Wolf Interval (Senyaza Series Book 3)

by Chrysoula Tzavelas

  “This isn’t the ground floor. I don’t think I want to know who else is trying to hitch a ride on this elevator. Do you?” Yejun put his other hand, the bandage stained and sagging already, on the closed doors.

  “Is it going to go down without opening first?” I stood up and rubbed my face and reached out habitually for my dogs, yet again. And again, the absence hurt, but I didn’t have time to sob in a corner now. Instead I took a deep breath, gathering in my power. The lights were very even in the elevator, so I’m sure Yejun didn’t see it, but I felt my shadow flicker and change.

  Something banged hard on the door and Yejun called out, “Sorry, we’re all full.” Then he glanced up at the ceiling of the elevator. “It could. It might be very quickly. And it might bother you.” He looked over at me, then did a double-take. I had no idea why. My shadow definitely wasn’t showing.

  “Do it,” I told him. “I’ll be fine. I want to get out of this building as soon as I can.”

  “All right,” he said slowly. “Hold onto something.”

  He probably meant “the wall” or “a railing” or something like that, but that didn’t occur to me until after I’d grabbed his arm and he’d given me a startled look. Then he lifted his hands away from the door and the button, did something, and the elevator plummeted down.

  It wasn’t quite freefall, but it was a lot faster than any elevator should ever go. I felt the magic, but it didn’t make me sick. Maybe that was because my stomach was still above me somewhere. But at least I kept my feet and I helped Yejun stay up, too.

  “Oops,” said Yejun. “I hope—jump!”

  We both jumped as the elevator jerked to a halt and landed a second later, hard. The doors crashed open and Yejun stumbled out of the tower, dragging me after him. Once we were clear away, he bent over to catch his breath and rub his legs. “Well,” he said. “That didn’t work.”

  I eyed him nervously, then glanced at the shining tower. The light above us started twinkling and bits of the tower had become transparent. “What didn’t?”

  “The jump,” he explained, shaking his hands. “I always wondered if you could jump in a falling elevator to save your life.”

  “We’re not dead,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but we weren’t really falling, either, and I still landed pretty hard.” He smiled at me.

  “Is that why you said ‘oops’?” More of the tower was vanishing away.

  “Uh, no. That was because I messed up what I was disconnecting and the tower started vanishing around us.” He looked irritated as he patted at his pockets. Then he said, “Ah!” and pulled out his sunglasses and started inspecting them for damage.

  “Right. Maybe next time we should just see who wants into the elevator?”

  “Sure,” he said, as if it was already a topic he was bored by. “Probably just some kind of extraworldly monster. We don’t have enough of those, after all.” Then he looked me up and down again. “You look older than you did before you ran off. What happened?”

  “Excuse me?” I had no idea what he was talking about, or why he was asking. I’d thought he’d understood what happened. I didn’t want to talk about it again, either.

  Yejun squinted at me. “When we first met, I thought you were around twelve. You know. An, uh, early bloomer, but twelve. Then I realized you were older and just super-Disney. Which made me feel better about... Uh, anyhow, you look like you’re my age now. In your face, I mean. You’re not as... cute.”

  “Do you specialize in sprinkling salt into open wounds?” I demanded.

  He put his sunglasses on. “What, did you like being cute? You seemed kind of annoyed when I thought you were a kid before.”

  “I was!”

  “Well?” He looked at the place where the shining tower had been. Now there was just a blocky four-story building, with empty display windows on the ground floor.

  “We’re not going to waste time talking about this,” I said firmly.

  “Good,” he muttered. “Sorry I brought it up.”

  “Where is Brynn? And Amber? Why in the world did you come after me and leave them behind?”

  He reached out to touch one of my curls. “I left them with the Fiddler. And really, did you think I was going to protect them? Amber’s a lot tougher than I am. And Brynn told me to go after Heart. I’m an obedient man, miss.”

  “Hah,” I snorted. “But—but you shouldn’t have risked it. You don’t need me now, anyhow. The Fiddler knows where to go.”

