Alexis blinked, recovered.
“Okay. Great,” she said. “My car’s in the Old Zoo lot. If I’m not there, or at the portal, or the cat cages, waiting for you, just do what you can to assess the situation, then call me.”
“Got it.”
Without waiting that time, she hung up.
Staring around at the dark trees, she tried to decide if she should waste time even trying to track those things, or if she was better off sticking close to the portal, making sure nothing else got through. She had her doubts she could track them, truthfully, not on her own, not without using up the last of her magic.
She might need that magic, if only to stay alive.
She’d never had a true breach before.
Not a real one. Not like this.
It was bad enough when that fallen angel used the portal to bring through demons. She’d been out of town for most of that, or it never would have happened. She would have shut the portal down before it got that far, or moved it.
As it was, by the time she got back, that damned angel had already let in dozens, perhaps even hundreds of lower-level demons.
Still, he hadn’t been completely reckless.
Intentionally or not, the rituals he and his Watcher used only let through specific beings, from one part of the manifest worlds. He hadn’t just flung open the door to every semi-evil creature in the creation, from whatever dimension felt like day-tripping to hers.
He still made a mess, but it was a containable mess.
In fact, by the time she got back to Los Angeles, the problem had already been more or less dealt with, and not by her.
Which had been a relief, since she really didn’t like screwing around with angel business.
That being said, she’d never known angels or demons to try and collapse the entire architecture of the manifest world.
Whatever this was, it was new.
Whoever was behind it, they had a whole different magnitude of agenda.
Alexis had no idea what had come through that portal just now, but it definitely wasn’t your run of the mill, human-possessing demon.
It wasn’t an angel, either.
Or a god.
It definitely wasn’t human, or fae, or a dimension-traveling Watcher, or a shifter.
It was something else.
As she thought it, she turned sharply, gazing up the hill towards the cat cages.
Without waiting to find their exact location, she began to walk, lengthening her stride as she gained momentum up the steep hill.
She’d stopped at least a few of those shadow creatures with her first cast spell, right before she’d thrown that temporary seal over the portal itself.
Maybe she could learn something from them.
Maybe she could at least discern what the blazes they were.
Trying to find that entrapment spell now with her eyes, she raised her hands as she walked, casting another quick screen to find the vibrations of what she’d thrown at them.
She pinpointed the segment of hill at once.
Once she had, she began to move faster, shifting to a military-style jog through the trees. She couldn’t tell for sure if she still had the creatures trapped within her spell, but based on the agitation she felt inside the energetic restraints, she was guessing she did.
Thinking about that, she began to run.
Drawing everything she had left inside her, she bolted up the hill and then down a short slope that led down to the actual cages. She skidded to a stop when she came within ten or twelve feet.
She could feel them now.
Worse, she could feel them burning their way through the initial spell.
She had no idea how they were doing it, but she didn’t wait.
Throwing up both of her hands, she hit them with another net, speaking the words aloud that time, putting more of her personal energy into it.
The language came out guttural, thick with effort.
She watched the spell hit into them.
Three shadowy forms with bright silver eyes got thrown back into the pile of dried leaves. Her spell coiled around them, sparking like an electrical fence with an animal caught in the wire. The beings inside looked paralyzed, frozen in place.
She’d never seen one of her spells do that.
Normally, if she had to catch a supernatural that way, it bound them like invisible rope, restraining them, but not harming them.
On these beings, the same spell acted more like a supernatural electrocution.
The shadowy figures writhed on the dried leaves, their silver eyes staring up at her, their mouthless faces unmoving.
Despite that, she got the impression they were in pain, possibly even in agony from the living energy that powered her spell.
Her very life force seemed to burn them.
Hadn’t the Traveler said The Others fed off the life force of others?
He’d also said these couldn’t possibly be Others themselves, although they might be their willing minions, or even their slaves.
Everything about them freaked her out.
She’d never been afraid of anything that came through one of her portals before.
She could smell them now.
She smelled the smoke sizzling into the light and energy of her spell, burning through the gold and green ropes that wound around them.
“They’ll be free in minutes.”
Alexis just about jumped out of her skin.
Turning to stare at the Traveler, who’d appeared next to her, silent as the ghost of one of the Old Zoo’s great cats, she scowled.
“Don’t do that,” she said, smacking his arm with one gloved hand.
It was his turn to jump.
Then he gave her a wry smile.
Stepping closer, he wrapped an arm around her waist, hugging her against him and nuzzling her cheek. He kissed her mouth, her throat, her jaw.
Then he released her, stepping back.
“The spell is impressive,” he added, as if he hadn’t just done that. “But it will not hold them. I doubt anything in your arsenal will.”
He frowned down at the beings temporarily frozen inside the gold-green, electrical-looking ropes.
“…I am not sure how we kill them, either.”
He turned to look at her again, his mouth grim.
His amber eyes shone in the darkness under the trees, containing their own inner light.
