Inn Between Worlds

by Thomas A Farmer

  Nothing happened.

  Gideon tried again, thinking about the sound each one of the pillars would make. The grinding noise of stone on stone filled his mind, then the avalanche sound as they broke him apart. Clear and vivid this time, sixteen pillars leapt from the ground at once, all speeding for Taimethis's chest. If he was half as big as he seemed, Gideon's attack moved as fast as a bullet.

  Then they stopped, quivered, and each of the sixteen pillars snapped at the base. They hovered there before swirling around Taimethis and coming to settle behind his back like a set of skeletal wings.

  Now, Gideon understood what Catherine meant. Taimethis had become the ground itself. Any attempt to use the vast plain of stone would fail. Simply standing on it would be death.

  So, he pulled lances out of the air itself, focusing it into sharp bursts and striking at Taimethis's stony arms like a hundred hammers. The stone that made up his body creaked and shuddered as dust motes the size of mountains fell away.

  To his left, Catherine drew a long arc in the air that solidified into a bow of sapphire light. Arrows appeared in her hand, ready to draw and be loosed. She took aim at the nearest of Taimethis's four arms, loosing an arrow that sped through the air like a shaft of moonlight.

  Gideon aimed his lances of air at the spot Catherine hit, focusing them more and more on a steadily smaller area until the palm cracked and a world of debris fell a thousand kilometers to the ground.

  Catherine drew her bow again, fighting to stay stable as Taimethis's tails snapped at her like whips. Automatically, Gideon aimed and fired his LeMat at the spot where the stone serpents broke from the ground. They writhed and pulled away from Catherine's platform as the focused gravity beam pierced them both.

  One of Taimethis's hands swept by them, breaking Gideon's air lances like glass and causing enough turbulence to knock him from his platform. Reflexively, he fired at the hand as it trailed away from them. It shuddered, but continued its course through the heavens.

  Gideon remembered that he could fly here at the same instant that he impacted solid stone. For a moment, he thought he fell back to the ground, but then realized that the gentle curves of the city-sized plateau of stone were in fact the contours of Taimethis's hand.

  He came to that realization moments before fingers the size of starships curled up and over him. Gideon shot a hole in one with his gun and dust rained down on him, but Taimethis's monstrous grip continued to close.

  The image of a sycamore pod filled his mind, propelled on a curl of blue crystal. Gideon closed his eyes and vividly called to memory the sensation of trying to crush one of the spiny seed pods in his hand. To that, Gideon added the idea of millions of nails and reality coalesced around his body to form a protective spiked metal shell.

  His next thought was of chains and ropes. Gideon envisioned binding Taimethis's stone hand, of pulling the fist tighter against himself until he heard the creaking and groaning of stone. He felt the pressure on his protective shell as though it were him. It increased, bending the spines, and he continued to focus on the idea of chains binding the great hand.

  Pressure continued to mount until it became pain. Gideon, embodying the spiked shell, felt the force in his bones. It drove him to his knees inside the shell and he knew that if Taimethis's hand remained intact much longer, it would crush him.

  Then, as suddenly as his protection appeared, the pressure disappeared. Gideon dismissed the shield in time to see Catherine standing on her platform, already pivoting away to take aim at the next stone hand. The cool glow of one of her arrows lingered on the broken bits of Taimethis's fingers.

  His entire hand crumbled and Gideon was again falling. This time, he remembered flight early and brought himself back into the air and set down on Taimethis's wrist. More distance separated him from Taimethis's body than separated the Sun from Earth and another of Taimethis's impossibly long arms bore down on him. The hand glowed a deep red, burning with atmospheric heating as the moon-sized palm drew closer.

  Taimethis's hand stopped a thousand kilometers above him. The glow in the palm brightened as solar fire leapt across interstellar distances. Hydrogen plasma hot enough to reduce him to ash superheated the air around him and his clothes burst into flames.

  Pain bit into Gideon's skin, but he fixated on a single thought. Aloud, he said, “I am fireproof.”

