by CM Raymond
"Yeah," Hadley replied, "no problem at all. Gregory here and I were just getting a little antsy hanging around New Romanov.” He laughed. “We’re not very used to sitting around doing not much of anything. Ezekiel said we should come out and relieve you boys—give ya an early break. Not to mention, Olaf has another job for you. Said he could use your able hands on a project."
Robert glanced at Hank and shrugged. The Rift guardhouse was a duty nobody ever wanted to pull. Best case scenario, it would stay closed and they’d twiddle their thumbs for the week, but worst-case, Laughter would tear through their defenses and the only thing that would stand between an army of flesh-eating hell monsters and their precious city would be the men on guard. And everyone knew that in that scenario the guards were sitting ducks, whose lives would be sacrificed for the sake of buying the city just a little more time.
Robert shoved a hand toward them and Gregory shook it, giving it a little squeeze. He hoped that the man might be able to read him and know trouble was brewing, but the man did nothing but grin like a kid on his first date.
"Well, I ain't going to complain," Robert said. “I mean, I certainly could use some of Ellie’s cooking and a little time in the household bed." He laughed and winked at Gregory. "If you know what I mean."
Gregory felt Hadley’s elbow jab him in the ribs. He swallowed hard and answered with a laugh, "Oh, I know what you mean. We’re happy to give you some time with the missus." His voice trembled but Robert, whose mind was already far away, didn’t notice a thing.
The men gathered their gear and headed for New Romanov, leaving Hadley and Laughter free to carry out their plan.
Gregory realized he only had one more shot, if that. "Hadley, this isn’t you," he said with indignation in his voice. "I don’t know how she got to you, but you have to fight her. You're stronger than this—I know it. You're better than this."
Hadley grabbed the sides of his head and closed his eyes. His face wrinkled in pain or determination. "I-I…know. You’re right."
Gregory's heart leapt. It’s working. "That's it, Hadley. It’s Laughter. Fight that damn bitch. Fight her hard."
"She's strong, Gregory. I’m not sure—" And as if a switch had been flipped, Hadley looked at Gregory, his hand still gripping his head, and laughed wickedly. "Nice try, asshole. You really think you're strong enough? Don't be a fool. Laughter is stronger than you, stronger than Hannah, stronger than even that old bag of bones Ezekiel. It’s gonna take more than your feel-good talk to change this. She’s won. We’ve won.” He laughed again, this time lower and more sinister. “There’s nothing you can do."
The laughter and words cut Gregory to the quick and he looked into the pale white eyes of his friend from the temple, but Hadley wasn’t there. In his place was something different—Gregory stared into the oblivion of the world beyond. Somehow Hadley had stepped into Laughter’s world and come back a different person altogether.
His throat constricted as the hopelessness of his desperate situation overwhelmed him, and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t hold back the tears that accompanied the sobs that convulsed him.
“You’re gone,” he said between gasps.
Hadley’s sinister grin grew. “Tears, little Gregory?” Hadley stuck out his lower lip in a fake pout. “It’s so sad for you, huh? Well, I’m not gone, I’ve finally arrived. All these months on that damned ship following her damned orders, and I didn’t once realize I could be me. Laughter has shown me the way, Gregory, and when she finally comes to Irth she will show you the way as well, if you allow her.”
“Never! Hannah will blow the shit out of your stupid queen.”
Hadley burst into laughter again, and his face turned red as the maniacal wave swept over him. “Laughter has grown in power for thousands of years, but Hannah is just a child. What can she do to stop her? What can she do to save you? Nothing! Hannah is nothing!”
A loud crack filled the air and they both spun toward it.
“Someone say my name?” Hannah said with an eyebrow raised and a fireball in each hand.
In one swift move Hadley drew his blade and pulled Gregory to his body, setting the razor-sharp edge against the engineer’s Adam’s apple.
“Step back, bitch, or I slice the Brainiac’s throat open and Lilith will die—and all you worms with her.”
