The Outer Dark (Central Series Book 4)

by Zachary Rawlins

  “Ex-boyfriend,” Emily reminded her primly. “Alex, I understand that you’re hurt and upset, but I need you to calm down, until…”

  “I need to get to hospital,” Alex said, staring in horror at his diminished hand. “Where am I?”

  “The Outer Dark and the end of days,” Emily said sweetly, squeezing his intact hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll look after you.”

  Alex nodded queasily, gave Leigh an apprehensive look, and then toppled like a bowling pin.

  “Oh, poor thing,” Emily said sadly. “He’s been through an awful lot, you know.”

  “Yeah,” Leigh said curtly. “You told me. Several times.”

  Emily crouched beside Alex and patted his stiff leg.

  “Do you think we should move him?”

  “I think you should move him.”

  “I think much of the damage is psychological,” Emily said worriedly. “But the infection in his leg…”

  “Yeah, I’m not sure that leg is gonna make it,” Leigh remarked, glancing over Emily’s shoulder. “Oh, and the eye. That’s probably a goner already.”

  “Yes.” Emily turned and gave Leigh a speculative look, nibbling on a sapphire thumbnail. “Unless...”

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Leigh backed away slowly. “Never mind. I don’t care about the reasons. Just stop looking at me that way.”

  Emily smiled benevolently.

  “Be a dear and pick up Alex; won’t you, Leigh?”

  The vampire shook her head in mute protest, then moved to comply, grumbling to herself.

  “Yes,” Emily said, nodding in agreement with herself. “That might work.”

  “What might work?” Leigh asked, hoisting Alex up into a fireman’s carry. “You’re freaking me out, Emily.”

  “What? No, I’m not,” Emily assured her. “You trust me absolutely.”

  “I’d be more inclined to believe you if you used empathy to make me believe you,” Leigh said, adjusting the dead weight on her shoulders. “Just saying.”

  “I’m willing to chance it,” Emily said, with a dazzling smile. “Come along, Leigh dear.”

  “Okay, but if your ex-boyfriend leaks on my shirt, I’m going to be upset.”

  ***

  “We are agreed, then, Eerie?”

  “What?”

  “We are agreeing,” Katya said, wiping dirt from her bruised face, “that the next time either of us sees Vivik, he’s a fucking dead man. Deal?”

  “Katya, no!” Eerie paused in the process of removing the grit from her hair. “We can’t.”

  “Enough with the bullshit, Eerie! Save the innocent little lamb act for Alex. I know you’re capable of worse, and I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to do it myself.”

  “It’s not that,” Eerie protested. “Vivik is Alex’s best friend! They watch pervy cartoons together, and other boy stuff. We can’t hurt him!”

  “What the fuck? Alex can make new friends.”

  “I don’t think so,” Eerie said seriously. “Alex isn’t very good with people.”

  “He’ll learn. Let’s face it – the only reason Alex sucks at socializing is because you’re so fucking insecure that you manufactured a boyfriend who can barely talk to other people.”

  “That’s not nice!”

  “You aren’t so fucking nice, either, Eerie. That’s my point. Do you seriously still not get it? We are well past the point of everything going back to the way it was.”

  Katya made an exasperated gesture at the sky, which was dark upon dark, a starless void with a single ebon star glaring down upon them. The anomaly about them was a shallow valley gouged from the desolate plain by a forgotten impact, narrow rock walls colonized by scrub pine and a strange tree with broad, reddish-toned leaves that made a crackling sound when they brushed against them. The valley widened out to perhaps a few dozen meters down below them, where a seasonal wash spoke to the ancient memory of running water, and then narrowed again near the other end, where a tight stand of willows stood sentinel around what Katya assumed was a spring.

