Am I really doing this right now?
"Hold on tight!" Basile called behind them, and she looked back to see him and Marius standing almost shoulder to shoulder.
She met the vivid's eyes—gilded, lit with concern and something she couldn't quite place. Her heart twinged, and she waved as Adam and Satara passed her.
Then, the doors slid shut. Grime caked the windows, but through a rusty hole in the side of the subway car, Edie could see Marius turn away with a muttered curse.
The train shuddered and started, jerking down the rails for a few moments before finding its clumsy, off-kilter footing. She tore her eyes away from the hole and examined her surroundings.
The interior of the car was just as disgusting as the outside had been, coated with rust, mud, and a strange, organic sort of filth. Almost bloody. She had been in gross places before, seen and smelled dirt and gore, even been covered in it—but there was something unsettling about this filth.
Without knowing where it had come from, she could sense it was like a disease, a corruption. This filth spread on its own. If she listened closely, under the clapping of the train against the track, she could almost ... hear it. Crawling. Breeding.
Loath to touch anything, she planted her feet as best she could and shifted her weight against the train. Near her, Satara was in the same predicament; she stood near one of the poles and wedged it between her arm and her shield to keep her hands clean.
Adam, on the other hand … though he seemed to acknowledge the filth, it didn't stop him. He sat heavily on one of the benches and put his head in his hands, shoulders rising and falling evenly as he took deep breaths.
Edie tried to exchange a look with Satara, but the shieldmaiden had already fixed him with a concerned gaze. "Are you all right?" she asked.
"I'm..." Adam raised his head, tugging on his guitar strap. "I don't like the idea that Elle had to ride this thing to get ... where she is now." Under his breath, he added, "Makes me wonder what the Wending is like."
They fell quiet again, and Edie broke her stance a moment later to walk to the other end of the car. They were the only passengers on this car, but when she looked out the window at the end, she could see into the one behind them. And there were people there.
Or what she thought were people. From where she stood, they were only faceless white-gray forms. They sat, mostly, but some stood, all with their heads bowed. The sight of them made her spine crawl, but she couldn't seem to look away.
"Edie!"
The voice made her jump. Basile. She glanced around, then realized the aura that had fallen around her previously was shimmering. He was speaking to her through the circlet.
"Don't look at those," he continued. "Just go back to where you were and keep your eyes ahead."
The tone of his voice sent a spike of panic through her, and she averted her eyes at once, turning back around.
Around them, the dingy train windows were completely black, but not with the close darkness of a tunnel. This darkness seemed ... more vast, somehow, and she could hear things in the beyond. A strange bubbling or murmuring, and a distant keening sound. Between those, a deep, cold, resounding silence, like what had poured from Basile's tear in reality.
Once again, she was reminded of the ocean off the coast of Maine. If something happened and they were lost in this void, would she be able to find which way was up? Or was there a riptide to pull her down here, too?
Without warning, the thundering of the train on the rails disappeared. Their ride felt smoother, suddenly skating noiselessly as if through open air. Edie gasped as the car around them began to shake, and instinctively, she reached out to grab one of the hanging straps.
Her gaze shot to her companions, but the lights flickered. She could barely make out Adam and Satara holding on for dear life before the car was plunged into complete and utter darkness.
The shaking continued, and Edie cried out into the dark. Her mind whirled with pleas and prayers and panicked questions. Was it happening sooner than she thought—the void taking them?
But a few long, terrifying seconds later, the lights flickered on again. Her feet felt steadier under her, and as she looked around at the others and their surroundings—all in one piece, thank whatever gods were listening—she realized the train had stopped.
The doors groaned open, revealing a new station, and stayed that way. Slowly, like newborn fawns, the group staggered out onto the platform.
The station around them was eerily familiar, almost a mirror image of the one they had left behind. Just like the train, it was dirty and decaying, even by NYC standards. As she walked forward, Edie spared a glance at the open doors of the car next to theirs, expecting to see the creepy figures she'd seen through the window. There were none.
Wordlessly, the group left the platform, starting up the stained stairs. The lights were dim, yellowed and dirt-caked, and the bloody corruption climbing the walls and carpeting the floor pulsed and writhed as they passed it. Here and there, Edie noticed gray lumps breaking up the filth. It wasn't until she saw an ashen-skinned figure shuffling on one of the upper-floor platforms that she realized they were people. Lost souls who hadn't even made it out of the subway, swallowed up.
The smell was vile, smoky and tangy. She tamped down the horror welling inside of her and climbed, climbed, climbed, desperate for a breath of fresh air.
But even as they crept up the last set of stairs and breached the pavement, there was no fresh air to be had. They found themselves in a small paved court, boxed in by tall buildings. The world around them was dark and shining; above, there was no night sky, only dark gray clouds.
It was impossible to tell anything distinct about this place. There was hardly any light but a faint, muted blue glow from an alley to the street, beckoning them forward.
Edie looked to the others as they walked toward it, wanting to ask if anyone had a plan, but it felt too strange to talk here. Like in her reoccurring dream. She couldn't shake the fear that if the silence was broken, something would be alerted.
When they came to the end of the alley and turned the corner, though, she couldn't help but gasp at what she saw.
