by K. F. Breene
You are doing a wonderful job. I would hate to get in your way and prevent you from kicking heads.
“Super. I can see that you’ll forever remind me of that. In my defense, it was a tense situation and I wasn’t thinking. Or in control.”
Yes. It pulled at my primal side in…pleasant ways. Almost as alluring as ripping off arms and chasing demons around with them…
“Oh good. I needed to know that, thanks,” I grumbled. “And it was just the one arm.”
I slowed when the path opened up in front of us. My heart, which had nearly returned to normal speed, started to thump faster again. We were coming on an intersection. I worried I’d see demons in it.
“The good news is…” I said as I stalked forward, my power throbbing. I felt the earlier demon chant vibrating through me. Blood! Blood! Blood! “At this rate, no one will try to present me to my dad. They’ll ship me back to the surface as quickly as possible for fear I’ll kill them all.”
Or want to fight you in a show of bravado.
“Don’t help, please.” I gingerly touched the rock wall and felt a prick on my palm. Too sharp to flatten against—not that doing so would really help me.
Figuring I just had to go for it, I summoned all my power and stalked out into the space with a confident swagger. My sword pushed against my back, wanting to be taken out and swung around. The weight of my gun reminded me that demons could also be shot.
Stillness greeted me.
I let out a relieved breath and looked around.
Jagged rock walls on all sides, nearly uniform in height. We’d come from one prong of a fork in the road. I turned to look at the other prong, along which the scuffle from a moment ago must’ve taken place. No one walked out. Either they’d been going the opposite direction, or they were dead.
The pathway in front of us led away right. No hovels peeked over the walls, and no voices floated our direction.
Plunk.
I gritted my teeth. The leaking roof was starting to get on my freaking nerves.
Have you felt any of these demons? Darius thought-asked.
“What do you mean?” I started forward again, not wanting to curse my good luck.
The level-five demon in Seattle, and the one we called not long ago, seemed to feel your power. And you theirs, correct?
I thought back as we hurried along. “Their power made mine throb—either the fire or the ice, depending on their type of magic. But ever since we got down here, my power has become a beast all its own.”
They should feel your magic.
“At first I thought they couldn’t, but maybe they do. As you’ve seen—safely from the sidelines, I might add—I am constantly noticed. I should invite them to tea so I can ask if it’s my power they are feeling or my mug they are seeing. Or both.” I analyzed the rock walls, which were reducing again. There wasn’t any apparent rhyme or reason for their fluctuating size. “Why did they put in walls, anyway? Why create corridors that essentially lead to the same places? It’s not like these are streets with homes, and the occupants want privacy. They’ve made it so you have to stay on the path. You can’t go over the walls unless you want to cut yourself up. It feels like we’re rats in some science experiment in the Brink. I don’t get the reason for it.”
Being that the creatures in this section of the edges are extremely volatile, maybe privacy is exactly what they’re after. The fewer demons each sees, the fewer problems there will be.
I frowned, because maybe, but there weren’t exactly tons of nooks and crannies on the paths. Hiding wasn’t really a legitimate option. Besides, the paths just dumped out into the open. Privacy en route to the meeting didn’t mean much if you didn’t also have it while conducting business.
The rocks around us fell away. Another step and the imagery around us changed dramatically, blanking out my thoughts. I turned around with wide eyes as Darius pressed up against me. Behind us, the corridors of rough rock walls had disappeared, replaced with a desolate landscape stretching as far as I could see. Gray stone had turned to hard mud or clay, run through with cracks.
I turned back around, gripping Darius’s arm.
Directly in front of us, a single pier led into the smooth water of the river. It stretched out in front of us until it disappeared behind a thick layer of gray fog. No ripples or current disturbed the surface. Desolate beach ran along it, and just like behind us, there wasn’t another person or creature as far as the eye could see.
“Only one dock,” Darius said out loud, clearly wanting to interrupt the unnatural silence.
“Right in front of us.” I patted my gun for comfort. “Was that the only path to get to the river, or would that pier have magically appeared in front of no matter where we’d entered?” I looked around again. “This smells like mind-fuckery to me.”
I walked along the beach, watching the dock as though it would follow. It stayed right where I’d left it. So did the fog, not shifting and rolling like normal fog. The dried mud under my feet didn’t feel as smooth as it looked, nor did it give way like that substance normally would have. In fact, the hardness felt like the stone we’d just left.
I stopped and looked up. The canopy of rock from the edges of the underworld had been replaced by limitless gray sky, the same color as the fog. Seeing it stretch forever, like the beach, like the new canvas of dried desert behind me, gave me vertigo.
Yanking my gaze away, I looked back toward Darius.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach.
He was gone. The spot he’d been standing in was empty.
I glanced to the side. The dock was lined up with me. It was no longer where I had been.
“Holy tater tits, Batman.” I broke out in a cold sweat, fighting the urge to sprint back in his direction. If I did that, and he was just obscured by fog or an illusion, I’d miss him, and in this place, it was entirely possible I’d never find him again.
Plunk.
I froze. And looked up.
