An upper layers woman was dragged past him by a group of lower layer thugs, screaming at the top of her lungs. Andrew tracked her with his eyes, ignoring the urge to get involved.
What peace keepers there were had retreated back to the palace. Myrmidon ruffians were here and there, no doubt paid muscle, pushing unhappy citizens down the street towards the billowing banners.
The Myrmidons had enough followers. Just enough to send things tipping towards insanity. And they were having a grand time with it. Whilst they had been working on converting the palace and the queen they had clearly been working below as well. The rejection of the old religion had given way to a hunger for something new. Their pseudoscience and twisted philosophy offered that.
The roar of the dragon shook the city. That creature turned his stomach sour. Defeating the Myrmidons and finding Victoria would have been no problem at all if it weren’t for that damn beast! He’d been wracking his brain for a way to kill the creature, and had not come up with any plausible solution so far. It was maddening. The entire city was burning to the ground and he could do nothing for it.
From ahead, just beyond the crumbled remains of a building, came the echoes of an angry crowd. Andrew picked up his pace, following the other stragglers who were headed—or herded—the same direction.
A mob had formed in the lower bazaar, angrily frothing beneath red Myrmidon banners. Their numbers were not particularly strong, yet people were curious, and more were arriving by the minute.
A voice was shouting from ahead, but over the noise of the crowd, Andrew couldn’t make it out. And even his impressive height wasn’t giving him an adequate enough view. With a growl, Andrew shouldered towards the front of the mob.
Once finding an adequate spot, his heart gave a violent lurch. Victoria! On her knees before Ramses, chin lifted in defiance. The great dragon, Noel, sat just behind them, watching the crowd with sharp, yellow eyes.
Andrew’s chest ached with desperation. And something else, some heavy sense Andrew couldn’t shake, was twisting through the atmosphere. That haunting sense that hadn’t left him since he’d arrived, and it was thriving down here.
‘The upper layers do not seem to be the ones with power,’ Ramses said musingly. ‘They know that I and my friends have the ability to grant all of you the power of gods! They know it and they fear it! So they sent us away whilst they cower inside.’
The crowd roared with anger.
‘They do not concern themselves with the pain down here that they cause. Your revolution with the Red Scorpions did not go as planned. The Denizens knew of an ancient power, they worshipped it, but did not harness it. When they went away the palace stole those relics from us. Is it any wonder things go now as they do?
‘The Royal Family wishes to deny the power our gods have given us. We must take it back. We must demand from them the relic that is ours. We must control our own destiny. And if they will not let us, then we will take it from them!’ He gestured towards Noel. ‘Do you see? He came to us from the stars! He knows of the power! And look at him now!’
Andrew scowled, wracking his brain. He couldn’t attract Victoria’s attention without attracting that of the others. He wasn’t so concerned by that, if they would really exchange her for him, but he didn’t have what they wanted.
He looked up at the dragon. The creature was hardly paying attention to what Ramses was yelling about. Bored, like a cat, till he had something to play with. It would not be wise. He was almost glad she could not see him, for he did not want to disappoint her.
‘And the Traveller,’ Ramses hissed, making the crowd go quiet. ‘It is time we demanded for him as well. For he is selfish and dangerous. What has he done but make a show of his arrogance? Deny you from exploring where Noel had fallen? Been so desirous to change this city…our traditions! The Traveller wants to be special. He’d rather keep all of his power to himself then help out all of us below.’
Victoria rolled her eyes.
‘He wants to keep all the knowledge and power to himself!’ Ramses repeated.
Angry noises.
‘Why should he sit up in comfort? What did he do to deserve that?’ Ramses’s eyes searched the crowd darkly. ‘Let him come down here and lead us all into the light!’ He turned to Victoria smugly. ‘We have the princess here. Why does she not command his presence?’
Victoria said something very rude which made Andrew smile, despite everything.
