by Rainy Kaye
I winced and looked away as more whirlpools came into view, dotted around the lot. Goosebumps raised on my arms, and I rubbed my skin, trying to usher them away. I had seen far worse in Green River.
Whatever the mage was up to, Joseph Stone would be by soon to slap him around.
The last container also proved to be empty.
I turned to Randall, twining my fingers together. “I guess they unloaded everything inside. There are no windows to peek in, so what should we do? Knock on the front door? Pretend we’re delivering pizza?”
He sucked in a breath between his teeth and let it out in a huff as he scanned the building. “Let’s see what’s on the other side.”
Clenching my fingers together over my stomach, I hunched my shoulders a little and charged toward the warehouse before I lost all my nerve. It was crazy to be out here, and the whirlpools weren’t helping to ease me any.
As we made our way around the warehouse, I kept my eye out for any people, here or across the street, but we seemed to be alone.
On the other side of the building, the lot was void of any containers or semi-trucks, and the warehouse didn’t even offer a loading dock door. A row of small windows lined near the roof.
“There.” I pointed with one hand while shielding my eyes against the sunlight with the other. “If we can figure out how to get up there, we can probably peek in and get an idea of what we are up against.”
I surveyed the lot, but nothing had been left out—no ladder, no chairs, not even a trashcan.
“It’s too high for me to boost you,” Randall said, but an idea formed on his face. “We do have the car though.”
I scowled at him. “Gonna need you to elaborate, sir.”
With a smirk, he led me back around the building. “It’s a big empty lot. We can park the car right up next to the warehouse and climb onto the roof to look in through the window.”
I scowled at him. “You’re willing to use your car as a stepstool?”
“Oh, I already bid it farewell,” he said with a sigh. “I know my car is going to be trashed by the time we get through whatever we’re going to have to do, so I’ve just made my peace with it.”
I patted his shoulder. “Fiona will be touched.”
With that, I jogged over to the car and waited as Randall strode over, tossing the keys in his hand, smirk on his face. My heart kind of fluttered, but it might have been nerves.
To be fair, that was part of it. The rest I would deal with later.
We dropped back into the car, and Randall navigated it past the containers and creepy whirlpools and turned into the back of the warehouse. Watching out the side window, he eased the car next to the building, and then put it in park.
“You want to go up top?” he asked, flicking a finger upwards. “You’re more nimble than I am, and I can brace you on the way up.”
“Fine,” I said, pushing open the door, “but I want not one word about footprints.”
He laughed, working himself over the center console and out through the passenger door behind me. We stood together, staring up at the windows.
“I mean, if people are inside, they are pretty oblivious to what is going on out here,” I said.
“Maybe it’s all robots,” he said, and then offered his hand. “Alley-oop.”
I took his hand and stepped up on the bumper, pressing my weight into him. Carefully, I lifted my other foot to stand on the hood and then, stabilizing myself by bearing down on his hand until I thought one of us might snap a bone, I brought my other foot up onto the hood.
He stretched straighter, raising his arm a little, as I worked my way up across the hood to the windshield. Sucking in a deep breath and holding it, I released his hand and slammed both palms onto the top of the car. Getting up the windshield took a couple of tries, but then I was on the top, crouched down, and I had to wonder why this was so much harder than my acrobatics on Arlo’s rooftop.
Probably because I was dead tired now.
Also grits. I was full of grits.
Like a dumb music box dancer, I put out my arms a little for balance and shuffled my feet around in a slow circle until I was facing the window, except I came right to the sill. Leaning forward, I braced my hands against the side of the building, angled over the gap that allowed for the side mirror, and then arched my back to see into the warehouse.
It was empty.
No men ready to kill us, but also no Fiona.
“Well,” I said, voice strained as I pushed back off the building. My foot tried to slip from under me, but I dropped down, pressing my fingers to the top of the car and putting way more weight on them than I should. Even my toes were straining in my shoes. Clenching my teeth, I twisted around, lowering my hips, until I was sitting, and then scooted myself forward so my legs dangled over the windshield.
Only then could I breathe properly again.
“Just a bunch of old As Seen on TV products?” Randall asked.
“Nope.” I squinted at him with one eye. “They’ve abandoned ship, apparently. Everything is gone.”
The disappointment in my chest must have registered on my face, because Randall waved me down and said, “Let’s go check it out. Maybe there’s something left behind that will give us a lead.”
I started to protest, but if we didn’t investigate inside, we would have to admit defeat—that we had lost Fiona. Walking around the empty warehouse would at least buy me a few more minutes of hope before I gave in to all the awful feelings brewing inside.
“Sure,” I said weakly, and he put up his hand to help me off the car.
With my feet back on the ground, I continued to hold his hand as we rounded the warehouse and headed for the front entrance. At the front, I let go of him and hung back as he took the lead and shoved open the door.
Did any of these other warehouses on the street belong to the same group? Maybe Joseph would know. I would ask him when he came into town to stop the mage.
He would have another idea, at least.
