Other Dangers: Slipped Through

by Amanda M. Lyons

  The voice in his thoughts was colder than he expected, too much like the old Henry for comfort, and he pulled his hand back toward her side, rested it there as he frowned.

  But he could still see the bag, a few inches below her belly on the floor, still open a little from when she’d gotten her clothes, now forgotten and tangled on the dusty floor beside it. The gap was just wide enough to show him dark shapes, the edges of thin dog-eared folders and wireless notebooks, the handle of a dagger or knife, its grip molded by use and what looked like the worn spine of a thick paperback novel. And which of those things will be the one that holds all the answers? The notebooks and folders are too thin, they’re probably log-books or more about what she’s been doing over the last few years than the stuff I really want, but could it really be the novel? Does something like that really come in such a neat little package?

  Curiosity threw out his altruism, swallowed him whole with its power. He wanted it as badly as ever, more than the woman beside him, and more than the feeling of standing on his own doorstep. Easing away from her body, he felt the clammy sweat that stuck their skin together give and he reached to the back of the couch, pulling himself up from the gap where he’d slept with one hand, and propping his weight on the arm of it with the other. Pins and needles moved through his left leg as he lifted it to shove himself up enough to lift his right leg over her side and down to the cooler surface of the cement floor.

  It was farther than he’d ever expected to get in his head; visions of her vengeance and his death poured through his thoughts as he stood, legs splayed wide over her as she slept. He moved slowly, lifted his other leg over her body, and slowly began to ease it down toward the floor. His balance was thrown off-kilter by the two- foot difference between couch and floor, and the sudden shift in weight sent him sprawling backward. He might have avoided falling if his left foot hadn’t caught in the loop of her backpack, but it did. Instead he found himself landed painfully on his ass in the dust of the floor, hissing a curse under his breath. Eyes wide and locked on her, he was relieved to find that she was just where she was a minute before, asleep and unaware.

  This proves I’m the piece of shit Rachel was always telling me I was. I’m living down to expectations and I should stop where I am, wake her up, and leave this world where it stands. But I can’t. It isn’t what I want, and that isn’t who I am, much as I wish it were for Abby‘s sake. I’d be kidding myself if I thought I’d changed enough to go any other direction than the one I chose when this started.

  Resting his open palm on the floor, he lifted himself up with a grunt and dusted off his backside. Eyeing her, he slid back into his discarded pants, reached out to grasp the top handle of her bag, and lifted it toward him. He held it against his chest, felt the odd shapes of whatever lay inside bumping against him as he took soft deliberate steps toward the other couch and settled there, its bulk shifting underneath him.

  He grasped the tab between his fingers and breathed for a moment, listened to her, trying to be sure that there wasn’t some trick to it all, that he had really gotten it away from her. Then he started to pull it down its track, the little teeth made soft purring sounds as they came apart one by one.

  ***

  It was dark, the shadows beyond the trees were too dark to see through and Abby saw that she stood in the middle of a wood. There was nothing to see, but her eyes were wide with fear, breath wheezed in and out of her body in shallow gasps that left her lungs aching in her chest. She didn’t know why she felt this way; it was as if she had been dropped into herself in the middle of a chase, one that had left her ragged and desperate to escape.

  A crash came from the trees to her left; the sound of it was loud, and the breaking of saplings and the shushing sound of leaves as they brushed each other were too deliberate to be accidental. Something was trying to flush her out, to make her run so that it could go back to the hunt. What is it? How long has it been chasing me? Her eyes roved over the trees above, looked everywhere but the area where the sound came from, trying to gauge its location knowing that it would already have left the distraction behind.

  There was no way to be sure where it was, she could see nothing but the paler bark of the trees rising into the sky above her. Instead of running she walked, stepped beyond the trees and out into the darkness that surrounded her.

  As she moved a howl rose into the night, high and piercing; it let her know that rather than stepping away from the creature she had gone closer. As Abby raised her head with an inward drawn breath, she could make out a dim shape in the tree branches a few feet to the right of where she stood, and suddenly she knew what pursued her. Throwing all of her energy into motion, she threw herself forward, ran as far as she could from herself.

  The creature in that tree was the beast that rose at Jared’s call, the being that was all the darkness within her made form, and it wanted her, it wanted to take what was hers.

  Forward momentum dragged her down a hill and up over the rise of another as she fled. Sweat poured down her body, made her clothes cling to her and chafe her skin. She’d been running for a long time now, longer than she’d been here, for hours and maybe days. Trees and branches flashed by her head, dragged against her as she threw herself through them, jumped over their discarded limbs beneath her feet.

