by Kit Hallows
She didn't flinch as she matched my stare with her own simmering fury, and then her lips curled into a smile. "Morgan Rook." Her words were laced with cold loathing. "That's your name, isn't it? You've been stalking me," she sighed, her breath frosting the glass. "I remember you, you murdered my Amelia. For that you will hurt. Far more than you already do now. There's a ritual I observe. The summoning of the woken eye. It takes seven full days but it brings so much focus and power. Especially when the sacrifice is made to endure relentless suffering until the culmination. One day soon, you will become that sacrifice. I swear it."
Amelia? My mind flashed back to the night I'd first encountered Wyght, and the ritual she'd performed for whatever god or devil she'd been trying to raise. I recalled the agony clouding the face of the witch I'd shot, and how Wyght had carried her into the darkness before I could stop her. "I wasn't aiming to kill your friend."
"Her name was Amelia, she was my sister in arms and you took her life."
"That bullet was meant for you." I glanced at the witches in the cells beyond. "But saying that, I'd have eradicated your whole coven if I'd had the chance."
"You did have the chance." She laughed, baring long white teeth. "And am I to understand that you lured me out here after all this time because you tried to poison me that night, and wound up poisoning your own lover instead? You incompetent fool. Her blood is on your hands, not mine."
The dark tide rising inside me surged through my heart. I slammed my palms against the glass and the cell wall began to darken.
Elsbeth Wyght stepped away, her eyes straying to the black cloud-like fissures my rage had fused into the glass. I hammered it again and the darkness grew, along with the glimmer of fear on her face. And then curiosity. "You still have power left." She seemed almost impressed.
With the sound of her voice came a fresh wave of rage. I smashed my fists against the glass and two dark swirling eddies formed where my flesh and bones had hammered the wall.
A streak of color flushed across Wyght's face as she watched. She sighed, leaned forward and placed her hands upon the glass, the gesture almost intimate. "Good." Her voice was low and breathy. "Keep going, Morgan Rook."
And then she blew me a kiss, and the gesture ignited more fury in me than I could contain. I slammed my fists against the glass, my eyes intent on her slender pale throat. I imagined my nails sinking into it, tearing and spraying her blood in a mist across the wall.
She began to pace, the chains rattling upon the floor. She stood taller now and her eyes locked onto mine. "Your time is running out." Wyght gestured to the steel door. "When they return, they'll take whatever's left of you. And that will be the end. I very much doubt we'll meet again, in whatever existence awaits us. So if you wish to make me suffer, this is your last chance. Do it. Take down the wall."
I punched the glass, ignoring the agony that exploded through my knuckles. Splinters shot through the wall in jagged lines. I pressed my hands against the darkened ovals and the color deepened. I pushed harder, channeling the rage I'd carried for so long. The fissures popped and echoed like breaking ice.
"Good." Wyght's leer was feral. She pressed her palms against the cracks and licked her lips like a dog waiting for a bone. "Give me my death before they can. Do it!"
I threw everything I had into making the glass shatter. I saw it all in my mind's eye. I imagined myself stepping over the jagged shards and seizing her. Her howls of despair and agony as I unleashed upon her the same fate she'd visited upon Willow, and all those poor souls she'd taken from this Earth.
The two black ovals in the glass grew until they formed one long dark shadow. I stepped away. "I thought you were just taunting me. You really want me to do this. Don't you."
"If my time's up, then so be it," Wyght said. "You want me dead and I don't want them to have what's left of me. So we have an accord." She gestured to the glass. "Keep going, you've almost created it."
"Created what?"
Wyght looked at me and paused as if she were trying to figure out how to explain a complex idea to a child. "You have power, Mr. Rook. A power they've missed. Dark, dark power." She nodded to the oval in the glass. "Your rage and latent magic produced a portal." She gestured to the manacles around her ankles. "For you, not me. They've bound me in iron to temper me and prevent an escape. But you're as good as free. All you need to do is finish what you started and leave this place."
