by R. L. King
Wherever he was, no roads were within sight. If he didn’t spot something soon, he’d need to levitate above the trees. Anything unusual should show up bright and clear against the backdrop of darkness.
It was hot out here—hot and humid. He’d worn his usual outfit of black T-shirt, jeans, boots, and his long black overcoat, but he was beginning to regret the latter. Even though he’d enchanted it long ago to be comfortable in any climate, it didn’t fully prevent the soupy air from having its way with him. As intrigued as he was by Kolinsky’s odd discovery, he wished the dragon would send him somewhere a bit more hospitable next time. Like Hawaii.
Something moved off to his left.
He stopped, whipping his head around, but whatever it was had already disappeared back into the trees. He’d only caught a glimpse of it from the corner of his eye: something tall, shadowy, and fast.
Probably not an alligator, unless alligators walked upright.
Enough with the bloody alligators!
He crept forward, trying to look in every direction at once. That was harder than it sounded in the dark, though, even with the light spell he held in front of him. The still air seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. He realized that, while he was thinking about alligators, he hadn’t registered the more unnerving fact: whatever he’d seen had made no sound.
He was approaching the spot Kolinsky had pointed out on the map now. If he was correct in his orientation, it should be about fifty feet ahead, but the trees were so thick he couldn’t see it yet.
Maybe it would be nothing—or at least a normal rift he could study for a few minutes and safely leave alone.
Something heavy dropped silently down on his head.
If he hadn’t had the shield up, it probably would have taken him out. As it was, he yelped in surprise as it coiled around him, pressing into the shield. Whatever it was, it was strong, and as pitch-black as the night. He couldn’t see much because it was obscuring his vision, but it seemed to undulate like an enormous snake. It still didn’t make a sound, but it smelled like rotting flesh. He couldn’t see its head.
He staggered to the side, trying to find a tree to slam it into. The psychic pressure was building as it coiled more tightly around his shield. So far, he wasn’t in any danger, but if the thing popped the shield—which it seemed strong enough to do—he’d be in bigger trouble.
Heart pounding, he forced himself to stop thinking about getting turned into mage purée and focused on magic. If he could get it to let him loose so he could get a proper look at it, he could deal with it.
He closed his eyes—nothing to see here anyway—and concentrated on gathering magical energy. No finesse this time, just raw power. Sweat poured down his face as the thing pressed harder, and the air grew warmer inside. Even though he wasn’t watching it, he knew from experience that meant the shield was turning pink, the earliest indication that it was starting to buckle under the strain. He didn’t have long.
“Get off me!” he roared, releasing the energy into the shield, in much the same way someone might electrify a fence.
Several things happened. A deafening buzzing filled his ears as the magical energy engulfed the shield. The rotting-meat smell became a rotting cooked-meat smell, which was even more unpleasant. But most importantly to Stone, the thing’s hold loosened on the shield and it dropped away.
Immediately, Stone leaped in the opposite direction, putting some distance between himself and the creature. Whatever it was, he hoped there weren’t more of them. Was it a snake? He suspected there were snakes out here, but not ones that big. The thing had to be the size of a bloody anaconda!
He thrust the light spell in front of him, keeping the shield up and augmenting its power in case there were more of the things.
Whatever it was, it was gone.
That was not good. Anything that could disappear that completely and silently probably didn’t fall under the heading of “normal natural stuff you might find in a bunch of trees in Louisiana.”
Brilliant.
He didn’t want to levitate yet, but if the alternative was having another one of those things drop on his head, the choice wasn’t a hard one. After one last glance to make sure the snake-thing wasn’t lurking overhead, he lifted off the ground and floated above the trees. Depending on the nature of Kolinsky’s anomaly, it might make it harder to spot it from up here, but he wouldn’t be much use against it if he got himself squeezed to death.
When he made it to his cruising altitude three feet above the tallest trees, he reoriented himself to face the right direction…and nearly dropped the shield in shock.
“Guess I won’t have any trouble spotting it…” he muttered.
Fifty feet ahead of him, a roiling mass of black energy had engulfed the tops of the trees. Even from here, Stone couldn’t miss the malevolent waves rolling off whatever it was. He shifted back to normal sight, expecting it to disappear—but it didn’t. The only thing that changed was the flickering edges around it dropped away. But whatever that was, it was here, on this plane, and it was visible to mundanes.
This is definitely not good.
Moving with care and keeping his shield at full strength, Stone floated closer. The energy seemed to be confined to a fairly small perimeter, at least for the moment, but as he dropped lower and focused his magical sight, he saw more black tendrils reaching outward, away from the central core.
Was whatever had attacked him one of those tendrils that had managed to break away? Were there more of them out there, cruising around this section of forest looking for warm bodies to devour?
Kolinsky had been right about one thing: this was definitely not acting like a normal rift. So far, no matter how potentially dangerous the others had been, they hadn’t been visible to mundane sight. If rifts that mundanes could see started popping up, that could change a lot of things.
He was twenty feet from the energy core when he spotted it.
