“There’s a conflict here,” she said.
“Conflict? Hell, it was a full-blown frontal assault,” Grainger said.
“I’m talking about the rift,” Thalia said, shaking her head impatiently. She was wringing her hands. Logan had the impression that each bit of information she doled out came at a psychological cost. “It doesn’t fit. There’s a miasma lingering here.”
“Carnifex?” Gideon asked.
“I think so,” she said. “Don’t you sense it? Any of you?”
Exchanged looks and head shakes followed. Logan worried about her confidence. He said, “I would probably only sense it if he planned to return here.”
“Carnifex is anything but subtle,” Thalia said. “Brute force, destruction, carnage. That’s him in a nutshell.”
“So what’s the conflict?” Grainger asked.
“This rift was coordinated, a planned and timed assault on a mass of humanity in motion,” she said and waited for them understand. When they remained confused, she sighed. “I don’t think he’s capable of that degree of sophistication.”
“Maybe he had a magical aid,” Gideon suggested. “A talisman.”
“Maybe,” she said, “but I think another possibility is more likely.”
“Someone is helping him,” Fallon guessed.
Thalia nodded. “Somebody with more magical acumen than Carnifex possesses.”
“Somebody with a grudge against humanity? Or somebody who enjoys watching the carnage from afar?”
Thalia shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Regardless,” Gideon said. “Our goal remains the same. Remove the watcher’s tool—Carnifex, in other words—and the carnage ends.”
“Let’s begin then,” Thalia said. She unbuttoned the cuffs of her long-sleeved blouse and rolled them back. Generally, the Walker women wore long sleeves in public to conceal the golden sigils that adorned their skin. Fewer questions that way. And the habit dovetailed with Ambrose’s “Discretion is the better part of Walkers” philosophy.
“Sure you’re up to this?” Logan asked quietly. Then for Grainger’s benefit, he added, “It’s already been a long night.”
“I’ll give it a try,” Thalia said. “Gideon, you know what to do?”
“Right with you.”
“What’s she talking about?” Grainger asked.
“If she opens the rift,” Gideon said. “We go through. The two of us. Walker protocol.”
“What about me?”
Gideon looked at him. “I would strongly suggest you not try to follow.”
“Wait!” Logan said. “Before you start, take this.” He removed his crystal amulet and placed it over Thalia’s head. “Liana made these to protect us from our fears over there.”
“Thanks, Logan,” Thalia said. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Instinctively, they formed a loose circle around her, with the intention of shielding her spell-casting from any pedestrians or passing motorists. Her hands tapped and traced sigils along her forearms as her lips formed a series of whispered incantations, almost a soft hiss of continual sound rather than individual words. Thalia’s magic differed from Liana’s in that regard. Whereas Liana often shouted magical commands, Thalia seemed to coax magic from the ether, sometimes silently, and usually with more versatility and effectiveness. Until Thalia’s rift accident, she had been Liana’s clear magical superior. Her loss had been a devastating blow to the Walker ranks. Though Logan was glad to see her back in action, he worried about the cost of pushing her too far too soon. Thalia’s forearms had begun to glow, and her eyes had gone vacant again.
“I can see it,” she whispered at last. “Where it ripped open, like a psychic echo… the damage is still there… a wound, recently closed… I’m reaching out to it, feeling the contours, searching for the weakest spot… yes, thinnest here… if I can prod it, just slip through that spot… I think I can open it again.”
Gideon pulled his sword from its scabbard, shifted his grip slightly, then nodded in anticipation. A warrior, he was fixated on the imminent battle. Thalia similarly focused on her magical task, reopening the rift. Logan, douser of bad vibes and all things paranormally nasty, felt his gut lurch in dread.
“Careful!” Logan said to Thalia and hoped she heard him.
He gave Fallon a meaningful look. She had released Thalia’s hand when the older woman had begun her pattern tracing. No physical contact. Logan nodded urgently. Fallon frowned, shook off her nerves and indecision with a long exhalation, and reached a gentle hand toward Thalia’s neck. She paused, glanced at Logan; he nodded again. Contact there wouldn’t interfere with the spell-casting. Fallon laid her hand against the nape of Thalia’s neck. At the moment of contact, Fallon gasped, her back arching as if a jolt of electricity had coursed down her spine.
