat. Heat blasted from multiple furnaces, driving up the temperature in the room and drawing beads of sweat on my skin.

  But it wasn’t my skin. It wasn’t my fear. I wasn’t here. Eavesdropping on someone’s pain meant sharing in it. And there was a whole lot to go around.

  Strapped to the gurneys, lying mutilated and weak in piles on the floor, there were creatures everywhere. Asrai, harpy, yeren, banshee, aswang, ciguapa, selkie. Their overlapping cries and moans created an eerie symphony of terror that tore at my nerves. Missing limbs, eyes, tongues, skin, and organs (based on the carved-open, half-empty carcasses), many had drawn, or were drawing, their last breaths. Chains rattled as a male windigo let out a desperate, shuddering bray. His chest and face were shredded in a familiar claw-like pattern. Bloody stumps were all that remained of his once-majestic set of horns.

  Not surprisingly, the banshee’s screams were the loudest. She was the only one not injured to the point of immobility. That’s her, I thought. My banshee.

  It had to be. Her wounds were in the exact same place. She must have gotten loose somehow—and instinct sent her right back out looking for food.

  Their captors were stationed around the room. All were male, of above average height with toned builds that appeared human. Dressed in full tactical gear, including gloves and hooded masks, if they had supernatural features, I couldn’t see them. None of them appeared to be in charge. All pitched in equally, wheeling the bodies, carrying them over their shoulders, dumping them in the blazing, steel confines of the furnace. They barely spoke or acknowledged each other. They were rigidly focused on nothing but cleanup and disposal. It’s their jobs, I thought. They were following orders. But whose orders?

  I moved, intangible, around the bodies, warding off their ghosts as my empathy pulled me to the female harpy whose blood I’d connected to. Her cries were fading as she drifted into unconsciousness. The straps holding her to the gurney were soaked a deep red. Something ferocious had taken a bite out of her midsection. Her wings had been removed.

  One of the hooded men stepped up beside her. Lifting the large cleaver in his grip, he separated the harpy’s head from her body with a swift, clean strike. Blood pumped and ran off the side of the gurney, joining the puddles coating the dusty floor. He tossed her head into a waiting bucket, then without pause or a glimmer of emotion, loaded the rest of her body into the oven.

  Disgusted, I pulled out of the vision. There was nothing of any use here, anyway, nothing but more disconnected clues. And I was done watching them suffer.

  The moment I fell out of the vision, I knew something was wrong. The air was cold and tense, electrified. My hair stood on end, like I was in the charged echo of a lightning strike. The space in front of me hummed and pulsed. It shook a moment, vibrating against me—then shattered with a heavy boom, as the invisible barrier separating the worlds ruptured like busted glass.

  Thrown to the floor, I shielded my eyes. But what exploded wasn’t tangible. A few ethereal fragments brushed over me like a whisper. The rest hung, clustered over the black puddle of pain that triggered the breach.

  Throat dry with excitement, I climbed to my feet. I’d studied countless exits, but I’d never stood in the center of one as it burst into being. Neither had I seen one start out so large. Most exits were born with a single, broken shard, or a small handful. They took weeks, months, in some cases, years, to grow into a viable passage. This one had emerged with a cluster of fragments nearly four feet tall.

  I watched the broken pieces spin. Reflected in the colored fragments were glimpses of both realities; mine, and whatever world lie on the other side.

  I put my hand out, but it went nowhere. The exit wasn’t usable yet.

  As the bright shards spun, one began to dim. It darkened.

  Another dimmed. Both turned black. “What the hell…?” I’d only seen exits stripped of color in one place: the dead world of the del-yun.

  Dropping back down to examine the stains on the floor, I searched for a trace of the blight. “It’s not here,” I sighed. I raised my eyes and stared into the exit.

  But maybe, it’s over there.

  If the world on the other side was stricken with the blight, in the exact place where the rip occurred, could the exit have been tainted as it opened? Is that why the shards turned black? I wondered. Were they infected?

  If the exit was sick, what would happen when it became viable? If all the shards turned black, would the blight seep through?

  “Son of a bitch.” I scooted back. Is this how it spreads?

  There were so many exits across all the worlds. New ones opened all the time. If this was truly how the blight traveled, how would anyone ever stop it—when the exits never closed? But they did shrink.

  I’d altered the size of one once, over the summer, on Drimera. Multiple times, I’d tried to recreate my accident on purpose, but the results had been slight with little to no improvement. Possibly, because I didn’t want to improve.

  Me, having influence over one of the biggest mysteries of the linked worlds, was more than a little unsettling. But my apprehension didn’t change the facts.

  One: trauma left scars on the land. Two: scars tore open the exits between the worlds. Three: exits were possibly the gateway for a world-killing contagion. Number four was the real kicker: the only thing I’d ever known to affect an exit was me. Except, I had no idea how.

