by A L Hart
Ophelia’s back straightened, eyes filling with gratitude. “Then it will not be long before we can go with you, journey the many worlds?”
Jera saw him falter, his gaze dropped to his plate. “N-not quite, my light of lights. Not quite.”
Her sister’s face fell. “Not to pester, but why? My control is far improved.”
When he didn’t answer, Jera happily cut down her twin’s infuriating optimism. “Because it is just a matter of time before you fail again. Before your control slips and you slaughter thousands once more.”
“Jera,” the Maker said quietly.
Her eyes whipped towards him. “Is it not true? Have you not seen what is left of this world?” She looked back to her sister’s now shadowed, bowed head. “You killed hundreds of thousands, Lia. Who’s to say you will not kill more should he bring us with him on his journeys?”
Her lip trembled, eyes watering. “I’m more stable now.”
“Which is exactly what you said before he brought us here, before you destroyed every last sign of life so that not even our skies will shine again!”
“I . . .”
“Face the sore truth, darling sister of mine, this is where we belong. This misery is what’s best for us. It is our rightful punishment.”
“Jera, please,” the Maker murmured, eyes cast down, ever shy of confrontation. “Might we have a calm meal just this once?”
“A meal where we feed one another lies, you mean? Where our only form of entertainment is pretending you do not dine with two demonic murderers? My, shall I grab my charlatan’s hat as well?—”
He rose swiftly, mouth a tight line. To Ophelia, he offered a hand. “Care to walk the gardens, my light of lights?”
As soon as they’d come, the tears in her sister’s smokey gray eyes dried and she looked up to the magnificent male before her. She placed her hand in his. “Please.”
Without another word, the two of them departed. Solitude engulfed her. There was but the crackle of the torches’ flames, the pained noises she excreted through iron-locked teeth.
She could not pretend, would not pretend.
Her sister was wretched.
She was wretched.
This very world was but a prison where those like she and Ophelia belonged, where they could not hurt anyone else. Where all light fled and desolation slept deep in the bones.
A bell of darkness rang inside of her.
And rang.
Until finally she leaned forward and consumed the meal before her.
I woke screaming.
My mind and body, it felt as though someone had wrapped their fingers around the two and were trying their level best to rip them apart. Knives bit into my back, cultivating in my spine. White-hot agony blistered along the span of my wings as they twitched, jerked, peeling away from the source of the pain.
“Sorry, but I had to set it,” I heard Jera say through the red.
I was on my stomach, the behemoth wings spread out wide, their lengths sweeping the floor. Twisting, I saw that the left one was risen higher than the other, something black draped around the jointed arch.
“It’ll take some time before it heals and you can retract them,” she continued. “But you were out for the hard part.”
Carefully, I dared move into a sitting position, grimacing at the needling pricks scratching at my nerves. That man, that ungodly thing, I didn’t want to think about it, what he’d done, even as each breath pressed my lungs against the evidence.
Finally sitting, I pushed my legs over the side of the bed, but when I attempted to stand, the zipline of fire to shoot through me grounded me.
Jera stood in front of me then. She placed a hand on my bare shoulder, my Dad’s old shirt tattered and gone. “Where are you going? In the event you haven’t noticed, you’re bruised up pretty bad.”
Bruised?
I laughed bitterly, staring at the floors, some rich carpeting that must have cost a fortune. “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving where?” she asked, bewildered.
“Don’t know, don’t care. Someplace where you aren’t.”
There was a moment of silence before finally she stepped back. “Peter, setting the wing was necessary. If you’re upset over the fact—”
“I’m upset because—” The rage welled in my chest, followed by a burning shame as I remembered the man’s boot pressed into my back. The helplessness. The way I’d looked to Jera and begged.
I clenched my hands once. Twice. When I could breathe just enough to speak, I whispered, “I’m upset because you’re selfish, Jera.”
“Surely such knowledge isn’t new to you.”
That rage bubbled on the tip of my tongue. “No. It’s not new to me. But the extent of your apathy is.” I looked up at her then, drinking in every flawless contour of her visage and wondering how it was she could be so ugly inside. “You talked a big game last week. Had me believing somewhere deep down in that corrupt little heart of yours you cared about me.”
She crossed her arms, grays narrowed to slits. “Is that the first thing you do upon waking, grow sappy and sentimental?”
Deep breaths.
“Human, you aren’t terrible and your company is enjoyed from time to time. Any misconception you have on my feelings towards you is entirely that, a misconception—”
“You hesitated!”
She jumped, then collected herself, smoothing her unruffled blouse. “Hesitated?”
“When he threatened my life, you hesitated. When he broke my wing, you hesitated. Over what? Some HB staff who may or may not have been involved with your sister’s torture? Was my life really worth less than a momentary revenge? Do I actually mean so little to you?”
Her lips pulled back. “So I had a moment of blinded anger—”
“A moment where you showed your true colors.”
“Do not behave as though you’re infallible to such moments.”
“No, Jera, I think I will, because had the roles been reversed, had someone held a knife to your throat, no revenge in the world would have kept me from protecting you, and I guess that’s the unfortunate effect of this crippling bond.”
