Inn Between Worlds

by Thomas A Farmer

  The psychic lifted his hands to the air and tilted his head back, closing his eyes as he muttered to the wind.

  Zee could practically hear James thinking how dramatic Nathan was.

  “This way,” Nathan said after a moment.

  Zee and James followed him away from the giant arch and off the trail.

  “Just tell me you can get us back,” Zee said.

  “You never gone off trail, girl?” Nathan asked.

  “Yes. In our reality. I don’t even know if the spells I know will work here. I didn’t think to put a magic preserving spell on me before we left to make sure I kept my powers even if the reality isn’t magical.”

  “This world has magic,” James said. “Very little of it, though. And do not worry. I cast the spell to bind our powers to us through realities.”

  “Thanks. Nathan, where the fuck are we going?”

  “Patience,” Nathan said as James flinched. “There is no rushing perfection.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself and stared at Nathan as he paused.

  He finally moved, jerking so suddenly Zee hopped in place. He twisted complicated symbols in the air, his reality cutting crystal appearing in his hand as he swiped down and cut a hole through the reality.

  “Through here,” Nathan said. “He left maybe five minutes ago.”

  “Do you recognize the coordinates?” James asked.

  “Yep. Gort reality.”

  “That’s where they get some of the main ingredients for Chaos Candy,” Zee said.

  “Could be their headquarters, but why go right there if he knows we’re following?” Nathan asked.

  “Because if that is where his compatriots are, that is where he would lay a trap,” James said. “We must hurry.”

  “Hurry into the trap?” Zee asked.

  “They will not have as much time to set one up.”

  “But the guy’s had an hour. What was he doing that whole time?” Nathan asked.

  “That is an excellent point,” James said.

  “So he could’ve gone there to set up from here, then came back here to wait for us and lead us there,” Zee said. “Most witches can detect a normal portal within a few minutes, and they don’t know we have Nathan, so if they wanted us to follow, they’d have to make sure they left a portal within a few minutes of us. I can see it.”

  “As can I,” James said. “One moment.”

  Zee felt air charge as James worked a spell and her ears popped as he drew something in the air.

  “We are now invisible to all but each other,” James said.

  “That going to keep them from detecting us?” Nathan asked.

  “I included all the usual extras to keep us from being perceived in general,” James said.

  “Good enough for me,” Zee said. “But can they see the reality rip?”

  “No,” James said.

  “Okay. Once more unto the breach.” She adjusted her grip on her gun and knife and stepped through after the guys, zipping the portal shut behind them.

  The world was a green, lush landscape surrounding one stretch of road under street lights, the exact opposite of the desert. The road turned into a dock stretching out onto a lake. A bar sat at the end of the dock, hanging out over the lake.

  Bouncing live country music came from the bar and ducks waddled around the bank sloping into the lake. They probably swam right under the patio of the bar, quacking for patrons to toss them snacks.

  “If this is where they have their headquarters,” Nathan said, “I’m sorry, but we can’t destroy it. I already love this place.”

  “Yes, you would,” James said, face passive except for a slight pursing of the lips.

  “Mister proper and classic have a problem with a country bar?” Zee asked.

  “I am not a fan of this kind of music, no,” James said. “Nathan, the gentleman we are chasing?”

  “Yes, right away, sir,” Nathan said in a horrible and hilarious British accent.

  Nathan closed his eyes and started his thing and Zee looked around.

  To the side and a little behind them was a giant parking lot. Not terribly packed, probably not surprising for a weekday night, but not a bad crowd.

  “I don’t see them setting up shop here,” Zee said.

  “Neither do I,” James said. “However, this does look fairly remote. There could be buildings hiding beyond the trees surrounding this area.”

  “Yeah.”

  But something felt off.

  “Now, why am I not surprised,” came out of the dark.

  Zee jumped, pulling her gun up before remembering no one could see them, heart pounding so loud in her skull it gave her a headache.

  Kostos appeared out of the air, a blond woman close behind.

  He was as big and intimidating as she remembered. About six-foot-four, with buzzed short black hair, naturally tan skin, thick lips and big brown eyes hidden behind surprisingly proper looking small glasses. He was a high school science teacher at a fancy private school in California while in the human world and his nice suits and glasses were the only things scholarly about him.

  The rest was raw, caveman.

  Zee’s body flooded with the urge to run or fight and her legs shook as she took a deep breath, trying to ignore the twinge of her scars.

  And the urge to run up and hug him and see how he was at the same time.

  “She’s here,” Kostos said.

  “Zee’s good,” the woman, Zee thought her name might have been Rachel, said, “but even she can’t travel through realities without leaving some trail. There’s no way anyone from our reality came here without leaving a trail.”

  Zee snorted.

  There were actually a few ways to do it, and now she could add on the inn James had led them through.

  “She’s here,” Kostos said. “I can feel it.”

  “Hey,” Rachel said, stroking his arm, “it’s okay. We’ll find him. We will find these bastards and put an end to all of this. But you have got to stop obsessing about Zee. She’s trying to do her job, just like you. She’s not the enemy. She’s not working with these guys. She’s trying to stop them. Okay?”

