by Sasha White
Remember what Endelle said, go with your gut.
Then I have to change course.
Do it. I’ve been a warrior a long time. Going with your instincts will get you where you need to go, every damn time. You’re connected to this power, so follow its lead.
But even as he said this to her, mind-to-mind, an explosion sounded behind them, much closer this time.
She flowed faster than before, taking tunnel after tunnel. He could feel the dimensional crossing, like a bump in the road, but still they were pursued as another explosion sounded.
Closer.
She reached the end of a tunnel. A dead end. I don’t know what to do?
What do you see? All he saw was darkness, like a wall of infinite black.
I doorway with a kind of gold seal around it.
Another explosion. Try knocking.
An explosion sounded so close his ears rang.
Fuck that. Samuel, use your sword.
He didn’t pause to ask questions. He summoned his dark power and as his smoky mist swirled around him, he sliced at the wall with his blade and what do you know, an opening peeled back.
A man in long black terry robe, a cigarette in one hand and martini glass in the other, stared back at him and muttered. “Oh, shit!”
Samuel stepped through the opening, dragging Vela with him, turned and faced the breach but he saw nothing just the wall.
But he heard another explosion.
“Fuck.” Their host said. “The wreckers followed you.”
Samuel turned back to face the robed stranger. “What do we do?”
He rolled his eyes, settled his cigarette carefully on an ashtray, placed his martini glass on the coffee table then went to the wall.
Samuel pulled Vela close as another not-so-distant explosion rocked the space.
“I could use some help here,” the stranger called out.
Vela went to the wall, and placed her hands on it alongside the man.
“Shit, this isn’t working,” the man shouted.
Samuel’s instincts kicked in and he went to the stranger. He placed his hand on the man’s back and his own power flowed. A kind of zing went through him, into the stranger, and the power amplified about a hundred fold.
Then everything went black.
Sometime later he woke up on his back.
“He’s awake now,” Vela said.
He shifted his head slightly. Vela had hold of his hand, her knees curled next to him. Her long, unruly hair, full of waves and curls, hung beside her face, an almost angelic look. He squeezed her hand.
“You okay?” she asked.
He glanced around. He was on the floor, in the same room, the stranger’s living room. “What happened?”
“You amplified Merl’s power and he sealed the tunnel back up. Looks like we opened up an exit point that had been closed for about five decades.”
He glanced at her other hand. She held a martini glass. “You’re drinking?”
“Seemed like a good idea. Greygoose dirty. Very nice. And we were very lucky Merl was here.”
She’d called him by name twice.
He didn’t like that. At all.
He sat up, his head spinning. Shit, where was his identified sword. Only he could touch the grip or the hilt. Jesus. “Where’s my sword?”
Merl said. “It’s humming over there.” He gestured behind him.
Samuel widened his eyes. His sword was stuck about ten inches into the wall, on the opposite side of the large room, at least thirty feet away from where he now sat. There were many issues to address right now like how much he didn’t like his new host since he could sense his male-hunting stench, but he needed to take care of his weapon first.
As he rose to his feet, he said, “I take it we’ve reached some kind of safe haven here on Second and you must be from Third.”
“Guilty.”
Had Merl actually said that?
Samuel crossed in front of him, catching his gaze and holding it hard, as he passed by.
The man held up both hands in surrender, a new cigarette in one hand and a half full martini in the other.
Samuel pulled his sword from the wall, the familiar feel of the grip a comfort in what had become an increasingly bizarre situation. “We’re on Second?”
Merl nodded and took a slow drag on his cigarette, squinting, savoring. “Yeah, you can fold it anywhere you want. I don’t have shields up. Haven’t needed them. Of course your arrival, as well as Vela’s,” he offered her a smile as he sipped his martini, then finished his thought. “Anyway, your arrival will force me to rethink my strategy.”
He’d called Vela by name and smiled at her.
Good ol’ Merl was starting to piss him off.
