Darklight 5: Darktide

by Forrest, Bella

  “Don’t let them get away!” Lady Izelde’s screech was almost as sharp as her wraith’s. “His eyes—” Her voice cut off as gem blasts came flying our way.

  Had she recognized Gate Maker? Just what we need, great. Gate Maker dodged every shot, although one whipped past the top of my head. He dropped a few feet with an annoyed hiss, but he was back in control after half a second. It was as if he had eyes in the back of his head. My heart pounded wildly.

  A cry caught my ear. I turned to see Izelde’s ash wraith tearing through the roots around its feet, with the help of her sword. Finally free, it leapt into the air in pursuit, Izelde spurring it onward, her face twisted in a fearsome glare. The wraith let out a shrieking, resonant scream that surpassed everything we’d heard before. I smashed my hands over my ears, which were still partially stuffed with fabric. Dorian looked over his shoulder at the battle, his face tight from pain. I leaned against him, my head swaying.

  Gate Maker thrust his wings powerfully, his body elegantly winding and contorting through the air to dodge two shots from Izelde. Her sword had a much longer range than I expected. I clenched my teeth, willing him to fly faster. I hated being helpless.

  The air whistled past us, the eerie sound making my skin prick with goosebumps. By the time Gate Maker had accelerated to full speed, the ash wraith’s glowing form had fallen behind. After another few moments, the wraith disappeared completely, swallowed up by the mist. The training camp vanished from sight. My stomach sank with the cold realization that we had truly fled the battle.

  Dorian dropped his hands from his ears. “If she survives, she’ll tell the Immortal Council that you’re with us,” he said hotly. “They’ll keep trying to hunt you down.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Gate Maker replied without turning. “Soon, I’ll be somewhere where they can never find me again.” His tone was gleefully excited, a far cry from his usual manner.

  I gave a full-body shudder, seemingly without cause. Dorian glanced back at me, his upper lip twitching. Both of us were still charged after fleeing the battle. We’d given them no explanation, just asking them to trust us. What kind of leaders left a battle halfway through? I only hoped Izelde’s attempt to chase us had allowed the team on the ground to gain an advantage in her absence.

  I pressed a hand against my ribs after Dorian looked away, aiming his guarded look at the back of Gate Maker’s head. My ribs roared with fiery pain now that the adrenaline had drained from me. I licked my lips, tasting the remnants of Dorian’s blood.

  The wind battered me, chilling me to the bone and making my eyes water. I took shelter behind Dorian’s broad back, sucking in a deep breath as the landscape changed below us. We went deeper and deeper into the wilds of the Immortal Plane, where I’d never been before. It was difficult to see the ground beneath us in the gloomy soul-light. I lifted my face, and the breeze stung like a blast of artic air.

  “Are you going to tell us anything?” I shouted to Gate Maker. I regretted it when the wind cut my chapped lips.

  “Just hold on.”

  Fine. I held on to Dorian as we flew. Gate Maker kept flying, even as my eyes sagged from exhaustion.

  “We’re headed northeast,” Dorian told me at one point, but he had nothing else to add. It was too difficult to talk over the whipping wind.

  With nothing better to occupy itself with, my mind started churning out anxious thoughts. What if the battle back at the camp went horribly wrong after we left? What if our friends thought that we had abandoned them and left them to die? Gate Maker’s quest made everything too risky. I grunted as my ribs complained. They had never truly healed from the sanitarium battle and had probably been fractured again during the Hive battle. Now, the tight bindings around my torso had loosened during the clash at the training camp. I longed for the water and painkillers that I knew were in a pouch on my belt, but it was too dangerous to start reaching for them while we were going this fast. I risked losing my grip on the canteen, or worse, on Dorian. There was nothing I could do about it. The effects from the vampire blood would have to tide me over.

  Only after several hours of flying did Dorian try again.

  “Where are we going?” Dorian demanded, shouting over the wind.

  Gate Maker didn’t respond.

  I shifted restlessly on Gate Maker’s back. My legs were starting to prick with pins and needles; I wanted to walk and stretch.

