by Anne Bishop
A feeling of dread swept through Lukene, making her stop and look around.
What had drawn her to this path? Why did everything feel out of balance? The dark resonance, usually suppressed by the presence of so many Landscapers, felt as if it were leaking out of the forbidden garden, seeping into the ground and spreading out to contaminate the rest of the school. And it was strong now. Terribly strong.
Which was impossible. Unthinkable. She was overreacting to something that was always there in the background of the school. This was probably nothing more than a reaction to her confrontation with Nigelle and her thoughts about Glorianna.
But she hurried along the little-used path, and when she reached the archway and saw the open wrought-iron gate, she froze for a moment. Then she spun around, intending to run back to the school buildings and warn everyone that the unthinkable had happened.
Has the unthinkable happened?
A whispered thought. Calm, soothing, coaxing.
Lukene hesitated, turned back to look through the archway.
If she went running back now, what could she tell the Head Instructor? That someone had opened the old gate? That would cause an uproar among the Instructors in both the Landscapers’ and Bridges’ schools, but it wouldn’t tell them anything. And she didn’t actually know someone had opened the gate.
You don’t want to make another mistake, the voice whispered.
Lukene shook her head. No, she didn’t want to make another mistake.
She stepped through the archway—and gagged on the smell of rotting meat.
No more mistakes, the voice whispered. They eat at you. Eat you right to the bone.
Mushrooms burst as Lukene kicked them in her rush to the gate. Just a quick look to confirm nothing had changed inside, she thought as she squeezed through the opening. Then she would report to the Head Instructor, who would assign workers to replace the gate. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear.
The small hole in the old stone wall throbbed inside her like a bad tooth.
“No,” she whispered. “Oh, no.”
Back through the gate. Racing across the short distance to the archway. Distracted by a movement on the wall, she stumbled as she glanced up and…
…she ran across endless, rust-colored sand beneath a sky the color of ripe bruises. Her heart pounded, her arms and legs pumped for speed, but the creatures behind her kept getting closer, closer.
Guardians and Guides, how had she gotten here? One moment she was running for the archway. Then a movement, a stumble, and…
She ran, gulping air that felt too hot, too dry. Feet pounded the endless sand.
Travel lightly. All she needed was a few moments to calm her mind, find her balance, and resonate with the access point of one of her landscapes. That would bring her back to her garden at the school. Then she’d be safe. Then she could warn the others that—
One foot slid over something just under the surface, breaking her stride. She flung her arms out to keep her balance, but that brief hesitation cost her. She felt the slashing bite on her left calf, felt blood flowing down her leg as fear gave her speed.
The calf muscles in her left leg seized up. She lost her balance. Fell on her hands and one knee. Up again in a heartbeat, but it was still enough time for another one to reach her, to slash at the back of her right thigh.
Running again. Running and running, trying to ignore the wounds, the blood, the muscles that were getting too stiff to obey the mind’s frantic commands.
Then she caught a glimpse of white and veered toward the mounds, not wondering what they were or why she hadn’t noticed them before. If she could reach the top of one, maybe she could keep the creatures away long enough to get back to her garden at the school.
But as she got closer, fighting for every stride, she saw black, chitinous, segmented bodies pouring out of the top of the mounds, running toward her.
She tried to veer again, but the calf muscles in her left leg stopped working. She staggered. Barely kept herself from falling. In a scream of terror and defiance, she turned and grabbed the creature that was almost on top of her, lifting it up in both hands.
For a second she looked at the head, the jaws, the legs. Her mind supplied a word: ant. But this thing was as long as her arm from elbow to fingers. Screaming, she hurled it at the others rushing toward her.
She tried to run, but her legs didn’t work anymore. She fell full-length on the sand.
And they were on her, the ones that had chased her, the ones from the mounds. She screamed as their jaws ripped out pieces of flesh, as her blood drenched the sand. She kept bucking, trying to throw them off, but there were so many now, her movements produced no more than another ripple under the mound of glistening black bodies.
Then she stopped moving. Stopped screaming.
When they finally left, the workers returning to the mounds, the scouts returning to the endless landscape, all that was left was a darker patch of wet sand, scraps of cloth, and clean bones.
Chapter Three
Present
Clutching the penny, Lynnea crept toward the wish well. There was no one around at this time of night. No one would see her here and mention it to Mam, who said tossing coins into the wish well was a waste of good money. And Mam would be very angry if she even suspected Lynnea wished for something beyond what Mam thought she deserved to have—food, serviceable clothes, and a place to sleep.
Besides, if Mam found out she’d gone to the wish well, she’d have to explain where she’d gotten the coin, since she wasn’t allowed to have money. And since Mam searched her tiny, barren room several times a week to make sure she wasn’t hiding anything she was forbidden to have, she wouldn’t keep the penny for long.
So she had to come tonight, had to sneak out of the farmhouse after Mam, Pa, and Ewan had fallen asleep. You needed a coin in order to make a wish at the well, and there was no telling how long it might be before Mam bobbled the egg-money jar again, spilling a few coins on the kitchen floor. Mam’s sharp eyes hadn’t noticed the penny next to a leg of the kitchen table. But Lynnea had seen it—and had convinced herself that the sunlight coming through the windows at just that moment, casting the shadow that had hidden the coin, meant she was supposed to have the penny in order to have this one chance to make a wish.
