by Kristie Cook
“He went outside to take a leak. And why not? We both feel it. She—”
“Because it doesn’t matter right now. You’re in no condition to travel.”
“Um.” I cleared my throat. “I’m right here. What’s going on?”
They exchanged a look, and after a moment Hayden seemed to acquiesce because he looked away first. Bex moved to prop herself up on her good elbow so she could see me better in the dim firelight. I moved closer to her pallet of blankets. They’d been Bonding their souls every night, which seemed to help her healing along—or at least keep infection at bay—but they really needed to Forge to do her the most good. And to Forge, they needed a Gate, and we had no clue where to find the nearest Gate.
“We’ve been feeling this strange, uh …” Bex’s big blue eyes slid to Hayden, but when he failed to provide the word she sought, they came back to me. “I guess a tug? Kind of like we’ve been hooked on a fishin’ pole and someone’s reelin’ us in like a big ol’ catfish.”
My breath caught, and I sprang across the five paces separating us to fall to my knees next to Bex. “Seriously? Like an urgent need to go somewhere that comes all the way from your soul?”
“Yes!” Bex nearly squealed, the loudest sound I’d heard from her since we’d been here. She looked up at Hayden. “I told you she’d know.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth. “It’s a Gate! You’re being pulled to a Gate so you can be Forged. And you have to go or you’ll both die. How far away do you think it is?”
“It’s to the east,” Hayden answered with reluctance. He blew out a sigh. “If it’s where I feel like it is, about a three-days’ walk. If we’re lucky and don’t have any problems, which is unlikely.”
I wanted to squeal like Bex. A Gate! They knew where to go to find a Gate, which meant they’d not only be stronger by being Forged, but Brock and I could get back home. I didn’t squeal, though. Only nodded.
“We need to leave as soon as we can,” I said. I thought about the screaming creatures we heard at night. “It’s better to travel in daylight, right?”
“We’re not going anywhere until Bex is fully healed and ready to travel.”
“She’ll heal faster once you’re Forged at the Gate. We’ll have to help her.”
“I can—” Bex started.
“I said no.” Hayden stood and put his hands on his hips as he towered over us. “We’re not going anywhere. Not yet.”
I rose to my feet to face him. Unfortunately, I was vertically challenged and he definitely was not, so I had to tilt my head back to look him in the eye. “Didn’t you hear me? You have to. If you don’t—”
“I don’t like sitting here any more than you do, but we’re not moving until Bex is ready. She’s not ready yet.”
“You’re going to run out of time! If we don’t get you two to the Gate in time, your souls will start to reject your bodies. And if your physical bodies die before we can get your souls to the Gate and to the Space Between, the Darkness here will overtake you. All of this will be for nothing!”
I didn’t know how much of that was actually true here on this Dark world—if things worked the same way they did on Earth. I didn’t know if a Gate here could Forge them with all of the Darkness surrounding it. Unless Brock and I somehow figured out how to project, I didn’t know how we could get their souls to the Gate if it came to that. Would we be able to stay in our physical bodies, like we did when we passed through the Book’s portal? Would Lakari try to stop them or us? So far, the Dark souls didn’t seem to care much about Brock and me or that Nathayden and Rebethannah had already started the Bonding process—they hadn’t attacked us yet. I didn’t know anything, really, except that a Gate held a lot more promise than anything else in this world. The news that they’d been feeling that pull was the best news we’d had since arriving.
Hayden’s eyes narrowed, and he pointed a finger at me. “You have no idea what it’s like out there.”
“We just came from out there,” I said through clenched teeth, glowering at his finger. Yeah, the climate sucked. So did the scenery. I did have an idea what it was like outside.
“That was a quick supply run,” he snapped. “We got lucky by seeing nothing. Or by nothing seeing us! Shelters like this are rare, and if we get trapped by a gozzard or a Weiran or even a human, Bex can’t fight and she can’t run. We’re dead anyway!”