  “How are we going to get back to our friends?” Dorian demanded, pushing past the ignored question. “Once we’ve done whatever we need to do for you to return home, we’ll be stranded out here in the middle of nowhere with no way to travel back to the camp. We can’t spend days walking back across the Immortal Plane. We don’t have supplies or anything, and there is so much we need to do with our team.”

  For the first time, Gate Maker slowed slightly and craned his neck to look back at us. His flat eyes stared at us as he mulled over Dorian’s words.

  “I’ll send you back to the camp through another one-time portal, if I have enough energy. It’ll get you to your friends instantly.” His voice was as flat as his gaze. It raised the hairs on my arms, though I couldn’t pinpoint why. “This is necessary. I can only make a gate to my home plane from specific places where the barrier is weak. I’ve found a place where the barrier is currently fluctuating and is weakened, but it won’t stay that way forever.”

  The barrier? I replayed the conversations I’d had with Gate Maker in my mind, picking them over for clues about his home. He rarely talked about it, but he was naturally suspicious after his experience with the Immortal Council. He’d mentioned a plane, but never which plane. I scowled and puzzled over that. If it was beyond the council’s reach, it couldn’t be in the Immortal Plane, but he definitely wasn’t a mortal creature.

  “It isn’t the Immortal Plane, but it’s also not the Mortal Plane. Are you saying there’s another one?” I demanded. “Dorian, you never mentioned a third plane.”

  Gate Maker’s wings faltered a beat, which Dorian missed because he’d turned to face me.

  “That’s because there isn’t one,” he shouted over the wind.

  Gate Maker let out a low chuckle. “Vampire, I’m afraid that you’ve been misinformed.”

  Dorian stiffened against me. What the hell does that mean?

  Gate Maker said nothing more, no matter what we asked him. We’d flown into an area with more souls dancing on the wind, lighter than any others I’d seen, and the brightening light allowed my eyes to make out the landscape below. Stretches of forest blanketed mountains, enormous, towering peaks that challenged the endless sky. They were jagged and treacherous, far too steep and deadly to ever be habitable.

  As Gate Maker angled down, I tried to take in every last detail. It was strange… the atmosphere in this area felt charged with energy. He circled around a round basin, too perfect to have formed naturally. A lake was completely bordered by incredibly tall cliffs that glowed in the soul-light. I squinted and noted that they were transparent, with deep yellow veins shimmering through them like an intricate circulatory system. Ice, but it’s not nearly cold enough for that. The “veins” were merely the soul-lights being reflected in a beautifully eerie manner.

  A dozen rivers, ranging from fast-flowing channels to tiny trickling streams, flowed into the hole from lips in the ice cliffs. Some of the water was golden, some too dark to see through, while other streams glowed like Lake Siron in various colors. The water cut canyons into the glaciers, spilling forth to make enormous, shimmering waterfalls. The water pooled together and mixed, flowing over rocks or falling into deep crevices that ultimately ran to the pool in the center. There, all the colors mixed together in a stunning combination that shimmered and vibrated, as if life itself teemed in the liquid. Lush fernlike plants crawled up the sides of cliffs next to the falling water.

  Gate Maker landed on a rock outcropping. His talons nestled softly into silver moss. My breath caught in my throat, astonished by the beauty, as spray from
the waters created a stunning rainbow mist that floated in the air.

  “We’re here,” Gate Maker said. He sighed, the sound filled with the relief of ending a very long journey. Despite his redbill beak, I made out the smile in his profile.

  He was ready to go home.

  Chapter Thirty

  We slid from Gate Maker’s back. My feet landed in the moss, and I immediately sank and then seemed to spring back up a few inches. Dorian bounced experimentally a few times on the elastic ground, his expression surprised and somewhat skeptical. What kind of place was this?

