by Steve Vera
“Yeah?”
“That bastard threw me against the wall. First time I’ve ever seen stars—I felt like Sylvester the Cat.”
Skip was glad for the smile because otherwise he would have felt homicidal. Just wait ’til he got his hands on Donovan fucking Smith. “Do you feel nauseous?” he asked her.
She nodded. “A little.”
“Dizzy?”
She thought about it a second. “Not really.”
“Hmmm. Hold on.” He turned around and while the others were tending Cirena, he went to the black metal desk at the north end of the room and pilfered through it. “You guys definitely got the spare-no-expense memo,” Skip muttered, walking back to Amanda with an ophthalmoscope. “All right, look straight ahead and follow my fingers.”
She obeyed. Her dilation was good, motor skills perfectly functional. “Do you actually know what you’re doing?” she asked.
Again Skip smiled. “Yup. You’re talking to the Skipster. I know lots of stuff.” This time he even got her to smile. “I could do a breast exam if you want?”
Her smile widened.
From beside them, Tarsidion was getting upset, though their conversation was in their own language. “Vo tien,” he snapped at them, and Skip could just imagine the big exotic saying “I’m fine.” And then he rattled something else off.
“You’re not going anywhere, Tarsy,” Gavin said in English. “That’s exactly what he wants—to separate us and pick us off one by one. We stay here.” Gavin’s tone was full of authority, bordering on booming, but then he lowered it. “He has to come here. The next Fourth Moon isn’t for another two years. If he wants to go home, he’ll be here. Bank on it.”
Tarsidion’s jaw clamped tighter than a pit bull hanging from a tire swing. His nostrils flared and his breath came out in snorts. Beneath their conversation, Cirena was motionless.
Amanda left Skip and approached Gavin. “What’s the Fourth Moon?” she asked.
Gavin turned, surprised by her question. He licked his lips and seemed to contemplate how he wanted to answer. “Normally the span of time between a solstice and equinox contains three full moons,” he began, “but once every literal blue moon there are four. The third is the blue moon, the fourth is…the Fourth Moon.”
“Relevance?” Skip asked.
“Mandatory for crossing worlds,” Noah said.
“Short answer, in order for a tornado to form, you need two opposing masses of air—one really hot, one really cold. Think of a Fourth Moon as the really hot air mass.”
Skip looked at the three of them. “What’s the cold mass?”
“The talisman.”
A heavy, sad silence followed. Each of them knew what the price had been for that.
“You guys got weapons?”
It was Tarsidion who answered. The dispassionate mask of pain-control ebbed from his face to allow a fracture in his lips. “Lots.”
Skip had thought as much. “Take me to them.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
He hadn’t intended to hit her so much. Donovan had become so accustomed to people wilting in his presence that the fact that this girl would defy him had…angered him.
The image of Amanda Kasey screwing her eyes shut as he bludgeoned her into the coffee table kept flashing in Donovan’s head like a movie reel stuck in a loop, the way her hair had jumped when the back of his hand had splattered her face. He could still feel those soft tresses bunched in his fist as he’d yanked her off her knees. Her brave whimpers.
It was nothing he hadn’t done countless times before—defiance equaled pain, concession equaled no pain. So why did he give a shit now?
And why should the feel of her body sagging under his, the scent of her breath laced in fear be so vivid to him? So…
Donovan furrowed his brows and banished his emotions back to their pens. They had grown stronger lately, impetuous. He focused on something else.
Like the Whisperer.
As ferocious as these Blackburn warriors were, they had failed. Bullets had merely hurt the creature and despite the vast amount of punishment they’d pumped into it, the Whisperer had kept coming.
It was a smart fucker, too. Within two hours of the battle on the highway, the creature had taken out the entire power grid to both Connecticut and New York by sending a power surge in the form of a ball of lightning right into the transmission grid. Burned everything. A total blackout had rippled all the way out to Ohio and up to Montreal—a huge swath of darkness.
Airports were down, streetlights were out for hundreds of miles and the eerie drone of generators wailed into the night. The commentators and journalists covering the story spoke in hushed, somber tones, and there was a sense of people merely trying to ride out a sudden storm. A tempest.
In one afternoon this squash-faced fuck had altered the world. But there was one thing it had failed to conquer…Donovan.
…soft tresses in his hands.
Amanda Kasey would be the second, he decided.
He wasn’t done with her yet.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gavin plodded across the thick carpet of his sanctuary, head down, hands clasped behind his back. When he reached the wall—a eucalyptus and walnut library brimming with books, scrolls and DVDs—he pivoted on the balls of his feet and plodded back the way he’d come.
Another of the seven had fallen.
First Alyssandra, then Lucian and now Jeukovelin. Would Cirena be next?
It would have been different if Lucian were here. Lucian always had an answer, always knew what to do. He wouldn’t have backed out. He would have done as he’d said and opened that tomb, just as they’d planned. Their way, their rules. If Gavin had been more like his brother, Jack Nyx would still be alive.
