by Jen Ponce
At the bottom I stayed sitting, my face buried in my arms propped on my knees. Stupid bastard. If I could have kept my eyes open a minute without puking I'd shove him in the damned water. "Did you say Akashic?"
I could feel him grinning. "You can't even stay on your feet; I doubt you could shove me in the water."
"Stay out of my head," I warned.
"You project your thoughts like a carnival barker with a blow horn. I can't help but pick them up."
The river shushed and rushed over rocks, the sound of a thousand people sighing. "Akashic records. Book of life."
"Not a book. A river. And no, it's nothing like your myths on Earth. More like yeast."
"Yeast."
"A starter. Now come on." He yanked me to my feet and this time I lashed out with my foot, connecting solidly with his knee. He cursed and backhanded me. I wasn't braced for it because of course I didn't see it coming and I slammed into the side of the hill. It knocked the wind out of me.
Let me free. I will fight him.
"Yeah and get yourself killed." I pushed myself off the ground, brushing at my clothes, squinting. "Don't do that again."
"The spider wants a go at me?"
He sounded astonished. "Yeah. Who would blame her?" I looked around. The view still made me nauseous but was I imagining things or was it not so bad? "Hit me again and you're a dead man."
He laughed. "You kicked me."
"You yanked me." I put my hand on my hips. "Are you done frolicking in the stream and playing with your toys? I want to get this shit over with. I hate you." The last bit didn't go with the rest of my speech, but fit none-the-less.
He sidled closer and closer still until we were inches apart. Lust seized at me. "Still hate me?"
I had to fight to keep myself from leaning toward him. "Yes. Whatever it is you're doing, knock it off."
He backed away and pulled out an ancient looking metal case from his pocket. His thumb tapped the top and it popped open. A compass? I leaned in for a closer look and then grimaced. A bone bobbed around in a red liquid. Small squiggles of writing decorated the outer rim of the thing. "Ready?" He snatched my hand.
"Stop grabbing." I tugged but of course couldn't wrench free. A buzz started behind the bones in my head, vibrated my brain, and made me stagger. "What are you doing?"
"Linking up with you. Nice, isn't it? Ah, that heart. The power is immense."
"Yeah." I stepped away from him, using my body weight against him but he still didn't budge. Wooziness crept into me. I staggered, this time into his body.
"I have the location of the first victim. Send us there. Make the hook and I'll guide us to the right location." Excitement edged his voice.
"Hook. Right." I blinked once, then twice. The landscape before me looked ... well, it looked fine. I frowned. "Did you set it?"
Distracted, he looked up. "What?"
"The," I waved my hand, "everywhere."
"Of course not. I'd never be able to afford that amount of power." His eyes searched me inch by fleshy inch. I fought not to squirm under his penetrating gaze. "No more sickness. Dizziness?"
"What are you, my doctor? Shut up so I can concentrate." I pictured the hook in my mind, felt it, pieced together the sensations of it. In moments we were stepping through—
—into a scene I wanted to forget.
A young woman slumped against a dirty brick wall, her eyes half-lidded and staring. Her pale skin was mottled with blues and purples where it touched the dirty alleyway. Her throat had been slashed; blood had sprayed from it, soaking her shirt. I averted my gaze in dismay. "Why are we here?"
"I need her blood. Formless ones are made with the blood of murder victims. The fresher the better." His voice was emotionless. A day in the park for a demon, I suppose.
"I can't do this all night long."
"You can. And you will. I have to find thirteen victims. This is the first. You can either whine and resist or do your damn duty and help me get this done." A slurping sound. Sickened, I watched him straighten, what looked like a turkey baster in his hand, only thinner. The woman's blood filled the tube. He squeezed the bulb and squirted the liquid into the clay pot.
My voice rasped as I asked, "That's how you made Lucy?"
"Yes."
"Why? Why would you do such a thing?"
He slipped the tube into his jacket pocket and tucked the pot under his arm. "It's my duty."
I snorted. "Duty. Stupidity more like."
