“It’s what we do. We find things. When we get out of this, I’ll show you how to protect yourself from us.”
“You’re sure you’re going to come out of this intact?”
Cameron smiled, though his smile had a predatory quality to it; a sharpness to his eyes. He turned around and walked into the enclosure with his arms stretched at his sides. When he turned around she saw his eyes had become the color of molten gold again, and were glowing as intensely as the amulet around his neck. Behind him, and all around him, shapes were beginning to stir, and soon the enclosure was full of cats—small and large—shoulders up, heads low, and ready to attack.
Their eyes, Alice thought, they glow like his. And then she sensed something. A presence. Invisible, but imposing, and indomitable. She couldn’t see it with her own eyes, but she knew it was there, beside him and all around him. For a moment, only a moment, she thought she saw another face superimposed over Cameron’s; a feral face with sharp teeth and no eyes.
“Go,” Cameron said as the cats encircled him. “I’m going to be just fine.”
“I want to believe you,” she said.
“Just go. If I’m okay, I’ll send crows. Go home and watch your windows.”
Alice nodded, flicked the ignition, and the bike roared to life. The legionnaires wouldn’t have heard it over the sound of the churning sky. She thought maybe they had seen her get on the bike, but when she glanced over her shoulder at the outer gate, it too was covered in thick green and brown vines and roots.
She twisted the throttle. The wheel spun for a second, but then it caught the earth and the bike lurched forward. Alice picked her feet up and guided the bike through the chain-link fence, through the enclosure, and toward the open hole in the living wall on the far side of the sanctuary. Cameron’s golden eyes locked with hers for a split second as she passed him, and a powerful heat rose through her chest and into her neck and cheeks.
Alice brought her eyes front and center again, then ducked as the bike went through the living wall, and started making tracks across open terrain. The powerful winds encircling the area picked up her dust trail and ate it, allowing her to make a stealthy escape, but she didn’t feel good about having fled the sanctuary. Not even the thought of having made it to the road without being chased could quell the sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.
She had left Cameron behind to fend for himself when what the legionnaires wanted was her. Only her. He had seemed confident that he could beat this; that he could come out intact, and with the sheer number of big cats—with their deadly teeth, sharp claws, and gleaming eyes—at his back, she had believed him. Mages or not, the legionnaires would think twice about taking on tigers and leopards… and that panther.
Selene, Alice thought, the name of the goddess of the moon—a symbol of protection in many cultures.
“He’ll be okay,” she said to herself as the bike swallowed miles and spat them out of its tailpipe. “He’s going to be okay.”
CHAPTER 18
Becoming
Open the flood gates, he thought, and when he closed his eyes, this is exactly what he did.
He imagined a hole of light appearing in the darkness, listened to the furious howling of the wind, felt the distant currents of magic begin to flow through the hole—through Isaac—and into this place, but the image was difficult to form. He kept thinking about his mother, about his father, and about that boy in the schoolyard—the way he had cried. He wanted to cry himself, now. In fact, he was crying, and trembling, and having difficulty breathing.
When he opened his eyes he was no longer in the dark place, but looking down upon a tiny kitchen table where Isaac—then Thomas— was sitting. His grandmother’s medicine bag, which had once been filled with pill bottles of various shapes and sizes, lay on its side, its contents emptied. One of the bottles was open, and the Isaac he was looking at now had a handful of them in his hand. A cup of water sat quietly on the table, waiting to be picked up and used as a vessel for his own suicide. His mother had done it, as had his father, so why shouldn’t he?
A year had passed since his father’s death, and if life had been hard following his mother’s suicide, this year had been hell. Seventeen was around the time when children in the United Kingdom started on the path that would take them to higher education, but Thomas had no intention of studying and hadn’t for a long time. He had been hearing a demon’s voice in the back of his mind telling him to do it, over and over and over, and eventually, he had listened.
“It’s the only way,” said the demon that sounded like Isaac; the doppelganger he had seen in the cottage, the thing that had been goading him since he entered the Void. “Tell him to do it, and rest. Your magic is useless here.”
After two failed attempts at calling the Tempest, Isaac believed these words. His Guardian had left, his mind felt like jelly, and he didn’t think he could take more of these memories—these failures of his. Because they had been failures. He had failed to protect his mother from herself, had failed to keep his anger in check, and had failed to give his father a reason to continue living. He had also failed to find a way out of this place, and time was running out.
With a shaky hand, Thomas raised the pills to his lips and tossed them into his mouth. They tasted bitter, and Thomas gagged. Isaac, too, could taste the pills in his own mouth. Thomas went for the glass of water, eager to rid himself of the taste, but then Alice flashed into Isaac’s mind. For a moment he was no longer in the kitchen, about to complete a task he had been too cowardly to do at seventeen; he was back in the dark place, and there was more of him here.
Before he entered the kitchen he hadn’t been able to see his feet, but he could see them now, and more of his arms, too. Was he rematerializing? He wasn’t sure, but something was different now. He felt a little more real, a little more whole. Had it been Alice? Thinking of her had brought him back here. But no, it hadn’t just been thinking of her—it had been the feeling that came after the thought.