The city laid out before them was a decomposing nightmarescape. The dark buildings, huddled together, defied reality as Edie knew it: broken apart, the pieces still drifting near where they had crumbled off; stairs and fire escapes upside down and backwards, with ashen figures still sitting on them as though they were rightside up. Blue mist shimmered within the ruin, snaking around the debris like settling dust.
All around them, chunks of the road had been lifted, hovering lopsidedly over the craters they had left behind—some quite high in the sky and some just a few inches out of place, making the road pitted and uneven. Fissures in the asphalt glowed, leaking a bluish-purple energy. A constant low fog curled around Edie’s ankles, and the sky above was dark and stormy, the roiling gray streaked with the same color as the magic seeping from the ground.
Ghostly wind whistled through broken stone, the only sound nearby; in the distance, what sounded like rolling thunder and the groan of distressed metal echoed through the entire city. From where they stood, this place seemed to stretch on forever.
Beside Edie, Adam was the first to break the silence, his voice soft with awe. "What is this place?"
The aura around her shimmered, and Basile's voice answered: "This ... this is nowhere."
At those words, Edie’s heart clenched.
Uncertainly, they walked forward, glass and gravel crunching under their feet. The vulnerable, naked feeling of being without part of her soul intensified in Edie, almost bringing tears to her eyes. This place was not right. If they got lost here, they would never get home. Time would end before they found their way.
"This isn't really what I expected," Adam murmured, eyes lingering on the floating cement and debris. "With all the Norse stuff and fantasy creatures, I thought it'd be ... I don't know. Not a city."
Basile's voice rose around E
die again. "It didn't always look like this. And it doesn't look exactly like this everywhere, for everyone. It’s complicated."
Satara raised her head and nodded. "I read about something like that recently. It said the universe is adapting to modern humans' presence, with the way we've separated ourselves from everything else. We are ... permanently changing the tapestry of existence." She looked above, brows drawing together. "If the Wending is all about eternal travel and being lost, then it must reflect modern ideas of what that means—never resting, never going home..."
Edie shivered. She tried to remind herself that they would be okay—they were living, not dead, and they had Basile to guide them—but she couldn't shake a niggling feeling of foreboding. Adam was right: this entire thing was jerry-rigged. Anything could go wrong at this point.
If Basile made a mistake, they'd pay the price.
They continued along the street for a while, mostly silent. This place was much bigger than Basile had made it sound, and the realization that they had no idea how to find Elle was beginning to set in. Where did you even start looking in a place like this?
Edie was about to ask but was cut off by a sudden tremor in the ground below them, one that threw them all off-balance. A metallic groan accompanied it, like a piece of old heavy machinery—too close for comfort. The noise thundered through the broken cityscape, pinging off buildings and narrow passages and creating a fierce echo.
Edie spun, trying to find the source of the noise, but it seemed to vibrate from every inch of concrete and steel around them. The tremors continued, and it wasn't until she looked up at the sky that she realized what was causing them.
Her breath caught in her throat. Without thinking, she grabbed Adam, pushing him and Satara into the darkened doorway of a nearby apartment building.
"What are—"
Edie cut him off, clamping a hand across his mouth. He shot her an indignant look. Then, his eyes caught on the thing behind her, and his gaze filled with terror as it drifted up toward the sky.
To say the thing was looming above them was not entirely accurate. In fact, it seemed to be standing several hundred feet away. But its sheer size gave the impression that it was gazing down from much closer and made Edie think it could probably still see them.
In form, it was similar to a human skeleton—a skull, ribs, limbs, a spine—but the proportions were all wrong. For starters, it had to be three hundred feet tall at least. The skull was slightly too small, the shoulders too broad, the arms and spine too long; there were too many ribs, and the points of each vertebra extended in bony spikes. It had stopped walking, and white light glowed from within its head as it observed the city streets below it, uncomfortably long neck craning down, then scanning left to right.
Edie flattened herself against the splintered door of the apartment building, holding her breath. That low metallic whine echoed again as the thing's head moved and it began to walk. It came closer but moved left, and was out of their sight within fifteen seconds.
Still, Edie didn't move an inch. Whatever that thing was, she didn't want to run into it. Fine dust fell from the buildings around them with every earthshaking footstep. It wasn't until the dust stopped falling and the tremors faded that she finally allowed herself to breathe.
Beside her, Satara exhaled slowly, still watching the corner of the sky where the skeleton had disappeared. After a moment, she asked, "And what was that?"
The air around Edie shimmered, and Basile spoke: "That is what's known as a Coveter. I'd hoped you'd get lucky and not run into one."
"Where did it come from?" Edie asked, daring to take a step past the doorway. In the distance, she could see its retreating form, its head bowed watchfully.
"No one's sure how they got here, not even the gods. Maybe they've always been part of the Wending. In any case, they serve as sort of ... the jailers of this plane. When they're not feeding off the lost souls, they roam around looking for people who shouldn't be here."
"Great," Adam said under his breath. "Giant skeletons. Why not?"
Edie had to agree. They'd just arrived and she was already done with this place.