His breath caught in his throat, and for a moment all he could do was hang there in the air and stare at it.
This was definitely not a normal rift.
In every other case he’d seen, the rifts had been relatively smoothly shaped. Some were larger than others, and some more irregular, but in every case, the edges had been even and rounded. They hadn’t exactly looked like they belonged where they were, but they did look at least marginally natural.
The best way Stone could describe this one was “a violent rip in the fabric of reality.”
It was small, so that was good. Mostly horizontal and around four feet off the ground, it was perhaps six feet from edge to edge and two from top to bottom. It looked like a giant had taken a serrated knife and gouged a hole in the air, revealing a gaping black space beyond. Several more of the dark tendrils, some as big around as small tree trunks, were attempting to shove their way out like a bunch of commuters trying to exit a packed subway train. A low, weird humming split the silence, barely audible to normal hearing but affecting Stone like fingernails scraping a chalkboard on a psychic level.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t supposed to be here. This plane’s reality was protesting against it.
It was hard to pull his gaze away from the rift itself, but movement below it caught his attention. He took a quick look down and almost wished he hadn’t.
Stone wasn’t afraid of much in the physical world. Even his initial nervousness about alligators was more the concept of alligators than the real thing. He wasn’t afraid of the typical creatures a lot of people had phobias about, like snakes, bats, or insects.
Even so, he was tempted to draw the line at giant extradimensional spiders.
It appeared they had been formed from some of the smaller creeping tendrils, which had dropped free of the rift and joined together, forming skittering, crawling things straight out of a nightmare. Their bodies were the size of small dogs, and their long, shiny black legs stretched almost six feet.
Stefan, you are going to owe me a damn
ed good dinner for this.
Something shot up from the trees below him and wrapped around his shield. This time, instead of trying to squeeze the life out of him, it flung him straight down, slamming him into the ground.
He hit hard, stunned. The shield mostly protected him, but the impact still hurt, especially with the jarring, discordant nails-on-blackboard psychic interference making it hard to concentrate. He managed to keep the shield up, but just barely.
And now the spider-things had taken an interest.
Moving almost as if they shared a single mind, they skittered like a shining black carpet toward him. Before he could do more than rise to a sitting position, they had engulfed the shield.
Stone’s heart pounded harder. Do not panic.
It was hard not to, though—the spider-things blocked the scant light from outside, but when he shifted to magical sight a faint glow picked out their writhing, shiny legs as they probed at the edges of the shield. Everywhere the tips touched, little pink points flared. He dug deep, gathering more energy to augment the shield.
But as he watched in horror, one of the legs managed to poke through. Before he could do anything, it pierced his side.
Instantly, his brain lit up with thoughts, flooding in so fast he couldn’t stop them. Some of them were his own—nightmarish memories of events from his past: Deirdre’s death, Desmond’s death, the horrific scene in Windermere where he’d ashed his own twin sister to save Verity, the gargantuan, malevolent portal from Burning Man. The memories tumbled over each other, combining with…something else. Something worse, because it was utterly alien. His brain strained to comprehend what this thing was trying to feed him, and a tiny corner of it feared it wouldn’t be able to do it. What then? Would he go insane?
He might have screamed—he wasn’t sure if it was in his mind or aloud. Desperately, he wrenched himself backward and tried to focus on augmenting the shield as more of the probing, pointed legs struggled to poke through it, but his concentration was shot. If he didn’t do something right now, more of those things would get through. If one was this bad, he didn’t want to think about what would happen if several more of them got their hooks into him at the same time.
A sudden thought hit him, and with it a desperate idea. These things are getting into your mind. That was the worst of it. If they did physical damage, he could likely deal with that. But if they drove him insane—that was a thought he didn’t want to contemplate. If he truly was incapable of dying, the concept of spending the rest of his unnatural life without his mind terrified him even more than the horrific extradimensional spider-things.
It’s not the physical bit you’ve got to be afraid of.
He was taking a big chance, but he’d certainly done that enough times lately.
They were all screaming now: Imogen, Verity, Ian, Deirdre, Aubrey, Jason, Amber—their shrieks cut into his mind, threatening to submerge his rational thoughts.
Need to do this now—
In one sudden, vicious flick of his mind, he dropped the physical shield while simultaneously diverting every shred of energy he could call on to his mental shields. If they wanted to pierce his body, they’d just have to do it—but they weren’t going to get into his brain!
Instantly, two things happened.
The discordant screaming and nightmare visions in his mind winked out like he’d switched off a light.
His body lit up with agony as more of the spider things plunged their pointed appendages into him.
But pain, he could deal with. Pain made him angry.
He used that anger to lash out, feeding energy through the spiders’ bodies as they crowded around him.
He expected to send them skittering off into the trees. What he didn’t expect was that they’d explode in a hail of black shiny bodies and segmented legs. Their psychic death-screams were bad, but not as bad as they’d have been if they still had their pointy legs stuck into his body.
