by Joshua King
“Good times,” I replied.
“Told you,” Bugs said.
“Did something happen?” Brielle asked. “Why are you down here?”
“Nothing happened. I just woke up and the rest of you were still asleep, so I came down here to try to make cookies and Lilly found me. I was actually just about to ask her a few questions.”
“Sure,” Lilly said. “Just let me clean up in here first. The cook will have a fit if she comes in here and it looks like this.”
She went to a cupboard and took down a plate, which I promptly filled with as many cookies as could fit. We walked out into the dining room where I noticed the group had piled all our bags.
“You’re all prepared, aren’t you?” I asked.
Bugs held up three fingers in a scout sign. Another layer of the man revealed.
We took the same table where we’d eaten breakfast the morning we were here. Outside the large window to one side I saw the horizon was starting to get light and streaks of pink and purple light were gradually taking over the dark blue expanse of sky. I had totally lost track of the passing of the days. The time had become arbitrary as we burned through both day and night with travel and battles.
“Do you think we can trust her?” Stephana asked.
I turned back from the window and nodded.
“Yes,” I said. “Malakan chose her to be our contact here. He could have had anyone else help us find this portal, but he had her do it. That means something.”
“But what?” Ashe asked. “We don’t even know who she is or why Malakan chose her.”
“That’s something I want to find out,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter. How he guides us through this isn’t up to us. He put down the path he wants us to follow and all we can do is follow it the best we can. That means trusting people along the way.”
Just as I said that, the kitchen door opened and Lilly came out carrying a tray with two teetering piles of coffee cups and a huge, steaming carafe. She set it down in the middle of the table and grinned at me.
“Our cover story,” she said, waving her hand over the tray to indicate the coffee. “When the cook shows up, she’ll just think you are very early risers here for breakfast.”
“What did you do with the rest of the cookies?” I asked.
She reached into the deep pocket of her apron and pulled out a packet wrapped in red cloth and tied with a length of string.
“For emergencies,” she said.
In the chair beside me, I felt Stephana shift as I reached for the packet of cookies and tucked them into my bag. She was far too confident of a woman and secure in what she meant to me to feel jealous, but there was obviously a hint of discomfort that Lilly was going around making me cookies. I’d have to find a way to reassure her later.
“We were just talking about you,” I said.
“Oh?” She took a chair from a nearby table and pulled it close to our table before sitting down. “What about?”
“How do you know Malakan?” I asked, figuring we might as well just dive right into the thick of things.
“I’ve known him most of my life,” Lilly told us. “I haven’t always lived in this village. Many, many years ago I lived out beyond the woods with the rest of my kind. Our realm was self-contained and regulated, and Malakan was a frequent visitor. He brought us news of the outside and helped us manage dangers and threats that came our way. Over time, though, the people within the realm started to divide. Some didn’t like having to be so isolated. They started to leave.”
“They could do that?” I asked.
“Of course. Nothing was holding them there. It was our home, not a prison. We were convinced those who left wouldn’t be gone for long. Our kind isn’t exactly the most popular in the Underworld and we’d learned not to have to rely on others to get the things we needed. The elders figured the young ones who had wandered away would eventually see how different it was out in the rest of the Underworld and not like the way they were treated, or the lack of freedom they’d find there. Eventually, they’d find their way back home. But they didn’t come back. It seemed like it could be a good thing, that they had found a place to settle and were living their lives. It might have even meant a shift in the sentiments. Then Malakan brought word that the ones who had left hadn’t been seen in some time. They’d gone missing not too long after leaving and no one has heard from them since.”
“Then why did you leave?” I asked. “If it was so dangerous and those others who left disappeared, why did you leave them to come here?”
“Time passed. Malakan was banished from the warlocks and the tensions grew throughout the Underworld. Our realm was attacked several times.”
“Attacked?” Aurora asked. “By who?”
I knew what she was thinking. She could see the image of her father in her mind and even though she knew that was the most likely answer, there was a part of her that still didn’t want to think of how extensively his cruelty stretched.
“Men came and burned our homes. They waged war against us and tried to drag the women away. We were strong and fought hard against them, but even when we were victorious, it was infuriating. The families within the realm decided to leave. We spread out and established ourselves in villages throughout the Underworld.”
“You said your kind isn’t popular in the Underworld. How did other people respond to you just showing up and wanting to live amongst them?”
That was the first time in my life I could think of ever having used the word amongst, but it felt appropriate in the situation.
“There was some resistance at first,” Lilly admitted. “But Malakan helped smooth the way for many of us. It was easier for others to accept us when it was just a few rather than the whole clan. I was still very young, but had already lost my family. Malakan made sure I was safe. He brought me here to the village and introduced me to the owner of the inn. She gave me a job and I’ve been here ever since.”
“You don’t have any family?” I asked.
Lilly shook her head.