Holding her hand over the wish well, Lynnea whispered, “I wish…” But there were so many wishes crowding up inside her, she didn’t know which one to choose. And all she had was a penny. Maybe you could get only a small wish granted if you dropped a penny in the well. But a small wish wasn’t what she wanted. What she really wanted…
I wish I lived in a different place. I wish I could have friends. I wish I could do things right instead of always doing the wrong thing, no matter how hard I try. I wish I could find someone special to love. I wish someone loved me.
Something strange and powerful washed through her, startling her so much her hand snapped open.
The penny dropped into the well, and the feeling faded.
Lynnea stepped away from the well, wiping her hands on her much-mended skirt. Then she glanced at the sky and felt fear—such a familiar sensation—ripple through her. The farmhouse was beyond the other side of the village. If she didn’t hurry, she wouldn’t get back before the others got up and discovered she’d been out.
Wondering if anything good would come from the risk she’d taken tonight, Lynnea lifted her skirt above her knees and ran back to the farmhouse.
Sebastian stood at the end of the alley. The colored pole-lights that gave the Den’s main street a festively decadent appearance barely touched the entrance, as if even created light didn’t want to enter that dark space.
He was a demon. This was his landscape. But he didn’t want to walk into that dark, didn’t want to see whatever was at the other end of the alley.
Didn’t matter what he wanted. The crowd that had huddled at the edge of the alley, waiting for Teaser to fetch him, simply watched him now. Humans and d
emons alike, they watched him.
Beside him, Teaser extended a hand and took the torch someone passed to him.
“I’ll go with you,” Teaser said, looking pale and sick.
“I too,” a voice growled. “Go with you.”
The crowd parted for the bull demon. Big, mean, and not too bright, they came to the Den to drink in the taverns and bellow at the dancing girls. The wickedly curved horns could gore a man, and despite the bovine cast to their features, it was said they ate raw meat…of any kind.
This one held a thick wooden club that ended in a ball filled with metal spikes.
Walking into a confined space with a bull demon that was carrying a vicious-looking weapon wasn’t something any sane person would do, so feeling relief at the offer told Sebastian better than anything else could how deeply he feared what had been found in the alley.
“Thank you,” Sebastian said. He closed his eyes for a moment, gathered his courage…and walked into the alley.
Something wrong here. The ground felt soft, fluid…as if it might ripple under his feet at any moment.
No. Hard-packed ground didn’t shift, didn’t ripple. He just felt sick, a little dizzy. Which was understandable considering what he expected to find.
As they walked forward, the torchlight finally unveiled the other end of the alley.
The three of them froze. The bull demon’s breathing suddenly changed, sounding harsh and wet.
The body of the succubus they’d found a week earlier had been bad. This one was worse. Much worse.
Female. So mutilated he couldn’t say if he’d ever seen her in the Den before, could barely say with any certainty that the thing spilled over the alley was female.
“Human,” Teaser whispered.
Sebastian jerked, breaking the awful hold the corpse had on him that had kept him staring at it. He looked at Teaser. “You recognize her?”
Teaser shuddered. “The bracelet. She always wears that wide gold bracelet. Has a rich husband. She’s a mean bitch who likes to play rough games in bed. Husband likes meat-and-potato sex, so she comes here to roll in the muck and do it naughty.”
She’s not going to do anything anymore, Sebastian thought, worried about the way Teaser talked as if the woman were going to sit up at any moment and laugh at them for being taken in by her hideous joke.
“Let’s—” Fear suddenly clamped icy hands around his spine. “Did you hear that?”
The bull demon waggled his ears and snorted. Sebastian had no idea if that meant yes or no.
The ground felt soft again, fluid again. And he would have sworn on everything he held dear that he heard a whisper of sly, wicked laughter coming from nearby.
He knew the Den. Knew these alleys as well as he knew the main streets. Something wasn’t right here.
“Let’s go,” he said, backing away from the corpse. Was there something moving up there on the walls? Something just beyond the torchlight? “Teaser, let’s go.”
The alley wasn’t long, but he felt as if he labored for hours to gain each step.
Halfway back to the street and the crowd. He turned and focused on Philo and Mr. Finch, two humans who had found their way to the Den and had settled in to stay.
Then he heard it. A faint scratching as something shifted on the wall.
He didn’t think. There wasn’t room inside him to think, not when he was certain that if he didn’t get out of that alley now, he’d end up like that woman. Or worse.
He sprinted for the mouth of the alley. Between one step and the next, the alley stretched like warm taffy, and the people waiting for him receded as the hard ground turned to sand that pulled at his feet, slowing him down. In another moment the alley would disappear and there would be nothing but sand, nothing but—
No! He was in the Den, in an alley. A short alley. Hard ground beneath him. Stone walls on either side of him. Teaser and the bull demon running just behind him. Familiar people waiting for him a few steps away. Just a few steps away. Just—
They burst out of the alley and were caught by the crowd.
