by S. M. Reine
The ground pitched beneath him. The crowd was dense. A blur of faces.
He appeared in the bathroom, hands braced against the sink, splashing water over his face. It clung to three days of beard growth and sparkled on his chin. The lines between his eyebrows and on either side of his mouth were deeper than he remembered.
For weeks, every time he had looked in a mirror, he’d seen her . James had grown used to having Elise’s constant presence lurking inside of him, watching him in all of his solitary moments. It was strange and invasive, yet had somehow become comforting. Even when she didn’t want to speak to him, she had always been there. A constant companion.
But now it was just him. Alone.
A man with a toothbrush and a razor loomed over his shoulder. Some stranger with two chins and a t-shirt stained with ketchup. “You using that?”
He stepped back to let the traveler use the sink.
James held his hands under the dryer, blew hot air over his damp fingers, and watched the light glinting off the ring he still wore on his right hand.
And then he was walking again, passing through the busy airport. His feet slid over moving walkways. The roof arched high overhead, blurry and indistinct. He forced his way past a long line winding outside of a McDonald’s.
His mind was back in Saudi Arabia. He could almost hear Elise sharpening her swords.
Whisk, whisk, whisk…
It had only been days since he had last seen his kopis, but he was already struggling to separate true memory of Elise from myth. He wanted to remember her from the times they were happy. He wanted to remember her excitement when she began her first week at college, followed by the typical exhaustion and dread of an overworked freshman; the flush high on her cheekbones when they danced at competitions; the way they played at fighting before dinner, sometimes, just to keep their senses sharp.
But he remembered her sharpening her goddamn swords. Preparing for her next battle. Readying herself to drive a blade through the spine of an enemy. He remembered her haunted by the ghost of her victims, smoking cigarettes and bleeding from her scalp. The spirit of fury and vengeance, the woman who never smiled or slept.
That was the legend. The Godslayer.
Not the woman.
He passed a television next to a souvenir shop and stopped when he recognized a photo of a gaping hole in the street between two casinos. It was a news report on the crisis in Reno, Nevada, which was widely believed to be the result of a volcanic eruption and collapsed mines.
“Recovery efforts continue in Nevada this week,” said the newscaster, whose practiced tone of concern was unconvincingly sincere. “Air quality reports suggest that it may be several weeks before downtown Reno is habitable again, and FEMA is seeking funding to expand operations to accommodate evacuees from Sparks and other surrounding towns. Most buildings in downtown Reno, including three major hotel-casinos, are considered unsalvageable.”
The camera panned over a few select scenes of destruction: cars caked in ash, firefighters quenching a domestic fire, and what used to be a motel.
“Gertrude Priest is currently with Allyson Whatley, who is helping coordinate recovery efforts. Gertrude?”
The image flipped over to a petite woman with blond hair on a hill overlooking downtown Reno. The skyline behind her was almost unidentifiable. Half of the casinos had collapsed or burned, and the camera angle was low enough that the mountains were out of frame. A thick waisted woman in a polo shirt stood beside her.
“Thank you, John,” Gertrude said. “Reno has been through an unfortunate series of natural disasters this year, beginning with earthquakes in the spring, which experts now believe were a precursor to the eruption. Ms. Whatley, can you tell us if we’re at risk for further eruptions soon?”
“Not at all,” Allyson said, her expression hard and unreadable. “Seismic activity has significantly declined. This is the end of disaster for northern Nevada, and everything is under control.”
James took a notebook out of his pocket and flipped to the middle. The pages weren’t blank, as they had been in his dream. Elise had taken everything else with her, but not that.
He found a simple spell, tore it out, and blew on the page.
The lights flickered. The television fuzzed. Allyson, Gertrude, and the destroyed city behind them turned to snow.
“Something’s wrong with the TV,” complained an older woman who had been trying to watch from a nearby bench. “Hey! Something’s wrong with the TV!” The souvenir shop’s clerk picked up the remote and started clicking. Every channel was unavailable.
James tore himself from the television. Found a sign that said “Ground Transportation.” Drifted to the parking garage.
The slap of cold November air on his face helped wake him up. The air smelled different in Colorado than it had in Nevada, or even California. The sky was a different shade of blue. It carried a hint of grass and chlorophyll, more moisture than the desert. It was the smell of home—or, at least, the place that used to be home.
A silver Honda waited for him in the parking garage. James watched it, half-hidden behind a pillar, to make sure that it was Hannah’s. He could only see a woman’s shoulders and arms in the driver’s seat.
She leaned forward. He glimpsed her through the windshield.
Hannah was still beautiful. Until her injury, she had been the prima ballerina of their company, and grace lingered still in the curve of her throat, in the way she rested her hands on the steering wheel. But she had aged. Even through the tinted window, he could tell that the color had gone out of her lips and cheeks, and that her slow motions were more tired than deliberate.
She didn’t smile to see James when he stepped out from behind the pillar and approached. The trunk popped open. He set his carry-on inside, next to a boy’s backpack and some textbooks that had slid across the mat.
