by Erik Hyrkas
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t know it would do that.”
“They know we’re here for sure now,” she whispered. She pulled out her necklace and observed that the arrow still pointed above them. “The ilo is still up there. I wonder if we scared off the demon-birds or just helped them get ready. We should get up there as fast as we can.” She paused and looked at the red ball again. “Maybe I should carry that.”
Brit held out her hand and he gave it to her.
“Looks like some sort of weapon,” Hunter said. “You might want to be careful. You don’t want to kill yourself with it.”
“How did you activate it?” she asked.
“I just squeezed it,” he said.
She braced herself and squeezed it. Nothing happened. “Maybe it’s out of energy,” she said. “That was a pretty strong blast.”
Hunter stepped on the platform, and it emitted a soft humming noise. Brit hopped on a moment before it began rising. Above them, the square of ceiling also rose upward. When their heads were above the floor of the next level, they scanned this space anxiously but there were no living creatures. This room was also cylindrical, but unlike the entryway, this room was cluttered with low furniture constructed of wood and stretched gray leather.
The platform paused, and Brit began to step off when Hunter grabbed her arm.
“Wait. Let’s see if it keeps going up,” he said.
She nodded and moved back toward the center of the lift.
She spotted cloth dolls arranged on a low table, small colored blocks stacked in the shape of towers and bridges, and thin sheets of dusty glass the size of notebooks stacked on shelves.
The lift hummed again and began rising into the air. Brit wondered how it knew to go up rather than to go back down, and then she wondered how they were going to get back down. They could try to dig their way through the floor, but falling twenty feet was going to hurt.
Chapter Thirty-Three
When they emerged on the next level, they saw heaps of twigs and branches woven together expertly the way a bird on Earth might build a nest. The bird creatures were nowhere to be seen. Brit was sure that the noise of the ball must have scared them off.
She pulled out her necklace and saw that it pointed toward the nest. “It’s in there,” she said.
Hunter scrambled over the rim of the nest, but Brit walked to a massive open window and looked out. Flying in low circles over the trees where three massive raivos.
“Holy shit,” Hunter said.
“What?” Brit said.
“There are dead enkeli in here,” he said. “These things are definitely carnivores.”
“You better hurry,” she said. “They are flying around above the trees, but they could come back at any moment. I don’t want to be bird food.”
“I don’t want to be bird shit,” he said. “Though, I’m not sure how hungry they are if they left these snacks behind.”
“Let’s not chance it. Find the ilo,” she said.
“I’m looking, but there’s a heap of bones, sticks, cloth and other crap in here. There’s a shit-ton of soul disks and some power chisels,” he said.
Mountains rose up on the hazy horizon, and in the foothills of those mountains, Brit could make out a white city. She then noticed the break in the trees that seemed to trace a line from that white city to this tower and ending at the clearing between two large blue pillars of solid stone similar to what the tower was made of.
Motion brought Brit’s attention back to the sky. She saw the demons swooping back in their direction.
“They are coming!”
She turned and clambered into the nest, which was big enough to hold three pickup trucks, to help Hunter look. The sight was gruesome. Half-eaten enkeli limbs and piles of guts left little room in the nest to stand or walk without exceptional alertness. As Hunter had said, there were power chisels and souls scattered about and sticking out from between the loosely woven floor and walls of the nest. Brit pulled out her necklace and followed its lead to the far rim of the nest.
There, tucked behind a picked-over ribcage, she found it. The way home.
She hadn’t seen the ilo in years, but she recognized the quarter inch sheet of smoky glass four inches long and two inches wide.
“I’ve got it,” she said.
An angry screech from the window was enough to tell her that it was too late.
“Fuck balls,” Hunter said. “Run!”
There was a soul lying next to the ilo. Brit didn’t know why, but she grabbed it and then scrambled over the nest rim with Hunter behind her.
“How do we get out?” she said between hard breaths. Panic and bile rose from her gut.
Hunter pointed at the platform they had ridden up, and they ran to it. When they reached it, they both turned to the sound of the clicking talons of one of the giant demons.
“The lift’s not moving,” Brit said.
“No shit,” Hunter said. “Fuck!”
He brandished the armilon at the demon as two more landed heavily on either side of the first.
Brit had dropped her power chisel in the nest, and even as she realized she no longer had it she knew she couldn’t have used it as a weapon against these things anyway. She frantically ran her fingers over the ilo’s surface, trying to activate it or make it do anything.
“There’s another lift over there,” Hunter said, pointing to a raised spot twenty yards away. “Maybe that’s the down lift.”
The soul Brit was holding glowed, and a spot on the surface of the ilo melted away in the perfect shape to hold the soul. She realized that one of the gestures she had made must of activated the ilo, and she placed the soul in there.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“Making a diversion,” she whispered. “Just get ready to run.”
One of the raivos lunged forward, and Hunter swiped hard with his armilon, knocking it back. The beast let out a squawk of rage that Brit took to mean that it was definitely going to eat them.