  “I don’t…”

  “Shut up. You want the best-case scenario? Let me give you the best case: We rescue Alex, we all live through the experience, and then somehow make it back to Central. What happens next? Alex gets sequestered, for his own good. Put to sleep, if he hasn’t knocked himself out already. They stick him in a lab in the Far Shores forever…”

  “I don’t…”

  “Shut up! The rest of us go to debrief – with Ms. Gallow – and quarantine. Once they mine all that shit you did out of our heads, and replay every word we exchanged, that’s when Ms. Levy and Ms. Gallow decide that you need to be sequestered in a black site of your very own. I deserted the Auditors, so I’ve got a court-marshal coming. Vivik betrayed Central for the Outer Dark, on multiple levels, so I bet he gets put down by Director’s order.” Katya glared ferociously at the Changeling, who clung to Derrida for comfort. “Oh, and the dog. He gets cut up into pieces and put under a microscope, just to see what changed while we were in the Outer Dark.”

  Katya patted Eerie on the cheek condescendingly.

  “That is the best-case scenario.” Katya smirked at the horrified Changeling. “Have you ever considered what would happen if the Anathema captures us? I bet they have a whole list of stuff they always wanted to try on a Changeling, just on general principal.”

  Derrida growled, and Eerie buried her fingers in his back. Above them, the black star consumed the light that escaped the anomaly, baleful and intent.

  “Stop!” Eerie covered her face with her hands. “I don’t want to hear it!”

  Katya’s eyes blazed as she seized a double-fist of Eerie’s hair, and then used it to drag the screaming Changeling to the ground, while Derrida barked and circled helplessly.

  “We are fucking well beyond this shit, freak! I am not dying out here, in the damn Outer Dark, listening to you prattle on about your boyfriend like a little girl!”

  “Stop! You’re hurting me!”

  “I don’t care!” Katya dumped Eerie roughly on the ground. “Vivik screwed us, do you understand?” Katya gestured at the landscape unraveling around their narrow anomaly, a ribbon of the material flowing slowly through a fantastic congregation of Ether-shrouded monstrosities, the animate husks of dead stars, and the malevolent sentience of the darkness itself. “We aren’t just in the Outer Dark. We are at the end of everything! You heard Emily – even if you could work your shortcuts, we are a thousand years from anywhere. Was she lying?”

  Eerie shook her head without looking up.

  “No. I know where we are. Not far from where I am meant to return. So far from Central…”

  Katya marched over and smacked Eerie across her face. Eerie recoiled, gasping in shock and clutching her reddening cheek.

  “Quit fucking about and whining! Why are you so useless, Eerie?”

  “You are being mean to me,” Eerie said quietly, her voice flat. “You should stop that, Katya.”

  “I’m being mean? How much did you keep from me, Eerie?” Katya grabbed the Changeling by her shoulders and gave her a good shake. “You set this entire thing up from the start. All because you didn’t want to take a chance and strike up a goddamn conversation. Do you realize how easy it is to get a boyfriend like Alex? They’re a dime a dozen! You should have skipped the multi-year plot and just bought tickets to an anime convention.”

  “Stop making fun of me!” Eerie’s balled fists shook. “Stop right now!”

  “You think you can make me?” Katya scoffed, giving Eerie a dismissive shove. “You’re pathetic, and you know what the worst part is? You choose to be pathetic! All this shit just gets handed to you…”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” Eerie objected.

  “…all this power, and you use it for something so fucking trite? It’s just sad. I move needles, Eerie, while you can alter reality.” Katya folded her arms and smiled victoriously. “Who’s done more, though? I made it to the fucki
ng elite of the Black Sun, from nothing…”

  “You kill people!” Eerie shook her head violently. “What – what’s so good about…?”

  “…and then, because the situation called for it – because the people I care about needed me – I gave it all up. Started over, as a stupid trainee for the Auditors, doing bullshit grunt work for Ms. Gallow and that psycho Mitsuru, like I hadn’t been working in the field since I was a kid.”

  “Killing people! Again!”

  “Then, I get wind of what you’ve got planned, and again, I see something that I can do, to look after the people I care about. Do I think about the consequences for myself? Sure, and they scare me shitless,” Katya ranted. “I just have an extra drink or two and then do it anyway. That’s me, okay? I did what needed to be done, no questions asked. What about you?”

  Eerie stared at the ground and said nothing.

