The Verse of Sibilant Shadows: A set of tales from the Irrational Worlds

by JM Guillen

  I studied the room melting in the hellfire, noting the cubicles closest to the hole had fallen in. Near the pit, that left a large section of wall blank.

  Biting my lip, I considered the situation.

  The hole was awfully wide across, but small sections of flooring here and there broke up the giant pit into several smaller gaps.

  Then something occurred to me:

  I could run along the wall to get around it.

  Edging closer, I peered down, into the depths of the closest breach.

  Heat scalded my face. The walls were melting in the room below. The metal and glass canisters slumped down into blobby lumps, becoming liquid slag. It was a long way down. A long, hot way down.

  I had to go back.

  The air was cooler that way, I consoled myself, and the floor was firmer. That was something. I turned back toward the door.

  Then, like a hammer wrought of ice and iron and terror, an alien, sourceless panic flooded my entire body.

  For no reason.

  “Wh—?” I dropped into a crouch, my eyes as wide as they would go and the hair on the back of my neck at attention. Every sense I owned, save my intellect, screamed at me.

  My heart pounded.

  It didn’t make any sense. Nothing had changed. The heat still rose; the floor still sagged. The room remained mostly the same as it had been when I opened the door. I sensed no cause for this hysteria.

  Slowly, I unlocked my joints and straightened.

  And then the very fabric of the room ripped apart in front of me. A vertigo-inducing, scarlet flame burned wider and wider.

  “Fuck! Why me?” I spat the words, slowly backing away.

  A haunting vision of grace slid one long, slender leg through the gateway. The platinum-haired witch-woman slowly emerged from the blood-drenched hallway beyond, spotless in her form-fitting, gray dress. Her lovely, delicate features were absolutely blank as she sauntered forward, every motion slow and controlled. Her vacant eyes seemed to look through me, inside me, searching, probing. Her fingers madly twitched, plunking away at my very being.

  They’re chasing me. Why? What was so special about me?

  I froze, unable to back away from those mad eyes. She was inevitable, an unstoppable predator stalking its defenseless prey. I could do nothing to prevent her from utterly destroying me.

  The dark-skinned man followed her, a disparate entity of speed and deadly mobility that diverged from his bewitching companion so much that I found myself fleeing his presence before I realized that my legs were moving.

  I darted toward the wall, dodging felt-paneled cubicle walls and sliding over paper-strewn desks at top speed. I leapt over desks and rolling chairs like a sprinter clearing hurdles.

  The crash and clamor that chased after me told me the trio was shoving the office furniture out of their way.

  And then the ruckus ceased.

  Nope. That’s not worrying at all.

  I dove over a desk with a typewriter. After I hit the floor and rolled, I leapt to my feet to continue my unscheduled parkour practice. The typewriter hit the floor in a crushing jangle two seconds later, and I glanced back. The blade fashionista had hurled it out of his way, bounding after me like a hound on the scent.

  I tried to consider him a blessing in disguise. After all, he inspired me to run faster, gaining the speed I would need to run along the wall above the first hole in the floor.

  This has to work; it’s my only chance, my mind wailed as I approached the appointed wall-space. I tried not to look down. They always said don’t look down, so there had to be a reason for it.

  I glanced down.

  Oh! God, it’s a long way down! Please, oh please, don’t let me fall! The floor below had collapsed. It appeared that the hole under me sunk into the heretofore unknown basement level. Either that or it was sinking into a literal Hell.

  Or was the center of the Earth rising up to meet it?

  Regardless, a really deep hole dropped below me.

  The air also grew extremely hot. It had gone from standing-in-front-of-the-oven to car-upholstery-in-mid-summer to ankle-deep-in-molten-lava in an instant. By all rights, the heat that surged up from that hellish pit should have kept me aloft like a balloon.

  Sweat poured down my face, plastering my hair to my scalp and molding my borrowed shirt to my body as I barreled ahead at top speed. Reaching the wall, I zoomed up it at an angle, aiming far higher than I truly wanted to go.

