“No, the one where a group of friends break into an abandoned insane asylum looking for a place to party. They find these dark, spooky underground tunnels and the demon that’s been haunting the place picks them off one at a time.”
“Like I said, they poke their noses where they don’t belong.”
Evans shined his light behind me, illuminating the wall inside the gate. “Another Frankenstein lever.”
“Stop calling it that.” But the size and shape was identical to the one that broke the illusion and opened the gate. Only the material was different. This lever was made of the same greenish metal as the iron bars. “This one probably opens the gate from inside.”
I lowered my flashlight to the floor ahead. A heavy black shadow of trauma drifted in the beam. It sloshed back and forth between the widely-spaced walls.
Humans didn’t need corridors so wide.
But lyrriken, fully shifted, with wings spread…
Staring into the darkness ahead, a chill crossed my shoulder blades. Intuition screamed in the back of my mind: turn around. Run. I started to say as much, to tell Evans that his ‘demons in the tunnels’ movie wasn’t so far-fetched.
My itch to flee waned as I caught sight of the gouges on the wall.
The marks, contained within a circle, were a good six inches long and three deep. There were several designs. Paint had been used to darken the ruts.
I looked closer. Not paint. The coloring was old and faded, but it was undeniably blood, and it was highlighting something I hadn’t seen in a long time: the tribe sign of a firedrake—my tribe sign; used to mark boundaries or signal the territory belonging to Aidric.
I gripped the flashlight in my teeth and examined the symbols with both hands. Curling my fingers down through the furrows, feeling their rough edges, I tried to grasp why they were here and what it all meant.
A triple murder involving one of Aidric’s potential ‘picks’, a warehouse in the basement, and a secret tunnel marked in blood.
What the hell is going on?
Evans was wandering ahead in the heavy gloom. I turned slightly and quietly slipped off a glove. I picked at the old blood. A fleck came off under my nail. I had a second to slip my glove back on, before the wind rushed in my ears.
The tunnel grayed out. The walls distorted and lost focus. With a blast of wind and sound, time reversed around me.
The blurring, rippling walls slowed to a stop. My hands were still on their surface, ghostly and intangible now, hovering over symbols that were freshly made. The blood was fresh, too. Thick and wet on my skin, it dripped down the curved walls, tainting the air metallic, even as the hot breath of dragons blew over my skin.
The wind faded to something less painful, and I heard voices. They overlapped, but that wasn’t the sole reason they were indistinguishable. Varying in pitch, cadence, and origin, some were in dialects I didn’t recognize. Some were the grunts of a species with no language. Others were garbled screams. Distant and feral, they echoed in from far away like some ancient memory refusing to be forgotten.
Along with the sounds, a disquieting fusion of scents polluted the air. Musky and sharp, stale and festering; soil, salt, cinder, flesh, feather and pelt, and others I couldn’t classify. Shapes darkened the shadowy corridor as they came toward me in single file. Lyrriken first, their large forms shrunk and wings folded in, as they traded scales for naked human flesh. Then other species: Sidara, Alakai, So’la, Del-yun, Churel, Asrai, Ekek, Makara, Strigoi, Aswang, Glaistig, and others I couldn’t see well enough to identify. Some were capable of shifting into a form that would pass for human (in the dark, at least), but not all.
Where did they come from? Where were they going? And just as important: when? I couldn’t imagine Aidric ever allowing such a mix of creatures to walk upon his land. If it was before Aidric, then the house wasn’t even here when they passed through.
Or was it recent and done without consent? Were these the ‘things’ Henry saw at the dry docks?
The procession neared me. Tension gripped my stomach from the amount of trauma dripping off their bodies. Fear filled their hearts. I breathed it in as row after row overtook me, passing through my ghostly form with a noticeably icy pressure.
There was so much anxiety and alarm. It set my pulse on fire.
Gasping from the strain, I turned to follow their progress, but the wind was blowing again. The walls were blurring and undulating. A familiar roar drowned out their sounds as their bodies vanished.
My hands solidified—so staggeringly quick, I dropped the flashlight. I muffled a startled sound as Evans came up behind me. Hovering at my shoulder, he reached over and traced the lines with his gloved finger.
