Blaze of Glory

by C. J. Strange

  Another noise, this one more insistent, urges me to follow. The thick smell of charred wood and soil clings to the inside of my nose like soot, and the intensity of the heat is starting to scald my dry skin. If I stay here, I’ll die. I don’t have much of a choice.

  My boots wade through piles of ash as I keep to Tesla’s wake. Each of her paws alights the charred flakes beneath her as it lands, marking out a path for me in bright orange embers. A path I’m keen to follow, if it’ll get me out of here. Or if it’ll end this vividly roasting vision.

  The small billow of smoke that looks and acts like Rhys’ cat Tesla pauses in what appears to be a large clearing within the chaotic combustion. She sits, chirps at me, and then cranes her neck to stare directly up.

  With one arm braced against my face, I follow her lead, and glance toward the sky.

  That’s the first time I realize I’m underground: when I discover there is no sky.

  A bleak and sooty substance arcs jaggedly upward from all angles. With the heat distorting the air into ripples, it’s hard to tell if the cliffs and crags are constructed of smoke or solid rock. Ergo, how difficult it would be to use my Magicks to manipulate should I need to scale it. At the apex, right above us, there appears to be an opening. It’s as if we’re at the bottom of a massive chasm.

  Or, a massive volcano.

  I’m already plotting my escape from this hellhole—which may still be nothing but a hallucination—when another chirp from my feline guide jolts me from my thoughts.

  I glance down, and do a double take. She’s not alone. There are several other plumes of smoke circling my feet now, wafting through the dunes of ash, though they don’t seem keen on committing to any one specific shape.

  Did you find some yourself some weird fire friends there, kitty?

  The world becomes ominously overcast all of a sudden. Everything around me darkens at least seven shades. I snap my head back up.

  The mouth of the cavern, previously bursting with white light, has been covered over by… something. Not unlike a storm rolling in. Everything is suffocated in the thick swathe of hot, inky blackness, and deep within my mind I find myself screaming a defiant scream:

  I do NOT want to die in the dark!

  A crack of thunder alights everything electric blue. I sense the protection of a familiar presence at my back. His hot breath sweeps across my nape. My eyes widen, and it’s his own warm hands upon my hips that keep me from whipping around to face him.

  “Alfie!?”

  At long last, I’m able to speak aloud. At my feet, Tesla hisses, a sound I’ve never heard her make. Especially in Alfie’s presence. The hands on my hips grow warmer, hotter, starting to burn. I squirm against them reflexively, and he yanks me against him as thunder rumbles overhead once more.

  I can’t help the gasp that slips out of my mouth. He’s hard as a rock.

  Alfie… This time, my cry is echoed somewhere deep inside of me, but he chuckles in my ear as if he hears it nonetheless. His lips brush my ear, the kiss white-hot, and I yank away from it, narrowly avoiding the teeth that try to capture it.

  “They tore the world open,” he murmurs in my ear. His voice is rough and sweet, like honeyed beer and cigarettes.

  “Aldrnari…” is his next seductive whisper. I have no idea what it means, or even what language it’s in. For all I know, it’s some Novanist bollocks. I writhe as his teeth seek out my throat, and he drags me into him harder.

  “Alfie!”

  Another crack of blue lightning illuminates his grin as the struggle breaks out. He looks sinister, rabid; nothing like the Alfie I’ve known since we were toddlers on pushbikes. My Magick refuses to work as it normally would, the fabric matter of his clothing refusing to shift and be malleable in my hands. Ash kicks up in clouds, the ground gritty and uneven beneath my feet. Tesla hisses again, more viciously. I lose my footing, and the ground meets my back with enough force to knock every ounce of air from my lungs.

  Alfie…

  My brigade mate peers down at me. If anything of my sweet lunatic is even left in there. The way he’s leering at me makes me doubt it, his eyes dark and empty, his smirk framed with sharp, white fangs.

  The raging flames crawl closer. I can smell it burning through his clothes, licking them right off his pale, freckled skin.

