Briar: Through the Mirrorworld

by C. T. Aaron

  One of them is Alexander.

  I spot him at the far end of the field, where Cepheus had made his entrance. Alexander is giving orders, gesturing all over the place to a group of men who’ve run to him. Most of them then look up at me and Maebry.

  Ezzy jogs painfully toward Cepheus, barking. It’s not a sound I’ve heard before, not like this: a full-throated, unleashed bark that echoes throughout the arena. Imagine the biggest, baddest big dog in your neighborhood growing up that everyone was scared of, and multiply it by ten. By the sound of it, Ezzy’s out for blood.

  The problem is, his body can’t keep up. He’s limping horribly and his head isn’t held as high as usual. He must be in a million kinds of pain, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  “Mae, they’re coming,” I say quickly as the men around Alexander start running away from him with determined expressions. “You’ve got to get Aison up and we have to move.”

  “I’m trying,” Mae says. “He won’t get up. I think maybe he’s unconscious or stunned or something.”

  “Keep trying.”

  Cepheus has been staring at Ezzy as Ezzy approached. Now he seems to recognize his old foe from our battle outside, and both of Cepheus’s faces roar. He raises the flail and whirls it. Ezzy rears back as if recognizing the weapon.

  Cepheus takes a menacing step toward my dog, who, instead of leaping for an attack, takes a matching step back.

  He’s scared.

  He’s not the only one.

  I chant cuss words and slap my hands on top of the wall, trying to come up with a plan. Panicking, I search all over the arena for some hope, some idea . . .

  Spark! And Betty! They’re our best chance now.

  Except Spark is gone.

  I search all over the area where we’d been sitting. The stands are empty except for a handful of guys on their feet, starting to raise fists and cheer the next fight about to happen. They don’t care who it is that’s doing the fighting, they just want blood. I don’t see Spark anywhere.

  “He ran,” I whisper. “He freaking ran.”

  “Briar . . .” Maebry groans.

  To our right, the two guards are moving; the first is getting to his feet, while the second is holding his belly and moaning. I don’t see blood. Ezzy managed not to puncture his skin.

  I also hear shouts coming from our right and left, where the building curves; and then more from the staircase I’d climbed to get here. Alexander’s men will be here in seconds.

  And we’ve got nowhere to go.

  I slide my hand into Maebry’s. “I’m sorry. I was trying to help.”

  A strange silence falls over us as Mae lifts our entwined hands and stares at them. Then she looks into my eyes.

  “It’s okay, B.”

  Then the world becomes white. We move closer together as if pushed from an outside force until it’s like we’re slow dancing.

  And a moment later, my stomach drops as we fly into the air together. And I think, Well, if I had to die so young, I’m glad it was with Maebry.

  We fly higher.

  Higher.

  So quiet and so white.

  FOURTEEN

  Being dead is taking a long time, I think, deliriously, as Maebry and I continue to fly upward. For a second I wonder if God’s really there after all and this is how we get to heaven. Pretty cool; maybe I get a pass because of Maebry’s faith.

  Then there’s a thunk. We’ve hit something. Like a ceiling. I feel it in my head, but it doesn’t hurt too bad. Does God get stuck?

  “B?” Maebry says as we start to sway back and forth. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know. We’re alive?”

  She sort of nods, only it’s more of a head jerk. “We’re inside something. Ugh, it’s sticking to me.”

  We start moving again, swinging first, then moving up, then falling. We’re on the ground now. A voice from beyond us says, “Hold on.”

  And all at once I have a pretty good idea what’s just happened.

  Heat scorches my hand, then disappears. “Sorry, sorry. It’s gonna take me a minute here,” that same muffled voice says. “I’m gonna have to burn this off of you.”

  “Spark? Please tell me that’s you.”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” Spark says. “Me and ol’ Betty, and we are in a serious time crunch here, shut up and hold on.”

  After another few seconds, Maebry and I can move again. We get to our feet, trying to yank webbing off our bodies. Maebry shrieks when she sees Betty standing a few feet away.

