by Erin Hayes
“It doesn’t matter,” Nakir finally says, his voice grim. “If she dies, we’re all dead.”
Chapter 12
We find a Lodge on the outskirts of Derweze to spend our last night in the relative safety of the Door to Hell’s shadow, far enough away from the bazaar so that when Jennet’s magic on our money wears off, no one will chase after us. Which is a small comfort, because we’re not so far away that if we really pissed someone off enough, they’d be after us in a heartbeat.
Such as stealing a telescope or ten Akhal-Teke horses.
Tomorrow, we’ll go back to the same area where my own Lodge used to be, spend the night, and then head out at exactly midnight into the Door. And then take it in as few chunks as possible in order to get to Abaddon’s Watchtower.
And from there? Jennet makes sure that Nakir is refreshed for killing Abaddon, and he does his thing. Done and dusted.
Except nothing is ever that easy.
To my utter surprise, I’m not the first to fall into Hibernation at the Lodge, despite my utter disregard for the amount of energy I spent today while shopping. Maybe my mental energy, expended by everything that happened in the past few days, isn’t working in overdrive like it normally does.
So I take this time to unwind a bit.
In other words, I need a drink. I get up from my resting spot in the Great Room—smaller and less grand than the one in my Lodge, but it’s a nice place to lay one’s head.
The male witch, Kerem, has one eye open, watching me as I peel myself away from the chaise lounge that I had rested upon. His quiet mannerisms and big frame remind me of Yusuf, and I gulp self-consciously, trying to focus on something else.
Good luck. You’re a mess.
“Shut up,” I mumble, getting to my feet.
“You all right?” Kerem asks.
I wipe my hands on my trouser legs. “Yep. Just feeling antsy.”
He gives me a crooked smile, and I’m not sure I like it, actually. It’s almost…patronizing, and it sets my teeth on edge. “This will all be worth it in the end.”
“Yeah, but you haven’t seen what it costs,” I tell him. “I have.”
The smile doesn’t falter. “We all have our reasons for being here,” he simply says.
“This isn’t a shitting contest,” I tell him after fumbling for a comeback.
Why are you so bent on fighting the Halos?
Because I’m apparently a prickly asshole, that’s why. I don’t say anything else to Kerem—I’d rather conserve that bit of energy for another sip of vodka—and head to the bar, which is through a set of double Doors and in another room, away from the main room. This Lodge is more rundown than mine was, which gives me an odd sense of pride.
We may have been living on the edge of sanity at my Lodge, but at least we presented ourselves nicely.
Nury and an older Halo are already at the bar when I park my own ass on a stool next to the young man. “Vodka,” I say, slapping a real 5-Manat bill on the counter. Wouldn’t do to piss off the bartender of the Lodge we’re staying at. Especially with midnight leering nearby.
The man takes it without another word and quickly pours me a drink and puts it in front of me.
Quick and easy.
Nury holds up his drink in appraisal and tosses it back, wincing at the aftertaste. “Surprised you’re still functioning,” he says.
“I’m always up for cheap vodka. Like any normal person.”
He frowns. “You’re not a normal person.”
It’s an honest, genuine comment, and I bark a sharp laugh. “But I try. So hopefully no one notices.”
“Oh, we noticed,” the old man says with a huff as he takes a more measured drink. He doesn’t waste the energy of grimacing at the taste. Maybe he drinks better vodka than I do.
Or maybe I can drink and be a hardass, too. I take a mouthful of my own glass of vodka and make a face despite my effort not to.
Nope. Definitely not a hardass.
The old man gives me a smug smirk at my reaction, the weathered lines of his face crinkling around his eyes, making him appear to be old. Far older than most people in my world grow to be. He must have been around from before.
My eyes widen at the realization. That maybe this man had been around when there was no curse. He has memories of a time when he wasn’t counting his footsteps or worrying about how he’d make it to midnight.