He glared at me, and I glared back. I’d heard the sounds at night that came from creatures Hayden called gozzards and alien races with names like Weiran. But we’d yet to see or hear them during the day. Before we could continue our argument, monster-like screams came from outside.
“Ah, shit, what the hell is that?” Brock yelled as his footsteps tromped through the outer cave, quickly coming closer to us. “Hayden!”
His terrified yell for help was drowned out by a deafening roar.
“Oh, fuck,” Hayden said as he leapt to immediate action. Four-letter words were apparently universal.
He snatched up one of his bags and pulled a dagger out of it, although he already had one in hand.
“Arm yourselves!” he ordered as he took his place in front of Bex.
He’d given her a blade to keep under her bedding, just in case. She pulled it out, but she could barely stand steady on her feet. Hayden and I both positioned ourselves to guard her. I already had my knife out of its sheath, the blade’s mere six inches seeming like nothing more than a pocket knife compared to what I expected we’d be facing based on that roar. We were prepared in the two seconds it took Brock to come flying through the narrow passageway that connected the outer room with the inner cavern. He had a katana-like sword in hand that he’d found on their supply run the other day.
“Looks like a dragon fucked an elephant,” Brock said, his voice shaking and his chest heaving with pants as he shoved a hand into his dark hair. Seeing someone built like Brock—as tall and muscular as Jeric and whose fighting skills ranked at the top of the Guardians—showing so much fear was enough to scare the shit out of you.
“A dragon and a what?” Hayden asked.
“An elephant. I mean, it’s huge as an elephant and with a long trunk for a nose.” He held his arm in front of his face to imitate an elephant’s trunk. “But it’s scaly and has a bunch of horns. And it breathes. Fucking. Fire!” His eyes were wild as they remained trained on the opening. “It can’t fit through that passage, though … right?”
“A gozzard,” Hayden said, understanding now, “and yes—”
He didn’t have to finish his sentence to answer Brock’s question. A long, black, scaly, tube-like thing, kind of like an elephant’s trunk, slithered into the cavern from the passageway. It lifted into the air, its end wiggling, as though smelling for us. It swung for Brock.
“Whatever you do, don’t cut—” Hayden began to warn, but he fell silent when Brock’s katana blade sliced through the tentacle or trunk or whatever it was.
The piece fell to the cave floor and burst into little wormy bits that hopped in the air like Mexican jumping beans. As though they could smell us, they swarmed toward Bex and me. One hit my leg and latched on with piercing little needles that sank into my skin. The main body of the beast remained on the other end of the passage, and flames and smoke shot through the opening into our room. The part of the trunk that was still attached to the body split into four parts, peeling back an opening. Several tentacle-like things—these thin, white, and slimy—flared out of the hole, and their ends opened up to little mouths full of spindly teeth. The little black pieces on the ground jumped for us as the white tentacles swayed and swung, the mouths snapping for our faces.
My heart kicked into overdrive and my body into action. I swung my blade in the air while I grabbed the slug-like things on my legs and threw them on the ground, then stomped on them until they fell still. Hayden and Brock
jumped and hopped from foot to foot to avoid the little leeches while slicing at the tentacles trying to bite us. Bex screamed behind me, and I spun to find the black things attacking her, and with only one working hand, she was barely able to fight them off, let alone smash them until dead. I left the tentacles to the guys while I helped Bex, yanking the gross little bastards off of her skin and stomping them to death. When she was clean of them all, she looked behind me, her eyes huge. She screamed and tried to jump backward, but she fell on her butt. A louder scream of pain ripped from her mouth—the injuries between her legs hadn’t fully healed yet. I spun to find a mouth snapping at me. I swung my knife at it, severing the mouth from the rest of the tentacle. The creature’s bellows filled the cavern, but it looked like we’d amputated all of its pieces and the thing was retreating.
Hayden ran for the passage. “Follow me! Aim for its eye, nice and deep!”
