by Ayer, T. G.
I ran with panther speed in the direction of the center of the city, past my apartment building and toward the abandoned train station.
As I entered the subway, I forgot the changes in the city and headed left instead of right. So much for experience in this backward world. I spun around and hurried toward the tracks where Anjelo had said the bodies had been found.
When I got to the scene I stopped.
No one.
I sank into a crouch and blew out a sigh. Had I come this far for nothing?
I lowered myself to the floor, scraping my boots on small stones and concrete, and sat there for a while, waiting, watching. Hoping.
More than half an hour later, I was still waiting. But no longer in silence. A thunderous headache had started drumming against my temples and I was starving. I realized suddenly that I hadn't eaten all day.
Chloe was right. I needed to take care of myself. I hadn't done that in the rush to find Lily.
Rubbing my temples, I sighed and got to my feet. I could wait a little longer, but how much longer did I have.? Sooner or later the demon lord wannabes would find me, and -
"Are you okay?"
I swung around, so tired that even the soft voice managed to startle me.
Two teens stood there--the speaker, an Hispanic girl around twelve, and a boy about the same age, his Nordic look a stark contrast to her darkness. If you could call anything about them dark. The pair looked gray and hazy, ghostly in their transparency, even to the point that jeans, sweaters and sneakers were colorless.
"Please don't be scared," the girl said. "I'm Emma. This is my friend, Simon." She gestured to the boy beside her.
"Are you from City Deep?" I asked.
They both nodded solemnly.
"How long have you been here?"
"Not too long." They exchanged glances. "A few hours maybe."
I stifled a whoop of joy. "Then you might be able to help me."
Simon snorted. "How can we help you if we're dead?"
"You know you're dead?" I asked. Some people didn't.
Simon's expression turned sullen. "Do we look stupid?"
Emma elbowed him in the ribs. "Shut up, Simon. She's just trying to be considerate."
"No point is there?" he said. "We're dead."
I decided to let them fight it out.
"There's nothing she can do to change that fact, now is there?" There was a bite to Emma's tone and I figured she was dealing with her own passing on a more internal level than Simon.
I cleared my throat. "I came to see if I could help you."
"You just said you needed our help," snapped Simon.
I shrugged. "A little bit of mutual cooperation then."
He just watched me, eyes wide, unimpressed.
"We're trying to find the people who killed you." There was no skirting around the word killed, so I just said it. "And the reason I need your help is that you may have seen what happened to my friend."
Emma's brow creased. "What friend?"
I mentally crossed my fingers. "About this high," I indicated Lily's height where she reached my ears, "Blond. Pretty. She's a walker."
"We don't want to get involved," said Simon.
"Say's you," Emma snapped at him. "I'm helping. It's not like it's going to get me killed." Her tone was sharp, annoyed, as if she'd been dealing with him for too long and had had enough.
Maybe he got the message because he had the grace to remain silent.
Emma turned back to me. "We did see her. It's Lily you're looking for, isn't it? She's one of the kids we live with. Storm takes care of us all."
She paused for a moment then looked at the floor where her body had lain in the last few moments of her life. "They took her when they came for our bodies."
"Did you get a good look at them?"
Emma nodded. "There were two men. One was a blond guy about this tall." She held her hand above her head. "I had a feeling I knew him but I just can't remember his name."
She glanced at Simon. "What do you remember?"
Simon shrugged. "Like you said. Tall. Blond. Muscular. I think. Maybe . . . blue eyes?" He squinted up at the curved roof of the tunnel as he thought. "But I can't remember a name either. Weird."
"Why weird?" I asked.
"'Cos I'm usually very good with names," he snapped. Then he studied my face. "I feel I've seen you before. Who are you?"
"Kailin. I'm Anjelo's and Lily's friend."
"Yeah." He bobbed a finger in my direction. "I remember now. Anjelo tells everyone that you're his alpha. You know that?"
I smiled. "He's a good kid. Though for the record Corin Odel is his alpha."
"But he respects you." Simon sounded as if he couldn't understand why.
I wasn't sure what response he expected. "So one of the guys who took Lily was blond. What about the other one?"
He thought back, eyes narrowed. "Light brown spiky hair, eyes like metal. Big dude."
Agent Blake.
I should have known.
I waited hoping he'd give me more. He did. "Dude had some kind of power. Like he could freeze shit."
"Water mage?" I asked. "Powerful?"
"Hell, yeah." He seemed impressed despite the fact that the paranormal had left him dead. Some scary shit."
I nodded. So Blake was a water mage who freezes things.
And his blond companion bore a scary resemblance to our very own Storm.
CHAPTER 39
I DIDN'T UNDERSTAND WHY NEITHER Emma nor Simon could recall the name of our Storm lookalike.
Do Immortals have the power to erase memories?
A question for Jess.
"Did the blond man kill you?" I asked feeling a little uncomfortable.
Emma shook her head. "No. He came later. We'd just started our practice and the spiky-haired guy shot us."
"What kind of things do you practice?" I asked, trying not to sound interrogative or judgmental.
She shrugged. "Stuff. Our powers mostly. The tunnels are good because we get to practice our powers without being seen."
