by Amos Cassidy
“We should be at the Beyond soon,” Ryder said. “Just keep moving. Eyes ahead at all times.”
It sounded like another critter had joined the first. No. Not just one more, but several more—a chorus of dozens of legs in the dirt. Clay tried not to think about it. He did as Ryder said, kept his eyes straight ahead. Well, on Ryder’s large back at least.
The sounds were getting louder.
“We’re being hunted,” Ryder said.
“What?”
“Don’t stop and don’t panic.”
“Is it more of those ankle grabbers?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“Just keep moving.”
“Ryder?”
“Keep moving, Clay.”
“We have to get to the Beyond.”
“I know.”
They turned a corner, stepping over piles of twisted metal and stone.
“There,” Ryder said.
Clay saw the lines tied off on a bowed and twisted lamppost. And beyond that was an ominous curtain of purple and black.
“The Beyond,” Ryder said.
The song of the critters was everywhere, and Clay swore he could feel the ground vibrating beneath his boots. No way was he taking any sort of breather until he was safely out of range.
“Just a little more,” Ryder said.
“Should we run?”
“Not until the right moment. We’re prey, yeah, but being running prey would make things worse. We need the window to be wide-open, can’t have them cut us off. It’ll be a brief window. Keep calm. When I say, we sprint.”
“Okay.”
“In ten seconds, run as fast as you can, straight into the Beyond.”
“Got it.”
“Ten . . .”
The ground burst open before Clay, cutting him off from Ryder in a spray of dust and dirt.
“Clay!”
The critter was huge and had ten legs. Its body was the shape of a spider, striped in black and white. A dozen black orbs watched him, pincers twitched. It was on its hind legs, the others dangerously close and looking like two rows of deadly scythes.
Shrieks filled the air, as did Ryder’s roar. Clay was blind to everything else. All his eyes could focus on was the monster before him.
He took a step back and the critter hissed. But this was no critter. It was bigger, a beast of terrifying magnitude.
“Clay!”
The creature hissed and leaned in closer. It stank of rot, and Clay felt like his bladder was going to empty.
“Clay!”
More shrieks, a sickening wet sound, some hissing and another explosion of dirt.
I’m dead. I’m dead.
“Clay!”
He couldn’t die here. This wasn’t how it supposed to happen. He had to do something.
He reached round to his backpack, slowly, and found his tiny LED flashlight. All of those dark eyes watched his every move, the odd hiss rising from the massive body.
But it wasn’t making a move.
He clicked the flashlight on and shone it in the thing’s eyes.
It worked. The critter screamed and fell onto its back. That flashlight had one powerful bulb in its tiny body.
“Clay! If you can hear me, run! Run into—”
Ryder was roaring again and something crunched. It may well have been bone.
“Ryder!”
Please don’t be dead! He kept the flashlight on and moved around the monster, trying see through the dirt.
He had to run.
Ryder had told him to run.
He couldn’t leave Ryder behind. But he needed to find Ash.
“Clay!”
The dust parted before him and there was Ryder, another twisted pole in his hand. Behind him was the Beyond, waiting to carry them away.
“Run!”
He’d paused too long. Before his feet could get to work, he was wrapped in sticky coils.
“Clay!”
He was rising in the air, his body encased in black silk. He strained to see what had happened. The sharp ends of a critter’s legs were weaving the cocoon he was trapped in, only his head was exposed. The more the critter wrapped, the more it squeezed his bones in a suffocating hold.
“No!” Ryder swung at the creature. “No!”
The critter started moving away. Clay was its prize. But Ryder was quick and lethal with his pole.
Every strike from Ryder’s weapon made the critter jolt and cry out. It spat black ooze at him, but Ryder twisted and dodged. Clay’s lungs screamed for breath. He had to get out of this thing before all of his insides were crushed. Yet despite his attempts to wiggle, he couldn’t move anything but his head.
Damn this! Damn this! He felt so helpless. What was he but a weakling from Shelter? This shouldn’t be happening.
No! Not giving up!
There was a shudder and the critter screamed and fell on its back. It dropped Clay. He rolled across the ground, trapped in his cocoon before stopping face-up. Straining his neck, he looked over to see Ryder driving the pole into the monster’s head. The legs twitched and went slack.
Ryder was on him, pulling at the black binds, scraping the jagged edge of the pole along them. Air filled his lungs as he drew deep breaths, suddenly free. His bones expanded, organs sighing in relief.
Ryder offered him a hand. “Come on.”
Clay took it, getting to his feet
Critters were screaming. He wouldn’t be food, couldn’t be food. They had to get out of the Cusp. His body was nothing but aches and pains. He could barely feel his legs, but he pushed on. He couldn’t let go.
Together they ran at the Beyond, and darkness devoured the grey.
ASH
You’ll know when you’re close, Cal had said. You’ll know when you’re close, Daemon had said.
They’d been right.
I knew we were close.
I knew because my skin had broken out in beads of perspiration. Because the air that I inhaled was warm and dusty, making me cough and my eyes tear up. I knew because the sky ahead wasn’t dark. It was red and gold and fucking glorious!
