by Tracy Korn
"Now follow me…" he called just before darting forward. We flew at full speed for several more seconds until the fog cleared just long enough to show a curtain of raging fire coming out of jagged rocks.
"Leo!" I shouted to him as we went into the fire, unable to stop in time, but the very next second we were surrounded by silence again. Deafening silence. He collapsed his wings and landed on his feet, but I realized this too late and couldn't close my wings all the way before I crashed into him. He caught me around the waist and steadied me until my feet found the ground. "Thanks," I whispered, feeling my heart pounding against his as he loosened his hold on me, his hands moving from the small of my back to my hips before he let me go. His horns were starting to recede, but his chest was still heaving, and all his muscles were tensed. "Leo, what happened back there with Uri?" I asked, surprised at how difficult it was to talk.
He took a slow, deep breath and let it out through his nose in two streams of smoke, both of which disappeared into the fog that surrounded us. His horns receded the rest of the way, and his black hair fell in soft waves around his shoulders, the ponytail apparently a casualty of his aerodynamics just now.
He let his gaze fall to the ground and shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "I never should have brought you to this island." When he looked up at me again, his eyes were dark again, but now also glassy and bloodshot. His heavy brows were drawn together, and his jaw was clenched like he was in physical pain.
"Leo…what happened?" I asked again, moving my hand over his shoulder.
"The Sylph Uri was talking about last night—the one he was looking at to replace Ian on the mission to kill Eve," he started, then took another deep breath. "He wants you, Halsey."
I stared at him for a second, then stepped back. If I was the Sylph Uri had been talking about with Ghob, he'd clearly missed something. I definitely sided with humans. This had to be a mistake.
"I can't be the one he wanted," I said. "He didn't want Ian because he was too partial to humans. I'm partial to humans, Leo. And I would assume you are too?"
"It doesn't matter," he said. "I think he told her that to buy some time, but she didn't take the bait after all. He called me in there this afternoon and put it all on the table."
"If it doesn't matter, why doesn't he just ask Ian?"
"I don't know, Halsey. Midori told him you were the one." Leo pushed his hands through his dark hair. "She doesn't think you're a Sylph," he added. "She told him as much after that first honing class."
"Then what the hell am I? Uri is the one who said I was a Sylph in the first place."
"He still believes you are," Leo answered. "But the fact that Midori doesn't think you're like the others is exactly why he wants you to go with us. I told him you weren't ready for this."
"Us?" I asked, studying him.
Leo sighed and moved his hands to his hips, then let his eyes fall to the ground again. "I don't have a choice. I have to lead a group to find Eve and kill her, just like we heard him discussing with Ghob last night," he said, then met my eyes again. "We're leaving in a week, Halsey."
Chapter 28
I stared blankly at him, hoping this was all just a bad dream.
"We can't, Leo. You heard them say that Knox person she's protecting will lift the veil. With Eve gone, they'll take him and then attack everyone."
Leo gave me a pained, knowing look. "Not everyone," he said quietly. "Uri said the Gnomes would protect the people who never hurt the earth."
"Everyone has hurt the earth!" I shouted. "They'll kill everyone!"
"No. He promised me. Ghob told him herself."
"We can't do this." I shook my head. "If we don't, that guy can't lift the veil, and whatever is behind there can't kill anyone. We just refuse."
"Halsey…" Leo sighed. "If we don't, they'll kill the rest of my tribe. And yours…all of the people each of us on the team cares about. The original Elemental Fae like Sylvie who can cross between the planes have already started setting traps near the tears in the veil—luring the people we care about with echoes and glimpses to the other side so they'll be marked."
"My aunt and uncle barely leave the house, but Max…" I whispered.
"Uri said he's been coming to those woods of yours since they told him your helicopter went down. There's another tear right there somewhere," Leo explained. "Every time you thought about him, reached out like that in your mind, Sylvie made it so he'd hear you better the closer he got to that spot on the path, and when he was close enough, she marked him."