“Freaky,” he whispered.
I bent slowly for my flashlight, giving myself time to swallow my heavy breaths and adopt a neutral face. Coming back up, I used my phone to snap some pictures of the marks. “I’ll show these to my friend,” I said, thinking of Oren. “He knows about this kind of stuff.”
“You have a friend who knows satanic symbols? Does that come in handy often?”
I flashed him a look. “They aren’t satanic.”
“Don’t you watch any movies?”
Shaking his head at my lack of cinematic knowledge, Evans went on ahead. I hung back to take a few more pictures, including some of the tunnel itself. I texted them to Oren with a question mark. The signal wasn’t great. Knowing it would likely only get worse, I waited for the last picture to go through before I started after Evans.
It only took a few steps to realize there was no outline of him ahead, no glow of his light. I shined my own farther down. It illuminated a good part of the tunnel, but there was nothing. Even his steps had gone silent. “Evans?”
Moving faster, I shifted my eyes to increase their reach.
There was still no sign of him.
“Damnit.” Louder, and noticeably angry, I called out, “Officer Evans!”
Reaching back, I drew the knife from my belt. The bulbs on the walls buzzed. The musty air smelled hotter than before.
I halted at the junction. The tunnel went right and left. I let out more scales and listened in both directions. I didn’t understand. How did he get out of range so fast?
Then I smelled it. No…
Refusing to panic, I followed the distinctive odor down the tunnel to my left. The passage was constructed the same, except this one curved at the end. Reluctant, yet eager, I sprinted down and around the bend. It was a dead end. On this world, anyway.
Forty feet ahead, a cluster of brilliant light disturbed the heavy dark. The rectangular prisms dangled in the air, hanging at odd angles like the shattered pieces of a mirror; frozen in mid-break. But these ‘mirrors’ weren’t glass or even solid. My flashlight didn’t bounce off their surface. It went straight through, as the prisms rotated, giving off the intermittent rush of musty warm air.
A vibration rumbled against my ass, and I jumped. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun blared out from the back of my jeans. “Shit.” Fumbling for my phone as the song blasted at full volume, I glanced at the number before I answered. “Detective. This isn’t a good time.”
“You called me,” Creed replied. “You were looking for—”
“Sorry. I have to call you back.” I hung up and turned off my phone.
Staring at the exit, my pulse quickened. I knew what I had to do, but crossing over with no knowledge of what world lie on the other side was a risk. Based on the evidence—the species that came through, the tribe sign—there were dozens of possibilities. All of them were dangerous.
Yet one world stood out above the others. Even if I didn’t want to acknowledge it, even if I could ignore the pangs of anxiety clenching my stomach, I knew where the exit led. I knew what was waiting for me on the other side, and what had likely already found Evans. It’s only been a few minutes, I thought. If he hadn’t made contact, I might still be able to convince him he hadn’t left his world for another.
If he’s not
already dead.
I inched up. A hairsbreadth from penetration, I paused. The outer edge of the exit came around me. A beautiful glistening wall of color bathed my skin. There was a sense of building pressure as I hesitated on the edge of the damaged veil. Studying the prisms, I searched for glimpses of shapes or movement that might mean something was on the next world lying in wait. But there was only darkness.
I checked my grip on the knife and moved into the fractured light.
Nineteen
Sultry air sat heavy on my skin. Wind tugged at my disheveled braid. It stirred the dirt floor, sweeping pebbles along, tumbling them off the steep drop to my right. Distant screeching echoed in. The noise bounced against walls that were no longer the smooth, evenly spaced construct of something manmade, but the wet, rough, irregular stone of a natural cavern.
I tried to calm my racing mind as I studied the multiple passages ahead. Ranging from pitch black to dimly lit, and of varying height and width, one was significantly roomier than the rest. An elder with wings folded could easily fit through. At the moment, there was only a hot breeze, blowing in from its dark depths.
I stepped over the rutted ground and followed its call.
