“Hello?” I called out. My voice echoed back strangely, as though it were bouncing off nearby walls. I hauled my body into a sitting position, frowning into the darkness. “Is anyone here?” The soundwaves spread out, creating a peculiar effect. It was as though I could see them, bouncing off invisible barriers that surrounded me on all sides. Bright ripples of bluish light suddenly shimmered across the unseen barriers, turning them into solid walls. And not just any walls.
Glass walls. I recognized them immediately.
No… I scrambled to my feet and ran for the glass, launching myself at it with my full weight. A clang echoed back, but the impact made no difference. Panic took over, sending me into a blind fury. Someone from the Institute had trapped me. I’d disobeyed Victoria, and she’d sent her minions to bash me on the head and take me out. And this was my punishment—the glass box that I’d feared since I Purged the hydra on my birthday. It wasn’t exactly the same as the glass box from my nightmare. It felt far more real, thanks to the pounding in my head, the ache in my bones, and the biting cold of the glass against my cheek. Details too concrete to be part of a dream. Plus, there were no familiar spectators standing outside the box, watching me. Beyond the pane lay nothing but endless dark.
My heart hammered harder as understanding dawned. That was why Nathan and the pixies weren’t with me. They’d been taken away, too. Maybe they were suffering a similar fate, somewhere else in the Institute. And Genie was still out there somewhere, needing my help.
“Let me out! I know who’s doing this! Please believe me! Please!” I screamed, pounding the glass until my already-tender knuckles swelled anew, reigniting old injuries. “My friend is in danger! Please, you have to let me out of here! I can’t… I can’t breathe!”
I slammed my hands, knees, arms, fists, hips, and feet into the glass in a violent cycle, until everything hurt. Even then, I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop, not until someone let me out. If I paused for even a second, the claustrophobia would take over, and there would be no coming back from that.
“Persephone?” A cold touch trailed across the back of my neck, and the shadows within the box shifted.
I whipped around, panting. “Leviathan?” Just like in the nightmare, he’d come to comfort me in my darkest hour. But I didn’t want him here. I didn’t want him anywhere near me. “Where am I? And what the hell is going on?”
He emerged from the thick, black smoke, coiling his scaly tail beneath him to prop up his humanoid torso. His glowing angler-fish appendage shone with a warm yellow light, but I’d learned my lesson about that. I turned my face to the side in case it drew me in again.
“Apologies, Persephone.” He bowed his head. “I did not mean to startle you.”
“Then don’t creep up on me, and don’t touch me!” I snapped. My chest felt like a ten-ton weight had been dropped on it. “I think you should start answering my questions, now.”
His striking eyes observed me with… concern. “You must relax, Persephone. I intend no harm. You are safe with me.” The end of his tail flicked, making the scales shimmer with a teal sheen. “I am sorry to have to contact you in this manner.”
“Wait…” I froze. “So, this is a dream?” I didn’t know what emotion I was meant to have. I felt numb and overwhelmed all at once, my mind a seething mass of panic and confusion.
“Yes and no. It is more of an astral projection,” he explained. “It was necessary.”
Anger sliced through me, finally fixing me on one emotion in particular. “Necessary?! I thought I’d been locked in a freaking prison cell, Leviathan! I thought Victoria had thrown away the key! Because of you!”
He had the decency to look sheepish. “I was worried.”
“You should be more worried that I’ll cave your head in, after you pulled a stunt like this!” I shot back, livid. I’d told him about the nightmare, and now he was using my worst fears against me simply because he wanted to. I had no right to be surprised. I’d given him ammunition—of course he was going to hurl it back at me.
He snickered softly. “You are angry. You should not be. I was worried that you might be stepping into danger you cannot handle. You do not have all the knowledge required to succeed.”
“And whose fault is that?” I really wanted to hit him, but I had a feeling my knuckles would shatter if I tried to punch his armor plating. “You had every chance to give me more information, and you chose to be all vague and ‘disinterested.’ I’ve had to figure things out for myself, and we were about to get more intel when you decided to play this… telepathy trick on me.”
“I highly doubt that,” he replied coolly.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Then start talking. Tell me what I need to know about the Door to Nowhere. You can begin with how to open the damn thing.”
He laughed, his silvery eyes glinting with mischief. “You do not know me very well, do you? I would not make it that easy.” He lunged forward on his coils, but I didn’t flinch. “I will not rule with a weak queen at my side. You must prove that you are worthy of my gifts. I must see your value. You say you have had to figure things out for yourself, but I see no evidence. You have sought aid at every turn.”
“I. Don’t. Want. Your. Gifts!” I punctuated each word with a palm to the glass. In all my life, no one had aggravated me more than Leviathan. How could he stand there and spout all this bull about me not doing things for myself? Yes, I’d had help, but that didn’t minimize what I’d managed to achieve so far. And he was one to talk—his mind would still be in deep freeze along with his body if it weren’t for me, which didn’t make me feel good, but it was still the hypocritical truth.
