Two Worlds of Oblivion

by Angelina J. Steffort

  Something moved in the bushes beside her, and she shrank to the side, almost falling over her own feet as she grabbed for the dagger, which was fastened in a belt under her jogging vest. Gerwin reached to his side at the exact same moment, pointing to the wall on the other side of the street.

  With tired feet, and an excess of adrenaline, Maray turned into the small space that led up the stairs to the iron gate, which during the days, allowed kids to enter the school grounds. She stopped and pressed herself against the wall, her breath louder than the cars in the distance. Her father was beside her, knife in hand and ready to throw it at whatever was coming their way.

  The bush on the other side of the street had returned to being an inconspicuous shrub, and Maray leaned forward, ready to defend herself if necessary. Beside her, Gerwin held his finger to his lips and pointed to the end of the street where a dark figure was disappearing around the corner.

  Maray let out a gust of air. “What was that?” she asked in a whisper as she stepped away from the wall for the better view, but all she got from her father was a shake of his head.

  Had Rhia and Feris found them? Was someone else after them? Or was it their own fear making them paranoid?

  For a moment, Gerwin was absolutely still except for his eyes, which were racing from side to side in their sockets as he checked for additional followers. Then he gestured for Maray to follow him before he started up the hill to where the pedestrian zone hit the one-way street. She didn’t ask questions but snuck along the wall behind her father, sweat pasting her shirt to her back—not just from running.

  At the turn into the wider street, Gerwin held his hand up, announcing he was about to stop. A shudder ran through the heat under Maray’s clothes. If he was stopping again, this must mean he had noticed something… another threat. She froze to the spot behind him and saw it, too. There, at the end of the street, something furry was moving. It had to be about the size of a bear, with the outline of a wolf. Not a wolf, a Yutu. Those beasts which were roaming the borders between her world and Allinan were lethal; silent in their approach before they launched at you with their razor-sharp claws and pointed teeth. Maray had encountered some of them, and every time, the situation had involved the Yutu attacking her and someone else launching themselves between the monstrous animal and herself. Jemin, her father, again Jemin, Heck… She didn’t even want to count how many times people had risked their lives for her even if they were trained soldiers like Jemin and Heck. No one should die for her, ever; it wasn’t part of her life-plan, and she didn’t think she could ever live with herself if that happened.

  She freed her dagger, a motion which by now had become more natural. She wasn’t worried about touching the Cornay weapon the way she had been in the beginning, and the resonance of power as her skin touched the hilt didn’t make her feel as if she was losing control.

  “Dad?” she whispered so lowly that her words nearly got lost in the November fog.

  He gave her a cautioning glance over his shoulder. She knew that they shouldn’t move in order to not attract attention. But what good would it do if the Yutu was after them specifically? And this one had interest in them and only them. She could tell by the motionless shape that was staring at them from less than a hundred feet away, its eyes two crimson orbs in the haze. The eyes were familiar. The same red as the Yutu that had come after her when she had snuck away from the palace back in Allinan with the impostor. She shoved the thought aside and focused on the matter at hand. A Yutu was following them here in the Vienna of the world she’d grown up in, and if they fled home now, her mother would be in danger, too. They had to lose the Yutu first. Lose it or…

  Gerwin had pulled his sword as if he had read her mind, now holding the weapon at his side, hidden from the windows above them between his hip and the wall enclosing the school grounds.

  “We need to warn Mom,” Maray unnecessarily said and earned another look from her father. This time it was a look of agreement. He lowered his torso a bit, like a lion before its attack, still eyeing Maray, who was watching how the Yutu melted out of the last bush and equally crouched to spring.

  “It’s time to get out of here.” Gerwin spun around and grabbed Maray’s forearm as he launched himself down the hill. Both of them sped up to a sprint in no time, Maray’s lungs screaming for oxygen before they hit the corner to the next side street. “Up here.”

