The Mortal Falls

by Anna Durand

  As Tris kept on crunching ore, I twisted out from under Nevan's arm. He raised his brows but didn't try to stop me.

  Tris, mouth stuffed with rock, mumbled, "You gonna save the dead guy or what?"

  "Yes. Right now." I spun on my heels and bolted down the path back to the pool and the water-spouting boulder. Another pair of footfalls clapped up the path behind me. No need to glance back. Nevan was tailing me, I knew — or rather, I felt it.

  Breaking out of the trees, I veered toward the boulder and its burbling water, certain the way home must lie somewhere in the vicinity of the tiny cascade. I'd wound up standing in front of the rock when I leaped through the darkness into this alien place.

  Great, more water.

  I halted at the pool's edge, mere feet from the big rock, my eyes drawn to the fountain spurting from it. Would I have to dive into the pool? My skin crawled at the idea.

  Nevan sprinted past me, straight up to the boulder. Though I panted from exertion, he hadn't even broken a sweat.

  "I'm assuming," he said, "you haven't the faintest idea how to get back from whence you came."

  "Nope."

  "It'll be easier this time." He slid his hand into mine, lacing our fingers. "Water is the doorway. When I say jump, do it. No hesitating. It is imperative you follow my instructions."

  The seriousness of his tone convinced me. I nodded, but my gut clenched when I glanced back at the water.

  Nevan dipped his free hand into the little fountain. The boulder dissolved into a darkness teeming with worm-like bands of blue, green, and purple. "Jump."

  Hand in hand, we jumped.

  The impact as we hit the floor in the cave made my knees buckle, punching them into the stone floor, shooting pains through my legs.

  Nevan landed flat on his feet, steady as a mountain.

  As my vision adjusted to the dimness, I raised a hand to my forehead and strained to make out my surroundings. Ahead of me, the waterfall cascaded over the cave's mouth in a rumbling, silvery curtain, muted by… uh… magic.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the portal whatsit spiraling into infinity. Would I ever get used to the supernatural being real?

  Nevan crouched beside me, lashed an arm around my waist, and jacked me up off my ass. Once he'd set me on my feet, he cradled my neck in his hands. "All right, love? No permanent damage?"

  A playful lift of his brow contradicted his concerned tone. He was the most confusing man I'd ever met. "I'm fine. Let's go."

  To my left, a shadow stirred. My attention swerved toward it just as a figure trundled out of the darkness in the depths of the cave.

  Sheriff Travis Blackwell passed in front of the curtain of water, shoulders slumped, his clothes and hair rumpled and drenched and splatting drops onto the ground. Scrapes on his arms turned the skin a raw red. His mouth was open, his breaths came hard and fast. Eyes narrowed to slits, lips compressed into a line, he planted his feet wide to bar our path out of the cave with one hand positioned on the butt of his Sig Sauer.

  His voice was hushed, his tone eerily cool. "Where have you been?"

  I scuffled backward, bumping into Nevan. His body pressed against my back, buttressing me there. His hands, coiled around my upper arms, staked a claim. I had no time to consider whether I liked his dominant stance or the possessiveness it communicated, because Travis intervened.

  With one wide step, he closed the distance between us and stabbed a finger in the air in front of my face. "I said where the hell have you been?"

  His voice boomed in the confines of the cave, ricocheting off the walls. He repeated his question, with even more volume. I suppressed a cringe — damned if I'd show him any fear, no matter how insane he was acting — and told him in a dead-calm voice, "We explored the cave."

  Travis's gaze swung past me, past Nevan, straight to the disk of blackness behind us and the multicolored tendrils corkscrewing within it. His eyes flew wide, his face blanched, and the fury crumbled out of him like a fragile shell broken by the wind. His hand fell away from his gun. He rocked back on his heels.

  I wondered how long he'd hidden in the shadows, how much he'd witnessed.

  "What is that stuff?" Travis asked, his tone far too even.

  He was putting on a front and I couldn't fault him for it. The otherworldly hole in reality had thrown me for a loop too. His voice may have been even, but his eyes beseeched me for a rational explanation.

