by Kristie Cook
His tone indicated he was trying to remind me of something, but I had no idea what.
“We didn’t exactly have time to talk about anything but Bex and Hayden.”
Brock scowled again and then shifted his dark gaze onto Bex. “Someone said they found his truck in the swamps near the springs of Lake Haven.”
Bex gasped, and her good hand went to her throat. “Oh, no,” she choked. “That’s no good. People die in those springs! Did they … did they find his body like the others?”
Brock’s brows pushed together. “I don’t know. Asia and I found out right before Jeric called about you. And then we ended up in this god-forsaken place.”
Bex’s face had gone completely white, causing her greenish-yellow bruises to stand out in stark relief. I returned Brock’s constant scowl at him before trying to settle Bex down. I’d always sensed a layer of deep pain in Brock, but he usually kept it hidden under the surface, masking it with jokes and a laid-back attitude. That comfort blanket had been removed, though, uncovering a side of him I didn’t particularly like. It wasn’t like him to be so direct and hurtful. The Darkness of this world had already begun to claim his soul.
“He’s probably dead,” Bex cried. “Just like Sissy and Mama … everyone I love … my family … dead.”
“You don’t know that, Bex,” I tried to soothe. “And you still have Hayden. And us.”
She swiped at her tears and nodded, but she didn’t force her usual smile. Her chest heaved as she tried to fight the emotions, but heartache showed through her eyes. The Darkness was getting to her, too.
Hayden had stopped right below the top edge of the dune we’d been climbing to wait for us. As we came closer, Bex gasped, and her hand flew to her chest.
“Ohmagosh, we’re here,” she said, picking up speed to reach Hayden. “I feel it.”
I felt something tugging in my own chest, and it could only be the pull of the Gate. Finally. We’d been traveling for three days, stopping for only a few hours at a time to rest at the tops of trees and under the ledge of a cliff—the only kind of shelter we’d found. My legs ached, my chest burned from trying to breathe normally, and my head throbbed from the weight of the Darkness. I could only imagine how Bex felt, although she hadn’t complained once. Probably because she knew Hayden would make us stop, and we couldn’t afford to do that. Brock’s pace picked up into a near jog, and I pushed myself to move faster, too, and we all caught up to Hayden right below the crest. As soon as we reached the top of the hill, Hayden swore.
“Get down!” he barked in a whisper, dropping to his knees behind the top of the hill.
We all dropped, too, and crawled up on our bellies to look over the dune. My breath caught at the sight.
Off to our right, maybe five or so miles away, stood a city of black, gothic buildings with a multitude of towers and sharp-pointed spires reaching for the sky. Like the cathedrals of old Europe, but if those were places of worship, I didn’t want to know who the congregation praised. A wall of black stone enclosed the entire city, and from our vantage point, I saw no break in the barrier, no gate to pass inside. Not that I really wanted to get inside. The city sat at the edge of a huge body of black water—perhaps a large lake or bay or maybe even a sea because I couldn’t see the other side—that stretched down toward us. Besides that, nothing but gray desert lay between us and the city.
Below the dune, though, about a quarter-mile away and on the edge of the water, was an encampment of … monsters. Gozzards, giant troll-like men that stood at least twenty feet tall with muscular limbs thicker than a Redwood trunk and skin the color of peas, and smaller beasts that looked like lizards but were the size of lions. People intermingled among them, all dressed in long, black Victorian-style coats, knee-high lace-up boots, and scarves, hats, and goggles on their heads, as though they’d walked off the set of a steampunk Sherlock Holmes movie. And all apparently female. Tents made of a black material were set up around the area, and several fires burned in barrels.
A black haze hovered in the air, stretching from here to the city. It churned and bubbled and moved not like a cloud on a current, but as though individual particles moved on their own. It was a swarm of Dark souls in spirit form, swooshing to and from the city, some coming down and wrapping the monsters and women in a black mist before gusting upwards to the mass above.
“If the pull in my gut is right,” Hayden said, “the Gate’s on the other side of them, in the water.”
“Makes sense,” I whispered.
“Who—or what—are those things, and what are they doing?” Bex asked.
“Good question,” Hayden said. “I’ve never seen so many in one place except in battles. With each other.”
“Battles?” Bex echoed.
“They’re at war?” Brock asked.
“We’re always at war,” Hayden murmured. “Those who’ve gone Dark are always fighting for power and greed, throwing each other off the thrones every few months or so, it seems. They’re really just feeding Enyxa’s insatiable lust for chaos and mayhem. The rest of us, who haven’t gone completely Dark, live away on our own in the wilds, staying out of their wars as much as we can.”
“Where are the men?” I asked.
“Who knows? Enyxa takes them away.”
“What?” Brock demanded.
“The only male humans are those of us who haven’t gone completely Dark yet,” Hayden explained. “Enyxa uses these female Dark ones to help us along. More temptation, in more ways than one. If you get up close, they’ll mesmerize you with their beauty. It’s only on the surface, though. Their promises are alluring, but only good until you fall into complete Darkness. Then they cast you aside like trash for Enyxa to clean up.”
“Sounds like most of the women I dated,” Brock muttered.
