by Lanie Bross
A gnarled hand reached toward her.
Everything went dark.
9
Red sand.
Luc opened his eyes and lifted his head: red sand stretched for miles and miles along the coast of a dark ocean that swept all the way to the horizon.
Dirt covered his face. His eyes, teeth, ears—everything felt gritty, as if he’d gone through a sandstorm.
His mind was fuzzy. He remembered jumping but not landing.
There had been wind. A fierce, howling wind he thought would rip him apart and a searing pain that made his whole body shudder uncontrollably. And then … God, why couldn’t he remember? Had he actually survived the fall off the building? Had he passed out from the pain? Luc had seen it happen on the field—a guy from another team who got his shin kicked in so hard the bone broke through his skin. He’d fainted, and Luc didn’t blame him.
He rolled over onto his back despite the screaming in his muscles. He rubbed the sand from his eyes, then felt around for a lump on his skull. He must have cracked it. Really hard.
In the sky, two identical suns were sitting next to each other.
Double vision was a sure sign of a head injury—Ty had been out for a month after a bad hit gave him a concussion last year.
Very slowly, Luc raised his hand in front of his face. One hand appeared in his field of vision, but overhead, two suns still blazed on opposite sides of the sky.
What. The. Hell.
He pushed up onto his elbows carefully. Every inch of his body hurt, as if he’d been thrown off a building. No, not thrown—jumped. He slowly stood up, taking deep breaths to counteract the pain. His legs were weak, and he stumbled a few steps before regaining his balance. Behind him, his shadow, or shadows—two of them?— trailed across the sand. They fell in opposite directions and had a stretched look to them, the way shadows do when the sun hangs low in the sky.
Luc blinked several times to clear his vision, but two shadows remained. He was oddly reminded of early-morning soccer practices, of endless drills across the field as the sun started to rise—and how his shadow would dribble the ball alongside him, long and distorted, as if it belonged to a man eight feet tall.
Had he been dumped in the Black Rock Desert? No, this body of water had to be the ocean, which meant he must be somewhere along the shoreline. Yet there were no boats in the water, no people on the beach, not a sign of life anywhere.
And Christ, it was sweltering, like running an oven in a heat wave.
Something tugged at the back of his mind—some deep fear he couldn’t name. Something was wrong, even more wrong than the two suns. He pinched the inside of his arm, feeling the pain wash over him, but he didn’t wake up. No, not dreaming. Maybe he was in a coma.
Maybe you’re dead.
He inhaled and tried to quell the rising fear that tightened his chest. He couldn’t be dead because he didn’t feel dead. He hurt everywhere, and the sand scratched his eyes and sweat beaded on his skin.
Dead people didn’t sweat like this.
So if he was alive, then where the hell was he?
To his left, cliffs rose, sheer and jagged; a purplish-blue sky swelled above them like the taut belly of a balloon. The cliffs ran alongside the beach, parallel to the ocean, trapping him on this small strip of sand.
He fumbled for his phone, but the screen was blank. It must have been water damaged.
“Hello!” he shouted.
His voice echoed off the rocks and bounced down the beach. No one answered. He slowly turned around, dreading what he already knew he’d find. Behind him, more of the same: endless miles of cliffs and sand and ocean.
Panic welled up again and this time he didn’t try to fight it. Hours earlier, he’d thought his night couldn’t get any worse. Wrong.
He saw something glinting in the sand. His pulse sped up. A few feet away, the blade Corinthe had thrown at him lay half buried in the ground. He spun around to see if she was there, too, then crouched and carefully extricated the knife from the sand.
Had she somehow brought him here? Had she dumped his body, thinking he was dead, and bolted? Maybe she had brought him here by boat. …
The idea brought his gaze back to the water. He watched the dark surface of the ocean and felt a prickling at the back of his neck. It wasn’t right. The water. It didn’t move right. He’d spent enough time on the bay to know that water rippled, even if there was no wind.
