by C. T. Aaron
“Whoa. What’s up with this?”
“Yeah, phones aren’t any good here,” Mae says. “Anything more complicated than maybe a flashlight doesn’t work so well. That’s why you don’t see YouTube videos of this place floating around. One reason, anyway.”
I slip my phone into my pocket. So much for evidence of another world.
We walk slowly through the red-rimmed desert. “How long have you known about this?”
“Not that long. Before we met. Oscar took me the first time.”
A petty and utterly useless pang of jealousy shoots through me when she says his name. I don’t know if or when I’ll get used to the idea that she dated that guy. I hurry to dismiss the sensation. I’m only about 64% successful.
“Why did Oscar bring you?”
“To show off, I think. I mean, I can’t blame him. We were like, fifteen, and he wanted to impress me or something.”
“Fair enough. Still don’t like him.”
“Totally okay.”
I’m getting used to this strange red place. Not comfortable, but used to it. “Why’d it end with him? Because you moved?”
“No, no. It was before that. It wasn’t a good fit.” Her hand squeezes mine. “This is a good fit.”
“How did he know about the doorway?”
“From his dad.”
“His dad’s a Counterpart too?”
“No, actually. But anyone can come and go through the doorways if they know where to find them and they’re kind of shown how by a Counterpart who’s been here before. Like, if you were walking past the doorway we came in, you’d see the darkness, but you might not necessarily be able to get through it.”
“Wait, so why did his dad ever come here, though? I’m confused.”
“Well . . .”
Maebry lets the word hang. I decide to let her choose her words. It’s only fair.
As we walk, I notice other figures out here in this odd red-lit land. Animals, or parodies of animals, like a Surrealist painter decided to populate an otherworldly zoo. Far off, I see some gigantic beast coasting through the air on wings like a Pteranodon. Further still, a beast standing four or five stories tall looms over some smaller creatures scurrying back and forth in front of it. Given the lighting, it’s impossible to see much more than the fact that the beast is roughly humanoid, like Bigfoot or King Kong, with slumped shoulders and a broad, flat face.
If we were standing beside it, we would probably get lost between its toes. We could just as readily be crushed by those toes if the beast was so inclined. If you’ve ever been to a zoo and wondered, even for just a second, what it would be like if a rhino or elephant got out and rampaged through the crowd, being out here feels like that. Times ten.
“It’s just that,” Maebry says, “Oscar’s dad was, um . . . kind of into some shady shit? Like, you saw all those guys betting in there.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s into that. But at a bigger level. Like, much bigger.”
“Bigger how? Those Fams were huge.”
“Bigger in the amount of money involved,” Mae says. “Bigger risks. That fight we just saw, that was just until one of the Counterparts quit. There are other Meets, and they don’t end until . . . yeah.”
Feeling like an idiot, I repeat back: “Until?”
“Until they’re dead.”
The giant Kong Fam roars. I can practically see the soundwaves coming toward us. The sound rattles my skeleton.
I stop walking, pulling Maebry up short. “Let’s go back.”
Mae follows my staring gaze to the looming beast. “Oh. Sure, of course. It’s pretty unsettling the first few times. Come on.”
Gratefully, I follow her lead back toward the arena, and cast several glances over my shoulder as we go.
“How often do you come here?”
“A few times a week, I guess.”
“A few times a week? Mae! Why?”
“I didn’t know about the Meets at first. I just came to hang out with Oscar. It can be very peaceful here, actually, away from the meets. You know how connected you feel to Ezzy?”
I nod.
“Well, like I said tonight at the soccer field. It’s one thing if someone thinks they see a giant wolf. It’s another thing if they see Aison. So being here is the best way to spend time with him.”
“Did you ever fight Aison? At a . . . meet?”
Maebry makes a sound I have never heard from her before—maybe a laugh, or a screech, or cry. I can’t tell.
“No! Oh my gosh, no, B. Never.” She pauses. “Not that I wasn’t asked.”
“Wait—Oscar told you to do fight Aison.”
“He asked if I wanted to. That’s all. I said no.”
We reach the arena and go inside. The place has not quite emptied. Groups of men stand around in small clumps, talking, smoking, and sometimes swigging from flasks or bottles.
“So it just so happens that a doorway to this place is at that old racetrack?” I say as Mae leads me toward the one we entered.