He ran into the darkness, and I followed. Brock cursed behind me, but his footsteps were right on my heels. We flew into the smaller entryway of the cave. Almost all light was blocked out by an enormous, black, scaly beast with half of its face missing where a nose or snout should have been. Five horns protruded from its head over eyes the size of my fists that glared at us angrily. Its bottom jaw, jutting with tusks longer than my arm, stretched open and flames flew out. I ducked and rolled. When I came back to my knees, I couldn’t see Brock or Hayden on this side of the beast. But I could see its eye. I sprang to my feet, and as it opened its mouth to spit more fire, I jumped into the air, kicked off the cave wall and came down with both hands gripping the hilt of my knife. With the full force of my body weight, I plunged it as deep as it would go into the creature’s eye. Black, inky shit spewed out at me. More black fountained on the other side of its head, and the creature screamed one more time before it collapsed to the ground.
Hayden stared at me from the other side of its head.
“Nice work,” he said, his voice filled with awe.
“Comes with being a Phoenix,” I said. “If you and Bex get Forged, you’ll be amazed at what the both of you can do.”
His eyes narrowed for a second, but instead of responding, his gaze dropped to the beast between us. “Dinner.”
Brock and I exchanged a look. We were going to eat this? But then Brock shrugged. “Looks like we’ll have plenty to eat for the next few days.”
I left the guys to cut up the meat and found Bex collapsed on her bedding. Her whole body trembled. Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them back. The way she gnawed on her bottom lip, though, I knew she was in a lot of pain—physical and emotional. She’d already been through so much. I dropped down to her to clean any new wounds as well as my own.
“I’m okay,” she said, though her voice shook.
“No, you’re not,” I said.
“I am. As far as Hayden knows, I’m just peachy.” She ducked her head to catch my attention and looked me in the eyes. “I don’t have much to go back home to, you told me that, but I woke up on another damn world. This is all just blowin’ my mind. I got my Hayden now, and I really … I really just want to go home.”
“I know, sweetie. I’m right there with you, trust me.”
“We have to get to that Gate, Leni. I can feel it. And I know you and Brock need it, too, right? Because it will get you back to Jeric and Asia?”
I nodded, then went back to dabbing at the little pinpricks of blood on her legs. “Yeah, but Hayden’s right. You need to heal. You need to be able to at least defend yourself.”
She lay back on the bedding with a sigh and stared at the dim ceiling. Her eyelids fluttered rapidly, but a tear slipped down her temple anyway. “We might not make it that long, though. We might not ever make it home.”
“We have to,” I said simply. I patted her on the knee. “Right now, don’t you worry about anything, but getting better. We’ll figure the rest out.”
If she could hear the doubt in my voice, she didn’t say anything, although I was probably making empty promises. Hayden was right: Bex was definitely in no shape to travel. But if we didn’t make it to the Gate in time, we’d all be in trouble. And the clock had already started counting down—probably the moment we arrived.
Chapter 2
“What are we going to do, Jeric?” Asia asked me from my side, her voice edged with the same agony I felt. Her hair had become black as night, matching her black clothes and our black moods. Her thin arms were wrapped around her tiny waist as though hugging herself, but she did it because she felt that if she let go, she’d fall apart. I knew this because I had the same feeling that I was missing pieces of myself. That I was incomplete.
We both held what had become our usual spots on the water’s edge, watching and waiting. The Phoenix manor loomed behind us, an old plantation-style mansion with an eight-story, abandoned hotel built around it. The sun hung low in the western sky to our right, causing the small waves of Tampa Bay to shine gold and pink. We needed the gold light to come from below, though, from the Gate that would bring our Twin Flames home to us.
“Whatever Leni did for the Book to take them through the Gate, she apparently can’t do it again to bring them back,” she said when I provided no answer.
I crossed my arms over my chest, not wanting to believe it, but after three days of waiting, the truth of Asia’s statement had become clear. Something was wrong, with either Leni or Brock or the Book. Otherwise, they’d be back by now. My jaw clenched and popped. Asia, not normally the touchy-feely type, placed a tiny hand on my tight bicep and squeezed. I looked down at her, and she returned my stare with round, dark eyes that seemed too big for her elf-like face and shining with the desperate sorrow we shared.