"No…" I said, tears burning my eyes as my voice broke on the word. "I didn't know. I didn't know, Leo…"
"None of us did," he said, his voice full of anger, but not toward me. "That's how Uri wanted it, and we don't have a choice now that our people are marked. We have to protect them."
My mind was spinning with indecision, and I was doubled over with guilt and anger. No matter what I did or didn't do, someone was going to die because of me—either the veil would be lifted, and the war on humanity would begin, or Sylvie would make sure everyone we cared about would pay the price. There had to be another way.
"Leo, you said there were others," I remembered. "Who? An Undine and a Gnome, right? Ghob said there had to be one of each bloodline."
"I recommended Alec and Bryce. Uri doesn't know we've already found a tear on this side of the veil."
"Do they know you put them on this team? Bryce just said he found the tear that leads to Portland. We're supposed to meet on the cliff after sunset tonight."
"When did he tell you that?"
"Tonight at dinner."
"Then they don't know yet…I don't know when Uri is planning to tell them."
"You said we're not leaving for a week. We have time then. We can still sabotage it somehow like we were talking about last night," I said, trying to pace myself. "We can go tonight and warn Eve, and maybe she can protect the people who are marked. She has to have some kind of power or they'd have killed her by now."
"Bryce will never agree to that."
"Then we won't tell him. Someone has to be helping Eve, Leo. She has an archangel and an Elemental Fae queen trying to kill her, and they haven't been able to do it yet."
"Halsey…"
"Do you really want to be responsible for killing most of humanity? We have to try," I said, moving deeper into the fog.
Leo followed me. "Where are you going?"
"To find the way out so we can get back to the cliff," I said, trying to push the fog out of the way.
"No, Halsey, listen. You can't just go wandering around in here. Bryce said The Fold is—" Leo started, but his voice quickly faded as I toppled down and landed on something hard. Water splashed me, and I panicked that it would burn my skin, but it didn't.
The fog was several yards above my head against a backdrop of gray, overcast sky that met the dark lake surrounding me. Everything was deadly silent except for the sound of the calm water below. I looked down and found myself sitting in a rowboat, which I nearly fell out of when another rowboat came out of the fog. As it came closer, I saw a vacant-eyed, older woman inside paddling slowly. Before I could say something to her, dozens of other rowboats appeared in the fog, each of them carrying a person who seemed to be in some kind of trance too. "What is this place?" I whispered to myself, watching the boats slip in and out of the fog that was now seeming to close the gap from the sky to the water.
"Halsey!" Leo shouted as he descended from the fog above, his dark wings sending currents of air that rocked my rowboat. I reached for the sides to keep from falling overboard, but Leo's arms hooked under mine as he lifted me out of the boat and back through the tear.
We toppled to the rocky ground that we couldn't see, and I was confused about why we were both desperately out of breath.
"Where…was that?" I gasped.
Leo's wings snapped closed, then disappeared. He dropped to his hands and knees, trying to suck in slow, deep breaths.
"Limbo," he finally sa
id. "For human souls—it's their world between planes."
"Are you talking about Purgatory? People riding around like zombies in rowboats on a foggy lake?" I asked, then coughed and sucked in a breath.
"It's just another tear, Halsey. I was trying to tell you…The Fold is the veil."
"Bryce told you all that? That's what he found out in his research?" I said, getting to my feet.
"As of this morning, yeah," Leo nodded. "The raven messenger just called it The Fold because everything has to be a stupid puzzle," he said, rolling his eyes. "It extends out past this island—it's the fog, just like by the cliff, and it's the reason why planes and ships go down if they don't know how to avoid the tears like the one you just fell through. The Bermuda Triangle is just a bunch of tears in the veil."
"But you said they were doors. You said we just needed to find the right ones to go back and forth between home and here," I said, confused.
"Yeah, doors, whatever, they're just more tears in the veil," Leo agreed. "But we don't know which ones lead home and which ones lead to the fifth ring of Hell, or Limbo," he added, throwing out a hand in the direction we'd just been. "That's why Bryce was researching."