  He pulled gently on my lock of hair. “Walk and talk, please.” When I took a step toward him, he grinned at me, stuck his hands in his pockets, and started walking backwards. We walked like that for a moment and he didn’t stumble once, as if he walked backwards all the time. As we approached an intersection, he executed a right turn. “See,” he confided, “You’re not thinking too clearly right now. It’s okay. You’ve had a hell of a day. But when you are thinking clearly, you’re going to understand why I couldn’t just let you run away. I hope.”

  “You know, talking down to me makes you kind of a jerk,” I told him coldly.

  “I can’t help what I am.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully, then said, “Nope. Can’t do it. You’d just run away again. And right now we’re all trying to save the world or whatever. No time for anything else. Let’s talk after we’re out of this dead city.”

  “No!” I said, frustrated. “You don’t—”

  An eagle cried over our heads and I reacted instantly, grabbing Yejun and dragging him under the eaves of the nearest building, a sprawling edifice that reminded me of the Seattle convention center.

  A shadow passed over the street and I once again reached for my dogs, my extra senses, because I just couldn’t learn. “Dammit,” I muttered.

  “Looking for us, you think?”

  “I hope so,” I said grimly. “Because if he’s not looking for us, he’s looking for the others.” I listened as hard as I could, and in the distance, bouncing around buildings, I heard the cry of the horn and the howl of the hounds. “Hell. We need to get to the others as soon as we can.”

  “What’s the rush?” Yejun asked mildly. “I thought you wanted to get away.”

  I let go of his arm, pushing him away in disgust. “I wanted to keep them safe.” His eyebrows remained raised and I uneasily remembered that I’d actually fled because of something else, because of something the Fiddler had said, and because of a look in Yejun’s eyes.

  I turned away, looking up at the building we stood next to. “If we go through the streets, that horrible bird is going to see us. And... and I can’t deal with my dogs yet.”

  Yejun pulled on one of the double doors. It clicked, then opened easily, and he looked over at me before vanishing inside. I darted after him, and ran into his back because he’d stopped just inside the room.

  “What is it?” My eyes adjusted quickly. We were in an empty room, without dust or furnishings. The door behind us was still open, and when Yejun made as if to pull it closed, I caught his wrist. “Wait, don’t. I don’t want to be trapped here.”

  I remembered again what Amber had said, and how the doors had locked themselves before. Or had that been a dream? The long walk before I arrived at Jen’s tower felt like a distant, frightening dream. Nothing had made sense then. Nothing made sense now, either, but now there was a visceral reality to the terror inspired by both the searching eagle and Yejun’s smile.

  “There are other doors,” he pointed out. And there were, two more on other walls, and a big display window, too. But the thought of closing the door made me want to scream. It wasn’t what they like to call a “proportional response” and I didn’t know why.

  “It’s too crowded,” I said, and shivered. It was like there wasn’t enough of some vital resource, but I couldn’t tell what it was.

  His face went blank again and he released the door and stepped away from me. “Ah.”

  “It’s the building,” I told him, frowning and wondering what he was thinking. �
��It doesn’t want us in here. It’s pulling away. Can’t you feel it? Did you unlock the door?”

  An eagle screamed outside and in the distance, there was the call of a hunting horn. My head snapped around and I scrambled over to the window. The street beyond was still as empty as it had been, which wasn’t any kind of reassurance. “This is bad on both sides.”

  I expected Yejun to say something, but there was only silence. When I looked over my shoulder, he’d vanished and the door on the far side of the interior was half-open.

  I cursed, looking between the open door and the window. Once again I saw the shadow moving overhead. I could go out, get his attention, try to deal with him directly. Facing a full-blown demon alone in my current state was dumb. Going deeper into the building was terrifying.

  Yejun had come for me when I thought I was most alone.

  Slowly, I moved to the open door. The corridor beyond was pale and clean and as long as I’d come to expect. Other than a few closed doors, it was also empty until it reached a T-intersection.