“Crippling?” she breathed, a bout of fury lashing through her gaze before she hissed, “Well should the dark elf be as powerful as the lore riddles them to be, this bond shouldn’t be a problem for us much longer.”
I froze. Was this some trick? The twins had told me it was impossible to break a succubus’s bond. Or was that a lie?
“Dark elves are scarce creatures,” she said, reading my surprise. “Because they hold unfathomable magic, abilities capable of combating the prices paid by all who’ve entered your world. There’s never been a tale of success, but at this point, I’m willing to try anything.”
Try anything.
The two words addled me. She would be willing to try anything except us. Giving us a chance beyond intimacy scraped together in fits of anger. This was why she wanted to come here all along.
“Oh, don’t wear that look,” she remarked in mock concern.
How cynical did she have to be? What was she trying to prove?
“It’s fine, Jera,” I said, unable to get my voice above a whisper. “I get it now. The games you play, that’s all they’ll ever be. Games, because you’re too twisted and heartless to be upfront and have anything serious. But understand this, I’m done trying to help you, done trying to save you, because clearly not only are you not worth it, but I don’t think you’re even capable of being loved.” I shoved aside the humane part of me that wanted to go to her when hurt showed in her eyes, when the shadows collected in their depths.
The words, harsh though they were, could have been more true in that moment.
I braced for the wrath of her perturb.
It never came. Her face went blank, her eyes on the door of the bedroom. “They’re waiting for us in the study,” was all she said.
Ch. 11
We all congregated in the study, some of us more shir
tless than others.
Any damage that’d happened during the altercation had been removed, the table of edibles cleared. I guess they’d decided to drop the act and kumbaya. None of us were friends here, and it was made clear by the way Jera posted up against the bookshelves on one side of the study and that HB woman casually occupied a lounger on the opposite end of the room.
I hovered towards the back of the room, closest to the door. Seeing as I was done putting Jera first, there was officially nothing and no one I had to protect. If something happened during this clandestine meeting, I wouldn’t hesitate to be the first one off the scene. Whether that was cowardice or an apathy no better than Jera’s, I didn’t know. Didn’t care.
What I did care about was the location of the psychotic male who’d so easily snapped my wings. He stood towards the desk, his back to all of us as he gazed out the window and into the dark night.
A room full of creatures who wouldn’t hesitate to snuff the other.
Why had I come here again?
Behind me, the door opened. I did a double take.
Between elven lore and what little description Niv and Jera had offered, I’d all but had my mind made up on how this ‘dark elf’ lady would look. And like just about every other facet of my supernatural knowledge, I was off by a mile.
It was the ears I noticed first, two long, fleshy extensions that rose from the sides of her head and drooped outward, a silver ball dangled from the tips of each of them. A silver which contrasted harshly with the absolute ebony shade of the dark elf’s skin—if not darker—but matched her eyes perfectly. Eerily.
As she walked past me, the smell of field orchids resting in her wake, she turned her head just slightly to look in my direction. It was impossible to tell the exact place she glanced, because this close, I saw she had no pupils, no irises, no coloring beside the filmy, translucent silver reflecting my image back at me. “Peter,” she murmured, voice a deep tenor. Powerful. There were people in the world whose voice alone were a weapon, and she was one of them.
Which only served to put me more on edge. Five opposing powers stashed in a study that’d once seemed imperceivably spacious now felt as tiny as a rubix cube.
“Good to see you in one piece,” she said, and when she smiled, her lips but a shade lighter than the rest of her, I’d swear images flickered in the mirrors of her eyes.
“Thanks,” I said sourly, having yet to step farther into the room.
After a moment of pause, she turned and moved towards her desk. “You must forgive Graves. I did instruct him to bring no harm to my guests, but when Jera here went after the medic, I suppose things did become complicated.”
“The Maker’s child was closer,” Graves stated, gaze still cast out the window. “Had I gone after the succubus, the medic would have died.”
“Are you admitting a demon is faster than one such as you?” Jera taunted half-heartedly.
“It was a mere matter of speed and velocity.” A point-blank, dispassionate statement.
“And given the trajectory in which you launched at me and Graves’ displacement, mathematically speaking, he’d have gotten to you moments after you snapped my neck,” Jai added, smiling at Jera’s murderous glare.
“Please, I did not call the four of you here for banter,” Inoli said as she stopped behind her desk. “I brought you here for something far more important.”
“More important than getting rid of HB filth?” Jera proposed.
Inoli looked to her. “Yes.”
On the desk, the projector was still hooked up, its beam directed at the shut curtains. She picked up the remote at the edge and sat at the desk chair, pushing back to give us all a clear view of the screen.
“Before I begin, it is important that what I am about to tell you stays within this room. For but a moment, I will need the four of you to abandon your qualms, forget who is an enemy of whom, and simply listen to what it is I am about to reveal. Can you do this?”
None of us answered. I was too busy keeping one eye on Jera and the other on Graves; Jera was too busy glaring fiery daggers at Jai, and Jai was observing the dark elf as though she wanted to carve her up and make taxidermy of her corpse.