  They climbed a lower part of the wall and ducked into the bushes behind it, Maray still struggling to get enough air into her lungs. For a while, they just crouched there and waited, listening hard for any sound that didn’t belong in this world… then Maray remembered that Yutu moved soundlessly if they wanted to do so. She swallowed and glanced at her father, hoping to find reassurance in his eyes, but all that awaited her was the same fear she felt eating her up as the seconds ticked by.

  Maray waited until her breathing was beginning to return to normal then whispered, “Is it gone?

  Jemin

  The wind bit into Jemin’s face. He would never consider wearing a cloak. They were too bulky to move efficiently, and he needed to be efficient. The number of Yutu crossing the borders in the palace gardens had increased since Maray’s return to the other world with her parents, Princess Laura and Ambassador Johnson, and he needed to be ready at all times. Anything that would hold him back had no place on his body.

  “Do you see this?” Heck asked from a couple of steps away.

  They were combing through the underbrush, following fresh tracks of a Yutu. He glanced over at his friend and patrol partner and got a triumphant grin.

  “This is not good,” he retorted and joined Heck where he had stopped. The tracks ended mid-bush. “The beast must have crossed the borders right here.”

  He rammed his boot in the ground where the paw prints vanished.

  Sometimes he wondered how the Yutu did it. Normally, someone would need magic in order to cross the borders between worlds, and they weren’t magical creatures. But then, what good would it do him to know. He would have to hunt them down either way. Creatures of Allinan belonged in Allinan and the other way around.

  He swallowed as an image of Maray flickered through his mind. She was a creature of both worlds. Where did she belong? Royalty in Allinan and hunted for her magic blood by her grandmother. For sure the Yutu was after her, too.

  “Shall we?” He lifted his arm and touched his wrist, feeling for the bracelet that allowed him to travel dimensions, and checked if Heck was ready.

  Heck was already stepping through the fog, sword in one hand.

  Jemin followed suit, drawing his own sword as he felt the fog swallow him and pull him through the temporary gap in the sealed borders.

  When he set foot into the other world—the world where magic was dormant and where demons slumbered, biding their time until they’d find a loophole into Allinan—Heck was crouching on the ground, his teeth bared in a smile that told him they were on the right track.

  Heck loved the hunt. It was more to him than a duty. It was almost a game. Like a scavenger hunt when they’d been kids. Jemin frowned as he looked around.

  “I’m glad it’s off-season,” he noted and scanned the area for potential spectators. He knew how difficult it was to find a safe spot to portal during the summer when the gardens were flooded with tourists. In the winter, most of them were in the palace, touring through memories of a brighter day of Austria’s history.

  Heck nodded and followed the paw prints. They were leading toward the north wall along a path he had walked not long ago; only then, it had been in the other direction. It was the path to the hidden door that led toward Maray’s apartment. His heart did something he still had trouble getting used to: a tiny leap of excitement at the thought of her. It also did it at the mention of her name.

  “This is dangerous,” Heck noted, his grin fading the closer they got to the wall. “If anyone sees the beast—”

  “Yutu are shy,” Jemin interjected. “They normally flee from crowd
s.”

  “One person would be enough to alarm the world—this world—that something is wrong.”

  Heck was right. Even if just one human being in this world saw a Yutu, it would mean that Allinan’s existence could be exposed. The few people here who knew about it were either high up in political ranks or Allinan diplomats. They were assuring that there was no interference from both sides and that that any demonic activity was smothered before it could cause trouble. It was more like an agreement: both worlds made sure that the dangers of their own world didn’t cross into the other one. And while Maray’s world did that with police and prisons, Allinan did that with the guard of dimensions.

  “Wait.” Jemin held Heck back with his outstretched arm, stopping him from setting his foot where he’d been about to. “The tracks disappear again.” He crouched down to examine the last paw print, and to his horror, he found a human footprint right where he would have expected the next dent a Yutu’s heavy paw left on the soil. There was only one person he knew could shift between human and Yutu—

  “Langley,” Heck beat him to it. His usually nice olive skin tone had changed into chalk-white.