  "I saw that thing when I first came in here, chasing after you two. I tried to touch the stuff, but it — " He jerked a hand toward the whirlpool hovering in midair, his lips trembling, infecting his voice with a matching quaver. "It floated away."

  "Long story." One I really, really did not want to tell him. He'd drag me off to the loony bin for sure and maybe sign up for his own stint in a padded cell.

  I tracked his gaze as it zeroed in on the churning darkness and its ribbons of luminous color unreeling into eternity. The abyss telescoped down to a pinpoint and winked out with a sizzling snap and a puff of air. Where once the portal had hovered, I saw only the mottled, uneven rock of the cave's rear wall.

  Travis blinked twice in slow motion. He shook his head with such ferocity his head seemed to flap like a flag in the wind. He sank his face into hands, and after a moment, looked up at me. "If it's all right with you, I'm gonna pretend I never saw… whatever I thought I saw."

  "Do what you want."

  He squared his shoulders, straightening. "Why'd you run, Porter?"

  Just like that, we were back to the cop-versus-suspect dynamic. Not more than half an hour ago, I'd panicked when Travis whipped out his handcuffs and suggested he might arrest me. Now — backed up, in the literal and figurative sense, by a sylph who could whisk me away in a heartbeat — I discovered it had gotten much easier to defy the sheriff.

  "I won't go to jail again," I informed him. "Not ever."

  Nevan's fingers pressed into my skin. Whether his gesture signified support or a warning, I couldn't say for sure.

  Travis drummed his fingers on his leather belt. "I offered to help you."

  "You mean the way you helped last time?" I shrugged out of Nevan's grasp to take a single step forward. "Why should I trust you?"

  My fingers curled claw-like toward my palms but did not ball into fists. The memory of those days, of the most horrifying time in my life, ratcheted up my tension until my entire body ached from the pressure of rigid muscles.

  Nevan kissed the top of my head. His hands stroked my arms, the realness of his touch banishing the ghosts of the past. He nuzzled my hair, murmuring phrases of comfort too soft for Travis to hear.

  Thank you. Did gratitude expressed in thoughts count? Nevan had said debts accrued in the Unseen realm, not here, so I supposed I was safe.

  "Well, Travis?" I said. "Why should I trust you?"

  He rubbed his eyes and his voice grew strained as he met my gaze head-on. "I'm sorry for how I treated you back then. More sorry than you could possibly know. Took me six months to track you down, Lindsey. I came here to try and mend our friendship. I screwed that up too. Won't ask forgiveness, 'cuz I don't deserve it, but I will say this. I failed you three years ago. I won't make the same mistake today."

  I should've felt vindicated by his admission, but it left me hollow. "Why didn't you tell me any of this when you turned up in Lutin Falls two and a half years ago?"

  He aimed a long-suffering look in my direction. "You wouldn't speak to me unless it was in an official capacity. I've been fixing to tell you lots of times, but I chickened out. It's still hard to admit my brother went psycho on the girl he loved more than anything in the world. Hard to admit, to believe, I didn't see it coming. He was my brother."

  Nevan glided a hand up my back, settling his palm between my shoulder blades. I'd almost forgotten about Nevan. He had become a pillar of strength for me, and though I'd leaned
into him moments ago, his presence had faded into the background of my consciousness. Another item had also lapsed from my thoughts.

  The dead body.

  Enough distractions. Travis's admission confused me, but I had no time to consider its implications. I moved away from Nevan, toward Travis and the waterfall behind him.

  "I appreciate your honesty," I said and shoved him aside, clearing my path to the falls. "But I've got work to do."

  "Work? What the blazes are you talking about?"

  Spray from the waterfall misted over my face and my hair, pasting strands to my cheeks. I swiped them away. "I have a dead man to resurrect."

  Travis scuffled sideways, distancing himself from me even as he glared at Nevan. I glanced around in search of the sylph and found him standing behind me, motionless and erect, his gaze remote yet fastened on Travis. Despite his aloof demeanor, Nevan's irises burned with a tempered fire. He'd withdrawn from the battle, but not from the war.

  What exactly the two men were fighting for, I had no clue.

