Shouldering off the coat, she threw it on the driver’s seat.
She stood there for maybe two breaths, adjusting her weapons, her swords, all the holsters, her whip. She checked her pockets for ammunition for the fourth time, then finally turned to close the driver’s side door, barely letting it click.
She didn’t bother to lock it.
The Traveler had already exited the car on his side and now closed his door as quietly as she had.
As he did, his eyes remained warily on her face.
“Are you going to tell me what we’re doing back here?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, but began walking swiftly in the direction of the big cat cages.
The Traveler followed, but only after exhaling in obvious frustration.
She rounded the corner, entering the winding footpath leading up to the display area… and immediately came to a stop, seeing a group of shadowy figures.
They clearly saw her, too.
They came to a stop, dead-center on the packed-earth trail.
In that bare breath when she first glimpsed their outlines near the trees, Alexis saw the way they moved, gliding like liquid shadows in the dark.
Nothing human moved like that.
Then she fully rounded the corner, and the shadowy forms saw her.
They froze.
Even the way they did that was inhuman. They didn’t move at all, not even to breathe. It was like someone hit pause, or like they’d all been turned to stone.
Their silver eyes glowed in the dark, sharp as living metal.
She thought at first their irises must be reflecting moonlight, then realized the moon had dipped down too low in the sky. Moreover, it was setting behind them; she could see the last of its light through the trees as it fell below the horizon.
She was still staring when the creatures moved.
Instead of running away, they ran right for her.
“Holy gods in the netherworlds,” the Traveler said. “What in the creation are those?”
She didn’t bother to answer that.
Then again, she couldn’t have answered that.
Reaching behind her back, she drew both of her swords with a satisfying ring of metal against metal. She lowered her weight, awaiting their approach.
Perhaps strangely, the prospect of fighting these things didn’t alarm her.
This was the part of her job that soothed her.
It was a coping method she knew inside and out.
Hell, after today, this was her damned happy place.
“Traveler, you might want to move out of the way,” she told him.
No answer.
She glanced behind her, but he was already gone.
Frowning and cursing under her breath in spite of herself, she drew back her right sword, holding the other out in front of her.
When the shadowy creatures were less than a dozen feet away, she leveraged her weight off the wet earth, leaping towards them. She sliced down and through the first of them with the right sword, hitting her mark perfectly as she ran the blade across the middle of the largest of the shadowy forms.
She connected with its shoulder, right by the neck.
The blade should have more or less hewn the damned creature in half––
––except it passed right through him.
The lack of resistance brought her down hard.
A hell of a lot harder than she’d expected.
It threw off her balance, forcing her to shift her weight midair, or risk crashing head-first into the damp earth.
Managing to catch herself somewhat, mostly by bringing her leg back in in a quarter turn, she was still forced to bend her knees as she landed, tucking her head and holding out her arms with the swords as she rolled, coming back to her feet a few yards down the path.
When she turned, the shadowy forms had stopped.
Now they stared at her from the other side of the path.
She stared back at them, breathing hard.
They didn’t breathe.
They didn’t breathe, speak, grunt, laugh.
They didn’t have visible auras.
They didn’t have faces, Alexis realized, at least not with any features she could make out, even now, with the moonlight shining on them in full.
Instead of reflecting against their skin, or illuminating details of their jaws, chins, cheeks, eyes, ears, noses… the light of the moon got absorbed into the shadowy substance of their entire bodies, which she only now realized wore absolutely no clothing.
Every speck of light got swallowed by that swirling darkness, which had no lips, no eyebrows, no visible skin, no visible bones or flesh…
No hair.
All each one of them contained was the outline of a human-like body: arms, legs, torso, hands, morphing fingers, a head, a neck…
…and eyes.
Each of them wore two of those shocking, glowing, silver eyes.
“What now, Lightbringer?” a voice said.
Her eyes jerked upward.
She saw the Traveler in a nearby tree, looking down at her.
“I doubt your guns will work any better than your swords,” he added, glancing down at her before returning his gaze to the shadowy forms. “It seems they aren’t substantial enough to gut. A pity. You are quite skilled at these arts, Alexis Poole. I admit, that leap just now really turned me on… as well as your recovery when they proved to be lacking in flesh. It’s far more satisfying, watching you in person, than having to content myself watching you ‘discipline’ your local vampires and dark magicians long distance…”
She scowled up at him, half in disbelief.
“Are you planning on giving a running commentary?” she retorted.
“Would you like my assistance?” he said politely.
He stood in the Y juncture of two thick branches, one foot perfectly balanced on each, his body utterly relaxed.
“You told me to get out of the way,” he reminded her with a graceful, strangely accommodating gesture. “…I am, however, of course happy to help.”
“Are they Travelers?” she growled up at him, focusing back on the shadowy forms.
She saw the Traveler shake his head out of the corner of her eye.
“No.”
“What are they?” she said, glaring up at him. “Are they those ‘Others’ you were telling me about?”