His heart pounding, Sebastian spun around, deaf to the cries and questions of the humans and demons around him.
He’d almost slipped into another landscape. The alley had almost changed into another landscape. A terrible place…from which he would never return.
The certainty that something terrible had existed in that other landscape made his legs weak.
“I need a drink.” Now as desperate to get away from the crowd as he’d been to reach them, Sebastian shoved his way through the bodies and headed for Philo’s place.
Standing at the back of the alley, It watched the crowd follow the incubus like a herd of trembling sheep. On another night, It would have walked among them, looking like a well-to-do, middle-aged gentleman who had come to the Den for a little gambling, a little whoring. On another night, they would have looked at It and seen potential prey. The succubus It had killed a few days ago had certainly seen It that way. The human female stinking up the alley had been less convinced that another “human” could give her the same sensual thrill as an incubus. It had shown her It wasn’t human—and then It had shown her other things. Not that she’d been able to see most of them, since her eyes were one of the first pieces of forfeit.
Her fear had spilled out with the rest of her, a delicious feast of emotions, spiced at times with the hope that someone would see her, help her. Killing the succubus, a creature so diluted from the purebloods of her kind, had produced the first shivers of fear in the hearts of the people who lived in this place. But the human female’s terror, coaxed and nurtured in the few minutes It had taken to kill her, had seeped into the ground, changing the alley’s resonance into something It could use as a connection to one of Its own landscapes. Then It wouldn’t have to move through landscapes held by Its enemies in order to reach this hunting ground.
But something had fought Its attempt to shift the three males into the bonelovers’ landscape. They had almost crossed over, had felt the sand beneath their feet for a moment. But something—or someone—had been strong-willed enough to hold on to the alley and keep them in this place. Anything that strong was a rival to be eliminated.
But even a strong rival could be beaten if fear was molded into a sharp enough weapon.
It resonated, imposing Its will on the ground around It—forcing Ephemera to yield to Its desire.
Between the alley’s stone walls, the ground changed into rust-colored sand around the corpse.
It shifted form, Its large body changing color to match the stone while Its eight legs climbed the wall. Then It waited.
A few minutes later, the first bonelover appeared. Not long after that, the sand was hidden under a mass of glistening black bodies.
A little girl’s fear of ants had been the seed It had nurtured long ago, feeding that fear until the girl had been glutted with it, then hollowed out by it. Her terror, day after day, had pulsed through the land, giving It the power to reshape something small and natural into a nightmare come alive—a nightmare people called bonelovers because that was all that had been left of the little girl who had been their first prey.
Sighing like a sated lover, It watched the last bonelover disappear. Being simpleminded creatures, they couldn’t cross over into the alley. For them, the alley didn’t exist. But anyone on this side of that fluid border who could be lured or driven onto that sand would disappear into the bonelovers’ landscape—and never return.
It climbed down the wall, Its body changing as It touched the sand. As a bonelover, It raced across the sand to the access point It had created that would take It back to the enemies’ lair—the place they called the Landscapers’ School. It had found a safe place there, a dark place where It could hide while It anchored Its landscapes within other landscapes—and searched for the landscape where the Dark Ones now lived.
As for the humans and other creatures who lived in this hunting ground…When they came back for the female’s
body, they would find sand instead of hard ground, an elegant dress that was now tattered rags, a wide gold bracelet…and clean bones.
Sinking into a chair, Sebastian braced his arms on one of the tables scattered around the courtyard of Philo’s place. His body shook, as if it comprehended something his mind couldn’t bring into focus.
Teaser, collapsing into a chair opposite his, looked just as sick, just as frightened.
What had happened in that alley? Glorianna had told him once that a person couldn’t cross over into a landscape if the heart wasn’t open to what it held, just like you couldn’t always get back to a landscape you’d known if something had changed inside you so that your heart no longer resonated with that place. When you crossed a resonating bridge, the borders and boundaries that defined the landscapes could become as fluid as a dream. The only constant in Ephemera was that it was ever-changing.
So what did it mean that he, Teaser, and the bull demon had almost stumbled into another landscape without crossing any kind of bridge? How could two landscapes meld so that you saw one fade as the other became dominant?
Nothing like that had happened in the Den before.
Philo, a short, round, balding man who served the best food in the Den, hurried up to them and clattered two whiskey glasses on the table. Sweat beaded his forehead, but his hands were steady as he poured drinks and pushed the glasses toward Sebastian and Teaser.
Teaser gulped down the whiskey. Sebastian, afraid to haze the edges of his mind and slip into nightmare, took a cautious sip.
The crowd gathered in the street just beyond the courtyard, but there were a few precious minutes of silence before Philo shifted from one foot to the other, drawing Sebastian’s attention.
“This is the second one in two weeks,” Philo said. “There is no demon race that kills like that. Nothing in the Den kills like that. That’s why, when we found this one, we asked Teaser to fetch you.”
Sebastian frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Philo and Teaser wouldn’t look at him. When he glanced at the crowd, none of them would look at him.
