by Jaymin Eve
I felt my own eyes grow hot and damp. Seeing her devastation, her fears were my fears, but she’d already had those she loved taken from her. Callie stepped up and stood by my side, not saying anything, heat still shimmering in the air around her.
Lexen shook as a rumble of anger emerged. “No one else will die.” His voice was low, controlled, and icy. “I’m going to kill Laous the next time I see him. He’s dead. End of his story.”
After another moment of Lexen stroking a hand up and down her spine, murmuring words I couldn’t hear, Emma calmed herself. By the time he set her back on her feet and picked up the still unconscious and burned Daelighter, there was determination crossing Emma’s tearstained face.
“We need to go now,” she growled, mimicking her mate. “Let’s get this asshole healed enough to hurt him some more.”
Lexen hit a button to close the gates, then we all hurried through before it shut on us. “What are you going to do about the guards?” I asked, hurrying to keep up. Callie remained silent, her expression unreadable. I expected she was both worried about Daniel and trying to deal with the fact she’d hurt someone again.
“Most of the police are on our payroll.” Lexen’s words were clipped. “We’ll let them know what happened. They’ll take care of it.”
“My father should be able to help,” I added, realizing this was probably part of his job. Covering these things up. “Call his office or something. Once he gets back to Earth.”
“Yes,” Lexen agreed, falling silent.
The rest of the journey along Daelight Crescent was a subdued one. Emma marched ahead, her eyes shiny. Callie was silent and hot. Whatever flames existed inside of her, they were bubbling just under the surface. And I was having a mini-breakdown. I just really needed Chase to get here, so I could stop imagining him with his throat cut, bleeding his precious life back into the trees he came from.
My morbid thoughts cut off when we reached the end of the street and turned down a lane covered in roses and vines. They were dense on top, trailing down the sides to form a barrier.
“I’d kill for some coffee,” Callie muttered randomly, breaking the tense silence.
I couldn’t help but smile. “What’s your favorite?” I asked. I wasn’t a huge coffee drinker, but I enjoyed a macchiato at times.
“Café au lait from Café du Monde in my favorite city, New Orleans.” Her voice was wistful.
My smile grew. “I went there on vacation once, with my family. They weren’t around a lot, but we tried to do a family vacay once a year. We ate beignets in Café du Monde almost every day.”
Some of the blankness left her face then. She turned toward me, and as her eyes ran down me, she jolted.
“What?” I asked.
“You do realize you’re covered in blood, right?” she said, voice low.
Emma and Lexen stopped, looking me over as well. “I only got a bit scraped up,” I muttered, even though the injury in my arm felt a bit more than “scraped.”
I lifted the hand on my injured arm, surprised by the red on my palm. Pushing up the sleeves of my dark sweater, I felt a little faint at the sight of a thick line of red running down it. “That’s more blood than I expected,” I murmured.
“What happened to your arm?” Lexen asked.
I held it closer to me, feeling very protective because all of a sudden it felt really painful. “I don’t know. The guy who grabbed me dug his nails in or something. My arm hurt right after he touched me.”
I was probably going to get tetanus from that piece of crap.
Lexen reached out and I didn’t flinch, which was an improvement from the last time he tried to touch me. I’d mostly forgiven him, especially since he had been correct about the dangers. Not that it gave him a right to grab me, but he’d apologized for that.
His hand skimmed across to the neckline of my sweater. He pushed it to the side just enough to see my shoulder.
“Not nails,” he said. “You’ve been cut. It’s deep.”
Swallowing hard, it felt like the pain shot to another new height then. “Why would he cut me? Was he trying to injure me so I couldn’t fight?”
Lexen and Emma exchanged a look. I clicked in a second later. “He took my blood for Laous, didn’t he?” I was such an idiot. I’d basically handed it over to them without a thought. “That’s why he ran off so quickly and didn’t try to help his friend.”
Callie spun. “Should we go after him?”
Lexen shook his head. “No point. They were organized. He’ll be long gone.”
“I thought Laous wanted us?” Emma sounded weary, her anger fading away. “So why has he given up so easily?”
“Getting Maya’s blood would be the priority for him. If they managed to capture her, or any of you as well, it would just be a bonus.”
At least teaming up … bonding … whatever was happening with the secret keepers and four overlords, was making it harder for Laous to just scoop us up. Maybe fate had thought this plan through.
“We need to move again,” Lexen said. “Maya is losing blood. She needs a healer.”
My legs were a little wobbly at this point, but I was blaming it on adrenalin crash. The blood loss, though, probably didn’t help. As we continued along the rose covered path, a light at the end caught my eye. It was hard to see exactly what it was at first, but as my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I … still had no idea what I was looking at.
“That’s a transporter,” Emma answered my unspoken slack-jawed question. “This is the permanent one which connects Earth and Overworld.”
The transporter appeared to be made up of a million strings of light. Or something close to that number. They were intertwined with each other, moving constantly, with ends shooting off at random intervals.
“It’s going to be difficult for me to take the three of you across,” Lexen warned. “But I think it’s worth the risk. Leaving any of you behind is not an option, not with Laous and his resistance members out there.”
