My bedroom door started to open.
I reacted on instinct, whirling and casting the spell of telekinetic force.
“Nadia?” said Russell, his eyes wide.
At the last minute, I managed to jerk my aim to the side, so the hammer of telekinetic force that would have shattered every bone in Russell’s body instead hit the door. The spell ripped the door from its hinges, tore a good chunk of the frame from the wall, and threw the door into the far side of the hallway. It smashed into the wall like an axe blade and hung there quivering, sheet rock falling in pieces to the floor.
I barely noticed any of that, because the door clipped Russell on the side of the head as it went past. He spun around, a flash of blood stark against his white hair, and fell on his back in the hallway.
I stared at him with incomprehension. What was he doing here? He had died decades ago, and no one new ever came to the Eternity Crucible. Was this some new trick of Arvalaeon’s? Or had…
In a horrified, frozen instant, my mind snapped into focus. I wasn’t in the Eternity Crucible. I was back on Earth, in the Marneys’ house. I had gotten out of the Crucible and saved a lot of people from Castomyr.
And I had just killed my brother.
“Russell!” I shrieked, falling to my knees next to him. He was breathing. Oh, thank God, thank God.
The door across the hall banged open, and James limped out, M-99 carbine in hand, Lucy following him with her pistol.
“What happened?” said James, looking at us, his head swiveling as he looked for threats.
“I…I thought there were anthrophages in the house,” I said. “I was sure there were anthrophages in the house.” Russell seemed dazed. God, there was so much blood on his face. “I blew the door off the hinges, and Russell was there. Oh, God, I…”
James passed his weapon to Lucy and then knelt next to Russell with a grunt. “Here, let me look at him.” He began examining Russell’s wound, and then produced a flashlight and shone it in Russell’s face. Russell blinked, his eyes following the light as James waved it back and forth before him.
“Ow,” said Russell. “Why are you shining that in my eyes?”
“Don’t think you’ve got a concussion,” said James. “Nasty scalp wound. It’ll need stitches, and we’ll have to take you to the emergency room.” He looked at the door. “Lucky, though. If that hit you straight on it would have killed you.”
The guilt boiled through me like acid.
“Nadia,” said Lucy in a quiet voice. “What happened?”
“I woke up,” I said. I stood, my hands trembling a little. “I thought there were anthrophages and wraithwolves coming for me. I couldn’t have stopped myself. They killed me so many times. I wasn’t going to let them get me again without a fight.”
“That…doesn’t make any sense,” said Lucy.
“No,” I said. “Oh, God, Russell. I could have killed you. A hundred and fifty-eight years, and I could have killed you because I’m a moron.”
“It’s okay,” said Russell, wincing as James began cleaning the wound. “It’s okay. It was an accident. It’ll work out. Girls like scars, right?”
He wasn’t angry. He should have been angry. I had been stupid, stupid, and he had almost gotten killed. I was lucky that I had only given him a scalp wound and caused thousands of dollars of damage to the Marneys’ house.
Because if I hadn’t stopped myself, I could have blown up the house and killed them all.
I backed away, rubbing my face, my eyes burning.
An awful realization started to fill me.
I couldn’t stay here anymore.
Arvalaeon had broken me. He had sent me to hell, and it had broken me. I was like a drunk who slept with a shotgun and woke up screaming and shooting at the walls. When I had woken up, I had been certain, absolutely certain, that I was still in the Eternity Crucible, that the monsters were coming for me.
And I had lashed out, almost killing Russell in the process.
I had a lot of magical power now, thanks to the Crucible, but I wasn’t entirely sane. That was a dangerous combination, and I couldn’t be around Russell and the Marneys.
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m so sorry.”
“It was an accident,” said Russell.
“I shouldn’t have come back here,” I said. My chest was hitching as I tried to find the words. “I can’t control myself. I went to hell, and it broke me, and I can’t control myself anymore. I’m sorry.”
“What are you talking about?” said Russell.
“Nadia, maybe you should lie down for a little bit,” said Lucy.
I stared at them, trying not to cry, trying to think of how to explain myself. What could I tell them? That I had died nearly sixty thousand times and it had ripped my mind apart? That I couldn’t see a shadow without bracing for anthrophages or maybe a bloodrat to jump out of it?
“If I stay here, I’m going to hurt someone by accident,” I said. “I have to go. I’m so sorry.”
And with that, I cast the Cloak spell and vanished from sight. It was a challenging spell, but a lot easier than it had been, and I stepped back into my bedroom. I heard the consternation as James and Lucy and Russell looked for me. My emergency bag was a duffel under my bed, and I grabbed it and climbed into the ruined window.
I dropped my Cloak long enough to cast the levitation spell, floated down to the lawn, and Cloaked again.
Then I walked to the driveway, sat down, and waited.
I could maintain my Cloak for about nine or ten minutes while walking around. Holding still while Cloaked was a lot easier. I could do it for hours. I needed to make sure the Marneys didn’t get into any trouble from my temper tantrum. I had made a lot of noise and light, and someone was bound to have noticed and called Homeland Security.
I had to make sure Russell and the Marneys were safe before I left.