Hayden ignored him, the sarcasm once again lost on him. “Enyxa enslaves them as her army, but they don’t think they’re slaves because they have rank over the other creatures, which is why they’re always fighting. Once we men go Dark, she takes us away, presumably to use for some other purpose.”
I knew the other purpose. Brock did, too. Enyxa used them to make souls on other worlds go Dark. When the Lakari dropped into human form on Earth, they were always men, so apparently Enyxa kept the female souls in the Dark worlds with her and sent the males to the other worlds. I couldn’t help but wonder why.
“This group doesn’t look quite friendly, but definitely not at war with each other,” Brock said.
“Obviously,” Hayden agreed.
“So what are they doing here?” Bex asked again.
We watched the gathering silently for a few moments longer as the sky began to darken with nightfall, and the air grew noticeably cooler. Several of the monsters stood in a line along the shore, their backs to us as they faced the water. The mist of Dark souls spread across the sea, swirling and churning restlessly.
My stomach sank with the answer. “They’re guarding the Gate.”
Brock’s head twisted sharply to glare at me, and then he looked back at the encampment. He scooted up a little farther, as though that would give him any better of a view.
“Why, though?” he asked. “Wouldn’t they want souls to come through so they could be Darkened?”
“They’re not here to keep souls from coming in,” I said, my voice heavy.
“Damn.” Brock had caught on. “They’re waiting for their opportunity. For the Gate to open somewhere else so they can go through.”
My throat thickened, making my next words even harder to force out. “They’re waiting on us to open it for them. They know we’re here.”
We all scooted down the dune a few feet to keep ourselves out of sight—as if that helped when Dark souls flew overhead.
“What are we going to do?” Bex asked as she flipped onto her back. She held
her good arm against her chest in the same way Brock and I did, as though what we felt within was a physical sensation. “The pull to go there is even stronger.”
“I say we get the hell out of here,” Hayden said. “We can take on one or two of them, but not that many.”
I rolled onto my back and stared at the sky that had become a slate gray in the last few minutes. Before long, the sun would disappear, and I’d learned these recent nights of being out in the wild that no one on Earth knew the black of night like it was here. The freezing cold would settle into our bones. We definitely couldn’t stay on the side of this hill. We wouldn’t last for more than a few hours—less if they saw us.
“Will they hunt at night?” I asked him.
“Yes,” Hayden said, “and here we are in plain sight for them.”
“So that can be when we make our move,” I said. “We can sneak past them.”
“And then what?” Hayden asked. “That water is black for a reason. It’s not clean, fresh water. All kinds of things have been dumped into it.”
“We don’t have a choice,” Bex said. She shuddered, though, and I didn’t know if that was from the thought of swimming in black, mucky water, or from the air already cooling down. “You know we don’t, Hayden. You feel it, too.”
“We have to sneak past them, swim through gross-ass water, and then somehow figure out how to open the Gate,” Brock said, his voice a near growl. “All without those … things … getting through it, too. Impossible.”
“We have to figure it out,” I said. “If we could project, it might be easier, but then we’d be leaving our bodies behind.”
Brock rubbed his scruffy chin. His tone lightened some as he said, “Hayden and Bex can project. They could sneak out there and open the Gate, and we could carry their bodies to them.”
I considered this for a moment, then shook my head. “They’re not Forged. We don’t know if they can even open the Gate, or if they can fight off that massive mist of Dark souls. They’re not strong enough.”
Brock huffed and rolled onto his back. “Then I’m out of ideas. Maybe Hayden’s right. We should just get the hell out of here.”
I sat up and stared at him. “You are not giving up, Brock. We will figure this out, and we will get through that Gate, and you will get back to Asia. We promised each other.” When he didn’t answer—didn’t even look at me—I turned to Hayden. “Is there any way to camouflage ourselves? Maybe we could steal some clothes and try to pass through the camp?”
Hayden snorted. “You and Bex, maybe, but Brock and I will never pass.”
“It doesn’t have to be perfect. We can stay on the outskirts of the camp, and it’s only until we reach the water.”
“We could do it!” Bex said excitedly. “And once we hit the water, it’s pretty much balls to the walls to get out to the Gate anyway, right? Not like we’re taking a moonlit dip in that shit.”
Hayden groaned, expressing his dislike for our plan, but he knew it was a plan. The only one we had. So we huddled together as night fell completely, shivering against the cold. At least half of the beastly creatures left camp to hunt, and by the grace of God, they hadn’t sniffed us out already, but had headed away from us. Before their noses did lead them in our direction, we slid down the other side of the dune and crept to the first dark tent on the edge of camp. Bex and I snuck in while Hayden and Brock kept watch behind a burning barrel. At least it gave them a bit of warmth, too.
“There’s no way these are going to fit the guys,” Bex whispered as she held up a jacket inside the tent that would barely fit me, let alone Brock or Hayden.
“We’ll have to do the best we can,” I said.
The tent contained two beds, two trunks, a table with a dim lantern on it, and a chair. I could only hope the woman who slept on my side of the tent was larger boned. Her size was definitely bigger, but the guys were going to look ridiculous. No way would we be able to fool anyone.