  I grab her arm. “It’s okay, it’s okay! She’s with us.”

  We’re standing on the roof of the arena. Somehow from up here, Betty had sent a line of her webbing through the opening and caught us up in it. So, there’s something I’ll have to tell our grandchildren someday . . .

  I move to the edge of the roof and peek carefully over to the field. Cepheus is circling Ezzy, swinging his flail every few seconds. Ezzy doesn’t look any worse than he did a few seconds ago—he’s got his feet under him as he keeps a distance between him and Cepheus, but I can see his legs are wobbly.

  “Ezzy’s still hurt, I’ve got to get him out of there.”

  “Sounds good to me, we got a whole lot of really bad guys wanting our asses,” Spark says. “So if you got a brilliant idea, better do it now.”

  Still trailing spider web, Mae joins me at the edge. “Hold on. Aison’s awake.”

  On the field. Cepheus has disregarded Aison entirely, and that’s his mistake. As he takes another sidestep toward my Familiar, Aison’s massive hand comes to life and grabs the giant’s ankle.

  Cepheus grunts in surprise, both faces swinging around to figure out what’s just grabbed him. In the time it takes him to figure it out, though, Aison is on his clawed feet, pulling Cepheus to the ground. The giant lets go of his flail, which smashes into the dirt. Aison looks at us, raises his wings, and gives one mighty flap that takes him into the air, still holding the monstrous giant in his hand.

  I’ve never seen Aison fly before. For that matter, I’ve only ever seen him a handful of times. I saw a bald eagle in the desert once, on a school trip. It was enormous, by Earth standards, and elegant. Aison is not elegant. It’s more like watching a rhinoceros trying to swim in the ocean. But the sheer power behind his flight is breathtaking. His wings act like jet engines, propelling him upward with brute force that makes rhythmic bass drum beats in the air behind him.

  “Yes!” I shriek.

  And Mae grins.

  Excited that something is finally going right, I say to her, “You know that’s Oscar’s Fam, right?”

  Her grin drops. “What?”

  No time to elaborate. For all Aison’s size and strength, Cepheus is also a huge Familiar. Aison manages to clear the roof, flying about twenty feet above us while Cepheus bucks and writhes beneath him. I can see Aison’s normally stony expression showing some strain as he veers to the right and drops Cepheus from his hand. Cepheus falls out of sight on the far side of the arena. Aison turns and flies back toward us.

  But then, instead of a nice landing on the roof, Aison crashes. Mae and I have to hop backward out of the way as the huge gargoyle slams into the roof and slides to a halt.

  “Aison!” Mae cries, and rushes to his side.

  I join her, and immediately see the problem. There’s a good reason Aison wasn’t moving earlier: several garish, bloody wounds glare from his back, right between his wings, where Cepheus’s spiked ball hit. Aison’s gray skin is mottled there, an enormous bruise taking shape.

  “I’ve got to pop him out of here,” Mae says in a rush.

  “Do it.” I go back to the edge of the roof and look down on the field.

  Ezzy stands there, his hind quarters quaking as he gazes at me. I pop Ezzy out of the arena, sending him to whatever strange place our Fams go when they’re not with us, and by the time I turn around, Aison is gone too.

  Now it’s just me, Maebry, Spark, and Betty. All of us humans are
breathing hard, looking at each other and at the world around us, trying to figure out what the hell to do next.

  “Hi, I’m Spark, nice to meet you,” Spark says sarcastically to Mae. “Don’t worry about your Fam, just leave him alone and he’ll heal up.”

  “How long will that—”

  “Hard to say, just leave him be,” Spark says. “Now we gotta motor on outta here, kids.”

  We all move to the opposite end of the roof from where Aison dropped Cepheus, which, as we near the edge, I see is approximately the place where Spark parked his motorcycle. The problem is, men are pouring from the arena and fanning out around the building, pointing up at us and shouting at each other. There’s no way for us to get down, and no way to avoid being seen.

  I ball my hands. “We’re trapped up here.”

  “What about your spider?” Mae says desperately. “She got us out of the arena, is there any way she can get us down?”