I don’t know when I fell to my knees. I didn’t even know I was crying until my vision blurred too much to see anything but a haze of colour.
This was the sun. They had a sun. I could see the sun!
I felt Daemon’s presence at my back. He didn’t speak, he didn’t tell me to hurry up. He simply waited while I rode the emotional wave that seemed to want to go on forever.
Finally, the tears ebbed. I wiped my face with my shirt sleeve and shrugged off my backpack. I pulled out the suit Coralee had made. It was hot here and I knew that it was going to get hotter. Inferna’s name suddenly made sense. Inferno. Heat and dust and that sun.
I was already wearing the boots Cal had given me. I just needed to change into the suit. There was no one about as far as the eye could see, and with the glowing sun in the distance, that was pretty far. The landscape was mainly flat with the odd crop of rocks and dry, dead-looking trees. I could strip and change right here.
I got to my feet and held up the cloth. Daemon was facing me, his gaze fixed on a point over my shoulder. His effort to show he wasn’t going to watch me change? I chuckled.
“No way, dude. You’re gonna have to turn around before I change.”
His shoulders tensed, and for a moment, I thought he was going to be stubborn about it, but then he slowly shuffled round so he was facing away.
I changed fast, afraid he’d sneak a peek or something.
“You can look now,” I said.
He turned slowly to face me, and I posed, hands on hips for his inspection. I knew I looked strange, all crimson and silver. My hair was tucked into the hood, which had shrunk to fit my head and snugly frame my face. It was tight, really tight, but instead of feeling constricted and hot, I felt free and cool.
Daemon’s eyes scanned me from head to toe. “Good, you’ll blend.”
“Blend? Is this
some kind of fashion thing in Inferna?”
His lips curved in that humourless smile again. “Something like that.” I wondered what he’d look like if he really smiled, with humour. Would his eyes light up? And then I wondered why the hell I cared.
“We should get moving, act while the city is in slumber.”
“They sleep during the day?”
“The nobility are mainly nocturnal. It’s the perfect time to ask questions about your friend while the slums are on low watch.”
Slums? Nobility? I’d done enough history to know that the world he was describing sounded archaic. But the rules were different here, and if I was going to survive, I needed to listen, ask questions, and learn.
The sky was getting brighter and brighter by the second. A red haze spread across it like a lazy stain.
“What is that?” I jogged to catch up to him and pointed into the sky. He paused and looked up but didn’t reply. Maybe he didn’t know what I was talking about. “The red stain thing, what is it?”
He tucked in his chin and continued to stride toward the city. “Dust from the mines.”
“Like gold mines?”
“Inferna has no need for gold.”
“Then what?”
“Aether.”
“What’s Aether?”
“It’s what everything is made from. It’s the coveted substance of creation, and Inferna owns it.”
“I don’t understand? What do you mean substance of creation? Creating what?”
“Everything.”
We continued in silence for a few seconds and I was beginning to think that was it, that he wasn’t going to explain further, but then he began to speak.
“They say that the mines of Inferna are the epicentre of all creation. It’s where our worlds were born. Inferna is a world in its own right, just like your earth is a world. It is vast and dangerous and filled with horror you cannot even begin to imagine, and yet it is also filled with beauty and wonders that would make your head reel. Inferna was built around the mines, claimed the mines as its own once the true owner was gone for good. It has used the Aether residue ever since to continue to populate its soil.”
Worlds linked by the Shadowlands, worlds that had communicated forever while earth had been left out in the cold. Why? Why hadn’t we been privy to the grand scheme of things? And to think mankind had been searching the stars for answers when all along the answers had been under our noses. I wanted to know, to understand.
Daemon continued. “The first Infernians to be created by the Aether were perfection in every way, gods in their own right, or so they believed. But they were forced to work, to plough and bake and sew. It was the way of things for us all, a circle of life granted to us by our maker, the Heart of all our worlds, but then the Heart was taken, altered, and it seemed, as if in the blink of an eye, it was gone all together. We were alone, adrift, broken. The balance was disrupted, and it was then that your Earth began to feel the effects as the barriers that kept it apart from us began to crumble. Instead of working on a way to prevent this, to enforce the fabric of our worlds, the Infernians claimed the Aether mines. Why should they work, plough fields, and sew or bake when they could create others to do that for them? Hellions they called them, creatures of all shapes and sizes, who would work to serve them. Infertile creatures, who could not procreate, creatures to work the mines and bring forth more Aether to make more Hellions. They sell it too, to Saul and Enchansa. In Saul, they turn it into electricity and technology, and in Enchansa, they call it magic. No matter how much Saul and Enchansa may hate the Infernan ways, they would never do anything to intervene. They would never risk losing their Aether supply.”
“So Aether originated in Inferna? What about Enchansa, Saul and Earth?”
“The Heart created all the worlds, Aether never really played a part in your realm, but it has always been precious to those born in the Tri-realms.”
I took a moment to absorb all this, digesting the information, filing it away for later examination. “Someone said that only an Infernan, or someone who had been there before, could find Inferna.”