The shaft I’d chosen was cavernous. It reminded me of a subway tunnel, except the walls were broken by jagged crevices and yawning offshoots with no end in sight. Many of the outlets were large enough for a man to fit through. I stopped at each one, aiming my light into their depths and hoping Evans hadn’t been that stupid.
Detecting nothing of him, I moved on.
The sense of familiarity was strong. So was the sense of danger. I tried to ignore them both and concentrate instead on the countless overlapping footprints in the dirt. Many were too old to identify. The lyrriken and human were recent and clear. I bent down and ran a finger over the ruts. The bare human feet were most likely shifters, but one fresh imprint stood out: the clear impression of a man’s shoe in the mud.
There were others. I followed them for thirty feet to a wide fork. Again, one channel was broader and taller. The ground was rocky. At its end, small in the distance, was a huge egg-shaped, vine-draped opening. Through it, glimmers of moonlight broke the darkness. It was barely a twinkle. To Evans, it would be a beacon.
Running toward it, I divided my attention between the uneven terrain under my boots and my need to watch for movement at the fast approaching cave mouth. The camouflage of shaggy grass and meandering vines that covered the open space rustled with the wind. Each gust was ripe with the scent of sweet foliage and mineral-rich soil, the faint aroma of smoldering wood, and the unmistakable smell of dragon.
I quieted my nerves and stepped up to the opening. My hand shook as I parted the vegetation and looked out.
I was in a valley, at the base of a lush hillside. Before me was a huge meadow of white-grass. The lanky milk-colored stalks swayed in the breeze. Their edges rubbed together, vibrating with a low solemn tone, like the strings of a violin.
My throat tightened at the sound. I’d forgotten how beautiful it was.
Beyond the field lay a vast range of craggy mountains. Stone turrets adorned their slants and peaks. Bridges and platforms stretched between the summits, weaving in and amongst each other with perfection. Above the mountain colony, the twin moons kept watch, full and bright. A mantle of thin clouds spilled across the sky like streaks of overturned paint against the dark, silhouetting the distinctive winged shapes that soared in their midst.
My face wet with tears, I watched them ride the wind. “There really is no place like home.”
I had to think like Evans.
He wouldn’t have noticed the exit until he was on top of it. Stepping through would have left him shocked, confused, and panicked. But he’d followed the moonlight in the tunnel readily enough, telling me he hadn’t been thrown off for long. His excitement at finding himself in this new, impossible world had kicked in within seconds. Yet, despite his schoolboy charm, Evans was a cop. The obvious danger would have tempered his awe.
There were no signs of a scuffle outside the cave mouth. The white-grass was undisturbed. I knew the city would interest him. I also knew he wouldn’t go there straight away. He would stay close, watching and surveying the land, as he tried to figure out where the hell he was. Venturing out wouldn’t have been done without a reason or a temptation great enough to justify leaving his position—like what was drifting down the grassy rise behind me: the sounds of a lyrriken gathering.
It was the last place he should be.
My first visual sweep showed no sentries posted. Still, I kept my steps light as I moved up the slope. The grass was deep, but between the moons and my shifted eyes, I had no trouble finding his trail again. It helped that his prints were fresh and obvious, made with a halted, stumbling gait that betrayed the man’s flustered state of mind.
His tracks led exactly where I was afraid they would. I was worried, but rushing in wasn’t smart. Staying back, in the shadows, I lowered myself down and studied the outcropping that stretched along the top of the rise. Infused with the dark blur of movement, scaled bodies moved in and among the circle of rocks. Inside their boundary was a smaller circle, where two lyrriken (one male and one female) in their more vulnerable human forms, were beating the shit out of each other. Nearby, a chained nageun, incited by the blood-smell, snarled and pulled at its binds. The winner of the match would be granted the honor of fighting the creature and consuming its remains, or fighting and being consumed. One outcome held more favorable odds.
The combatants knew their chances, though. That was part of the thrill. It was why there were many such places on Drimera. Stone groupings or wooded thickets provided cover for young lyrriken to steal away for a night of gluttony to eat, brawl, and fuck outside the watchful eyes of the elders and the Guild. Their revelry wasn’t a secret, but neither was it approved. Periodic, contained socializing relieved stress and provided a healthy outlet for aggression, so it was allowed.