Ramses sighed. ‘Ah well. She has no true power, save for perhaps over him! Go on, go on and demand of the king he hand the foreigner over! It is your right, is it not?’
And with that, the crowds broke, marching towards the upper layers in a determined tide. Andrew felt the people break past him like water but he didn’t take his eyes from Ramses. Yet the priest didn’t see him. He’d turned back to the huge monster crouching on the wall, whilst hauling Victoria to her feet.
With a heavy flutter, the dragon dropped from the stone and landed beside the two of them, human before he hit the ground. Andrew wrinkled his nose and pushed closer along the wall, attempting to close the space between them. He couldn’t guess how acute Noel’s senses were, but as distracted as the man appeared now by Ramses’s crossness, Andrew was willing to chance it.
‘We should have heard a response from the palace by now,’ Noel was growling. ‘You said we would.’
Ramses paused and glowered at Noel. ‘If you would not have made such a blunder as you did at the palace we wouldn’t be in this position! I told you to use your influence on him. Not go charging in like a rhinoceros and scare him off!’
Noel bared his teeth and a low rumble escaped him. ‘I have been locked away too long to be patient. Charming methods are too slow.’
‘Andrew’s too clever to be charmed by an idiot like you, anyhow!’ Victoria spat.
‘But not so for you my dear, isn’t that right?’ Ramses purred. He fixed Noel with a flat look and pressed his staff to the side of Noel’s head, brushing it against the curls. ‘Yes, and how exactly are we supposed to find what we are looking for if we go on without his help, hmm? He knows what we need. It saves our faces to wait and not admit any…ignorance. We do not need to demand. He knows.’
Noel’s eyes shone hatefully. ‘He’s not leaving the palace. Nothing is going to pull him out of there. We should be tearing it down. The girl’s done no good.’ He smirked at Victoria. ‘Guess you aren’t so important after all.’
Victoria huffed her breath. ‘Guess you aren’t, either!’
Ramses went quiet, despite the uneasy atmosphere around them. ‘Tear it all down? And lose what we’re looking for in the rubble? No. There’s another way. Now, be still. Wait. He will come. His curiosity for the device will draw him in.’
Noel crossed his arms. ‘You don’t even know what the device is. You are all fools.’
The staff smacked him again and Noel growled. ‘That is why we have you. Now come. There is a way you can make use of yourself.’
Noel frowned. ‘What would that be?’
Ramses pushed Victoria towards the red tent and gave Noel a curious look. ‘You are our esteemed prophet! Time to look to the beyond; to appeal to that power that gives you such…insight. Perhaps it can be…encouraged to persuade our friend for all our benefit.’
Andrew unhappily watched them go, mulling over that. He didn’t believe a word. It was completely ridiculous. But he did not feel as safe as perhaps he had.
Chapter Twenty-One
As Andrew made his way towards the palace he fought with his desire to take one of the tunnels back to their den. It all had to do with the time device. At least Noel’s interests went that far. Ramses, he wasn’t so sure of. The Myrmidons, he felt, were still too stuck in their obsession with the supernatural to be a true threat when it came to something as advanced and alien as that.
Or so he hoped.
His legs gave an alarming, drunken wobble beneath him and he just managed to save himself from a fall. He huffed his breath
in frustration and marched at a quicker pace. If his body was about to break down, he needed to be in a safe place.
Something else was bothering him. Something tugging at his insides with a slow, growing insistency. Like something had latched on to him from the lowest layers and he was carrying it back with him. Thinking on that too deeply sent his skin crawling in revulsion. It was nothing but simple paranoia.
He stumbled again and a spike of fear ate at him. It was nothing. Nothing.
The remainder of the journey back to his room was much the same. He tugged off his disguise with shaking hands and washed the dust from him, vision blurring. He wished he could somehow wash away the clinging sense that wrapped itself around him. It would not leave. It simply grew.
