Afterlife

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  I laughed under my breath, dry and bitter. The reaction was totally inappropriate, but it was all I seemed capable of at the moment. “Yeah, well . . .” I inhaled and exhaled heavily, staring ahead once more. “How could you have known, you know?” I said. “Besides, the events you set into course also led to me existing in the first place, so I suppose I should be grateful.”

  After a moment, I added, “But thanks for the apology, anyway.” I glanced at Re, flashing him a quick, closemouthed smile, then cleared my throat and looked away. The empathy shining in his moonstone eyes was dragging me perilously close to tears, and I’d had enough of crying. I’d been doing far too much of it lately. I was over it.

  For a little while longer, Re and I walked along, side by side, in companionable silence. After a few minutes, he cleared his throat again. “I’m also sorry for being so blind,” he said. “I didn’t know . . .”

  I shot him a sideways glance, no idea what he was talking about, now.

  Re pointed over his shoulder with his thumb. Only Susie and Syris walked behind us. “When I paved the way for them to come into existence, I thought they would end up tending this universe for all eternity,” he explained. “I had no idea that the Mother of All would—” He shook his head, pressing his lips together into a thin, slightly downturned line. “I swear I didn’t know what she would eventually do to this universe. I had no idea what she used the universes for . . . no idea that she destroyed them.”

  I looked at Re full-on and searched his eyes, reading nothing but sincerity on his face. He was as disgusted by the Mother of All as I was. As we all were.

  I clenched and unclenched my jaw, reining in my hatred of the being who had given life to everything in existence. And who, if left unchecked, would eventually destroy everything, too. She had to be stopped; even if it meant the end of me, it would be worth it, so long as it meant the end of her, too.

  “We’ll make sure she never destroys another universe again,” I vowed. “Never again.”

  11

  I thought it was a mirage at first, just a tiny, fuzzy point of gray atop a dune at the far edge of the horizon. But as each dragging step brought us closer to what appeared to be an anchor point, the clearer the roughhewn stone archway became until my brain had to acknowledge the fact that it, in fact, was real. Or as real as anything was in Aaru.

  I picked up the pace to catch up with Dom, who was way up at the front of our trudging train of people. My feet still dragged as I jog-walked; they just dragged a little less than before.

  Dom glanced over his shoulder a few times as he strode along through the desert, watching me approach. There was worry written all over his face and more than a hint of fear, but by the time I’d reached him, his expression had blanked.

  Had I imagined his apprehension? Was it just a trick of my heat-exhausted mind?

  “Everything alright?” I asked Dom as I fell in step beside him.

  He shot me a sideways glance. “Of course.”

  I frowned, not buying it. “Do you think we’re going to have to wait again?” I crossed my fingers, expecting a not-so-great answer based on those brief glimpses I’d caught of his expression.

  Dom’s eyebrows rose. “I honestly cannot say.” Once again, he looked back over his shoulder, and the worry and fear resurfaced.

  I’d thought he’d been looking at me with all that trepidation, but close-up, I could see that his focus was far away. He wasn’t looking at any of us. He was looking at something beyond us.

  I followed his line of sight far across the desert to the horizon behind us, back the way we’d come. What I saw there turned my insides to lead, and I missed a step, stumbling a few yards up the side of a dune. But I didn’t pull my attention away from the horizon.

  Far off in the distance, a thin layer of white covered the golden sand.

  I turned around fully and raised a hand to block out the sun, squinting to make sure my eyes weren’t playing a trick on my brain.

  They weren’t. That was the mist, alright. And if the mist was here, then so was the Beast.

  “Best to hurry, I think,” Dom said, continuing on his way, abandoning me to my long-distance gawking.

  “What is it?” Mari asked when she reached me. She stopped and stood beside me, staring across the desert we’d just traversed, much as I was. It was obvious the moment she saw the mist; the color drained from her face, and her mouth fell open. “Holy shit. Is that—”

  “The mist?” I finished for her. “Yeah.” I turned and jogged to catch up with Dom. “Do you think it’s following us?” I asked him as I drew near.