  My hand shaking, I reached out. Ghosts swarmed in black waves, swirling about my legs, crawling up like children begging for attention. The negative energy in the basement was stifling. The terrible things I saw in my vision were a fragment of what had gone on in this room. Accumulating over the years, the sea of trauma was deep enough to equal a battlefield.

  But why? Why were they doing this? The killings weren’t spontaneous. They weren’t related to vengeance, a disagreement, or a hunt. They weren’t personal. But they were well-planned, and far from a new occurrence. I was surprised there wa
sn’t already an exit here.

  But one’s here now. The question was: could I do anything about it?

  I extended my arm further, toward the shards, and the air turned icy cold. Each breath became more difficult than the last. Heaviness climbed into my lungs, like all the burdens of on all the souls that perished here were sitting on my chest.

  No. Not them.

  Something else was pulsing and warming under my shirt.

  I ran a finger over the fabric, stroking the pendant beneath. I still didn’t know how to fully use the dragon eye or what power it held. Thankfully, the process the elder’s used to preserve and shrink the organ left it resembling a harmless piece of amber in an antique oval setting. I’d put it on a shorter, sturdier chain. Wearing the pendant fulltime had become so easy, I sometimes forgot it was there.

  Was it like this for Ella Chandler? She’d worn the necklace, day and night, until she died. The illusions it created hid her true nature, allowing the half-selkie, half-dragon woman to live in this world with the human family she loved. I had no real need for the eye. Yet the more I wore it, the less I wanted to take it off.

  The approaching sound of boots on metal disrupted my thoughts.

  Damnit. I was out of time.

  I drew my hand back from the exit, and gunfire sped past my ear, striking the main furnace door with a resounding ping. Another shot glanced off the steel directly above my head. The trajectory put its origin at the elevated walkway.

  Turning, I caught sight of a man dressed in black disappearing through one of the upstairs doors. His height and build were a match to the figure in the sewer. Or was it one of them? I wondered, as three hooded men left the shadows and rushed across the elevated walkway to follow him out the door.

  I started to pursue, and a hail of bullets changed my mind.

  Raining freely, from an automatic, they struck the ground at my feet and the furnace behind me. I was too exposed to avoid them all. One shot skimmed my side, tearing through cloth and grazing skin as it bounced off the furnace wall.

  More rounds followed, growing louder as the gunman drew near. I sized him up as he jumped down from the walkway above. His human build, black tactical gear, and hooded mask were in line with what I’d seen in my vision. I tried to identify his species by scent and got nothing. The buffet of smells in the room were overpowering, but it was more than that. His body had no odor at all. Illusion? I wondered.

  Was that what woke the eye?

  Regardless, one thing was clear. They weren’t behaving like creatures defending their nest. They were acting more like bodyguards. Except, monsters weren’t known for employing their own private security team. Only dragons were so bold. And this was nowhere near covert enough for dragons. This was… I still had no fucking idea.

  As more steps echoed off the girders above, the first two engaged. Bravely holstering their handguns, they moved in. Their rapid approach applied they were intent on close combat. If they were human, it wouldn’t be a fair fight. But looks can be deceiving. And they started it.

  Gloved fists came at my face. Blocking one opponent, I snuck a punch in under his ribcage and spun to evade the other. Ducking, slamming into my second attacker, I hoisted his body up and over my shoulder. I hadn’t expected him to take the flip with ease and land in a graceful crouch behind me. Assuming he could spring up as smoothly as he went down, I drove a fast boot back into his nose. As he toppled, I dove past and stole his weapon. Rolling onto my back, I fired at his lunging companion; putting a point-blank bullet in his stomach as he reached for me. I scrambled clear, expecting him to fall forward on top of me. When he didn’t, I fired again, higher, at his chest. That did it.

  He was down.

  But the first man was back on his feet.

  “Son of a bitch.” I clipped him in the thigh. The bullet tore through with a spurt of red. But after a brief flinch, he resumed his advance. I stood and fired as I backed up, shooting him twice in the other leg. The results were the same.

  Gripping a nearby gurney, he flipped it in my direction. I deflected it with a kick. The gurney clattered to the floor between us. That was all the time it took for him to recover. Charging forward in a running vault—with a hole in one leg and two in the other—my opponent bounded over the upside-down gurney.

  Watching him, I stood, stunned at his resilience.

  He can’t be human, I thought. Then why is he fighting like one?

  He took a final leap to close the distance. As he was nearly upon me, I gripped the iron, furnace door beside me and yanked it open. His face hit with an impressive clang. Bouncing off, he fell flat on his back and didn’t move. “Finally.” Restraining him and beating the answers out of him would be a lot easier now.