  The flames on his clothes went out for a moment, then reignited as the solar flare drew closer and the air got hotter.

  Finally, Gideon understood. Taimethis constantly grew larger, using his arms and tails to distract his opponents until he was so large that they could never reach him. Even now, the hand he and Catherine shattered was reforming itself out of superheated metals cast off by the solar flare bearing down on him.

  “It's all a damned feint,” Gideon growled.

  He imagined the distance shrinking. The millions of kilometers between his perch on Taimethis's wrist and the colossus’s torso shrank. The distances grew again as Taimethis realized what Gideon was doing and fought him.

  The solar flare stretched and shrank, first a match, then the end of the universe, and back again a thousand times. It slowed as space itself warped. Catherine's platform, visible now only as a glowing blue speck against the red flare, circled it, deflecting the monstrous fireball.

  Taimethis pushed against Gideon, stretching space again, and this time Gideon allowed it to happen. Taimethis grew, his arm stretching a billion kilometers from end to end and a thousand kilometers thick. Gideon allowed that to happen as well, envisioning now that he simply stood on Taimethis's torso, looking up at his eyes.

  Trusting Catherine to occupy Taimethis's arms, Gideon opened his own eyes and found himself face to face with the man again. Rather than speak to him, even to threaten him, Taimethis leapt into action. His eyes flared, twin beams of destruction, but Gideon was prepared this time.

  Gideon threw his right leg to his left side, pulling himself out of the way of Taimethis's attack. The red god's aim was off, distracted as he was fighting Catherine with his stone colossus body, and Gideon took aim with his LeMat.

  The gravity beam obliterated Taimethis's human torso. The beams ceased as his head, arms, and legs dissipated into red smoke. Under his feet, the stone god’s torso cracked and started to fall apart.

  Catherine appeared at his side, wordlessly weaving blue crystal around the red mist that was all that remained of Taimethis. She danced the cage into being with a frenzy Gideon did not expect, but was too slow. The red smoke escaped, but instead of reforming either man or monster, it simply vanished into the air.

  Gideon sank to the ground beneath him. Intellectually he knew the stone was falling, but the ground was a million, million kilometers down. He could take a second to breathe first. “Is he dead?”

  Catherine shook her head angrily. “No.” A smile spread across her face. “But he's wounded.”

  Gideon laughed. “Does that mean we won?”

  Catherine sat down next to him, her eyes still billowing blue fire. She smiled and with the voice of a storm said, “yes.”

  “Good.” Gideon stood, offering a hand to Catherine to help her to her feet “Let's go home, then. We missed dinner.”

  CHAOS CANDY

  -by-

  Amie Gibbons

  For my kitteh

  Because he doesn’t run when he sees the darkness

  He stays and has my back while I face it.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lindsey Pratt had always been a bitch. Now she was just a bitch with a badge.

  Zee crossed her arms, slouching in her chair and sizing the bitch up over her desk.

  They’d met on their first day of Parata University. Zee had barely joined with her order a month before classes started, and Lindsey’s had been together for about six months and had had a chance to learn the basics of magic.

  And Lindsey thought that made them so superior.

  Witches joined into orders of five elements after they turned eight
een: fire, water, air, earth, and multi. Their powers couldn’t come on until they were eighteen due to the spell the Parata government put over the world, and even then, they didn’t come on until five witches were drawn together and formed a bonded order. Zee’s didn’t form until she was nearly twenty-one, making her one of the older beginners.

  Lindsey had showed Zee up in Potions, Zee broke her pointy little nose in martial arts, and after that, it was on.

  Lindsey won their ongoing bitchfest when she dated Zee’s order’s water Brad, and then broke his heart.

  Three years after his death, Zee still hated her for that.

  Fire witches held grudges like that.

  And now Lindsey wanted her help?

  Oh, this was rich.

  Zee’s office was a converted living room. The thick white carpet set off the squishy gold and black chairs. Little froufrou, but she didn’t decorate it. Then again, she wasn’t about to change it either.