“Where are my manners?” Nury says, breaking into my thoughts. “Rahym, I’m Nury. And this old man here is Emre.”
We don’t shake; we don’t do things like that unless we need to, and while midnight isn’t too far off, habit takes over. Instead, Emre just raises his eyebrows in answer.
“Yeah,” I say. “You were in my group when the Lodge burned down.”
Nury cringes. “Sorry about that.”
Emre averts his eyes.
“Don’t be. Not your fault.” I take another swig of vodka and make another face. Again. “Fucking terrible grog, huh?”
Emre nods to the liquor bottles lining the bar. The bottles are dusty with some of their labels peeling off in the heat. “Vodka used to taste better than this. Way back when people had time to distill things properly. Nowadays, it’s either you have the new shit stuff. Or,” he taps a finger on the counter, “you have the old shit stuff with all the flavor evaporated out of it.”
Bingo. He was older than the curse. I was right.
We were right. Shut up. I’d love to pick his brain, to hear what he has to say about the world before the curse.
“I’ve had worse,” I say, gesturing to the drinks. “But I’ve also had better.”
Emre chuckles and takes out another 5-Manat bill for the bartender. He doesn’t even have to say what he wants before the bartender starts getting him another drink. Maybe he already knows what Emre wants. Or maybe it’s all so terrible, it doesn’t really matter.
“So why do you two have a death wish?” I ask. “You seem like you’re too reasonable to follow Nakir into the Door.”
There’s a shocked pause from everyone, including the bartender, as he eavesdrops on our conversation before he resumes pouring the drink. Nury opens his mouth to answer but then coughs uncomfortably. Emre snickers.
“I’m an old man,” he says, stating the obvious. “And I would do anything for my family.” He twirls his finger to indicate the whole world outside. “I’d like to live to see it all go right. For their sakes.”
“And…” Nury’s voice trails off as his cheeks color.
“Nury’s here to take care of a lady he’s sweet on,” Emre finishes for him.
I remember the knowing smile between Sena and Kerem. “You’re talking about Fatma?”
Nury manages to turn an even more crimson shade, and I wonder if he’ll go into Hibernation with his emotions in this high of a gear.
“Does she know?” I ask.
“Everyone but Fatma seems to know,” Emre says, giving the younger Halo an encouraging clap on the shoulder. Nury presses his lips together.
I raise an eyebrow. “But you’re on this trip because of her? And she doesn’t know?”
“Well,” he says, “I haven’t gotten around to telling her yet.”
It makes me realize just how much older I feel than Nury. And the age difference can’t be that much—I’m in my early thirties, and Nury has to be in his early to mid-twenties. But there’s an innocence and naivety about him that makes him seem much younger. It makes me feel far more world-weary. I’ve been married, had a child, and lost them both. He hasn’t even worked up the nerve to tell the woman he loves how he feels about her.
How adorable.
I lean in toward Nury. “My advice? Life’s too short. And being in Halos makes it much shorter than you want it to be.”
The younger man meets my eyes. “You were in the original Halos, weren’t you? ’Bout three years ago?”
Every cell in my body shudders to a halt, freezing the air in my lungs and causing my mind to go blank for a
bit.
“Yes,” I say finally through too-dry lips. “I was.”
“How was that?” he asks, too eagerly. He puts both his elbows on the counter and leans over at me.
He thinks this is a hero’s journey. That we’ll be lauded if we came back. Have parades and statues and poems made in our names. He’s romanticized it in his head, twisting it into something so far from the truth, it makes bile rise up in my throat, making it difficult to say anything.
“It was the biggest mistake of my life.”
Both Emre and Nury watch me, going still at my honest answer. They don’t prompt me to expand on it. Instead, their expressions turn from horror to sorrow.
