“I hate that guy,” Lucas growled.
Distant laughter juxtaposed their mood. Then Sayre materialized riding a huge raven. “But brother, I’m part of you. So that means you hate yourself.”
Sometimes he did, but he wasn’t admitting that.
“Why are you doing this?” Amy screamed up at him. “We never did anything to you!”
“You think I’m trying to punish you?”
“Or you’re still a psychopath in this realm,” Lucas offered.
“Well, you’re both wrong. This little guy here, he’s mine now.” He turned the bird, and Lucas could now see that a toddler who looked just like him sat in front of Sayre. His eyes were wide, face set in wonder as he stroked the bird’s glossy feathers.
Amy’s hand tightened on Lucas’s. “Is that... Smudge?”
“I call him Stanley,” Sayre answered. “Yep, Amy, you were havin’ a boy.”
“Give me my son!” Amy screamed, a hysterical edge in her voice.
“Look, you two diddle some more and have another one. Stanley’s mine. I never did get to have a kid. You can have plenty. Apparently,” he muttered. “It’s like when you got a litter of puppies. You try to find homes for ‘em. You don’t keep ‘em all.”
“Babies are not like puppies, you asshole,” Lucas said. “You have no right—”
“But my DNA is in him too. That’s how I could take him, y’know. My connection to you, and to him. Always wanted someone to love.” He patted the boy’s head. “I aged him a little. No idea how to raise a baby. But this guy is more than a companion. He’s my ticket to the Beyond.” Sayre nodded his chin toward towering clouds in the distance.
Except they weren’t clouds. On top of a fog-shrouded mountain sat a white castle.
“What is it?” Lucas asked, his chest tightening with dread. Hell. That’s all he could think about; Sayre was taking his son to Hell.
Sayre shrugged. “I don’t know exactly. The beings here, they tell me it’s a place of no return. You have to make a long, treacherous journey to the entrance. Once someone goes through, they don’t come back. Which is good, ‘cause I hate this place. When I clear this illusion, you’ll see why. I’ve been told my soul’s too dark to pass through, but I bet I can with a pure little soul at my side. Me and Stanley, we’re gonna fly right over all the spooky shit below.” He arched an eyebrow. “Catch us if you can.”
Like a master horseman, he turned the raven with reins and headed off into a sky blanketed in gray clouds.
“Lucas!” Amy screamed.
“We’ll catch him.” Lucas conjured a Pegasus, and they climbed onto its back. The horse galloped for a few seconds and lifted off. Lucas saw the raven up ahead, growing smaller with distance. He jammed his heels into the horse’s side. “Giddy up, Peg!”
The moment they were airborne, the peanut fields evaporated, revealing a lush forest.
“What’s so scary about a forest?” Amy asked, leaning over to look down. “Oh, something like that maybe.”
What he’d taken for a river, flowing gray and speckled, turned out to be an enormous snake. He could see its solidity now, the way the sunlight glistened off its scales.
“Where is its head?” Lucas asked.
“Uh, heading right toward that deer.”
In a small opening, a deer sipped from a pond, sending gentle ripples across the water’s surface. The snake slithered closer. Closer. The deer lifted its head in fright—and opened its mouth, revealing rows of sharp fangs. Its neck grew giraffe-like as it lunged toward the snake. Before it reached its target, a huge, slimy claw broke out of the water and snagged the deer. It let out ghostly screams as it plunged under the tumultuous surface.
“Holy crap, what was that?” Amy asked, still turned to see as they passed over the scene.
“I’m glad we’re up here is all I can say.”
The horse’s wings sent a whoosh of wind with each powerful stroke, gaining on the raven. Suddenly, the bird seemed to hit an invisible wall, its wings flattening, its head thrown to the side. It dropped to the ground, along with its riders.
“Smudge!” Amy cried out.
Lucas visually snagged a landmark where they fell, a dead tree poking up out of the forest. “Sayre will probably conjure a sea of mattresses beneath them. He doesn’t want to hurt our baby.”
“No, he wants to take him to Hell. For company!” She sniffled behind him, her arms tightening over his stomach. “But something stopped them.”