It made sense. "Were you there long?"
Emma shook her head. "Simon thinks the man followed us. We'd only just got there when he came up behind us."
"Yeah," Simon said. "He had a gun, and this thing like a torch, with a very fat head. I think it had a screen on the other side of it because the light reflected off his face."
Observant kid.
"The machine beeped," he said. "Then he smiled at us and said 'gotcha' and shot us, bam, bam." Simon mimicked the movements of the shooting with his forefinger and I could have sworn I heard gunshots reverberate around the tunnel.
If Blake was using some kind of machine to detect paranormals then the fact he'd missed the goblin kids behind the silver mirror now made sense. Silver would have hidden their presence no matter what paranormal they were
First the African village, then the kids in Cicero, then the goblin clan, and now the two City Deep kids. It had all seemed random but only because the killers had been learning, testing their weapons and machines on mages and DeathTalkers and goblins.
They'd been methodical, determining first if the kids were paranormal, then eliminating them instantly. They'd upgraded to direct kills now.
Direct, and much more efficient.
"Did we help?" asked Emma.
"Of course, you did," I said. "You were very helpful."
"But you look worried."
I shrugged. "It's just that I want to stop the killing. I want to find the killer. And more than anything I was to find Lily."
"You won't," said Simon.
"Shut up," said Emma, sharply.
"She needs to know what she's up against."
Emma glared at him but he paid no attention.
He met my eyes earnestly. "You need to know. They are very powerful. They know everything. And the man we can't remember . . . He's more powerful than all of them."
That wasn't reassuring. "How do you know? Did you see
something after they took you away?"
Simon nodded. "Flashes of stuff. And your friend--Lily--was there too."
"Did they hurt her? Is she still alive?"
Emma's gentle mouth twisted. "When we finally left the human plane, she was still alive. She was furious and struggled hard. They hit her a few times and when she kept fighting they tried to drug her. But none of the drugs worked. So they tied her up and gagged her and put her in a room where we couldn't see her. We didn't hear her again after that."
There was a sadness in Emma's eyes that told me she thought Lily might well be dead too.
I didn't want to ask but I forced myself to. "Have you seen her here in the Graylands?"
Emma shook her head. "Not yet. Although if they've killed her it shouldn't be too long."
I was about to hand her Nerina's key and ask her to call if she saw Lily when her eyes went wide and scared. I started to turn to see what had frightened her when the sound of gunfire exploded in the tunnel.
Pain ripped into my back. The bullet's impact spun me round into the curving wall of the tunnel--and brought me face to face with the gunman.
A human gunman, red-faced, bright-eyed, and in the Graylands.
What the hell was a human doing in the dead world? How was that even possible?
"Don't hurt her," yelled Emma, shoving into the man's way.
"Get out of my way, kid." He flicked the air with the back of his hand and Emma's image wavered like smoke as it passed through her body.
But she didn't. She yelled and began to throw blobs of ghostly gray fire at him. Simon followed suit, aiming his hands at the man, pulling dust into a mini hurricane. Dirt and stones rose from the floor and joined the spinning wind, but the demon soldier swiped a hand at it and the mini vortex evaporated.
I took advantage of the kids and their distraction and edged away down the tunnel until it curved out of sight. Then I turned and ran.
I stopped only briefly to yank open the door to what I thought was a side tunnel. It was, in fact, the entrance to a stair case. I left it wide open hoping the gunman would think I'd run that way. Then I sped off down the main tunnel in the pitch black using my panther sight to guide me.
The tunnel seemed to go on forever, but eventually it came to an end and opened out into a gray day.
I was miles from the city now. I should return to the lake and jump home.
But when my head began to spin and bile burned the back of my throat, I knew I needed time to rest before I could safely make the jump. Cool liquid trickled from the wound on my back. When I touched my finger to my back it came away covered in blue fluorescent poison.
How the hell had they gotten the ammunition to the Graylands? More importantly, why?
I was beginning to suspect whoever was killing paranormals saw me as a threat to be removed. I wouldn't be safe at my own apartment.
Whoever the human soldier was, he wouldn't be alone. Humans with deadly weapons in the Graylands were infinitely more dangerous than any demon overlord. They'd check my apartment, and if they knew what they were doing they'd probably check Tara's. I'd go to Logan's hotel room to hide.
I ran, the urge to grip my shoulder almost taking me over. My heart tightened. Pain sliced through my arm and into my hand.
But I didn't slow down, even when I neared the front doors of the hotel. Here in the Graylands with everything upside down, I had to focus to remember to go left instead of right.
When I slammed through the hotel's front doors there was no doorman with a long mustache in the lobby. No staff at the desks in the reception area. There were elevators but they didn't work.
Nothing lived here, not even electricity.
So what manner of paranormal power was behind the presence of live weapons in the dead lands?
I pushed against the stairwell doors using my weight to shove them open.
I squinted up at the stairs that I had to climb and felt the stairwell tilt, the walls threaten to close in on me.
You can do it, Odel. One step at a time.
And one step at a time was all I could manage. Six floors of one-steps as my ragged breath rasped in the silence of the stairwell and the soft soles of my boots tap-tapped on the concrete stairs.