James traced a finger over the backpack’s strap. It was a big backpack. Bigger than a small child—like the one on the flight—would have been able to wear. The kind of bag a boy would take to junior high loaded down with textbooks and binders.
Ten years old. That hurt almost as much as the thought of Elise with blood smeared on her cheek.
He shut the trunk and slid into the passenger’s seat.
Hannah’s knuckles were white on the wheel. She gazed at him for a long time without speaking. The silence had such weight to it—the kind of silence that could only be shared by people who had loved each other for many years.
James was surprised to feel a new ache in his heart as his eyes tracked over the delicate bones of her hands, the curve of her elbow. Her fine blond hair was loose around her shoulders, pinned back over one ear with a white clip. She was wearing a plum-colored blouse. Knee-length skirt. Modest shoes. She was not the bright, glowing woman he had left behind to find Elise.
He wondered what Hannah thought of him now, unshowered and wearing the black clothing the Union had given him to replace his abandoned belongings. He scraped a hand down his stubbled jaw.
“Hannah,” he said, just to break the silence.
Her lips pinched. “You look horrible.”
And even though he hadn’t meant to tell her, at least not immediately, he somehow found himself saying, “Elise is dead.”
Surprise registered in her blue eyes. Her fingers relaxed on the wheel. Her hands fluttered into her lap, and she plucked at the lace on the edge of her camisole. Beautiful little gestures. “What’s going to happen?” Hannah asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Have you warned the coven?”
“Not yet.” James hadn’t spoken to anyone about it. He could barely bring himself to think about what had happened to Elise, much less answer questions.
The fact was that he still didn’t know how she had died. Malcolm, the Union commander who had recovered her body, had left a few messages for him. Maybe there were some details in his voicemails. James couldn’t bring himself to listen to them.
Had her neck
been snapped, like the greatest kopis that preceded her?
Was it a stray gunshot? Demonic possession?
Had she been alone?
He tipped his head back against the chair and rubbed a hand down his face. Those thoughts had been torturing him for days. He couldn’t escape—not when he was awake, not when he was unconscious, not when he had taken a handful of sleeping pills and passed out for twelve hours the night before traveling to Colorado.
Hannah tipped her chin down and arched an eyebrow. “You’re killing yourself over this, aren’t you?”
James was angry with her for saying it, but he wasn’t sure why.
“Let’s just go,” he said, too exhausted to yell and shout and rail against fate in the way he wanted to.
She pulled out of the parking garage.
James glanced into the back seat of the car as they emerged into the sunlight. There was a pair of shoes with cleats behind Hannah’s chair, and a miniature DVD player hanging on the back of her headrest. They were the kind of accoutrements that he would expect to see in the car of a mother.
It felt so very, very strange to see them in Hannah’s car.
“We’ll have to tell the coven what happened as soon as possible,” she said. “Landon will need to take action.”
“No, I’m not ready to discuss it. Especially with Landon.”
“Unfortunately, James, this isn’t just about you.”
The city that he had left behind so many years before blurred past him. James hadn’t given any consideration to how it might feel to return, but he probably would have guessed that he would be sad. There were a lot of sad memories in Colorado.
But he wasn’t sad. Not about the town, not about his dead sister and aunt, and certainly not about what he had left behind with Hannah. There was no room for any more sadness inside of him.
“What’s the coven been doing lately?” he asked.
She turned the wheel to the left. The car banked around a curve. “How much do you really care?”
James clenched his hands in his lap. “Is every conversation between us going to be an argument for the next few days?”
“If it has to be,” she said. “Don’t forget, I can still smell your bullshit. You’re not saying what’s on your mind. You don’t care about the coven, or Landon, or anything else around here.”
“That’s not true. I care about you—and Nathaniel.”
She gave him that look again. The Hannah look. Her eyes were off the road for only a moment.
James glanced back at the freeway before she did, so he saw the person standing in the left lane a half second before they hit him.
“Watch out!”
Everything moved in slow motion.
She slammed on the brakes and tried to swerve.
The body connected with their bumper. The impact made the entire car shudder, and rubber squealed.
The windshield spider-webbed with cracks and bowed into the passenger compartment as the person they hit bounced over it. Hannah screamed as the thudding traveled over the roof of her car, struck the trunk, and slid off of the back.
Another crunch , another shock. The seatbelt snapped tight over James’s chest. His head whipped forward.
The car skidded across the lane as the truck that had bounced off of their bumper squealed to a halt. Vehicles blew around them, blasting their horns and skidding on asphalt.
They finally stopped moving.
James’s head was spinning, but it was no longer from grief. He couldn’t focus on the dashboard in front of him, and he could barely make out the median on the other side of the shattered windshield; they had been spun forty-five degrees and hit concrete.
He took a short inventory of his injuries. The seatbelt had cut into his neck, but it had saved him from being launched out of his seat. His upper lip was damp. He wiped blood off of it and stared at the glistening crimson on his fingertips. His face was bleeding—why was his face bleeding?
“Are you all right?” he asked Hannah. Her hands were welded to the steering wheel. Her hair had fallen out of its clip. Her mouth moved, but no sound came out.