  The air shifted as Gate Maker transformed, his body gathering into a muddy red shape and then popping into his humanoid form. It was the first time I’d seen this version of him since the sanitarium. He was hairless, with burnt-sienna skin that clashed wildly with his violet eyes. Except now he wore clothing, a gray, sleeveless robe that brushed the ground above his bare narrow feet. When he moved, his robe fluttered elegantly behind him. He could manifest clothes as well as new bodies? He hadn’t bothered with his previous forms. Probably too awkward to ask if that means he’s been naked this whole time.

  “Incredible, isn’t it?” Gate Maker gestured around the small rock outcropping and to the streams rushing past us. His flat eyes widened, the purple expanding to take in everything around him. He waved a hand, and suddenly every stream of water stopped falling. For an insane moment, I thought he’d halted time, but then more water crashed over the cliffs and fell over the motionless water. It wasn’t until pieces of it broke off and shattered against the rocks below that I realized he’d turned it to glass.

  Gate Maker laughed with the mirth of an amused child. He moved his right hand, and the moss transformed into a thick woven rug of different silver threads that glimmered beneath our feet. He held his sides as he doubled over in laughter.

  I bit my lip, not knowing whether to laugh along from the sheer strangeness or to point out that he owed us several explanations. Something in his chuckles snagged my attention. They were odd… not human, so far from human that they raised the hair on my arms.

  “What is this place?” I asked. Dorian stared at Gate Maker, sizing him up warily.

  “A place of power,” Gate Maker said. “The waterfalls around you are generating massive amounts of energy as they crash into this magnificent valley. Right now, the barrier in this place is, as I said, fluctuating and weakened. It’s the perfect place for me to create a gate to my home but is a situation that will not last long.” He let out a grateful sigh. “When I’m in this place, I can tap into all that energy. It’s so refreshing… after all this time, I finally feel power flowing within me.”

  I gazed at the waterfalls, noting their power as their water poured into the bowl below us. God, he just reformed the ground around us to his whim. Moss turned to fabric; water turned to glass. Dorian shook his head in disbelief. I saw a dozen questions behind his glacial eyes.

  “Come, rest,” Gate Maker called as he walked to the middle of the platform. He sank to the rug with a small smile, kneeling and sitting back on his feet. Despite the smile, his eyes were stern. Warily, I went to join him. The carpet was comfortable, a welcome departure from the weathered feathers of Gate Maker’s redbill form. Dorian trailed behind me, keeping a few feet between himself and Gate Maker.

  “What can you tell us about this place?” Dorian asked as he settled on the ground. Although his question was curious, I noted a subtle edge in his voice. This is the strangest meeting we’ve ever had.

  “As a vampire, you know that the barriers between planes sometimes shift in strength and solidity,” Gate Maker explained flatly. “It is why I picked those locations to build the stone circles that your kind uses to pass between the Immortal Plane and the Mortal Plane. Here, there is a glorious serendipity—great energy created by the waterfalls for me to siphon, combined with a temporarily weakened barrier. There is one catch, however. The weakness of the barrier will not last long.”

  I furrowed my brows. “And you need us for this?” I questioned, wondering what exactly was about to happen. “Or do we just need to be present?”

  “A little of both. With your assistance, I’ll be able to create the gate without breaking our contract. Sit next to me.” He patted two spaces beside him. “I need to ask a favor of you.”

  We complied, but Dorian moved slower than I did. We arranged ourselves in a triangle formation with Gate Maker. I scratched the back of my neck and watched Gate Maker carefully. I contemplated the idea of a favor with a feeling of unease. Favors could be dangerous…

  I exhaled slowly through my nostrils, trying to suppress my frustration. “Can you explain your world to us? If we’re helping you leave ours, we at least deserve some information.”

  Gate Maker ignored the question for a moment, staring out past me to the endlessly falling water. Frustration roared inside me. He’d forced us to drop out of battle and abandon our friends. Why was he taking his precious time to contemplate what he wanted to say? He’d had plenty of time to think about that on the flight here. We’d left a high-stakes battle to sit on a rock together. I took a deep breath, reaching for rationality and calm. It was reassuring to know that each time I did this, it became a little easier to move aside the negative effects of the blood.