  “Nothing to say?” Katya gave Eerie a little nudge in the chest. “Cat got your tongue, freak?”

  “Such an attitude!” Eerie voice was plain and angered, deprived of its normal music. “What a bad mouth you have, Katya!”

  Katya laughed and reached for Eerie.

  The Changeling looked up, and her pupils were of perfectly normal size, ringed by brilliant golden irises that shimmered inhumanly. Katya’s hand froze midway, afraid to touch the cloud of golden motes that rotated about Eerie like her own private solar system.

  Coughing, Katya backed away.

  “No more words?” Eerie followed her with confident steps. “Nothing left to laugh over?”

  Katya continued to cough, eyes watering and face reddening.

  “Jeez, Ériu,” Katya gasped. “Took you long enough.”

  The cloud of golden dissipated, though there was no wind. Eerie frowned.

  “You baited me.”

  Katya shrugged, still coughing.

  “No choice. We are stuck out here, and I need a grownup Fey, not a love-struck little girl.”

  Eerie smiled, and the smile was somehow the saddest expression Katya had ever seen on the Changeling.

  “Do you realize at what cost we are having this conversation?” Eerie wondered neutrally. “My full manifestation excites the Church of Sleep, and we are perilously close…”

  “No choice,” Katya said, hands on her knees, pausing to spit phlegm. “You said that your future self would be more powerful, right? Well, you aren’t going to ever get the chance to exist, Ériu, unless you get involved now.”

  Eerie closed her eyes, and a series of concentric rings composed of tiny golden particles expanded around her at set intervals, rotating in paradoxical opposition. A ghostly filigree rotated about her, interlocking like an Etheric clockwork mechanism.

  “Impressive,” Katya said quietly, wiping her mouth. “What’s that?”

  “Quiet, child,” Eerie said, with a superior tone. “I am operating.”

  Katya took the Fey at face value and shut up.

  She noticed something wet pressing against her hand, and realized that Derrida was hiding behind her, terrified of Eerie’s transformation, his hindquarters shaking uncontrollably. Katya tried to comfort him, running her hand along his back until his fur no longer stood at edge. Ériu floated to the center of a golden-iridescent matrix of tremendous complexity, particles drifting from her fingertips and her hair. The ephemeral clockwork began to move, the assemblage burning so brilliantly that she was forced to shield her eyes.

  Katya pressed her palms deep into her eye sockets, but that was not enough stop the metallic light from piercing the wet grey matter behind. She held up her hands in front of her eyes, and was startled to see the bones within.

  A slow lightning bolt erupted from the glassine surface of the Outer Dark, growing toward Ériu’s bare feet like a meandering vine. Katya felt her body tingle, Derrida’s coat bristling and crackling with static electricity. It seemed like there should have been tremendous sound, but instead Katya heard a pervasive and monotonous static that rattled her bones and dismantled her thoughts. Even with her hands pressed to her ears, Katya gradually became aware of something else struggling to be heard beneath the static; a simple melody, sometimes hummed and sometimes sung.

  Katya was certain she had heard the refrain before, though she could not recall the name or an occasion. The Ether resonated in sympathetic unison with the melody, as did her body, a vibration that extended from the tips of her toes to the caps atop her teeth. She tried to shout, but her voice was lost in the sea of overwhelming sound. Derrida barked silently, and Katya clung to his leather collar, smoothed by years of use.

  The sky was dominated by a massive and vibrant construct, dense to the point of incomprehensibility, each arc and flourish poignant with promises and terrible secrets; one great illustration, or many; a diagram for a machine that could only build itself.

  Ériu gestured and plucked like a harpist, as the construct rotated and flexed about her. Katya wiped her eyes, and found blood in her tears, but she could not look away. Katya’s mind refused to comprehend the scale of it, the Fey tiny by comparison, but somehow not obscured by the vastness of the illuminated glyph. The refrain Ériu hummed reverberated softly through the glimmering lines of the construct, flaring along the shuffling rhythm of her respiration.