“Oh, no, there are doorways all over,” Mae says. “You just have to search for them. It gets easier the more you do it. They also pop in and out, though. Some are more stable than others. This one’s been here for awhile.”
I stop and pull her near. “When’s the last time you came here?”
“Yesterday. A doorway popped open near school last month, so I slipped in to hang out with Aison for a bit.”
“Well, not to be all Miss Possessive Pants or anything, but that kind of freaks me out that you’re ever here by yourself.”
Maebry smiles. “That is kind of possessive, and I kind of like it.”
She kisses my cheek.
“But I don’t come to this one alone,” she goes on. “No way. There’s nothing around the one by school. It’s quiet. And I don’t go very far from it. It’s okay, B.”
“Doesn’t feel okay.”
“Yes, but home isn’t always, either.”
Maebry steps toward the inky curtain of darkness we came through, but I step away from her suddenly, walking down the bleachers toward the ring and the net-cage around it. I hear Mae’s sandals slapping on the wood behind me, following.
I stop about ten yards away from the group of men, and ignore that they stop talking and stare at me when I reach the netting around the fight ring. I curl my fingers around a strand of the net, testing it. The netting surrounding the ring turns out to be made of some kind of metallic rope; aircraft cable, I think it’s called. It’s been professionally put together, as far as I can tell, with brackets and rivets connecting each horizontal strand to each vertical, creating a checkerboard pattern. I could have fit a foot through one of the squares, but nothing more. It reminds me of those cargo nets you see on playgrounds, but cold and unyielding.
“I can’t believe they do this,” I say, even as I imagine Ezzy or Aison inside. Are they good fighters? How would anyone find out unless they tried? It’s one thing to trust that Ezzy could defend me at home, if I ever really needed him to. But here . . . those Fams were huge, and scary. I don’t think it was their first time.
Mae stays back a few feet, like she can’t bear to come any closer. “I know.”
“That one Familiar, the bear-looking thing . . . you’re sure it’s not dead?”
“It’s not. The Counterparts pop them out before they get killed.”
We’re now entering a conversation it’s never once occurred to me to even consider. “But the Counterparts are controlling the Fams, right?”
I knew that much from Ezzy. I never bother to control him when he was with me at home, but I always knew I could.
“Like a video game, kinda,” Mae agrees. “Yeah.”
“So what if they didn’t quit soon enough? What if the Fam got killed on accident?”
Mae doesn’t answer right away. Leaving my fingers clutching the steel net, I turn my head to look at her. Maebry is glaring hatefully at the arena floor, jaw clenched.
“Then
they die. They both die.”
“Wait, both Familiars? Why would—”
Her gaze lifts to me in surprise. “The Familiar and the Counterpart. Briar, if your Fam dies, you die. Some Counterparts even think that when a human being dies of natural causes on Earth, like just old age or whatever, it’s their Fam that died here first.”
I face the arena again, trying to swallow, but I can’t. My throat is too dry. It’s a lot to take in. The fight was disturbing, but I shouldn’t be bothered by the idea that we are so intimately connected with our Familiars. Maybe it’s the thought of forcing Ezzy to obey my every command, and risking my own life to do it, scares the crap out of me.
A burst of annoying laughter draws my attention away from the blood-soaked arena. A group of guys are . . . just being guys. Loud. Obnoxious. Like the world revolves around them. I imagine they all drive tiny red sports cars or jacked-up white pickups.
They’re also counting rolls of money. Having never actually seen a roll of cash outside of the movies, I have no idea how much it might be.
“Mae?”
“Mmm.”
“If you had fought Aison . . . and you won . . . how much would you have gotten?”
She joins me at the metal net. “I don’t know. It all depends. Maybe ten or twenty thousand.”
I spin my head toward her so fast, a bone in my neck cracks. “What?”
Maebry only shrugs. “Not exactly worth it, B.”
I turn back the other way, to the cash the guys are counting. “Twenty thousand dollars.”
“I said it depends.”
Her hand caresses my back.
“Briar—what.”
I lick my lips. “It’s just that—”
“No. Don’t you say it.”
She moves away. I turn to face her.
“No no, I’m just saying, like—God! Twenty thousand bucks? You’re not kidding? Do you know what we could do with that?”
“Yes, we could risk our lives. And our Fams. No.”