  “Get us down, sure,” Spark growls. “Right into their hands. Then what?”

  “Can we fight them somehow?” I say.

  Spark starts to answer, but shuts his mouth as a baritone rumble vibrates the roof beneath us. At first I think it’s some kind of explosion, except it’s not a quick thing that happens then is over. The rumble is continuous, and getting louder.

  From beyond the edge of the roof, a new Familiar flies up. It’s the source of the rumble, a deep rattling that sounds like a helicopter on steroids.

  The Familiar flying to greet us is something like a hummingbird. Its wings are a constant blur of motion, and the source of the roar. But instead of just a giant version of a normal hummingbird, this thing has wings as black as a crow, and a segmented scorpion-like tail curling down from its hind end. The markings on its face give it a sinister appearance, and its eyes flare a hellish green.

  “Hello!”

  I jerk in surprise—it can talk? Then I realize, no, it’s Alexander.

  The three of us turn toward his voice. Alexander is on the ground with a group of men, waving an arm casually over his head while speaking into his megaphone with the other. I don’t see Oscar in the group.

  “Hi, there!” he says, fake friendly. “I’d like you to make that eight-legged freak disappear now. If I see one more Familiar show up, I’m going to have my flying friend there execute all three of you, one after another, bang bang bang. You understand?”

  Spark weakly waves a hand.

  “Ah, that’s wonderful,” Alexander says through the megaphone. I swear he is smiling. “Let the spider go, now.”

  Spark clenches his jaw, and then Betty disappears a second later.

  “Excellent!” Alexander says. “Now, you three just sit tight while some of my friends come and get you down from up there. Wouldn’t want you to fall and hurt yourselves. Please stay right where you are. If I lose sight of any of you, all of you die. Okay? Okay.”

  The three of us stand there, motionless, while the hummingbird hovers nearby, making our hair flutter in its breeze.

  I turn to Mae.

  “In my head, things were going to go a lot better.”

  Mae takes my hand and doesn’t answer.

  FIFTEEN

  They send various Familiars to come get us. It’s a little terrifying, being picked up by, in my case, a giant vulture-like bird with talons as big around as my forearm. The animal clutches me hard enough to leave bruises, but the flight lasts all of five seconds.

  The Familiars drop us right in front of Alexander. The big group of men has made a large circle around us. I didn’t think my heart could pound any harder than it already has today, but I’m wrong: it’s making my limbs go rubbery and my mouth dry.

  “Hi,” Alexander says, and he is, in fact, smiling. Not like he’s actually finding anything funny, I mean. “Let’s have a look at you. Dear dear, what a sorry lot. What do you think, should you call the police? Hey, how about the National Guard? No? No, that’s right, phone reception isn’t exactly stellar here, is it?”

  He steps closer, dropping the smile. The two guys in the suits stay close behind.

  “So tell me, just how fucking stupid are you?”’

  A few choice answers swing through my head, but I have the sense—and terror—not to say any of them. I have to fight to keep from calling Ezzy, because based on the look in Alexander’s eyes, and the fact that several Fams are flying overhead, he absolutely meant what he said if any of our Familiars show up right now.

  The three of us stay silent, alternating between staring at him and glancing around, as if there will be a sudden opening in the crowd we can all run through.

  “He’s not with us,” I blurt out, pointing at Spark. “I talked him into it, he didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  Alexander laughs. “Oh, really? Don’t care.”

  “Thanks anyway,” Spark mutters at me.

  “All right, we still have a meet to do.” Alexander nods at a couple of guys, who surround us closely. “Take them inside, to the visitor tunnel. God knows they aren’t the home team, hmm? Wait for me there.”

  There are six men. One pushes Spark’s shoulder toward the arena, but they don’t grab us. We get their drift and start walking, the six men forming a tight circle around us. There must be a hundred or so others trailing behind, talking now. It’s all a giant mumble, I can’t make out any actual conversations. The men surrounding us don’t talk.

  “You don’t have to do this,” Maebry tries, imploring the man on her left..