Samuel thought-the-thought and got rid of his sword. He returned to Vela, and as he passed by Merl again, he made eye-contact and let him feel just what he thought about this Third ascender, with a power similar to his own.
Merl’s lips quirked as he once more raised his martini glass and his cigarette in surrender. What a prick.
When Samuel reached Vela, she sent, What’s the matter? You’re all pissy and from what I can tell, Merl just saved our lives.
I had something to do with that.
Her expression softened. Yeah, you did and it cost you.
“Okay, you two. Enough with the telepathic chit-chat. It’s kinda rude.” The last word came out with a stretched ‘u’ sound. This man was one piece-of-work.
The weird thing was, Merl was warrior-sized and matched Samuel pound-for-pound. He wore black silk bottoms, but the terry robe, open to the waist, exposed muscled pecs.
Samuel slipped his arm around Vela. “Who are you?” he asked, not trusting much about this stranger.
“Merl Tuttle, escapee from Third Earth, former warrior, including stretches inside the darkening grid. Got sick of the chaos on Third and found a way to get out. Question is, how did you find me? I haven’t had visitors from Third since I got here.”
“We’re not from Third,” he said.
“Why, Vela, you didn’t tell me that.”
He’d caressed her name. Hell, he’d poured oil over every single one of those words, the bastard, and now a lovely red hue covered Samuel’s vision as his dark power rose in a sudden smoky stream.
He launched at Merl before he had time to think or before he could respond to Vela calling out, “Don’t, Samuel. He’s a friend!”
He caught bare arms, because somewhere in Samuel flying at Merl, the Third ascender had lost his robe and dropped into a fighting stance.
Samuel grappled with him, wrestling him to the ground, then letting his fists fly.
Merl folded out of his hold, levitated. Samuel’s dark power recognized his foe and responded with similar levitation and folding, until once more he made contact.
But Merl had more power and the next thing Samuel knew, he lay face down on the carpet, a knee in his back, and one arm pulled back and upright to the breaking point.
“You done throwing a fit?”
“Don’t talk to my woman that way.” The words sounded slurred since they were half-spoken into a thick carpet.
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Merl let him go. Samuel rose to his feet, breathing hard, sweating, mad. He glared at Merl. “Just leave Vela alone. She’s mine.”
Merl opened his mouth to speak then closed it. “Hold the phone. Are we talking that breh-hedden shit here? I mean I heard rumors that Thorne had been laid waste. It’s the breh-hedden, isn’t it?”
But Samuel stepped into him and got about an inch away from his nose “Breh-hedden or not, stay the fuck away from my woman. We clear?”
Merl narrowed his eyes and though he said nothing, he stared back, nostrils flaring.
But suddenly the air above them was full of light, then little pin-pricks of fiery pain hit his bare shoulders, arms and back. He waved his hands, as Merl did, batting away the annoying bites of fire.
“What the hell is that? Another trick Merl?”
“I didn’t do that.”
“Are you two Neanderthals finished?”
The sound of Vela’s voice, as well as the cessation of sparks falling all around him, caused Samuel to turn and stare at her. “What was that?”
She turned a palm up and a small firework appeared, which she then launched toward the ceiling. When it floated down, it winked out in a succession of small bursts of flames.
“Why did you do that?” Samuel asked.
“Because you’re both being ridiculous, especially you!”
“Why, me?” He jerked his thumb toward Merl. “This asshole was disrespecting you.”
“And you were treating him like a moron. Knock it off.”
Her criticism rankled.
Merl pulled at the sides of his bottoms. “I have little holes in my pjs.”
Vela rolled her eyes but walked toward the entry wall. “Sorry, Merl, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about your pajamas.” She planted a hand on the wall, her blond hair falling almost to her waist. He decided he loved her hair. “I need to know about this. What it is, how we got through, and what those explosions were. You said something earlier about wreckers.”
“Yeah, Merl,” Samuel said, without affection, “Tell us about the wreckers.”