“No. I told you, they do not operate in this dimension in such a way. They were able to grab you in the portal because that is essentially a non-dimensional… or possibly a quasi-dimensional or even an a-dimensional space.”
Pausing, he seemed to be thinking.
“Minions of theirs, possibly?” he mused.
Folding his arms across his broad chest, he raised a finger to his lips, tapping them thoughtfully as he stared at the shadowy forms.
“As I said before, I do not believe The Others can manifest in a corporeal form… likely not even this kind of corporeal form, which is apparently mostly pure energy. They can’t even do it for short periods of time, like other quasi-dimensional beings. But it is quite possible they can possess people. Meaning beings who live here… in this dimension. It is possible they could even possess the ability to puppet those other people around… long-distance, of course… particularly with a functioning gate so near to us.”
Still thinking, the Traveler added,
“Of course, this is all speculation. I am not anywhere near one hundred percent certain they can do any of that. But this forms much of the Ancients’ speculation about these beings… that they conduct most of their manipulations through the minds of others, and potentially via energetic networks of various kinds. It is believed much of this is purely utilitarian. Meaning, they use their ‘minions’ to collect living light.”
She frowned up at him again. “What does that mean? Collect light? Why?”
“Oh!” His expression cleared. “They feed on life force. Did I neglect to tell you that part? Since they neither have any of their own, nor have the abil
ity to generate any of their own, they spend much of their time coming up with creative ways to obtain the life force of other beings.”
She turned her head, staring at him for real.
“Energy, you know,” he clarified. “…from beings like us.”
“Yeah, I get it.”
Alexis frowned, her eyes returning to the shadowy forms.
“And you and the Ancients… you’re still trying to figure out if these are the good guys or not?” She gave him a hard look. “And incidentally, they felt pretty damned ‘corporeal,’ trying to drag me through that portal.” She glared at those smoke-like shadows. “I know you explained it, but it doesn’t make them feel any less real, Cal. Materially, I mean.”
At his silence, she sighed.
“So? That’s what these things are? Energy vampires? Life force collectors?”
The Traveler continued to stare at the shadowy forms.
His gaze narrow, he frowned, balanced perfectly on the two branches.
After a long-feeling pause, he shrugged, glancing down at her.
“No idea,” he said.
Rolling her eyes, she fought a dark part of her that wanted to laugh.
Really, she should want to throttle the Traveler by now, given how exceedingly not-helpful he had been, in terms of actually keeping her alive.
Strangely, for the most part, she was just amused.
She hoped like hell that wasn’t from the fucking, too.
“Well, you’ll have to let the Ancients know how well this went,” she told him, flipping the hilts of her twin swords in her hands and reinforcing her grip as she went back to staring at the shadows. “…Maybe this will be a helpful information-gathering trip for you, Caliginous. You can let them know how I died, and tell them how much you learned about their new pals, The Others, as you watched them drain the last of my life force out of me.”
The Traveler didn’t answer.
The shadowy forms still hadn’t moved.
Glancing over her shoulder, towards the portal, she glimpsed more things sliding through the iron bars of the old cages.
Shit.
The portal was still open.
It was open, and more of these damned things were spilling out into her world.
Her dimension.
Her Earth.
Cursing, she swiftly sheathed the swords, pulling her hands down in front of her.
She quickly but meticulously drew a circle-shield with a few deft gestures of her hands and fingers. Throwing it out over the area of the portal, she managed to wrap some of the new, escaping beings into the spell as well, capturing them before they could run down the hill and into the forest.
Luckily, it seemed to hold them.
Yanking backwards on the spell, tightening that circle, she jerked them up the hill, then grounded the shield into the Earth, calling on more power as she slammed her palm and fingers into the soil itself, drawing from the Earth’s core.
Still down on one knee to pull power from the planet, she held out her other hand, this time towards the portal behind the cage walls.
She slammed a second shield over the portal door, pulling her hand off the Earth and flipping her wrist in a quick circle to run a seal around the edges. She felt the spell meld with the cement and brick wall, and with her previous protection spells.
Drawing another set of symbols quickly in the air––maybe a tad less meticulously that time––she threw yet another layer of shielding over that one.
She knew it wouldn’t last.
None of it would last, not if they already got through her primary spells.
It might not even last more than a few minutes.
Yet for now, she had at least five beings trapped on the hill below the old lion’s cage.
More importantly, the portal itself was closed.
Temporarily.
She had to hope she could keep it closed long enough to at least stop the bleed, and figure out how to deal with these shadowy things, whatever the hell they were. She needed everything to just stop getting worse for a few minutes… preferably, for a few hours or days… hopefully long enough for her to get the situation back under control.
She could already feel that control slipping away from her, though.
For the first time in her life, she felt inadequate to handle something the portals threw at her. For the first time in her life, she knew without a doubt that her magic wouldn’t be enough.
She couldn’t do this alone.
