by Sam Cheever
“Can’t you ask Dialle where they are?”
Worry slipped across my sister’s pretty features. “He’s not responding. She probably has him in a trance like we were.”
“I wonder how we broke free?”
Astra shook her head. “I’m just glad we did. Ready?”
I shook my legs and flexed my fingers, finding them as good as new. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Trapped in a Nightmare
Déjà vu upon deja vu,
We need to go in to go out.
The castle beyond the cavern where I’d been held since arriving was nothing like it had been in my night visions. It was still dark and creepy, but the walls weren’t made of stone, and ice didn’t cover every surface. I must have added that part myself because I was freezing to death in my restraints. I wondered what else I had made up and the nagging question had me worried. If the smaller details were wrong, how much chance did I have that the big things were right? Especially the part about Slayer.
What if he was already gone?
“This way,” Astra whispered, pointing to a wide set of steps at the end of the first hallway. We ran along a passageway that was covered helpfully with carpets to muffle the sound of our boots, and plunged into the relative dark of the staircase carved from rock. Whereas the hallway above had been softly lit with lamps fed by magical energy, the stairwell we were quickly descending was lit only by stinky oil lamps situated about every ten feet. The meager light source left a lot of murkiness at foot level, which nearly did me in more than once. As I stumbled into Astra for the fourth time, nearly sending us both bouncing down the stairs, she shoved me away with a growl. “I don’t remember you being this clumsy before.”
She was right. I wondered if the poison from the malfunctioning mark was taking its toll on me. Or, I lifted my hand with the blackened flesh, the Nightwhiff bite. “You’re right.” I frowned, murmuring, “I’m not at my best right now.” Though I regretted the words the minute they left my mouth, not liking to whine and complain, they had the desired effect on my sister, who looked immediately guilty.
“Yeah. Well, hopefully we’re going to take care of that shortly.”
We hit a landing and peered around the arched doorway into a long passageway that looked remarkably similar to the one above. No prisons there.
We started down another level.
“Oh yeah? How are we going to do that? If you hadn’t noticed, our visit to the necromancer hasn’t exactly gone without a hitch.”
“I have a plan.” Astra sucked back into the shadows, pulling me back too, as a ghoulish guard floated up the stairs from below. As he rounded the curve in the stairs and spotted us, his dead eyes went round and he reached for the scythe resting against his back.
I reached out and sent silvery energy into him, turning him to a pile of ash at our feet. I was glad to know at least that part of my visions had been right.
We started down again. “Please tell me it isn’t your usual plan.”
She turned to me with a grin. “You have something against kicking ghoul ass?”
“Not if it’s part of a real plan as opposed to just a seat of the pants, keep whacking until something good happens caricature of a strategy.”
She laughed softly. “It’s a real plan. But I’m happy to tell you we’ll still be kicking ass and blowing shit up.”
“And I’ll be doing the praying,” I murmured.
We hit the next landing and peered around the doorframe. More carpet, more wooden doors. I was starting to get a funny feeling. “Does this feel kind of off to you?” I asked Astra.
She frowned. “You read my mind.”
We shared a look, both of us no doubt having the same horrific thought. What if we were stuck in another Morta-induced night vision?
“How are we going to figure out if this is real?” she asked me.
I frowned, considering. “I don’t think we can at this point. We need to keep going.”
She speared another glance toward the passageway and then nodded. “Let’s go.”
We started down another flight of stairs. Soon we heard more footsteps. As the guard rounded the curve in the stairs, his dead black eyes went round and he reached for the scythe strapped to his back.
Astra zapped him into ash and we looked at each other. “Okay,” I said. “We’re in trouble.”
Astra leaned against the wall, biting her lip in thought. “Let’s assume we’re currently still hanging in that damn cavern and this is all a bedtime story created by Morta. We need to stop the cycle and call her to us so we can fry her ass.” She looked up at me. “Any ideas?”
Dread slid up my spine. My mind was a blank. How did one compete in a world that didn’t really exist? An idea came to me, but I didn’t like it. “How far does Morta’s magic stretch?”