  Above us, the opening—and what I presume is my only escape from this nightmare—is now completely covered with a matte indigo square. It doesn’t look real, more like a two-dimensional image brought into reality. A simple, single-color square. It’s one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen, which… is really, really saying something.

  “They tore the world open!” Alfie repeats himself, yelling it to the heavens. “They! Are! My! People!”

  And, with that, the two-dimensional blue square explodes, sending cold, black smoke rushing down over us. It smothers the fire, igniting it as if it were gasoline fumes, rocketing the heat to launchpad levels and sending flashover ripping through the entire underground cavern.

  Through it all, there’s little I can do but lay there prone.

  Alfie, please… don’t let me die in the dark…

  4 Penny's Part To Play

  I awaken with a snap, a thunderbolt striking me awake both in reality and in the dream. Or rather, the nightmare. I’m still choking on icy, inky smog, the velvet couch plush and soft beneath my body.

  I’m in Illiam’s lair. I’m horizontal. And, curiously, I’m not alone.

  Laying curled on the chaise across from me is a girl around my own age, completely draped in a quilt of platinum-white hair. It flows over alabaster skin, which is barely concealed by the simple linen robe she’s clad in, and pools like liquid silver on the hardwood.

  She’s still asleep. Still dreaming, I think to myself, sternly wondering if she was abducted and put under in a similar way to how I was. Wondering if she’s being subjected to the image of one of her best friends trying to kill her, too.

  But why…?

  “I do not have a thing for blondes, if that’s where your mind is currently wandering.”

  I’m expecting Illiam’s voice at any moment, but it still makes me jump. “That was a bit of a dodgy trip,” I spit back. “Perhaps next time warn a girl before you drop the acid?”

  “No acid. No drugs.” Illiam steps into view, leaning on the back of the chaise. “Just your mind, high on mine.”

  I snort as I roll to my feet. “Cheesy line. I thought you were smoother than that.”

  “When it comes to grandeur, I tend to prioritize my moments, little bird. There will be time for that.”

  “I thought my time had arrived?” I say, folding my arms across my chest. I’m still wearing the same wardrobe I had been when I was transported here, which leads me to presume the linen rags the girl on the chaise is wearing are what she would normally be clad in. I immediately begin to wonder who she is, why she is here. What her story is…

  “And this ain’t exactly the privacy you seemed to be after when you brought me here,” I add, nodding to the girl. “Who is she?”

  Illiam leans his weight more comfortably on the piece of furniture, glancing down at her with both a love and a lust I hope he doesn’t ever look at me with. Especially when I’m asleep. Eurgh.

  “Someone special,” he eventually purrs. I can’t tell if he reminds me more of a cat, or some sort of serpent. The venomous kind. “Someone I have been keeping a very close eye on.”

  “Someone like me?” I ask, quirking one eyebrow.

  My reflex is pure sarcasm, which is probably why I’m shocked when he nods at me with more sobriety than he’s ever shown he’s capable of.

  “Someone like you,” he says. His voice is quiet and sincere. “Someone just like you.”

  I rip my eyes away from his own. I wonder if he allows me to, for how easy it is. “And what do we have in common?” I eventually ask, having chewed several possible questions over in my mouth before committing to one.

  Illiam pauses wit
h a soft, “Hmph.” While he stares down at the pretty blonde, I seize the opportunity to study him closely. Every movement is perfectly poised and oh, so graceful. And yet, my gut tells me there’s a sense of chaotic genius simmering away beneath his suave, stony exterior.

  His eyes lift a beat too early, and capture mine. Immediately, I’m unable to look away, and I have to wonder if that was planned. If so, I feel like a right bloody wankmuffin for falling for that old chestnut.

  “She’s special.” The words catch me by surprise, partly due to his bluntness, and partly due to how vague he’s being. “And she has a very special part to play in our impending spiritual and political pantomime.”

  I allow his velvet baritone to rumble around in my skull a little while before responding. My tone is hushed to keep from rousing his other guest from whatever spell he has her under.

  “What pantomime?”

  Illiam chuckles, shaking his head. “Oh, Wentworth,” he mutters. The derision in his tone isn’t rude or spiteful, though. It’s profoundly patronizing.