“We have to do something,” she said. Nearly begged. We both knew what that something was, but she looked to me to make the decision. We were part of the Sacred Seven, and I was supposed to be the leader of not only the Phoenix, but of the Seven, too. I didn’t know how I could do that when I was missing half my soul. I pressed my lips together and blew a lungful of air out of my nose before giving her a short nod.
“We don’t have much choice,” I finally said. “We just have to convince everyone else.”
With one last look to the water where Leni and Brock had disappeared, I dropped my arm over Asia’s shoulders and turned her toward the manor, where a small army of Guardians waited. Someone must have been watching us from inside the manor and warned everyone we were coming, because when Asia and I entered, all was silent. I hated the way the other Guardians looked at us—it was like going back to school all over again after the accident that had taken my family and my hearing. Expressions of sympathy mixed with blame and fear: fear that Asia and I would lose our shit and also fear of losing their own halves as we had. The other expression I didn’t know quite so intimately was one I figured cancer patients were familiar with.
“They look at us like we’re dying,” Asia whispered, noticing it, too.
“Aren’t we?” I said.
Her head snapped up to look at me. “No, Jeric,” she said sharply. “We don’t have time for that attitude. We’re going to get them back. Whatever it takes.”
Whatever it took ... Unless the Lakari had backed off the Gates, doing whatever it took to bring our other halves back could mean jeopardizing all of Earth’s souls, and not even I was that selfish. I knew Asia wasn’t, either, but sometimes pushing the pain away to see clearly became impossible. We just had to hope something had changed.
Most of the Guardians were gathered in the old hotel’s ballroom, waiting for us. They silently created an opening for Asia and me to walk through, like Moses parting the Red Sea, until we reached the front of the room.
The Phoenix consisted of the Guardians of Earth’s seven Gates to the Space Between—the place where souls go when their physical bodies die so they can begin their next journey—and to other worlds.
Each Gate had a loose hierarchy of Guardians based on seniority, which was a relative term. No Guardians were over the age of thirty-five, and the older ones had only lived that long because they were healers and rarely went on missions, although they still often had to fight. Guardians didn’t have the luxury of normal lives with families and living to old age with our other halves. Our lives were dangerous and our life spans short. Nobody had survived more than six missions in one lifetime in thousands of years. Or so the rumor went.
No one really remembered or understood why, but Jeremicah, Jacquelena, Broderick, and Anastasia held special status over all of them. Rebethannah and Nathayden supposedly did, too, although neither of them had made it to an Earth Gate in several lifetimes. We’d all been part of the Sacred Seven, which meant little to us right now. The true meaning of what this entailed or how it had happened had been lost over generations. All that remained was a vague notion that we were elite among the Phoenix and intended to lead them. Other Guardians said their souls felt our superior status, but we hadn’t felt this instinctively at all.
Still, they insisted that we take our positions as leaders. Even those with seniority at Gates other than ours looked to us now that we were here and the Phoenix were in crisis. In other words, nobody else wanted to make the hard choices. Nobody else desired to make the decision to open the Gates and risk all of Earth’s souls, or to keep them closed and lose us—their supposed leaders—to the Darkness and Enyxa’s control.
Some of those with authority stood at the head of the room and watched us with curiosity, including Melinda and Uri, healers who had the most seniority at our Gate. My eyes scanned over all of their expectant faces as I made my way to the front, but I didn’t stop to discuss my decision with any of them. Instead, I climbed the three steps to the dais in one stride, and Asia followed. We stepped to the front of the low stage and stared out at the sea of faces. I stood with my feet shoulder-width apart, my back straight, and my hands clasped behind my ass. From the corner of my eye, I could see Asia taking the same confident stance. Once everyone settled from our passing through, the room’s silence became complete, as solid as when I was deaf. Hundreds of eyes stared at us, waiting.