She wasn’t even sure she could do this with help.
Panic tried to ignite in her chest.
Some part of her began muttering in the forefront of her mind, making it difficult to think about anything else, including the shadowy beings in front of her.
Need some serious spell mojo, werewolves to track down whatever got out, should call Jules, see if any of her witch friends would be willing to help. Wonder if those fallen angels might lend a hand, or just make things worse. Jaime’s a necromancer and God knows what else, but he’s also about as reliable as a drunk badger. Who else? There has to be someone else… someone other than this traveler and Devin’s people, who might just get themselves killed…
She forced the urgent, muttering, fearful voice back.
She couldn’t afford to be afraid.
She had to figure this out.
She had to figure it out.
Now.
Before everything broke through and she went from being the last Lightbringer alive to being the last Lightbringer to die.
16
Not Enough
She forced an exhale, forcing her mind level.
Turning her focus back on the path leading to the parking lot, she saw that the three shadowy forms, the first three she’d seen, the ones she’d tried to stop with her swords, were gone.
They’d completely vanished off the path.
Cursing, she looked all around, including behind her.
Nothing.
Rising to her feet, she realized she was panting, sweating from the amount of effort she’d put into the two spells.
She listened, trying to hear them in the nearby trees.
More nothing.
Just wind, birds, distant traffic… the usual sounds right before sunrise.
Her hearing was a little better than a regular human’s, but nothing like a vampire’s or that of most animal shifters.
She yanked her phone out of her back pocket without thought, hitting through a number from memory.
It took about eight rings.
“What?” A sleepy, grumpy, growly voice.
“Devin?”
“It’s five-thirty in the morning, ‘Lex.”
“I know. Sorry.” Hesitating, she said, “I have a situation. A bad one.”
She felt his ears perk up, as much as heard it in his voice.
“Where are you? At home?”
“I’m below the gate. At the Old Zoo. I’ve got it sealed again… sort of… but it was open, Dev. It was wide-fucking-open, and I have no idea what got out. I’ve just lost a group of… somethings. I don’t even know what they were. Nothing I’ve ever seen before––”
“Lost? As in lost? Where?”
“In Griffith Park.”
“Jesus, ‘Lex.”
She heard him sit up, the sigh of an old mattress as it accommodated the shift in his six-foot-six, probably two-eighty frame of solid shifter muscle and bone.
It occurred to her that he might not be alone.
It also occurred to her that her demeanor on the phone was freaking him out.
Even as she thought that part, he seemed to wake up enough to really hear her.
“Wait,” he said, still seeming to turn over her words. “‘Lex? Did you just apologize to me? Like, did I hallucinate that? You saying sorry? To me?”
There was a silence, as if the entire concept stumped him.
His voice shifted from incredulous to nervous.
“Jesus,” he said again. “This is real
ly bad, isn’t it?”
“Really bad.”
“How bad are we talking? Like… end of the world bad?”
“Worse than I can explain to you over the phone right now, Devin. But yeah… it’s bad. It also can’t wait. I really need your help now, if possible. I think we’re going to need a lot of people’s help.”
Thinking about that, realizing the sun was starting to lighten the sky, she added,
“What about that witch? You know, the little redhead? The one you were seeing for a while. You said she was pretty powerful, right?”
At his silence, she prodded him again.
“Is she still in Los Angeles? And if so, could you call her?”
He exhaled, his voice turning gruff. “Yeah. She’s still here.”
“Do you think there’s any chance she’d be willing to come take a look at the portal? Right now, I mean. As soon as possible. I could pay her… if that’s a consideration.”
Another stunned silence.
“You’re letting someone else look at your portal?” he said, incredulous. “A witch?”
“Yes.”
“As in willingly? You’re willingly letting someone else examine your precious gate? A witch, no less? A trained witch? You want them to do spells there? In front of your gate? On purpose?” He paused. “Seriously?”
Alexis felt her irritation rising, the longer he spoke.
“Yes,” she said, teeth gritted. “Can you do it, Devin? Can you call her?”
“‘Lex––”
“I have a few others I can try, but I can’t screw around with calling more people right now. Like I said, there are things loose up here. I just need someone you trust. Whoever you think would be good enough, who isn’t heavily into dark magic… or even just some garden-variety psycho. I don’t care if it’s your human witch ex-fuck-buddy, or if you know a vampire who has the right mojo for it.”
Pausing, weighing back and forth as to whether she should tell him there was a good chance those shadowy things were sent here to kill her––as in her, Alexis, specifically––she dropped it a moment later, deciding that could wait.
“Do you think she’d come?” she asked instead. “Or not?”
There was a silence.
Then he exhaled, still sounding like he was waking up.
“She’s right here,” he admitted. “We’ll come up now.”
Lightbringer: An Enemies to Lovers Urban Fantasy with Demons, Portals, Witches, Renegade Gods, & Other Assorted Beasties (Light & Shadow Book 1) Page 12