Mom always said that the sign of a true fighter was one who knew when to share the load, which she’d learned the hard way. I wouldn’t let him make me feel guilty about accepting help when I really needed it, like getting out of my bedroom thanks to Nathan. Nor would I let him belittle what I’d done myself. I’d been the one to figure out the pixies weren’t responsible, and I’d managed to coax them into joining forces with me. As self-sufficient victories went, mine weren’t half bad. And my shared victories weren’t bad, either. Besides, I didn’t care what he thought of me, and I definitely didn’t want to be his freaking queen! All I cared about was rescuing my friend and exonerating my Purge pixies.
Leviathan chuckled. “And yet, you have grown to admire the creatures you birthed. If you were to suddenly find yourself without your new gift, you would feel its absence. That is enough for me. For now.” He pulled back, giving me space from his rotting fish breath. “As for information… the best I can do is point you in the right direction. You will find what you are looking for in the new wing of the Institute. That much I heard from your pixie friends.”
“What?” That didn’t make sense. How could he have heard it from the pixies?
“I can now communicate with others of my kind. All thanks to you, and my link to you.” He sighed wistfully. “Our bond has turned you into a telepathic satellite dish, of sorts. I hear messages and thoughts from my kind as they bounce off you and reach me—in a way that’s never happened before. Since the Institute is full of monsters, I can hear a great deal. Now I know the lay of the enemy terrain.”
What’s he going to do with that sort of intel? I didn’t dare ask. As long as he remained in his box, there wasn’t anything he could do in the outside world… right? I doubted he could manipulate the monsters through this link, or he would’ve done it already to break himself loose. Still, the idea of being his cellphone tower, with thoughts pinging off me and back to him… It didn’t sit well with me at all. He didn’t deserve an outlet to the wider world. He’d shown he couldn’t be trusted with it.
I squinted at him, deciding what to say next. “I’m already in the new wing. That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier.” I allowed myself a small smirk as his eyes widened in surprise. “I told you I was capable.”
“You are already there?” He sounded baffled and intrigued. “How did you
figure that out?”
“Oh, now you want me to spill the beans?” I grumbled, not wanting to tell him anything. And yet, if he could hear monsters talking now, maybe he had intel that he’d be willing to cough up, now that he knew I’d gotten here without him.
He laughed. “Have you developed a means of conversing with the pixies? Has such a power come to you already?”
“We have an… understanding of sorts.” I refused to let him be smug over the fact that we were mostly talking in charades and mime performances. But I should have known better than to try and pull the wool over his eyes.
“They will not listen, will they?”
“They listen,” I shot back stubbornly.
He nodded in thought. “Yet they do not understand you fully. Is that right?”
“They get mixed up sometimes, that’s all.” I thought of the children’s book and grimaced, though I tried to cover the expression as quickly as possible. “But they’re doing their best, and they’re helping me, which is more than I can say about you and your vague comments.” I also felt an urge to defend them. They weren’t stupid, by any means. There was just a bit of an issue with their love of destruction.
Leviathan smiled. “You continue to impress me.”
“I’m not doing anything to impress you. I’m doing this to save my friend,” I retorted. I didn’t plan on ever becoming his evil queen, so he could stuff that.
“Nevertheless, I am pleasantly surprised by the warmth you are showing toward these creatures. And your ability to reach the crossroads you are at, without my assistance. In return, I will grant you a valuable piece of information.” He lunged nearer, coming disgustingly close to my ear. There, he whispered a single word: “Inwalla.”
My brow furrowed. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“It will mean everything to you.” He pulled back, all smugness and arrogance. “It is how you will get the pixies to obey. They will understand every detail of your instruction. No more mishaps. No more accidents. It is an ancient word of the Primus Anglicus; the only word they will listen to.”
“Inwalla? That’s all I need to get them to understand?” It seemed too easy, and with Leviathan, that was never a good thing.
“Yes,” he said simply. “However, I would urge you to be careful. You are entering a perilous unknown. Even I know very little about the Door to Nowhere and the land beyond it. It is hallowed ground, and the spirits are uneasy.”
I saw an opportunity to give him a few home-truths. “But not because of me, like you implied. You said I was the one who caused all of this by opening the gateway, but that’s not true, is it? It opened because they built the foundations of the new wing too deep and stirred the gateway back into life.”
He pressed a palm to his chest. “More and more remarkable with every encounter. What a wonder you are.” His eyes twinkled, his angler-fish bulb flashing a sultry pink. I realized he might’ve made his earlier digs about my apparent uselessness to manipulate me. Bastard. “I know you have been worried. I have heard your fears. I wanted to see if you could bear the weight of such responsibility, and you did. You did not crumble. You feared you would, yes, but you did not.”
How does he know that? Dread bubbled in my stomach. I hadn’t told him it concerned me, though I supposed you wouldn’t have to be a genius to figure that out. And yet, his certainty made me nauseous. Could he… read my thoughts when we were linked like this? I suddenly felt very exposed and vulnerable, my mind open for him to scoop out the highlights. It set a dangerous precedent. If he’d listened to my fears without me knowing, then what else could he hear?
“I do not delve too deep,” he said, as though he had heard everything I’d just thought. He laughed, without so much as a hint of malevolence. “I skim the surface so I can sense how you are feeling. I would not intrude where I am not welcome. A person’s mind is a locked box that should never be opened, unless the key is given. I reach only for your emotions. I do so because I wish to know your state. I do not like when you suffer.”