  He glanced over his shoulder to look at me, but his focus slid past me, returning to the thing oozing along the horizon. “I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head and returning his attention to the way ahead. “I have heard tales of the Beast moving throughout Aaru like a stalking hunter in times long past, but . . . I had hoped they were just stories.”

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek, vacillating over whether or not to tell him about my mist encounter in the woods back in his section of Aaru.

  “Perhaps it is merely a coincidence that it came here,” Dom said. “We are still near the outermost layers of Aaru. I suppose it is not inconceivable . . .”

  “I saw it earlier, too,” I admitted reluctantly. I should have told him sooner, but the encounter had been so strange . . . so disturbing. “In the woods, just before we left your cottage,” I added.

  Dom looked at me, eyes widening. “Then, it would seem, the Beast is following us. Why did you not say anything?”

  I shrugged, trying to play off my solo encounter with the Beast like it was no biggie when in reality it had shaken me to the core. “I didn’t think it was that big of a deal, and, well . . .” I shook my head. “I didn’t want you to worry. There’s too much other shit going on right now to worry about. I thought the Beast was the least of our troubles.”

  Dom shot another quick glance over his shoulder, then looked at me. “Apparently you were wrong in that assessment, little sister.”

  “Yeah, I’m realizing that now.” I crossed the first two fingers of my left hand and held my hand up for Dom to see. “Let’s just hope we can zip on through this anchor point and throw the Beast off our trail for a bit.”

  “Yes,” Dom said, brow furrowing. “Let us hope.”

  When I glanced at him a few seconds later, his brow was still furrowed. “What?” I said, studying his profile. “You’re wearing your thinking face. What is it?”

  But Dom just shook his head. “I had an idea, but I don’t want us to get ahead of ourselves. One step at a time . . .”

  “Alright,” I said, giving in to his dismissal only because I knew pushing the matter would be pointless.

  Dom and I settled into a pensive silence as we continued on. I could hear the others’ panic-tinged voices behind us, and as a whole, we moved faster through the desert, pushed onward by the Beast’s presence.

  “Hurry,” Dom said when we drew close enough to the archway that the scene through the opening became visible.

  I could make out a stormy sky streaked by branching bolts of lightning every few seconds. If that was the section of Aaru we needed to get to next, then we needed to be there now. The anchor points could shift at any moment, and missing the connection and having to wait until it came around again wasn’t an option. Especially not now, with the Beast slowly closing on our heels.

  Dom loped ahead, making it look like running through fine, bone-dry sand was the easiest thing in the world.

  I felt like if I tried to run right then, I would have stumbled at best and likely ended up tripping over my own feet and falling on my face. No matter how many times I reminded myself that none of this was really real and that any discomfort was purely temporary, I couldn’t shake the heat exhaustion or the feeling that I was severely dehydrated. I followed Dom as quickly as I could—which was pretty much just a brisk walk punctuated by a stumble every time I tried to increase my p
ace to a jog.

  Dom reached the anchor point well before any of us and stuck his arm through the archway, preventing the connection from breaking and postponing the next shift.

  Relieved, I slowed my pace, my feet dragging even more now than they had been before. Even so, I was still the second one to reach the anchor point.

  “This is our stop?” I asked, not slowing as I drew near. If I slowed, I would stop. And if I stopped, I would sit. And if I sat my butt down in the sand right now, I feared I would never get back up again.

  “Yes,” Dom said. “Go on.” He nodded to the archway.

  I stifled a laugh, and it came out sounding faintly like a sob. It looked so cool and refreshing on the other side of the archway. Not even the Beast itself could have kept me from reaching it and falling through. I longed for the touch of the rain . . . for the caress of the wind . . . for anything that would soothe my singed skin and exhausted soul.

  I lurched through the archway, stumbling forward a few steps, then dropped to my knees near the edge of a rocky bluff in an entirely new section of Aaru.