  My breath came hard and heavy. I didn’t want to go back into that corridor again. Why had Yejun? Had it swallowed him up?

  I wanted my dogs back so much. I couldn’t face this alone. I’d fail. I didn’t know how to succeed.

  The crowding pressed against me and I could just catch Yejun’s scent. I concentrated, then followed it to the T-intersection and turned left.

  There were choices in this corridor. That was something different. Maybe it was just a corridor in a building. Maybe Amber had just been messing with my head. Maybe the Far City was running out of breathable air.

  As I walked, the walls changed, becoming unfinished red brick and whitewashed cinderblocks. An open door led to an empty men’s bathroom—a modern men’s room, in this place? But that was another way it wasn’t like the endless corridor from before and I’d never been so glad to see a urinal in my life.

  Walking wasn’t catching me up to Yejun, so I broke into a jog. Then I didn’t want to wait to find him, and I ran. Only a moment later, I burst through a swinging door into an industrial kitchen.

  Yejun stood in the center of the kitchen, near an empty steel table. “I know this place,” he muttered, as I skidded to a halt. Then he looked over at me, as if surprised to see me here. “Where have you been?”

  “We shouldn’t split up.” I darted over and took his elbow.

  He yanked his arm away from me. “You know, I just don’t know what to make of you. Half the time you grab me and then you say it’s too crowded, so I thought, okay, maybe it’s an indoors thing, we don’t want that, I’ll give her some space, try not to be a jerk, but goddamn you make it tricky sometimes—”

  He was babbling, his eyes darting around the room. He didn’t feel the crowding himself. He thought it was something about me. “It is crowded,” I said, my voice going higher. I had to explain, somehow. “But we still shouldn’t split up. I don’t want to be alone in here. If we’re going to deal with something nasty, it’s better to be together.” I glanced around anxiously, then let my breath out. The commercial kitchen touched on ancient memories. Before my father had found us and taken us away, my mother had done the books for a restaurant in New Orleans. I used to play under her desk.

  “You know this place...?” I inquired quietly.

  He shook his head. “My grandmother’s restaurant.” A muscle in his jaw twitched and his voice was flat and far away. “I hated it here.”

  Yejun looked up at the ceiling and I took the opportunity to hold onto his arm again. It wasn’t anything like having a dog pressed against my leg or lazing in my shadow, but it had its own warm, muscular appeal.

  “I think you’re right,” he added. “We should stick together.”

  I followed his gaze up. A pool of darkness blotted out the ceiling. Slowly, it started to overflow. I stared in horror as huge drops of shadow dripped from above and spread across the floor. Every surface they touched changed. Stainless steel blackened and aluminum corroded. The floor tiles beneath our feet cracked. Then, with a sizzle, every oven and range in the kitchen blazed with red heat.

  -nineteen-

  This, I thought as the room around us transformed. Was this what Amber had meant? I really, really hoped so.

  The huge knife rack on the table beside us hadn’t been there before. One of the knives was out, lying carelessly on the table. The blade was the only shining thing in the room, gleaming bright save for the brown crust along its edge.

  The heat from the blazing ovens hit me like a blow and I swayed backward. Yejun remained upright, as if he was used to it, but his face was pale and beads of sweat appeared on his brow. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He didn’t have to tell me twice. I headed over to the door, still holding his arm. It was awkward dragging him behind me like that and by the time we reached the door, he’d had enough. He shook me off and I gave him a hurt look. “We have to stay together,” I insisted.

  “Hand,” he said, holding out his to me. I took a deep breath and put mine in his. He closed his fingers very lightly over mine, then lifted it to his mouth and pressed a kiss on my knuckles. He wasn’t even looking at me as he did it, as if he did it without thought.

  From the other side of the kitchen came a chopping sound, as if several knives were slicing onto wooden blocks. The knife on the blackened steel table had vanished, and so had three of the knives on the rack. The surfaces that had once shone silver now glittered scarlet under the patina of corruption.