I knew it was nonsense, but the journey couldn’t be over that easily. There had to be a way to find her.
Squaring my shoulders, I started for the open door.
“Hey!” a voice shouted behind me.
Lips parted in a silent gasp, I spun around as a man with thick wavy hair to his shoulders flicked his hand, flailing a green tentacle of magic right at me.
Pulling up my magic, I shot out my hands and released it. A barely visible wall, like a sheet of ice, spread out in front of me. The tentacles slammed into it and sizzled out.
I took a step back, shaking my hands as I realized they were icy, and took in the wall. I slowly turned my head as I followed the wall down in either direction.
It went on as far as I could see and spanned straight up toward the sky.
All words caught in my chest.
Footsteps hurried toward me, but I couldn’t look away.
The man on the other side of the shield tried the tentacle again.
I took another step back, bumping into Randall, as the tentacle slammed into the wall and disintegrated.
“We need to go,” Randall said, gripping my shoulders.
I nodded, numbly, but I stared dumbfounded at the wall. The one I had put there.
The one I had no idea how to make.
“Saf, let’s go.” He hooked me under the arm and tugged me away from the wall, away from the man who launched another tentacle.
We hurried the opposite direction, to the side of the building where the car was parked, but the wall had picked up past the warehouse and continued down the lot, cutting us off from our vehicle.
With a glare back in the direction of the man, Randall urged me forward. We increased our pace, jogging out of the lot and across the empty road, following the line of the wall. It had to end somewhere, but it continued on through lot after lot, melding around every structure.
It wasn’t until we had made it to the end of the block before Randall spoke.
“T
his wall has to end somewhere. We’ll have to circle around and grab our car after that asshole leaves,” he said, and then gestured across the street. “Let’s turn here and get back to civilization.”
“But the car,” I said, though the words came out smashed up. I couldn’t quite find my grip.
There was no way I could make a wall like that, not even a small one let alone one that spanned on for several blocks. Something else must have happened.
“I know,” he said, ushering me forward. “We’ll come back for it when it’s safe.”
I nodded, but my brain continued to churn over what had happened.
Across the street, we hurried down the sidewalk and found ourselves on a residential street with small white and blue houses and green yards, with southern oak and cypress creating a thin canopy that let through the early afternoon sun.
“So, that wall thing—” he began, but I shook my head.
“I don’t know how to do it,” I said with a bite, even though it was unwarranted. “I can’t make stuff like that.”
“Well, you kind of just did, and it was pretty amazing, so let’s add that to the repertoire.”
I stopped dead in my tracks, and he turned to face me.
“I can’t make a wall, Randall,” I said, snapping off each word. “It was a fluke.”
His gaze roamed over me, but he put up his hands. “Okay.”
He turned and headed down the road again.
Part of me wanted to yell at him, ask if that was all he had to say about this, but the more rational part had to wonder why I wanted to fight him about it in the first place.
Letting out a growl, I hurried to catch up with him. “Where are we going?”
“Some place we can sit down and figure out what to do,” he said.
Before I could reply, the ground felt uneven, and my feet tried to go from under me. I pressed my palm against the trunk of a southern oak to steady myself. Randall clenched a signpost with one hand.
When the sensation happened again, I realized the ground was shaking.
I stared wide-eyed at Randall. “We had tremors in Green River when she was loose too. We need to get—”
I was going to say out of this city, but that meant leaving behind Fiona.
Randall released his grip on the signpost and slipped his hand under mine, tearing it from the tree trunk.
“Let’s keep moving,” he said. “We need to find somewhere to take cover.”
We started down the street again, my attention fixed to the ground. I expected cracks to form in the asphalt, for the world to split apart into ravines, but nothing happened, not even another tremor.
As we continued on, nearly at a run, my thoughts flipped through ideas of where we could wait out an attack from the mage. Nothing came to mind. The ruin we had seen on the way into New Orleans had been nothing compared to what the mage was capable of, to what he was going to do. He was unlikely to be more merciful than Eliza Brown had been.
We rounded another corner. Randall halted so fast I rammed into him.
People filled the street, but all of them wore puffy purple and green outfits and matching masks with diamonds and swirls and feathers. They mulled about the street in small packs, kicking and picking at the trees and ground.
I started to turn back, but Randall continued forward. I tugged his arm, and motioned to the groups.
“They don’t seem to care about us,” Randall said.
It was true. They had seen us already, but we had garnered no reaction from them.
I let Randall lead the way through them, and as we wove among the crowds, I caught glimpses of their black eyes peering through the eyeholes of the mask.
They were like the patrons from the restaurant after the streamer had touched them. Had all these people been caught by it too? Had they been the ones preparing to escape? Had a banner swung through on their way out and turned them into…whatever these were?
Demons.
As we passed through, they peered at us with those hungry black eyes but didn’t make any attempt to bother us. Still, I held my breath, muscles tense, ready to fight or run if they made a sudden motion.
