Thinking about Lily, my jaw hardened more, but I didn’t bother to voice that aloud, either. I knew what he’d say. I even agreed with him… in theory.
I still couldn’t forgive her for taking my child.
He squeezed my hand, so tightly it hurt.
I understand that, baby, he sent, soft. Gaos, I understand. I really, really do. And I’m not telling you what to do, or how to feel. I’m just telling you why I’m trying to make my own peace with it. For Balidor. And for you.
When I kept walking down the corridor, biting my lip, he squeezed my fingers tighter.
You still love her, he sent, soft. You still love her a lot, wife.
I didn’t answer that, either.
Even so, my throat closed at his words, enough that I didn’t try to think past it until we’d walked another ten or so paces.
By then, we were coming up on what looked like a dead end.
I looked down. The wet footprints stopped in front of it.
Or maybe not stopped––but they didn’t turn around and walk back the way they came, either. There was a space before the wall where they grew confused, where they crossed over one another. Then they simply disappeared.
Revik was already feeling over the rock with one hand.
“Here,” he said, finding the opening.
I watched his fingers disappear, right before he pulled them back. He turned, gauging my expression with his eyes, his narrow mouth curled in a faint frown.
“You ready for this?” he said.
Feeling his light watch mine cautiously, trying to discern if he’d gone too far with the Cass thing, I exhaled. By then, everyone else was clustered behind us.
Glancing over the rest of them, I took Illeg’s hand, since she was the nearest.
“Lock hands everyone,” I said.
Returning my gaze to Revik, I swallowed, giving him a single nod.
“…We’re going through.”
33
THE FIRST DOOR
I SLID THROUGH the rock wall after Revik, gasping as the matter rearranged itself around me. I gripped Illeg’s fingers in my other hand, pulling her in behind me.
Then I was through.
There was a bare pause, where I looked around a well-lit cave––
Then it felt like I got sucker-punched in the gut.
The pain, the shock of it were so intense, I bent in half, gasping.
Even so, I knew it wasn’t physical.
Throwing up a hand, I fought the hard slam to my aleimi, the sharp, sudden drain of my light that went with it. I threw up a shield, and instantly, an angry, horror-filled scream filled my mind, so loud, so insane-sounding, it made me cry out. The sound deafened me, like someone screaming hysterically directly in my ear.
Worse, I knew the voice. I knew the timbre of it, the deep tones, even though I’d never before heard it sound like this.
I knew that voice better than I knew my own.
Panic filled my light. Tears ran down my cheeks from the pain of the voice in my head, the suffocating construct that descended over my light. I fought to see past it, to find him.
With every ounce of my strength, I looked for Revik.
Luckily, I didn’t have to look for long.
He stood only a few steps away, gasping, holding up his hands as if warding off the same sounds, the same blows I was. I could tell at once from his expression and his heaving chest that the screaming I’d heard wasn’t coming from him. He winced against the same pain and emotion that I did. His skin was pale as chalk under his tan, likely from the same drain to his living light, and the construct that wrapped itself around both of our heads.
Flashing back to Kali’s vision, I remembered.
I remembered why the voices sounded like him.
Turning from Revik, I scanned the inside of the cave with light-filled eyes, fighting to see them, to locate the telekinetics that had to be there. I looked for beings that looked like Revik, but nothing I saw fit the picture I’d expected.
In a quick, squinting, half-blurred scan with my physical eyes, I saw our people alone. Cass. Balidor. Feigran. I saw and felt more behind me.
I didn’t see anything that looked like Revik but Revik.
From the sounds of it, there had to be a lot of them.
I couldn’t pinpoint a location for any of the bodies. I couldn’t see them.
I fought to recall Kali’s vision, how those beings looked, screaming into the night, and it occurred to me I’d never actually seen them in her vision, either. I’d heard them. I’d felt their minds, their light. I’d felt their horror, their terror, their desperation as they pulled apart the sun, breaking it apart, draining it for the Dreng.
Everything about them was alien, connected to Revik only through his voice.
The mass of them seemed to come from over my head, but I felt them all around me, below me, inside me. It was like drowning inside a hive of liquid minds. The biology of them melted together, fighting to break free, fighting to get into my light, screaming in unison, in concert, like they couldn’t help themselves.
“In the wall!” Revik shouted. He pointed with his hand, his voice barely discernible. “In the wall, Allie!”
When I tried to follow his pointing finger, my vision whited out a second time.
I couldn’t see. I couldn’t feel or hear anything outside the screaming.
My hand was still up. I kept shielding my face, gasping, as if warding off an attack. I lost all awareness of Revik, of where I was, of whether I was even alone.
By the time I recovered enough to see, I had my back against the rock wall.
Around me, seers were clutching at me, clutching at Revik, who still stood a few paces away. Faces were contorted in front of mine, eyes wide with fear. Their lips showed them to be yelling, trying to reach me, to get me to answer their words.
Looking at them, it hit me.
This wasn’t affecting any of them. They had no idea what was wrong with either of us. Whatever I was hearing, whatever had Revik staggering in the cave in front of me, none of the other seers seemed to hear it, or feel it.