“Then why play games, why manipulate me into feeling guilty?” I felt breathless again, panicky. He’d allowed me to believe that I’d been the catalyst to these kidnappings. If that wasn’t suffering, I didn’t know what was.
He sighed. “Truthfully, I did not know about the new wing until after we spoke last. I said only what I thought to be true at the time. And I would have remedied your feeling of guilt during this meeting, but you had already figured it out yourself.” His voice turned soft and caring, which unsettled me more than his cool-as-a-cucumber act.
I could hate Leviathan. Hate was easy because he’d caused me so much upset. But to think he might actually be on my side, trying to help me through this in his own twisted way… That was harder to swallow. He was trying to get me to stand on my own two feet, like I’d wanted. And that notion boggled my mind.
Crap, can he hear all of this? I peered at him, but he showed no sign that he’d invaded my private thoughts. Maybe he really meant it. The idea alone sounded insane: it suggested he had some sort of moral compass. But if he had read my mind at that moment, he wouldn’t have been able to resist a dig at my expense.
“What lies beyond that door is likely treacherous,” he said instead. “It is a mystery. No one has ever come back from it. So, you must be cautious. Do not be foolish and get yourself trapped there, too. Take pains. Gain insight. Have courage. Never try to be a hero, for heroes have a tendency to die gloriously.”
I nodded uncertainly. “Then I need to get back to the real world, where I can make a difference. Genie needs me, now more than ever. And I will figure this out, because that’s what I do, even if you ‘highly doubt’ it.”
He laughed and reached out his hand, pausing just shy of my cheek. “Ah yes, the Atlantean firecracker. By all means, return and rescue the wench. That girl has grown on me in recent years. She is a good friend to you. And you will need good friends, later…”
Before I could ask what the heck that was supposed to mean, a blinding pain tore through my skull, and the shadows and the box and Leviathan’s eerie eyes vanished. This time, at least, I knew where I would wake up.
Twenty-Eight
Persie
“Persie?” Someone shook my shoulders. “Persie? Can you hear me?”
My eyes opened slowly to the hazy glow at the bottom of the sphere and Boudicca staring at me upside down from where she stood on my forehead. Nathan loomed over me, his expression deeply concerned.
“I’m okay,” I croaked. “How long was I out?” My head still throbbed, but I could handle that. Although Leviathan might’ve given me a heart attack by choosing the worst possible time for a telepathic visit, at least I’d come away with something useful: Inwalla.
“Ten minutes or so.” He helped me sit up, and I discovered that all of the pixies had formed a protective circle around me. A murmur of relief rippled through the creatures, some of them wiping their brows with their usual brand of melodrama. “What happened? You were talking, and then you just… keeled over.”
Only ten minutes? It had felt a lot longer.
“I’m not sure,” I lied. “I think it was an aftershock symptom of my last Purge. But I’m fine now.” I couldn’t bring myself to explain about the glass box or how real it had felt. I knew Nathan would’ve understood, and that he wouldn’t have judged me for it—he already knew, to some extent, about Leviathan’s mental visits. However, there was a huge difference between Leviathan talking to me and him being able to take control of my mind long enough to drag me out of reality and into… wherever we’d been. Nathan didn’t need to know all that, not right then. We had plenty of other concerns on our collective plate.
Nathan squinted, as though he only half-believed me. “Does that happen often?”
“It’s mostly headaches and residual pains, but I did Purge a bunch of creatures at once this time, so the aftereffects are more intense. Honestly, I’m fine now.”
Nathan sighed with relief. �
�Thank goodness for that. You had me worried.” I stared at the phone in his hand, which he hurriedly slipped back into his pocket. He gave me a solemn look and said, “I was about five seconds away from sending the pixies off to hide and calling for help. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know if you were going to wake up.”
“Then… thank you for waiting.” I meant it. If Nathan had phoned Victoria, it would’ve been game over, and the useful information Leviathan had given me would have been worthless. Nathan got to his feet and dusted himself off, taking a moment to gather himself. He looked rattled, and I had an opportunity while Nathan walked a short distance away, just out of earshot, to pace off his lingering nerves.
“Inwalla,” I whispered.
The pixies all whipped around to face me, staring in wonder at the person who’d spoken their sacred word. A moment later, they shivered as though a bolt of electricity had shot amongst them all: a magical current running through the pixie circuit. With no need for further prompting, they marched forward into formation and stood at attention, falling into line like an army. Boudicca stood at the front, her shoulders back, arms straight, ready to take orders.
Nathan gawped at the scene. “What are they doing?”
“They’re obeying.” I smiled, thrilled that the word had worked. “And we’ve probably only got one more shot at this before some pixies gets caught, so cross your fingers.” I focused on Boudicca. “Can you send a team to bring us the book we need? A Complete History of Wisps and Legends.” I repeated the instructions that Nathan had previously given and prayed they wouldn’t bring back another kiddy book.
Harley Merlin 19: Persie Merlin and the Door to Nowhere Page 28