  You didn’t change things your dead best friend decorated.

  “Let me see if I’ve got this straight,” Zee said. “You want to hire me? And it’s not through the Agency?”

  Lindsey flushed and worked her jaw for a second before she forced it into an obviously painful smile. “Yes.”

  If she was swallowing eight years of rivalry, it had to be good. It couldn’t hurt to find out what was going on.

  “What’s the job?” Zee asked.

  “My order’s fire’s missing. I need you to find him.”

  That was it?

  Zee knew Jarred. He was a playboy. He was probably in the Trenster reality, hanging on the beach and downing mojitos while he hit on everything in a bikini.

  “Was he arrested and ran?” Zee asked.

  Lindsey’s left eye twitched and she shook her head, making her blond curls dance around her chin.

  Zee smiled. “Then why are you coming to me?”

  She scowled, meeting Zee’s eyes with fire. “Fuck, you’re going to make this difficult, aren’t you?”

  “Why don’t you start with explaining why you don’t just use the Agency’s resources to find him yourself? You’re an agent. Missing persons are part of your job. I’m a bounty hunter. They’re only my job if they’re running from you guys.”

  Lindsey leaned forward, resting clenched hands on Zee’s desk. “Exactly.”

  Zee blinked, pursing her lips. Jarred was actually on the run? She couldn’t imagine Jarred being in trouble with the Agency for anything serious.

  Maybe with the human police in the main reality for speeding tickets… or picking up a prostitute. But something Parata authorities would care about?

  “Really?” Zee asked.

  “There’s a warrant out for his arrest. The Agency has people looking for him. I need to find him first and prove he’s innocent.”

  Hairy black holes, this was getting good. “What’s the charge?”

  “Inter-reality smuggling.”

  Big whoop. With the Agency’s regulations, who didn’t smuggle?

  “Drug trafficking…”

  That made Zee’s eyebrows shoot up. Drug smuggling?

  Lindsey licked her lips, taking off a layer of shimmery gloss. “And conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “And now we get to it. So that would be charges?”

  Lindsey’s hands went limp like they’d been shot. “Please don’t be a bitch, Zee. This is hard enough. You want me to beg, I will. You want three, five times your going rate, it’s yours.” Her voice cracked and her big baby blues sparkled.

  Damn. Tears. Zee didn’t do tears.

  “Consider me de-bitched. Just tell me what happened.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know. Last night, Secretary Jolnavich came to my place, asking where Jarred was. He said there’s evidence Jarred’s involved with the Chaos Kings, and when he went to bring him in for questioning, Jarred wasn’t there.”

  “Wait.” Zee held up a finger. “Chaos Kings? As in the only gang of witches powerful and smart enough to evade the Agency and smuggle Chaos Candy into the main reality?”

  Lindsey nodded.

  “As in the punk asses who spread that drug around humans, witches, and vampires alike. As in the bastards who’ve paid off and memory wiped more agents than they’ve killed, which is saying something. As in the gang so bad they make the Crips and Bloods look like fucking rabbis. Those Chaos Kings?”

  “I know it looks bad.”

  “No. Mullets look bad. This looks messy. The Agency is desperate to stop the Kings. Any lead turns them into the Gestapo and KGB rolled into one… more so than they already are. What do they have on Jarred?”

  “They wouldn’t tell me. My order and I aren’t allowed within a mile of this case. I’ve talked to everyone I know. If any of them are on the case or know anything, they aren’t talking. Agents could’ve found Chaos Candy at his place, money somehow traced back to some other lead they have, or just saw him talking to a suspected member of the Kings. I haven’t heard from Jarred since Friday in the main reality, and there was nothing out of the ordinary then.”

  It was Saturday. Parata ran parallel to the main reality. Witches lived out their lives in the human world, then went into the pocket reality of Parata to repeat the week and work on magical studies and exploring alternate realities.