His feet felt weighted with lead as he stumbled to the edge of the ocean. The water wasn’t dark blue at all; it was black. And it just sat there, a giant puddle of inky darkness. Shadows undulated beneath its surface. They almost looked like … eels.
Millions and millions of eels.
Luc backed away quickly, a shiver of fear sliding down his spine, despite the cloying heat.
“Looking for something?” a voice said from behind him.
He swung around, clutching Corinthe’s knife. A useless move, since he had been in a total of zero knife fights before and had no idea what to do with it.
A woman stood a few yards away from him. She was barefoot on the red sand and wore a long white dress. Her hair was as black as the ocean and hung nearly to her waist. She didn’t appear to be affected by the heat at all. Her pale skin practically glowed under the sun’s light, and the shadows she cast stretched long and narrow behind her, giving her an eerie air.
She smiled at him. Her teeth were very pointy; one was so sharp it looked like a dagger. And her eyes—like looking into a pit of tar, inky and bottomless. They completely unnerved him.
Luc couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d seen her before. That same anxiety flickered through the back of his mind—there was something he should see or remember—but it dissipated when he tried to focus on it.
“Where did you come from?”
His voice was hoarse and raw. He swallowed against the dryness. In the sand he saw his own footprints, but around her there were none. He took a step backward.
This seemed to amuse her, because she laughed. The sound, not entirely pleasant, was quickly suctioned away by the heavy air. “That’s not important. All you need to know is I’m a friend. And I came to tell you: Corinthe is responsible for your sister’s current … predicament.”
Luc felt his stomach seize up. Jasmine. “What—what are you talking about?” he stammered. “What do you know about my sister?”
The woman tilted her head and stared at him almost with pity. “I know she’s in trouble,” she replied softly.
“What do you mean?” Luc was losing it. Blood pounded in his temples; he could hardly hold on to the knife, his hand was sweating so badly. “Where is she?”
“She is imprisoned in the Forest of the Blood Nymphs,” the woman said evenly. “Because of Corinthe, she’s in mortal danger.”
Luc felt as though someone had punched him in the chest. “The Forest of the … what?” He shook his head. This had to be a nightmare. Or everyone around him had suddenly gone insane.
“Of the Blood Nymphs,” the woman said.
“Who the hell are you? Is this some kind of sick joke? Where’s my sister?” Luc instinctively raised the knife until the blade was pointed directly at the woman’s throat. He hoped she wouldn’t see that he was shaking ever so slightly.
But she just tipped her head back and laughed. When she looked at him again, her black eyes seemed to devour the light reflected in them.
“You can’t hurt me. And you don’t scare me. I told you—I’m a friend. We can stand here and play games or you can go after your sister. Either way, it makes little difference to me.”
Luc felt as if he might pass out. His thoughts were spinning in dizzying circles.
“How do I find her?” he asked, practically spitting out the words.
The woman shrugged. Suddenly, she seemed to lose interest in him. “Corinthe can tell you. If you can trust her, that is.”
Rage ate away at him, made him want to punch her. Riddles. This was clearly some ki
nd of sick game to her. “How do I find Corinthe, then? What the hell is this place?”
She smiled again, and the rage turned to fear. There was something vicious about her smile—it was the way a cat might look at a mouse.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Corinthe will find you.”
Another chill went down Luc’s spine, despite the sweltering heat. He took a step toward her, but she turned and then simply vanished into the thick air, which shimmered with heat. Then Luc remembered the woman he had seen when he was riding the bus, the woman who had simply materialized from the steam.
Was she following him?
Several seconds later, he thought he saw her again at the base of the cliffs. She raised her hand and waved to him. The sun glinted off her finger. A ring, maybe. The glare stung his eyes and he had to look away. When he glanced back, the light was gone, and so was she. Then a figure appeared at the top of the cliffs, silhouetted in the brightness.
How the hell had she gotten up there so fast?
It didn’t matter, because she knew where his sister was, and when he caught up with the woman, she was damned well going to tell him how to find her. He wasn’t going to wait for Corinthe to find him. She would probably try to skewer him again.