“I’m not sure how much Nakir has told you,” I rasp, swirling my drink. “If anything, I know the Door to Hell probably better than anyone else alive—and that’s because they’re all dead. I had a wife and a daughter. And I joined the Halos for a better future for them. Like you did, Emre,” I add. The old man’s cheeks flush. I scoff and shake my head. “Obviously it didn’t work out. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here.”
“What happened?” Nury asks softly.
“Well,” I say, not looking his way. “We started going into the Door, scouting out the various Door Stops. Going a little bit farther every time to see where we could go. We got cocky, went too far, and when the first Halo collapsed from the Hibernation, we turned back. We were too late. Demonlings attacked us a few miles out from my Lodge, where my wife and daughter were waiting for me. I tried making it back, for them. I collapsed about forty yards from them. And the demonlings brought the fire with them. It burned down the tree and front porch of the Lodge. The demonlings killed our horses. Maysa and Beste tried getting out of the Lodge, to save me. I can still remember them screaming before I passed out.”
To punctuate my thoughts, my own memories play out the sounds of their voices, shrieking within the confines of my mind. I grit my teeth against it and give a slight shake of my head.
Don’t focus on it. You can’t change the past.
“I was burned all the way down my back,” I say, touching my left side, where the skin is raised from third degree burns that I sustained. “But Maysa and Beste didn’t make it, as well as all the other Halos.” Like Sasha and Onsen. I gulp back the lump in my throat. “I swore then that I would continue Maysa’s work. That her legacy would live on, not through our daughter, but through my work. And now the Lodge is gone, too.”
They both watch me, and even the bartender has his full attention trained on me. But my story isn’t unique. We all have our sob stories like mine in the world after the curse. We all know someone affected and killed by the curse and the demonlings.
It’s Emre who speaks first. “I’m sorry.”
I only nod.
Nury’s eyes are so wide, I can see the white all around his irises.
“Yeah,” I say. “It’s not glamorous. People will die.”
“But we have to try, don’t we?” Nury finally asks. “For a better future.”
So optimistic. So naïve. So all I give him is a noncommittal, “Maybe.”
“So why are you doing this, then?” Emre asks, knowing that I’m not saying everything.
Smart man.
I give a shrug. “Seems to be the normal thing to do. At least by your standards.”
Emre chuckles. “You’re in the wrong crowd if you think we’re normal. This guy may be on a quest to take care of his lady love.” He nods to Nury. “But the rest of us? Eh.” He shrugs dismissively. “You know Rabia? Big human woman with muscles?” I nod, remembering a Halo member fitting that description. “She’s here because she lost her family at the Caspian Sea. They were on holiday at the beach, and…” His face trails off as he makes a face.
“Murat is here because his brother died with the original Halos,” Emre says. I remember the man that had eyes for Jennet at the bazaar earlier. I’m surprised that I hadn’t seen familial resemblance.
“Who was his brother?” I ask.
“Dunno,” Emre says. “He doesn’t talk about him too much. We understand why.” I do, although I make a mental note to ask Nakir about it later. Maybe connecting with Murat would help us cross that chasm I felt at the bazaar.
Then again, if Murat already decided that he doesn’t like you because you hang around Jennet…
Well, there are some things that being friendly can’t fix.
“Sena, Fatma, and Kerem are here because of Jennet,” Emre continues. “They know each other from when they were in their witch convent. And those witches stick together, apparently. As we know, Nury is here because of Fatma.”
“And you? You said you were alive from before?”
Emre nods and picks up his new glass of vodka and takes a sip before answering. “Yep. And I was in the army, too. So I saw firsthand what happened when chaos descended upon the world and our realms were split. Saw what happened when people fell into Hibernation. Saw the panic. The hysteria. And, well, I’m an old man now. Far older than I have a right to be in this apocalyptic world.” He salutes me with his drink. “I’d like to see it return to the way it was.”
“Well, I hope you live to see it that way.”
“You don’t think we will?” Nury asks, a hint of alarm edging into his voice.