Astra frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Assuming our physical bodies are trapped somewhere in this mountain, if we could wake up enough to shift, how far away would we need to go?”
Astra’s head was already shaking. “I’m not leaving Dialle here.”
“And I’m not leaving Slayer or Torre, but we need to break her spell somehow, or we’re not going to be any good to any of them.”
Astra thought about what I was saying for a moment and then her eyes went wide. “The forest!”
I shook my head. “What forest?”
“Morta’s environs encompass a circular mountain range. At the center of the mountains is a forest of healing trees. Prophesy says the Primordial Forest is a focus of light and life, a sanctuary from Morta’s celebration of death. It’s a yin and yang thing. Natural law abhors an imbalance between dark and light magic, so when her environs were created several millennia ago, the forest was formed as a counter-balance. It’s specially warded. Creatures of pure dark magic can’t cross the forest’s barriers.”
Hope sparked as I considered the logic in the concept. “So all we need to do is get to that forest.”
She nodded. “Yeah, unfortunately that’s the easy part. First we need to break free from this vision cycle.”
“This is the place where a real plan would be nice,” I said.
Astra frowned. After a minute she shook her head. “I got nothin’.”
The tiniest seed of a thought had been flinging itself around in my brain for the last several minutes, since we’d started to suspect we were stuck in Hell’s version of Ground Hog Day. Only because we didn’t have any better options, I decided to put it to Astra. See what she thought. “What about the Nightwhiffs?”
Astra fixed a questioning gaze on me but quickly caught on, her green eyes narrowing in thought. “Pull power from them, you mean?”
I nodded. “Like you did in Nerul’s court. This castle is saturated with death and the dead.”
“But these aren’t souls.” She frowned. “In Nerul’s court I believed I was pulling the energy from trapped souls.”
“I don’t know about you but I’ve felt something around those things. A pull. I think we can harvest some of their energy...whatever they are.”
Astra shrugged. “It’s worth a try. But there’s no guarantee the energy we pull will be real. I don’t know how deep into the vision we are at this point.”
“We have to try.”
She nodded in agreement, holding out her hand. “Grab on, I’ll see what I can pull loose and we’ll take it from there. Concentrate on something we know for sure is outside the castle. Hopefully that will be enough to drag us out of her spell.”
“Got it.” I dropped my hand into hers. “Let’s do this.”
Energy tingled against my palm as soon as Astra grabbed my hand. Sparks spat from the place where our flesh touched and, almost immediately the air thickened with a familiar shimmering fog. Squinting into it, I could make out the terrifying visages of hundreds of dead essences, their eyes sightless and mouths open wide in silent screams.
Astra’s magic agitated the Nightwhiffs, makin
g them spin faster. After a moment they began to swirl closer, as if Astra was casting a hook into a lake of death and reeling them in.
I felt their agitation in the center of my chest. It transferred to me, until fear threaded oily fingers around my heart and squeezed. My breathing turned harsh, rushing from between my lips in raspy bursts that fogged on the icy air.
Morta’s face flashed before us and I yelped, twitching back in surprise. Astra held firm, her eyes closed and her entire focus on drawing the Nightwhiffs into our sphere.
The miasma swirled faster, pressing more tightly together, and jagged blades of black and blue light danced between them like horizontal lightning.
Morta appeared in the midst of the roiling energy, her face a mask of rage. She flashed toward me so quickly I didn’t even have time to blink and then was gone. But her signature stench of death lingered where she’d been. “Hurry up, Astra!”
“I could use a little help here!”
I concentrated harder.
A jolt of black energy speared toward us, slicing painfully into our joined hands. When it disappeared I glanced down, surprised there were no wounds. Our hands pulsed with blue light. A forked jolt of power slammed into us, spearing us each in the center of the chest and sinking deep. With a sense of excitement, I felt the energy take hold in my core, coating my own power like an oily layer. As long as the two energies stayed separate, I knew the death magic wouldn’t do me any good. So I concentrated on pulling the Nightwhiff energy into my core, forcing it to mix with mine. I knew I’d been successful when the magic sparked, flaring quickly into something I had to work to control.