“Bitch?” Hannah said. She tisked, shaking her head. “Call me that again and I’ll rip your nuts off, Had. Don’t think I won’t.”
The mystic applied more pressure to Gregory’s throat and a thin line of blood appeared behind the blade. “Sorry, Hannah,” his lips dripped with hatred, “You try anything, and you’ll have to carry Gregory back to Laurel on a stretcher. We both know you won’t let that happen—you need him too badly. Now get the hell out of here so I can complete what I was sent to do, and maybe the queen will be generous and let you see him alive one more time.”
Hannah shrugged. “Quite frankly I’m a little sick of the both of you. Lilith’s got Aysa fixing the Gate as we speak, so I don’t really think we need you boys in the club. Maybe I’ll just blast you both to oblivion right now.”
His smile faded as he calculated her bluff. If nothing else he wasn’t going to die beneath the Rift, so he would need to play this one out to completion. His deranged mind had been convinced that Hannah wouldn’t let him live, and the programming was buried deep within. Laughter had altered his reality in the place that most mattered at the moment—between his ears.
White covering his eyes, Hadley attacked her the only place he knew he held an advantage.
“Shit,” Hannah yelled as a burst of pain reverberated in her mind. Her eyes flashed red as she cursed, and she pushed her mental shields up enough to get him out of her head.
“Headache much?” Hadley laughed. “Leave me be, Hannah. Go rally your troops, maybe do some training exercises and all that shit you’ve insisted on during every waking second of my existence.”
“Sorry, Had, I’m taking you down. I’ll miss you, though, and the way you looked at me.” Her eyes grew brighter red and the fireballs dancing in her palms grew. “Is it getting hot out here?”
Hadley held his breath. Laughter had left his reasoning capacity intact, and the only thing he didn’t doubt was the fact that there was no way in hell that Hannah would do anything to hurt Gregory. He grinned. “Not hot enough.”
With his attention on her fireballs and the gambit that was playing out, Hannah slipped into his mind. She was better than he thought, and his arrogance had always been his greatest enemy. Thankfully Laughter had not taken that away.
She put a suggestion in his mind, one connected with the outside world he was perceiving.
“Shit,” he screamed as the dagger’s hilt scorched his hand. He dropped it to the ground and shook out his hand, cursing the gods and Hannah and anything else that came to his racing mind.
Gregory was ready for this moment. He slammed an elbow into Hadley’s gut and jerked away.
As Hadley watched him retreat, he realized he’d been bested. He looked at his palm, and it was as clean and smooth as ever, clearly untouched by ungodly heat.
“You’ve gotten better,” he sneered at Hannah.
She extinguished the fireballs, her eyes returning to normal. “If you had paid attention to anything but yourself, you might have noticed when I finally surpassed your skills. But the world is your mirror, isn’t it, Had? And the only thing you wanted to see in me was a half-rate mental magician. Always made you feel superior. Almost made up for not being named the Master by Selah, didn’t it?”
Saying the words almost hurt. They were lies, particularly the part about her being better than him, but if she wanted to win she needed to keep his mind from becoming too focused and sharp—because if it did she wouldn’t be able to take him down with her mind, but might be forced to rely on more lethal means.
He narrowed his eyes. “You’re better than me in your dreams, douche nugget.” The final words dripped with sarcasm. “
Let me prove it.”
Hadley drove at Hannah’s mind with all his force. In response she threw up a shield and held it steady, but as he pushed on she could feel him slipping through her mental barrier. Hannah gritted her teeth and forced more of the Etheric energy flowing within her toward her mental capacity, but her shield continued to wane.
The two paced in a circle on the dusty ground like two fighters sizing each other up in the Pit back in Arcadia, but an onlooker wouldn’t be able to tell that as far as the expenditure of energy went they were already in the fifth round.