He’s so innocent, it almost makes me hurt from the inside out. This will probably be the first time he’ll be in harm’s way, the first time that he’ll see that not everything works out all right in the end. The first time that he’ll find out that heroes on a fool’s journey are still fools.
Emre and I exchange a knowing glance. He’s on the same page as me.
“We’ll see,” I say, giving the young man my best smile. “We’re putting our best foot forward.”
He doesn’t seem to be comforted, so instead, I nudge his glass toward him.
“Drink up. For none of us know what tomorrow brings,” I say.
“True statement,” Emre adds, clinking his glass with mine.
After a moment’s hesitation, Nury adds his drink to our toast. I’m able to get a full mouthful before the Hibernation overtakes me, my body’s energy finally giving out from everything I did today.
I manage to set the glass down. “Think I’m at the end,” I mutter before everything buckles, and I crumple to the floor of the sticky bar, unclean from years of neglect and other patrons passing out.
Maybe there won’t be too many more times ahead where I’ll pass out like this. And no one else will have to suffer because they have no control of their body from a curse.
Then again, I may just be headed toward a form of permanent Hibernation. And lying here, unable to move or do anything to protect myself, I’m terrified.
For the first time in three years, I realize that I don’t want to die. I want to find joy in life again.
You want to succeed.
Chapter 13
Maysa digs her fingers into the dry, arid dirt before putting in a seed of…something. Her hands are smaller than I remember, and when she looks up, I realize why. She’s ten years old again, her face free of the worry lines that started appearing just before she died. She’s at the age right now where she’s innocent enough to not realize the full extent of our predicament, but she’s starting to realize that something’s not right with the world.
“That’s not going to grow there,” I find myself saying, and it’s a voice I almost don’t recognize. It’s my voice from when I was ten years old myself. I remember being a little shit. Mainly because I was trying to hide my conflicting feelings for Maysa. And Jennet. Two girls who made a prepubescent boy wonder if they were friends or more.
Maysa hums softly to herself, ignoring me. Her hair glints mahogany in the sunlight, pulled into a loose braid that has wisps floating in the breeze. She always smells of figs, and the scent assails my nose.
I breathe in deeply.
“Hey, Maysa,” I say, reaching out to her shoulder. She looks up at me, from her crouch, her eyes golden. Even as a te
n year old, she was beautiful in a delicate, fragile way. When she and Jennet were together in Derweze, they’d turn heads, even from those who were trying to conserve their energy.
“What, Rahym?” she asks.
I swallow back the lump in my throat. “Don’t get your hopes up that this will grow.”
“But it will.” She nods down at the freshly dug earth. “It will grow. It has to.”
I frown in confusion. “What did you plant?”
“A tree.”
I let out a guffaw. “A tree? Out here?”
We both take stock of our surroundings. The desert sun is harsh and unforgiving as it bears down on us. We can see the glow of the Door to Hell, so perilously close, yet far enough to make us feel invincible. There’s a wooden, two-story building next to us, the Lodge that Maysa’s father is running. The building is old, but he’s been renovating it.
It looks better at this point than any time I ever ran it. Maysa’s father was just as proud of the Lodge as she was.
She saw a dream in it.
“We need some shade here,” she says simply. “Even if they don’t stay at the Lodge, someone may want to rest here.”
“It’ll take forever for it to grow,” I mutter.
“That’s fine.”
“And you’ll have to water it.”
“That’s fine, too.”
“And you’ll have to take care of it. And not let the Hibernation keep you from doing it.”
“Yep.”
I stop and chew the inside of my cheek, watching her. Her conviction is refreshing. She believes this tree will have no problem growing. That everything will be fine.
“Rahym!”
We both look at the front of the Lodge, where I see my father standing next to Maysa’s father. Jennet and her father are standing with them as well. Her blue eyes watch us intently, curious. She was stunning then, too. How did I never put together that she’s a witch? There was something supernatural about her, even when we were ten.