The gray sky was there, same as before, but that had been a drop of water. I was sure of it. Which meant the leaking rock ceiling was up there somewhere.
An illusion. That’s all this was. Trickery of the eye. Magic intended to do what those walls had done: force us on a certain path.
Mental fuckery, like I’d thought before.
I closed my eyes, focusing on my connection with Darius. I could feel his beating heart, pounding rhythmically deep inside me. Strong and sure, it wasn’t at an elevated speed, which meant he wasn’t freaking out like I was.
Could he see me?
Instead of opening my eyes and looking around wildly, like I’d just done to no avail, I looked internally, feeling the natural homing device assured by the bond. It was a beacon that would allow me to find him anywhere. In any world. We would never be lost from each other.
I walked like a blind person, waving my arms in front of me to keep from bumping into anything. With my luck, a pole would randomly appear just so I’d knock my head against it. If there was YouTube in this place, the residents would go to town thumbs-upping that little nugget. It would be right up there with the whole head-kicking debacle.
A slight hum filled my body as I neared what should’ve been Darius’s body. His heartbeat stayed strong and steady. Another few steps and a flare of delight fluttered my heart and flipped my stomach. Being that this was the first time I’d been away from him since the bonding, even just a little bit, I wondered if that would always happen when we reunited. It was nice.
I opened my eyes.
The pier was back in front of me. Darius was not.
“Darius?” I called.
I am here. You should be right beside me. I am reaching for you but not feeling you. I can hear you in my mind.
“Does your heart not react when you freak out? Because you should be freaking out—not that I’m judging.” I was totally judging.
I saw you disappear. This place seems to be an illusion, tricking our minds. It also seems to have some
metaphysical power. The change in our proximity has put us on a different plane. Or the same plane but in a different space. Perhaps it’s meant to isolate people before they go over the river.
“You’re talking nonsense. Okay, look, we need to get back in the same acid trip. Do you have any experience doing that?”
Drugs do not affect vampires in that way.
“Dang it. Don’t do drugs, they said. They’ll ruin you, they said. Well, now look.” The dock lurked across from me, taunting me. Ready to move around like a ghost when I wasn’t looking.
Rage sparked again, and this time I let it fill me. Fanned it higher. I didn’t like being punked. If this place wanted to mess with me, I’d mess with it right back.
“Let me know if anything happens on your side.” I set fire to crawl along the dock, feeling things out. Magic radiated from that direction, complex and comforting. It was equal parts fire and ice, blended in a breathtaking way. This magic couldn’t be unraveled by a mere touch. In fact, it needed counter magic—I would have to work in opposition with its structure to tear it apart.
I spent a few more minutes studying what I was feeling, trying to make sense of it. Identify it. Then I pushed my magic out all around me, mixing the two sides as best as I could despite the fact that they wouldn’t peacefully blend.
The world lit up around me. Fire and ice interlaced in the sparkling, complex fabric of this entire illusion.
“My father is an absolute master,” I said softly. I knew this was above me, and it would take too long to even attempt to carefully unweave it. I’d have to do what I did best. Try to blast through it. Which was good, because my appreciation didn’t stop the rage boiling within me. Something else, too. Confidence. The desire to command. To control everything around me, even though I clearly wasn’t doing great with controlling myself.
I waved my hand through the air, operating on impulse. Letting my power lead me. If I was going to crack up, I might as well go big.
Swirls of ice flurries played within the magic, followed by sparks of fire. I threw an explosion into it, shaking the ground and punching a hole through the void of gray. The visual winked, and everything blinked black. When all the light was lost, a blue tint appeared, showing a lightning-quick glimpse of the world beneath the illusion. Stone beneath my feet, pockmarked and uneven like before. Pier after pier down the way, the edge of each two feet apart from its neighbor. Rolling, boiling wisps of fog contained within invisible walls, allowing me to see past it now. Rock walls hacked at so as not to reach out into the beach illusion area.
The river did have a current. A fast one.
The illusion blinked back in place and I felt blinded.
I curled my magic into the fabric of the illusion and short-circuited it. There it was again—raging river, the line of piers.
As I watched the water, a twisted body—and is that a broom?—floated along. Maybe someone hadn’t possessed the right magic to cross the river and finish up their…sweeping?
I blinked and shook my head. I was probably seeing things.
One thing was for certain. This was all for show. A grand hoax to make it seem cooler, or scarier, than it actually was. To make people feel more alone than they really were.
My dad was a showboat.
He had me going, too. He’d gotten me good, the tricky devil.
Reagan?
Oh yeah.
I worked my magic without thinking. Without planning. I set my goal—bring Darius back into my acid trip—and let intuition guide me again. Fire slid over my body. Ice throbbed up from my middle. I forced them outward until they wove together in a halo around me. Then I shoved that halo in the direction Darius should’ve been, punching through the tapestry of the magical illusion in order to reach the reality beneath.
The world around me throbbed. Not just the illusion I’d been marooned in. All of it. The whole damn thing.
