by Amie Gibbons
“Apparently I can do a lot when scared. Not sure how to get us outta here,” I said. “But if they can’t do steel, well, we’re safe for now.”
“If it’s Fae magic, it’ll react to the steel, even in here,” he said.
“Will it stop them?”
“Not sure for how long, but for now at least.”
The first of the little bodies must’ve hit the wall because it shook and a thump and squeal said something was thrown back. More thumps followed and I snorted, picturing the stupid things hitting and bouncing off like balls.
“So was this the plan?” I asked. “Get you in here so they could ambush you and drag you off?”
“Possibly,” he said. “It’s a fate worse than death. They’d probably think it quite fitting. I’m betting there’s more to it than that though. There’s no way they set this trap, with all these leaders here, without wanting to at least make a run at the full leadership.”
“But we got them out. Do you think they assumed you wouldn’t do that?”
“No.” he shook his head and froze. “No, they’d know I’d get everyone out.”
I slammed my palm to my forehead. “So they wanted everyone out, for what?”
His mouth dropped and he sunk to the ground. “To get them out of the wards I have around the hotel. I kept wondering why they’d do something like this, and have it hidden, but not that well. I mean, especially with a psychic. I figured it was an oversight on their part. They expected you to be out of the picture, and that maybe I wouldn’t figure it out or check Jade in enough time. It wasn’t. I’m trapped in here, at least for now, and that… I think that was just gravy. They were trying to flush everyone out of the hotel.”
“There was no bomb or whatever?” I said. “They couldn’t get past your wards, so they didn’t. They just made you think they did.”
“And I did the rest.” He slammed his fist into the wall, making the whole structure shake, and let loose with a string of abuses in another language.
“Carvi.” I touched his arm. “We’ll get outta here.”
“They had to have something ready to go, fast,” he said. “They’d… fuck!”
“No, that’s your thing,” I said, offering a smile as he stared at me.
“Lea,” he said, voice as weak as I’d ever heard it, “I told them to get out, without a second thought. Those excuses for blood bags fucking tricked me. And I didn’t even consider it. I was so sure they’d managed to get past my defenses because of what I saw in Jade. And I told everyone to get out. Hundreds of my people, not to mention the humans, and…”
He slammed his fist into the wall again.
“Okay, okay,” I said, resting my hands on his arm. “What do we need to do to get outta here? You said you’re blocked. Can you use my power to get around that? Or just to bash at it until it breaks? I mean, it’s gotta take power to keep you trapped in here, right?”
“Yes, yes!” he said. “Lea, you’re a genius.”
“Nope,” I said. “Still no idea how this metaphysical stuff works.”
“My mental powers are being blocked. Yours are not. I can use your power to get us out of here.”
“I like it. How?” I said.
“The astral plane isn’t real in the same way ours is. Everything we’re seeing is a construct. A metaphor, for what’s really going on. So we get out of here, out of the maze, and away from them, we get out in the metaphysical sense.”
“So how?” I asked again.
He grinned. “We fly. This is a hanger after all.”
Huh?
Carvi took my hand. “Close your eyes.”
I did, and I heard him take a deep breath.
Why? It’s not like he breathed. Then again, I was doing it too, and it wasn’t like I needed to breathe in here either.
Did vampires ever get to the point where they didn’t feel the reflexive need to breathe when they could?
If Carvi hadn’t, somehow I doubted they ever lost it.
“Ariana,” he said, making my eyes snap open.
He never used my real name.
“Your mind is going all over the place,” he said, surprisingly gentle considering the situation.
“Sorry.” I grinned. “What do I need to do?”
“Eyes closed.”
I slammed them shut, trying very hard to keep my brain blank.
“Focus on a plane,” he said. “We’re going to build a little one in here.”
“But I don’t know how planes work.”
“You don’t need to.” Okay, he sounded a little snippier there. “Just have to get the idea in your head. In the real world, if you’re conjuring something, you have to know exactly how it works and get it right down to the last molecule to have it be an exact replica, not so much in here.”
You could conjure stuff in real life!
“Oh come on, focus,” he said.
“Grrrrrrr,” I said. That was harder than he made it sound. “One plane, coming up.”
“Picture a small one. Like what you’d go skydiving out of,” Carvi said. “Or even smaller, just one big enough for two pilots and some luggage plus room for fuel.”
Daddy had a friend, Doris, who’d been in the air force who fixed up an old World War Two airplane in her spare time and flew around Texas in it for fun on the weekends.
I pictured it. The wide wings, the green army lookin’ paint, the tiny four seater inside with enough room for as many suitcases and a cooler.
One summer she flew it over to Alabama and we flew down to Pensacola in it. It was about as long as driving since we had to stop about every eighty to a hundred miles to refuel and it wasn’t like we could land the plane at the gas stations alongside the road, but it was more fun than driving.
The plane formed in my mind’s eye and a pop made me jump.
Carvi shouted something in one of his old languages and I opened my eyes.
And grinned.
