Hidden Realms

by Unknown

  But it was faster.

  Darkness engulfed me, and in the black, I heard a voice laughing. Coldness crept over me, paralyzing my muscles and making it hard to breathe. I choked, my strength draining as the light vanished completely and something grabbed my shoulders, trapping me and refusing to let go.

  “Chloe!”

  I screamed, lunging up into a tangle of blankets and Noah’s hands on my arms. Radioactive daylight cast the room in vivid relief for a heartbeat and then vanished, plunging everything into darkness.

  Maddox swatted the switch on the wall. I cringed at the sudden light.

  “What happened?” Baylie cried, leaning over the edge of the top bunk.

  Blinking hard, I looked over to see Noah staring at me.

  “Nightmare,” he answered, as though finding the word on autopilot. “Just a nightmare.”

  “Chloe?” Baylie asked. “You okay?”

  Trembling, I felt my forearms, and breathed again at the realization they were normal. I nodded. “Y-yeah.”

  Noah wouldn’t stop staring at me. Carefully, he eased away from the bed and then rose to his feet.

  The light on the landing came on. “Everything alright?” Diane called from the stairs.

  “Yeah, everything’s fine,” Maddox replied.

  A moment passed. The light beyond the door disappeared. His brow drawing down, Noah hesitated and then walked back to his bunk.

  Maddox turned off the bedroom light.

  I shivered. Noah looked stunned, and I couldn’t think of many reasons why. The room had changed when I first woke up. I’d seen everything so brightly, even if only for a second, and I knew what Zeke and those others did with their eyes.

  And Noah had been there, watching me…

  My hands rubbed at my forearms again.

  Across the room, the bunk ladder creaked as Maddox climbed back up, and I could hear the blankets rustle as Noah returned to his bed.

  He’d seen something. I was certain of it.

  And I had no idea what he was going to do now.

  In the darkness, I pulled the blanket up higher, bundling it around me against the cold I could still feel on my skin. I’d thought I’d been doing okay this far from the ocean. I’d hoped maybe things would be alright.

  Clearly, I’d been wrong.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Zeke

  “No, damn you, I said Sylphaen! The Sylphaen!”

  I slammed my fist into the boulder as the image of the guard on the other end of the connection wavered. Within the hollow in the stone, the shimmering surface of the relay connection steadied again.

  “Did you say Sylphaen?” the guard asked.

  “Yes!”

  He blinked. Ripples distorted his image as he turned away, saying something I couldn’t hear.

  “That’s not possible,” he argued as he looked back to me. “There’s no… back… you–”

  I let out a furious groan as the guard vanished and the glowing blue-white collection of magic dissipated from the hollow in the boulder. It’d taken me forever to get that damn connection working, and that was after I’d swum for nearly an hour, avoiding outlaws and mercenaries and who knew what else that lived out here, before finally spotting the marker leading to this relay station in the middle of nowhere.

  Exhaling, I scowled and pressed my hand to the boulder again, trying to reactivate the magic inside the stone and reclaim the link to the outpost on the edge of Yvaria – the only place I’d been able to reach. Light shivered through the lines beneath the sand, and slowly, the blue-white glow began to accumulate in the hollow again.

  “Zeke?” came a scratchy voice from the other end.

  The picture solidified.

  I blinked, torn between surprise and the urge to swear. “Ren? What are you doing in–”

  My oldest brother made an impatient gesture. “No time. You said people claiming to be the Sylphaen attacked you?”

  “Yeah.”

  The connection went scratchy.

  “Ren?”

  “–come back home, understand?”

  I hit the boulder again.

  “Zeke?”

  “I’m here. What’d you say?”

  “I said come back home. Leave whatever you’re doing and get home. Let us investigate these–”

  “Ren, they’re after a dehaian girl in Santa Lucina. They want to kill her.”

  For a moment, Ren was silent, muscles jumping along the hard line of his jaw. The image wavered and then solidified again.

