Lost in Mist and Shadow: A Between the Worlds Novel

by Morgan Daimler

  “I am on my way. Tell Brynneth,” his voice now was grim and Allie sighed, hoping he wouldn’t be too angry with her for all of this.

  “Brynneth”, she said quietly, seeing that he was off his phone, “Jess is on the way.”

  He looked startled and then smiled at her reassuringly, “Ah, I had forgotten that you could reach him immediately. There are perhaps some advantages to your spellbond that are worth considering.”

  She smiled back, her face tight and tense. “What should we do now?”

  He hesitated, looking behind them and then ahead, “You are certain that whoever left this emotional trail is no longer here?”

  “Jess asked me the same thing,” she sighed, “and I told him yes. I am fairly sure we are alone.”

  He nodded slightly, the barest jerk of his head. “Then we will continue forward and see where your trail goes. At any sign of danger or indication that we are not alone, we will immediately retreat though, do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. She had assumed that he would want to head back to the car and wait for back-up, and a large part of her would rather do that, but she didn’t question his decision. She had no idea how old he was but she trusted his experience and training.

  She moved forward along the lines of the emotions she was picking up on, ignoring the way they made her stomach turn. This time she wasn’t completely overwhelmed so it was a little bit easier, but still she could feel the currents of the trace, like a rip tide, trying to overwhelm her. A dozen yards from the open area she stopped, breathing hard with the effort of not losing herself. “Bryn, would it totally mess up your military precision if I put my hand on your side?”

  He tilted his head to the side, regarding her intently, “as long as I have one hand free I am confident in my ability to defend you, barring the presence of a significant threat.”

  “Significant threat?”

  “A dragon for example.”

  She could feel her eyes getting wide at that thought. Trust an elf to think of something like that when answering a basic question. “Let’s hope there aren’t any dragons wandering around. So can I put my hand on your side, or back?”

  “You should probably lead the way, bad form as that is for my ‘military precision’,” he replied enjoying teasing her over her choice of words. “May I ask why you need to do this?”

  “I am having a hard time not being overwhelmed by the emotions. Touching another person helps me stay grounded. At the last scene I was completely overcome and it made me physically sick. I really don’t want to do that again,” she explained.

  “Ahhh, yes,” he said, “I understand.”

  He extended his hand, the glove disappearing from it even as he reached towards her. Wordlessly she took his bare hand in hers, the skin-to-skin contact having an immediate effect. Trying not to feel utterly foolish she moved forward holding his hand, following the emotions now without feeling like she was about to be sucked into them.

  Another dozen yards and the forest thinned slightly. Nothing that could be described as a clearing but there was definitely more space beneath the trees and less underbrush. Allie felt the trail stop and become a swirling pool. Brynneth spoke calmly, oblivious to what she was sensing, “What is it? Why have we stopped?”

  “We’re here,” Allie said, looking around the area. “Wherever here is. The trace stops here and just kind of… collects.”

  Without thinking she moved slightly to the left, pulling him along behind her. He followed passively, letting her go where she felt drawn. Her feet crunched in years’ worth of dead leaves accumulated on the forest floor. She hit a spot where the swirling emotions suddenly spiked in a way that made her skin crawl.

  “Allie?” Brynneth tried to get her attention, but Allie felt a strong pull, something like she’d never felt before, and as the wind picked up she would have sworn she smelled rose and jasmine, the scent of Syndra’s favorite perfume. The hair on the back of her neck stood up as she started to lean forward her hand reaching out towards a place where the leaves had blown into a pile against a fallen log. Brynneth resisted, holding her back, “Aliaine!”

  “It’s okay,” she muttered, hearing Syndra whisper in her ear – or perhaps only imagining it – ‘If you won’t help them who will?’ and she shivered. “This is what we were here to find.”

  “What is?” he asked, relaxing slightly as soon as she responded. She leaned forward her fingers brushing against the leaves, lightly, almost caressing. The dead, dry leaves fell away to reveal an equally dead face. Allie stared at the face, mesmerized.

  Brynneth breathed in sharply, “Is that the missing girl? Jenevarien?”

  “No,” Allie said, her voice hushed, “It isn’t. This is Sasha. The other missing girl.”

  Her head came up slowly, and as if in a trance she walked over to another area, a place that didn’t look exceptional at all, and moving the leaves aside revealed part of the face and neck of another girl, her throat viciously slashed. Brynneth’s hand clenched around Allie’s pulling her back slightly as she stood and stared at the gory wound. “Jenevarien?”

  Allie shook her head, feeling dizzy, “No, I don’t know who she is.”

  “Allie-“

  “Wait, just wait please,” Allie begged, her head swinging around to look at the rest of the area. She understood now what she was looking for, the strange places where the energy seemed to be thicker than the other places. She moved with more confidence to the next body, shaking her head at Brynneth’s inquiring look. That one wasn’t Jenny either. Even Allie could tell that the third girl hadn’t been dead for very long, and she glanced around the woods nervously, despite being sure that no one else was there.

  She stood for another minute searching before turning to Brynneth, still clutching his hand like a life line. Which in a way it was. “That’s it. That’s all.”