Cirena should have opened his throat.
He glanced at the Talisman sitting on his desk like a radioactive time bomb. That thing had been bought with Jack’s blood. Their ticket out of here.
In three hours it would be nightfall, and the war for two worlds would be waged.
The coverage of their fight with Deos was everywhere—local, regional, national. Thanks to Mr. Cellphone Guy, it had gone viral. The video was unsteady and of low quality, narrated by a breathless teenager, but enough of it was discernable to have set the whole media world in a blaze; it had over forty-seven million hits on YouTube.
The four of them appeared clearly enough, the best shot being Cirena as she launched herself off the SUV with K’lesha leading the way, her beautiful face contorted in battle lust. There wasn’t enough money in the world to have paid an actor to get that shot.
They kept playing the same clip over and over, trying to figure out who Cirena was and just exactly what she was jumping at. Asmodeous himself appeared blurry and warped, as if his very presence was incapable of being captured by something as crude as digital pixels, which left much to the imagination. One thing was certain though. Whatever it was she was jumping at was big. And frightening.
The incident at exit 40.
Gavin checked his watch. In two hours, the Fourth Moon would rise and a brief window would open. Whoever was left standing would go home.
There was a knock at the door.
“Yeah?” Gavin asked.
“It’s Skip.”
Gavin had both hoped and dreaded that it might be Amanda; he still hadn’t told her everything. Just the small detail of being from another world and such. But he would let her sleep—that was a conversation best had with a clear head. “Come in,” he said.
His door opened noiselessly and in came Skip, a glimmer of sil
ver on a very black cloud. “Now this is what I call a getaway house,” he commented, walking into Gavin’s sanctuary. “I feel like I’ve walked into another world.”
“That was the point.”
“Except for this,” Skip said with a smile. “This is how I know we’re going to get along.” He’d stopped in front of Gavin’s guilty pleasure, an original life-sized movie prop from Rocky III, circa 1982. Skip’s smile remained while he looked over Sylvester Stallone’s unbreakable expression of composed confidence, his boxing gloves resting on his thighs, lowered but ready. “I’m gonna be honest, Gavin,” Skip said, eyes fixed on Sly. “This waiting around bullshit is driving me nuts. I’d sure feel better if I knew what the plan was.”
“I thought you said you were a soldier.”
Skip took his eyes off the prop. “I was.”
“Then you should know that waiting is part of it. Don’t worry, in two hours your wait will be over.”
Skip shrugged. “I still wanna know.” He continued with his little tour and stopped in front of the portrait on the wall behind Gavin’s desk. “Hey, that’s all you guys, plus two more,” he said, pressing his face mere inches from the painting. “Is that armor real?”
“Yes.”
Skip smiled. “Crazy. Who’s the babe?”
“Her name was Alyssandra.”
“Was?”
Gavin nodded, feeling a long-familiar current of sadness wash through him. Even after all this time he couldn’t talk about it.
“Sorry,” Skip said, giving his head a little bow. “She’s beautiful, though it looks like she’s got…pointy ears or something.”
“Yes.”
Skip studied the picture and then shifted his attention to Gavin, waiting for elaboration. None came. With a shrug he returned his attention to the portrait, which really was Noah’s greatest creation. She had a way of capturing the spirit of a scene in both color and stroke better than any person Gavin had ever met, both worlds counted. Gavin loved that picture, had spent countless hours gazing into it, remembering, smiling, crying, even now he never got tired of looking at it.
“Wow, this other guy looks just like you. Brother or twin?”
“Twin. Identical.”
“Really? His hair looks blond,” Skip said, absorbing the painting with his eyes. “Where is he?”
“Same as all the others. Dead.”
Skip stopped. He turned around and faced Gavin and did something only Skip Walkins could get away with. He smiled. “There’s a new sheriff in town. That shit ends tonight.”
Gavin almost snorted. That was one way to look at it. At least he was optimistic.er naHer
“I have a question for you,” Skip continued, sucking his teeth.
“Shoot.”
“Why’d the Lord of the Underworld fly three quarters across the country to try and flambé you all when he already had the talisman? Why’s he have such a hard-on for you guys?”
“Besides the fact that he was defeated by mere mortals for the first time in his life and stuck in a cold alien ground for the past seventeen years? He wants the same thing we want—to go home.”
“So there’s no chance he might just go home without stopping here first?”
Gavin let out a laugh. “No.” The smile disappeared as if it had never been there. “His way home lies through us. I have something he needs.”
“Which is?”
Gavin studied the police chief before answering. If this man was still sitting here ready to pledge his life to this cause, he deserved to know. “He needs my Quaranai.”
“Your kwore-ah what?”
“Quaranai, the weapon of all Shardyn.”
“What for? I thought there was a ‘Fourth Moon’ coming.” Skip even used finger-quotes.
“Step one of three.”
“Well, what are the other steps?”
Gavin sighed. “That, my new friend, is not a simple conversation.”