  Below, a small lake of molten metal and liquid stone bubbled, waiting.

  My feet pounded the plaster as I did my best to ignore my imminent death.

  A snarl came from behind. The killing machine still chased me, doing his best ninja impression as he used his weird hand and foot blades as climbing crampons, shoving them into the wall and leaping along my back trail like the world’s biggest rabid squirrel.

  But with guns.

  Four steps from the apex of my arc, eye-searing crimson snagged my gaze.

  Fuck, no! What did they want from me?

  On the far side of the gaping holes in the floor another fiery fissure burst into existence, twisting space as well as my stomach. The crossbow-wielding asshole stepped through, waiting for me.

  So… death in front, death behind, and death below. Great.

  I was so screwed. If I didn’t fall screaming to my very painful, fiery death, and if the guy behind me didn’t stab me with his sharp, pronged fists of death, then his gun-toting friend would certainly shoot me to death. Death, death, and more death. It surrounded me, suffused me, demanded my surrender.

  Dammit. I guess I’ll just have to take door number four, Monty!

  I never was very good about doing what people expected of me.

  Reaching the top of my arc, I shoved with my foot, abandoning the wall. For an eternal instant I hung in total freefall.

  The pit below yawned wide, broiling the air around me. Flames licked up at me, inviting me to their dance.

  I gazed down into it with widened eyes.

  Then I was flying, diving for the nearest bit of solid ground. As it rushed up at me with more speed than was truly necessary, I stretched out my hands, reaching for safety like a long lost lover. And just like the bastard deserved, I slapped it hard with both hands, stealing some of the impact. I tucked my head, rolled, and bounded to my feet a few steps away from the crossbowman.

  Who pointed a very large gun directly at me.

  I shoved an airwall between us just before he fired. The bolt of force hit my wall an inch away from his barrel. I grinned as I realized what an idiot I had been. Why hadn’t I just used my “gift” when—

  The man went flying backward, ripped off his feet by his own stun-gun.

  I hadn’t expected that.

  Before I could see where or even if he landed, I was past him, running straight for the unnatural, crimson passageway.

  Here goes… Taking a deep breath, I leapt and plunged through the fissure in space.

  Ragged ribbons of burning silver glided along my skin as I barged through, back to the other side of the hole in the floor I’d just crossed.

  I appeared directly in front of the dead-eyed, soul-sucking blonde. Fear sliced through me, an overwhelming, despairing sensation. With a snarl, I snapped one leg out as I dropped into a spinning crouch. My leg met hers and swept it out from under her.

  For the first time, emotion appeared on the woman’s face. Total, unexpected surprise reflected in her black eyes, and her mouth rounded into a little o of dismay as she hit the floor.

  I grinned like a jackal and charged toward the door.

  I can’t believe that worked!

  By the immediate barrage of footsteps behind me, Mr. Shiny Knives still bore hard on my heels.

  Naturally.

  I sprinted to the hallway door, yanked it open, and hurled myself into a bloody nightmare.

  Shocked, I skidded to a stop. At least two dozen people with gas masks had crowded in here when I’d first entered this h
allway going the other way.

  I’d have never guessed so few now. Blood and chunks of bodies painted the room so even the ceiling dripped fat, scarlet bits.

  I stood in the middle of a charnel house.

  “Stop right there, ’Rat!” The deep voice held a note of hatred that took me completely off guard.

  I turned.

  The blade-wielding maniac who had chased me stood silhouetted in the doorway.

  An absolutely hulking beast of a man, his brown skin glistened with sweat from the heat, but while his chest should have been heaving with the effort of that climb—mine certainly did—he barely breathed. He could have been strolling in the hot summer sun on a Sunday afternoon for all the effort he showed.

  It was completely unfair.

  As was the gun he held pointed directly at my head.

  Slowly I raised my hands, palms out.

  “Don’—!” was all I managed to squeak out before he fired.

  Directly into the airwall I’d put over the doorway.