“And it’s probably going to stop us too.” As they neared the dead tree, Lucas slowed the horse. He could see the faint shimmering of the wall, nothing more. He touched it, finding it as solid as glass. The horse continued alongside it as Lucas felt his way in both directions. “It seems to go on indefinitely.”
“We need to get down there and find them,” Amy said, searching for Sayre and Smudge.
“Down there” was a mass of trees and vines and shadows. God knew what lurked in them.
He directed the horse down toward the canopy. Damn, even his conjured creature seemed reluctant. A deafening sound started once they neared the top of the trees. Like crickets on steroids. Like screaming monkeys. Like the thrum of bullfrogs, all at once. Creatures scurried among the highest branches. Some ran away. Others crept closer, glowing eyes watching with interest.
As they slowly descended in a narrow space between trees, he saw a frog creature with a squashed face. Farther down, a black, furry thing slid behind the leaves.
The moment they touched down, Lucas and Amy jumped to the ground. Something dark and fast streaked past them and speared the horse all the way through. A long rope tethered the hook and, like a fishing lure, pulled the bloody horse toward a wall of fluttering vines. The horse whinnied, fighting it even as it gasped for life. Lucas snapped his fingers, and Pegasus disappeared. What looked like a four-pronged anchor with barbs for feet dropped to the ground in its absence.
Crap. Now they were available prey! Lucas put his arm in front of Amy, and they inched backward. Amy hissed and pointed to the anchor that gained its “feet” and scrambled toward them like a spider on a leash. Scissor-like fangs swished back and forth underneath its body. It jumped at them, as it had done to the horse.
They dropped to the ground as it flew overhead, then rolled to the side when it rebounded.
“Make it go away!” Amy screamed as they lurched to their feet and ran.
Lucas focused on changing the dream as they weaved through trees and vines. Only this wasn’t a dream or a nightmare. It was... hell. “Sayre said the peanut field was an illusion. Maybe because he lives here he can create one temporarily, but I can’t change this.”
A vine wound down and slapped at his arm, stinging like a hundred nettles. “And this is no illusion,” he said, wincing as blisters rose on his skin. “Watch the vines, Amy. They’re nasty.”
She jerked out of the way of another one swinging down from above. It tangled in her hair, wrenching her back. He grabbed it, despite the stinging, and tore it away from her.
“Do I want to know what that was?” she asked, moving fast in front of him.
“One of those vines.”
“A vine that grabbed me?”
“Yep.” He flexed his hand, feeling welts on his palm.
“We can wake up at any time, right? And leave this place?”
“Yes.”
They both knew they wouldn’t leave Smudge here, though. It was nice to at least know they could. That was their illusion.
They wound their way between trees and questionable vegetation.
“Do we know that we’re going in the right direction?” Amy asked as she ducked a branch covered in spines. “Even if there was a distinct sun, we couldn’t see it from down here.”
“I’m pretty sure we are.”
“I don’t like ‘pretty sure.’”
He glanced over at a tree trunk that was breathing. “Pretty sure is all we have.” Like, he was pretty sure if they caught Sayre, there wo
uld be a fight. And he was pretty sure if they could get their hands on Smudge, they could somehow put him back into Amy’s belly. No need to discuss.
In the distance, the sound of a body hitting the ground hard stopped them in their tracks. Then an “Oof,” and a thump. Lucas tuned in to the very human sound, and he pointed toward the right.
A child’s cry shot them forward. While Amy did the mama bear rush through the brush, Lucas watched for weird and dangerous flora and fauna. An iridescent blue bird with a rapier-like beak hunkered down on a low branch as Amy approached, watching her with its beady green eyes. Lucas grabbed a broken branch and threw it at the bird, sending it into flight with ear-shattering screeches.
“God, what was that?” Amy called. “A parrot?”
“A bird. But nothing like On’ry.” Amy’s ornery cockatoo might be a pain in the ass, but compared to that thing, he was a softie.
He could feel eyes watching them, most likely with dinner in mind. Or lunch, or whatever the hell time it was here. He hoped there wasn’t nightfall; it was dark enough.
