by Mary Calmes
“Why would you be noticed?”
“Kyries, like sentinels, and other travelers––”
“Travelers?”
“Any creature that can cross between planes is called a traveler.”
“Can’t warders cross planes?”
“They can follow, but they can’t go themselves. If a traveler punches through a hole,” he said, yawning, “then a warder can follow.”
“That’s what you meant earlier.”
“Yes.”
“Sorry, go on.”
“Okay, so when I leave, I’m gonna create a displacement wave that, because this is a façade, everybody’s gonna feel. How close this thing is to falling, it really might be the last straw.”
“There was no wave thing when you come in?”
“No, the punch in implodes, backfills the hole it creates, but the punch out has nowhere to go but out so it sort of explodes. That one you’ll feel.”
I shook my head. “None of it makes any sense to me.”
“Why would it?”
“I can’t just leave my friends here.”
“I don’t see that you have a choice.”
But Jess and Kenny and Chale were counting on me, and something else popped into my head. “Why did I hurt that man when he tried to grab me?”
“What man?”
“When Chale and I were running, we—”
“Oh, that wasn’t a man.” He yawned again.
“Are you bored or something?”
“Fuck you, man, I’m tired. I hunt for a living, you know.”
He was so irritable it almost made me feel better, more normal. “Okay. Tell me why, when I touched a demon, it burned him.”
“The touch of a warder scalds a demon, as does the touch of their hearth, as the hearth is their heart.”
I absorbed that. “So I can hurt a demon?”
“Burn it with your hand, yes, but not fight it. Hearths don’t fight demons.”
“Sure.”
“But if you ever wanna test if your man loves you or not, go grab hold of a demon. If it sizzles, you’ll know you still got it.”
“I—”
“Let’s go,” he said suddenly, almost whining, grabbing hold of my wrist.
“No. I can’t just—”
But he was cut off when we all felt the earthquake, followed by the sounds of people screaming from downstairs.
“Okay, hearth,” he growled at me, but he wasn’t panicked, more annoyed. “We have to make the jump now. My idea of fun is not free-falling into a hell dimension.”
When he finished, he yanked on my wrist, trying to pull me after him, but I planted my feet. It was only then that I noticed that I hadn’t hurt him. He wasn’t burned.
“I thought my touch would scald you.” I was amazed.
He scoffed. “I’m not a demon, no matter what your deluded warder told you.”
“All he said was that you tried to kill Malic.”
“We’ve been over this. I needed some blood to heal; I was never going to hurt him.”
I shoved him off me, and because he wasn’t expecting it, I managed to free myself. “I can’t leave my friends.”
“Then you’ll die,” he assured me even as the room rocked.
Chale, who had run to the window when the first quake occurred—even if he hadn’t told me I would have known he was not from California—slammed into my side, clutching at me.
“Simon, we gotta get out of here!”
I turned for the door and ran with Chale right behind me. We were joined instantly in our charge down the hall by the kyrie.
“This is madness, hearth of a warder,” Raphael told me.
“I have to find Jess.”
“Simon!”
I knew the voice. Stopping at the top of the stairs, I looked across the atrium and saw Leith. He was there with Ryan—or Rindahl—and Jackson—Jaka—both his fellow warders, but for me, he was the draw. And I knew everything would be okay. Leith would take me home, and Ryan and Jackson would take my friends. The kyrie could even take my new friend Chale.
“Run!” Leith commanded, and I yelled for Chale to follow me as I turned to charge around the terrace. I saw the people surge into the atrium, heard the screaming and yelling, the shrieks of fear. It was chaos, but Leith had come for me, had known intuitively that I was in danger. I simply wanted to reach him.
When I was almost to him, the ground beneath my feet fell away. It felt like the first downward drop of a roller coaster, the moment where you lift up off your seat and then realize that there is only air around you.
Chale screamed behind me, and there was a rush of air as we plummeted. The images rolled over each other, Ryan suddenly at the center of a swirling vortex, diving toward Leith, whose face was flooded with fear, Jackson leaping off the balcony only to be driven back hard as Raphael grabbed him, his claws sinking into Jackson’s chest.
I fell faster and faster, my speed increasing. I couldn’t see Leith or anyone, and all the voices became one horrible howl of pain as the speed and lack of oxygen overtook me, and all I saw was black.
VI
THE SHAKING was insistent, and when I finally opened my eyes, I saw Jess’s big brown ones staring down at me. Her face was dirty and scratched, but other than that, she looked unscathed. Sitting up, I wrapped my arms around her, crushing her to me.
“Oh, baby, are you all right?”
She was trembling hard. “Jesus Christ, Simon, what the fuck is going on?”
Why was she asking me?
“Oh God,” she moaned.
I pulled back to look at her face. “Did you see Leith?”
“Leith? No. How would Leith be here?”
“Never mind,” I said, taking a breath. “Did you see Kenny?”
She only nodded.
“Is he dead?”
She shook her head and started crawling away from me. It was only then that I realized that we were both covered in dirt. The two of us were in the entrance to what looked like a small cave. There were some rocks on one side, and I could see the furrow in the ground, which showed me how she had gotten me there. I had been dragged. But she wasn’t big enough to—
“Simon!”