  Apparently it was not an energy gun like the other man’s, for an actual bullet tangled in my wall. It must have been a higher caliber than the Tommy-gun the Naar’eth carried though. The single cartridge pressed harder on my wall than the Naar’eth’s handful of bullets had.

  The large man snarled at the stuck bullet and glared hatefully at me.

  “Ha!” I pointed at him triumphantly.

  He held up a grenade.

  My heart dropped into my stomach. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t! It would blow him to smithereens!

  “Whoa!” I put everything I had into my airwall. I had no idea how much force I could take. I edged back a step, hands rising higher. “Just… just settle down. You don’t have t—!”

  He set it off with a flick of his thumb

  A soundless whump made the world around us tremble. The floor and walls shuddered as if made of rubber but returned to stillness while retaining their original, undamaged if gory shapes.

  “I’m still here…” My voice was a tremulous whisper, but it was apparent that I was indeed, still here, not dead, dismembered or—

  My airwall dissolved, feeling like sand running through my fingers.

  Oh fuck. I whimpered.

  “Not for long, you’re not.” The man grinned and stepped into the bloody hallway, taking his time aiming the gun at the precise point on my head that he wanted.

  In that moment, the nude woman stepped from behind me. She stood at my side and swung her perfectly ordinary, old-timey machine gun to the front. She fired on the man before he could blink.

  She fired and fired and fired.

  My knees gave out during the blaze of gunfire, and I collapsed to the grisly carpet, retching, as the mirror-eyed Naar’eth riddled the man with bullets.

  His body danced and shimmied as he was pummeled with impersonal, ceaseless ruination. Blood appeared as if by magic, giant red roses that burst into bloom all over his body like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

  I jerked my head aside, tearing myself away from the mesmerizing death-dance.

  The Naar’eth still fired, her mirrored eyes as vacant as the black-eyed witch-woman’s, her lovely face just as blank. Unlike the witch, the Naar’eth’s lips moved in an unending stream of unintelligible words that poured from her stolen lips.

  The gun ran dry, and the bloody ruins of her target collapsed to the floor.

  The Naar’eth turned her head to regard me, the smallest hint of a smile curving one corner of her ever-moving mouth. She inclined her head to me briefly and then turned back to face the doorway.

  Abruptly her lips stopped moving, and she looked down.

  A dull-silver, metal bolt stuck out of her breastbone.

  Surprise registered in her eyes just before she abruptly disappeared.

  I gaped at the suddenly empty room until motion caught my gaze. I whipped my head around, hearing a noise in the room we had just vacated.

  The Naar’eth fell from a crimson fissure burning at the top of the ceiling, down into the flaming pit, her pale arms spread wide as she plummeted to her white-hot annihilation.

  And then… the dead man in front of me stood up.

  “No fucking fair.” I was kind of glad I was still on the floor, for if I’d made the effort to stand, my knees wouldn’t have held me.

  His head spasmed to the side, a rapid flutter of movement so fast it blurred his features for a split second. Then he froze, perfectly immobile, as if time itself were suspended.

  The now familiar silver slid over his eyes.

  “Ha!” I actually pumped my fist into the air. “One for my side!”

  For a long moment, the Naar’eth stared at me. Then he inclined his head, his lips moving, whispering words I still couldn’t understand.

  I nodded back, stunned at his reappearance.

  His ever-moving lips quirked, and he turned away from me to face the door, gesturing as he did.

  “Go.” It was the only intelligible word, but something I agreed with wholeheartedly.

  I ran for the stairs.

  Behind me I heard the Naar’eth engage the crossbowman and his witchy companion.

  It didn’t sound healthy.

  I ran to the top of the stairs, two more floors. At the roof, I burst out into the evening air. It felt amazing, like being able to breathe for the first time, like being reborn from fire and blood and death and terror.

  After jogging to the edge, I began the long, slow climb down.

  Of course I easily found the windows from the outside. Peering in the first one, I realized they had been boarded over on the inside.