Blue light burst from my skin, shimmering just above the surface like a strange aura. When I glanced at Astra I saw she was emitting the same blue glow. I turned my head and screamed.
Morta was an inch away from me, Nightwhiffs swirling in her black eyes and her mouth open wide, displaying two rows of tiny, deadly sharp teeth. Rage pulsed off her as she reached for me, her hand missing its fleshy covering. Just a skeleton’s claw clutching at my arm.
I jerked away and her form vanished. “Astra. Let’s do this before it’s too late.”
“Think of someone outside these environs,” she reminded me.
I closed my eyes and concentrated on my chosen subject.
A scream filled the passageway and the world shifted. I slammed to my back on a cold, hard surface. Opening my eyes, I looked up at the rough-hewn rock ceiling of the healing cavern. The soft swish of movement had me turning my head to find Astra lying next to me. She was trying to sit up, holding her head and grimacing. “Frunk me, that hurt.”
The doors to the cavern slammed open and black energy, edged in shimmering blue blasted toward us, pushing a nauseating meat locker stench before it. Morta floated through on its tail, her face filled with rage.
I grabbed Astra’s hand. “Now!”
We both released the energy we’d amassed in a thick wave that slammed into Morta, stopping her in her tracks. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted movement and turned my head to see Slayer, Dialle and Torre stretched out on the floor across the cavern. Astra!
My sister turned her head slowly, jerkily, the energy thickening the air around us to the point that it was hard to move. Her eyes went wide when she saw the men.
We need to get to them, I told her.
Shift-hop, she responded.
I envisioned the spot behind the men and the world disappeared for just an instant. As soon as our feet touched the cavern floor, we bent down and placed our hands on Torre and Slayer. Astra placed her lips on Dialle’s mouth.
Now! She screamed in my mind.
I envisioned the circular mountain range, filling in the middle with a vast expanse of verdant trees and life. The air shifted before my gaze, thickened, and the sound of Morta’s enraged screaming dulled.
Relief filled me as the shift started.
But then it faltered. Our energy thinned and the world slammed back into us again. Morta flew across the icy cavern, skeleton claws outstretched. Her wide, terrifying gaze was thick with swirling shadows.
“Shit!” Astra screamed.
I dropped her hand and threw out my palms, grabbing hold of the black and blue energy snapping around Morta and twisting it in my hands.
She stopped a few feet away, her eyes going wide as I ripped the death magic from her grasp. With a scream of sheer desperation, I flung my hands into the air and sent the energy back out in a twisting coil that flew through the air and wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides.
She writhed from side to side, infuriated. The humanoid mask slid away, leaving behind her true demonic form. Glittering blue fire flashed from bony eye sockets and her pointed maw opened wide to showcase a full muzzle of deadly teeth. Her slender form was covered in gray flesh, dried and stretched like a centuries old corpse. Atop her triangular head were two small horns, situated behind two large ears that lay flat to the hairless head. A thick tail slammed the ground behind her as she fought my magic hug.
Against her superior force, it didn’t take long for my energy to weaken. I looked at Astra. “We need to go now.”
She nodded, blue fire spitting in her palms. I was happy to see that, while I’d been demon wrestlin’ she’d been harvesting more death energy.
Dialle’s eyes popped open and he sat up. Astra had obviously fed him energy through their shared mark. He reached out and clasped Torre’s arm. Astra grabbed one of my hands and I reached down and clasped Slayer’s thick wrist and, in the blink of an eye, we fell into the shift.
Morta’s enraged scream was the last thing we heard as we fled her deadly castle.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Against all Odds—Love
Death stalks me and courts my friends,
It’s time to take stock of what’s important.
The clean, refreshing smell of nature was the first thing I noticed as the world came back to us. The second thing I noticed was the tall, perfectly formed woman with long black hair and an irate look in her orange-brown gaze.
Caninra.
I frowned. “What are you doing here?”