“Hadley, no! Stop! This isn’t you,” Gregory screamed, but it did no good. “Remember who you are. Remember all that you have done. Remember what you love.”
But Hadley kept pushing, and a smile rose again—he knew he was almost through Hannah’s barricade. In a second her brain would be scrambled and the Rift would be his.
“Remember what you taught me!” Gregory yelled. “You changed me!”
And then Gregory heard his own words. As he stood there in the middle of the open plain he was terrified, scared of everything. He had let Hadley take him without much problem because he was afraid of the man who, in the mountains outside of Kaskara, had taught him to not fear for the first time in his life.
Gregory crouched and grabbed the first big rock his hands could find, then roared like a wild beast and rushed the mystic.
The mystic whirled and sent a quick burst into Gregory’s mind—enough to toss him on his ass—but before he dropped Gregory saw something in Hadley’s eyes. Whether it had been his words or the fear of injury, for a brief second Hadley had been back.
And that was all that Hannah needed.
“Sit down, bitch!” she yelled, and Hannah blasted him as hard as she could with everything she had.
Hadley’s body convulsed, and he bent at the waist as if he had been run through with cold steel. He looked up at her, smiled for a moment, and dropped to the ground unconscious.
They both ran toward his crumpled form and Hannah reached for the dagger at her hip, but before she could draw it Gregory had snatched Hadley’s and held it to his throat.
“Holy balls, Gregory!” she said between exhausted gasps for breath. “That was badass.”
“It was?” he asked, head still spinning from Hadley’s assault.
“Hell yeah, it was. I’m starting to wonder if we’re wasting your gifts on flying the Unlawful.”
Gregory grinned from ear to ear even though he knew she was being overly kind. But as usual, he didn’t think of himself for long. “What are we going to do with this guy?”
She looked down at Hadley. The young man’s eyes were wide and his skin was pale and damp with sweat, but his face looked relaxed and almost pleasant, as if he were himself again. She didn’t want to take any chances, though.
“Keep your knee on his chest and keep the blade at his throat,” she said. Gregory nodded.
Hannah placed her hands on Hadley’s head, and this time she sent the healing power of the Etheric into him little by little until his eyes snapped open.
“Hadley, is that—”
“By the gods!” Hadley burst out. “She’s coming—Laughter. Almost here. We have to go.”
With fear in his eyes, he scrambled to get away from Gregory. Hannah easily broke into his mind and she found terror, but no trace of the Kurtherian. Grabbing him under the armpits, she dragged him to his feet.
“It’s OK, Hadley. You were under her spell, but you’re safe now.”
“You don’t understand,” he yelled, shaking his head. “She’s coming now!”
As he spoke, the world began to shake and a sound like a mountain shattering filled the air.
Hannah looked behind her at the opening Rift.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hannah held onto Hadley’s shirt as she stared up at the Rift in disbelief. The edges of the portal into Laughter’s universe trembled. The Rift flexed before the passageway into their world began to spread apart as if it were being pulled open by a giant on the other side.
“Holy shit,” Hannah creaked.
“Guys,” Hadley yelled, “we’ve gotta go. We need to get back.”
Gregory shook his head incredulously, his insides turning over on themselves. “This can’t be. There’s no way it can open unless…”
“Lilith,” Hannah replied. “Something’s gone wrong in New Romanov.”
Gregory glared at Hadley. He couldn’t believe the plan had gone south, not after all they had been through. Not after they had stopped the mystic. In his mind, there was only one explanation for what was happening. “You’re doing this,” he shouted, landing the best right hook he could muster on Hadley’s chin. “Get out of our heads!”
Hadley held his jaw. “Damn nice right, Gregory, but it’s not me. Swear to the Matriarch! She’s coming. Laughter is coming for us. For Irth. We need to get back to New Romanov before it’s too late.”
A bestial roar from overhead grabbed their attention, and the team swung back to face the Rift just in time to see a Skrim begin its climb into Irth.