  “William, William, William. He has everything he’s ever wanted, and yet still, his hunger knows no satiation.” Illiam’s eyes draw me in deeper, and I can taste his amusement at the corners of my mouth. “He is a very bad boy, our Prime Minister. And if I’ve told him once, then I must have told him over one hundred thousand times: one day, someone with an ego and an army bigger than yours will knock you off that horse, young man.”

  “I must confess, the idea of someone—anyone—scolding our Prime Minister like a ten-year-old brat is a right proper trip. Cheers for that one.”

  “Well, of course, my dear! I do love a good confession. Especially one that falls so eloquently from such divine lips.”

  I snort an awkward laugh, blinking several times. Either my mind’s getting sharper or Illiam is actually capable of showing mercy, because my eyes snap away from his without too much effort. I return them to the girl on the chaise.

  “He’s a monster,” I affirm, sternly. I need him to know where I stand on that one. “Wentworth, I mean. And I ain’t talking metaphorically. Given the rumors I’ve heard, I’m not entirely sure he’s human.”

  Illiam lets one cold, pale hand fall to the sleeping woman. He brushes a few locks of fine silk away from her face, away from the curve of one humble breast. I clear my throat, glancing away, but something twinkling beneath the white-gold waterfall catches my attention as I do.

  It’s a moulded pewter brooch, pinned to her robe on the left side of her chest. I recognize it immediately: a servant’s pin. Whoever she is, she belongs to someone in the capital county of London.

  “Rumors?” he asks, tugging my attention back in his direction.

  I nod. “Yeah, this and that. Lots of people say he’s into some legit Medieval era shit. Especially when it comes to any sort of human rights issues. Torture, policing, imprisonment. That sort of thing.”

  The airiness of Illiam’s laugh is spine-numbing. “Oh, little bird. Those aren’t rumors, it’s all perfectly true. I thought your lot had caught onto the real juicy undercurrent. It’s an absolutely delicious channel of back-alley information that I just love to sink my teeth into on occasion.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard those rumors. I don’t know if I’d call them I just didn’t want to go and offend your best mate right off the bat.”

  “I’ve unfortunately already heard the worst of it when it comes to Wentworth. As I said, he can be a very bad boy.”

  “Let me guess, you knew his father too?”

  Illiam’s sudden pause catches me off-guard. I wonder, as I’ve wondered many times before with this strange stranger, if I’ve crossed an invisible line.

  “As a matter of fact, little bird,” he finally purrs, after the longest, coldest, heaviest silence, “I did. Prolifically. I have had a great many special friends over the course of my lengthy lifetime. I do hope one day to add you to my little collection.”

  I fight the shudder of almost sensual revulsion, aware of his eyes devouring every inch of me. I’m determined not to let him see how easy I apparently am for him to manipulate. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of.

  “But,” he says—and I’m actually rather glad he did, because I was having trouble coming up with something to say in response to such a creepy bloody confession, “as I have already ominously stated once, you both have a rather special part to play in this upcoming extravaganza Wentworth wants the world to put on for his own amusement. My own wants and needs will sadly have to wait.”

  “What a bloody shame,” I deadpan. It’s out of my mouth before I can proofread it.

  Illiam giggles behind one hand.

  “Priorities, my dear! It is one sacrifice I am willing to make. Besides, watching the two of you evolve into your true selves will only heighten the anticipation.” He runs a tongue along his lower lip, and I shudder again, this time unable to subdue it. “Intensify the hunger.”

  I grit my teeth together. I don’t feel safe in his presence—or rather, I really feel like I shouldn’t feel safe. But I’m starkly aware that I haven’t located items within the room that can be commandeered into weapons, and my hands are relaxed against my bare thighs.

  Another of his mind games, perhaps? I have no idea what his Magicks are, if he’s an Anomaly or something more. But one of these bloody days, I swear I’m going to find out.

  “But anyway,” says Illiam, waving one hand in dismissal, “I digress.”

  The blonde on the chaise whimpers softly, her brows furrowing beneath the cascading river of hair. Illiam quickly lowers a hand to her shoulder in an oddly soothingly manner, his thumb stroking her skin.