“What makes it difficult?” Callie asked. “What could happen?”
Lexen adjusted the guy over his shoulder. “The path between Earth and Overworld is not that easy to navigate. If you lose contact with me, you might be lost forever. I know the transporter looks like a straight line, but that’s only because I’ve connected to Overworld. If I let that go, we’d be adrift in a place with an infinite amount of destinations.”
Emma let out a sound of alarm. “How could you not tell me that? I could have accidentally let go of you, and then I’d be stuck wandering in space forever?”
Lexen shook his head, one side of his lips quirking up. “Not forever. You’d die of hunger long before that.”
She smacked him on the arm, and I was happy to see some color returning to her face. She’d been so pale and quiet since we found the dead guards.
“Are you sure it’s worth the risk?” she asked, more serious.
I didn’t like the fact he hesitated first, before nodding. “I believe this is the better of the two choices, but there’s no guarantee.”
Emma turned to me and Callie. “I trust Lexen. But I think we should put it to a vote. Are you two okay with taking the risk and all three of us holding on to Lexen as we cross?”
Being lost in space until I starved didn’t sound like a fun time, but I also didn’t want to stay here on my own until Lexen came back for me. What if there was something dangerous going on in Overworld? He might never come back for me. What if Chase was somehow already in Overworld?
“I’m in,” I told her. “I should have listened to Lexen before when he warned me it was too dangerous to stay here. This time let’s go with his instincts.”
Callie also agreed, so the three of us stepped closer. Lexen took Emma’s hand with his right, Callie then took Emma’s other hand, and I grabbed Callie’s. We were a chain, and before I could ask what happened next, Lexen reached out with his free hand, latching on to one of the strings of lights.
With a jerk, I was pull
ed off my feet and the world disappeared. I was hurtling into a long tunnel of darkness and light. At first I freaked out, my mind all like “What the hell is happening here?” – especially since it appeared we were racing along the tunnel without having to walk or move our feet. My stomach was in knots, but after a few moments, I started to enjoy the experience. It was like one of those carnival rides where you pretend you’re spacewalking, using a harness to jump your way along a dark tunnel.
Only this time there was no harness. And it was real spacewalking.
Okay, so nothing really like a carnival ride, but if I kept my thoughts on an experience that was familiar, I didn’t freak out as bad. It was silent in the transporter, although there was the faintest white noise in my ears. I couldn’t see what was at the end, because it was just very bright, but my body felt eager to get there. Like I was being called … pulled.
Could it be House of Leights? Was I remembering the place I was born? Were the trees calling me? At some point I forgot that it was important not to let go of Callie. When she squeezed my hand, I jerked, and in slow-motion turned to her. Her face was painted in shock and horror. “What?” I tried to speak but ended up mouthing the words because there was no sound.
Her eyes darted down to our hands, and I focused there as well. No! Oh crap.
Only the very tips of our fingers were still joined. In my fascination with whatever called me at the end of this tunnel, I’d started to slip away from her. The bright light at the end was close, thankfully, so I just had to hold on for a few more seconds.
I slipped again, and only my index finger remained linked with hers. I tried to reach out for more leverage, but I couldn’t get any more grip. We were literally being pulled apart, like suction was on either end. Another little slip and silent screams ripped from me.
One final slip, and then I was hurtling away into the endless darkness.
Chapter 14
Panic took longer than it should have to crash into me. At first I was spiraling. Then there was some disorientation. Then there was panic. As the out-of-control spinning stopped, the world around me stabilized. My head cleared as I began to drift along in darkness. After some time, the darkness didn’t seem quite as … eternal. There were these tiny pinpricks of light, which appeared to be very far away, and somehow at the same time seemed like I could reach out and touch them. Nothing made sense in this place, not distance, or time, or emotion.
You’re going to die.
This voice of reason woke me up to the serious nature of my predicament. I was going to die. I would literally float along in this darkness until my body ceased to function. It was so unfair. I’d just found out the world was bigger than I ever expected, and I hadn’t explored more than a tiny percentage. I hadn’t seen the land of my birth. I hadn’t … I hadn’t kissed Chase. That hurt more than anything.
House of Leights had been so close…
One of the lights in the distance burned a little brighter, catching my eye. By instinct, I reached for it, but the light faded before I could touch it, and I was again just floating along in the nothingness. Despite logic telling me otherwise, I refused to give up this quickly, so I started to experiment, figure out what I could do while I drifted. Obviously doorways could be opened from here, because Lexen had said there were infinite possibilities of travelling to other places. So how did I get one to open?
Instinct was telling me it was the tiny pinpricks around me. Those lights were the only thing to differentiate the emptiness, and the transporter itself had been made of light. We’d literally used a light beam to get from Earth to Overworld. Focusing lessened my fear, so I put every ounce of effort into that. I reached for lights, over and over, and after some time I figured out a way to swing my body closer to them. Eventually I actually brushed against one, and as shock rocked down my arms and across my chest, I immediately let go, unsure if I’d just done something really bad, breathing deeply until the tingles subsided.