The engine ticked as it rapidly cooled.
“Mother Goddess,” Hannah finally breathed, “I think I just killed someone.”
James released his seat belt with a hiss of pain, rubbed his collarbone, and shoved his door open. “Stay here,” he said, stepping onto the sliver of space between the side of the car and the median.
Traffic on the freeway was stopped in the lane behind them. People were still going around the other side, inching along and staring through rolled-down windows. Horns filled the air.
James’s shoes crunched on broken glass as he made his way around the trunk to search for a body.
He found a smear of blood on the top of the car and down the trunk. He found the dent where the body had bounced. He also found a red-brown puddle on the asphalt behind their rear tires and a pickup truck a few feet away. The driver looked as stunned as Hannah.
But there was no body.
“What the hell?” he whispered. Had the body been thrown?
Something tickled the nape of his neck.
James slapped at it and spun to search for what had touched him, but there was nothing there. The sensation didn’t alleviate when he turned, either.
The creeping feeling traveled into his hairline and down his spine. It rippled over his bones. With a cold wash of fear, he realized that he wasn’t being touched—he was feeling infernal power. A lot of it.
Red light flared under his feet. He lifted a shoe to see that he was standing on a blazing crimson sigil, which quickly spread over the asphalt and illuminated the shards of glass like fairy lights. An invisible hand drew the line in a wide, sweeping circle that encompassed James and the entirety of Hannah’s car.
A massive demonic rune.
He leaned into the open door of the car again.
“We have to run!”
Hannah hadn’t released the wheel. “Is he dead? Did I kill him?”
He punched the button on her seat belt to release it, grabbed her arm, and dragged her across the seat. “Get out of there, it’s a trap!”
James wrenched Hannah from the car and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her to his chest.
The sigil exploded.
Her car leaped into the air as though blasted by a bomb. It flipped end-over-end, and James couldn’t see where it landed.
The red light surrounded them with leaping flames. His skin boiled.
Beneath their feet, the road vanished, and the sky disappeared a moment later. James felt a wrenching sensation in his gut.
They wheeled and tumbled through black void. His chest hitched with the effort it took to breathe.
And then they hit.
Hannah’s shrieks suddenly cut off. She lost her balance and slipped from his arms, sprawling on the ground.
Being teleported by external forces should have been easier after all the times that James had done it in recent weeks, but it wasn’t. His body rebelled at the change, even before his senses could process what had happened. Nausea swept from his toes to the ends of his hair, rippling down his shoulders and blurring his vision.
He doubled over, braced his hands on his knees, and vomited. James hadn’t been eating much since Elise had died—he’d just had a handful of nuts and black coffee that morning, and a salad the night before. It splattered on the ground in a half-digested mess.
By the time he wiped his mouth clean and had recovered enough to see, Hannah was still on all fours. She flexed her fingers in fistfuls of orange-red clay.
There was no red clay in Denver.
James’s senses finally caught up with him. The air burned his throat with the taste of sulfur, bitterly dry and scraping his mucus membranes with every inhalation. As he bent to take Hannah’s arm, he noticed that it was harder to move, as though he were pushing through fluid. He felt weak. Heavy.
He looked up. They were in a forest, but it was unlike a
ny forest he had ever seen. Iron branches reached for a red sky that roiled with smoke. There was no sun. No moon.
A cry echoed through the air—a scream of absolute despair, like the sounds that he heard in his worst nightmares of Elise’s death. James spun to search for the source of it, but all he saw were the thick black trunks of iron trees as thick around as his body.
Another scream followed from his other side, and then another. They echoed off of the metal trees.
Hannah was hyperventilating. She clutched at her throat with hands that had been stained by the clay. “Where are we?” she gasped. “Who is screaming? I can’t breathe—”
A powerful feeling of wrongness shivered in his stomach, tickled at the back of his neck, made his skin crawl like he had fallen into a pit of snakes. Demons. Infernal energy. It was everywhere—in the forest, the ground beneath his feet, the very air, woven into the fabric of existence in a way that he had never felt on Earth.
He reached out to touch one of the trees. It was hot, as though warmed by fire deep within the earth.
Except that they weren’t on Earth. Not anymore.
Something huge soared overhead, blotting out the red sky. It was bulging and blimp-like, but there wasn’t enough light in the crimson twilight to make out any other detail.
James wrenched Hannah to her feet, and the gesture made his muscles ache. “We have to move.”
“What’s happening, James?”
“I don’t know.” He pulled her through the trees as a chorus of screams floated over the forest. A piercing cry shattered the air beside them.
Hannah broke free to step around a tree, and her eyes widened at what she saw on the other side. Her cry joined the others’.
There was a body in the branches, stretched between the brittle fingers of the tree. It had two legs, two arms, a head, male genitals. But if it had once been human, there was no longer any way to tell.
A y-incision down its torso had been peeled open and the skin had been pinned to the branches, as if the tree had cracked open the body’s abdominal cavity. A stuttering heart spit blood with every pulse. But the body was alive—dear God, it was alive —and its head was thrown back in a scream that James could see trembling in its exposed lungs.