Merl held out his hand and a lit cigarette appeared between his fingers. He took a puff, once more squinting slightly, glaring. The bastard.
After he’d released a puff of smoke in Samuel’s direction, he said, “Look, I don’t know who either of you are, but clearly you’ve got a lot of power between you. Which one of you saw the gate?”
Vela turned slightly toward the wall. “I did. We’d reached the end of the tunnel and I saw a glowing archway here, in this location. Samuel couldn’t see it, but he used his sword to break through.”
He narrowed his eyes at Samuel. “Only a powerful warrior can use his sword to make a breach in a gate.” Then back to Vela. “But it’s the rare ascender who can locate gates like mine.”
Vela turned toward him. “So then you had enough power to find this gate in the first place?”
Merl took another drag, another sip. He glanced at her. “Hell, no. I paid a fortune, a life’s fortune, to have the gate made then erased from all the grid documents.” His eyes grew cloudy.
Samuel tried to figure out what would have caused a vampire like Merl to have given up his fortune, his occupation, the life he’d built on Third Earth, to come here and live, literally, off the grid. He wanted to think the worst of Merl, that he was some kind of psychotic outlaw, but he sensed that Merl possessed a warrior’s honorable core, despite his interest in Vela.
Merl sat down in a low-chair angled from the corner of the room. “All right you two, have a seat and I’ll tell you what’s going on, or what I think is going on.” He sighed heavily. “Well, it was a nice five-decade run. Fuck.”
Vela crossed to the couch opposite the entry wall. She sat down, shoving the left mass of her hair over her right shoulder. Somewhere along the way, she’d set her martini glass down.
Samuel remained where he was. “I’ll stand.” He reached down near Merl’s chair, picked up the terry robe and threw it at Merl’s bare, muscled chest.
Merl laughed, waved the hand with the cigarette, and the terry was once more wrapped around him. But he smirked.
“Probably a good idea you don’t sit down,” Merl said. “You’d mess up my furniture, with that black smoke that leaks out of you. It’s called grayle, by the way.” He even spelled it. “And rare on Third. Not the grayle, just the color of it.”
“How so?”
“Those gifted with this kind of power, like me, can release just about any shade of grayle from light gray to white. But not that charcoal shit. You’ve got tremendous latent power because of it.”
Recalling the way his power had streamed and killed those men, Samuel had to agree. He quickly repressed the guilt that was always about an inch away.
Merl glanced between the two of them and frowned. He didn’t speak right away, but the line of his lips tightened. Finally, he said, “All right, I want to hear this from the beginning then I’ll answer your questions. How the hell did you end up in the darkening grid that connects Second and Third Earth?”
Chapter Four
Vela reeled from the recent scrapping match between the men. She’d never seen anything like it, or at least not to this degree. She’d witnessed similar antics when her husband and other Militia Warriors would gather in a knot around the BBQ and do some proverbial chest-thumping.
In this case, however, Samuel had looked ready to tear Merl apart. Fortunately, the Third ascender out-powered Samuel with his own Third ability, otherwise the men would probably have battled for hours.
She’d therefore done the only thing she could think of, which had actually worked, when she’d rained a series of about twenty fireworks down from the ceiling until each stopped his caveman posturing.
Of course, it would have helped more if she’d actually disliked that Samuel had gone caveman on her. At the very least, the breh-hedden had a strong sexual component and watching the warrior exhibit all that possessive behavior had worked her libido like throwing a match on a gasoline-soaked campfire.
Poof, instant blaze.
She knew what had been going on and that Merl had been putting out his own feelers, though she thought his intentions ranged on the side of riling Samuel up.
The discussion had turned, just as it should, to their current predicament, and since her power had led her here, straight to Merl, who lived in some kind of reclusive state on Second, she told him all that she knew, including what she’d seen of Duncan’s horrific imprisonment.