She looked to the others. "There's no way we'd be able to take one of those things on. They're the size of the Statue of Liberty, for Christ's sake. We need to find Elle's soul and get the hell out of Dodge."
"Agreed." Satara sighed and glanced at Edie's circlet. "How are we supposed to track her?"
Basile's voice came through. "I figured we'd use whatever residual soul energy is left in that guitar. Do you sense any vibrations, Adam?"
The hellerune pulled the guitar across his chest, glancing up and down its length. "I ... guess maybe a little."
"What direction is it coming from?"
He seemed to concentrate for a moment, then shook his head, frustration creeping into his voice. "I don't know, I can't tell. It's faint."
There was a pause from the circlet, then another shimmer. "We're gonna have to get closer to her."
"How? We don't have time to play Hot and Cold with my dead kid's soul."
Another pause. "Well, souls are trapped here, but they still have a measure of sentience. They still act like people, and they can still be guided. If you could draw her to you somehow..."
Edie looked between Adam and Satara. "We could go around yelling her name?"
"Maybe," Satara said, "but look at how much ground we'd have to cover."
"It's not like we have a better option to get her attention. And I don't think we should split up."
Adam looked deep in thought for a few moments, fiddling with his guitar strings. Then, suddenly, his head snapped up. "I have an idea." His hazel eyes were bright with determination. "But ... it's kind of crazy."
"My favorite kind of idea," said Basile's voice.
Satara rolled her eyes. “Clearly.”
Adam did a three-sixty, craning his neck to look up at the buildings around them. He seemed to consider his options before pointing up, past Edie and Satara, at one of the crumbling apartments—one of the only ones to have maintained its upper floors, taller than the others.
"If I go up there and play something she recognizes..." He lowered his hand and returned it to the neck of the Genesis. "The guitar worked without an amp when her soul was inside it, so ... maybe it won't matter here, either." He glanced between them uncertainly. "If the sound carries and she hears it, maybe she'll come?"
Edie frowned. "Yeah, but maybe something else will hear it and come." She gestured toward where the Coveter was still retreating. "What then?"
"I don't know, there are a lot of weird sounds in this place." Adam looked at Satara pleadingly. "Shouting would be just as likely to get their attention, right? And this might travel farther."
The shieldmaiden was quiet for a moment, turning to assess the building before glancing at Edie. "We could stand watch. If one of those things starts toward us on the horizon, we'd have plenty of warning, Lady knows."
Edie couldn't help the dread simmering in her heart. There were a million things that could go wrong here, and the plan might not even work. But they'd already taken great pains to get here; at this point, she was determined not to leave empty-handed.
She sighed at Adam. "Please don't get us killed."
With nothing more than a nod, he sprang into action at once, jogging past her with the Genesis now slung across his back like a rifle. She followed close behind, the splash of their combat boots in oily puddles and the jingling of Satara's armor the only sounds between them.
In a hundred yards, they came to the door of the building, covered by thick, dark boards. They seemed secure, but as Adam grabbed them to tear them off, they crumbled like charred firewood in his hands and fell to dust at his feet. After a pause, he disappeared into the void beyond. By the time Edie did the same, he was already climbing a cement staircase.
Gravel crunched under their feet as they made their way up. The staircase hugged the wall on one side, climbing up steeply, but the other side w
as open, with no handrail or guard. Edie stuck close to the wall, trying to match Adam's haste.
As they reached the door to the roof and burst through, she found herself gasping for breath. The air here was wrong. It didn't feel like she could ever get enough of it in her lungs, even when they wouldn't expand any more.
The view from up here was just as disconcerting, but it at least gave them a bigger picture. The city was broken and huddled, buildings leaning on each other, most streets no more than labyrinthine warrens. Ashen figures dotted the landscape here and there, scurrying between buildings or sitting on roofs, fire escapes, debris. She watched as a spirit trotted along the broken concrete and walked up a wall, never breaking stride or slowing down. After a moment, it disappeared into the ether.
She looked away, unable to suppress a shiver. The gray sky stretched on for an eternity, heavy and rolling without reprieve. In the distance, she could count the forms of several Coveters, and her heart dropped. She drifted to the edge of the roof to look to the west; when she glanced over her shoulder, she saw Satara had done the same on the opposite side.
Adam stood between them, staring out at the city with the Genesis in hand. Then, after another glance back and a deep breath, he began to play.
A long, keening note tore through the silence suddenly, the vibrations of it shaking the pebbles at Edie's feet. She could feel the noise carry far, snaking through the wreckage as Adam carved his melody—rugged and dark, but sad, longing. The opening riff of one of DB's first albums, if she wasn't mistaken. Nervously, she scanned the skyline, her ears ringing with the force of the tune.
It was so loud from where she stood that she almost didn't notice Satara say her name. She turned her head and froze.
Adam's head was bent while he focused on his melody, but his guitar was ... at first, she thought it was smoking. As he played, wisps of white energy coiled around his hands, slowly spreading to wrap around his body as well. Dark purple energy soon joined it. She didn't have to be holding the guitar to feel the vibrations coming from it; she could sense the power from where she stood.
Unholy Spirit (The Necromancer's Daughter Book 3) Page 20