  "I'll retrieve the dead fellow," Nevan said, and vanished in the blink of an eye.

  Travis took a hesitant step toward me. "Retrieve? What he hell's he talking about?"

  "Nevan has gone to find the body and bring it here."

  Travis's mouth puckered. "He's stealing a corpse?"

  "Guess so."

  The vibrations from the pounding water of the falls numbed my brain, driving out thoughts. Weariness descended upon me and my shoulders caved under the phantom weight. It felt like decades had elapsed since I leaped into the other world in search of a copper-eating leprechaun. I closed my eyes, more weary in mind than in body, yearning for a rest from all this craziness.

  "You were gone a long time."

  I came back to reality with a mental start, rolling my eyes toward Travis. His voice had sounded too close, which made sense considering he'd crept to within a foot of me. Worry lines creased his forehead.

  "Don't be so dramatic, Travis," I said. "Half an hour is not a long time."

  "Half an hour?" His mouth opened and his upper lip lifted, exposing his teeth. "Lindsey, you were gone for three hours."

  12

  "You're demented." My voice spiked an octave higher. Three hours? No way. As a little girl I'd read stories — legends — about people who were taken by the fairies and returned years later, but they hadn't aged a day because, for them, mere hours had ticked by in the fairy world.

  Travis nodded solemnly. "It was three hours."

  He tipped his wrist toward me to reveal his watch, the hour hand a black sliver on the pale face. Three hours had passed. Three hours.

  I laid a hand on my chest, over my racing heart, unable to process the shock. Time truly did move slower in the other world. No legend after all. Why hadn't Nevan warned me?

  As if on cue, Nevan popped back into the cave between me and the falls, the dead man slung over his shoulder. I yelped and hopped back, my feet splashing in a puddle. "You scared me. The way you zip in and out is not good for my health."

  He tilted his head down, lowering his voice to a whisper meant only for me. "You can feel my approach."

  Good point. Why hadn't I this time?

  I lolled my head into his chest, exhaling a soft groan. "Travis told me something I couldn't believe and it kind of knocked me off kilter."

  "He did what?" Nevan enunciated each word with the hardness of an ax splitting bone.

  Looking up at him, I gave his chest a light smack. "Don't go all caveman on me again. This is your fault."

  "My fault?"

  I backed away a few steps. "You didn't warn me time passes slower in the Unseen realm."

  "Ah, that." He gave me a sheepish smile. "I simply didn't think to mention it. Besides, the time difference is usually minimal."

  "Usually? We were gone for three hours."

  He tapped his wrist. "Sylphs don't wear watches."

  "But you knew this would happen. Why didn't you tell me?"

  Travis chuckled, appearing far too pleased with himself. "Not so gaga over jungle boy anymore, are ya?"

  As one, Nevan and I swung our heads toward Travis and shouted, "Shut up!"

  "This is none of your business," I added, and Travis raised his hands palms out, backing away. He watched us with smug amusement.

  Nevan turned his attention to me. "Time passes more swiftly in the Unseen realm when magic affects the continuum."

  "You swore you wouldn't use magic on me."

  He shot ramrod straight, chin up, gazing down at me over the tip of his elegant nose. "I never break a promise. Perhaps whatever allowed you to cross the veil caused time to pass more quickly. Besides, what would I have to gain by stealing hours from you?"

  Good point. The missing time had served only to tick off Travis worse than before and saddled me with an absence I had to explain away. If Nevan had planned this, he would've known I'd realize how much time passed. I'd be mad at him, which I currently was. He gained nothing from the missing hours.

  A nasty thought occurred to me and I whirled on Travis. "How do I know you didn't set your watch ahead three hours?"

  He slapped a hand on the rock wall. "Christ, if you're gonna believe a freak who wears a dish towel for clothes, I don't know you at all."

  "We finally agree on something."

  Nevan hefted the dead man off the floor, slinging him over his shoulder again. "Shall we take care of your deceased friend, or should I hand him over to the sheriff?"

  "Let's fix this. Please."

  Nevan crossed through the falls and out of sight. I tiptoed closer to the water, envisioning the cliff one step beyond it and the roiling pool below.