Skip walked over to a leather sofa-chair and made himself comfortable. He put both hands behind his head and rested his ankle on his knee. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Gavin looked at him then out of the window behind. There was still a little time left. He shrugged and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “This is advanced shit.”
Skip unclasped his fingers and leaned in as well. The two were just outside acceptable bubble space. “Try me.”
“Well, all right then. It used to be that one could cross the worlds if one knew where and when.”
“Past tense?”
“Yes. All natural-occurring portals were sealed centuries ago.”
“Why?”
“It got too dangerous,” Gavin said. “Think about it. Do you honestly think that the legends and fables of your past societies were all a simple matter of superstition and exaggeration? Why is it that every culture on this world has its own version of vampires and trolls, giants and goblins? Do you think it’s possible, in light of certain…distinctions you’ve made in the past day or so that those myths might possibly be the results of world crossovers? My world to yours? And don’t think it was just one-sided either. A band of marauding Visigoths crossed over in 327 AD—this world time—and invaded the Barony of the Southern March, a frontier land on Theia between the civilized realms of Men and the Wildlands. They wiped out three villages, one whole town and laid siege to the Emerauk Castle for seven weeks. The timing of that raid could not have been worse. The Southern March was already at war and as a result, three months later the Barony fell. To this day it has never been recovered.”
Skip stared at an imaginary spot on the floor as he processed Gavin’s words. “Well, that sucks.”
“It most certainly did. What replaced it was a perversion of mankind. Man’s dominion on Theia diminished that day. For a thousand years the final separation of our worlds was a subject of great debate among the people of each world, as well as across worlds. One side wanted to learn from the other, or exploit the other, and the same was true on the other side, while others just wanted to separate them forever and be done with it. Hundreds of years they debated. Finally, sometime in the fifteenth century, the wizards of both worlds decided to create the most powerful, audacious and dangerous spell in the history of both worlds—a spell that spanned the cosmos itself.”
“We had wizards?”
“Oh, yes. You’ve never heard of Merlin?”
“Get out of here.”
“I will not. Makes sense though, right?” Gavin said, almost smiling. He liked Skip. “Everybody knows about Merlin, and there’s a reason for it. The station of Merlin was appropriately revered.”
“Station?”
“Yes. Merlin was not just one man. He was a position, held by the most powerful and wisest wizard of the time. It was passed down from generation to generation.”
“So, what happened?”
“You have to understand, only a very select few know about this even from where I come from. Most educated people would simply dismiss this as nonsense. A place without magic, bah-humbug. No such place exists.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I’d bet my left nut that people here would say the same about a place with magic.”
Gavin smiled. “An unpleasant and unnecessary wager to propose, but a safe wager nevertheless.”
“Lay it on me, brother. I wanna know.”
Gavin’s earlier malaise was replaced with a slight hum of excitement. For the first time he could really be honest with someone, and it was unexpectedly refreshing—therapeutic. Truth was the foundation of the Knights of the Shard, and though their deception was for the greater good, the opportunity to addre
ss such an extensive deception was like ambrosia. It gave him something else to focus on. “Both sides had valid complaints. There was the Southern March incident on Theia, which had a huge ripple effect, and Vladimir the Impaler, aka Count Dracula most certainly had a negative impact here, as well as thousands of other examples over the millennia.”
“Dracula was from Theia?”
“Where else do you think vampires come from? We digress. The whole point is that it was just too dangerous to allow crossovers, so in the early Renaissance—this world time—the wizards of both sides decided to shut the ways forever.”
Gavin paused for effect.
“I’m listening,” Skip responded, almost annoyed. “How’d they do it?”
“The Spell of the Black Veil,” Gavin said dramatically and felt a familiar flutter go through him. As Apprentices, they had studied it in detail.
“Sounds ominous.”
“To say the least. It was an undertaking that required two generations and supreme power and calculation. And also great risk. The results of an error could have had consequences beyond comprehension.”
“It’s a good thing they did it right, then.”
“They didn’t. To put it in ‘laymen’s’ terms, our wizards screwed yours.”
“Say what?”
Gavin looked around, scratching his head, trying to figure out how best to say this. He noticed a wool blanket lying neatly folded on one of his chairs. He walked over, picked it up and let it drop so that it was hanging between his two hands. “This blanket represents all the magic between our two worlds. On this side,” he said, wiggling his left hand, “is Earth. On this side,” he said, wiggling his right, “is Theia.”
“Go on.”
“Now, in order to achieve success with this spell, a huge amount of magic was going to be needed to sustain it. I cannot stress enough the magnitude of what was being attempted.” Gavin draped the blanket over the circular coffee table in front of them. He arranged the blanket so that it was centered, allowing the same margin of slack to fall on all sides. “This is what was agreed. The table represents the spell itself and how much magic would be required. The remainder,” Gavin said, flicking the extra edges, “was what magic would remain in both worlds, evenly distributed.”