  “–doesn’t matter. So just get back here. I’ll send people to check on this girl. But you head for Nyciena.”

  I looked away. Ren lived and breathed responsibility – and that was putting it politely – but he wasn’t thinking. I couldn’t just go back to Nyciena and let someone else handle it. I was the only one who’d seen Chloe.

  Turning back to the relay, I shook my head. “Can’t. I’m the only one who knows what she looks like. Just send the guards to Santa Lucina. I’ll meet them.”

  “Zeke, no. This girl isn’t–”

  “No time, Ren. See you when I get back.”

  I broke the connection and shoved away from the boulder, taking off into the open water again. I was more than a few hours from Santa Lucina, if the marker I’d found earlier was any indication. But the guards would take awhile to get there as well, and I was pretty sure of the route they’d take. I’d catch them on the way.

  Building up speed in the water, I swam for the California coast.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chloe

  The others were still in bed when I finally decided to get up. I hadn’t slept since my dream the night before, and as the sun crept over the horizon, I concluded it was time to give up the charade and surrender to another night without sleep.

  Not that I wanted it. Not if that nightmare was waiting for me.

  Shifting my shoulders against the cold still clinging to me, I pulled open the bedroom door and slipped into the hall with my clothes bundled beneath my arm. I changed in the bathroom and folded my pajamas, leaving them in a small pile by the door for lack of anything else to do. I didn’t want to wake anyone by heading back into the bedroom.

  The first floor was still, and Peter and Diane’s door was closed. My stomach growled, the sound loud in the silence, and wincing, I made my way to the kitchen. I’d been too nervous to eat much of anything yesterday, and my body seemed finally ready for me to make up the difference. Thankfully, Diane had brought food in a cooler when we came up here. I grabbed the milk and cereal, and then hunted through the cabinets for a bowl. Breakfast made, I returned to the living room and sank onto the couch.

  Sunlight spread through the room as I ate, the golden beams filtering past the windows that stretched up the height of the wall, all the way to the pinnacle of the room’s cathedral ceiling. Setting my empty bowl aside, I pulled my legs up and then hugged them to my chest as I watched the pink and blue morning.

  The steps creaked.

  I turned. At the top of the stairs, Noah paused. For a moment, he studied me, almost as if deciding what to do, and then slowly, he walked down to the living room.

  “Morning.”

  I swallowed nervously. “Hey.”

  He glanced to his parents’ bedroom, and then came over to the couch. “Sleep okay?” he asked me as he sat down.

  I shrugged a shoulder, watching him. He appeared cautious, as if he was picking his words and actions like they were patches of land in a minefield, but he didn’t looked nearly as freaked out as I’d expected.

  Which was odd.

  “You?” I asked warily.

  He nodded, his gaze on his hands.

  A moment crept by.

  “So,” he said. “First visit to the ocean.”

  My brow drew down. It almost seemed like there was a question in the statement.

  He glanced up at me and I nodded. Echoing the motion, he dropped his gaze to his hands again. “Quite a trip then, I guess
.”

  I didn’t know how to respond.

  He drew a breath. “When I was little, my grandfather used to tell me stories. History, he called it. But they were stories of people who weren’t quite like everyone else. People who had… abilities.” He looked up at me again. “Abilities like making their eyes glow in the dark.”

  I trembled.

  “They loved the ocean, my grandfather said. So much that they couldn’t be apart from it. And if they tried… it’d draw them back. It was their home, you see. They couldn’t really leave it.”

  Noah paused. “He called them dehaians.”

  My arms tightened around my knees, and then I flinched as my skin started to sting. Panicked, I moved to tuck my arms behind my legs.

  Noah reached out, his fingers coming to rest on my wrist.

  I froze.

  “It’s alright,” he said.

  The spikes crept from my forearms. He watched them, not moving away.

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  Noah’s gaze dropped briefly. “A guy whose grandfather told him a lot of stories.”