  She took his chin, forcing it down so he looked her in the eyes. “Okay?”

  He took a deep breath and kissed her and they disappeared.

  Something zinged through Zee and she clenched her fists.

  She hadn’t known he was seeing someone in his order.

  Not that she got to be jealous. They’d left that part of their relationship far behind when she went after his brother, and hadn’t been screwing around for a while before that since she’d had a boyfriend at the time.

  But still.

  “Sarah?” James asked. “Is there something we should be aware of?”

  “Those are the agents on the case, or at least two of them,” she said, voice steady.

  “Sarah, I may not be an empath, and you may hide your expressions well, but there was most certainly a reaction when he kissed her.”

  “Ancient history, James.”

  “So you two were intimate at one point?”

  “Intimate? What are you, a hundred?”

  “Approximately. And you are evasive.”

  “We screwed around in school… and after school, basically whenever we were both free we’d booty call the other. And then the thing with his brother, and well, this.” She jerked a thumb back towards her burn scars.

  “Ah. Will this affect your work on this case?”

  “Of course not. Why would it?”

  He shot her a look.

  “It’s called casual sex, James, you should try it sometime.”

  “There is no such thing as something so intimate being casual. That is an invention of the modern media, pushed no doubt by cads who wish to convince women to sleep with them with no repercussions. No, thank you.”

  “You’re just repressed.”

  “And you, my dear, are lying to yourself. If the relations were casual, you would no
t have reacted as you just did. Saying intimacy is casual does not make it so, and you, Sarah, are jealous, and I suspect hurt.”

  She stared straight forward.

  “If you two are done making out over there,” Nathan said, opening his eyes and dropping his arms, “bad guys are thataway.” He pointed towards the parking lot.

  They walked across the lot, Zee looking around the whole time.

  Nothing out of the ordinary.

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, boys,” Zee said.

  “Me too,” Nathan said as they hit the edge of the parking lot, nothing but dense trees beyond it.

  “We are shielded,” James said. “It would require a great deal of power to break my charms.”

  “I feel like this is where Zee should be making a dirty joke,” Nathan said, looking at her.

  “My funny bone is broken,” she said. “And yes, pretty sure there’s a dirty joke in there about a broken bone too.”

  James stepped up onto the hard-packed dirt surrounding the parking lot and Zee and Nathan followed, diving into the trees.

  “He has no sense of humor today,” Zee said.

  “He has no sense of humor any day,” Nathan said.

  “I can hear you,” James said.

  Zee and Nathan shared a look and she almost smiled as he wiggled his eyebrows.

  They slogged forward, the trees seemingly unending.

  A scream shattered the night and the trio ran forward, splitting up to barrel through the trees.

  The guys disappeared as the ground sloped up, longer legs and the increased vampire strength giving them an advantage.

  Zee poured on the speed, keeping a good grip on her gun and knife as someone screamed.

  She cleared the slope and ran straight into a rip in reality.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Zee slammed on the brakes too late as the world switched from one forest to another and she crashed into short bushes clustered in front of a giant marble wall.

  She clenched her jaw as she fell, training keeping her from screaming in surprise as she half landed on the bushes. She pushed off, scrambling back to her feet, gun still in hand but knife lost to the wilderness.

  “Sarah, down!” James yelled from somewhere and she hit the deck, pulling her gun up and looking around with quick, practiced eyes.

  The underbrush and trees were thicker here than in the other reality next to the bar, more wild. Something crawled over her arm and she didn’t twitch for fear of attracting attention of whatever James was shouting about.

  Weren’t they still invisible?

  Flames shot towards her and she raised a shield just in time as they crashed over her.

  So that’d be a no on the invisibility thing.

  Zee pulled up her sight and focused on the magic. It was a shimmering gold with black sparkles, and something teal flashed just to the side a split second later.

  She smacked the flames down and pushed to her feet.

  Where the hell were the guys? Or the attackers?

  Even with her sight, all she saw was forest.

  “James? Nathan?” she screamed.

  Nothing.

  “Fuck!”

  If whatever this was was enough to take out James and a freaking psychic, what chance did she have?

  A figure in a black mask jumped through the rip and Zee shot him dead center without thinking. The bullet ricocheted off a shield an inch away from the man’s chest and she shot two more times just in case and threw a fireball, focusing everything on the man.

  She felt the shield crack under her pressure just as two more of the masked assholes burst through the rip.

  Followed by another asshole, just not masked.

  “Zee, how’s tricks?” Kostos said, running up to her and wrapping them in a shield.

  She dropped her efforts with a sigh.

  Shields had never been her strong suit.

  Zee stared up at her rescuer as he twisted his hands in the air, making the shield stronger than a cold war bunker.

  He dropped his hands and met her eyes.

  If she wasn’t so doped up on adrenaline already, she was pretty sure that one look would have her heart racing all by itself.

  “Threatening me then saving me,” she said. “You are a complicated man.”

  He shrugged. “Hello to you too. Long time no try to kill you.”