  “Well?” Dorian asked. “You said it was urgent. Give us some answers.”

  “That is fair, I suppose,” Gate Maker finally said. The flatness in his voice melted away, and sardonic humor danced in his words once again. “Those who live there call it the Higher Plane. It’s a fitting description. My home is closer to the purest form of the universe… to eternal truth. It has different rules. The beings that live there are just like me.”

  I listened intently. That explained his powers, but not why he was stuck here. I glanced at Dorian. His scowl spoke volumes about his own frustration.

  “How could there be another plane?” Dorian demanded. “We would know, wouldn’t we? Vampires are the keepers of the barrier. It’s our job to sense planes.”

  Gate Maker blinked slowly. “You are keepers of a certain barrier between the Mortal Plane and the Immortal Plane,” he said patronizingly. “There is another, a barrier far more intricate and powerful than the one you’re familiar with, and for good reason. This is why I didn’t want to bother telling you. Your minds require a tremendous amount of effort to understand such simple concepts.”

  My annoyance caught flame inside me as I recalled Sempre saying something along those lines when I’d pretended to betray my friends and sell them out. How often high-status creatures thought so little of those they perceived as beneath them.

  “I’m what you would consider to be a small-minded human,” I said tightly. “Yet I’ve dealt with plenty of revelations like this before. Hell, look at where I’m sitting. I was able to handle this plane, why not another? Everything I knew about existence has been upended multiple times in the last four months, and I can handle it happening again. Dorian is capable of it, too. Don’t underestimate us.”

  “With you, I could believe that,” Gate Maker said, his tone innocent. His contemplative gaze stayed on me. Was Gate Maker trying to use me to needle Dorian? I glanced at Dorian, who’d caught the insult and let out an irritated growl.

  “If you brought us here just to insult us before you leave—”

  “It is not only your presence I require for this endeavor,” Gate Maker cut in. Dorian scowled. “I require some of your light energy, in order to make this work.”

  “Light energy?” I wondered aloud. I had a hazy memory of Sike rambling about light energy and trees as we walked through the redwoods, but I hadn’t thought much of it. In humans, it only seemed to be important in its relation to dark energy.

  Dorian scoffed. “Nobody can siphon light energy. It only produces soul-light that can be absorbed by the occasional plant, if anything.”

  “You speak confidently for someone who didn’t know there was an entire other plane,” Gate Maker said coolly. “You th
ink you know everything? Do you want to do this, or not?”

  Dorian’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t have much choice, do I?”

  His shoulders went tense as he simmered in anger. I reached out and squeezed his hand comfortingly. I completely understood his frustration and impatience. Getting information out of Gate Maker made me want to pull my hair out, but we needed to work with his cryptic, condescending replies if we wanted to fix the tear. How many times had my own personal understanding of the world been shattered? Too many. Adding another plane to the bunch was probably easier for me to accept than Dorian, who’d known of the planes his whole life. Let’s just get through this together.

  “Light energy isn’t like dark energy, though both come from souls,” Gate Maker began. “It can’t be harnessed or consumed by vampires or other creatures, although the radiance of light energy benefits and nourishes the plants in this plane. You can think of light energy as the byproduct of the warmth and power of a person’s positive actions. Such energy simply cannot be taken by force—it needs to be created naturally and given freely.” Gate Maker lifted his hands toward us. “That’s where you come in. While the power of this place is immense, even that is not enough to provide me with the energy needed to create this complex gate. I need you to gift me some of your light energy, which is an incredibly powerful thing, to make this gate.”

  I raised a questioning brow. “And how do we gift you this energy?”

  “It’s a simple process,” Gate Maker said. “I need you to recall positive memories. You must feel the radiance of something that you believe is truly good.”

  My mouth fell open, unable to produce a sound. I’d been fighting to close the tear with everything I had for months on end. I’d turned fugitive, suffered torture, killed people, and now Gate Maker was telling me, with utter seriousness, that in order to save the world I had to… think happy thoughts?