She crossed her arms, tapping a foot in anger. “Some moron summoned me here.”
I threw Astra a wide-eyed look. She grinned. “I guess we both thought about the same person.”
“Damn,” I murmured. “I didn’t even know I could do that.” The last thing I needed was a cranky Queen of the Hellhounds filling my verdant safe house with hostility. My luck she’d burn the damn place down. “Sorry about that.”
Caninra arched a slim, dark brow. “You two are dangerous.”
Astra lifted her fist and I bumped it with mine. In our world, dangerous was a good thing to be.
Slayer walked up to me and placed a hand on my back, his gaze soft on mine. “Are you all right?”
Seeing him brought back the visions and I barely suppressed a shudder. “I’m okay. You?”
He frowned. “What about the mark? Has it flared up again?”
I schooled my expression into neutrality. “No. I’m good.”
He didn’t look convinced. “And the bite?”
I tried to shove my hand behind my back but he grabbed it, his expression turning dark as he eyed the black lines running up my arm. “This needs to be dealt with.” Glancing at Astra, his frown deepened. “We still need the necromancer’s help.”
I laughed. “I don’t think she’s going to be helping us. You didn’t see her face back there.”
“Yeah,” my sister agreed. “She’s really pissed.”
“My love, we need to talk.”
All eyes slid to Dialle. “Morta’s already gathering her forces against us.”
His gaze slid skyward and mine followed. High above us, the distinctive shapes of the death dragons dipped and circled, like oversized, dead vultures. Panicking, I glared at Astra. “You said she couldn’t come into this forest?”
“I don’t believe she can. As long as we’re here
we’re safe.”
“But we’ll need to leave eventually,” Torre said quietly, his gaze on mine. “And she knows it’s only a matter of time before you’ll need her help.”
I wanted to deny it but he was right. Which brought me back to my first idea. I skimmed Slayer a look and found him speaking to Dialle. When I looked back to Torre, his gaze had sharpened, as if he knew what I was thinking.
“We should get some rest,” Astra said, looking at Caninra. “Are your people coming?”
The woman nodded. “They’ll be here by morning.”
“Good. Gerch and the remainder of our army is working its way to the forest now.” My sister looked at me. “You look beat. You need to rest and reserve your strength. Tomorrow we fight our way out of here.”
“I’ll get her settled,” Torre told Astra.
Though Astra’s gaze slid to me, unsure, I nodded. “I am tired. Wake me up if anything happens tonight?”
She nodded. I felt her eyes on me as Torre placed a warm hand on my back and started me down a path, toward the sound of falling water in the distance. I realized Astra was as unsure as I was whether letting Torre mark me again was a solution or just a new problem. But at this point I couldn’t let Slayer put himself back into danger to save me. I was starting to suspect that a lot of what we’d experienced in Morta’s castle while under the influence of the night visions was based in truth like she said. But even if it wasn’t, something told me Morta would harm Slayer just to hurt me. Especially since we’d kicked her dead ass and escaped. We’d upped the ante on the whole control thing. And a dark world creature such as Morta, who was thousands of years old and extremely powerful, would not take kindly to that.
The sound of falling water had gotten steadily louder as we walked and the air smelled of clean mist. I pulled it into my lungs and smiled, so grateful to be out of the cold, disgusting castle. Torre walked beside me with his head down, a frown on his handsome face. I took a moment to study him, remembering how I’d felt about him when we’d first met. Like his brother Torre was tall and darkly elegant, maybe a bit more refined in build than Dialle, but every bit as heart-stutteringly gorgeous. His long-lashed dark gaze, long straight nose and full, kissable lips were enough to get a woman’s heart palpitating. Add to that a strong, stubbled jaw and shoulder length blue-black hair which he’d taken to wearing straight rather than pulled back into a low pony, and he was more than drool worthy. Torre was also a gentle and considerate lover, careful to ensure I felt as much pleasure as he did. But he’d let me walk all over him for months and, in the end, I suspected his lack of strength was the thing that had soured the mark he’d tried to give me.