Thalia’s body began to twitch.
Fallon’s eyes opened wide in alarm.
“Stop!” Logan shouted, reaching for Thalia’s glowing arms.
Gifted with hyperacuity, Gideon was too quick for Logan. “No,” he said, stepping in front of Logan and catching his hand. “Let her finish!”
“You don’t understand—”
Thalia screamed.
Fallon grunted in pain, staggered sideways, striking a newspaper dispenser with her hip before falling to the sidewalk in a heap. She whimpered softly and writhed on the ground.
The moment Thalia screamed, the glow around her arms winked out. Then her eyes rolled up, showing only the whites. Her legs crumpled and she fell unconscious toward the ground.
Grainger tried to catch her, but Gideon beat him to it. He’d been too stunned by the swift chain of events to stop Fallon’s collapse, but he recovered in time to break Thalia’s fall. “She’s burning up.”
“What’s going on?” Grainger asked
“I don’t know,” Gideon said from a crouch, caressing Thalia’s face.
The police chief’s hard gaze settled on Logan. “You knew, didn’t you?”
“I sensed something bad was about to happen, but Gideon wouldn’t—”
“Sorry, Logan,” Gideon said. “Forgot about your talent. I thought, well, I haven’t been in group dynamic mode in a—”
“Everybody ignores me!”
“Said I was sorry.”
“Why bring me out here if you refuse to—?”
“Enough, Logan!” Gideon said. “Live and learn.”
“Right,” Logan said, mentally kicking himself for becoming sulky when—Fallon! “Damn it!” he whispered fiercely as he rushed to her side. He kneeled beside her and checked for cuts or abrasions. Physically, she seemed fine. He placed a hand on her head, another under her jaw and examined her eyes. They were fluttering as she moaned quietly. “I think she’s coming out of it.”
Grainger kneeled on the other side of her. “Yes.”
“Logan,” Fallon whispered as her eyes began to track and focus. “Thought that was you touching me. Felt the swoopy-loopies.”
“What’s she talking about?”
“Inside joke.”
“So she’s making sense?”
Logan nodded. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“So what happened here?”
“I’m not sure,” Logan said. “Thalia will probably know when she wakes up. If she remembers anything, that is.”
“What do you think happened?”
“When she pushed against the rift,” Logan said, “something pushed back.”
PART THREE
SHADOW WALKERS
Chapter 46
When the rock spire first began to topple, Liana couldn’t help herself: she screamed so loud the cry might have been ripped from her throat by a demon that thrived solely on vocal expressions of sheer terror. In this hell dimension, such a demon might even exist. But she wasn’t looking for excuses. Of all the ways one might possibly die, she had always considered burning among the worst way to go. And the idea of falling several hundred feet into a sea of molten magma increased her fear of immol
ation beyond rational boundaries. She was about to take a swan dive into temperatures hot enough to melt stone. With that grim thought foremost in her mind, she thought she had an undeniable right to one last scream of defiance, of protest—but mostly, of sheer terror.
Barrett scrambled from the flattened tip of the broken and falling spire or rock to what became the top side, sword clutched in his right hand, Liana dangling from his left. If her nerve-shattering scream caused him to release his grip on her to cover his ears, she could have forgiven him for the lapse even as she plummeted to certain fiery death below. Well, almost. But somehow he held on and that incurred a debt she’d never be able to repay. Especially since, despite Barrett’s impressive heroics, she remained convinced their deaths were imminent.
The broken spire was too short to span the crevasse that had opened in front of them moments enough, too short to form a natural, if temporary bridge to solid ground. Just before the spire was horizontal, Barrett leaped forward, his sword held high. From his other hand, Liana swung precariously, feeling like a human anchor about to tug him down to his death. A quick glance upward showed her that he wouldn’t make it across the widening gap to the far side—not by a long shot. If he had let her drop, he might have had a chance, but with her added weight they were both doomed. She made a silent apology a split second before they slammed into the far wall with jarring force.