Crazy. This whole thing was crazy.
He had to find Jas.
Without thinking too much about what he was doing, he tucked the knife into his belt and started to climb. He wrapped his hand around a bit of rock, found a toehold, and hauled. He tried to ignore the pain from his cut and bleeding fingers.
This was far more intense than any training he’d ever done for soccer. At the Y, they’d made him strap into a harness before letting him climb the rock wall. Here, there was nothing to catch him if he fell.
Still, he climbed, hand over hand, feet scrambling for purchase. The suns beat down on his back, pushed sweat into his eyes until he could barely see, and yet he went on.
After what felt like an hour of climbing, he pulled himself onto a small ledge and took a break. The progress was agonizingly slow, a diagonal path across the sheer cliff face. One wrong step would send him tumbling down to the sand. He wiped his face, feeling the sting of salt in his torn-up hands.
The cliffs seemed higher than when he started. The hopelessness of it all made his shoulders shake. Just above him, a swollen belly of rock jutted out over the black ocean. There was no way around it. Carefully, he found handholds and curled his fingers into them. Fresh waves of pain radiated up his arms, and blood trickled down his wrists.
Judging by the heat, the sun—well, suns—were directly overhead now, so he kept his eyes on the gray rocks in front of him. Gray, the color of Corinthe’s eyes. The woman on the beach had said Corinthe was responsible for his sister’s … imprisonment?
His foot slipped and he barely caught himself.
Focus, damn it.
His biceps burned as he fought to keep his grip. His fingers were on fire. His foot slipped again, and it took everything he had to lift it back onto a small ledge.
He clung to the side of the cliff as rough rocks scraped his skin. Sweat rolled into his eyes, blinding him as he tried to blink away the burning sensation.
His arms shook, and his fingers slipped another inch. He fought to reclaim his balance and dug deep down into the place where survival instincts took over.
He had to hold on.
For Jasmine.
He let out a breath through clenched teeth and closed his eyes, rested his forehead against the rock. The suns weighed down on him, blistering and stifling, as if they were trying to force him into the black ocean.
Cramps seized his legs, and his left foot slipped off the ledge. The momentum pulled him off center, and his fingers began to slip.
He couldn’t hold on. No strength left. His body gave up and stopped fighting even as his mind screamed to keep going.
His other foot slipped.
And he fell.
Above him, the two suns hung side by side, twin bloated faces leering in victory. It was the last thing he saw.
He hit the water and went under. Blackness.
A water that was not like water.
He floated in it, into a creeping, airless coolness. Was this death? It was more peaceful than he ever imagined it would be.
Then … his lungs began to burn and instinct kicked in. He found strength he didn’t know he had. He flailed. He fought for the surface. He went nowhere. The water seemed to be full of silken hands—touching him, groping him.
His entire body burned from the lack of oxygen, a new kind of pain that reached down into his core, and his mind grew fuzzy. His limbs turned heavy. He allowed himself to float through the darkness, memories swimming next to him.
“Don’t worry, baby. It was just a bad dream.”
Mom stood next to his bed, smoothing her hand over his sweat-covered forehead. There was a pressure on his chest—his heart felt as if it were going to burst open. Light from the hallway spilled into the room he and Jasmine shared. His baby sister stood wide-eyed in her crib, watching him.
“You were gone,” Luc said; his throat felt rough and swollen. “I couldn’t find you. It was so dark.”
“I’m right here,” his mother said. She made soft shushing noises and he began to relax back into the pillow, his heartbeat slowing to normal. Finally, his eyes drifted closed and he heard her whisper: “It was just a bad dream. … You’re okay. … You’re safe. …”
10
Hands, rough like sandpaper, jerked Corinthe awake. A rush of pain made her gasp. Her stomach rolled, and for a second, she thought she was going to be sick.
She opened her eyes. She was lying on packed dirt on the ground. A stubby candle, enclosed by a smudgy glass-topped lantern, flickered next to her.