  “But why…” I tried, trembling as the spikes grew longer. “Why aren’t you…”

  His mouth tightened and he seemed to struggle through the minefield again, finding the words. “Because sometimes the stories are real, and that’s okay.”

  My brow furrowed.

  “Just take a breath,” Noah told me. “He said… he said those were your defenses. Some of them. And if you calm down, I bet they’ll go away.”

  I hesitated, and then pulled in a shaky breath. The spikes started to retreat.

  “You’re safe here, Chloe. I…” He nodded, almost as if to himself. “I promise.”

  The spikes disappeared into my arms. He took his hand from my wrist.

  “You doing okay this far from the ocean?” he asked.

  For a moment, I stared at him, shaken by the reality that someone knew the truth and was fine. Not freaking. Not pressuring me to go into the water.

  Just treating me like I was normal, and being fine.

  “It’s not so bad here,” I whispered.

  A smile flickered across his face and he nodded. “Good.”

  The bedroom door upstairs opened. Carrying her clothes, Baylie started toward the bathroom and then spotted us.

  “Hey there.” She paused. “Everything alright?”

  I nodded. “Yeah,” I replied, feeling like for the first time in a while, the answer was mostly true.

  She looked between us. “Okay,” she allowed, appearing a bit unconvinced. Eyeing us uncertainly, she walked into the bathroom.

  Noah watched her go, and then glanced back to me. “So,” he said, his voice low. “If you’re doing good here, then you want to do something like people on a regular vacation would? Go hiking, maybe?”

  I gave a small laugh, the sound lost somewhere between relief and incredulity. “That’d be nice.”