“That is true. Inferna is never in one place. It moves constantly, but those created there will always find it. If not born of it, once you set foot on its soil, you will become connected to it.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to be connected to such a place, but I didn’t really have a choice. I recalled Avery’s reluctance to ask Daemon to do this, his attempt to sway me with seduction. They’d been protecting him from this place, and now that Daemon had explained how it worked, I couldn’t help but wonder how he fit in here, what his life had been like, and whether he had been a Hellion or a noble. I was about to ask him when he came to a halt.
I stopped, watching his profile as he inhaled deeply.
I waited, and then he began to move again, sure and fast across the barren land, closer and closer to the place of his birth.
I picked up the pace, keeping in his shadow. Before I knew it, the ground underfoot was blood red and the sky overhead a deep orange.
A strange scent wafted over me, sweet and sharp. I’d never smelled anything like it before, the only thing I had to compare it with in my limited repertoire of sensory memory was incense. Clay had found some once, and we’d burned it sparingly. It had been a pungent but pleasant aroma, and this wasn’t entirely different.
“We’re here.” Daemon said. He came to a halt so suddenly that I almost careened into his back. “Stay close. Do not speak to anyone. Let me do the talking.”
I nodded, my eyes growing wide as I peered around him at the world spread out before us. I don’t know what I was expecting: gates, a wall, something to show a delineation of here and there. But Inferna rose out of the barren land like a red and orange metropolis of rock and dust and more rock. In the distance, I saw towers and turrets and flying things that circled the highest buildings. Closer to the ground were shacks and huts and three-storey higgledy-piggledy buildings that looked as if a child had built them. Among these shacks wove creatures, all shapes and sizes, and all shades of red, black, and silver, or a combination of all. I glanced up at Daemon in surprise; he looked nothing like these creatures. His colouring, although dusky, was nothing like the colouring of these creatures.
“Are they Hellions?” I asked.
Daemon nodded.
“And what are you? A noble?”
The air around him seemed to freeze, the temperature dropping, and I wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to pry,” I said.
His shoulders unwound. “The truth of my existence is no secret in Inferna, and no doubt news of my arrival will spread fast.” He turned his head slightly, offering me his profile. “Hellion born, not created. I’m what you would call an abomination.”
“I would never call you an abomination.”
He turned away. “We should get going and make our enquiries. Let’s find your friend and bargain for her freedom.”
It was clear that the subject of his origin was closed for now. With a final, deep inhalation, Daemon stepped into Inferna.
CLAY
The monster was behind them ont he other side of the Beyond and Clay didn’t have time to dwell on hid near death experience before his attention was captivated by something glorious.
“Is that the moon?” Clay asked.
“By the Mother, Clay! That was really bloody close!”
“Is . . . is . . . that the moon?”
“Yeah, I think it is,” Ryder said
“So beautiful.”
“It is.”
Clay couldn’t take his eyes off the silver disc. All his life he’d longed to see it, as well as the sun. “Thank you for saving me.”
“It’s nothing.”
“I’m so glad you’re here.” He collapsed to his knees as his adrenaline spike ebbed “That was close.”
“We should keep moving,” Ryder said. “They haven’t followed us through, but that could change.”
>
Outin the Shadowlands. He was out in the Shadowlands.
“The Shadowlands,” he said, as if confirming it aloud. As Clay looked around, he realised it wasn’t what he’d expect. “Wait, why does this look so . . . unbroken?”
“You’re right,” Ryder said.
“We’ve been lied to, tricked into thinking this world was . . . Look at it! All this time we’ve been locked away in Shelter while this place was kept from us. By the Mother, there are houses here, homes fit to live in. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Ryder said. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”
“Do you . . .” he hesitated. “Do you think Blake and the council knew about this?”
“I can’t answer that, Clay.”
The pang of sadness left a bitter sting in his heart. Mother, he missed Blake so much already. He wanted to be curled up with him again. It was a longing he couldn’t stomach. Blake . . . things would never be the same again.
Clay got to his feet. “Let’s keep moving.”
“Which way do you think first?”
He realised, then, that Ash could be anywhere.
“It doesn’t matter.” He stood a little straighter. “I’ll search every inch of this place until I find her.”
“I’m with you,” Ryder said.
ASH
I was doing good, staying close, keeping my mouth shut, not that it would have mattered. These creatures spoke another language entirely. Guttural and melodic and kinda beautiful, and when Daemon responded in kind, I couldn’t help the weird breathless fluttering of my chest. The strange language on his tongue sounded more than beautiful, it sounded primal and sexy.
Daemon had questioned several Hellions, but no one seemed to have seen Bernie or Treagor. They didn’t pay me any attention, just a quick glance and then dismissal. Daemon finished questioning another Hellion and then turned to me, shaking his head. I was beginning to lose hope.
As we wandered past stalls selling dry-looking fruit and shrivelled up vegetables, I started to wonder if this had been a fool’s errand all along. This world was huge. A vast metropolis filled with danger and Bernie could, for all I knew, be on the other side of it. I wasn’t one to easily admit defeat, but the admission was worming its way up my throat, ready to burst free, when Daemon grasped my wrist and pulled me close.