  His eyes searched the woods as she had, but not nervously, rather he looked almost as if he wished someone would come out after them. Allie shivered again, cold and exhausted, and he snapped back to himself. He reached the hand that was clasped with hers up and felt her face, frowning. “You are like ice Allie. We must get out of here.”

  “Fine by me,” she felt her head dropping forward, almost too tired to hold it up. “This was what I needed to do, I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  His gaze sharpened, focusing on her pale face, and before she knew what he was planning he scooped her up easily, still holding his sword in one hand. She let go of his other hand to throw both her arms around his neck reflexively. He moved quickly back the way they had come, skirting around the ritual site itself, and had them back by the car faster than she would have thought possible.

  He climbed over the fence still carrying her, as if it took no effort, and set her down on the ground on the other side. This far away from the site, without the emotional taint in the air, she already felt better, but nonetheless he placed his bare hand against her neck and began channeling healing energy. Allie would have protested except that she was fairly sure that he was doing it as much to make himself feel better as for her benefit.

  ****************************

  Brynneth knelt down next to Allie and focused on directing healing energy into her without putting her to sleep, a delicate effort given how exhausted she was. He had erred greatly in bringing her out here by himself, and yet he could not see any way to have predicted this turn of events; it had seemed like a simple task to humor the girl and help her find some closure with her friend’s death. Indeed even if she had been able to explain to him that this might happen he doubted he would have believed her. Had I not seen it myself I would not have thought it possible, Bryn thought, hearing the sound of a car in the distance and not doubting that it was the rest of his squad. Nor will most believe me when I tell them the tale! Following emotions lingering in the air to find corpses, it has never been done that I know of. And if I had not indulged her and brought her here, if she had come alone, he winced at
the thought of how badly that could have ended. As it is even with my assistance she has driven herself almost to collapse….

  The second Elven Guard car pulled up and parked behind his own and he heard four doors opening, which he had not expected. Lifting his head and turning slightly he saw not only Jessilaen, Natarien, and Mariniessa walking over but also Captain Zarethyn, making him wonder what the girl had told Jess. Certainly his own message had not been anything worth rousing the Captain out of the Outpost, although it was just as well that he was there.

  All four of the approaching elves took in the scene before them – Bryn wearing full armor and obviously giving Allie some kind of healing – and he watched Jess’s eyes narrow dangerously. He repressed a sigh, although he should have realized that his friend would overreact to anything concerning the girl. Before he could decide where to start Allie spoke, without lifting her head, “I hope you still have detective Riordan’s number – I do if you don’t – because you need to call him.”

  Also predictably Mariniessa, who had no great fondness of humans, frowned at that, and Brynneth spoke quickly not wanting the sharp tongued mage to say anything they’d all regret, “Allie has found three bodies out in the forest, just beyond the grove used for the rituals. One of them is the second missing girl, but she does not know who the other two may be.”

  That brought all four up short. Zarethyn tilted his head to the side, indicating that the healer had his full attention and Bryn did his best to recount the entire afternoon’s events, beginning with Allie’s insistence that she needed to visit the site. Jess walked over, ignoring Mariniessa’s disapproving look and sat next to Allie who leaned into his side. Brynneth lost the thread of his recitation momentarily as he realized the girl was replenishing her own energy now by pulling from Jess. That was utterly fascinating and he wanted very much to know what the limits of that ability were. However it would have to wait for another time.

  “Aliaine,” Zarethyn stepped towards the girl, taking in her appearance and apparent weakness, “is the person who you felt here, whose energy led you to the bodies, the same person that you felt at the place where the missing girl was last seen?”

  Allie looked up, the movement shifting his hand on the back of her neck so that he had to readjust to keep the energy flowing properly. “I told you you could call me Allie. And yes. I have no doubt. It’s like….like an emotional fingerprint. Distinctive. The same blend of emotions in the exact same way…”

  “Could it not just be someone else feeling something similar?” Mariniessa asked, earning a disapproving look from their Captain.

  Allie shook her head slightly. “No. It’s hard to explain. The emotions carry a feeling of personality with them that’s unique to each person feeling them. Your happy doesn’t feel like Jess’s happy and so on. What makes it particularly weird, or maybe distinctive is that it takes a huge concentration of something felt very intensely to leave a real lasting impression. In my experience emotions are like…like scents, perfumes. They don’t linger for that long, not really. This guy had to have been almost frantically feeling what he was feeling – no even more intense than that. I don’t know how to explain it.”

  Allie sighed and put her head back down. Zarethyn turned to Brynneth, “Did you examine the bodies?”

  “No, I could not. I was helping Aliaine, and after she found the third one it was more important to get her away from the area. The dead are not going anywhere as it is, and she needed to recover some of her own energy,” Brynneth said, keeping his voice calm and even. Mariniessa made a disparaging noise, probably at her own perception of the girl’s weakness. Brynneth suspected that the half-elf’s empathy was very similar to his own healing gift, and he knew only too well how very difficult it was to actively use a gift of that kind, which pulled on the user’s energy rather than ambient magic. With time and experience she could learn, as he had, to use other sources but for now he guessed that she always used her own energetic reserves. He continued on, ignoring the young mage, “I did however make some basic observations. The three girls all appear to be between 14 and 20, assuming they are human or mostly human. Each had her throat slit. One corpse was undoubtedly more than a month old, another a week or more and the last very recent.”