  "Porter," Travis grated through his locked teeth, "think about what you're doing. Who you're trusting."

  "I have."

  Holding my breath, I steeled myself for what lay ahead and marched through the silvery curtain of the falls.

  I halted just in front of the falling water, my toes sticking out over the ledge. Nevan grasped my hand. I accepted the support and inched along behind him as he strode down the ledge with the dead man on his shoulder. When he stopped a few yards from the falls, I aimed a questioning look at him. He draped his free arm around my shoulders, snuggling me against him.

  The world plunged into darkness. We sailed down, down, down into the clawing abyss, crashing through energies that scraped at my flesh. My arms bolted around Nevan's waist, I hooked my legs around his and prayed his hold on the dead man wouldn't weaken his grip on me, sending my body reeling out into the void.

  Light stung my eyes. Warm, humid air clung to my skin. I blinked my blurry eyes, my arms still welded to Nevan. His muscles moved beneath me and his weight shifted as something thumped nearby, then his other arm wrapped around me. The brilliance that had blinded me diminished into sunlight streaming down through the thick canopy of foliage.

  We emerged in the clearing alongside the pool. The dead man lay on the ground at our feet.

  Nevan cleared his throat. "Ye might want to unhook yourself from me, darlin', before I get the wrong idea about your intentions."

  "Huh?" I glanced down. My legs were intertwined with his, my arms belted around his waist, and my hips tilted into him in what might've qualified as a seductive pose under different circumstances. Oops. I disentangled my body from his. "Sorry. Here I order you not to kiss me, and then I go all drunken-slut-at-a-frat-house on you."

  His features scrunched into the most adorable look of bafflement. "What in the name of the stars are you rambling about?"

  "I — Oh, to hell with it. Think whatever you want."

  Spinning away from him, I waved an arm to indicate the dead man. "Grab him and let's get moving. Travis won't be far behind."

  "The sheriff is of no consequence to me, love."

  His imperious tone
had returned and it rankled. "Stop calling me darling and love."

  "Whatever you say, dearest."

  "Gah!" It was my turn to throw my hands in the air. "Maybe I'll start calling you honey-pie. How'd you like that?"

  Nevan collected the body, and as we headed down the trail, I thought I heard him mutter under his breath, "Mortal women are insane."

  I broke into a sprint, hurrying past Nevan, anxious to reach the vortex and resolve my legal problems. The slapping of footfalls to the rear assured me Nevan had picked up speed too and I risked a glance over my shoulder. He loped along in my wake with his usual grace and fluidity, the literal dead weight bouncing on his shoulder. Nary a speck of perspiration marred his skin.

  My breasts flopped up and down with each heavy step I took, my breaths quickened into gasps, and sweat dribbled down my face into my eyes and mouth. The salty flavor made me oddly hungry. When had I last eaten? My stomach grumbled, as if answering my question with a stern too long ago. Every step pushed my holstered gun into my side. I'd gotten so used to carrying it every day that I tended to forget about weapon unless I needed it.

  I rubbed my burning eyes, but kept my attention riveted to the path ahead, not stopping until I reached the vortex.

  Nevan laid the dead man on the ground in the center of the circle delineated by the rock benches. He lowered himself onto one of the benches, crossed his ankles, set his hands on the rock, and leaned back.

  I huddled at the entrance to the vortex, incapable of moving or tearing my gaze away from the corpse. The man looked too pallid and… well, too dead to spring back to life. Tris might've lied. Or too much time might've passed.

  Please, God, let this work.

  The dead man groaned.

  I crouched beside him, knees bent, hands gripping my thighs. Come on, come on.

  The man's chest heaved once, twice.

  Please, please. I leaned over him, counting the seconds.

  The man's breathing normalized. His eyes darted back and forth behind his lids and then, as his chest rose on a deep breath, his lids eased open. He blinked slowly, gaze unfocused. Lifelike color suffused his cheeks and his lips warmed from blue to a dusky pink. Pushing up onto his elbows, he rubbed his eyes and turned to me. His dark eyes, though still a smidge bleary, shimmered with life.