He ignored me. He was consulting his mockery of a compass to find the next victim.
"If it costs you so much to visit Earth without me, why do you visit me so often?"
He looked up, grinning. "You belong to me. I use your life energy to come to you. No expense required for that. And while tonight will still cost me, it will be but one small payment rather than thirteen large ones."
I didn't hear anything after his first words. "I don't belong to you," I shouted, my voice barking in violent echoes off the damp walls in the alley.
"Hook, darling. Hook." He took my arm again, and again I could feel buzzing in my head.
Twelve murdered souls, twelve more bodies I would have to see while Tytan carried out his gruesome task. They weighed heavy on my heart.
The next was an old man in a small hovel. He wore a stained and tattered shirt. He'd been stabbed. We'd come upon him as his attacker finished him, leaving him to slump to the ground. I rushed to him, searched for his pulse but Tytan shoved me aside.
"The moridor wouldn't have led us here if there were a chance he'd live. It only finds death." Again he pulled out the tube.
The old man's hovel was stark and dirty. It had tin walls and a dirt floor. A ragged pallet edged one wall, a wine crate sat in a corner with a fly covered plate. "Where are we?"
"Rio, I think."
Rio. "de Janeiro?"
"That would be the Rio, yes."
I counted in my head, blocking out the images of the man dying, of the expression on his face as the knife slid from his body. "I'll never sleep again."
"Quit whining. Your kind is the worst for moaning over the dead."
"Does your kind die?" The pot lid settled into place with a chink of sound but I didn't turn around, just waited for him to take hold of me again.
"No."
"Then you have no idea what death is like. To lose someone you love, to not know what happens to them after they die. You can't imagine the sorrow.” He took my arm and desire coursed through me once more despite the sickness in my heart at the old man's death.
"Haven't your religions worked out what happens to you when you die?" He sounded amused, as if he knew something I didn't.
"Do you know what happens?"
He made a sound of disinterest, then said, "I don't know and I don't care. Human doings matter little."
Disgusted, I began creating the doorway. "You're a piece of shit."
"Mmm." He was consulting the moridor. "Thank you."
Through the door, more death waited. More sadness. More. More. More. By the third, silent tears were coursing down my cheeks. The fourth I couldn't handle and Tytan had to restrain me from running screaming. A child. A golden-haired girl, maybe seven. The next, a family of three, murdered in a car wreck. A tire still spun off kilter on the bent axle. I blocked the rest. What else could I do? My mind shut off the sight, smell, and silent sounds of the violent deaths while Tytan calmly drew blood from each and dripped it into the pot.
I wanted to slap it from his arm and dash it to the ground, but knew I'd be doing myself no favors. My only consolation was that Tytan had been telling the truth. Everyone we visited that night had been dead. I couldn't help but feel that something of each of them lived on, had witnessed the Skriven taking their life's blood and marked it. Marked him, and by association, me.
By the time he delivered me home, I felt beaten and bloody myself. I stared down at Lucy. Tom had done what I'd asked—demanded—and had moved into the guest room. Lucy was sleeping in my be
d, wearing my pajamas. Knowing how she'd been made, I felt like weeping again but my wet cheeks said I'd never stopped.
I brushed away the tears and then touched her arm. She came awake in an instant, as if she'd been faking. "I'm sorry," I said. The words scraped my throat. It wasn't sufficient, not by a long mile and a half.
She shook her head and my likeness faded. Her dark beauty returned. "I read your children a bedtime story. I couldn't help it, though they both thought me strange for it." She stood, grace in motion, and shed the pajamas so quickly, I wasn't sure I'd seen it. With a gentle hand on my shoulder, she said, "Thank you for trusting me tonight. Even though you didn't have a choice, thank you."
I nodded. "Tytan asked me to make a hook for you." Actually, he'd demanded. 'Send her home. You know how,' he'd said, and off he went, clutching the pot to himself as if it were worth millions. I formed the door in my mind and she stepped through.