“I haven’t had any contact with any of my kind in years. But Malakan came to check on me every now and then to make sure I was doing all right. He’d fill me in on what was happening in other areas of the Underworld.”
“You’re a succubus,” Aurora suddenly said.
Lilly’s huge brown eyes swept over to her and she nodded without hesitation.
“Yes,” she said. “And you are the daughter of the Prime.”
They were carefully chosen words that held a much heavier message than just the most basic meaning of the words.
“He said…”
“I’m sure he did,” Lilly interjected. “Darian made no secret about his feelings toward my kind. At least, not to us. There isn’t a single one of my blood who doesn’t know what he and his followers put us through. But I’m guessing in Solan City the story is different.”
“Not many believe there are any of you left,” Aurora admitted. “My father…” She drew in a breath and let it out slowly like she was calming herself. “The Prime said your kind waged war against the vampires and the warlocks, trying to gain total power over this faction so you could take over the Underworld.”
“That sounds like some serious projection to me,” I said.
Lilly nodded.
“There have always been a few of every species who want more power. It’s to be expected. But it wasn’t a problem. Not until he came.”
“Does he know how many of you survived?” I asked.
“I don’t know. We left the village overnight. Anyone who went by there would think all of us were gone. But he has people everywhere. He has to know some of us are still alive.”
“The Council members who came when we were here…”
“They didn’t know. They’ve come by before and have never said anything.”
“If they knew she was a succubus, they would have told Darian,” Jaxxim said.
“Why?” I asked. “What is it about them that
he hates so much?”
Lilly shook her head.
“There isn’t enough time now,” Aurora said. “We need to get to the portal. The Council has come before. They will come again. Lilly, what did Malakan tell you about Hayden when he asked you to wait for us?”
“Not much. I was surprised to see him when he came. It had been a longer time than usual between his visits and there had been rumors.”
“That he was dead,” I said, filling in the words she obviously didn’t want to say.
“Yes. He didn’t explain anything. He told me a man named Hayden would be coming, and that you were very important and needed to be kept as safe as possible, especially from Darian and his followers. I didn’t even have a chance to ask any questions or get any more out of him. Malakan had never been so on edge. Even in the most dangerous times, he had been calm and in control. That day, he was almost frantic. I wouldn’t say afraid, just urgent. He told me to look out for you and what to do when you came, then he left. I don’t know where he went.”
“You need to tell her,” Aurora said. “I don’t know everything Darian did to them, but she deserves to know why we’re here and what Malakan is doing.”
The sun was higher in the sky and I knew any minute others would be coming into the dining room and kitchen. I didn’t want them overhearing our conversation, so I leaned closer and spoke as fast as I could to fill her in on the highlights.
“I’ve waited since the day I watched my family die to take Darian down,” Lilly said. “It never seemed possible. This may be my only chance. I want to go with you.”
I wanted her with us. She was meant to be a part of the group as much as the rest of them were, but I wasn’t going to force her to step out of the life she had built for herself and into the dangerous uncertainty of what we were doing.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Absolutely.”
I nodded.
“We need to go,” I said. “Wherever he is, he’s waiting for us and we’ve lost enough time. We don’t even know where the portal goes or how far we’re going to have to go once we go through it to find him.”
I stood and gathered my bags.
“I know where the portal goes,” Lilly said.
I paused and looked at her.
“You do?”
“Yes. Come with me to my room. I’ll tell you the story while I’m packing.”
We followed her to the back of the dining room and down a back hallway that led to a set of rooms set aside for the staff of the inn. Her room was tiny and sparse, but neatly kept. We stuffed ourselves into the corners to stay out of her way as much as possible as Lilly dragged a bag out from under her bed and set it on the mattress. She opened the wardrobe at the side of the room and pulled out a few articles of clothing.
“I wasn’t supposed to go through it. That was something the owner of the inn emphasized to me a few times when I first started working here. Like all the other unregulated portals, the one here in the inn is meant to be kept secret. Only a few people know it’s there and even fewer are permitted to know how to operate it.”
“Why did you?” I asked. “You were just someone Malakan brought to the owner. Why would he tell you such protected information?”
“I don’t know,” Lilly said. “To be completely honest with you, I don’t know how much Malakan told the owner about me when I came. They spoke privately and when they were finished, Matthias gave me my job. There was no other conversation. I’d only been here a few days when he told me about the portal. He showed it to me and told me how to use it, but warned me not to ever go through it.”
“Do you think Malakan wanted you to know it was there?” Ashe asked.
Lilly put her mostly-filled bag on the floor and yanked the blanket off the bed. She folded it up tightly and started trying to fit it into the space left after her clothes and other items.
“I don’t know why he would.”
“So you would know how he travels,” I told her.
“Why would he need me to know that?”
“Because he knew. Even then, he knew all this was going to happen. Not the details, but he knew the war would come and you would want to be a part of it.”