Merl had started out intrigued by what had brought them into his house, but by the end of her narrative, he’d slumped in his chair, took the last drag of his cigarette before folding it away, then released a heavy sigh.
“Well, fuck,” he said succinctly.
Samuel crossed his arms over his chest. “Not helping. But damn if I don’t think you know exactly what’s going on.”
Merl slid his gaze in Samuel’s direction and the men exchanged a long look until Merl finally dipped his chin. “In part. But I’ll begin here. The fact that the two of you were able to engage the darkening grid, and travel between dimensions, tells me that certain warring factions of Third Earth have begun an infiltration of this dimension. Someone’s on the prowl, looking to utilize whatever power Second has to offer, maybe even to take over, who the hell knows.”
“But what does that have to do with us? Why Vela and me?”
Merl shrugged. “I’ve always believed that forces are constantly at work to sustain balance in our dimensional world, and I don’t mean Upper Dimension forces, but something outside our comprehension. Call it the Creator or the Universe, whatever.”
Samuel snorted. “You’re talking metaphysical bullshit.”
Merl met his gaze. “If that idea doesn’t appeal, think of it as genetic intervention, that certain ascenders have genetic markers that get ticked when elements or stressors arise, like war. Then powers emerge, like yours and Vela’s, to counter other darker, more chaotic energies.”
Vela twined a thick lock of her hair around her finger and turned toward Samuel. He’d said that his power had taken hold while he’d been bound by ropes and tortured. And hers had emerged at a time when three rogue generals were about to plunge Second Earth into a new round of war and misery. Maybe Merl was onto something.
She released the lock of hair. “Well, setting philosophy aside, tell us about Third Earth, what’s going on up there?”
“Nasty war. Much worse than Second. You don’t want to get drawn into their conflict but it looks like you just might. The trouble with Third is that there are several factions vying for supremacy right now, not just one.”
“What’s at the heart of the war?” Samuel asked. “Territorial disputes?”
“Vast
disputes, going back millennia.”
“Is there a Militia Warrior contingent involved?”
“Yes, spread through the various factions, and each has an elite Warrior of the Blood force as well, which is why the war is so damn problematic; you’ll find men of great worth, slaying other men of equal worth.”
“But haven’t you just described every war that either vampire or humankind has ever waged?” Vela asked.
At that, Merl shifted in her direction and drew in a deep breath. “Samuel,” he said, staring at Vela. “You have a woman of great perception here and of understanding.” To Vela he added, “I believe you’ve spoken a truth, but perhaps only part of it. Not all warriors are honorable. But in the case of Third Earth, imagine Warrior Thorne battling someone just like him, in every respect. Now imagine being unable to get any faction to a negotiating table.”
Once more, he drew a cigarette into his hand, already lit, and dragged deep. She read his story in this simple, habitual reaction to a reminder of no doubt what he’d left behind in his world. Maybe where he’d failed.
She frowned. “Merl, were you kicked out of Third or did you leave on your own?”
He rolled the cigarette between his knuckles, staring at it. “If any of the factions find me, they’ll kill me, which is why your busting through my wall at the end of a grid tunnel pisses the hell out of me.”
“Are you in danger, I mean right now?” She leaned forward slightly.
“Maybe. I don’t know. Depends on the wrecking squad that traced you.”
“So they work in squads,” she stated.
“Yep. And any of the factions can send squads through the darkening grid in order to destroy what they perceive as the enemy. The weapons are sawed off shotguns, very inelegant, but effective, and besides blowing a trespassing ascender to hell, can break through the walls of the grid, which in turn allows for quicker movement.”
“So, they must use explosive shells,” Samuel said.
Merl nodded. “10 gauge. The wrecker’s own power amplifies the shot. You get a goddamn righteous explosion, enough to blow away your target and take down a grid wall, which ain’t easy. Wreckers are a highly specialized and extremely well-paid faction of any army. I worked as one for a couple of decades at the turn of the 20th century. There are limitations, however, but that shotgun makes up for most of them.”