  Naturally.

  Shaking my head, I edged along the narrow sill on my tip-toes, trying to peer around the nearby corner to see if, between the walls, I could tic tac my way down to the alley there.

  Flames roared up the opposite side of the building.

  So no. No exit there.

  Sirens from at least three firetrucks wailed louder and louder as they approached, so that I couldn’t hear anything else.

  I hunkered on the window ledge and contemplated my options. I could—

  “Liz!” The voice penetrated my concentration.

  I whipped my head around to find my crew: Rehl, Baxter, Alicia, Jax, and even Ben, all waiting to help me down.

  What? This was the most improbable thing yet!

  Grinning like a loon, I followed their hasty directions, jumping up to grasp the edge of the roof. I dangled like a fishing lure from the top of the building as I worked myself, hand over hand, trusting my friends to tell me when I was directly above the next window.

  “There, there!” they howled every time.

  My descent took forever. Occasionally the building trembled and shook. More than once I worried it would melt before I reached the street.

  After what felt like an eternity of carefully holding my entire bodyweight with one hand while edging the other further to the right so I could shift my weight to the other hand, I needed to drop another level.

  I maybe should have just made an air-slide. I grinned at the thought. What would my friends think, though?

  They’d be jealous. My grin grew wider. I’m about to be great at parkour.

  I looked down. The bottom sill was slightly to the right of dead center below me.

  I edged over slightly and carefully dropped the six inches or so to the thankfully wide window ledge.

  My crew cheered.

  My hands felt like they were permanently curled into monkey-paws. I tried to open them further, but they refused to obey. I shook them, hoping that blood flow would help.

  “Hold the window sill and dangle! Drop down to the next floor!” Rehl shouted.

  “Carefully!” That was Baxter.

  I smiled at his concern. It was sweet.

  “No, I’m gonna do this recklessly!” I shouted back as I crouched.

  Another heart-stopping little drop, and I was halfway down.

  “Drop all the way, Liz! We’r
e ready for you!” Rehl called.

  Looking down, I could see a little knot of people below me, entangling their arms together.

  “You want me to fall onto that? You’re nuts!”

  Cries of “We can take it!” and “You know you want to!” met my ears.

  I laughed.

  “How did you blockheads find me, anyway?”

  Rehl actually stuck his tongue out at me.

  “Got a message you were here and in trouble,” Alicia answered. “So here we are!”

  A message, huh? Like from a skinny, old man that had promised me help?

  “Come on, jump down! We’ll catch you!”

  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and leaned backward into the world’s most spine-tingling trust fall.

  Wind rushed past me, a mattress-thick cushion of nothing and less, and I wondered again if I shouldn’t make an airwall slide.

  When I hit the tangle of arms, all momentum—and thought—stopped.

  I grinned up at my friends, safe.

  Well, as safe as I could be in New York City. There were always a few problems lingering in the shadows and alleyways. Things no one had gotten around to taking care of yet.

  Yet. The thought arrived sharp in my mind. A certain skeletal gentleman owed me more than a few answers. Maybe after that, I could look into some of those other matters.

  Give me time.

  5

  This was my night for answers.

  The moon shone low in the sky, swollen and bright, but not yet full. The air swirled gently around me, a hint of a breeze that only teased at the cool of the dark. Steam rose from the gutters, hot and noxious.

  I stood still in the night, breathing deeply, purposefully. Tilting my head from one side to the other, I stretched my neck as I contemplated the building in front of me. I mapped the best route to the top.

  Scaling the three-story building wasn’t the easiest thing I’d ever done, but it certainly wasn’t the worst part of my week. While I stood on the roof overlooking the tiny shop, Fallen Leaves, I studied it for a time, letting my body rest, gathering my fortitude.

  This was going to be one hell of a night, I expected.

  I was glad to be back in clothes that fit my athletic frame. The black leggings were comfortable and allowed for easy movement. The leather jacket, gloves, and boots made my fashionable attempt at protection.