  “You give her a messed up dream too?”

  Illiam’s head snaps up, a bounce of shiny, steely waves. “I did no such thing! To either of you.” His voice is indignant to say the least, and I almost feel guilty.

  Until I remember this is the second time now that he’s kidnapped me. That eases the shame a tad.

  “Your mind, my mind,” he murmurs, stroking the other girl’s face. I bite my lip at the thought he might have watched me like that while I struggled through a torrent of fantasy flames. “I simply unlocked a message. A prophecy passed down to us.”

  “A prophecy?”

  Illiam nods, lifting those hypnotic blue eyes to meet my own.

  “Yes, little bird. Each of you was given one by the goddess. A prophecy—a warning.”

  I can feel a protective instinct gnawing at the back of my mind that forces me to spit out, “So, what? My warning is that my best mate is going to attack me?”

  I’m doing my best not to revisit the Reykrrök session several nights ago. More specifically, Alfie’s Reykrsýn. But, I can’t ignore it. The voice of the double-crossing bastard of a mercenary we met that night—Izzey—declaring in that German accent of his what the sign left in the pipe Alfie had just smoked from meant.

  The lines of travel. A damaged shield. Personal growth, the cause of a great and devastating betrayal.

  A broken brotherhood…

  “I wouldn’t know, I didn’t happen to be watching,” Illiam says, in such an offhanded manner that I can’t help wondering if he had been watching purely because of it. Regardless, it drags me back to the present. Back to the problem at hand.

  And I’m fast acquiring a lot more problems than I have the hands to deal with. I know that much to be true.

  “What was it?” I may as well just blurt it out, and see if a blunt question is met with an equally as blunt answer. “Where was it, that I was?”

  Illiam stares at me for a long while before bursting into a snort of laughter. “Oh my, that was quite the word salad, wasn’t it?” he muses aloud, and I feel my cheeks redden in annoyance.

  Thankfully, he doesn’t make me wait too long.

  “One of the Five Chasms,” he says.

  Considering I was looking for ‘blunt’, he didn’t exactly disappoint. Though I’m beginning to wish I’d gone for a little bit more
detail.

  “All right,” I say slowly. It’s like trying to get a straight answer out of an infant. “What are the Five Chasms?”

  Illiam chuckles and then shakes his head.

  “No, no, Miss Starling. I am afraid not. I do too much work for you kids, these days—”

  “Oh my god, did you seriously just ‘you kids, these days’ me?”

  “—and I will not allow you to simply stroll into my home, bat those beautiful dark lashes in my direction, flaunt that delectable throat at me, and demand I answer every question on the examination!”

  My lips twist in disgust. It’s a completely reflexive action.

  “Delectable… throat?” I repeat, slow and measured. That same chilling numbness is returning to my spine, and that general feeling of relaxed safety is beginning to waver. “All right. That’s even creepier and less attractive than the whole ‘you kids’ dealio.”

  Illiam’s eyes—I swear they flash at me, bright and alluring. Like the sun, glinting off one face of the moon. Hiding its much darker side from view.

  I swallow, carefully.

  “If you’re a vampire,” I mutter grimly, “or something equally as cliche and unoriginal, please tell me now, so that I can start figuring out whether you’re a stake-through-the-heart kinda vampire, a lemon-in-the-mouth kinda vampire, a blade through the neck—”

  “Lady Starling.”

  The serrated edge to his typically smooth baritone stops me sharp. I flick my eyes up to look at him, and when I do, I realize I’m too late. The puff of smoke that wafts from his grin as he chuckles at me tells me I won’t make the door before I hit the ground, even if I did choose to run.

  “Don’t be absolutely ridiculous,” he breathes, each word floating on a billowing dark cloud of its very own. “Like so many other things, my dear, vampires simply don’t exist.”

  The world twists and spins for a second or two before the rain-dampened grass is beneath my boots again, teasing the bare skin of my legs, and the setting sun is dim but beautiful against my horizon. Much more so than the interior of Illiam’s abode, whatever and wherever that place is. I’m still not entirely convinced it isn’t all just a dream.