Even so, their lights stabilized me somehow, allowing me to breathe.
I looked past them, and finally saw what Revik had been pointing at.
In front of me, a wavering circle of blue-green light pulsed around a dark, green-skinned opening in the rock. I’d never seen metal with so much organic material fused into it. The opening rippled like living flesh under stroking fingers. It looked more like an animal than a cave, like someone cut into an animal and I was seeing its organs pulse, its heart and lungs expand and contract, its orifices open and close.
I watched the opening widen, then grow more narrow.
It expanded out wider, like a pulsing heart, or maybe a swallowing throat.
I felt a pull there. I gasped when the pull strengthened, feeling sick to my stomach.
It hit me that the screaming lived inside that fissure in the rock.
Whatever that being was, wherever that door led, it was alive.
At the thought, it yanked on me harder. I gasped, my hand over my belly, feeling as if I’d been hooked by an invisible cord, attached somewhere right under my navel. Sickness rose in my light. I resisted the pull, even as I fought a surge of bile. I felt it pull on Revik next, right before he fell to his knees on the rock, hands splayed to hold himself in place.
Yards from Revik, only a few yards from that pulsing opening in the rock, Cass was already on the stone floor, gasping. Blood ran down her face from her nose. Her eyes were wide with terror, her lips moving as she shrieked something at Balidor.
Balidor was with her, his arms around her, his hands gripping her, white-knuckled.
Balidor’s expression looked even more terrified than hers.
He was yanking on her with all his strength, his muscles straining under the armored shirt, fighting to pull her back, away from the opening in the wall. His anti-grav boots dug into the stone, his whole weight holding
her around the waist and chest. I saw cords in his neck strain as he pulled harder, his arms and shoulders bulging.
I thought at first she was fighting him, trying to get away.
Then I realized she was gripping onto Balidor for dear life, shrieking for his help. Something kept ripping her arms away from him, and she brought them right back, holding onto him with every ounce of her strength, tears running down her face.
Even with all of Cass’s yells and shrieks, that deeper, more masculine screaming still drowned hers out, making hers sound distant, as if coming from underwater, or through a few feet of warped glass. I had to strain to hear her at all.
She slid a few feet closer to the opening in the rock, dragging Balidor with her, and I shouted in alarm. That same thing pulling on me was pulling on her, but a lot stronger.
“Cass,” I gasped, trying to talk to the seers around me, but unable to hear my own voice. “Get Cass… help her… help Balidor. Leave me and help them!”
I pushed the hands off me as the thought solidified. I shoved at them, fighting to get them to look away from me, to go after her, to help Balidor.
I fought to find Revik with my light.
CASS! THEY’RE TRYING TO TAKE CASS!
Revik’s head jerked around. From the stone floor, he looked up at me, panting, his face contorted in pain. From his eyes, the distance and light I saw there, he couldn’t really hear me, but he felt me pulling on him. He felt the desperation and horror in my light.
I pointed at Cass, at where she clutched at Balidor’s neck.
Then I saw Feigran.
He crouched in the corner of the cave, all the way to my right, his mouth open in a silent scream, his hands over his ears. His amber eyes met mine, begging me to help him, even as they seemed to look through me, staring at something outside of my view.
I saw Stanley kneeling in front of him, trying to talk to him, gripping his arms. The other male fought to get Feigran to look at him, to hear him, but Feigran only stared at me, clamping his hands over his ears even harder.
HELP! he screamed in my mind, again at a distance, so far away it was like a whisper in the dark. Only his panic told me how loud he was screaming it. HELP ME! MAKE THE BAD PEOPLE STOP! BRIDGE! ONLY YOU CAN STOP IT! ONLY YOU CAN STOP IT! OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!
Fear grew to a crescendo behind my eyes as I realized I had no idea what to do.
Images flickered and flashed behind my eyes, and I realized those came from Feigran, too.
I saw the invisible force grab Cass, dragging her away from ‘Dori while he screamed. It slid her across the stone and through that blue-green aura of light, into the pulsing organic cave beyond. I saw it grab Revik next, ripping him off the stone, swallowing him. After Revik disappeared, it grabbed Feigran… then me.
The image was too visceral. It was too real.
It also snapped my out of my trance.
Flashing out all of my remaining light, I slammed up and out with all of my strength, bursting through the construct suffocating my head. Reaching for the structures over my head, I used them to find a source of light, yanking down connection from the highest source I could find in the milliseconds I gave myself to find it.
Light flooded down over me from above.
I took the first deep breath I’d taken since I walked through that wall, pulling down more, using the light and that higher connection above as a shield from the darker light below. Once I knew I had it, I faced the rest of the cave.
I didn’t aim that light at Revik, although it was hard not to.
I aimed it at Cass.
CASS! I yelled at her through the space, throwing my light at her without thought, recalling the connection we’d formed in the tunnel. CASS! HERE! HERE!
Her eyes jerked up and back, igniting even as we met gazes.
Pale gold, her irises glowed sharply at me from where she knelt on the stone, making her eerily beautiful even as they reminded me how dangerous she was. At the same time, looking at her, I couldn’t help but feel her as a being like me.