Lucas scooped up other weapon-sized sticks. When one grew hot and moved in his hands, though, he tossed them all without even looking.
Another “Oof” in the distance, but growing closer. The sound of thrashing foliage, a growl. Oh, nice. This should be fun.
A copse of bright green trees ahead looked like a tropical oasis. Amy broke through the bushes and came to an abrupt stop. Lucas came up behind her, ready for anything. It did, indeed, look like an island, a circle of white sugar sand about fifty yards across surrounded by palms with fronds sporting wide center sections.
His gaze first went to their son, caged in by a palm frond bowed all the way to the sand. Smudge pushed and pulled on fronds as solid as metal bars, as frustrated as Francesca sometimes looked when she wanted out of her crib.
To the right, two creatures circled Sayre. They were large, over a hundred pounds each, and looked like some sort of mix between a sabretooth tiger and hell-hound. Their yellow fangs descended several inches below their square chins. Huge glowing eyes probably allowed them to see in the murk of the jungle. They had taken some flesh from Sayre, who stood arrogant and bleeding from his shoulder. Now they focused on the newcomers.
“Go ahead and finish with him,” Lucas said, gesturing to Sayre. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.” On a whisper, he said, “Amy, circle behind me and around to Smudge.”
He knew he didn’t need to tell her to move slowly. She did, silently creeping along the outer edge. One of the sabre-hounds stalked toward him, while the other moved closer to Sayre.
If Lucas could conjure a flying horse, he could conjure other things. In a moment, he held a gun, but when he squeezed the trigger, nothing came out but a click. So maybe he couldn’t conjure something mechanical. He conjured a sword, no mechanics involved, just slice and dice. He brought the sword down in an arc toward the hound’s thick neck as Sayre said, “Don’t—”
The creature split in two and fell to the ground. As Lucas charged toward the second one, both pieces morphed into a whole new creature, growing to full size in seconds.
“—cut the thing,” Sayre finished sardonically, lifting a long machete. “That’s how I have two of them.”
“Great. And now we have three.”
From the corner of his eye, Lucas saw Amy working at the fronds and having no more luck than Smudge had in moving them. Even worse, the baby shrank away from her in fear.
“The palm frond is like a Venus flytrap,” Sayre said in a low, even voice. “It will eventually grab onto him and suck him dry.”
Amy let out a soft cry.
“How do you break out of it?” Lucas hoped Sayre would be motivated to help, since he needed their son.
“I dunno. I tried to free a rabbit from one once. I was starving, and the things are not only fast, but have razor-sharp tongues that lash out. Figured I’d steal it from the trap. Didn’t work so well.”
Amy was searching for something, probably to tear the plant apart. Her fingers sank into the soft sand, as his feet were doing. Lucas focused on the two hounds in front of him who appeared none too happy about being sliced into two beings. Maybe it hurt. He hoped so. He looked up and spotted more of those palm fronds that sucked things dry. Yes, he could use those.
He trudged through the sand to the right of the beasts, holding out his sword to keep them at bay. They tracked him just out of range of the sword. One started to go around to his other side, the way they had cornered Sayre.
Lucas stopped beneath the frond, then inched farther back, luring them to the largest frond.
“You’re a flippin’ genius,” Sayre said, stepping backward as he looked up for his own frond, probably.
Lucas jumped up and grabbed hold of the stem, bringing the frond down over the creatures. The soft-looking fronds drove into the ground like spikes, trapping its prey. One creature jumped and stuck to the roof of the frond. A sound like a knife plunging into flesh gave Lucas a cold chill, made worse by a slurping sound. The creature screamed in pain, eerily similar to a child’s cry. Like a deflated balloon, it collapsed to the ground a minute later. The other beast slunk low, eyeing the flat section of frond above it.
Amy let out another cry as she stuck her hand between the fronds and covered their son’s head to keep him from standing. He’d been saved because he was sitting. So far.
Lucas turned to find Sayre bringing down a frond over the third creature. He glanced up to see if there was another frond above his twin. No such luck.