  “So Jarred’s been missing for a day and didn’t make it into Parata for the week? He could’ve been sleeping off a bender and missed the opening for the week.”

  “Does that mean you won’t help me?”

  Zee held up a finger. “I never said that. How do you know Jarred’s innocent?”

  “Because I know him. He might do recreational human drugs here and there, but he’d never help get that kind of poison into the world, especially not when humans could get it. Zee, you know he’s a playboy, sure, but he’s not a bad person. Chaos Candy kills its users. It shouldn’t even be considered a drug. It’s poison that makes you high first, that’s all.”

  How did Zee know she was going to say something like that?

  A warm weight settled against Zee’s leg and she scratched the big head without looking down. Sasha whined and licked her hand, tail thumping against the side of the desk.

  Lindsey wrinkled her nose at the giant Husky and Zee smirked.

  “Cracking into the Kings would be a serious coup. The Agency would be falling over themselves to thank me.”

  If Zee got any info regarding the Kings, the Agency might even let her run the bounty hunter course she’d proposed last year. The arrogant, controlling bastards said it wasn’t necessary. Anyone wanting to learn those skills could learn them from the Agency and become an agent. They had no qualms about hiring her when they needed help tracking down a criminal though.

  Funny, that.

  “So you’ll do it?” Lindsey sounded way too hopeful.

  “Yes.”

  Her smile was brilliant, absolute gratitude. Oh God, she was grateful to her nemesis since she’d agreed to help her friend.

  I might have to like her after this.

  Zee was a sucker for loyalty.

  “Why me?” Zee asked.

  “What?”

  “For this job. You could’ve gone to the fugitive apprehension branch of the Agency. I know more than a few people in there who would be glad to find Jarred and keep it under wraps if the price was right. Why me?”

  “You’re going to make me say it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. First, because you’re one of the best. Second, because those people who’d take a bribe from me are the same ones who’d take one from the Kings. You wouldn’t. You’ve never taken a bribe and everyone from agents to vampires knows you have integrity and you’d never turn your back on that.”

  Zee nodded. Couldn’t argue any of those.

  “But the main reason I came to you is because you quit the Agency. Nobody quits. The Agency has the power, the resources, and the best working for them. You get perks and leeway in the Agency other witches don
’t, and you left it all and started a bounty hunter firm to compete with the Agency. No one has done that in the four hundred years of Parata’s existence.”

  Zee nodded.

  She’d left the Agency exactly because that’s how they worked. Parata’s government had become so totalitarian they made the old USSR look reasonable. Those in the Agency, i.e., the party, got special privileges, different rules applied to them, and there was no competition, meaning the government had gotten fat and happy the last hundred years or so, and the people were so used to it, they just worked around the rules.

  And Zee wanted to burn the whole establishment down and start the government over with the ideals of freedom and individualism Parata had been built on.

  But most people thought that was kind of extreme.

  “You have connections the Agency can’t even hope for because you turned your back on them,” Lindsey said, “and the magical underground loves that. And I need those balls and connections right now.”

  Zee nodded.

  “I’m in,” she said. “Here’s the terms. Anything you know about Jarred, I need to. I’ll need full access to his homes and offices, here and in the main reality. Do not tell anyone you hired me, not even the rest of your order. Pay me half up front. Then stay out of my way.”

  “Have you done this before? Investigated a crime?”

  Zee kept her face blank. If the Agency knew...

  “I’m a bounty hunter. That requires a certain amount of investigation. Can you live with my terms?”

  “Yes.” Lindsey stood and held out her hand.

  Zee stood and shook it.

  And just like that, she was on the case.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The sun was just rising over the projected mountains in Parata as Zee left her office.

  Both the mountains and the sun were projected into Parata. It was a witch-built pocket reality maybe the size of an eastern state and Zee’s office was near the edge next to the campus, meaning it would’ve been quite a walk to Agency Headquarters if she had to walk.

  Zee teleported to the Agency’s steps after changing into a more badass outfit than her usual work attire of slacks and silky tops.