He tried to conjure her up in his mind, but shadows closed in around him. Isaac felt himself being taken away again—an alley on a city street. It was night, the asphalt was wet from a hard day’s rain, and the crows were watching Isaac as he stood waiting for something. Waiting for… he heard a moan coming from the throat of the alley, and he ran toward it as if he had suddenly remembered why he was there.
And hadn’t he? On this cold, wet night, in this alley tucked between two warehouses by the South Side docks, hadn’t he found a shivering, hurt “Alice!”
Isaac ran frantically through the alley, looking behind every dumpster and box, searching for her because he knew she was here. He had figured out she had been stolen across to the Reflection, but all of his attempts at getting her out had failed. Nyx, known only as the shadow woman to him then, had rebuked his attempts at opening portals into the Reflection, and Alice had been lost to him. It was the crows that had told him where she would be. At first he didn’t believe they had spoken to him, but they had, and when he found her lying in the fetal position at the back of the alley, curled up next to a chain-link fence, the relief had been absolute.
He had taken her in his arms and tried to rouse her, but while she had been conscious she had also been unaware of where she was.
“Alice, please,” he said, his voice wavering. His chest was tight again, his breathing was rapid and panicked, and he couldn’t keep his body from shaking if he had wanted to. She had been gone for so long, and she was so pale. She said something, barely a couple of words, but he hadn’t heard what she had said. When he drew her close to his chest, she reached for his shoulders and hugged him, but there was no strength left in her arms.
Isaac remembered having picked her up in his arms and walking with her to his car. He had gently laid her down on her back, but she had screamed and passed out. When he went to check beneath her, to see if he had set her down on a box or a sharp object, his hands came away bloody. He didn’t see the injuries to her back then, but h
e saw them later; the vast network of split, bleeding skin.
The scene suddenly changed. They were in her apartment now. Isaac had pushed her too hard, had wanted her to talk to him about what had happened, but she had refused.
“Why can’t you just accept that I don’t want to talk about this, Isaac?” she had said. There had been anger in her voice then, but in this memory there was something else, too—malice. It wasn’t just her harsh voice, her balled fists, her sneer, or the venom in her eyes.
“I want to help you, Alice,” Isaac had said, “I can help you if you would only tell me what happened to you exactly.”
“I don’t want to!”
“Why not?”
“Because I don’t, okay? I know you think you’re trying to help, but the last time I checked you weren’t a psychologist.”
“Would you go to one?”
“Why the fuck would I go and see a psychologist about this? What do they know about what I’ve seen?”
“Nothing, and neither do I. Not if you don’t tell me.”
Alice screamed, grabbed the book she had been reading, which lay closed on the coffee table, and hurled it at Isaac. Isaac ducked and avoided the hit.
“Get out,” she said.
“Alice.”
“I want you gone! I’m sick of this!”
Isaac understood she was in a bad place, he had seen what had happened to her after her return from the Reflection—she had quit her job, had distanced herself from friends, and had closed herself off to him. This was his mother all over again. He had failed. She wanted him gone, and nothing he had said after that moment had helped. He had left, and they didn’t see each other again for two years.
Had she been a weaker person, he may never have seen her again.
The world around him faded to black, like a scene transition in an old movie, and he found himself in the dark place again—in the Void. He was less than he had been before, barely more than a chest and a head supported by ribbons of white and blue mist. The space, which had seemed wide and cavernous, now felt so small he could touch the edges if he were to stretch his hands out far enough. But he didn’t want to stretch out his hands because there were things in the darkness; creatures he couldn’t see, but that could see him.
“Alice,” he said into the darkness, and in his mind he conjured not her face, but the last time he had seen her.
It had been at the museum. Dustin was helping her stand and they were about to leave. She had been worried about him, but he had told her he would be okay. His nerves had caused him to shake then because he knew what he wanted to do, but didn’t know how she would take it. When he kissed her on the forehead, she had smiled. He had smelled her hair—her coconut shampoo—and she had smiled at him.
Isaac’s cloud body seemed to pulse from inside, and some of his features became solid again; half of an arm, a leg, and his magic bangle were visible. He flexed his right hand, which was odd because while he could see his fingers and his bangle, his forearm became light, connected to his chest only by tangles of blue bands and sparkles.
He concentrated on thoughts of Alice, and then drew on the power of the Tempest. His magic bangle began to glow, and he felt the currents of magic surge through him like a stream. His body shook. His heart raced. At one point he thought his almost gaseous body would explode and he would be no more, but he kept his thoughts focused on Alice. Her smile, the way she wrinkled her nose when she was in deep thought, the intensity with which she spoke about her work.
His Guardian, though invisible, was his anchor against the tide of the Tempest; but she was his tether against the pull of the Void.
When his body was solid again and the darkness around him seemed to have given him some breathing room, Isaac stretched his hands out wide, turned around on the spot, and laughed.
“You had me for a moment,” he said, “You really did. But I know your game now. I know what you’re doing, and I know how to fight you.”