Ramses’s words about appealing to some sort of power to help them…
He shook his head curtly, casting a look round his room. Nothing there. Of course. He was overreacting and it was beneath him. He reached out blindly for a robe and pulled it on before shuffling across the room. On the way he wistfully cast a glance to Victoria’s chamber. He wished she were there now so he could wake her. She would have been cross with him…yet better that than her trapped with those beasts below.
He left the door open; feeling incredibly trapped in this small space. Might as well have been something else there, taking up too much room. Finally he sat down at the small desk and patted his notebook, once he’d pulled it from its hiding. He flipped to his latest notes.
“The device appears to be more of a doorway than a centre for control, as Samantha Turner seems to hope. It does seem that it could possibly respond to other technology, if it were presented, but at this time I have found nothing of use, or any mention of what could be of use, so it is rather worthless for me to suppose.”
He tapped the page for a moment, frowning. Another piece of technology… and it was in the Bone Vault. But it needed a key—in the treasury, obviously. Why was everyone so convinced that he could find it?
His gut churned. Of course he had a very pressing urge to find it—Victoria’s life may very well depend on it. Perhaps it would help Turner as well. And the idea of beating Noel and Ramses to what they wanted simply for the pleasure of it was sounding more appealing by the moment. But, all of that came after saving Victoria. And it was difficult to focus on any smaller pleasures besides that.
Annoyingly, his head swam, starting to ache dully. He closed his eyes, not to stop it, but out of curiosity. It seemed completely impossible, but…was there a chance he could, in fact, sense that key?
It was still an odd sensation, how easily it was becoming to dip down into that other sense. That sense that shouldn’t exist. That sense he hadn’t ever acknowledged till Tollin had rather irritatingly pointed it out.
This time, however, felt different. The sense he’d been aware of since leaving the lower layer had not left him with his thoughts. It was a dark, murky thing, clouding his senses, and it was angry. It wasn’t supposed to be there, Andrew could understand that much of it. It had been pulled from deep within those recesses of nothingness and forced here with him and it wasn’t happy about it.
His body took a physical hit, shooting a stabbing pain through his limbs and Andrew understood. This thing, this hitchhiker or parasite or whatever the hell it was, was responsible.
What do you want with me?
The thing snarled unhappily with the attempted communication. ‘Nothing.’
Another sharp barb of pain and Andrew’s vision, already dimmed by focusing on the thing at hand, blinked out for a moment. He struggled to remain calm. The fact that an unknown entity was capable of causing him physical harm was more than a little terrifying. But Andrew O’Neill was not one to panic.
Then why bother me now?
The thing twisted deeper into his consciousness, but to Andrew’s shallow satisfaction, could find no hold. It was frustrated. ‘Desperation.’
It was stretched thin, wherever it had come from, perhaps that dark shore; hauled up like some fish from the deep. There had to be a way to sever this connection before it did something to him first. He attempted to search out any weakness the thing might have before it could notice what he was up to. There wasn’t much there. Nothing but the clouding fog sparked here and there with flashes of pain.
He rolled his jaw against an alarming loss of feeling. What are you desperate for? You’re looking for something. Something connected to the time device. You believe it’s in the palace, don’t you? But you don’t know how to find it. And for some reason you think I do.
‘Only those with certain ability can find it.’
He couldn’t stop the slight flutter in his belly at that. Being told he had an ability that others didn’t have was, well, always flattering. Why do you want it so badly? I find it difficult to believe the Myrmidons understand the full implications of what the time device is. Noel, perhaps, but not Ramses.
The thing rumbled a little irritably. It was straining to keep its connection, as weak as it was. ‘They are all fools.’
Useful fools.
‘Yes. And we will use them. As we will use you. Let them believe they are in control for now. Let them control the beast. We will get what we want in the end.’
Andrew tried to spread his fingers, but found it wasn’t working for him. This thing had a good hold on him. And what is it, exactly, that you want?
‘Freedom. Control. Food.’