Stone fell, landing on his back in the springy underbrush, panting so hard he thought he might hyperventilate. But he couldn’t stay there long—he had no idea if the spider-things would reconstitute and come at him for another go. Plus, they weren’t the only things coming out of that rift. More of the thick, ropy black tentacles were probing toward him again.
He had to do something, and he had to do it fast.
He struggled to his feet, almost afraid to look down. Every bit of his body hurt from where the spiders’ legs had pierced him. Were the wounds real, or had they only been in his mind? He had to know. He chanced a quick glance, and his breath caught in his throat.
He looked like a refugee from a horror movie. Everywhere he could see, little rivulets of blood trickled down from the dozens of tiny wounds the spiders had poked into his body. His coat had protected him somewhat, but his T-shirt and jeans were already sodden with it.
This was not good.
Already, he was beginning to feel light-headed, and he wasn’t sure whether it was from the mental shock of what had just happened, or the physical shock of all these wounds. None of them were much on their own, but together, they posed a definite threat. Even if they couldn’t kill him, he didn’t fancy the idea of passing out here and letting those tentacle-things have him—or worse, drag him back through the tear in reality to wherever they came from.
I’ve got to close that thing.
Stone had always been proud of his willpower. Ever since he’d been an apprentice back in his days with William Desmond, it had been one of his strongest traits. It was probably a main reason why he was as good a mage as he was—because he simply refused to give up.
Now, though, he wasn’t sure it would be enough.
The rip gaped in front of him, taunting him, as more of the tentacles tried to shove through. He chanced a quick glance to either side of him, and saw that no more seemed to be sneaking up on him from the sides, but he had no idea how many more had already oozed out and were now crawling off to terrorize the area.
Can’t worry about that right now. If they’re here, they’re here, but I’ve got to stop any more from showing up.
That was going to be harder than he thought.
Closing a rift, even a small one like this, wasn’t easy. It required a lot of concentration and precision. He readily admitted it was a terrible metaphor, but he sometimes likened it to trying to zip up a pair of pants three sizes too small for the wearer. The rift couldn’t be closed all at once, so he had to start on one side and work his way through to the other, while simultaneously making sure the zipper didn’t either come unzipped or pop its teeth. And in this case, he’d have to do all of that while also ensuring nothing on the other side came through.
I could have stayed home with Raider. I could have ignored that note from Stefan.
Nobody said magic was easy.
He blinked stinging sweat out of his eyes. His legs were shaking. If he was going to do this, he’d have to do it soon. Now, even.
No more excuses.
No more fear.
Just get on with it.
Forcing himself to ignore the probing tentacles, he split his concentration between keeping his mental shield strong and reaching out to the nearest edge of the tear. If he could get hold of it, he could start knitting it together.
As he touched it, though, he staggered back as another onslaught of psychic energy did its best to repel him. Even though he wasn’t touching anything physical, it felt like he was trying to grip a live wire that writhed under his hands, trying to worm its tendrils into his mind.
He was certain of one thing now: this was not the “normal” kind of rift he’d become accustomed to—one that resulted from a natural (at last to hear Kolinsky tell it) intersection between two dimensional spaces.
This thing was the result of violence.
Somebody had opened this rift from this side, and whoever it was, they hadn’t spent much effort on trying to do it cleanly.
About the only thing Stone had working in his favor was that it w
as small. If it had been the size of some of the other rifts he’d had to fight with, he’d never have been able to do it on his own.
He still wasn’t sure he could, but at least he had a shot at it.
Damn, I wish Kolinsky was here. Or Harrison. Or, hell, even Daphne.
But they’re not here, are they? Quit whinging and do it!
His legs shook harder now, and more sweat poured from him, joining with the trickles of blood. He dropped to his knees, trying to look at nothing but the rift edge he was trying to grab. That wasn’t easy, though, when the black tentacles were inching closer to him. If anything dropped out of the trees on top of him now, he’d be lost.
Or an alligator…
Enough with the sodding alligators!
Gritting his teeth, he squinted at the nearest edge of the tear. It wanted to repel him—of course it did. Anything that existed wanted to keep existing. That was a fundamental rule of magic, along with the one about things having an affinity for their home dimensions. The good news was that if he could get this rift together, it was highly possible the things that had come through would go back through, or would simply cease to exist when their conduit to their home dimension winked out.
The bad news was, first he needed to get its edges knitted together, before its spawn killed him.
Or, you know, worse.
He leaned in again, squinting, heart pounding.
Just get it started…it will be easier after that…
A little more…
A little more…
There!
It was a tiny victory, and it might not be enough in the long run, but at least it was a start. He’d connected the two sides of the zipper. Now all he had to do was stuff Santa Claus into a pair of skinny jeans.
Seriously? That’s what you’ve got?
Another tentacle poked out of the tear’s other side, waving around, trying to reach him. They almost completely obscured whatever was on the other side now, making the slit of a hole look like some kind of elder god’s mouth, or one of those creatures from Doctor Who that looked like it had slurped up a mouthful of ramen noodles and forgotten to swallow.