With renewed determination, I tried again.
This time it was relatively easy to reach the speck, easier even to wrap my hand around it. The shock took me less by surprise, but that didn’t mean it still wasn’t uncomfortable. From this point, though, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I’d connected to something, locking in, but utilizing the connection was not going to be as easy, apparently.
It was very bright being this close to the speck – which wasn’t really a speck any longer since it filled my entire palm. The tingles increased the longer I held on, until eventually I had to release the light. My body started to move through the darkness again – those specks of light were anchors, holding me in place.
The panic I had been suppressing was starting to swirl within me again, not the best when trying to focus, so I drew on teachings from my mom, her methods of achieving inner peace. The first image that came to my mind’s eye was Chase; I connected peace with him. He was my feeling of safety … something that had been there from the first moment I caught sight of him at the party. Chase, the overlord of House of Leights…
One of the lights shone brightly again, startling me, and without thought, I reached for it, swinging myself out like I’d been practicing. The connection was easy, but unlike last time there was no shock. Warmth washed over me, and my stomach did a swirling thing. A very familiar swirling thing.
Chase… I couldn’t call out loud, but I mentally screamed, Are you there?
There was no reply, because Chase was clearly not here. But the light had gotten brighter when I thought of him. What had I thought of the first time the light beamed at me? Kissing Chase and … House of Leights.
Maybe that was where I needed to focus. On House of Leights? The land of my birth. The Daelighters kept saying we had a connection to it, that the water I’d been born in had filled me with energy and life, infusing into my essence.
With a speck of light in my hand, I remembered how I felt with Chase in the trees around the cabin. The peace, warmth, acceptance…
Take me home.
An infusion of heat rushed through my body. I gasped, and my arms started trembling, but I didn’t let go. Not even when the light burst out from my hand, forming a long tunnel.
This time I would not let go. Not for anything.
Lexen had made it look pretty effortless, the way he’d dragged us along the stream of light. I, on the other hand, had to fight and work for every step forward, because it seemed this connection worked in two directions, and I was drawn back at the same time as being pulled forward.
Eventually, I reached the brightest part and prayed with everything inside of me that I was close to my destination, then closed my eyes and pushed onward. Whatever had been pulling me snapped, and I tumbled forward, just managing to get my arms out in time to stop my face from smashing into the ground. My face ended up being the only part of me that didn’t hit the ground.
My groans were lost in the shouts around me, the noise so sudden after the silence that fear crippled me. I curled in on myself, mind frozen in terror. Hands touched me and I flinched. What if I had made a mistake? What if this was not Overworld? It was actually this thought that sent enough adrenalin coursing through me to clear my mind.
I pushed myself up, head already tilted back, so I could take it all in.
“Maya!” Emma’s face came into view and the loud clanging in my brain subsided, allowing me to finally recognize that it wasn’t noise around me, it was the voices of my friends and family.
Mom and Dad were standing there, faces tear-streaked, arms locked together. I got to my feet without any help and the three of us stared at each other. My mom’s shoulders were slumped forward, which is what she did only when she was exhausted or grieving. Dad cradled her protectively. It had always been the thing I adored most about them as a couple … love didn’t care about race or height or personality. It didn’t discriminate, and it had chosen well for them.
“Maya,” my mom choked out. The paralysis faded, and I was finally free to run i
nto their arms.
“We thought we’d lost you.” My father’s voice was very hoarse. I was pretty sure this was the first time I’d ever seen him cry.
I went to explain what had happened and apologize for scaring them like that, but before I could say a word, a huge bang rocked the metal platform we stood on. By the time I’d spun around, my father had already pushed my mom and me behind him. Another bang, and I realized this time that it had come from a land of gigantic trees, just in front of us.
This was my first time observing Overworld. The sky was green, the platform we stood on had a lot of symbols carved into it, and there were three very distinct and unique lands surrounding us. It was completely mind-blowing to think I was in another world. Another world! But there was no time to really comprehend this, because something was happening in House of Leights.
The moment the name crossed my mind, my body strained to move toward it. I needed to step foot into the world of golden trunks and ancient trees.
“Did Chase and Daniel show up?” I murmured.
“Yes,” my mom confirmed in a whisper. “Right after Lexen and the girls.” Her next pause was extended, and then she added: “Chase did not take the news well.”
I stilled. “What news?”
Her kind brown eyes softened, and I barely managed not to hug her again. I’d almost lost the chance to see my mom again. This moment was a blessing.
“When he found out that you were … still in the transporter.” Her voice broke, and I had to swallow down the sudden pain in my throat.
I had to ask. “What happened after he got back? Where did he go?” I looked around realizing there was one person I was missing. “And where is Brad?” I would have thought my best friend would have been waiting here all freaked out and ragey, doing that football player stance that he pulled out when he was worried. Panic hit me. “Nothing happened to him, right?”
My dad answered: “Brad is fine. He’s gone to House of Darken with Star. They’re trying to track you through the network there. He was as angry as Chase, just with fewer powers.”