  Heck had stuck his sword into Langley two weeks ago when Langley had attacked them—betrayed them was the correct term. Langley had let them stay overnight when they had brought Maray back to Allinan to help her father. And then, when he had heard about the extent of her freshly-hatched, unpolished magic, he had changed his mind. From one moment to the other, he had seen an enemy in Maray, and not an ally in the cause of the revolutionaries.

  He shuddered at the memories.

  “If he is around in his human form, nothing is keeping him from roaming the streets unnoticed.” Jemin felt an unexpected panic. He was used to the adrenalin that rushed through him in situations of crisis while on patrol, but this was different. It was about the chance that Langley would beat them to Maray; that he might finish what he couldn’t back then.

  “I thought you wanted to catch that hairy beast.” Heck was already running through the hedges when Jemin unfroze.

  It had been easier, all the danger, before he’d actually had something to lose.

  As they jogged up the hill to Maray’s apartment, Jemin didn’t care that some people rubbernecked at their apparel. Their Thaotine armor-shirts, leathery in appearance, silken to the touch, and a life-saver against almost any weapon—except for Yutu claws—stood out among the grey-in-grey of the Viennese winter look.

  At the corner before her street, he sped up. He couldn’t remember having ever run that fast; or that the strain of running hard affected him that much.

  “The door seems normal,” Heck commented as Jemin opened the door to the apartment building. “You know, for a non-Allinan door.”

  Jemin didn’t care to react to Heck’s joking tone. He was in soldier mode, one hundred percent, and in protector mode. He flew up the stairs, sword in hand, readying himself for a fight—if he was lucky, that meant a fight to prevent Langley from hurting Maray or her parents, and if he wasn’t so lucky…

  The door was cracked open just enough to see the familiar granite stone counter in the Johnson’s kitchen had been destroyed. He held up his hand to silence Heck, who was racing up the stairs behind him.

  “I go first,” he mouthed, and raised his sword as he kicked the door.

  The door sprang open and bounced back from the wall behind it with a boom, almost crashing into Jemin as he stepped inside.

  “Under different circumstances, I would find this funny,” Heck smirked over his shoulder. “But in this case…”

  Heck’s ability to find humor in almost anything was an admirable gift—just not now while the life of the future of Allinan was at stake. He shot his friend a dark look.

  “I know, Jem.”

  The thing was, Heck did know. His jokes weren’t ignorance of the situation or mocking. It was his way of dealing with the world. The same as Jemin’s way was to brood.

  Cautiously, Jemin tested his way into the room. The granite had been split by a force that was definitely beyond human. Jemin cringed away from the thought of the same force coming down on Maray’s ebony-haired head. He slithered around the columns that separated the kitchen from the dining room and was shocked and relieved at the same time. The long oak table had been shattered the same way as the granite, and a long claw mark ran over the white wall behind it. The Yutu-shifter they had thought dead had now crawled out of God-knew-where to end what he had started in the hideout.

  “Langley was here,” Jemin whispered as he searched his way through splinters of wood and broken chairs to the living room. The sofa had been torn apart as had the cupboards, the bed in Maray’s parents’ room, and in Maray’s bedroom. Boxes of clothes and books had been dumped on top of the mess.

  “Wow,” Heck appeared beside him. “Someone was thorough.”

  “Someone is lucky they are no longer here,” Jemin reacted with a sour edge. If he had found Langley, he’d have gone to any lengths to drive that sword into his heart. His fingers itched on the shaft. Langley would surely not survive their next encounter.

  But beyond all that fury, deeply buried, was the strongest surge of relief he’d felt in years; potentially all his life. There was no blood, no torn off body parts, and no dead bodies. Either they hadn’t been home when Langley came here, or… The relief drained from his veins as fast as it had swallowed him… Or, they had been taken by Langley.