Grunting with the impact, she waited for the moment when inertia would release them and they would hurtle to the raging sea of molten rock below. If they were lucky, they would strike a spur of rock hard enough to render them senseless or kill them outright. Better that than a straight drop to the fires below, hot enough to dissolve the flesh from their bones before melting their bones as well. In a few minutes, no trace would remain to indicate that two humans had ever walked across this hell world. And yet, somehow, the moment never came. Inertia never let go.
They hung suspended from the cliff face.
Beneath them, the falling spire shattered against its thicker, stubby base, breaking into several massive pieces that struck the river of lava with such force that, for a few seconds, eruptions of magma lapped upward like hungry tongues anticipating two human morsels.
Liana glanced up past Barrett’s body and saw his right arm extended, his fierce grip wrapped around the hilt of the sword. He’d wedged the side of the long blade deep into a narrow crevice in the dark rock. The sword served as a makeshift piton for two impromptu rock climbers in hell.
“Oh, God, Barrett,” she said tremulously, “I thought we were finished.”
“I noticed.”
“What?”
“You have an impressive set of lungs.”
Embarrassed, she cleared her throat and said, “My, um, battle cry.”
“Oh! Well, in the future, consider adding more unbridled rage and a little less stark fear.”
“Thanks, I’ll, uh, keep that in mi—”
“Oh, crap!”
She didn’t have to ask. As she stared up at him, dirt and pebbles trickled down in a fine spray from the crack in which his sword was pinned. Much like the rest of the barren landscape, the rock face around the embedded blade was crumbling.
“There’s a narrow lip of rock up here,” Barrett said. “I’ll lift you to it.”
“How narrow?”
“Too narrow to sit or stand.”
“Will I be able to teeter?”
“Nope.”
“No sitting, standing or teetering? What’s left?”
“Hanging.”
“Like from a noose?”
“Like from a trapeze, but without the swinging,” Barrett said. “When you were a little girl, you probably fantasized about joining the circus, right?”
“Not even once.”
“Too bad,” he said as he hauled her upward. “You’re slipping! Use your other hand!”
Liana reached up with her free hand and covered Barrett’s left with it, sandwiching his hand between hers to keep her fingers from slipping from his grasp. His forearm and bicep strained, muscles bunching, as he hoisted her higher with the strength of one arm. The tendons in his neck were prominent as sweat streamed off his face.
“See the handhold?”
She nodded.
“Grab it!”
He hadn’t been kidding. The lip of rock was a foot wide but no more than two inches deep. She transferred one hand, fingers already cramping on the hard narrow surface, and then she reached and grabbed hold with her other hand the instant he released it. A new wave of panic sluiced through her veins. The muscles in her arms quivered with strain. She had a minute—two at most—before sheer exhaustion overwhelmed her. “Can’t—hang on!”
“Yes you can.”
“I’m not as strong as you!”
“Use your feet.”
“Right,” she said. Her feet scrabbled for purchase beneath her, but her struggling increased the strain on her arms. If she couldn’t find—
Her left foot slipped into a wedge-shaped hole, taking some pressure off her arms while her right foot poked and prodded the rock face in search of a hold. In a few moments, she found a chunk of rock protruding from the mostly sheer wall and placed the sole of her right foot on it. She breathed deeply, calming herself. “Now what? Can’t hang here indefinitely.”
“Look up.”
She saw the faint glimmer of her light sphere hovering overhead. It was pulsing slowly, just about to wink out and cast them into darkness lit only by the roiling lava below. “Not exactly the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Not the light,” he said. “The surface.”
“What about it?”
“We’re only ten feet below the surface.”
“Ha!” she said in resignation. “Too bad the elevator is out of service. Might as well be ten stories.” When Barrett chuckled, she said, “What’s so funny?”
“The landscape is finally working to our advantage and you’re giving up?”
“What—?”