"OK…" I took a deep breath. "Then we go back to the cliff and fly the others back here. And Bryce will show us where to go. We'll talk to the others about warning Eve, and Bryce can just think it's the day trip he's been trying to make happen all this time."
"We can try it," Leo said, resigned. He sighed, and his wings slowly extended behind him. I watched the shadow grow under him as they unfurled again, his shoulders, chest, and stomach flexing to balance the weight.
The sight of him was enough to send a wave of heat through me again, and I quickly channeled it to my own wings. I closed my eyes for a second once they were fully extended and pushed the rest of the prickles out through my fingertips. When I looked back at Leo, he was smirking at me and shaking his head.
"What?" I asked, curious why he wasn't elated for me.
"I was hoping I'd have to kiss you again to get that to work," he said, his dark eyes flashing a deep golden glow.
***
The sun had set while we were in The Fold, but only recently judging by the simmering purple on the horizon. Leo and I glided to the cliff edge, where Rhea, Alec, Alita, and Bryce were just coming over the ridge.
"Perfect timing," Bryce said to me as we landed. "I guess you really are a quick study."
"Wow!" Alita rushed over to me and ran her hand over my left wing. "These are huge! And soft."
"Halsey said you knew where the tear was that led to Portland?" Leo said, folding in his wings as he turned to Bryce.
"The tears seem to be aligned with the constellation Orion. Our tear here is lined up with the star Mintaka on Orion's belt," Bryce said, typing something into his tablet. When he finished, a green series of lines and dots projected into the sky, one of the dots in the center shining brighter than them all. He typed something else into his tablet, and a red line shot downward, stopping in the middle of the fog. "That's our tear."
"When you get close, it looks like burning rocks," I said, glaring at Leo. "Which would have been nice to know."
Leo smiled. "I didn't want you to chicken out." He winked, then turned back to Bryce. "And the tear that leads to Portland?"
"It's north—aligned with the star Betelgeuse, Orion's sword shoulder," Bryce answered, typing another combination into his tablet and making a star to the upper left of the other shoulder light up." The tears in the veil move, though, because of the earth's rotation. I was telling Red-Cloud it's actually amazing you haven't wound up in Limbo with your free dives since it's right there next to our tear—aligned with the star Alnilam." Another red line shot down from the highlighted, projected star in the center of Orion's belt. "You fly forty-five degrees to the left, and we're suddenly a long way from home."
Leo and I exchanged knowing looks. "We'll be careful," he said. "How do we get to the tear lined up with Betelgeuse?"
"Go in through our tear and just keep going north forty-five degrees. We should run right into it. Space is compressed in the veil, so it shouldn't take nearly as long as it would to fly to Portland from here, even if we could get through the tear landmines around the island."
"How did you find all these tears?" I asked, amazed, but at the same time, confused. "How did you even know about them?"
Bryce exchanged looks with Leo.
"It's all right. It won't matter if she knows," Leo said.
Bryce looked back at me carefully. "Uri's Book of Muzaloth." He waved his tablet in the air. "I digitized it after I found it one day while I was looking for the generator he had to have for the island. I was going to shut it down and kill the firewall I thought he had running, and then I could queue home."
I looked from Bryce to Alec and Rhea to see if they were trying not to laugh, but their faces were serious.
"You saw the tears in a supernatural world divider in a book?" I said, incredulous.
Now the others started chuckling.
"Halsey, it's the book the archangel Raziel—the angel of mysteries—wrote about the eighth level of Heaven." Leo said. "We don't know how, but Uri…Uriel, must have taken it."
"Sorry, the what? There are levels of Heaven?" I asked, then turned to Alita. "Did you know about this?" She shook her head, looking as utterly confused as I was.