I sunk to my bed, curled up into the fetal position, and cried until my nose swelled and my eyes ached. Crying doesn't help, but sometimes it was the only thing you could do. I stared at the clock. It read three fifteen. I hadn't had sleep in two days. And although I was exhausted from crying, I didn't feel tired. Whether that was a yet unknown side effect from fleshcrawler life force sharing, I didn't know.
I showered, changed into a different pair of pajamas than the ones Lucy had been wearing, and slid between my sheets. I sighed. Too much. That's what it was; too much. It made my crumbling marriage tame in comparison. It wasn't fair. Why me? Why now?
I'm sorry. I know tonight was rough.
'Rough.' I shook my head. 'That doesn't begin to cover it.'
Do you want me to help you sleep?
'No. I want you to help me find a way to get free from Tytan. That's what I want.' I entertained thoughts of doing him in, but couldn't see how I would do it since he'd said his kind didn't die. Besides, I was sick of death and I'd made up my mind not to kill. Not even Tytan, who deserved it.
The phone rang, jarring me out of my stupor. I rolled over and answered it. It was Danni.
"He's gone."
"What? Danni, why are you calling so late? Early? Who's gone?"
Her small voice answered me. "Zech. I saw him in the community room and I talked with him. For hours." Her voice held amazement, as if she couldn't imagine talking to a man so long. I couldn't imagine her doing it either.
"When did he leave? What did he say?"
"He told me he worried his abuser would track him down. I asked him to call me on the hotline if he needed to talk."
I slung my legs over the side of the bed, feeling keyed up. "Okay," I said, reminding myself it was Danni and Danni was fragile. "Then what?"
"He called. Said they'd found him." She paused. "I was confused, because he said his abuser had been his girlfriend. But when he called me to tell me they'd found him, that sounded real. He asked me to call you. Tell you he's going to the hook? Is that a bar? I'm scared for him, Devany."
Shit. Shit. I yanked open the drawer on the bedside table. The tripwire lodestone was glowing red. I reached for the protection circle around the house, around the kids and Tom and they were still in place.
They'd used magic but they'd been hunting Zech. I should have thought of that, should have given him a lodestone too. "Damn it," I said aloud, before remembering Danni was still on the phone.
"It's bad, isn't it?"
There were tears in her voice. "Yes. But I'll help him."
"I'll call the police."
I started to tell her no and then said, "Go ahead. Give them his description and tell them he's running from an abusive relationship. I'm guessing he'll hide in the Old Market." I hung up on her, hoping she wouldn't be mad at me. She of all people would understand the urgency.
I yanked on pants and tied back my hair, then called on Arsinua and Neutria. "I don't know what I'm dealing with. You both will have to help me. Got it?"
Hunt. Kill.
I will. Please, hurry.
Neutria's excitement and Arsinua's terror mixed with my adrenaline. I imagined this is what being high on meth would feel like. The hook exploded into existence.
What are you doing? You can't hook to another spot on your world.
"If you hadn't been hiding the whole time, you'd know that I spent the night doing that, thanks."
With the Skriven's help.
"Are you on my side or aren't you? Now shut up and hang on." I concentrated hard on the hook Zech had led me into. Concentrated so hard pain shot through my temples and burned across my forehead.
You shouldn't be able to do this, Arsinua shouted. There's something wrong!
I stepped through the hook anyway.
TWENTY
I hit the alley, cracking down on one knee. I staggered upright, my neck straining as I searched for Zech. He stepped out from behind a dumpster, nearly scaring me out of my pants.
"Shit! What are you doing here? I told you to stay put."
"They found me. One of Yarnell's minions. The magic was faint but I could still sense it when they arrived. I left by the back window. Tore myself up getting over the fence." He held up his arm and showed me the long, angry gash that ran down its length.
I winced. "Here. Take this." I put two lodestones in his hands and would've laughed at the expression on his face if I hadn't gotten the feeling that a ghost walked over my grave. Ghost. Or demon.