She ran her fingers over the ilo again, and this time a semi-truck came into existence right in front of them. It skidded to one side with a blast of screeching brakes and rubber followed by bending metal and roaring flames.
“Run!” Brit said completely unnecessarily.
Hunter was already moving and she was a step behind him. They ran toward the other platform as the semi-trunk winked out of existence and then reformed again.
Whether the shock of the semi-truck slamming repeatedly into the nest or their caution regarding Hunter’s weapon, the raivos edged forward toward them without leaping on them immediately.
The lift emitted a soft tone when they stepped on, and a moment later, it began to descend.
“Thank fucking Christ,” Hunter said.
Despite the direness of their situation, Brit was glad Marcy wasn’t there to hear him say that. They were fleeing for their lives, but she was pretty sure that Marcy would have flayed Hunter alive for using her god’s name like that. Brit shook off images of Marcy slapping Hunter and brought herself back to their current situation.
Whatever their reason for pausing, the raivos now saw their prey escaping and so didn’t delay further. The three massive beasts lunged forward. The first demon above them made it to the lift opening as they were already nearing the floor of the second level. The ceiling directly above the lift was descending at the same rate as they were, and it hit the demon on the head, causing it to jerk back.
Defiant screeches above them were not comforting, however, and Brit thought now to the cowering creatures on the floor below them as the beasts continued to descend toward them, and she realized that leaving this place wasn’t safe.
The semi-truck emerged from the wall and slammed into the couch.
“Can you shut that thing off?” Hunter asked.
They kept descending to the main level of the tower, and Brit continued to swipe her fingers on the ilo again, not knowing what she was doing.
As the lift came to a stop, a shimmering portal appeared. Hanging in the portal were dark stairs leading down. Brit and Hunter looked at them, and then at each other. She remembered the portal that took them to this world, and this was similar. The semi-truck appeared again.
“Home,” Hunter whispered.
“These stairs go down and are black,” Brit said. “It might go somewhere worse than here.”
“Molly,” he said.
Brit knew Hunter was thinking of his daughter.
“If you need to go through,” she said. “I understand. I have to go back for Jax and Marcy, though.”
Hunter seemed to struggle with himself for a long moment.
“I’ll wait,” he said. “Like you pointed out, these stairs are different and might not even lead to Earth. I don’t want to step through and fall off a cliff on some foreign world or something.”
The portal winked out of existence, and then the soul that had been melded into the ilo fell to the floor.
Brit swiped her finger over the ilo again, but nothing happened.
“I think it is out of power,” she said. “We need a plan.”
“I wonder if those things sleep,” Hunter said. “We seem to be safe down here for the moment.” He gestured at the mummified family.
The berserk screeching and squawking did not make Brit feel any safer.
Brit frowned and folded her arms to hold herself. “We have no food or water, and I’m not sure how much charge is in your armilon. I think we should wait an hour or so to let them settle down, then try to sneak to the forest. From there, we can circle back around to the road.”
“If we get caught, I don’t think I could actually kill one of those things with this,” Hunter said. “I might scare them off or even break one of their wings, but I doubt that I’ll do much more than piss them off.”
They waited as near the door and as far from the mummies as they could get.
“I want you to know that I would have been okay with you taking the portal back,” Brit said. “I mean, I’m glad you’re here. I don’t really want to face these things alone, but I would have understood.”
Hunter stared into space. “My daughter will be near retirement age now,” he said. “All of these years—a whole lifetime—she will have thought that I left her, that I didn’t care. It was her birthday on the day I left.” He took a deep breath and pulled out a small dirty box. He opened it. Inside were a tiny pair of sparkling diamond earrings. “I didn’t even leave her present.”
“They are beautiful,” Brit said.
“Do you hear that?” Hunter said, suddenly sober.
Brit listened. “I don’t hear anything.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “Let’s check the door.”
Brit tried the same thing she had tried when opening it from the other side. She reached up and placed her hand along the seam of the door. With a soft click and a painful grinding sound, the door swung open.
Ahead of them, fifty yards away, the forest rose up. It looked dark and forbidding from the bright clearing, but the thought of giant demon-birds swooping down on them like massive eagles was more than enough to convince Brit that the cover of the forest was their best bet.
“The road is to our left,” she whispered. “Let’s get to the forest first, then circle around to it.”
Hunter tucked the small jewelry box away and gripped his armilon. “I’m ready.”
He dashed out into the open lawn, and Brit followed but quickly fell behind despite running as fast as she could. When Hunter reached the cover of the trees she was still halfway between the tower and forest.
The beating of massive wings somewhere behind her told her that she was living her final moments. She wished now that she had given Hunter the ilo for safe keeping. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was going to die first.
She kept running, unwilling to look at the swooping demon-bird. Hunter was standing ahead, feet apart and gripping his armilon like a warrior might hold his sword.
A screech less than ten feet above her was enough to throw off her balance and she tumbled to the ground.
“Fuck off,” Hunter said.
