by SM Reine
James’s surroundings came into focus next. He stood inside of a glistening temple in front of a silent gate, much smaller than the one on Earth. The arched ceiling was hewn from white stone, glossy as marble and radiant as the moon. A lush rainforest spread beyond the steps of the temple. Dense branches formed the foundation for a carpet of plump green leaves.
Bridges led to other buildings, each of which topped stone spires. Most were empty. At one of the farthest, he could see dark figures moving between the pillars—the resident angels at work, even in the peace of night.
They were in a Heavenly temple. The ethereal energy filled James with gentle, welcoming warmth.
“We must be in Zebul,” he said, dipping his fingers into a shallow bowl of water nearby. It sparkled with its own contained light, crystalline and cold as spring water. “This place is holy.”
“Uh, yeah,” Nathaniel said, staring at the starry mosaic on the ceiling.
“Even more so than the other ethereal planes. This is a place of craftsmanship—the origin of all ethereal artifacts, and every angel-hewn Haven. There’s nothing angels honor more than artistry, beauty, and invention.”
“And lies,” Nathaniel muttered.
James dried his hand on his slacks, resisting the urge to respond.
Energy hummed in the gate behind them. Electricity shocked between pillars, spreading into a disc of gray light. Nathaniel hadn’t had time to close the gate on the other side—which meant that the Union was climbing through.
They were about to have company.
“We’d better run,” James said. “Lead the way.”
Panic filled Nathaniel’s eyes anew. He nodded.
Their feet rang out with sharp pings on the tiled floors like the sound of chisels being driven into stone. Nathaniel traced a hand along the wall as they ran, eyes distant. “I feel a lot of gateways,” he said.
James ran through an archway leading to an adjoining temple, but Nathaniel didn’t follow. James stepped back and grabbed his son’s sleeve, dragging him along. “Do any of the gates go to Hell?”
“No,” he said. “But I think I see where we can go.”
Shouts echoed throughout the temple behind them—the angry voice of a man barking orders.
Zettel had crossed over.
James could see open air through an archway across the room. He shoved Nathaniel through the door and didn’t release his sleeve as they jumped onto a bridge.
It was steady beneath his feet, but the base itself was made of something clear—some kind of crystal. If not for the faint reflection of starlight, it would have looked like there was nothing between the bottoms of James’s feet and the canopy far below.
A wind whirled around them. A pair of angels erupted from the trees, snowing downy white feathers as their wings pushed through the air.
They crossed over the bridge, forcing James to duck. He pulled Nathaniel down with him.
The angels didn’t stop to confront the intruders. They also weren’t the last to appear from the trees below. As the first two soared into the glimmering night sky, others began to appear, as if alerted by a silent alarm. Hundreds of pairs of wings flapped as the angels climbed into the sky.
James doubted the angels would leave Zebul unguarded. If they were evacuating, then something was about to happen—something that would not favor the intruders.
Echoing footsteps rang out from the temple behind them.
Gary Zettel burst onto the other side of the bridge, red-faced and breathless. He didn’t seem to have taken the time to recover a gun before jumping through, but the two people at his back both had rifles.
James spread his stance on the bridge, both for stability and to conceal Nathaniel.
“Turn back,” he yelled into the windy night, which was filled with the sound of churning wings.
Zettel shouted to his men.
James slapped a mark on his thigh. Pain ripped over his skin, like the muscle was tearing off of the bone. It hurt so much more than the other spells had—he wasn’t ready for it. He almost didn’t remember to point at Zettel.
Electricity arced through the air. It missed the commander and struck one of the people behind him with a smell like burning hair and barbecue.
The soldier flew off of her feet, vanishing into the darkness behind her.
Another kopis fired, hitting the crystal in front of James. Cracks spiderwebbed through the bridge with the sound of severing glaciers. James jumped onto solid ground with Nathaniel just as the bridge shattered behind him. Crystalline shards fell onto the trees like drops of water, vanishing into the leaves.
On the other side of the broken bridge, Zettel yelled at the gunman. James didn’t stop to watch for long. Bridge or not, the Union would follow them—James had no doubt of that.
He limped into the temple with Nathaniel.
The second temple was very much like the first, but instead of housing a gate, it held towering looms and huge baskets of glimmering threads. Nathaniel stood behind it. “Are you okay?” James asked, staggering to his side. His thigh still burned and twitched from the spell.
The boy’s hand was pressed to the wall of the temple, eyes blank. He was searching for gates.
James shook him. “We have to go.”
Nathaniel blinked, and his eyes cleared. “This way,” he said without missing a beat.
They crossed two more bridges and two more temples. James saw movement when he looked across the forest—Zettel was leading a unit through the temples opposite them, looking for a way across. There were six people behind him now. More had crossed through the gate.
It wouldn’t take long for them to reach James and Nathaniel. The next bridge was only two spires up.
“Almost there,” Nathaniel said. “There’s a door straight to Shamain through that arch.”