  ***

  He reached into the backpack, prying open a folder here and there trying to determine if he was wrong about them, but he only saw the ragged edges of a few sheets of paper and a few handwritten words that had no meaning to him. There were other objects in the bag, but none of them had anything to do with what he wanted. He thrust them impatiently out of his sight before all the terrible consequences that might have been and still could be could wander through his thoughts again.

  Aside from a few shell casings, pens, and pencils rolling around in the bottom there wasn’t much left to consider. There was the bundle of clothes she kept, a comb, and a plastic bag that held what must be her bathing soaps, and of course, the paperback novel he saw through the gap of the zipper a few minutes ago. This seemed too convenient, like some sort of trick. Maybe there wasn’t anything here at all. She’s gone off so many times she might have hidden it somewhere or- But when he lifted it out of the bag and turned it in his hand he knew at once that he’d found it. Other Dangers was printed large on the cover in raised blue letters and a few inches beneath it was her name, Abigail Brennan. A sting like pins and needles burned him where his hands touched the book; the feeling wasn’t much different than the ache of a sleeping limb, a slow almost welcoming burn like the warmth of a fire close to the skin.

  What does that mean then? And what does it say inside?

  ***

  Abby struggled to pull herself from the bottom of a deep river bed. One foot planted firmly against the wall a few feet from the bottom, she tugged at the dense roots that she’d ripped from the soil and began to climb. Its howl wasn’t far off when it came and the wind had begun to rise, shaking the trees overhead. It was almost enough to drown out the soft sounds of its running feet, but she could feel it vibrate in the soil under her feet and down the thick cable of the tree root. It was still on the opposite bank, waiting for her to rise into view, and there was little she could do but what it wanted.

  She looked up into the sky, waited to see some flash of movement that might tell her where it hid. There was little to see but stars and the leaf shrouded branches of the trees as they moved in the wind. The world had gone silent and cold, a cold that hadn’t come to her world since that last autumn before the end of everything. Am I really dreaming? The hurt in her lungs almost wrenched the breath out of her, her muscles ached and there were cuts and bruises to mark the passage of time as much as the speed with which she had been running without the luxury of caution. It was all too real and she didn’t know what that would mean for her when this was all over. Is this Jared’s doing or my own? What will she do if she catches me?

  She moved as quickly as she could, pushed herse
lf to the top of the river bed with quick thrusts of her feet and the pull of her arms up the length of the tree root. Within a few minutes she’d succeeded, dragging herself up over the last few inches with the strength of her upper body. She lay still in the grass, sucked shallow breaths past her lips as she willed her lungs to stop shuddering. It was a respite she couldn’t afford to enjoy; the sound of the susurrating trees still covered so much and soon she wouldn’t have any more strength to run.

  As she heaved her body off the ground she stood, paused to gather her energy and began to walk away. So far there was no response from her bestial form, it lay quiet, watching her from wherever it lies in wait, biding its time. Even if she didn’t already know that Abby was weakened by scent and by sight, she would know because they were two pieces of the same mind, two parts of a whole that refused to mend itself together. She was running from everything in her that ever made her ache, that made her roil with guilt and a desire for destruction that extended to her very being.

  She is my death and I am her beginning.

  ***

  It looked like any other novel, thick and therefore long (a tome really) but still a paperback he might have expected to find on a shelf in any bookstore back where he was from. But there was the tingling, the zap of feeling that rose from it and into his body. It pulled at his being somehow, like a slow ebbing tide, it drifted in and out of his body. Just what exactly am I holding here? Fear sent a shock up his spine and down through his groin, made him swallow the extra spit pooling in his mouth and shift a little on the couch, trying to get settled again. So am I going to do this? He touched the letters of the title with his fingertips, felt the jags of energy tingling along them as he traced their shape, and then he reached toward the upper corner of the cover, pulled it away from the title page beneath it.

  The spine crackled as he flipped it all the way back, and he suspected that this was the first time this particular book had ever been opened, the inner pages still new despite their fibrous outer edges. There, in black letters on the page, were the title and her name, just as on the front. He could see the dark lines of the words through the paper and he wanted to turn the page now, to look at what laid on the page beneath it. But first he paused, looked over at Abby, still reclined peacefully on the other couch, and studied the pensive look that had come to mark her features these last few minutes since he’d opened the bag. I’m sorry for whatever it’s worth. I don’t know what I’m looking at, but I know by the feel of things that it means something will change, that it has to now. You did your best to warn me off and now it’s my job to finish what I started. Here goes.

  He lifted the page between his fingers, felt the texture of the paper for a moment, and then he turned it, beginning to read.