I spun again, my breathing light, quick. "Did you feel that? Tytan?" I raised my voice, searching the shadows. Was it my imagination or were the shadows even darker in one far corner? I stared hard, frozen, but nothing moved.
Zech held the stones up to the faint street light that filtered into the alley. "How did you get these here?"
"Long story. I spelled one with protection. The other you can use to defend yourself. I do not want you going back to Midia. Not yet. Understand?"
He nodded, and then slipped the stones into his pocket. I could feel the circle around him and breathed a little easier. Why the hell I hadn't made one for myself? "Stupid."
"What?"
I shook my head. "I can be lame at times. I can. Come on, let's get you back to the shelter." I took his arm, intending to use the heart to take him home when something blew us both out of the air. It tossed me into the far wall and Zech against the dumpster where he slumped, unconscious.
My head rang, my vision blurred. I squinted at the figure coming toward me, a darkness deeper than any I'd seen before, gathered from the shadows themselves. Then I felt it, a sensation like hot, melted wax. I pushed with my shoes, kicking up dirt but not getting anywhere of course, because my back was against the wall.
"What is it?" I screamed out at Arsinua, Neutria, anyone who could answer me.
A smell of burnt asphalt assaulted my nose before a gust of air blew it away. The thing leaned in close and a face materialized out of the umbral darkness. "The true question is, what are you?"
My mouth opened, shut, opened again. I squeaked, but no other sound came out of my throat. A female formed from the shadows and darkness draped like silk around her. She shook her head and tendrils of night fell like locks of hair around her face. She looked nothing like the woman in my vision or the one in the park but I knew it was her.
"You stole from me. You pulled magic through me but I didn't make you. I remember the Skriven I have made and I didn't make you." Her feet were bare and muddy. Her skin was dark but glowed red as if embers burned within her. "It wasn't a large pull, barely a trifle. But I felt it. I felt you."
"I'm not Skriven." And thank goodness for it, too. "I'm not anyone. Just need to be going." I tried to get up but she tipped her head and a weight pressed on my body. I couldn't move, though lord knows I tried.
"You pulled Strands from me. I felt them go. Unraveling. Yet no gift in return."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know I was pulling anything from you. It won't happen again."
She smiled. "But I liked it. It felt different. You are different."
I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Zech. Should I warn him to run? Would he try to be a hero? I had a bad feeling that I'd end up dead in this alley. No need for him to join me.
“Liam. Bethany. I'm sorry.” For a panicked moment, I considered running, but I couldn't give up. Not yet. "I'm Tytan's uh." Blast, what the hell was it? Archaic Tesseract? No. Shit. Oh! "Archaeon Tezrya."
"You are human. Yet not human." She studied me as if pulling me apart at the seams to see the stuffing inside. "You used Skriven magic yet no being can use it but the Skriven." She reached out a hand and I cringed into the wall. I didn't want her to touch me, but touch me she did and her finger burned like a brand on my collarbone. "I shall speak with Tytan. Until then, you can give me a piece in return."
Pain lanced through my body. My back arched with the fury of it and I thrashed in agony. I'd like to say it was over as fast as it happened but even after she took her finger away, the spot on my collarbone burned white hot.
"I think I like you," she said, and then the acrid smell returned, the shadows enveloped her and she vanished.
The alley felt lighter, looked lighter. I didn't. I felt dirty. Unclean. I rolled to one side and vomited. My head spun and I knew, I knew I wouldn't try jumping from one spot to another on Earth. Not without Tytan. Not ever again. Was that what he meant when he said it cost him? What had she done to me? What exactly had it cost me?
Confused, hurt, shaky, I pushed up from the ground as Zech wobbled to his feet. "Do you know what that was?"
He shook his head. "A Skriven. I don't know. Awful. I can't believe Arsinua would ever make a deal with one." He spat as if the idea left a bad taste in his mouth. Wait until one touched him.
I took his arm. "We're going to have to do this another way. Jump to Midia then jump back to the shelter. I don't want to risk another visit from that thing." I stopped. "Shit." The death warrant. "Would it take effect even if we were there only a moment?"