With a brutal swipe of this hand, he lashed out at the demon. Its screech died in its throat as it was blasted sideways and then into the ground. From the corner of her eye, Brit saw it tumble to the ground in a heap of black feathers and leathery skin.
She scrambled to her feet and ran toward Hunter. She could hear the demon scrambling after her now. Hunter was ready. He whipped the armilon at the creature again, and it squawked angrily.
“Hurry,” he said.
She reached him and turned. The creature was now stalking their way, looking more wary. It let out a series of low squawks and clucks. From high above, answering squawks and clucks echoed through the clearing.
“Keep moving,” she said. “We can’t fight three.”
Hunter seemed to realize the truth of her words, and he turned. They ran together through the thick underbrush. Not looking to see if the demon followed. It was too massive to fly through the densely packed trees, but Brit feared it might run them down perfectly fine.
Hunter didn’t run faster than Brit this time. Whether he was making sure not to lose her or simply the exertion of pushing through the undergrowth first was slowing him down, she wasn’t sure; but she was grateful not to be left behind. As they ran, Hunter favored left turns, and Brit knew that he was trying to find the road, which they should eventually run into if they kept to the left.
She hadn’t run this hard in decades, and she clutched a stitch in her chest. Of course, she hadn’t been given a reason to run this hard in her whole life. Even as her breaths grew ragged and became gasps more than a smooth rhythm, she pushed on.
Hunter stopped suddenly and grabbed her. He pulled her behind a tree and covered her mouth.
“Shh!” he whispered.
She tried to steady her gasping breaths, fearing that they were louder than any other sound in the forest. Hunter seemed perfectly fine, and Brit remembered that he had once been a fitness trainer. He didn’t look like he had even broken a sweat. Brit suspected the halo had preserved his physical conditioning.
When Brit’s breathing eased, she could hear multiple pairs of massive beating wings above them.
“The road is just ahead,” he whispered. “I can see it, but I don’t want to be in the open where they’ll spot us from the sky.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Whenever there was silence, they ran through the underbrush, keeping the road to their left as they ran, crawled, and climbed toward the Silver City. Whenever the beating of wings or the cries of the raivos grew closer, they hid behind trunks of massive trees. Eventually, the cries of the raivos grew fainter, and after a few miles, Hunter paused.
“I think we’re safe,” he said.
Brit nodded, too breathless to answer. She sat down and examined her bloody feet. Every step was excruciating.
Hunter winced as he looked at what the bottom of her feet had become. “Let’s rest a little,” he said. “I don’t know what to do for your feet.”
They sat with their backs against a large trunk. Brit closed her eyes and steadied her breathing.
A crush and rustle of underbrush from behind them made each peer around opposite sides of the tree they were using as a backrest.
Brit quickly pulled her head back when she caught a glimpse of what was back there. She had seen the sharp talons, leathery legs, and dark feathers of a raivo. It was following them clumsily on foot, but now it was nearly on top of them. They had been so loud as they ran that they hadn’t heard it until now.
She wondered if it was following the scent of the blood from her feet.
“We should split up,” she whispered as she slowly rose to her feet.
“Not a fucking chance,” Hunter said as he leapt back to a standing position. “There’s only one.”
By the way he was holding his armilon, she was sure he had every intension of
fighting the beast. Brit wanted to object, but she was too afraid to speak now that they could hear the creature breathing on the other side of the tree they were hiding behind.
The demon had paused, as if listening or smelling. Brit was sure it knew they were there. She looked around for someplace to hide, but there was nowhere that they could go that it wouldn’t follow.
Hunter, seemingly unable to wait even a second longer, leapt from behind the tree. Before he could swing his armilon, he was snatched up in the giant maw of the demon and shaken. The armilon went flying.
Brit ran to the weapon and the raivo dropped Hunter. He landed in a limp, bloody heap at its feet. He had massive gashes in his torso from where the demon’s beak had grabbed him, and she wondered if he was dead.
She scooped up the light cylindrical weapon and whipped it in the general direction of the raivo. The demon’s head was snapped to one side, but the force wasn’t enough to do any serious damage. She whipped it again, and nothing happened. It occurred to her that their only weapon might be out of power.
The raivo stalked closer, and she stood still, trying to decide what to do. She couldn’t have outrun it with tennis shoes, but leaving a bloody trail behind her and limping was definitely not going to work. The beast opened its mouth and let out a furious blast of sound.
Brit remembered the globe she was holding, the one she had picked up in the tower. She threw it into the open maw. The creature stopped screeching and looked at her in confusion. It dashed forward two steps and was about to snatch her up, but then it paused.
An audible snap emitted from inside the beast, and it croaked a wet, pained sound. It flapped its giant wings furiously but without coordination or purpose. Brit knew the ball she had thrown had somehow let off an explosion of force, that it had injured the demon. Now the demon seemed desperate and wild to escape, but its panic was as terrifying as its stalking. Brit had to dive behind a tree to avoid behind slashed by talons or blasted back by flailing wings.