“I wish he had told me that. Instead, it was just information I wasn’t supposed to have and wasn’t supposed to use. Which, of course, meant I had to try it. I lasted a few years. Things settled down and I got into the habit of life here. Finally, though, knowing the portal was there was just too much. I’d heard about the portals my whole life, but never really believed they were real. There aren’t any near my village and no one I knew had ever actually used one. I figured it was just a story that people told. I wanted to know how it worked, so I went through it. Obviously, I don’t want anyone to know that.”
A thought went through my mind and I stepped up closer to Lilly as she finally managed to shove the corners of the blanket into place in the bag and secure it closed.
“What is the price to go through the portal?” I asked.
“Why do you ask?”
“We never had to pay a price. It might be because the portal didn’t work the way it was supposed to, but I want to be prepared for this trip through.”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“You don’t know?”
She shook her head and swung the bag over her shoulder.
“I never paid one, either. I guess you can say my tab is still open.”
“That doesn’t seem like a good thing,” Bex said.
“Probably not,” I said, “but we have to take our chances. We’ll figure out paying the price when the time comes. Lilly, are you ready?”
She nodded and we made our way back through the inn to the closet that held the portal. I let Lilly step in first and go through the process of opening the portal. When the door opened, I braced myself. Even though the tracker chips were no longer active, there was a part of me that still worried we’d walk through the other side of the portal and onto the floor of Nakatomi Tower. This time, I knew we wouldn’t be alone.
The light touching my face when I moved through the portal was reassurance we weren’t back in the Tower. Wind whipped at my hair before I was all the way out and my feet slid beneath me when I made the final step through. I launched forward and caught myself on the rocks in front of me. Looking down, I saw I was standing on an uneven, rocky outcropping just beyond the rounded entrance to a mountainside cave.
13
"Where are we?" I asked.
I got my feet under me and took a few steps forward, looking around at the rocks and scrubby plants that surrounded us. The air around us whipped up in sudden gusts of wind that felt colder than the air when we walked into the inn.
"The mountains," Lilly said. "This is where the portal brought me when I went through it. I didn't go much farther than this, but I didn't need to. I know these mountains."
"Why would the portal bring us here?" I asked.
She shook her head.
"No one knows why the portals go where they do," Aurora said. "They've been around longer than anyone can remember and no one knows where most of them came from or why. The inn was built around the portal, but Matthias never told me why. I suppose telling me why they had done that would just mean having to tell me where the portal led, and he didn't want to do that."
“I guess it doesn’t matter. This is where Malakan wants us to be. Everybody look around for a note or something he might have left.”
“A note?” Lilly asked.
“The portals we’ve gone through have had a note,” I told her. “It has the next step he wants us to follow.”
“Don’t you wonder why he didn’t just tell you where to go?”
I straightened from the rock I was leaning over to look behind and glared at her.
“Of course I’ve wondered that. Do you think I’ve just been wandering around aimlessly, blindly following these instructions because I don’t have anything better to do?”
“It just
seems strange,” Lilly said.
She had taken a step back from me and I felt bad for snapping at her.
“I’m sorry. This whole thing has just been really frustrating. It will seem like I’ve figured something out or like we’re on the right path, then something happens and we have no idea what the fuck we’re supposed to be doing next. I want to believe that Malakan knows what he’s doing and that there’s a point to all this.”
“There is,” Brielle tried to reassure me.
“Then what is it? Darian is missing, which means he could be literally anywhere, doing anything. Instead of doing what needs to be done to stop him, I’m traipsing around playing hide-and-seek with a warlock.”
“You trust him, don’t you?” Aurora asked. “You’re the one from the very beginning who said you knew he was doing something with all this. As soon as that fire happened, you knew there was more to it.”
“And I still believe that. I know he can’t just give me a map of where he is. That would kind of defeat the purpose of trying to make people think he was dead. But what’s the point of him dragging us up here? There’s no note. No sign of him anywhere. We’re up on the top of a fucking mountain and I don’t even see anything else that’s alive, unless you want to count the weird plants stuck to the rocks. Somehow, I don’t think he’s hiding in them.”
Anger and frustration were building up inside me at a rapid, out of control pace. I felt irrationally wound up, like something was spiraling up inside me and I couldn’t tamper it down. Everyone in my group was looking at me strangely, trying to figure out what was going on with me. They had drawn closer together, like they weren’t sure what I was going to do next, and I noticed Jaxxim’s shoulders had tightened.
“Hayden?” Bex said. “What’s wrong?”
“What do you mean what’s wrong?” I asked. My hands shot out to either side of me as I tried to indicate the entirety of the mountain around us. “We’re on a mountain. Do you not see that? We just walked through a closet at an inn and now we’re standing on the top of a mountain, and we don’t even know where we’re supposed to go from here.”