We had a tiny airplane with the green army paint, Dorothy painted on the side in gold, the name of our friend’s plane since she joked it got tossed around in storms, but no top and double wings, more like one of those World War One planes with a flyer and a shooter; it even had a backseat with a giant machine gun.
Something Doris’s plane certainly didn’t have.
“I love it,” I said. “Can I keep her?”
Carvi chuckled and ran forward, calling over his shoulder, “You fly. I’ll shoot.”
“I don’t know how to fly a plane!” I ran after him.
He jumped up and grabbed the edge of the plane, pulling himself up with an effortlessness no human could manage. “It’s not real, just pretend it’s a car.”
“You’ve never seen me drive, have you?” I hit the plane and looked around for something to help me get up.
“Here.” Carvi held his arms down and I grabbed his hands.
He pulled me up with me walking up the side of the plane like I weighed ten pounds and not… well, not a considerable amount more.
When I got near the top, he switched to grabbing me about the waist, so fast I didn’t even slip an inch even though he technically let me go somewhere in there, and he pulled me the rest of the way in.
“Smooth,” I said.
“Always.” He winked and pulled me in, giving me a quick kiss and pulling back so fast I couldn’t think about reciprocating. He held my arms and grinned. “Let’s kill some fucking fairy projections.”
I giggled.
Wow, why were we suddenly all hyper?
Maybe it was a reaction to the stress.
I got in the pilot’s seat and Carvi was right, it looked just like the inside of a car.
So I was basically driving a flying convertible.
Okay, I could do this.
I glanced back to make sure Carvi was in his seat and he waved at his face. “We need hats and goggles. Probably bomber jackets too. Keeps us protected.”
“Right. Thinking Snoopy.”
I pictured the le
ather jacket and cap and the googles that were on the old stuffed Snoopy that still lived on my dresser with my collection of stuffed animals.
My arms were suddenly warmer and I looked down. The semi skanky outfit of Carvi’s fantasy was replaced with red leather pants, a green tank top, and a red leather jacket. My hair was still off my face and something pressed into it. I reached up and felt out solid goggles and something leathery that I assumed was one of the pilot caps.
I looked back and Carvi was decked out much the same, just in more regular brown leather.
He gave me the thumbs up and I shot one back, hitting the button for the ignition.
The plane roared to life just like a car and I looked up, willing the roof to part as I pulled back on the wheel, lifting us.
Okay, now I knew this wasn’t anything resembling real.
Planes, even little ones, don’t go up from a dead stop like a helicopter.
Cool. Whatever worked.
We went straight up like a helicopter, the pedals and wheel responding just like I expected them too, like a car that happened to go in three dimensions, something Doris told me definitely wasn’t how they worked.
The ceiling retracted and we went up.
Something landed hard overhead on the top wings, making the plane veer.
I screamed as I jerked up on the wheel harder, imagining the wall to the side disappearing.
It vanished, revealing a horde of horror.
My stomach lurched as my eyes tried not to comprehend what they were seeing and I barreled over their heads, the propellers smacking into something and making the plane rock.
A tentacle reached down and I pulled up my AR, shooting it one handed in a way physics would smack me for in the real world.
The round hit the tentacle with a meaty sound, nothing more than a tiny pop on the muzzle even though I didn’t have a silencer on the gun.
The thing on the top wings made a sound halfway between a squeal and nails on a chalkboard and I flinched, jerking the wheel to the side and angling up.
We twirled in the air, hanging upside down, and tentacles snaked out around the wings, holding the thing up.
I shot again on one side, then hauled the AR over my head and shot the other, shooting other tentacles as they came up, trying to keep the creature on the plane.
Shots rang behind me and I didn’t have to look to tell Carvi was goin’ to town with the machine gun, the ratatat tat saying it had a pretty good silencer on it too.
Things in this fake world sure were easy.
A tentacle wrapped around my neck.
Or not!
I beat at the thing as oxygen cut off and panic shot through me.
This wasn’t real. I didn’t actually need to breathe in here. It’d be okay.
The thing pulled and I lost my grip on the wheel as it yanked me to the side.
Trying to drag me out.
Little push knives appeared in my hands before I even realized I was wishing for some and I dug them into the tentacle holding me.
The scream came again and I flinched as I hacked at it.
It fell away and I grabbed the wheel, the plane staying relatively straight despite me losing control.
I pulled the wheel hard down and to the side and we twirled through the air, fast enough to make my stomach lurch, and the thing fell away.
“Wahooooooo! Die you overgrown walking appetizer outta a Tim Burton movie!” I screamed as I straightened us and the writhing mass of wrongness fell the twenty feet or so to the ground.
Why weren’t they doing what we were and just making stuff up?
Oh right, they were projections. They were the made-up stuff. And the maker didn’t seem to have stuck around, so these things could only do what they were told.
Programed really.
That’s what this reminded me of!
A video game.
I turned the plane and flew over the heads of the things as Carvi shot them up. I pulled higher and pictured something I knew would be a greater help than one gun.
I heard Carvi shout something over the roar of the engines and grinned.
Figured he’d like that.