Even though my name had been whispered, it sounded like a yell. My head snapped around, and I saw Chale. He was banged up, his right eye was swollen almost shut, and there were cuts and scratches on his face and neck. I was so happy to see him.
He grabbed me tight and hugged me hard, ending up rolling over on top of me, as we were both lying down in the dirt. When he lifted up, I saw a tear roll down his bruised cheek.
“Thank you for helping Jess drag me here.”
He nodded fast. “I’m not real sure where here is, but away from everyone else is better.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Come here,” Jess said softly, gesturing me to her.
When I rolled over on my stomach, my head swam for a minute before I got my bearings. I did the Navy SEAL crawl that they do in all the movies over to her, with Chale right behind me. We came up on either side of her and looked down the small hill at the craziness below.
I had never seen anything like it. There were creatures that looked like men but were definitely not. Some looked like Komodo dragons walking on two legs, like lizard men from some bad Saturday morning kids’ show with guys in zip-up rubber suits. Except the suits looked real and terrifying and more like something out of Clive Barker’s mind than Disney. Other creatures resembled bears, others like what I figured a werewolf would look like, but they were all doing the same thing: attacking the people in what resembled a giant corral. Off to one side there were two men who reminded me of Roman soldiers or gladiators in breastplates and those skirts made of leather strips. They wore guards on their forearms, but instead of sandals, both men wore boots made of fur that came to their knees. One had an ax strapped to his back; the other had a heavy broadsword hanging from a belt on his hip. They were enormous and primit
ive and scary as hell. The one with the ax kept gesturing to the other, and the creatures kept dragging woman after woman near them.
“I think,” Jess said softly, pointing, “that the one with the ax wants the one with the sword to pick a woman, but the swordsman won’t or doesn’t like what he’s looking at, so he passes.”
“Unfortunately,” Chale gulped on the other side of Jess, “every time he passes….”
And I saw what happened. The creature holding the last woman suddenly turned and bit down hard into her shoulder. I saw the blood roll down her shoulder a second before she fell to the ground, convulsing, foaming at the mouth.
And then she changed.
The seams split on her clothes; her hair sloughed off as her body ran with reptilian red skin. She came to her feet seconds later, leaping at the creature that had bitten her, trying to behead him. One of the wolf creatures pried her off, and she turned on him, screaming and shrieking, her arms and legs and tail wrapping around the wolf as she tried to dry-hump him. He stroked her tail and wandered out of the enclosure with her.
It was then, when I followed him with my eyes, that I saw it, the orgy that was going on off to the side. It had first looked like the fight that was raging in other areas, but my mind cleared, and I saw what I was really looking at. Creatures were falling on each other in a heated sexual frenzy.
Some of the women that were bitten did not change, instead remaining human. The bites bled, but shirts and sweaters stemmed the flow, and those women were herded toward another enclosure that looked like a barn from where I was. The whole thing looked like some medieval manor house, and I could see that there was an enormous outer wall that circled us. I couldn’t see behind the cave, but as far as I could see to the left and right, there was a wall.
“The men have all been either changed or not.” Jess’s voice was shaky. “They did them first.”
“Jesus,” I groaned.
“Not all the women are shown to the swordsman,” she told me, and I saw that several women were being bitten by werewolves. “I don’t know why some are picked and some aren’t, maybe it’s a certain age he’s looking for, or a type, but I haven’t been able to figure out what it is.”
Trying to figure out the reason was probably what was keeping my friend from going stark raving mad. Her brain, wrapping around a puzzle, was protecting itself from the total insanity of the situation.
“Maybe ax man has a preference and so he’s showing only those to the swordsman… I really don’t know.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” I assured her.
Her eyes flicked to mine. “At least you woke up,” she said, and her voice quavered. “I was so scared.”
“How long was I out?”
“Three days,” Chale told me, looking over Jess’s head at me. “I mean, hard to tell, but I think it was three days.”
“Yeah,” Jess agreed, and I heard the sob in her voice. “You hit your head so hard.”
I felt it then—the back of my head was tender. There was a large lump, but my mother always said, as it pertained to blows to the head, better out than in. She always preferred a big bump to no bump at all.
“I only started shaking you when I heard you moaning.”
“You must’ve been dreaming,” Chale chimed in.
“I seriously thought you were gonna die, but I kept putting water down you anyway,” Jess told me. “Thank God you woke up. I was totally freaking out without you.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
“I feel so much better now that you’re awake.”
Her statement made no sense at all. How was I her touchstone?
“I missed you.”
I reached for her and she grabbed me, pressing her body to mine, sighing deeply when Chale was suddenly at her back, the three of us wrapped together tight.
Jess sobbed silently, Chale was shaking, and I just held on. They had a three-day head start on me of horror, desolation, and hopelessness; I wasn’t quite as freaked out as them yet.
When Jess and Chale finally let me go, I asked her where Kenny was.
She wiped at her eyes, leaving dirt smears on her face. “He got bit and turned into a wolf thing. I don’t know which one; I can’t tell them apart.”