When I finally reached the door to the sixth floor, the gigantic orange number emblazoned on the wall blurred in front of my eyes.
I tried to swallow the cough that ripped through my chest and succeeded only enough that it came out strangled. I swayed as dizziness took hold of me, then caught the wall and rested my forehead against the cool stone.
When I grabbed hold of the handle of the fire-escape door and pulled I expected to meet the resistance of the hydraulic door, and put my weight into it. The door swung freely and I stumbled, only managing to save myself from tumbling back down the staircase by grabbed hold of the railing.
Close call, Odel.
I hobbled along the darkened passage, straining to look at the numbers on the doors through rapidly blurring eyes.
I'd been to Logan's apartment only a couple of times, but I knew how far it was from the stairs to his door.
At the door, I bent to peer at the number on the little gold plaque on the door. Everything was backward--as I'd expected.
I paused. Would my key would work? I'd brought it with me from the normal world. Did I need a backward card?
I leaned against the door jamb until the wave of dizziness passed. Then I slipped the key card into the hatch, and waited for the tiny ping and the green light glow.
Nothing happened.
Crap. Just like I thought.
An upside down world needs upside down locks and keys.
Now what? Where else could I go to hide out? Some place where I could get inside without needing a key.
I could think of two: Storm's place and my father's house. The decision was easy. I didn't have the energy to run all the way out of the city and up into the mountains.
Storm's place it was.
Frustrated and exhausted I yanked the key card out of the slot and gave the handle an angry slam--as if it would do any good to take my fury out on an inanimate door.
The latch groaned.
The handle turned.
And the door opened.
I frowned and brought the card key closer so I could study both sides of it with my hazy vision. Looked normal to me.
Okay, then. I shoved it into my pocket and entered the room.
Gift horse, and all that.
Once inside I shut the door and attached the safety chain. It made sense now. The locks were electronic and didn't work. A bolt and safety chain was as good as it got.
I went further into the room and saw the single unit that performed the multi-functions of dresser, suitcase storage and fridge storage. Calling on my panther strength I ripped it free from its wiring and shoved it along the floor to the front door. It wouldn't stop intruders but it would reinforce the door and slow them down.
I felt bad about destroying property but I didn't think it mattered. I doubted anyone planned to use Logan's apartment in their afterlife. So much of the Greylands remained abandoned, and 'abandoned' in the Graylands was far worse than the abandoned areas of the normal human plane.
With the door as secure as I could make it I stumbled to the bed. A couple of paces away from it my legs finally gave out, and I smacked face-first into the blankets.
CHAPTER 40
I LAY THERE FOR A while, breathing through the pain and grateful that, judging by the condition of the room, the resident demons hadn't gotten to ransacking the place yet.
When I thought I'd no longer faint if I moved, I gritted my teeth and forced myself to turn over.
I used the next few minutes to check on the condition of my body. My self-scan told me what I'd already known. I'd lost a lot of blood from the wound in my back but the bleeding had slowed, if not stopped. I was filthy, sweaty, and the front of my shirt was soaked with blood. But what really annoyed me was the bullet hole in my jac
ket. I loved that jacket.
Damn the gunman. How the hell did a human get into the Graylands?
And alive?
I rolled into a sitting position and eased the leather off my arms. It would tax my strength but I needed to get clean--quite a feat when the Graylands had no running water.
Good thing I was just-in-case type. There was a stash of moist towels in my backpack with my first aid kit.
I reached over and grabbed the backpack. Lifted it onto the bed. When I'd unzipped it and rummaged my way to the bottom I found what I was after. Tiny, crinkly packages of moist towels inside sealed foil.
I pulled them all out and dumped them on the mattress. Then I unbuttoned my shirt and let it drop open.
The towels did their job. I wiped my chest and as far down my back as I could reach. Then, after buttoning up with shaking fingers, I sat there and stared at the floor, at the pile of bloody towels, and wondered why I was shivering when I felt so hot.
I prayed the wound hadn't been infected. I prayed I could find something to wear in place of the shirt. I prayed no one would find me until I'd slept long enough to regenerate and heal. As hard as it would be to place myself in such a vulnerable position I really had no choice.
I had to get better. Fast.
I was trying to find a comfortable position on the bed when I realized there was a hard lump inside the front pocket of my jeans. It took me a moment to remember what it was. Nerina's key.
Now was probably a good time to use it--before I gave in to fatigue.
The invisible pull of my body urged me to put my head down on the pillow and close my eyes. Instead, I slid my fingers into my pocket and gripped the cool, metal disk. I pulled it out and lifted it close to my eyes. When I turned it over I realized the markings were on both sides of the disk. Did that mean one side was the wrong side?
Oh well. I'd find out soon enough.
I followed Nerina's instructions feeling uncomfortable calling out her name like a besotted lover. When the ritual was complete I lay there, waiting, ears pricked for some sign that she'd heard me.
I'd expected a ghostly death talker specter. I got a disembodied voice in my head.
"Kailin?"
"Nerina?" I responded, confused and relieved at the same time.