  Mere feet from my knees, the ground fell away in a sheer cliff, and beyond it, a deep gray sea raged, waves rolling and crashing together. The sky was a deeper, darker gray than the water, and angry clouds roiled from horizon to horizon. Wind whipped my ponytail around, making strands of hair stick to my face, and icy rain pelted my raw skin and sweat-soaked clothes. I held my arms out to the sides, welcoming the deluge.

  The sky was suddenly alight with jagged, twisting bolts of lightning, and the silhouette of an imposing fortress loomed on a rocky outcropping ahead, looking almost like it was floating over the stormy sea. As the lightning faded, it left behind a negative of the fortress momentarily imprinted into my retinas. A heartbeat later, the crash of thunder shook me to the very core.

  As I stared at the shadowy outline of the fortress, the relief provided by the rain and cool air faded, replaced by a severe case of we’re-fucked. I heard the others joining me on the bluff, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the fortress, almost rendered invisible by the storm.

  The ground groaned and shook suddenly, knocking Susie and Anapa to the ground, and I looked back at the archway. Dom had joined us, releasing the anchor point. The endless desert that had become my hell for the past few hours was gone, replaced by a primordial rainforest. A huge reptilian foot planted itself within view, then lifted and moved out of sight, only to be replaced by another.

  A high, hysteria-tinged laugh bubbled up from my chest as I watched a herd of brontosauruses slowly march past the anchor point. Looked like some creative Nejeret had created dinosaurs here—dinosaurs.

  Another bout of lightning lit up the sky, drawing my eye back to the fortress. I half expected to see a dragon beating its wings against the brightened storm clouds. This place was crazy. Pure, absolute insanity. I mean—dinosaurs.

  “I’m guessing that’s where we’re heading,” Mari said as I struggled to suppress another bout of hysterical giggles.

  Hands on his hips and staring off toward the fortress, Dom nodded.

  “How, exactly, are we supposed to get in there?” Mari asked, moving closer to Dom and mirroring his position as she studied the fortress. “Because I’m guessing we won’t find any back doors to sneak in through, and based on what you told us about the guy in charge here, marching up to the front gate and asking him nicely to let us in seems like pretty much the worst idea ever.”

  Her line of thinking sobered me. I knew exactly what she meant. Whoever built the fortress wasn’t looking for visitors; it was the opposite of inviting, and I had no doubt that the walls were crawling with guards.

  I looked at Dom. “What do you think? What’s the best way to get in?”

  Dom glanced at me sidelong. “We climb,” he said, no hint of doubt in his voice. “Up and over the wall.”

  I balked. “And what’s to keep the guards from pouring hot pitch on our heads or shooting our faces full of arrows?”

  Maybe it wouldn’t kill us—what with us all already being dead—but it would still hurt like hell, and I didn’t think even Dom would be able to Zen his way through that kind of pain. Besides, sneaking in was the game plan. As in, not getting caught.

  “The guards will not be a problem,” Dom said.

  I frowned, feeling like I was missing something. But based on Mari’s confused expression, it wasn’t something obvious. “Um . . . why won’t the guards be a problem?” I asked.

  “Because they will not be at their posts when we arrive,” he explained. “They will have retreated into the fortress long before we reach the walls.”

  I exchanged a baffled look with Mari.

  “And why exactly will they do that?” I asked, drawing out the word why.

  Dom flashed me a wicked grin. “Why, dear sister, because they will be hiding from the Beast.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Sure, maybe the Beast had been trailing us through the past two parts of Aaru, but we’d just shaken it back in that desert. The anchor point had shifted, and the Beast would have to wait until it reconnected to this place to follow us here.

  I placed a hand on the rocky earth and pushed myself up to my feet. “But what if it takes hours to get here?” I said, brushing my hands off on my jeans. “Or what if it lost our trail and never comes at all?”

  Dom’s focus shifted past me, and the tense fear that flashed across his dark irises caused the tiny hairs on my arms and the back of my neck to stand on end.