"And go where?"
"Away from here. To do what you will. Fetch weapons and allies if you still thirst for revenge. Kill me and slaughter our keepers. Make this a temple of gore and desolation."
I glanced back to the oval as it began to shimmer. "Where does it go?"
"Have you never left this world?"
"Twice."
"Where did you end up?" There was urgency in her voice now.
I shook my head. "The Hinterlands."
"The crawlspace between worlds; it's a good place to go. Hold the Hinterlands firmly in your mind and the portal will take you there."
I glanced back to the glass. Was she leading me into a trap? Probably. But it wasn't like I had anything to lose. "What's in it for you?"
"I want my captors to die. A final bloodbath for old time's sake." She leaned in close, her eyes intense as she watched me through the glass darkly. "Now place your hands opposite mine and concentrate."
"On what?"
"On your hatred. On the fire that rages deep inside you. Think of... her."
"Who?"
"The woman you killed. The one you sent to infiltrate my coven." A slow, sadistic smile spread across her face. "Willow. That was her name. Yes, Willow. Poor little lamb."
Anger ripped through me, I closed my eyes, leaned into the glass, and let it rage into an inferno.
42
Someone howled. The sound of anguish heavy, ragged and primal. It took a moment to realize the cry was my own.
I opened my eyes and the portal had grown so deep I could barely see Elsbeth Wyght as she stood on the other side of the glass. She moved to the far corner of her cell and stood unwaveringly still as she ran her finger over the silver spiral tattooed on her wrist, the gesture almost sensual. Soon the three witches in the cells beyond Wyght's stirred to life. One by one they rose up, their movements slow and shuffling, like zombies. Silver light spilled from the spirals on their wrists as Wyght called out to them. "Can you hear me?"
They nodded, their faces wracked with pain.
"Give me the last of your essence," Wyght commanded.
"Please," called the witch in the cell behind Wyght. She couldn't have been much older than a teenager. Her eyes filled with tears. "I want to live. I want to serve you, and-"
"If you want to serve me," Wyght said, "then you'll do as I ask, and you'll do it now." She pushed her finger against her tattoo. The girl screamed and pounded her fist upon the glass, as the mark on her wrist burned crimson. She sobbed, gazed down at her feet and closed her eyes. The other witches grinned and their eyes widened with an almost religious fervor as they tilted their heads toward the floor.
Wyght drew her arms up and held her palms out before her. Wisps of faint blue smoke began to drift from the silver spirals of her three acolytes. It writhed up into the air and passed through the glass walls like spectral serpents. As it coiled around Elsbeth Wyght, its luster deepened. Then one by one the witches fell to the floor, their faces frozen and lifeless.
"Come," Elsbeth Wyght said. She held her wrist high over her head and the snake-like smoke rushed into her tattoo. Wyght shivered as it shifted from silver to incandescent blue then she let out a long obscene moan and turned to me. With a lurid grimace, she curled her hand into a fist and smashed it against the glass, striking the heart of the charred oval with a sound like a crack of thunder.
The oval shimmered, turned vivid blue then faded to silvery black as it became a faint mirror.
"Now make your escape," Wyght said. "Be sure to-"
A door slammed. I turned to find the bu
tcher storming toward the cell. He glanced from the marred glass to Wyght and pressed a button on the remote control in his hand. Wyght's door slid open, and he charged into her cell. "What the fuck have you done?" he demanded.
Wyght peered through what was left of the glass and caught my eye. "Think of the last place you crossed," she said. "and remember our pact. Kill. Them. All."
The butcher seized her by the throat with one hand, cutting off her words as he examined her wrist. Then he glared at me as I stepped toward the opening.
Had Wyght played me for a fool? Possibly. But I'd already been slated to die in this place, and soon. There was nothing left to lose.
Focus, the voice inside me urged. Fetch weapons and eradicate them all.
The butcher tossed Wyght aside as I prepared to leap through. Then he thrust his meaty fist toward the hole to grab me but it vanished into the realm that lay beyond the portal. Bewilderment creased his face as he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
This was it. Do or die.