This particular party was in full swing, exuding an aromatic blend of hide, blood, waste, semen, sweat, fresh meat and drink. To my fellow lyrriken, who had never known any other way, the mixture was an aphrodisiac. To one who hadn’t experienced such a heady odor in an extremely long time, all it did was turn my stomach.
I took a minute to fight back the nausea. Then I crept closer.
Using the tall grass to hide my presence, I moved up until I was nearly on top of them. There were forty at least. Most were fully grown. Others, equivalent in years to an older human teen, were ripe for apprenticeship. A few younger ones were frolicking around a small bonfire that had gone untended so long it was barely embers. Shadowy nooks made by stacks of well-placed boulders were filled with bodies; eating and mating with equal vigor.
The sight of their comradery and pleasure brought no feelings of nostalgia, only a quiet uneasiness at knowing I would never again have a place among them. And a quiet fear as it sunk in: how easily I could die here. All it would take was for one to recognize me, one to know the old warrant was still active; one to escape and fetch the elders, bringing them to see the traitor who had finally come home to receive her punishment.
Traveling around the outer rocks for a better view, I evaluated their threat level by the color of their scales: the black, bronze, and red-hues of fire, the matte greens of the forest and swamp, the slick blues of water and ice, and the coarse, gray plates of the mountain. It was an easy assessment. If I was seen, I was screwed. Yet, I had one thing in my favor. I was infinitely more determined to recover the human who had stumbled into their midst than they were to keep him.
Only they don’t have him to keep, I thought, finally spying Evans. He was off to the left, at the edge of a grove of fruit trees. I saw no visible evidence of harm, no signs of coercion. He stood, unrestrained, engaged in conversation with another man—but not a human one. Though he’d ditched his stolen scrubs, Evans’s new friend was definitely the lyrriken male who attacked me in the hospital. His human attire (jeans and
an untucked burgundy button-up) was a good indication that he’d only recently returned to Drimera.
Evans was gesturing excitedly as they spoke, suggesting he was intrigued—and not damn near wary enough to realize he’d been right.
Our killer may not have been lurking in the basement, but this was close enough.
I glanced around for the blue-haired girl. Not seeing her, I worried what else she might be up to. Yet, her absence would make little difference when the moment fell apart. And I had no doubt it would. The only reason I hadn’t been noticed already was the sheer number of lyrriken masking my scent. My best bet was to kill them first, but how dead did I need to make them?
Removing a lyrriken’s heart, tearing the very soul from their bodies, would subdue them for a time. But if the organ was put back, the body would heal. Even if the separation was prolonged and the soul had fled, if the body was worthy, another would settle in and take hold. That was the elders’ philosophy, at least; that the worthy were given another go around. I’d never been much of a believer, but when everyone wanted to be worthy, it helped to keep order.
For a permanent kill, I had to burn the heart. It was the only damage our bodies couldn’t heal. But I’d never inflicted ‘true death’ on a fellow lyrriken except on order of the Queen. With the difficulty we had propagating our own species, our lives were considered a treasure gifted to us by the dragons. The dwindling of our numbers was not something I’d ever enjoyed being responsible for, even under orders.
I didn’t feel that conflict as strongly now. Not after Ella. Not after Carly and Scott. The species of their killers had no bearing on their crimes. I didn’t see them as lyrriken. Only butchers. The lyrriken in front of me, however, were simply in my way. To them, I would show mercy.
Taking a peek around the boulder in front of me, I watched the young feral creatures, and thought, I used to be just like them. Unpredictable, impulsive, and fierce; restraint was a faint notion on their horizon. They knew nothing of white flags or negotiation. There was only strength and resolve, and the willingness to spill blood. Anything but force and unwavering confidence was seen as weakness. I’d be scorned and laughed at if I were caught attacking them in my human form, but I couldn’t use fire. With one glimmer against the dark, they would be on me in an instant. I had to improve my odds swiftly and quietly.
Nite Fire: Flash Point Page 20