The smallest man Corinthe had ever seen—the size of a toddler, if that—knelt over her, holding what looked like a pair of large tweezers in his fingers, muttering to himself. He reached out with his tweezers; she felt a small tug on her arm and an icy-cold flash. She gasped and tried to sit up, but found she had no control over her limbs. Panic slid down her back.
Why couldn’t she move?
The man continued muttering to himself. He held up a dirty glass jar and dropped the stinger into it. Suddenly, he began to giggle. When he looked at her, his sunken eyes were lit up with excitement. “Hornet venom,” he cackled. “Small doses, they make strong. Make safe from more stings!”
He laughed until he wheezed—a raspy, wet sound that made Corinthe’s stomach turn over. When he opened his mouth, he exposed rows of blackened teeth. Each one came to a dull point, and she fought against the image of him taking a huge bite out of her.
A gnome. Had to be. Corinthe had seen their likenesses only a few times, in marbles that were not her charges. And gnomes lived in the Forest of Blood Nymphs, too—she had forgotten that. They were neither good nor bad, just very self-serving. They communicated in strange, circular ways that were hard to follow. Bargaining with a gnome took a lot of skill.
“Where am I?” she demanded. Her voice, at least, was still in her control—still steady. “Who are you?”
“This my home. I be Beatis, at your service.” He bowed, then stood and dragged the edge of a crusty sleeve over his dripping nose.
It was dark and smoky in the roughly circular room, which was only a few feet wider than the length of her body. Near her feet, crudely built shelves lined with dirty bottles teetered toward the ceiling. On her left was a pile of dried grass, sticks, and leaves—a makeshift bed, Corinthe imagined.
Above her, it looked like roots were entangled to form a ceiling. But was that … was that fur stuck between them?
She blinked, and her vision cleared slightly. More than a dozen animal carcasses in varying stages of decay were suspended above her, strung within the web of a tree. Bones, skin, eyeless sockets.
Corinthe quickly turned away, wincing. The gnome looked at her, then up.
“Pets. They be good tests. But n
ot always success,” he said, frowning. Then he shrugged. “Feeds tree. Keeps her happy.” He reached up and patted a bit of the twisted wooden ceiling affectionately; Corinthe now recognized that they were in the hollowed-out ground directly beneath the tree’s vast canopy of roots. The creatures trapped in the roots were ones she didn’t quite recognize—they didn’t exist in Pyralis. Or Humana, for that matter. The gnome returned to his task, bending forward to continue removing the stingers from her body. There were dozens and dozens of them remaining in her legs; Corinthe couldn’t stand to look.
“I always listening for the hornets. They’s very hard to find. They’s very hard to trap.” He rubbed his hands together. “Then I hears them and—I finds an Executor! So many questions, which to ask first?”
Alarm shot up her spine. He knew she was an Executor. She tried to force her fingers to move, but the command got lost somewhere between her brain and her hand.
“You be lucky Beatis find you in time.”
Something pricked her arm again. Before she could protest, a small tube was guiding her blood into a clear glass vial, which the gnome quickly filled and corked. He tucked it into his pocket, rubbed a greenish liquid into the spot he had bled, and waddled to the other side of the room with his jar. Carefully, he placed it on a shelf lined with an eclectic mixture of bottles, cans, jars, and boxes, each with peeling labels made of leaves and paste.
He pulled the vial from his pocket and slipped it inside a wooden box, then pushed it back behind several large bottles. When he returned, he held out a clear jar full of moving black things. He reached into the jar and pulled out something that looked like a slug. He held it between his stubby fingers for a moment, grinning as the slimy creature twisted and turned.
“What is that?”
“Leeches. They be good at sucking out the poisons,” Beatis said. “Don’t worry, pretty thing. Beatis be taking care of you.”
“Please …” Now she couldn’t help it. Her voice quavered. Stars danced brightly behind her eyelids, and she felt herself sinking, falling back into unconsciousness. She fought to stay awake, to stay alert.