“Hey, look at these,” Bex said. “They’ll work, right?”
Now she held up what looked like a cape. No, a poncho. She pointed to another one draped over the chair.
“Perfect,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.”
We threw on the coats we’d found, buttoned them up, and pulled the hoods over our heads. They both reached to our knees, with a tighter bodice and waist and then flaring over the hips. I’d found some goggles, too, to hide us a little more and also help us to blend in. The goggles would have been nice when we were traveling through the desert, but maybe they could help in the water, too.
After a quick peek through the door to check for others, we walked out like we belonged and headed straight for the barrel where the guys hid. They grumbled quietly about the clothing we gave them.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I snapped. “Hurry up.”
Both of them were tall and broad-shouldered, and neither could pass for women, so we stayed on the very edge of the camp and hurried toward the shore. We were almost there when two giggling women emerged from a tent right in front of us, both of them completely naked, their skin glowing in the darkness. Both of them just as beautiful as Hayden had said they would be. Except their eyes. Although one had blond hair and paler skin while the other was a brunette with a darker undertone to her flesh, both had the same eye color: ink black. They stood in front of us, smiles on their faces, arms around each other while their free hands roamed over the other’s body. Right in front of us.
“Why do you have all those clothes on?” the brunette asked with an accent like Hayden’s, while staring at me. I kept my head averted, as we all did, so they wouldn’t see the unusual colors of our eyes—unusual for these humans anyway, who were completely Dark. I rolled my eyes up to peek at them through my lashes.
“Yeah, aren’t you hot?” the blond asked. She reached out for Bex’s jacket, her arm skating over Bex’s boob, the same one Mason had mauled, making her flinch. The woman cocked her head for a moment, then laughed. “You even have gloves on! I don’t know how you can wear all that. The cold feels so good.” She lifted her arms above her head, raising her full breasts, and spun in a small circle before wrapping herself around her partner again, one hand landing on the other’s breast and the other hand sliding over her stomach, downward. “I can never wait until that fucking sun drops so I can take it all off and feel the air on my skin and see all the sexiness of my girls.”
The other woman giggled as her friend pinched and pulled at her nipple. “Me, too. You should come join us in our tent. The more the merrier, right?”
They batted their eyelashes at us as they smiled seductively, then turned to each other and proceeded to make out right there in front of us, their hands groping and stroking the other’s body in the most intimate places while they moaned into each other’s mouths. Without breaking their kiss, one of them reached out, about to grab my arm.
I carefully tucked it close against my body, out of reach. “We’re going to shed these clothes first. We’ll be back.”
I gave my head a small jerk as a sign to the others, and they began moving. I must have said something wrong, though. Or maybe it was my poor attempt at mimicking their accent.
“Wait,” the blonde said, extricating herself from the other’s embrace. She studied us more carefully, first Bex and me, and then her gaze fell hard on Brock and Hayden. In a flash, her hand flew out and knocked the hood of Hayden’s poncho down. “You’re a man! And your eyes …”
Her mouth fell wide open, but not to express her shock. A shrieking, siren-like sound exploded from her.
“Run!” Hayden barked, and the four of us took off toward the shore.
Hearts pounding and legs pumping, we sprinted through the camp and broke through its edge, onto the beach. A half-dozen monsters barreled toward us. Without slowing down, we all pulled our weapons out. A Weiran, the green
-skinned giants that reminded me of the Incredible Hulk, shook the ground as he ran toward us, swinging a mace. Hayden stepped in front of Bex and exchanged a look with me before we both craned our necks to look up at the beast. We lunged at the same time, Hayden’s two swords slicing into the Weiran’s tree-trunk of a leg and my knife cutting a gash into the arch of its other foot. The thing howled and immediately fell on its butt, making the ground quake beneath our feet.
“Run!” Hayden ordered again.
Before the Weiran could react or the other creatures could reach us, we raced again across the beach. Several round objects that I thought were rocks were scattered on the sand. Hayden picked one up and threw it at Bex.
“Put this on,” he commanded. He grabbed another and pulled it down over his head. Brock and I each picked one up and did the same as we continued running, splashing into the water.
As soon as the water touched it, the jacket I’d stolen tightened up around me, becoming a second skin, as thick and reptilian-like as the gozzards’ hide. Good thing, too, because even it began sizzling and disintegrating in the water. It wasn’t mucky and oily as I’d expected, but apparently acidic. I could barely breathe in the helmet at first, but then it sealed up, too, and oxygen came from somewhere. The protection would only last so long, though—everything was peeling away in thin layers—so I swam as hard as I could. Hayden and Brock took turns helping Bex, but eventually she must have realized they were moving too slow, because she began to use her broken arm to swim.
We swam for what felt like hours but had probably been only minutes. Then finally an island with a tree, permanently bent over from the wind like all of the trees on Erde, came into view. Brock turned back to me and gave me a thumbs-up. My pounding heart slowed minutely. But just because we’d found the Gate didn’t mean we could open it. Big splashes and waves behind us meant the monsters had followed us in. Part of the black sky above fell toward us—Dark souls. I pointed my knife downward. We needed to dive.