I expected them to go to the emergency room, but instead, I saw the dining room light come on and Lucy start stitching up the cut on Russell’s temple while James helped her. Lucy was a nurse and James was a doctor, so Russell was probably in better hands than he would have been anywhere else. Midway through the procedure a Homeland Security SUV pulled up in front of the house, lights flashing, and a pair of blue-uniformed officers emerged. James came out and talked with them, telling them that he and Russell had been moving shelves upstairs when Russell had tripped and hit his head on the window, shattering it. The officers seemed inclined to believe him and departed without any further questioning.
I had just caused James to lie to Homeland Security on my behalf. That particular crime carried a punishment of both twenty thousand dollars in fines and flogging on a Punishment Day video, depending on the severity of the lie.
Something else I could feel guilty about.
Once James went back inside, and the SUV left, I dropped my Cloak and started walking, the duffel bag thumping against my back. I wasn’t sure where I was going. Arvalaeon had given me a car after La Crosse, but I didn’t want to touch the thing since it reminded me of him and everything that had happened. Maybe I wanted to go somewhere warm? I was wearing that sweater, and I was still chilly. Of course, it was eighty degrees out and humid.
My phone started ringing.
I blinked in surprise and dug it out of my pocket, squinting at the screen.
It was Riordan.
A weird mix of emotions went through me. I really wanted to see Riordan. I hadn’t seen him in a century and a half. I regretted never sleeping with him when I had the chance. I wanted to see him and pour my heart out to him and maybe bawl into his shoulder for an hour or three.
No. I couldn’t. I had nearly gotten Russell and the Marneys killed. What might happen if I saw Riordan? I was like that drunk with a shotgun. I might get Riordan hurt or killed, too.
I knew what I had to do. I had done so many hard things already. What was one more?
I hit the accept button and lifted the phone to my ear.
“Hi,�
� I croaked.
“Hi,” said Riordan. I shivered a little at the sound of his voice. I hadn’t heard it in so very long. “How are you?”
“I’m not well,” I said. “I’m not well at all. I almost killed Russell tonight. It was an accident, but I almost killed him.”
“Russell texted me,” said Riordan. Huh. I hadn’t known that the two of them were talking without me around. Well, I suppose you wanted your boyfriend to get on with your family. “He’s worried about you. He thinks something bad happened to you and that you are having trouble with it.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong.
“Yeah,” I said. I took a deep breath, pulling myself together for the next part. “Something bad did happen to me. And something else bad is about to happen. I’m breaking up with you, Riordan.”
I knew that would hurt to say, but it actually hurt worse than I expected.
There was silence on the line for a while.
“I’m sorry?” said Riordan.
“I am breaking up with you,” I said. “I...um, I’m not sure what the right way to say this is. But we’re not dating anymore. We’re not seeing each other anymore. I don’t want to see you anymore.”
If Arvalaeon had been there, he would have known that was a lie.
More silence.
“Nadia,” he said at last, “if that’s what you want, I won’t argue with you.” He was calm, but he sounded…deader than usual. Like someone had just punched him hard in the gut. “But if something’s wrong, I might be able to help. I…”
“Riordan,” I said. I had to keep him away from me for his own good. I knew how determined this man was. He had found me again because the Firstborn had ordered him to do so, and he had followed me into Venomhold without blinking. He would come, and he would try to help me, and I might get him killed.
“Nadia,” said Riordan.
I had to hurt him. There wasn’t any other way. I had to inflict enough pain on him that he would hate me.
Oh, God. This was for his own good. I hoped he would understand that someday.
“Riordan,” I said. “Listen to me. I’m breaking up with you because I don’t want to be part of your pattern. You told me what happened to your wife Miranda. You told me what happened to Sasha. The only two women you’ve been with long-term, and you’ve gotten both of them killed. I see the pattern starting over again, and I’m not going be number three. That’s why I’m breaking up with you. You can,” my chest hitched, “you can find some other woman to get killed. I’m done.”
Lies, Arvalaeon would have said. Lies, lies, lies.
There was silence for a long, long time. I tried not to cry.
He just sounded sad when he answered. “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I understand.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Bye, Riordan.”
I hung up.
I started at the phone for a moment. Then I threw it on the sidewalk, and the screen shattered with a crack. That wasn’t nearly satisfying enough, so I stomped on it again and again until the phone broke apart into a pile of shattered glass, twisted plastic, and broken electronics.
That was stupid. I still needed a damn phone, and there was sensitive information on the SIM card and the memory card.
But like I said, my judgment was not at its best. I spat a string of curses, fished the cards out of the debris, and kicked the rest of the broken phone into a storm drain. I shoved the cards into a pocket, my hands shaking with anger as I did.
No, not anger. Something else. I was trying very hard not to break down sobbing on the sidewalk.
Arvalaeon had sent me to hell, and I had died again and again and again. Arvalaeon had sent me to hell, and it had broken me.
But…at least I wouldn’t pull anyone else into hell with me. The people I loved, Russell and the Marneys and Riordan, they would be safe from me.
And as for what happened to me…well, who cared? I didn’t. It was hard to care after dying nearly sixty thousand times.