“Well?” he said. “Your thoughts? Is there anything we can do?”
Shaking her head slowly, she pursed her lips.
“I honestly don’t know,” she confessed.
17
Out Of Juice
“Well, Lightbringer?” He kept his tone light, but she heard the edge underneath. “You have a plan, yes? An actual plan? One beyond simply hoping your werewolf friend and his witch ‘fuck-buddy’ get here in time? And that they are actually able to do something?”
When she didn’t answer, his voice lowered, growing more urgent.
“They will be free soon. And then they will be gone. Is there anything we can learn about them, at least?”
She fought to think, to decide.
“I take it they aren’t the same type of beings who killed Darynda?” she said, staring down at the writhing, shadowy forms. “They aren’t familiar to you in any way?”
“No.” He paused. “No to both things.”
She nodded, frowning at the shadowy bodies, those bright, silver eyes, the feeling of utter emptiness she got as she looked at them.
The Traveler was right.
They needed to figure out some way to use this, before the moment passed.
She just had no idea how.
They had no mouths. She couldn’t even speak to them.
She couldn’t cut them, or even threaten them really, since she couldn’t engage with them physically. There was no way to kill them, much less restrain them in any conventional sense.
“Can you?” she said, turning, looking at the Traveler. “You
have mindreading abilities, right? I was told some Travelers can do that.”
He was already nodding, understanding reaching his handsome features, flashing briefly in his eyes, which were again slowly turning blue.
Staring down at the shadowy forms, he closed his eyes.
Alexis held her breath, watching the Traveler’s face.
She saw the instant something shifted.
The Traveler’s features grew soft, even as his eyes slowly opened. Once they did, they lit up even brighter, creating a visible glow in the darkness of the path under the clump of ash and palm trees.
The shadowy creatures must have felt it, too.
A loud SCREECH! erupted from one of them.
The other two beings began to scream even more violently.
At nearly the exact same instant, the Traveler’s whole face winced, his head jerking back as if he’d been hit or threatened with a hot iron. He stumbled backwards and into a tree. He hit hard enough that Alexis flinched, but he didn’t fall to the ground.
He stood there instead, gripping the tree in both hands, using it to stay upright.
The beings on the ground continued to scream.
The sound grew louder, more excruciating.
After a few seconds, Alexis winced, putting her hands over her ears.
When the Traveler looked at her, he was panting, his face glistening with sweat.
Even with the insane racket from the screaming shadows, she could almost hear his heart pounding in his chest.
“What happened?” she said.
She half-shouted it, her voice filled with worry.
He shook his head, still gasping, gripping the tree’s trunk. She saw him wincing in obvious pain, even as he waved her off, shaking his head.
“Cal!” she said, louder. “Are you okay?”
He shook his head, still gasping.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said, also in a near-shout.
Wincing as he raised his arm, he motioned down at the shadowy forms still writhing on the dried leaves. Staring at them with his now-glowing blue eyes, he gripped the trunk more tightly with his one hand, obviously still struggling to stay upright.
“See what you can do,” he half-shouted, wincing again as he gripped his side. “Try something else, Lightbringer. Try spells. See if you can cut those cords… cut them off from their masters. Maybe that will be enough to neutralize them.”
“Cords?” she shouted back.
“Look. They are there. Like they were with you.”
When she hesitated, still watching him, he scowled.
“Stop worrying about me,” he said, louder. “I’m over two hundred of your years old. I’m an inter-dimensional being. I’ll be fine, Lightbringer. Do your job. Look for those cords.”
Nodding, she forced her eyes off him, realizing he was right.
The Traveler was obviously in pain, obviously injured, but he was still right.
She couldn’t worry about him right now.
She couldn’t worry about herself, either.
Fighting to concentrate on that, to keep her mind and eyes off him, she raised her hands.
Her fingers and words drew another, more complicated spell. Her hands shook only a little, but she knew she was running out of juice. She could pull off maybe one more spell after this one… maybe.
After that, she was done, at least for the next twenty-four hours.
Maybe the next forty-eight, depending on whether she got any sleep.
Even just casting a non-offensive sight spell, like this one, would leave her damned vulnerable until she could find some way to recharge.
Yet she didn’t really see how she had much choice.
Drawing the symbols carefully, she put as little of her own essence into her fingers and words as she dared, creating a complex, multi-layered sphere that appeared in the air in front of her, glowing with geometric symbols.
Blue-green, orange, gold, sparking internally with white light, the sphere dimmed as she stepped closer to it. She manipulated it carefully, using both hands so she could look at the shadowy figures through it.
Once she had the field focused on them, those shadows exploded into detail.
Black veins ran through them, intricate rivers of liquid darkness.
She saw what might have been “hearts” in their chests––pulsing centers filled with denser, deeper currents of that inky, shadowy substance.
Their eyes shone with deadened, silvery light.
Now she could see more in those eyes.