Lucas grabbed up the sword he’d laid down and ran toward Amy. With a swipe, he cut the base of the frond from its head. The spikes softened, and Amy pushed the frond away. She reached for Smudge. He shrank away, then looked over his shoulder and smiled.
Sayre swung on a vine toward them. Lucas lunged for Smudge, but Sayre snatched the boy a second before him and continued swinging on. He landed on the dark dirt and loam of the forest floor and ran.
“Bastard!” Lucas spat.
“Lucas, help!”
Amy stood hip deep in the sand. Lucas tried to run toward her, but his legs were now buried to his calves. And sinking fast.
“Cutting the fronds seemed to have triggered it,” she said. “It was soft before, but as soon as the frond was cut, the sand loosened beneath my knees.”
Lucas felt it too, though he’d been too focused on Smudge. “That’s what the son of a bitch meant when he said it didn’t go well.”
“He got out, though. So can we.” She tried to grab the severed frond stalk, but it remained just out of reach.
“Stop moving. It just makes you sink faster, and there’s no way you’ll touch it. Hold on.” He conjured a lasso and tossed it over her head toward a tree growing just outside the quicksand circle. It slipped off, and he snatched it back. Threw it again. This time it draped over the branch above Amy’s head.
She wound it around the branch one more time for strength, then started to climb it toward the edge of the sand. He searched for a way out for himself. The sand now reached mid-thigh. It was greedy, hungry. Hell, it was probably a living thing itself. He checked on Amy, who was almost to the shore with the rope in a death grip. Safe. Any moment she would turn around and yell—
“Lucas! Get out!”
Yep, that. “Coming, babe.” He searched for something to pull himself up, but he stood smack-dab in the middle of the clearing.
“Here!” she called, climbing a spindly tree so that it bent low over the pit. He conjured another rope and tossed over the tree. Amy wrapped it around the trunk, holding onto the end. “Pull!”
The tree drooped with his weight. “Amy, you’re going to fall back in. Climb down. I’ve got this.”
When she hit the ground, the tree lifted, raising him a little more. He heard the sucking sound as his legs came free. The sand particles moved independently of the flow of sludge. He imagined millions of tiny creatures all mourning the loss of dinner.
Shit.
“Then let’s get going.”
They ran, steering clear of other “oases.” Monkeys scampered along tree branches overhead. One swung down, making Amy back right into him. They both tumbled backward, she falling on top of him. He shoved her to the side as the monkey jumped down in front of them.
Of course, it couldn’t be a normal monkey. No, it was a psycho-fanged one with black claws and devilish eyes.
As Lucas scrambled to a defensive position, it leaned close and hissed, “You don’t belong here.”
Lucas felt Amy do the same startled flinch. She blurted out, “No, but some scoundrel who does belong here stole our baby.”
The monkey amazingly seemed to contemplate this. “I saw them.” It nodded its head to the left.
“Can you help us find them?” Amy asked, while he might have asked, “Will you not eat us?”
“The terrible man is taking our baby to the Beyond,” Amy continued. “Where does it go?”
It was odd to see the monkey shrug. “All we know is that those who enter never return. I can help you through the Forest of Lost Souls. That is where your scoundrel should be living, though he escaped some time ago. Follow me.”
Amy and Lucas shared a questioning look, but the monkey grabbed a vine and took off. The answer: follow it.
They entered an even darker wood with gnarled, dead trees that impeded their progress. As the monkey grew farther away, something else grew closer. Lucas turned to the right, catching sight of a human. A sort of human.
The man was gray, as though being viewed through a filter. And slightly stretched, arms and legs disproportionally long and rubbery. His eyes, only gaping dark holes. He reached toward them, uttering, “Help me,” on a hoarse wail. His fingers seemed to elongate. To stretch toward them.
“Go, go, go,” Lucas said, pushing an apparently shocked Amy into moving.
“Don’t let the Lost Souls touch you,” the monkey whispered from a branch high above. “They’ll suck your soul away. You’ll be trapped here... turned into a monkey or other creature.”
Never Fear - The Tarot: Do You Really Want To Know? Page 43