  Yejun glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t want to know what that is.” He kicked the door open and shoved me out ahead of him. As he stepped out himself, he flicked his hand backward and the knives remaining on the table scattered all over the floor.

  As soon as he was through, the door slammed behind him and the lights overhead started to flicker wildly. Instead of the long tube-lights, there was now a swaying incandescent chandelier, hanging from a rounded ceiling. The dripping corruption had not only been here, it’d had an even more dramatic effect. The floor was broken concrete and the walls were herringbone brick, with large gaping holes. Rusty hooks reached out from the walls like skeletal fingers and the far end of the hall was too dim to make out.

  “No, no, no,” I said, my stomach sinking. “I don’t like this. All of the other doors are gone.”

  “That makes our choice easy, then,” Yejun said. “Don’t worry. This isn’t like before.” Something about his tone bothered me. His voice was strained under the light words.

  Something hit the closed door behind us, so loud that I jumped five feet and hauled Yejun after me. Metal scraped down the door and an indistinct, high-pitched voice yammered something.

  I stared at Yejun, my heart racing. His eyes were wide and shocked. I demanded, “Who’s in there?”

  “Nobody,” he said, shaking his head. “You know what I said before about this not being like the other corridor?” He ran a hand through his hair. “This may be worse. I have a brilliant idea. Let’s run.”

  We ran. We ran past the gaping holes in the brickwork, which led only to blackness. Blackness was better than what could have been there. Blackness was better than what the sounds emerging from the darkness suggested was there. Then the floor started developing holes, too, and we had to jump. I stopped before the second hole, a blackness two feet across. There were faint wet noises below us, and banging on the door far behind us. I tried to squash the queasiness brought on by fear and the sketchy dimness ahead of us.

  “What?” asked Yejun.

  “I don’t trust the ground anymore. How can this be real? If this isn’t real, are the holes real? Is the ground? I can’t smell anything except death here.” Death, and Yejun. “We’re going to fall.”

  Then I flinched, anticipating mockery and impatience. But panic was going to sweep me off my feet soon and into my own darkness.

  He didn’t mock me, though. He slid his hand up to my arm, then took his hand away as he brought his other hand up to my head t
o tug on one of my curls. “It’s real. As real as anything here. And the holes are real. I can tell. But I don’t think we can jump them all while holding onto each other.” Then he stepped away from me and jumped over the next hole.

  Angry, I leapt after him. Hot, moist air wafted up from the blackness beneath me, sending unpleasant fingers under my clothes. “Don’t do that. What if the darkness eats you?”

  He shrugged and kept moving. “They all say it’s bound to happen eventually. But I’d like to get this done first.”

  I chased him over two more holes. Then the floor was clear, and the distant pounding had faded into silence. I took his arm again and we hurried on. Maybe the worst was over.

  That high-pitched voice screeched something I couldn’t understand from only a few feet behind us. I looked back and saw a shadow stretching out of the last hole. It was almost human-shaped—and then Yejun yanked me forward as he stumbled ahead, almost tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to get away.

  The far end of the hall turned abruptly. The light was very dim, and the red brick walls were apparently mortared with warm tar. The hall turned again, sharply to the right. After a few more strides it turned again, to the left. And then it turned again and again, until we could only hurry, not run.

  “It’s narrowing,” I told Yejun urgently. I could touch both sides of the hall with my arms half out. “Can’t you do something? If you can’t, I’ll try.”

  “What could you do?” he demanded, breathing raggedly.

  “I’m stronger than I look,” I told him.

  “Strong enough to break these walls?” He stepped backward, bumping into a brick corner.

  “I have no idea, but we have to do something!”

  “Can you—” he swallowed. His face was very pale. “Can you deal with that?”

  I turned around. The shadow thing was sliding around one of the walls.

  My breath hissed between my teeth. I missed my dogs so much. They’d been my link to humanity before, my bridge back when I went too far. Now? I didn’t know where I’d go, or if I’d want to come back.