  “Well, I’d say get in line, but these guys will probably get you first,” she said.

  “I can’t believe you’re holding a party and forgot to invite me,” Kostos said, grin wide and vicious as he raised his arms, and winds grabbed the three and slammed them together.

  They bounced off each other, shields firmly back in place, and scattered as a handful of them poured through the rip.

  “No, I didn’t,” she said, grinning too as his energy got to her, “but last time I invited you to one, you tried to arrest me… and then kill me.”

  “I was surprised, I didn’t expect you to get out of the magic binding handcuffs.”

  “Oh please, you’ve seen me get out of handcuffs, and that time I’d consented to being put in them.”

  “Who carries lockpicks on them to a booty call?”

  “They’re like guns. You never know when you’re going to need them.”

  “I’ve got the shield and ripping down theirs if you go on the offense,” he said, pulling a flask from his jacket, accent as thick and rough as when she first met him, eyes glowing with the thrill of the fight.

  “Just like old times,” she said as he downed the flask, emerald and white magic glowing so bright out of it she was surprised the potion didn’t melt the metal.

  “That power boost for just you, or can anyone ride?” she asked.

  “Not calibrated,” he said, tossing it to her. “Powerful stuff, so pace yourself.”

  “I never do,” she took a long gulp and screwed back on the cap, jerking as Kostos’ earth magic rushed through her system, kicking her powers into overdrive.

  Power ripped out of Kostos hard enough to make Zee’s teeth ache and her hands drop the flask and she focused on the air, watching the green swirl as his power slammed into the shields around the forming horde.

  The moment the first shield broke, she started shooting.

  They had backups for power failures, but the first thing most witches did with shields was put up blocks for magic, then they’d get the physical ones back up.

  Bullets traveled faster than that.

  The first one she hit in the chest and he went down without a sound, the next in the shoulder and that one let out a high-pitched scream that told her it was a woman, the next dodged and barely got grazed on the arm.

  Then the shield was back up.

  “You know who they are?” Kostos asked, taking a deep breath Zee could feel in her stomach.

  “Besides Chaos Kings? Nope,” she said. “Will if we can get samples of those magics and you get me into the Agency’s database.”

  “Got anything bigger than those?”

  He let another wave lose and she said “Nope,” as the magic flew, focusing her eyes and shooting at the gathered mass as the wave crashed through them.

  She got a few more before her gun clicked empty, no clue if they were kills, injures or annoyances, as the healthy swarmed by the front lines.

  “They’re getting over their surprise real fast,” she said, slamming her spare mag into the gun as she felt Kostos gathering his energy. She only had those nine bullets left and then her backup gun with eight.

  And this was a hell of a lot more than the two orders Laurel had predicted.

  Who the fuck were these guys?

  “We need to do something more permanent,” Zee said.

  “Only ten of them,” he said. “At least half injured.”

  “And two of us, and my two friends are missing,” she said. “And I don’t think I killed any so those injured are going to be healed real fucking fast.”

  “I’m open to ideas, princess.”r />
  “Where’s your order?”

  “Three working the case in our reality. Rachel went back to report. We were surprised we even found anything.”

  “How did you figure out we were here?”

  “Rip’s here. Pretty obvious.”

  “Any way to call for backup?” she asked.

  “Not while I’m holding these guys off.”

  “Change it up. I block, you blast. One good hard one should do it.”

  “That’s what you always said.” He grinned and she didn’t bother shooting him a glare.

  “On the count of three, we switch, do it fast,” she said.

  “Again, that’s wh-”

  “Yeah, I got it, we used to screw and you’re joking about it now because you deal with stress by saying stupid shit. I get it, you jackass. One, two, three!”

  She pulled up her shield as his fell and forced her way through their shields, pushing them down with sheer willpower she knew she’d pay for later as all her magic went into it.

  Blood sprang from her nose as a headache built behind her eyes and Kostos released the gathering energy in a giant ball of nuclear force air slamming down on the mass of masked attackers.

  Zee saw their lifeforces get snuffed out like flames as the supercharged air pancaked the entire crowd.

  She dropped her magic, turning her sight off, and turned to Kostos.

  “Damn, Zee,” he said, muttering something in his original Serbian language before his eyes rolled up and he passed out.

  # # #

  Zee picked up the flask and took a gulp to recharge, then poured the bit left into Kostos’ mouth.

  But he didn’t wake up.

  She checked through the flattened mass of bad guys, but they were so damaged by the equivalent of a building being dropped on them that she couldn’t tell if she knew any of them or not. She took samples of the magic traces left from the battle and got away from the mess.

  She’d never been squeamish, but that was too much for even her.

  She dragged the giant pain in the ass through the rip in reality and rested at the top of the hill, about ten feet away from the gash in the air that wasn’t closing.

  Without Nathan there or access to the Agency computers to look up coordinates, she couldn’t even tell what reality this one opened into.

  No matter what reality it was though, that kind of tear had to be closed before the realities’ energies started bleeding into each other, and especially before anyone saw it and decided to wander through.