  He grinned. “Alright, then,” he said, humor in his green eyes. “A regular vacation it is.”

  ~~~~~

  “So when do you guys want to take a break?” Baylie called as we headed up the next slope of the trail.

  I looked back. The narrow dirt track stretched behind us, twisting in a slow decline down the hillside. Trees sheltered part of the path, and the sunlight cast dark shadows from their branches. At Baylie’s heels, Daisy kept pace, panting in the heat of the bright summer day.

  “There’s a nice stretch of the river up ahead,” Maddox offered, hefting the cooler bag higher on his shoulder. “We could do lunch there?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Baylie agreed.

  I kept walking. She sounded tired and hungry, and really, I should have been as well. I’d barely slept last night and we’d been hiking for the better part of three hours, winding our way through the trails near the Delaneys’ cabin. But something about the fresh air and brilliant blue sky just felt so wonderful, I couldn’t help but keep moving.

  Noah glanced back at me as he crested the slope ahead. I blushed and looked away, my heart picking up speed.

  And then there was that.

  A smile pulled at my mouth as he continued on. I hadn’t expected it to feel this great, having him know what was going on. He was so calm about the whole thing, so normal. It was unbelievable, and more than a little exhilarating.

  Even if I worried it couldn’t last.

  Biting my lip, I climbed over the top of the hill and continued down the slope to the next turn of the trail. I didn’t think he’d told his brother or parents anything, and from the way Maddox was acting, it really seemed like Noah hadn’t. But I wasn’t certain I could ask him to stay quiet on the subject. In my family, it wouldn’t have been a big deal for me to keep things from my mom and dad. I spent most of my time doing that anyway.

  But it didn’t take a genius to see that the Delaneys were different. Closer than my family had ever been.

  I just wasn’t sure how I felt about anyone else knowing what was going on.

  The trail led around a curve and then opened onto a flat stretch of riverbank. As Daisy ran ahead of us to the water, I followed the guys to the shade of the trees, where Maddox was opening the cooler bag while Noah spread out a picnic blanket.

  “So,” Baylie said as Maddox fished the food from the bag, “how’s college going?”

  Maddox handed us both sandwiches. “Not bad. My psych TA from this past semester was a real nutcase, though.”

  “Well, there’s some irony,” Baylie observed.

  “Yeah, no kidding. He kept insisting we study nine hours a day because, you know, we were in college now, so we needed to suck it up or whatever.”

  “Seriously? What, was this a class for grads or something?”

  He shook his head. “Just a one-hundred level. I was only taking it because I needed the gen-ed credit.”

  “Oh, good grief.”

  “I think he believed it was his mission to toughen us up for college or something. Weed out people who, I don’t know, he thought were there for the wrong reasons.”

  “Like getting a gen-ed credit.”

  “Apparently.”

  I looked at the river as they kept talking. The water here didn’t have the same pull on me as the ocean – maybe because it was freshwater rather than salt. But the current was beautiful as it swept around the rocks, and the sound of the river provided a background to everything the others were saying.

  “So’d you stay in the class?” Baylie asked.

  “Yeah. Somebody complained to the department head, and he talked to the guy. Made him calm down a bit.”

  “Wow. The other TAs aren’t like that though, right?”

  I kept eating, half-listening as the conversation continued. Maddox had started at USC about two years prior, and Baylie fully intended to go there as well. I did too, for that matter, if only to stay close to her and get near the ocean at the same time.

  Though now that I thought about it, I wondered if college would even be a possibility for me.

  The others finished their lunch, and Maddox rose to rinse the cooler bag out in the river. Still talking to him, Baylie stood and followed, calling Daisy back toward her as she went.

  “You doing alright?” Noah asked as they walked off.

  I nodded. “Just wondering about college.”

  He hesitated. “Where are you planning on going?”

  I glanced to him. His face was so carefully neutral, it made my heart pound. “USC. Or, you know, somewhere like that. If I get in, anyway.”

  “Huh,” he commented.

  Silence fell between us for a moment.

  “That’d work, you know,” he offered casually, his attention on the river. “With the coast being so close and everything. And maybe, if you wanted, you could even come by Santa Lucina from time to time.”

  A smile pulled at my lips and I felt myself starting to blush. “I’d like that.”

  He nodded, keeping his gaze on the water, though his lip twitched
as well. On the shore, Maddox had finished with the bag, and was now standing with Baylie, discussing pointers for campus while Daisy investigated the nearby bushes.

  Seconds slid past. Absently, I played with the edge of the picnic blanket, trying to figure out how to ask the question without ruining the moment.

  “So,” I started, “have you told anyone? You know, about me?”

  Noah didn’t respond. I glanced at him.

  Expression fading from his face, he watched his brother. “No, not yet.”

  I hesitated. “Could you maybe not?”

  He looked over at me.

  “I don’t want people treating me like a freak,” I explained awkwardly.

  “They won’t.”

  “But–”

  “Really. My dad, my brother, we all grew up with my grandfather’s stories. Even Diane has heard them. And we’re not…” He trailed off, as though changing his mind about the words. “It’d be better if they knew. Better for you, better for me. I don’t want to lie to them, and you…” He grimaced. “I heard the crap that guy was yelling at the house. ‘Landwalker’. That’s not something your average intruder says. So he’s one of them, isn’t he? Both him and that Jesse guy.”

  I hesitated, and then nodded.

  “Do you have any idea why they’re after you?”

  I shook my head.

  He sighed. “It’d help if my family knew about you. Knew what we were dealing with.”

  Discomfort moving through me, I dropped my gaze to the picnic blanket.

  “You’re not a freak, Chloe,” he said quietly. “It’s hard, finding out you’re not quite what you always thought you were. But you’re not a freak.”

  I looked back up at him. He almost sounded like he understood.

  “Maybe think about it?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  Doing the same, he glanced to the river. Baylie was laughing at something Maddox had said.

  “Does she know?” Noah asked.

  “No,” I admitted.

  He looked back to me.

  “I tried to tell her, but I just… I didn’t know what to say,” I explained. “I don’t really know anything about this.”