The sound of gunfire whip-cracked over the trees and echoed through the temple. Most of the bullets missed, but one of them hit the pillar beside James’s head, making the marble splinter.
A thud rocked the temple—a much more powerful vibration than could have come from any bullet.
The floor pitched beneath their feet, almost throwing James to his knees. Nathaniel’s hiking boots lost traction on the smooth, tilted floor. He gave a shout as he slid toward the opposite door, tumbling toward the wavering bridge.
James released his grip on the pillar and slipped to his son’s side.
“What’s happening?” Nathaniel asked, clinging to the doorframe.
“Security measures,” James said. “The angels evacuated when they realized that their holy ground had been infiltrated. I believe it’s—well, it seems to be self-destructing.”
As if to punctuate his theory, another thud shook the temple.
“But we need to get to that gate!” Nathaniel said, struggling to climb the tilting floor. His feet found no traction.
James and Nathaniel fell onto the bridge. It was connected to a separate pillar, so it hadn’t begun to shatter—yet.
They could only watch as the temple they had left behind collapsed. The entire left side sank into itself, stone grinding against stone, and then slipped off the top of the pillar.
It tumbled into space silently and vanished into the trees.
“I think we’ll need another route,” James said.
Nathaniel swallowed hard and nodded. Their bridge led to another temple, which hadn’t been touched yet. He pointed at it. “There’s another gate there.”
The stress of the tremors made the edge of their bridge begin to crack.
James broke into a run, and the slivers in the crystal chased his feet as they bisected the bridge. The sound of breaking glass followed. Nathaniel jumped into the next temple, and James felt the floor breaking beneath his feet. He lunged to follow his son.
He braced himself against the door, chest heaving, and looked back to see that the bridge had disappeared entirely.
“They’re coming,” Nathaniel said.
James peered thr
ough the opposite doorway. The Union rushed up the other bridge, and they were already halfway across.
The building they stood in was very much like the first. All it held was a gateway.
“Where does this one go?” James asked.
“Does it matter?”
Probably not. James pulled off the glove again to find his palm bleeding. But it wasn’t bleeding from the stitched edges where he had attached it; it bled directly from the center of the mark, irritated by the presence of the gateway. The instant he saw the injury, pain swept through him afresh.
Gritting his teeth, James pressed his hand against the gate.
The symbols illuminated. Gray light flooded the temple.
But before they could jump in, Zettel appeared in the doorway. He had left the rest of the unit behind. He aimed a handgun at them.
“Step back!” Zettel shouted.
Before James could decide what to do, Nathaniel moved.
He whipped a spell out of his notebook, threw it at Zettel, and spoke a word of power. Magic washed over them. The air over Zettel rippled.
Water gushed out of the portal that Nathaniel had created, slamming into the commander. James jumped back as the water sloshed over his feet. It was icy-cold, like snowmelt.
Zettel struggled to stand under the tide, but a rock slipped through the portal and crashed into his head. He slipped and fell again.
“Jump,” Nathaniel said, tucking the notebook into his pocket. He followed his own advice and launched through the gate. When he disappeared, the water did, too.
Zettel scrambled for the gun, bleeding from a cut in his forehead. “Stop!” he shouted.
James followed Nathaniel through the gate.
When James reappeared, there was no ground beneath his feet—only blue sky. The gateway that Nathaniel had opened was gone, and James was falling.
The glove that he had used to protect his marked hand flew from his fingers, and he could only watch as it whipped away on the wind.
His stomach rose into his throat as he plummeted. He couldn’t breathe well enough to scream.
I’m going to die.
An instant after he had the thought, he landed on a boulder the size of a car.
James wrapped his arms around it, hanging on tightly as he fell through the air. Except they weren’t falling—the boulder was moving laterally, soaring through a cloudy mist as if propelled by rockets.
That was impossible. It defied physics, and he couldn’t feel a hint of magic from the rock beneath him.
Where was he?
“Nathaniel!” he yelled into the wind.
His son’s voice echoed back. “Over here!”
James looked up.
There were more rocks above his head, though some of them were large enough to be considered islands rather than boulders. They floated in the pale blue sky like an asteroid field. James was so dumbfounded by the sight that he didn’t see Nathaniel at first.
The boy waved his arms over his head. He was sitting on the edge of one of the biggest pieces of rock.
How was James supposed to get up there?
He carefully got onto his knees and was surprised to find the boulder steady enough to stand on. James extended his arms to either side to keep his balance.
Another boulder whizzed past. He jumped onto it.
“What is this place?” James called up to Nathaniel, who was swinging his feet over the side of the rocks, and looking pretty happy about it.
“It’s a Haven,” he said. “I think the angels were building it. It’s brand new.”
James stared around at the way the rocks slid together. They were moving toward a central point, compelled by some kind of gravity—trying to form into a new world. It was equal parts incredible and terrifying.
He leaped onto another boulder, and then another, and finally managed to get a handhold on Nathaniel’s island. The rock slipped away from beneath his feet. He dug his fingers tightly into a crevice and hung in empty space for a few breathless moments.