Instead of explaining, Barrett found a handhold for his left hand, secured his weight, then pried his sword from the disintegrating crevice. He reached up and jabbed the point against the cliff wall. Stone should have trumped forged metal, but the sword tip gouged into the rock and popped several chunks free. He was using the stone’s sudden and unnatural weakness to create new handholds above him. A few moments later, he worked his way closer to Liana, so that she could avail herself of the same divots in the rock wall. Abruptly, larger sections of the wall came loose, falling to the lava far below. He urged her upward, ahead of him. “It’s collapsing. Hurry!”
A massive slab of rock detached itself from beneath Barrett’s left foot, calving like an iceberg in warm waters. He swung crazily from a single handhold which then began to disintegrate under his pendulous weight. Liana made it over the lip to the surface, spun around, and offered her hand. “Here!”
The handhold crumbled away like wet sand through his fingers.
He dropped—
Liana screamed—
Barrett’s fingers pressed against the rock, sliding across the cracked surface, creating friction, though not nearly enough to slow his descent. That wasn’t his intent. He fell less than a yard before his fingers wedged into a crack and supported him. Tucking his sword through the back of his belt, Barrett used both hands and feet to seek and find even the smallest crevices and the most insignificant hand- and toeholds. Before his weight settled on any one point, he shifted to the next, a continual rock climbing motion depending more on faith and speed than on the quality of the cliff face. Cracks and fault lines followed his progress but never caught him. He scrambled sideways at first, but gradually worked his way upward, reaching the surface about twenty feet away from Liana.
She scrambled to her feet, ran to him, and hugged him so fiercely on his unsteady legs she almost knocked them both into the fiery chasm. “Thank you! Thank you, Barrett! I owe you my life. I gave up, but you never did. Not for one single moment.”
“It’s not over,” Barrett said. “We need to keep moving.”
“Right,” she said, swiping grateful tears from her eyes. “Of course.”
Barrett took her hand and they scampered across the treacherous ground. He seemed to sense an impending misstep an instant before it happened. When he was in dangerous situations, a dash of precognition augmented his meta-human reflexes, possibly induced by the sudden rise in adrenaline. An innate early warning system, if he could move fast enough to take advantage of it. Liana lost count of the number of times he yanked her back from footing that was sound one moment, treacherous the next. Crevices and sinkholes appeared randomly and with unnerving frequency. Barrett ran in a zigzag stutter step, faster than a jog but slower than a sprint. Because Liana couldn’t predict each change in direction, she collided against him more often than not. Presently, she began to trust his instincts more than her own senses, keeping her eyes on his movements rather than on the dark ground in front of her.
A rhythmic booming rose above the tortured cacophony of hissing steam, and crackling, crumbling rock. At first they ignored the sound, assuming it was caused by the disintegrating landscape or the rush of surging lava. Then Liana chanced a look behind them and gasped. “Company. Gaining fast.”
“How is that possible?”
At the risk of sending him face first into a sinkhole, she grabbed his jaw and swung his head around. “Sweet Jesus! That must be—”
“Carnifex,” Liana said grimly.
There could be no doubt. His heedless stride and singular method of locomotion marked him as literal master of this hellish domain. Though he was almost two hundred feet away and cloaked in the shadows of his world, Liana realized he was massive, perhaps ten feet tall with arms and legs as thick as a man’s torso. He was clad in patchwork leather, with metal plating banded to his shoulders, elbows and knees, and heavy black boots which created the thunderous sound of his progress. Held in his left hand was a crude, double-headed battle-axe as long as Barrett was tall. His prodigious weight should have sent him through the treacherous ground to the lava below like a cannonball dropped in a vat of cottage cheese. Yet incredibly the crumbling ground regained solidity just ahead of him, rising up to meet each gargantuan footfall, holding its shape and retaining its strength until he stepped away, then crumbling once more. No matter his pace or direction, the ground recognized, welcomed, and supported him—even when he spotted Liana and Barrett and veered toward them, breaking into a loping run.
Shimmer: A Novel Page 27