“You can fight all you want,” said a voice in the back of Isaac’s mind, “But until you figure out how to get out of here, we will have you in the end.”
Isaac suspected the voice was right. He had, after all, continued to degrade even after the first time he had thought about Alice. He was whole now, but how long would that last before he broke down entirely? But this burst of wholeness, of clarity, had also brought with it a great revelation. Isaac had been shown his failings, his greatest weaknesses, and his reaction—his instinct—had been to be ashamed of them. To be guilty.
To learn, you must become.
He was those flaws already, and they made him stronger. The taint of the Void in his body was weakening him, like an infection that would eventually kill him. But like his past, like his failings, there was no running from this. No matter how hard he fought, the Void would take him in the end. Isaac decided, in this very moment, that if the Void was going to take him, it was going to take him on his terms.
Isaac closed his eyes, lowered his defenses, and knelt on the floor. The darkness came rushing in, but he didn’t see it happen; right now, he was at peace.
CHAPTER 19
Trapped
Riding back to Ashwood, Alice couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t enacting part of some big plan in the battle against Nyx—she was running. Ever since she made the decision to leave the safe house, her goal had been to find Nyx. Since then she had fallen into a trap, had encountered Pain Children, and been tracked down by a powerful group of mages bent on her capture. But instead of standing and fighting, Alice had run.
Was that all she was without Trapper? All bark and no bite?
Isaac had called her a Half-Lich, but what did that mean beyond the ability to sense auras and detect the presence of the supernatural? And what if Trapper worked independently of her own abilities, meaning that it didn’t need her to work the way it did? Didn’t that mean she was, effectively, nothing? It couldn’t mean that. It just couldn’t. But then what had she really accomplished since leaving the safe house?
Alice pushed these thoughts to the back of her mind as she cruised along the motorway with the wind whipping at her hair. Despite the reality that she was being hunted by mages and that she was outmatched in just about every respect by Nyx and her forces, she allowed herself to be lost in the illusion of freedom offered to her by the Harley purring between her legs. She could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone; but she went home, because all she wanted to be was herself and that’s where Cameron had told her to go.
She had pushed the speed limit for a couple of miles following her escape from the sanctuary, but when she got into Ashwood she played by the rules and rolled along at a normal pace. Attracting attention wasn’t something she wanted to do, and obeying the speed limit went a long way toward achieving that goal, especially during daylight hours.
Finally, she arrived at the Victoria district and cruised past the many eateries and local markets in the area. At the foot of her apartment building, she saw her mustang parked squarely between two other cars. There was a rule that you couldn’t keep a fancy car in Ashwood because the moment you let it slip out of your sight something bad would happen to it. This wasn’t the case in Victoria, as evidenced by the currently intact condition of her own car.
Parking the bike a few spaces down, she slipped the key out of the ignition, and headed toward the door to her apartment building. A woman standing outside with a cigarette between her fingers and curlers in her hair—a client of the salon just a few doors down—gave Alice a pair of narrow, suspicious eyes, like she had just witnessed someone licking a dirty street light. Alice returned the sharp look, and the woman frowned, flicked her cigarette butt onto the sidewalk, and returned to the salon.
Alice took the elevator and opened the door to her apartment, which was quiet and clean. In the dimness it was almost serene, but a strange smell hung in the air. Alice made a cursory round of her living room, checking her kitchenette and the closet door before opening a window to let the
aroma out. Maybe it’s the kitty litter, she thought. She remembered Dustin having mentioned a weird smell a few days ago, but she hadn’t given him instructions to clean the litter box out, and maybe he hadn’t had the initiative to do it on his own.
“Elvira,” she said in a sing-song voice. “Where are you, baby?”
Elvira was in many ways like most cats—solitary, private, except for when she wanted something—but in other ways she had more in common with dogs. It wasn’t uncommon to see Elvira standing by the door, grooming herself as Alice entered her home at any time of the day or night. But she wasn’t at the door today, and that struck Alice as a little odd. Dustin had been coming to her apartment, however, and this particular cat didn’t like strangers—
Something thudded in another room.
Immediately she turned, her spine stiffening as her heart leapt into her throat, hackles went up, and goose bumps rose on her arms. She thought the cat may have made the sound, but was almost sure it had come from inside her closet. This wasn’t entirely surprising considering her past experience with the closet containing her Chest of Haunts, but she had already been a little on edge to begin with.
Alice took a deep breath, exhaled the nerves, and circled around the couch. The padlock securing the closet door was there, as it had always been. This was good. She grabbed her keys and unlocked it, then set the padlock on the kitchen counter, and opened the closet door. The chest was there too, sitting quietly on the floor, minding its own business.
“Hello, old friend,” she said, squatting to come level with it.
Alice ran her fingers over the top of the brown chest and felt the grooves of the sigils etched into it beneath her fingertips. Touching the chest was almost electric, a feeling that caused her entire body to shudder uncontrollably. Some said this wild spasm happened whenever a ghost tried to harm you. Others said it happened when someone stepped over your grave. Considering she didn’t yet have a grave and, she hoped, she would know if there was a ghost in the room, she was able to debunk the superstition entirely.
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