  Ever so slowly, I turned my head to look over my shoulder. Instinct forced me to take a few scrambling steps away from the cliff. From the mist just peeking over the edge.

  We wouldn’t have to wait after all. The Beast was already here.

  12

  As the mist crept over the edge of the cliff, we backed away, not too fast and not too slow, coaxing it closer and closer to the fortress. It had yet to display any overt signs of the Beast, but we were careful about staying well out of its reach nonetheless. We brandished our weapons just in case the Beast got frisky and decided to pop out.

  “How’s it looking?” I asked Dom, risking a quick over-the-shoulder glance at the fortress. “Think they’re gone?”

  We were maybe a hundred yards out from the walls, and the slight upward slope gave us a good view of the dense, shimmering mist blanketing the landscape from here all the way back to the anchor point nearly a mile away now, where it spilled over the cliff like a marshmallow waterfall. The guards must have noticed the mist by now.

  “I cannot tell for sure,” Dom said, “but I think . . .”

  Lightning flashed in the sky, turning night to day for a fraction of a second. For the briefest moment, I had a clear X-ray view of the Beast. It spread throughout the mist, those silvery tentacles stretching out like roots across the land instead of coiling into a slithering mass as it had been during my first encounter with it back in the mist plane. It was impossibly huge—far larger than I ever could have imagined.

  “Yes!” Dom hissed. “I can see the guards withdrawing into the fortress walls.”

  “Good,” I said, fear raising the pitch of my voice. I didn’t think I would ever forget seeing just how immense the Beast was. “So, um, maybe we could pick up the pace a bit, then?”

  I heard Dom’s footfalls hasten in response. I skipped back a step, sheathing Mercy, then turned and started to run after him. All around me the others did the same, and I wondered if they’d seen what I’d seen in the mist. Based on their wild, wide-eyed stares, I was betting they had.

  I reached the fortress wall just behind Mari. Dom had already thought a tall, steel ladder into existence. Mari was the first to start climbing, Re right behind her, and Anapa following him.

  “Faster, guys,” I hissed, switching from looking up and watching them climb to scanning the approaching mist. It was closing in fast, just behind Susie and Syris.

  “You next, little sister,” Dom said. “The twins and I will be right behind you.”

/>   I waited until Anapa’s shoes were well above head height and started to climb. The ladder was impossibly long, and my arms and legs burned by the time I was two-thirds of the way up.

  “This looks a hell of a lot easier in the movies,” I muttered, craning my neck to look down at Dom.

  Except he wasn’t right behind me on the ladder. I couldn’t see him at all.

  The lower rungs of the ladder had been swallowed up by the mist, completely blocking out my view of the ground at the bottom. There was no sign of Dom or the twins. There was just the thick, swirling mist.

  Lightning struck again, illuminating the horrors that lay within that dense, shimmering mass and giving me near-perfect visibility for a brief moment. I spotted Dom and Syris standing near the ladder’s base, with Susie maybe fifty yards out. Syris was gesturing wildly for her to hurry, Dom holding him back with a hand on his arm. The thunder that followed the lightning rumbled so loudly that the ladder trembled beneath me.

  I clung to the slick steel and glanced up at the battlement high overhead. Re was in the process of climbing over the wall. Mari was already up there, peering down over a crenel, her face looking ghostly in the gap between the dark gray stone of the fortress wall.

  Another bout of lightning illuminated the sky, and I glanced down again. Susie was almost completely surrounded by the Beast now, those silvery vines sneaking closer to her.

  “Shit,” I hissed, and I made a split-second decision.

  I hooked the heels of my boots on the sides of the ladder and loosened my hold. My heart hammered in my chest as I started to slide down the ladder toward the ground, the mist rising up to meet me insanely fast. It had taken me minutes to climb as high as I had, but it only took mere seconds to drop back down.

  “Kat!” Dom shouted, startled by my sudden appearance. Both he and Syris froze. “What are you—”