I stepped through the glass.
And out of this world.
43
I kept my memories of the Hinterlands fixed in my mind as I stood on the precipice of swirling darkness. Then a hand reached into the blackness and clamped down on my shoulder. I recognized the crude tattoos immediately. The butcher appeared and the knives on his belt chimed as he took a tentative step forward and seized my arm.
I jerked away and pried his hand off, side-stepping toward the roaring emptiness, willing it to sweep me through the dark jumble of night and stars. The butcher leaned in further, grabbing at me. He caught the hem of my sweater in his meaty hand and yanked me back toward the opening. "Come here," he growled, his disembodied voice echoing through the abyss.
Then, amid a howl of agony, he released me.
Spatters of blood sprayed my face. I wiped it away to see a slender white hand tugging at the handle of the pointed bone saw embedded in his neck. "Go." Elsbeth Wyght called. "Now!"
I turned from the gory spectacle, struggling to focus on my memory of the Hinterlands. I thought of Hellwyn, her hidden lair, the Gloaming Ghasts, the deeps and how much I wished she'd be there to guide me.
The amber necklace around my neck flashed as if responding to my wish. Which was impossible...
"Go!" Wyght cried.
As I looked back, the world beyond the oval shimmered and I caught a glimpse of Wyght standing behind the butcher, his saw in her hand. She grinned as she plucked the phone from his pocket and shoved him toward me.
He tumbled out into the space between worlds and spun, round and round, his fingers clawing to get back through the portal and the last thing I saw before I dove into the soaring darkness, was Elsbeth Wyght's smile. Tight, wicked and victorious.
"Take me to the Hinterlands!" I cried, as I thought of the dark tunnels I'd visited, of the werewolf I'd slaughtered and of how...
The gloom juddered and a rushing sound swept toward me as tiny spots of white light blossomed like flowers. I fell, cascading through the great empty chasm.
"I'll fucking kill you!" the butcher's voice echoed as he plunged along behind me through the space between worlds. His weight lent him speed and he caught up fast, his eyes gleaming with rage, his spiked teeth glimmering in the starlight.
He was almost upon me when a colossal hand reached out from the folds of darkness. It seized him by the head and a terrible din filled the air. It was like a whale calling out amid the murky depths of endless television static.
The Gloaming Ghasts...
"Get the fuck off me!" the butcher look like a minnow compared to the behemoth looming behind him. The Ghast's face filled the darkness, its soulless black eyes staring from its grub-like white flesh. It twisted the butcher's head until it came loose. Blood splattered the air in a slow languid movement and drifted about like drops of mercury.
The Ghast held the head up to his eye, then discarded it like a child disappointed with an old broken toy. It glanced my way and as I met its hypnotic gaze, I was filled with a yearning to swim through the milky-white cosmos. To be one with its dark majesty and to do its bidding.
Go, the voice buried deep within me roared. The plea was enough to break the Ghast's spell.
I turned and swam through the space between worlds, terrified as the air around me whooshed and the creature's eyes seared into my back. "Take me to the Hinterlands!" I called.
The stars surged and icy cold air hurtled past me. With a loud crack, I fell and my feet struck hard stone.
I lunged forward, colliding with a rocky wall, the impact almost knocking me out.
The air here was warm and laced with undiscovered scents. I turned back to see a porthole in the cavern wall and the face of the Ghast sailing toward it. The thud of its fingers upon the murky glass jarred me from my disorientation and I looked away before the creature could take hold of my mind.
Then I ran. As fast as my feet would go.
44
The drum of the Ghast's fingers rattled me as it echoed down the long narrow rock passageway. I ran past patches of glowing green fungus that clung to the walls, remembering its telltale light from my previous journey.