  Blood welled under the mask, darkening the fabric. I took a sniff.

  Still nothing. That’s not possible.

  “Time to find out what you are.” I bent to remove his hood—and bullets sprayed the ground at my feet. “Son of a bitch!” Scaling my head, I returned fire as I crossed the empty space and took cover between the smaller ovens.

  I peered out to see two more male assailants hop the railing and somersault down not far from my position. Their builds were larger and taller than the others, their black uniforms less padded. Made of a more form-fitting, stretchable fabric, the belted long-sleeved top and slim pants tucked into their light-weight boots was more like work-out gear than armor. They wore the same hooded masks, pulled tight around their necks; hiding all but human-looking lips and beautiful autumn-yellow eyes. They were elliptical and animal-like, but without the typical feral gaze many creatures possessed. Theirs were calm and serene. Focused, I thought, in the same mechanical way as the workers in my vision.

  Gray claws jutted from slim openings in their leather gloves. The shape, size, and color of the protrusions (leaden, like a swollen rain cloud), offered a much-needed, solid clue. Not to what they were. Countless creatures had similar claws. But the physical attributes did remove several species from my suspect list, including lyrriken. It wasn’t much, but at least I knew the Guild wasn’t involved. For once.

  Their ability to assume a human shape should help thin the list a little more—once the claws I was studying stopped swiping at my face.

  I jumped back, narrowly evading the strike as a third male sailed over the girder and dropped behind me. His arms came around mine in a tight hold, trapping them to my body. Squeezing, lifting me, the weapon fell from my grip as my feet left the floor. I could have broken free with effort. Instead, I took the assist, and as his two companions advanced, I brought both legs higher and kicked out. Each boot struck a chest, and my targets went sailing back into a pile of metal scraps.

  Peeved, my captor lifted me higher. He spun around to face the blazing furnace. Heat rippled out the opening, stinging my human skin as he moved to throw me in. I flailed in protest. One foot caught the wall beside the door; then the other. Planting my boots, I pushed off with everything I had, and threw us back. Momentum carried him, stumbling, into the side of the main furnace. Head, shoulders, and back bearing the brunt of the impact, he struck the cold metal with a grunt of pain. Slack formed in his hold. I wiggled free and dropped to the floor.

  Turning, I gripped his masked face, “This is how you do it,” and shoved his head into the furnace wall. Bang. Bang. Bang. I shoved it a few more times, until contact came with a wet, squishy sound. I snapped his neck, then drew his limp body closer.

  I took another sniff.

  Still nothing. Seriously?

  There were species capable of sensory camouflage. It was usually a temporary response associated with fight or flight. But if my opponents were experiencing anything it was confidence, not fear. It must be illusion. Except, the dragon eye around my neck was capable of both making and detecting them. If an illusion was at work here, why was the piece suddenly so damn quiet?

  I reached for his hood. A whisper of movement had me pivoting instead.

  There were two more, a few
feet away. Positioned in the open space between the furnaces, they were spinning, thrusting, flipping, and punching the empty air in a zealous demonstration of their skill at martial arts. It was impressive. But I wasn’t in the mood for theater.

  Discharging a quick burst of fire, it bit into the floor at their feet as they landed. The unexpected shock of heat and busted concrete messed up their footing and sent them tumbling. Flames and a spray of dust obscured my approach, as I stepped through and smashed my sidearm across the forehead of the one on my right. The one on the left got a punch to the throat as he tried to rise. My abrupt show of fire had thrown them more than I expected. I took advantage of the moment and delivered a set of swift, downward punches as they fell. One didn’t get back up. The other rolled away. He sprung up and slid into a deep fighting stance.

  Bending his exposed claws, my opponent beckoned me forward.

  I snorted. “How very ‘kung-fu’ of you. Care to tell me where you trained? Where you’re from? What you’re doing here? Anything? I promise, I’m a much better listener than I look.”

  He ran at me and popped up, quick as lightning, into a mid-air cartwheel. With no time even to raise the weapon in my hand, I dove clear—a fraction of a second away from his boot connecting with my jaw. I managed to rise before he closed in again. We engaged, and there was not a single doubt the creature was professionally trained. His defense was solid and rapid. His offense was delivered with the strength, poise, and precision of someone who’d undergone years of instruction.

  I was no slouch. I knew my way around a dojo. But this guy had serious moves. I managed to avoid any major blows. I even snuck in a few decent hits, while he ping-ponged around, flipping and flopping like his body was made of rubber. It was like fighting a goddamn jack-in-the-box. Even pegging him with fire was difficult.

  Plenty of creatures were formidable fighters. Plenty had adopted the styles of this world. But other than my own, I knew of no species that trained in multiple disciplines of human combat, especially to such a stunning degree of perfection.