  A low hum from the kitchen caught his attention, and he followed the noise, careful not to step on pieces of broken boards and shattered glass. As he got to the kitchen, he involuntarily smiled. It was the dishwasher, singing its tireless song of cleaning. Maray had informed him about the meaning of that particular household tool and how she liked to have clean dishes when she returned from somewhere.

  Absently, he ran his hand over the machine as he set in motion to leave and gestured for Heck to join him.

  “What now?” Heck asked, something Heck rarely did. Normally, he’d simply take action—sometimes not very well thought-out action.

  Jemin pulled the door shut behind him and continued down the stairs with a suspicious glance at the elevator doors in the foyer. “We track.”

  It sounded easy but really wasn’t. In this world, outside of the palace gardens, streets were made out of concrete. There was hardly any soil to find footprints—or paw prints for that matter. If they were lucky, they would find some suspicious fabric caught on a bush or on a newspaper dispenser, fur, maybe, if the Yutu hadn’t transformed back into the silver-haired Langley he remembered. The only thing easy to track in this world was blood; and he dearly hoped whoever had taken Maray and her family wouldn’t make it that easy for them to be tracked—their blood was too precious to be spilled.

  Heck was at his heels when they got to the bottom of the stairs. His hand reached forward and pulled Jemin into a small space right before the glass door into the cobble-stone yard just in time to hear voices appear in the driveway. It was the bright and cheery sound of babbling children that made Jemin’s heartbeat reach a critical pace. He pressed his back more closely against the wall, ignoring the bicycle-pedals that were boring into his side, and glanced at Heck just to find him mirroring his expression as outside, the light footsteps of two kids and the heavier ones of an adult passed by the glass door. Had that family been a little earlier, they might have fallen victim to Langley only because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The footsteps echoed further into the yard until they were finally swallowed by a closing door.

  “For a moment, I thought Langley might have come back,” Heck explained as he continued clawing on Jemin’s armor-shirt.

  Jemin nodded. “Let’s find the royal family,” he said and shoved his fear for the kids aside. He knew it had something to do with how he had wished someone had been around to protect him when he was a child. Instead, his father had sent him on countless spying missions even before he was old enough to know what he was doing. When they stepped th
rough the glass door, the yard was quiet again aside from the cars on the moderately frequented one-way street outside, and with one last check over his shoulder, Jemin pulled opened the slate-grey gate and took a deep breath.

  “There is nothing here,” he noted as he examined the immediate surroundings, glad that what few pedestrians were out on the street had chosen to walk on the other side.

  Heck had taken position, leaning against the white wall, hand on his sword, looking like a little out-of-place traveler waiting for a cab. But his moving eyes told Jemin that in reality he was screening every inch of their environment for gaps through which Langley could have escaped while simultaneously standing guard as he turned his back on the street.

  “What if they didn’t escape through the gate in this world?” Jemin frowned at the sidewalk as if it was the concrete’s fault Maray was gone. “Langley is a Yutu after all.”

  Heck pushed away from the wall and grinned for the first time since they had found Maray’s apartment breached. “Back to Allinan?” he asked and pretended to mount a horse.

  Jemin’s lip twitched at Heck’s display, but deep in his chest, there was an existential angst spreading that it might be too late. “Back to Allinan.”

  “We can’t,” Heck gestured at the windows above them and the sporadically passing cars.

  Jemin was aware Heck was correct about what he was saying, yet he had trouble accepting it. “We will lose the trail if we portal somewhere else,” he reasoned and earned a mocking grin from Heck that instantly let him spiral down a dark slope of doubt.

  “What trail?”

  “Damnit, Heck,” he hit the wall with his flat hand, hoping for some relief of tension, but not even the momentary pain in his palm helped. “She is out there somewhere. God knows if she’s alive… I mean all of them,” he added meekly, realizing his duty was to save all of the royal family even if his heart would gladly settle for Maray if he could choose only one of them. “We must find them.”