  “The last dark moon was a week ago, the one before that of course was five weeks ago,” Allie pointed out.

  “The third body does not fit the pattern.” Jess said.

  “No she doesn’t,” Allie agreed. “But I think whoever is doing this isn’t just doing it to advance a cause. He’s also doing it because he likes to do it.”

  “Also?” Zarethyn queried. “So you believe these murders are a continuation of the ritual cycle?”

  “You have been out here before, you’ve seen this place. Go look again and see if it looks like more has been done, more energy added. That part I can’t say anything about. But I don’t think this is all coincidence.”

  “Synchronicity,” Brynneth murmured. Jess nodded.

  Zarethyn contemplated this for several minutes, the light dying as the sun set and the stars filled the sky. Finally he nodded. “Natarien, contact the human police, ask for detective Riordan. Tell them we have found three more bodies at the ritual murder site. Jessilaen stay here with Allie. Brynneth, Mariniessa you will accompany me to examine the ritual site and the bodies.”

  Brynneth felt some of his tension draining away now that they had direction and a certain course. He leaned over until his lips almost brushed Allie’s ear and whispered so that only she would hear him “Do not hesitate to take what energy you need from Jess. He loves you dearly and he will be distraught if you faint on him because of an ethical quandary only you are concerned over.”

  He pulled back in time to see her lips twitching in a smile and knew that she would be sensible about this, at least for the moment. Half-elven she might be but she lacked an elf’s pragmatism when it came to such matters and was far too worried about something he didn’t fully understand, of being judged badly for using a natural gift that harmed no one. It was a way of thinking that was foreign to the elves, who rejected the concept of deep regret; it was a luxury that could not be afforded when you lived for millennia.

  He stood easily, leaving Allie and Jess sitting on the cold ground. He looked from her huddled form to the other two elves, waiting patiently for him to join them. “Captain, if I may make a suggestion?”

  Zarethyn, inclined his head in a shrug, “What would you say?”

  “There is no reason for Aliaine to remain her and it would be better for her to go somewhere she can eat and rest. If Jessilaen is to stay with her anyway, perhaps he should escort her back to her home while we handle processing the scene here.” Bryn kept his voice even, not allowing any of his concern for the girl to show through. He had come to be very fond of her, and after tonight he respected her abilities; it would upset him to see her damage herself through stubbornness. Not to mention that he was greatly concerned that should anything happen to her Jessilaen would not long survive. As it was he sometimes worried for his friend simply because Allie’s life span was almost certainly shorter than a full elf’s, and Jess was so very enamored of her already. He had been urging his friend to be less exclusively focused on her, but if anything that had made his depression worse – the only thing that had seemed to help pull him out of it recently was spending more time with Allie, as counterintuitive as that seemed to Brynneth.

  Zarethyn regarded his brother, perhaps thinking many of the same things Brynneth was thinking, and nodded, “Yes, nothing will be accomplished by her staying here at this point. Jessilaen, take the car Brynneth was driving and bring Aliaine back to her home. See that she eats and rests. We will handle processing the scene here and re-establishing the joint task force with the human police.”

  Jessilaen looked up, his face impassive, “Certainly. Shall I return here as soon as she is settled?”

  Zarethyn looked off across the field. “No. Stay with her until the morning.
Tomorrow at 9 we will meet at the Outpost and discuss the situation and I would like your opinion on the likely connections between some of the diverse situations that seem to be occurring.”

  Brynneth looked at Allie, wondering if she understood the subtext of what had just been said, if she realized that Zarethyn wanted his brother to stay with her to find out what she knew or how she might be involved in the wider situation. She made no movement or response and he guessed that she either had not understood it or was not concerned by it. It was hard for him to understand how she could have such insight into certain things and yet be so shockingly naive about others. Jess extended his hand to her and she allowed him to pull her to her feet and guide her towards the car. Shrugging the thought away for the moment Brynneth turned back towards the ritual site and led the two mages into the darkness.

  It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 9 - Monday

  This time Allie knew right away it was a dream. She was sitting in the living room again in the dark with the fireplace’s cheerful light bouncing off the walls. The windows were dark and the house felt oddly still, as if it were waiting for something. Allie shifted in her chair looking around for Syndra.

  The other woman finally walked in from the direction of the front door. She was wearing her uniform, the light and dark blue combination of Ashwood’s police department a familiar sight. Allie narrowed her eyes at her friend, not sure what the outfit was supposed to represent.

  “Hey Syn,” she said cautiously.

  “Hey Al. Finally listening to me, huh?” Syndra began pacing around the room, reaching out occasionally to touch the wood paneling or run her hand along the back of a couch or chair.

  “Trying to. Brynneth helped me with some healing, which seems to have dealt with the panic attacks anyway. I’m still afraid of everything and my empathy is still out of control. But I got out to the ritual site,” Allie said turning her head as she spoke to watch Syndra walking.