Was I lost in the Deeps? It seemed likely, and the prospect was beyond daunting. I had no idea how large the ancient ruins buried beneath the Hinterlands actually were. Or what I might find lurking in its vast network of tunnels. I'd found my way out before but I'd only just scratched the surface of this vast place and my stay had been brief. I'd also had a guide...
I glanced down at Hellwyn's necklace.
A dim glow flickered within the heart of stone, which made no sense. Its counterpart was tucked in a drawer in my apartment, back in another world entirely. Their mystical connection could never span that distance.
I looked up as a cold breeze rushed along the tunnel, reminding me I was without my coat. No warmth or armor. No sword, no gun. And no bag of tricks.
I felt like shit. Drained of vitality from the extraction. Running on empty.
I walked along the tunnel, slowing as it diverged into three dark passageways. A low, unsettling hiss came from my right and I caught the glint of tiny red eyes. I moved into the light of the fungus and found a small rock. Primitive, but better than nothing.
"Back off," I growled, as I hurled the stone and heard the creature slither back into the darkness. I picked up another rock and stood, listening carefully as I tried to decide which of the other two tunnels to take.
Voices drifted from the one to my left and there seemed to be a faint glimmer of orange-red light far off in the distance. Firelight? A long pitch-black length of tunnel stood between me and that mysterious glow with no fungus to light the way.
"Fuck it." I headed down the tunnel, my eyes on the prize and a rock in my hand. I felt my way through the dark as unseen things crunched beneath my boots. Sand, pebbles or bones, I had no idea. I plowed on without looking back and not even the faint slithering sound that lingered in the gloom behind me could tempt me from my target.
I felt a faint tinge of hope as the firelight seemed to grow, then Hellwyn's necklace flashed so bright it filled the tunnel.
Spindly creatures with rust-colored legs skittered across the walls, seeking the comfort of the shadows. Looking up, I saw a bulbous body receding into a pool of blackness that lingered on the ceiling, just above my head.
I bolted forward as the amber light winked out, plunging me back into darkness.
45
I ran, stumbling and skidding though the detritus that covered the tunnel floor as strange sticky cold strands brushed my face. I tore them away and flew on, fixing my eyes on the dancing red-orange glow and the growing hum of voices that promised possible respite from the darkness closing in around me.
Finally I broke from the tunnel and emerged into a cavernous chamber filled with smoking campfires and standing wooden torches. A slow tide of people meandered through makeshift stalls while traders barked their offers in hoarse urgen
t voices.
A profusion of mouth-watering scents filled the air; cooked meats, the tang of spices, fresh fish, confectionery and aromas I couldn't name.
Most of the vendors and their customers appeared to be human, but none, judging by their clothes, seemed to have come from the world I'd just left. Some wore primitive furs, others sported woolen smocks or loose fitting robes. Many hurried past me without even a scrap of curiosity, and for a moment I felt like an untended child lost in a crowd.
I made my way through the bustling market, doing my best not to be noticed. Raucous laughter came from a nearby stall where three trolls lingered, their lumpy green faces lined in amusement. They drank from horns and the vendor standing in the shadows behind them set a bottle of pale golden liquid before them. One of the trolls glanced my way, and its thick warty eyebrow rose in an arch. As it turned to the others I hurried away, flitting past what looked like a great white wyvern chained in an iron cage.
"You!"
I turned to the stall beside me. It glimmered with the countless knives, daggers, swords and maces that hung within. The trader, a swarthy man with a dark beard and sly old eyes, pointed to me. "Yes, you!" he said, as if we were old friends "Over here, come in".
I stepped toward him, taking in the treasure trove of weapons on display.
"You look like you're no stranger to chivalry," the vendor said. "Perhaps you're a knight? Or a soldier maybe?"
"I'm neither of those things." My gut told me to keep walking, but curiosity gave me pause. "Why?"
"Well," the vendor cautiously leaned over the counter, "unless my eyes are mistaken, you're traipsing through the deeps without a weapon. So I assumed you must be a master, trained in hand-to-hand combat perhaps. Or maybe you've got hidden powers? Are you a mage?"