Hannah nodded toward the portal. “That douche nugget thinks it’s already too late.”
The creature opened its mouth to scream at them again, but the massive open jaws were met with a fireball bigger than the magician’s dragon.
The Skrim’s head exploded as it fell back into Laughter’s world.
Hannah, eyes glowing red, shook the fire off her hands and grabbed the men by their shoulders. “Let’s haul ass,” she yelled, and with that and a crack they disappeared, leaving only a pillar of smoke under the Rift.
****
“Gregory!” Laurel screamed as he, Hadley and Hannah materialized in the center of the town square. She was in his arms before he even realized they had arrived, and began kissing him desperately. “I thought I had lost you.”
He took a little more of their precious time to kiss her back, and this one was longer; more filled with passion than desperation. Gregory knew all too well that Laughter and her hellish legion from beyond were on their way to claim New Romanov and Irth for her own, and if it were to be their last kiss he was going to make it count.
Laurel pulled away and smiled. “I love you!”
Gregory blushed. “Really?”
“For being so smart,” she said through a smile, “you sure can be stupid.”
Hadley cleared his throat and they looked up at him. “Hey, lovebirds. What do you say you knock that shit off and we save the world?”
Laurel looked up at Gregory. “What happened?”
“Well, Hadley almost killed me and then the Rift opened. It’s a long-ass story, but right now I need to get to Lilith.”
He glanced at Hannah, who was kneeling in the dirt. Parker had wrapped her in his arms. She looked exhausted, and rightfully so. Going several rounds with Hadley before taking out the Skrim and jumping them all back to New Romanov had been no small task. Just months before she wouldn’t have be able to do it, but now her most harrowing challenge still lay ahead and her energy was largely gone.
He ran over to her and joined her on the ground. Giving Parker a nod, he turned to his first true friend.
Hannah’s eyes were drawn, dark circles surrounding them, but she still managed to smile. “Didn’t think I’d get us back, did you?”
“I’ve doubted a lot over the years, Hannah, but you’re just about the only thing in Irth that I haven’t. But we need you now.” She nodded silently in response.
Parker looked at her and then at Gregory, holding back his dissent. “Let’s do this,” he said. It was against his better judgment, but he knew that arguing with Hannah now would be as productive as trying to mate two male boars. He gently lifted her to her feet, then turned them both toward the mountain.
“No,” Hannah said. “While I’d like nothing more than a double-date right now, I need you and Laurel here helping the troops.”
“Like hell,” Parker finally blurted. His self-control had met its
limit. “I’m going with you.”
Hannah placed a finger on his lips. “You’re so damn cute when you’re being insubordinate. We can fight this one out later, but right now you need to follow my lead. This is important. Most damn important thing ever. The Skrima are coming through the Rift, and if Hadley is right Laughter is close behind. She’s going to try to finish it today, and every move she’s made so far has been perfectly calculated. You need to buy us some time, Parker. No matter what. Find Karl and get his short ass moving.”
Parker knew she was right, but he feared for a moment that he would never see her again. Pulling her into a tight embrace, he whispered in her ear, “I’ll see you soon.”
“You bet your ass you will. I’m sure I’ll have to save you a half-dozen times before the sun sets.”
“Then you’d better make it back.” He kissed her and then placed one of her arms gently around Gregory and slapped Hadley on the back. “Go!”
The two parties set off in opposite directions and, glancing over his shoulder, Parker saw Hannah looking after him.
She gave him a nod and a slightly sad smile, which sent a chill up his spine.
****
Lights flickered around them, casting strange shadows in the tunnel as they hurried toward Lilith’s chamber.
“You OK?” Hadley asked, his face knit with concern.
Hannah lied. “I’m all good.”
They moved faster, letting the slope into the belly of the mountain carry them along. As they moved Hannah tried to focus, to put her meditation skills to work, but they were shit and it only worked to distract her. Catching her boot on a rock, she stumbled and hit the floor.