Blue flared on all sides, showing the magical blueprint of the spell, and then the whole thing peeled away. Demons stood on a large platform of stone, looking around in confusion. The piers showed up again, side by side, probably forty or fifty in all. Figures sat in the boats docked at the ends, rocking in the current. The fog wafted in front of them, a magically created fence mostly see-through at this point.
All the figures in the boats turned as one, and stared in my direction.
“Oh crap.”
I reached out, grabbed Darius by the arm, and yanked him toward me. “Hang on to me while I try to put this back.”
“Yes, hurry!” he said.
Now his heart was hammering.
Chapter Sixteen
I had no idea how to reconstruct what must’ve been my father’s work, so I pulled all my magic back into myself—all except for the halo I’d formed around Darius and me. I chewed my lip as the world around us throbbed. Blue light flared, still showing people looking around in confusion, before the illusion finally rematerialized.
“I have no idea what any of that was, but I’m a rock star when I let my split personality take over.” I wiped my forehead.
“You are a natural, Reagan, like a handful of mages in the world. What you aren’t, however, is subtle. Or even remotely good at strategic thinking.”
I started forward. “That sounded like a giant thank you for bringing you back to your lady love. Almost like groveling. Jesus, man. Get a grip. I don’t need thanks. I’m happy just to be awesome.”
I didn’t have to look back at him to know he’d narrowed his eyes at me.
The dock felt like real wood—it had probably started that way, but magic had made it indestructible. I had the impulse to jump to the one I knew waited beside it, my eyes wide open, just to see what happened. But it wasn’t worth the risk. I’d probably miss and get wedged between them in that dark, murky water. Given the creature I’d seen floating in it, and what might or might not have been a dirty broom, it had to be a hotbed of underworld bacteria.
Our feet thumped softly as we walked down the pier. I put my hand into it and felt prickles along my skin. “What do you feel?”
Darius did the same and flinched. He extended his hand again, slowly. It disappeared into the fog. “It is painful, but tolerable.”
“Maybe this is the real gate to the underworld, only allowing those with demon blood to pass.”
Wariness crossed his features. “We will now find out if Ja was right.”
“Or if she was trying to kill you by sending you down here?” I grimaced. “That probably should’ve occurred to me. It would’ve been a good reason not to bond.”
“Which is why I didn’t mention it.”
“Since you know everything, obviously.”
“Yes.”
He’d missed my sarcasm.
I stepped into the fog. Darius walked in after me. Immediately, his eyes tightened and his jaw clenched, clearly in pain. He kept pace, the sound of our feet on the boards muted even more than before. Wisps of white slid across my skin, lightly stinging.
Plunk.
I balled my fists. “If those drips continue the whole time we’re here, they will slowly drive me insane. I’m not kidding.” I thought about what I’d just said. “More insane.”
A few more steps and the fog cleared, revealing the boat at the end of the dock. From my previous efforts, I knew that it—and the other boats we couldn’t see—floated in the center of the huge river. Its bow was pointed upstream. Within it, sitting placidly at the back and staring straight ahead, was a creature in a dark gray robe with a hood covering its head. I could just see its human(ish) face, now noticing the grayish skin and missing eyes.
I did say ish.
It could see, though. Either the hollow sockets were also an illusion, or it had sonar or something. The boatman had looked right at me.
My dad was definitely a showboat. A real flair for theater, he had.
“How are you doing?” I asked Darius.
Still standing, he thought.
Yikes. I wondered if
it was as bad as Dizzy’s spell breaking his hands. I didn’t want to ask for fear it was worse. I really did put the guy through hell. I’d have to get him a fruit basket or blood bag or something after this was all through. Maybe a back rub.
“How about now?” I asked, not advancing toward the boat just yet.
“I’m fine now. It feels the same here as in the edges. There is also still air. I wonder if that will change.”
I did, too. Why else would I have inherited the ability to survive without breathing?
“That fog must be what keeps people out.” Darius turned and studied the gray, stagnant mass. “It’s strong magic, like the illusion anchored to this place, but it’s still just magic. It can be worked around with enough power and skill.”
“Like…by mages, you mean?”
“Yes. Lucifer is mighty, but he is not untouchable. Neither is the elf royalty. I’ve seen them undone by an incredible dual-mage team. Brothers. Absolute naturals. Who, consequently, were banned from the Realm after their trick. They changed the layout of the castle. I don’t think anyone knew that could be done until that point. Natural mages such as those are extremely rare. Only a handful exist, that we know of, in the world. Form two naturals into a dual-mage team, and they could undo this fog, cracking this kingdom open like an egg.”
“Wow. Don’t dream really big, do you? Should I mention the flaw in your plan?” I paused for a beat, and when he didn’t answer, continued. “Mages can’t get through the gate to the edges.”
“Where there is a will, there is a way.”
“Right. Well, good luck with the whole supernatural world domination thing. Think those dual mages will help out?” I stared at the creature in the boat. It hadn’t turned our way, though our murmuring voices must’ve reached it. “Also, do you think that thing can hear us? If it has super hearing like a vampire, it might be able to make out what we were saying, and I doubt you want your plans foiled before you even begin.”