“I can,” Chale told me. “They put a strange breastplate on him; the metal looked like bronze when it turns that green color if you don’t polish it.”
I nodded. “At least I can distinguish him.”
“Why would you want to?” Jess asked me sadly.
I put my hand on her face. “We’re gonna get out of here, and we’re gonna get home. You’ll see.”
She pressed her eyes closed tight, and I saw the tears roll out from under her lashes.
“Tell me what else?” I prodded her, wanting her strong again.
Jess took a breath, wiped at her eyes, and then fanned her face with her hand. “Okay, well, some of the people they took into that big house. I think they went in to work, but I’m not sure. We’d have to go in to know. And the first day, there was only ax guy down there, and then yesterday—oh, you’ve been out four days,” she gasped. “Because for one day, there was only ax guy, and then for the last three there’s been sword guy too.”
“Okay,” I told her, realizing I was thirsty. “What are you guys doing for water?”
She pointed back, and to my wonder I saw, of all things, big bottles of Evian.
“What the hell is that?”
Her smile made my heart hurt. “I was in the room when I felt an earthquake. I threw everything from the minibar in a pillowcase, grabbed the comforter, and stood in the doorway. I grew up in Northridge, man. I know about earthquakes.”
“You’re amazing.”
“I’m not, but you need to drink some now. There’s six bottles there, that little round cheese, crackers, and some other stuff.”
I crawled over to the bottles, which were deeper in the cave, picked one that was already open, and drained it. Just that little bit of liquid made me feel better. Sitting up made me slightly light-headed and nauseous, but after a minute, the feeling receded.
“Drink some more,” Chale told me, “and eat a cracker if you can.”
They went back to their lookout, and I opened a new bottle, sipped slowly, and ate a few Ritz crackers. My stomach couldn’t take any more of either, so I made sure to twist the cap on extra tight and then crawled back over to them.
“So you guys have been camping up here all by yourselves, huh?” I asked when I was back at Jess’s right shoulder.
“That’s right.” She shivered. “Camping.”
“How did you guys meet?” I asked her, to try and infuse some sense of normal.
“I was trying to drag you,” she told me, “and Chale was suddenly there, helping me. We met because of you, Simon, but Chale is my new best friend.”
“Same here,” he said, leaning into her, arms wrapped around her shoulders, squeezing gently. “We’ve had three days, no, four, you said.”
“Four.” She nodded, patting his cheek tenderly.
“We’ve had four days to bond…. She’s the sister I never had.”
“Okay.” I exhaled. “So what’s our plan here?”
“The plan is to stay hidden,” she said softly. “I don’t want to get bitten, and I have no idea what makes people change and what doesn’t. I definitely don’t want to be a slutty red reptile creature that wants to bang werewolves. It’s one thing to read about hot guys who can shape shift, but all furry with the muzzle and the teeth does not sound like fun.”
I had to agree.
“So what is—Jess!”
I saw it first, the stream of saliva or something that fell down onto her back. I rolled over, and there above us were two huge wolf creatures.
Jess screamed and bolted from the cave, but there to stop her, having snuck up on us, were three reptile creatures. I realized then that the cave was just up a small slope and could not have been that hard to find. They had just been busy befor
e, four days of weeding through the crowd of people, and had finally gone looking for strays.
I rushed forward but was slammed to the ground and pinned under what was easily three hundred pounds of snarling werewolf. I heard Chale yelling as I was jerked to my feet. The three of us were dragged down the hill toward the corral.
The enclosure was muddy inside, and as we were shoved forward into it, I lost my balance and went down. Chale was screaming, and when I turned to look at him, I saw one of the wolves preparing to bite down into his shoulder.
I felt a surge of protectiveness, and because I had fallen, no one was holding me. Rising fast, I charged across the small space and hurled myself at Chale. I struck him hard and he crumpled under me, which kept him from the creature’s jaws. The roar from the wolf creature was deafening, and I rolled over, hands up, to fend him off.
But he froze suddenly, still as a statue in his forward lunge, an enormous broadsword embedded in the middle of his chest as he sank to his knees. I hadn’t seen it thrown, hadn’t heard it whistle by me, it was just there, as though it had been summoned by magic. I scrambled backward as the creature fell forward from its kneeling position and slumped sideways into the mud. Jess was suddenly falling down into my lap, sobbing as she clutched at me, shuddering in my arms. Chale was plastered to my back, the three of us huddling together as lizard men and werewolves made a circle around us.
I heard a growl, low, menacing, and when I lifted my head, the swordsman was there, yanking his weapon from the wolf’s fallen body and wiping the blade on the creature’s fur before replacing it in the scabbard that hung from his hip. When he turned to me, I saw that his eyes were completely black. It was like the pupil had been broken like the yolk of an egg and the ebony color had filled the man’s eyes. The way he was looking at Jess was terrifying, like she was food.
“Oh God,” I moaned. “I think he found the woman he wanted.”
“It’s not her he wants,” Chale said through chattering teeth.
I had a second of understanding before the big man bent, fisted his hand in my sweater, and lifted me free of the others. I was dragged up against him, crushed to the hard metal cuirass as he looked down into my face.