The veins of those silver irises stood out starkly, filled with a disturbing precision, almost like they belonged to a machine.
The darker veins of their bodies also grew more detailed, changing in complexity and subtlety the longer she looked. Those parasite-like veins spread out over their whole bodies, liquid black infused with tiny spiderwebs. Those spiderwebs appeared to be made of the same metallic silver as what lived in their eyes.
Alexis followed the trails down their legs, arms, their pitch-black hands, up their necks, out to every extremity. The densest configuration of those tiny silver threads wound around the heart-like structure in the center.
The Traveler was right.
Those metallic threads didn’t belong to those shadowy forms at all.
They came from outside… from somewhere else.
She followed those shining, silvery lines out the back of the same creature’s head and out of a knot that lived behind its heart. A third, hard clump of black light in the center of the creature’s abdomen also emitted a cluster of silver lines.
The metallic threads ran up the hill.
She followed them with her eyes through the sight-spell.
They crawled strangely over the ground, through the leaves and mud.
In places, they tangled in higher branches, hanging shining in the air as they traveled from tree to tree, leaving a sort of residue behind, like a slug or a snail.
Swallowing, Alexis held up the ball of light she was using to see, and followed those threads up the hill towards the old cages.
It was almost completely light out now.
She could see the trees and ground clearly in the rising sun. She adjusted the spell to zoom in on the view in front of her, until she saw the silver threads disappear through the bars of the abandoned lions’ cage.
From there, they aimed directly at her spell over the portal.
It disturbed Alexis to see them uniformly pierce the dense energy of her shield. Punctured by thousands of those silvery, metallic threads, the shield looked more like a magical pincushion, or maybe a metal porcupine, covered in spear-like needles.
Really though, it felt more parasitic than that.
Even through the sight-orb, it felt like watching a living creature be drained of life force right in front of her eyes.
Her spells were fighting back, fighting to maintain form, cohesion.
Unfortunately, they were losing.
She could see the runes around the edges shimmering, wavering in and out.
She released the sight spell, letting it float in the early morning air, sizzling and sparking above the shadowy forms still barely restrained by her spell.
She could feel her shields wavering now––all of them, including those wrapped around the featureless invaders.
She glanced at the Traveler, and found him where she’d last seen him, still leaning most of his weight against the tree… but his breathing had normalized, and he looked more like himself again. When he frowned, staring up the hill towards the portal, she didn’t bother to answer his look.
She began to run.
Within seconds, she was in a dead sprint up the hill, every remaining ounce of muscle and strength devoted to throwing her body up the steep slope as fast as she could go. Ignoring the path, she darted around trees, leaping over roots and bushes, running under branches, not letting herself slow when she felt a burning sensation in her chest.
She ran, all-out, until she reached the
abandoned house for the great cats.
She half-crashed into the thick, metal divider around the observation area.
Leaping over the same divider, she gripped the bars to the cage, flipping herself up so that she hung upside down, and kicking in a square segment she’d cut out of the top, back when she first moved the portal here. Using the bars to climb up to the hole, she slid through, feet-first, gasping a little as she landed on the cut bars briefly on her stomach.
Lifting herself up again, muscles straining, she got off the top of those bars and used them to push off, jumping backwards into the cage.
She ran for the cave and tunnel behind the observation area of the cage.
At the end of the tunnel, more bars had been erected.
She knew it had been a trap door back when lions lived in these cages, but now it was meant to keep people out. Finding the edges of the part she’d cut, she forced it open, kicking it inward with her boots.
Once she got the opening big enough, she squeezed her way through the hole, wincing a little when she felt it graze her ribs, breaking the skin.
She’d never actually had to come in this way before.
Forcing herself through the opening on her belly, wincing when the swords got caught and she had to work them free… she panicked briefly, fearing she wouldn’t make it, that she was stuck. Adrenaline shot through her veins.
Wrenching her body sideways, then forward, violently that time, she managed to squeeze through the last of the opening.
She leapt to her feet, dizzy now, feeling sick as she forced herself upright.
Reaching over her head, she unsheathed her swords.
The metal rang, loud in the small space.
She stood there, in the dark, still gasping from the run, and now from the pain of cuts on her belly and side.
Closing her eyes, she didn’t wait but started murmuring prayers.
Throwing open her aura, she infused the blades with as much of herself, her will, her essence, the light of this world, the Ancients, the Traveler, the presence living within the primary portal itself… the order and beauty of the Outer and Inner Realms…
She called upon and infused as much of it as she possibly could in the small time she had. Her chest hurt in seconds, her belly. She’d drawn so much off herself already––physically, mentally, energetically––she doubted whether she could even pull it off. She felt the dim flicker of the living light she drew upon to power her spells, that same living light that the Others presumably came here to steal.
Lightbringer: An Enemies to Lovers Urban Fantasy with Demons, Portals, Witches, Renegade Gods, & Other Assorted Beasties (Light & Shadow Book 1) Page 13