Using the strength of his arms, he hauled himself up a few feet at a time. His marked shoulder ached. His bare palm burned. He left bloody handprints everywhere he touched, and flexing his fingers made the new skin feel like it was going to tear free. James kept climbing.
James looked up and continued to climb.
Nathaniel grabbed his arm when he reached the top, helping him roll onto the level ground. There was grass beneath him. Actual grass.
“This is so awesome,” Nathaniel said. He was grinning for the first time in days—maybe weeks. James couldn’t actually remember seeing him smile at all, even before his mother’s death.
“Where did you get the water you dropped in Zebul?” James asked. “It was…impressive.”
Nathaniel’s chest puffed up at the compliment. “I tagged the brook when we were hiking to Thistle’s house. I thought it would be useful.”
His son had pulled an entire creek from Earth to Heaven. Incredible. Maybe it wouldn’t take thirty years for Nathaniel to catch up with him after all.
“Well done,” James said. He switched his remaining glove to the other hand to protect the bleeding mark. It felt strange having it turned backwards, but it was better than leaving handprints on everything.
He got up to look around. The gateway stood on the far end of the grassy island between a pair of trees. The gateway was still vibrating with energy, so the Union would probably be right behind them. Time flowed much more quickly in a Haven, though—they had at least a few minutes’ head start.
“Where are we going?” James asked.
Nathaniel pointed. “We need to get to the middle. I can feel Shamain that way.”
“Shamain? The ethereal metropolis?” James couldn’t see “the middle” from where they stood—there were too many floating islands in the way, drifting through the air like a puzzle designed by Escher.
Nathaniel cracked his knuckles. “We have to climb.”
The vibration of the gate increased in intensity.
A smaller island drifted past them, moving toward the center of the developing Haven. Nathaniel took a running leap onto it without warning James. He landed easily.
Muttering under his breath, James jumped after him.
The second island was moving faster than it appeared. He slipped and almost missed, barely catching himself on the edge. By the time he got on top of it, Nathaniel was already jumping onto another rock, and another.
The distant sounds of yelling caught James’s attention. He looked back to see three men clustered on the island with the gate, and two more falling through the air who had been unlucky enough to have popped in on the wrong side, like James had, but without any boulders to catch them.
It was going to be a long fall into the eternal sky.
James refocused on following Nathaniel, who was climbing the underbelly of another island. James was much faster with the glove protecting his marked hand. He reached it just moments after his son.
The wind beat at them harder as they grew closer to the center of the Haven, roaring through James’s ears and whipping his shirt around his body. “Where’s this other door?” he shouted, turning to search the nearby islands. “I don’t see one!”
“We aren’t looking for another door!” Nathaniel yelled back.
“Then what—”
James looked up and answered his own question.
The rocks parted, baring a brilliant gold light hovering at the center of the field of islands. It was almost as bright as the sun, but no star had ever sung out like this did. It called to him in a soft chorus of voices and rippled with energy. Everything around it vibrated.
A fissure.
The juncture between universes was a glorious thing to behold, but it drove a spike of fear into James’s heart.
The Havens were meant to prevent angels and demons from interfering with the mortal inhabitants. If Nathaniel’s guess had been correct—if James were indeed ethereal Gray—would the fissure treat him
like an angel? Would he be capable of passing through to Shamain?
There was only one way to find out.
A witch wearing Union black scrambled onto the rock behind them.
“Keep going,” James told Nathaniel, and then he turned to face the attack.
The witch swung at him. James dodged it, then grabbed her arm and drove his elbow into the joint. It was a move that he had seen Elise execute, but he had never been fast enough to perform it himself.
The bone snapped. She cried out and dropped to her knees.
Zettel jumped onto the island, followed shortly by the rest of his unit. They spread out into a circle around James. There were only four of them now, including the one with the broken arm—fewer than had entered Zebul, but more than enough to take James down, if need be.
He looked up to see Nathaniel continuing to climb, a dark spot against the bright fissure. He was almost to safety. But if he went through the fissure alone, then James might never escape.
“This is the end of the line for you, Faulkner,” Zettel said, ripping a handgun out of one of the other kopis’s shoulder rigs.
James edged away from them. “This is ridiculous. You don’t need to arrest me now. I won’t be returning to Earth to cause trouble for a very long time.”
A vein bulged dangerously on Zettel’s forehead. “This isn’t about arrest.”
James saw his finger tense an instant before he fired.
He dropped to his belly, and the bullet passed harmlessly over his head. The boom of the gunshot shattered his eardrums.
One of the kopides jumped for James, reaching out with both hands, and he rolled just out of reach.
Zettel lowered the gun to fire again.
James felt a surge of magic, and the fissure flared. Fingers of white flame licked over the floating islands, hotter than the hottest day in the desert. The grass curled around him.
A shockwave followed instants later. It slammed into the rock. James had already been too close to the edge, and the shudders threw him off the edge of the island.
He was airborne for a half-second before hitting another boulder. It was moving in the wrong direction—away from the fissure.