Something moved up ahead, down the street, and everyone turned to face in that direction. Randall and I stood among the masked demons, as a line of vehicles approached. They were tall and wide and decked out in purple, green, and gold, with twirling, moving, swinging parts.
Marching band music grew increasingly louder.
“It’s a parade,” Randall said as we remained rooted in our spot.
The first float wasn’t much bigger than a car, and it boasted fleur-de-lis decorations on the side and a curtain of black and gold streamers mounted at the top.
“Uh, it’s not Mardi Gras, is it?” I asked absently.
Randall shook his head. “Nope.”
The next float dwarfed the first, and my throat tightened as I took in the entirety of it. From the front of the float jutted three enormous jester heads that seemed to be watching the crowd in return. The sides of the float carried an artistic menagerie of giant flowers, Mardi Gras masks, and strings with beads larger than my head.
At the top of the float stood statues of jesters in poses of dancing and laughing with wrapped poles in between them. In the back rose two more jester heads that guarded a golden throne with purple and green cushions. To complete the masterpiece, a mechanical jester with every detail down to a painted face and an elaborate three-prong hat sat on the throne, its head moving slowly side to side.
I turned to follow the path of the float as it rolled by, trailed by several more impressive but not nearly as elaborate floats. The band, decked in purple, brought up the rear, accompanied by dancers in blue and fuchsia feathers.
Above the parade floated a black orb, and from it extended three streamers of light—one purple, one green, and one gold—that snaked through the sky and disappeared far out of view.
“Look,” I said, pointing. “That’s what is causing the demons.”
“Yeah, I don’t think we should risk taking a potshot at that,” he said. “Let’s not piss off the mage, at least until Joseph gets here.”
“Fair enough.” I fluttered my fingers to indicate we should keep moving.
We set forward again, working our way through the crowd of demons, even though I still wasn’t convinced they weren’t going to suddenly turn on us.
They seemed to have no interest.
“Let’s see if we can get the car,” Randall whispered. “We can’t afford to lose our only transportation out of here.”
I nodded as he guided us down an open, well-lit alley, with short fences. It had been kept clean of debris and nothing strange lurked in the corners, which was more than I could say for out on the street.
“Hopefully that wall is down now,” I said. “Otherwise, we’re going to have to take a long hike to get around it to reach the car.”
Randall raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything.
I started to comment that I still didn’t know anything about how I had made the wall.
Footsteps crunched behind us. I spun around, expecting a few demons had parted from the crowd, but found a man with his hair pulled back in a ponytail and a baseball bat over his shoulder.
Without a word, he swung the bat. It connected with my head, and I fell to the ground, unconscious.
3
When I woke, it took me a moment to find myself. I was crumpled up on carpet, much of my weight resting on one shoulder, my arm tucked underneath me. It was as if someone had thrown me on the floor like a towel.
Clamping my jaw, I slowly untangled myself and pushed upright, onto my knees. Shadows and light danced across my unstable vision, and I blinked a few times until I could see.
Ahead of me stood a large bed made up with a dusty rose-colored duvet and white nightstands on either side. To my right, a large window covered with sheer curtains filtered in light through tree branches.
My neck ached and felt locked into
place, and I had to force myself to turn my head to take in the rest of the room. Nothing about the interior stood out to me, except for it looked straight out of a magazine photoshoot and not a place where real people lived.
Randall laid sprawled out near the door, stomach down, his head turned away from me. On hands and knees, I padded over to him and then gently shook his shoulder.
I lowered my lips to his ear.
“Randall,” I hissed, “we gotta get up. Rise and shine.”
He moaned, and I slid my hand around his face to clamp his mouth shut.
“Hey, remember that part where someone is holding us hostage?” I whispered with an edge. “How about we don’t let them know we’re awake.”
Randall stilled, and then popped straight up, reaching for the bronze doorknob.
I leaned forward, slapping his hand out of the way, and pointed at the door and put my finger to my lips.
He nodded tightly.
Slowly, carefully, I pushed to my feet. Dizziness swirled in my head, like wine in a glass, and I pressed my hand to the footboard of the bed until the sensation passed. With a small gesture at Randall, I crept to the window. The floor creaked under my steps, and I held my breath after each one, expecting someone to burst through the door. I had no idea what they wanted, but it was a familiar scenario at this point. My life had taken a sharp right turn after meeting Arlo.
At the window, I pulled aside the thin curtains and blinked against the setting sun. We were on the second floor of a building, overlooking an expanse of greenery guarded by tall oak trees draped in Spanish moss.
The landscape faded into the distance, giving no indication of where we were.
Randall came up behind me.
“What’s the odds we break both legs if we try to jump?” I asked, nodding out the window.
He nudged past me and stared silently at the ground.
“There’s a long balcony to the left,” I said, squeezing close to him, so our heads were side by side as we twisted to get a good view of the situation. “I’m not sure we can Batman jump to it, though.”
Randall stepped back and rubbed one hand over his face. “I think one of us can kind of swing the other over to that balcony, then they can assess the situation.”