  There was a discharge of energies outside of the electromagnetic spectrum, the construct rippling as a wave passed through it. Static droned dispassionately from the sky as the melody arrived at its logical conclusion. Katya clamped her hands over her ears and shouted, but nothing did any good. Derrida pushed his head into her legs, nearly bowling her over.

  Katya felt like she had been struck in the chest, the air knocked from her lungs, recoiling from a blow that never happened. It felt like waking from a sleep she could not remember. The golden lattice stretched from one horizon to the other, and snagged in her heart like a fishhook.

  ***

  Gaul Thule trailed off midsentence, hesitating so long that Lóa and Mateo exchanged a worried look.

  “I believe…”

  The Lord Thule’s voice was wooden. Blood dripped from his nose on to his desktop.

  “…a change has been made.” He curled his nose. “One of significance. Someone is tampering.”

  “Uncle?”

  The color slowly left Gaul’s face, and only a timely intervention on Lóa’s part kept him from sliding out of his chair, eyes twitching like those of a sleeper.

  ***

  Chandi paused in the act of brushing her hair, and then set her brush carefully aside and took a seat in a convenient plush chair.

  The nosebleed came fast, but she was prepared, having already snatched a box of tissue from the nearby bathroom. She dabbed away the trickle of red thoughtfully, occasionally sipping from a glass of water she had prepared for herself a moment before she knew why.

  Her phone waited, neatly centered on the nearby side table. The number was already selected, waiting for her to tap the phone and make the call.

  ***

  Emily and Thu Tran did their best to control Marcus Bay-Davies as he raved and convulsed, seized by an ecstatic vision of frightening intensity. The words he muttered would have consumed their minds as a wildfire consumes dry grass if not for the telepathic baffles that deafened them, a wooden spoon wedged between his teeth to keep him from biting off his tongue.

  In the shattered sky above the Inverted Spire, at the near border of the Outer Dark, a vast congregation of Horrors screamed in unison and then died in mass, deflating like punctured balloons and splattering on the ground.

  ***

  The Outer Dark has no depths, no directions, no dimensions. And yet…

  Deep within the Outer Dark, the Church was roused. An unearthly chorus began, and a great black star, as obscure as the darkness that existed before the invention of light, opened like an eye.

  ***

  For approximately fifteen minutes, the perpetual grey of the sky above Central was tinted a vibrant red, as residents were driven from
the streets by a sudden downpour. After the brief squall, a profusion of seashells will be discovered in the gutters and on the roofs, all tracing their origin to Monterey Bay, on the central coast of California.

  ***

  Timor sneezed, which was followed by a momentary fit of blurry vision. He recovered admirably, concealing his distress with a napkin and a glass of water until it passed.

  It was nothing, he assured himself, smiling ingratiatingly across the table at one of the better-looking of Anastasia’s hundred-odd cousins.

  ***

  Sofia Morales-North called to her husband, her voice weakened by an unaccustomed tremble.

  He hurried up the stairs and burst in through the bathroom door, finding her fallen beside the porcelain tub, her nose leaking on the tasteful earthen tile. He gathered her in his arms, casually ignoring the blood staining his Saville Row bespoke shirt as he carried her carefully into the bedroom.

  “Sophie, are you ill?” Henry North laid her carefully atop the bed. “What has happened? Are you…?”

  “I’m well, love.” Sofia put a hand gently to his chest as he laid beside her on the white cotton comforter. “A passing spell. A vision.”

  Her husband studied her with obvious concern.

  “Shall I call for the doctor?”

  “No need,” she said, attempting a smile. “I already feel much better.”

  Henry North hesitated, torn between marital and Cartel obligation.

  “You said a vision,” he said reluctantly. “Something bad?”

  “Not necessarily,” Sofia said, pulling him down on the bed beside her, and then curling up within his arms. “Something…familiar, though it has been a long time.”

  She explained as best she could, and then, not long after, drifted off to sleep. Lord North held his wife while she slept, issuing telepathic instructions to his lieutenants and weighing options. The strange flutter he felt in his chest was eagerness, Lord North assured himself, and not at all trepidation.