A gold line of light appeared, tying me to her, glowing in the dark. Instead of hooking into my belly or hers, like the light coming from that organic machine, this line connected us in the middle of our chests, heart to heart.
I held onto it, tightly. Then I fed my own light into it.
The instant I did, the connection sparked and divided, branching out to connect all four of us. Those branches ignited while I watched, letting off gold, green, red and blue sparks.
The lines of light flared brighter as they took root. I saw the same symbols and patterns I’d seen in the tunnel, the same gold and green, shifting, tilting, geometrical patterns, like being inside a giant kaleidoscope. They morphed behind my eyes, sparking those connections between us, strengthening them, turning them into a structure of their own.
The line holding me to Cass thickened.
Not just the one between the two of us––all of them thickened, tying me, Cass, Feigran and Revik into a kind of multi-dimensional shield made of light.
I felt every other member of the Four. I wove into them instinctively, without hesitation, without thought, without even any kind of plan.
Using that connection, I wrapped my living light deeper into Cass’s. I felt her grip me desperately back, clutching at me in the space, so tightly I could almost feel her hands wrapped into mine, her fingers gripping my arms, her arms wound around my neck and shoulders.
I had a sudden image in my head of the two of us on a dance floor back in San Francisco. It wasn’t a vision that time, or a glimpse into another mind.
It was a memory.
Fists flying. Drunk, tasting blood, feeling bruises rising and darkening but somehow having no desire to leave. Hooking arms to twist around one another, using each other’s combined weight to kick and punch people off us, Cass laughing her ass off as the fight raged, even though we’d more or less been the cause of it.
We’d been in Geckos.
Back then, they hosted a lot of punk and metal bands, drawing meth and coke dealers, a lot of guys and gals into both things, people who dated those guys and gals, people spoiling for a fight or a bit of action, people who sang or played in bands of their own, hangers on, politicos, biker-types, those who just owned motorcycles and liked being in that scene, college kids, locals who were friends with the band, bored hipsters, scam artists.
It was one of the few actual fist-fights I’d gotten into back in those years.
Cass had dumped Jack, for the fourth and what ended up being the last time.
After a screaming fight with him over stolen money, a forced blow job and just general douchebaggery on his part, she moved all her stuff into me and Jaden’s place. She and I went out to celebrate and commiserate alone, since Jaden was pissed at her showing up in the first place, and pissed at me for saying she could stay.
Also, Jon wasn’t with us.
Jon was on a date. Therefore, when Jack showed up at Geckos around one in the morning with a bunch of his friends––wasted, of course, and not only on alcohol––we didn’t have our usual kung fu bodyguard with us.
Jack didn’t even try to talk to Cass. He just walked up to her, grabbed her around the waist and began carrying her out of the club like she belonged to him.
I caught up to them halfway across the dance floor.
I didn’t think, which is maybe why I got away with it.
I didn’t stop to wonder if it would get either or both of us hurt. It was just me and her. No one in there was going to help us. The cops wouldn’t help us, or even get there in time. Jon wouldn’t get there in time, either.
She’d looked at me in terror that night, too.
She’d looked at me to save her.
At the time, I didn’t know how I’d known to do it. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever done before. Jon had barely showed me the basics of kung fu at that point.
Using Jack’s arm and shoulder as leverage, I climbed up the front of him. He’d been so
startled, and I moved so fast, he hadn’t even really fought me off. Throwing all of my weight down on him, I punched him in the face, and he’d let out a choked, startled cry, right before he dropped Cass and all three of us landed, hard, on the dance floor.
I’m not sure what happened after that.
The next thing I knew, the whole dance floor erupted into a fight.
Cass and I ended up back to back, shoving off dudes.
I still remember Cass laughing. She laughed through the whole fight. I saw her punch one of Jack’s friends in the face, then laugh when he hit her back.
By the time the bouncers and the cops waded in, we both had bloody noses, black eyes, and bruises over probably half our bodies. Jaden was furious. At three in the morning, both me and Cass were treated to a rant about how Cass was “bad news” who would get me in trouble for as long as I was “stupid enough to hang out with her.”
The whole time he talked, I remember Cass laughing.
I remembered us on the dance floor. I remembered her gripping my arm when some guy grabbed me, right before she twisted around me, kicking the guy in the face.
I remember wondering why that had been so much fun.
I don’t think I heard more than a handful of words in Jaden’s lecture. Cass and I just grinned at each other from either end of the couch, laughing periodically while Jaden paced in front of us, furious that we weren’t taking him seriously.
All of that went through my mind in a flash.
Then I had a hold of her with the telekinesis.
Grabbing her under the arms and around her chest with my light, I wrapped it around her and into her so tightly I felt her all around me. Once I knew I had her, I yanked her backwards without thought, pulling her bodily across the stone floor.
In the process, I pulled Balidor with her.
As I did, the screaming in my mind grew louder, more angry.
The voices rose, trying to pull my attention, trying to coax her away from me. Now that those presences felt closer, I realized not all the voices were screaming. The screaming was the loudest. The screaming made me wince away the most, but the other voices were almost more disturbing. They whispered, threatened, coaxed, persuaded, promised, lied.
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