I walked into the night, not knowing where I was going, and not caring either.
Chapter 2: Poor Handling
As you might have guessed by now, I wasn’t doing well, and I compounded my string of bad decisions that night by stealing a car.
I didn’t need to steal a car. I mean, I had a perfectly fine car that Arvalaeon had given me, and I still had an old Duluth Motors sedan parked in the alley behind the Marneys’ house. But I didn’t want to take the first car because it reminded me of Arvalaeon. And I couldn’t go back to the Marneys’ house, because I had almost killed Russell. I couldn’t face them after what I had done, and they needed to be kept safe from me.
So, I stole a car.
I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want to walk nine miles to my storage unit, either. I found an older Lone Star Motors sedan parked on the curb, one of the models that didn’t have the security chip on the key. I used a spell to unlock the door, hotwired the ignition, and drove off. The entire process took about a minute.
The radio came on as I drove, set to the news station. Some woman with a polite voice reported on the latest news about the death of Baron Castomyr. He was going to be buried with full honors in an elaborate ceremony, and the High Queen was expected to name a new Baron of La Crosse by the end of August…
I cursed in fury and turned off the radio.
Lies, Arvalaeon would have said. Lies, lies, lies. I wondered what would happen if I told the truth, if I went on the Internet and told everyone that Castomyr had been trying to summon a Great Dark One. No, actually, I knew what would happen. I would be captured and executed on a Punishment Day video in short order, and probably the Marneys and Russell as well.
That didn’t faze me. I mean, Homeland Security could only execute me once, and what was one more death? But I did care what happened to Russell and the Marneys.
So I suppose Baron Castomyr would be remembered as a loyal vassal of the High Queen rather than a damned lunatic who nearly wiped out a third of the population of the United States.
Lies, lies, lies.
I ditched the car about six blocks from my storage unit. I had once stolen a truck with Riordan to get away from a banehound, and he had insisted we make an anonymous call to Homeland Security so the owner could get his vehicle back. Except Riordan wasn’t my boyfriend anymore, so I suppose it didn’t matter. Someone would call in the abandoned car eventually, there wouldn’t be anything to link it to me, and that would be that.
The storage facility was nothing special, just long rows of squat cinder block buildings with garage-style doors. I walked to mine and unlocked it. I had various useful things stored there, some legal, some not. My battered Royal Motors Caravanserai van was there. It was an ugly old thing, but it had a lot of cargo space, and I had used it to run over an anthrophage, and it just kept ticking.
I threw my duffel bag into the back, grabbed some other useful things, and climbed into the driver’s seat.
The engine coughed to life, and I confronted a bleak problem.
I didn’t know what to do next.
I couldn’t go back to the Marneys and Russell, not if I wanted to keep them safe from what I had become. I had ended things with Riordan. I suppose the only thing to do was to wait until Lord Morvilind needed me for something.
Until then…
Until then, I decided I wanted to get drunk.
I had never gotten drunk before in my life, and if I was one hundred and seventy-nine years old, it was time to rectify that. Maybe it would help me get some sleep without waking up and throwing fireballs at everything in sight. And maybe it would help me keep some food down without throwing up.
Yeah, I mentioned the nausea, but not how it had started. When wraithwolves killed people, they tended to make a mess of it, and I had been killed by wraithwolves a few thousand times in the Eternity Crucible. Sometimes my own blood had splashed into my mouth as I screamed and fought. Many, many times bits and pieces of my own flesh or internal organs had landed in my mouth while I screamed.
That’s not the kind of thing you forget.
Because of that, I had a hard time eating anything without my gag reflex kicking in, and even if I managed to force food down, it sometimes came back up. Maybe if I got sufficiently drunk, I could keep food down.
So I robbed a liquor store, adding that to my list of questionable decisions for the night.
Granted, with my abilities, robbing a liquor store was downright painless. I drove until I found a place that sold alcohol all night. The store was deserted save for a bored-looking middle-aged man playing a game on his phone behind the counter. By law, only veterans were allowed to buy anything stronger than beer or wine. I could have Masked myself as a veteran and created fake ID in the process, but I was too tired and cranky to bother. I parked a block away, Cloaked myself, and walked through the doors. The clerk glanced up as the door opened of its own accord, then shrugged and looked back at his game. I helped myself to a large bottle of whiskey and a package of paper cups and left the store.
After that, I drove to an all-night fast food place selling fries and cheeseburgers. I was usually a fanatically healthy eater. At least, I had been before the Eternity Crucible. Now I wasn’t eating much of anything at all. Maybe the whiskey would help take the edge off.
I bought a bag full of fries and bacon cheeseburgers from the bored teenage boy manning the window, and then I drove for a while, the greasy smell of the food filling my van. It didn’t smell all that appetizing, but I was hungry, and I wasn’t in the mood to care. Eventually, I got out to the suburbs of Milwaukee, and at about four in the morning I pulled into the parking lot of a big box store that sold homeowner type stuff, toilets and hammers and lumber and the like. Various RVs and motorhomes were parked in the outer reaches of the parking lot since retired veterans often bought themselves a big RV and toured the country while their health held out.
Cloak Games: Tomb Howl Page 2