"We don't really have time for this," Bryce said, checking the Orion projection. "The stars are shifting as we speak, but OK, crash course because I love this stuff: There are ten levels. The eighth level governs the different realms: Limbo, all the other nine levels of Heaven, the constellations, wormholes, dimensions, astral projection, whatever. Raziel wrote a bunch of books, even gave one to Adam and Eve after they got kicked out of Eden so they didn't walk off a cliff or try to pet a tiger or something."
Alec shook his head at Bryce. "Oh my god, can we go now?"
"And it's just written in this book that the stars aligned with the tears?" I asked. "I mean, if you've been reading that book for a few years how are you just now figuring it out?"
Bryce sighed. "OK, this is going to sound stupid, but new pages appeared. I don't know how to explain it," he said, holding out the tablet that was still projecting the constellation of Orion. "I think after we finally found the first tear, it like, knew we were ready for more information or something. I don't even know how new digitized pages appeared because it's not like this is the physical, angel-touched book or anything."
I looked skeptically at Bryce, but Leo refocused everyone's attention when he started talking again.
"If anyone would like to go home, then we need to leave before the tear moves again. I don't want to hit Limbo instead," he said, meeting my eyes, and all the overwhelming new information I'd just learned was washed to the back of my mind. We needed to warn Eve about Uri's and Ghob's plan. Now.
Chapter 29
I carried Alita since she was the lightest of the three. Rhea carried Bryce, and Leo carried Alec as we made our way toward the fog and what we hoped would be the right set of flaming rocks. We followed Bryce's red grid lines in the sky, and I held my breath when I finally saw the flames.
"Halsey!" Alita screamed.
"It's all right! It's supposed to be there. Close your eyes!"
Seconds later, we were through the tear, the familiar white fog and rocky terrain beneath us…which I only discovered because I still couldn't seem to land on my feet. Alita and I crashed to the ground and rolled a few times before everything finally stopped spinning. I got to my feet. When I looked up, Rhea was slowly clapping.
"Oh, I forgot...you could fly into a flaming tear in the veil and stick the landing when you first got to the island, right?" I snapped. She raised a finely penciled eyebrow and sneered at me, but she also stopped clapping. Granted, it was only to punch Bryce in the arm for snickering, but I'd take my victories where I could get them.
"Keep laughing and I'll drop you in the ocean on the way back.
You can dog paddle to shore," she said. Bryce just rolled his eyes, unfazed.
I turned to Alita to help her up. "Are you all right?"
She nodded and looked around, wide-eyed. "Wow, it's just all fog everywhere," she said, taking a few steps in the opposite direction. All at once, Bryce, Leo, and I all screamed for her to stop. "Whoa! OK," she said, holding up her hands.
"Limbo, remember?" Bryce's eyes widened like this was the most obvious thing in the world. And I mean, we had just been talking about it. "It's literally like, twenty steps in the direction you were just heading. Come on," he added, waving for her to follow him.
"How far away is the Portland tear supposed to be?" Alec asked, holding out a hand and watching the fog move through his fingers as we walked.
"It's a straight shot northwest," Bryce answered, checking his tablet again. "No other tears for about an hour unless we get wildly off course."
Leo dropped back and walked at my side, slowing our pace a little to let the others get ahead.
"I talked with Alec and Rhea," he whispered. "They'll help us warn Eve about next week. But Halsey... Next week, we won't be able to pull any punches. Uri and Sylvie will be watching everything we do then."
"Then they can watch us look for someone who's not there," I said without taking my eyes from the empty fog path ahead of us.
"What about Alita?" he asked, lifting his chin to her back, several feet ahead of us.
"Maybe talk to Bryce about taking her under his wing? To look out for her, you know?" I said, turning toward him so there was no chance she could hear me. "I think he likes her. But she's kind of scattered. If she knows what we're really doing, she might slip and say something. It's better they stay together."
Leo nodded. "So where's the first stop when we come out the other side? How will we know where to find Eve?"
"She works behind The Citadel wall as the Crisis Management Director. I used to have a card with her queue code, but I can't find it."