Somewhere in the disintegration of his senses Andrew felt it tug at him. The dark thing felt it, too. That’s it. That’s what you want.
The thing coiled.
It was true; it was here in the palace. Andrew wasn’t exactly sure how to explain it, but he knew that it was. If he focused he knew he’d be able to find it. It would lead him straight to it.
‘Go…’
Andrew steeled himself and remained where he was. The thing was weak, but so was his body, and the force it pressed against him was difficult to fight.
‘There are consequences for disobedience.’
Andrew puffed his breath. There are consequences for everything. And I’m not your puppet. Not like the Myrmidons. You need me. I see no reason to be afraid.
Roaring, painful fire went through him, making his head snap back. He groaned with the pressure suddenly crushing through his skull. The room began to spin.
‘Our influence goes beyond you. You resist us; we will make you pay for it. We will make you obey.’
Go ahead and try. Andrew’s last snarl was broken as the thing took from him the last bit of strength he had.
* * * * *
Tollin jerked awake with a gasp.
All of the air may as well have been sucked from his lungs; he couldn’t get it back.
He passed a hand over his eyes and stared blearily up at the black nothing above him. His heart was still thudding in his chest, but the dream that had woken him was already leaving, much like smoke blown away on the wind. Yet that notion of thick ropes of black wrapping round him, prodding at his belly, snaking round his skull, it lingered in his head in some primeval fear he couldn’t quite grasp.
It was near impossible to ignore how his chest heaved: the hollow pit just beneath his sternum. It made him feel sick. It was a marvel he did not cave inwards.
Tollin pushed up shakily and scrubbed his face with his hands. When he’d last nodded off he’d been gathering tools for another trip to the core. How many years ago had that been? What was wrong with him? What was wrong with this place? It was eating away at him with a hungry persistence, coiling itself around his chest with crushing pressure.
There was something hanging just on the tip of his tongue, something that could help release the pressure. Sam.
He found himself saying her name without really realising it.
Still drunk with sleep, Tollin staggered towards the edge of the island. With careful grip he leaned as far over the stomach-lurching drop as he dared—which was quite far—to peer past the black void, to look at the dying star. Sti
ll, that sense of something from the corner of his eye, slinking back every time he looked, nagged at him.
It was so desolate here. So lonely.
Tollin was well familiar with loneliness. But he’d come to almost forget the feeling since Sam had come into his life and inexplicably saved him from the crushing silence he was used to.
The grim realisation had dawned on him very early on in this prison.
Sam didn’t exist.
She wouldn’t be born for—he mentally did a rough count, for another twenty years!
It was like she was dead. The idea hit in a hard, low blow. He rested his head against a cool, vibrating crystal with a heavy breath. An insidious, unhappy feeling, like a knife, twisted up inside of him, behind his heart. Sam was…no. Sam wasn’t.
This is how it will always feel. You will continue to live and Samantha will die. It will be years from now, or it could be the next Realm you visit, but Sam will die. And then you will for ever be alone, as you are now. You will feel this agonising sickness for the rest of your pathetic life.
Tollin tried to shake the thoughts as they snaked through his head. They weren’t his own. At least, he didn’t think they were.
You saw the mirror. You saw what it showed.
Tollin clenched his teeth. ‘That was only a possible future. The future isn’t set in stone.’
But you know it’s true. Because you can never give her up. You never will. You’ll pull her down with you and she will die young, just as the mirror predicted, because you cannot let her go. You will be Samantha’s death.
Time’s counting down, Traveller.
‘LEAVE ME BE!’ Tollin shouted to the void.
Silence echoed back to him, pushed in on him, laughing; made him feel so very small and insignificant. He collapsed; his guilt pummelling him. Even though he knew the truth he couldn’t even bring himself to acknowledge it. He couldn’t say it out loud. He couldn’t even think it.
Welcome Home (Alternate Worlds Book 3) Page 26