“Can you do this?” the elf demanded.
With a lasting scowl, Jera glanced to Inoli. “In exchange for a favor, perhaps.”
She shook her hand. “I know what you are to ask and the answer is no. I cannot do anything to help undo your bond with Peter.”
Jera’s nostrils flared. She pushed up from the wall. “Then I’ve no business here.”
“If you do not stay, your bond will be the least of your worries.” It was hard to tell whose gaze was more unwavering given the elf’s pupilless eyes, but Inoli must have won the war seeing as moments later, Jera leaned back against the bookshelf, waving the woman on.
Inoli turned back to us all. “Then can I trust all of you not to speak a word of this to anyone aside from the five of us?”
“Yes,” Graves muttered.
“Sure, sure,” Jai said.
“Very well,” Jera ceded.
When they looked to me, I shrugged, certain whatever big horror they revealed wouldn’t be something I urgently needed to tell anyone. “Yes,” I said, and as soon as the word was out, I felt a spark on my tongue, a little white pinch as though zapped by invisible wire.
Glancing around, no one else seemed to notice. Maybe my paranoia was finally catching up with me.
“Very well, let’s begin.” Above, the study’s lights flicked off on their own, leaving us in the steady dim hue of the blue screen. Inoli pointed the projector remote to the projector and clicked over to the first slide.
It was a picture of Earth.
“Peter, Jai,” Inoli glanced to each of us in turn. “Tell me, have you ever heard of the Shatters?”
I sneaked a look at the medic who looked to me, equally confused. We shook our heads.
Another click, another slide. The picture was still one of Earth, only now there were surrounding circles, each one denoting the earth’s five atmospheres. The troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and exosphere—and one more.
I squinted, peering closer at the black ring wedged between the stratosphere and mesosphere. I’d never paid much attention in biology, let along the brief brushings with astronomy, but I was sure of one thing: earth had five atmospheric layers, not six.
Inoli clicked on the remote’s laser light, pointing it directly to the black ring. “As the two of you know, this does not belong.”
In the corner, I saw Jai lean forward, and the look on her face . . . For a moment, I forgot she was this diabolical mad medic who’d killed who knew how many immortals, because just then, intrigue left her so focused, I doubted an earthquake could shake her attention.
Inoli went on. “Jai, do you know the history of us immortals? Our origin?”
Eyes still rapt on the screen, examining every last detail in a way that was almost uncomfortably intimate, she answered in an absent-minded tone, “Depends on the species. The fae traces back to before the Armored War, during the period of alchemy—HB’s birth—while vampires descend as late as Egypt’s downfall with the Macedonian Empire.”
“And before?”
Jai finally tore her eyes from the screen to look at the dark elf. “Impossible. No immortal history goes beyond the Armored War.”
Inoli nodded. “You are correct. No immortal history predates that awful milenia leading up to the Armored War. At least not in your world.”
Jai’s eyes grew wider. “That-that’s . . . incorrect. History shows the first immortal to have descended from humans’ involvement blood magic.”
“In part,” Inoli agreed. “Though that applied strictly to vampires during their ages of tomb raiding. You see, the first immortal to enter into your world was originally from another world. My world, our world.” She gestured to Graves and Jera.
“The layer you see is a gateway leading into our world, the Shatters. Lon
g before immortals appeared in your world, they existed primarily in this realm. A treacherous place filled with horrors and unfathomable despair. It is a world designed to destroy its inhabitants physically or mentally, completely and irreparably. Its topography is ever-changing, deadly to even those of inhuman capabilities, its climate unlike anything Earth has ever experienced. Few immortals survive beyond five hundred centuries, be it from the harsh conditions of the world or a death suffered by one of its very own brethren. If neither of those methods prevail, there is a more certain death awaiting.
“Every millennium, the Shatters undergoes a series of fatal catastrophes called the Epilogue, which wipes out three-quarters of the world’s population. Every millennium, immortals implemented methods to escape their fate, only to meet a gruesome death one way or another. That was, until one immortal discovered a way to escape the Shatters, to open a rift to another world before the Epilogue swept through. Your world. Earth.
“Back then, however, when those immortals crossed the gateway into your world by the thousands, they knew little more than the immortals of today do: to cross through the Shatters’ gateway comes with a steep price. For faeries it was iron, for werewolves it was the full moon, for vampires it was—”
“The sun,” Jai finished quietly, mouth opened in mesmerization.
“And so on,” Inoli said. “But the Armored War killed a large number of the immortals who crossed over, and those who remained, well I suppose they thought it best to have the truth of their origins die as time went on, seeing as many of them struggled greatly to forget such a wretched and dark world.”
A hard throb pounded through my head, a fleeting image of burning trees and dark skies grinding forward. I bit back a groan, crossing my arms and focusing on the pain in my wing, willing the pounding to subside.
“One might ask what was to stop more immortals from entering your world and spreading the truth of their origins. The reason is, there were very few capable of opening the gateway from the Shatters, and those who could were often killed during the Epilogue. Nowadays, it is a rare occurrence to find an immortal strong enough to open and cross through the gateway.”