  I glare at the guy closest to me. “Yeah, they do, Mae. That’s what guys like this do.”

  “Shut up,” the guy says.

  So I shut up, but only because there isn’t going to be any talking our way out of this. I easily picture him wearing the same ballcap as the guy at school.

  Of course, that kid was alone and unarmed. This is a little different.

  They march us back inside and take us to a sloped hallway where football teams would run through when they take the field. We’re stopped at a door. One guy opens it and orders us inside. Since Mae and I don’t know any awesome ninja moves, and Spark is totally outnumbered, we go inside the tiny room. It’s probably a closet or storage area back home, similar to what we’d put Oscar into. They shut the door and we’re in darkness. I can’t think of another darkness as deep as this. Except maybe being asleep. Or dead.

  Mae finds my hand, and we hold tight. “You shouldn’t have come after me, Briar.”

  “Yes, I should’ve. And I’d do it again. But how did you end up here, Mae? Please tell me you did not come here to fight, because that makes zero sense.”

  “No,” she says softly in the darkness. “Of course not. I popped Aison to me at the doorway, by the preschool? And then we just walked around a little is all. Only . . .”

  “Only what?”

  “Only someone found you, right?” Spark says.

  “Yes,” Mae whispers.

  “Yeah, they do that. When a new portal opens, Alexander sends his guys scouting around, seeing if anyone comes through, tries to talk them into the arena. They’d have had it under watch for awhile now.”

  “Wait, so they talked to you?” I demand. “That’s it? That’s how you decided to come here?”

  “No.” Her voice is so quiet now I barely hear her. Maebry sighs. “It was the guy who wears those shiny shirts. From the race track. Dante, I think? He was there with the other men. They recognized me and Aison right away. And then . . . Oscar showed up.”

  “That’s what I thought. God, Mae, they grabbed you? Did they hurt you?”

  I hear her sniffle, but she doesn’t answer for a minute.

  “Maebry?”

  “Oscar said they knew where you were.”

  I have nothing to say. Mae waits, then goes on.

  “He said they knew where you lived and they had people who could track you down. They’d grab you and bring you here and make you fight. I couldn’t let that happen. I wasn’t even sure I believed them, but it seemed possible
. . .”

  “God, Mae.”

  “So now we’re here, and it’s my fault.”

  “No, don’t say that. Huh-uh. Don’t. They’re bad guys doing bad things, that’s on them. We’re getting out of here. Okay? We’re all getting out of here.”

  “I’d like to share your optimism,” Spark says sarcastically. “But can we maybe channel it toward the actual ‘getting out of here?’”

  He’s right, of course. Talk is cheap right now. “Okay, okay. Right. Okay.” I take breath to center myself. “Any ideas?”

  “I’m a little worried he didn’t just kill us,” Spark says. “And that comment about still wanting to have a meet . . . that doesn’t bode well.”

  “You think he’ll try to make us fight our Fams?” Maebry says.

  “Maybe. Or worse.”

  “What’s worse than that?”

  Spark doesn’t answer.

  “If you called Aison here, do you think he could still fly?” I say to Maebry.

  She hesitates. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Could you control him to do it?”

  “Briar, I don’t know, he was hurt so bad—”

  I squeeze her hand. “Mae, he might be our only chance to get out of here. He flew out of the arena once already, and that was carrying that two-faced Fam. He could get the three of us out the same way, don’t you think?”

  She doesn’t sound hopeful as she mutters, “Maybe.”

  “Okay, so look, the first chance we get—”

  The door opens. The three of us rear back. It’s not bright out in the hall, so it’s not like we have to protect our eyes, but it’s still a sudden noise and sight.

  Alexander stands in the doorway. His goons stand behind him, grim-faced. He’s holding several things in his hands: A fire ax, a baseball bat, and a prybar.

  “My clients expect a fight to the death,” Alexander says as the three of us get to our feet, still inside the store room. “And that’s what they’re going to get.”

  “Why are you doing this?” I say before I can stop myself.

  “Why else? To make money. Cash is king, girlies.”