I felt more than heard him creep up behind me.
“Brilliant, lea,” he half shouted into my ear. “How high, you think?”
“Welllll,” I said, “it’s a fake world and things seem to be responding pretty well to me. I say give it till the ground looks really small and then drop it.”
He tapped my shoulder and walked back to his perch.
I took that as an okay.
The plane climbed without concern for gravity or stalling, and when the world below looked like stamps of different landscapes and the horrible monsters were nothing more than a moving mass of colors, something heavy fell out the back, making the plane jerk.
I grinned and looked down.
The bomb smacked down in the middle of the mass and went off with a cartoon roar.
A giant mushroom cloud rushed up at us too fast and battered our little plane with so much force we went spiraling down, pieces ripping off.
“Come on!” I screamed.
That should’ve worked better.
We went down too fast and Carvi appeared next to my chair. He pulled me up by my arm and yanked me to the back of the plane.
“Parachute!” he yelled.
One appeared on his back and he pulled me close, back to chest. A harness appeared around me and I couldn’t figure out how I was doing all this without even thinking about it.
My feet left the ground as the straps secured me to Carvi’s chest like a giant baby in a carrier, and then we were falling.
The giant flat greenness rushed up too fast and Carvi pulled the chute as soon as we cleared the plane, jerking us up and leaving us to drift as the plane smashed into the ground.
We floated for maybe thirty seconds before hitting the ground, Carvi taking the brunt and running with it to absorb the impact.
He slowed and flopped to the ground as the straps released me, and I stumbled, falling on my hands and knees in the soft, short grass. I rocked back to look at Carvi and he fell onto his back, holding a hand up.
“How did I do that?” I asked, inching up to sit next to him.
“You didn’t,” he said. “I did. And now I’m tired.”
“Nice! So you pushed past their blocks?”
“Essentially.”
“Where to now?”
He sat up, face worn and eyes more tired than I’d ever seen them.
“That really took a lot outta you, huh?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “That was definitely a one off. Meaning anything else that comes up is back to being on you.”
“Else? We just got out of their trap, didn’t we?”
“Doesn’t mean there won’t be more.”
“Crap in a handbasket and sugar a swine,” I said. “What do we have to do to get outta here?”
“I’m not sure,” he said. “We’ve given up on the trail, I think. I mean, we know whatever the magic is won’t be anything more than a tiny spell anyway, or it wouldn’t have been able to get in, so we just need to leave. Theoretically we should be able to will ourselves out, but we can’t.”
“Maybe it’s just that you can’t,” I said. “Maybe I can? Since my magic isn’t blocked.”
“Give it a shot.”
I bit my lip. “How?”
“Just like with the plane. Imagine us out of here.”
“Okay.” I closed my eyes, imagining floating back into my body.
I could feel it. My beautiful dress and hair all pretty, skin smelling like the fruity bath stuff in the room.
I opened my eyes.
And we were still sitting in the grass in the middle of a big flat expanse.
“Not surprised,” Carvi said. “It’s not a magic block like mine. We are in a place where whatever comes in is trapped. Probably why the Fae didn’t stick around after setting this up, she’d be stuck too.”
&n
bsp; I frowned. “What makes you think it’s a girl?”
He shrugged. “The Fae are matriarchal. No more so than modern America is patriarchal, but enough so when they mean some random person, they say her, whereas we say him. Also, a female is more likely to be the culprit, much like in our society, criminals are far more likely to be male.”
I’d take his word for it.
We gave it another few minutes so Carvi could get over his exertion, and then got to our feet.
“Does it matter which way?” I asked.
“Yes, away from the line to the Other Side would be best.”
“Lead the way.”
Carvi nodded to the left and we went that way, my little legs working hard to keep up with his longer strides.
We crested a hill and a wall of stone greeted us, rising up out of the grass as natural as a tree.
The stone stretched as far as we could see in either direction, making it clear this was the obstacle we had to scale to get out.
“Let me guess,” I said, “we have to climb it?”
Carvi slowly shook his head, quick jerks side to side. “Look at how smooth it is. No, whatever the way out is, I’m betting it’s through the wall.”
“Through?” I did not like the sound of that.
“I’m guessing,” he said, walking down the line of stone. “The Fae wouldn’t let us out without a fight, but there’s only so much they could do to trap us once they weren’t here. This is the wall keeping us in here, sure, but we can break through it, make a hole, something.”
“So I come up with explosives again?” I said. “Okay. I can do this.”
“Of course you can.”
I shot him a smile and closed my eyes, imagining a block of dynamite.
I opened my eyes and sticks of red sat in front of me up against the wall in a neat little pile with a long tail coming out.
“It’s kind of cartoony,” I said, “but I think it works.”
“It works great,” Carvi said. “you’ve got this down.”
“Thanks.” I held up my hand and a controller appeared in it.
“You’re mixing your explosive ordinances,” he said, “but whatever.”
We walked backwards and I hit the button in my hand after we were a good distance down the hill.
The explosion rocked the hill and sent me to my butt, but I hopped back up.