“Right, right, I know, but just . . .” I grab her hands. “Just listen for a sec. Just one, just one fight, me and Ezzy, you and I could get out of here. Out of Phoenix, I mean. Go to school, tell my mom to piss off, go live like we want—”
I haven’t gotten three words into this idea before Mae is shaking her head and saying, “No, no, no,” over and over.
She pulls her hands out of mine and instead grabs my shoulders. “Briar! Stop. Listen to me. I get it. I do. I won’t lie and say it never crossed my mind. Okay? It has. Oscar always made it sound like the safest thing in the world and there were times I really, really thought about it. Okay? I did. But look.”
She makes me face the netting and points through it to the dirt floor.
“That’s real blood. Blood. Living things were hurt, so that a few jerk-off guys could profit from it. So tell me which part of that sounds intriguing to you. Go ahead. I’m listening.”
My shoulders sag under her hands. For a moment, I’m sure I can smell the blood on the dirt.
She’s right. Of course she’s right. And suddenly I’m sick to my stomach all over again for even having thought it. Ezzy is a part of me, in ways I’ll never really understand. I can’t put him in danger for something like this.
I also can’t stand the thought of losing Mae, and that idea is the whole reason I wanted to talk to her tonight.
Guess we got a wee bit sidetracked.
“God, Mae. I’m sorry. I just, I thought for a second that maybe . . .”
She moves into me, draping her arms across my collarbone in a reverse hug. “I know. It’s tempting. But we’re better than that.”
“Better than Oscar?”
I feel her breath on my neck as she chuckles. “Way, way, way better than Oscar.”
I let myself sigh and close my eyes for a second, enjoying the warmth of her arms around me. I am so lucky I found her.
But I wish I’d found her first. I wish I wasn’t second after him.
I almost ask her about graduation and college right then, but I can’t. I don’t want to rush this moment with her.
Of course, just like on Earth, there’s always a jerk there to take your mind off things.
“You lookin’ for something, cutie?” one of the nearby men calls.
When his three buddies laugh, I pull on my best glare and slowly turn my head to give it to them. It doesn’t work well. They’re too old to be affected by it. So I roll my eyes nice and big and turn back to the ring just as Maebry steps beside me.
“Making friends already, I see.” She sounds nervous.
“I guess there’s assholes in every world.”
“Hey,” one of the other guys calls. “You girls wanna make some real money, huh?”
The other three friends laugh again, which propels the man on a swaggering walk toward us. He’s wearing shiny slacks and a pink button-up opened to his sternum. Apparently God still makes douchebags like this.
I’m not in the mood to deal, so I straighten my shoulders and say, very clearly and very loudly, “We’re leaving now. Back off.”
Pink Shirt raises his hands and shakes them in a mock fearful gesture, eliciting—of course—more laughs from the other three who are dressed more-or-less like he is.
I grab Mae’s arm and haul her up the bleachers, taking them two at a time. Keeping my voice loud so they’ll hear, I say to her, “I really do not need this shit right now.”
Mae says nothing as we reach the top of the bleachers and plow through the blackness of the magical arch. Instantly we’re back home, outside the crumbling racetrack, the moon high in the night sky now. I check my phone; it’s just after nine. Time passes the same in the mirror world, I think.
I gulp the warm air of Earth. It’s good to be here. “Can you call a car? I really want to—”
“Hey, girlies!”
My heart skips. Mae and I whirl around.
Exiting from the doorway are the four guys we’d left behind in the arena. They’ve followed us out, and now they’re walking toward us.
I glance around, and realize we are in the middle of absolutely freaking nowhere. The I-10 is a solid half-mile to the north, and even if we took off at a full run right now, I’m not sure we could outrun the men. They’re older than us, but not like, old. One of them has the lumpy shape of a bodybuilder, so he’s probably got some stamina in him. But Mae doesn’t run like me, and she’s just in sandals anyway.
My heart feels like it’s been uncorked and acid soda water is fizzing out of it.
“We didn’t think this through,” I whisper as the men, the smiling men, get closer. “I should call Ezzy, this is not good . . .”
“You girlies didn’t get to hear my offer,” the jerk in the pink shirt says. “Why don’t you come on over here?”
They get closer.
Maebry tilts her chin down a little, a half-grin creasing one corner of her mouth.
“Don’t worry, B,” she says. “I got this.”
FOUR
When Maebry’s Familiar pops behind us, there isn’t a thud so much as a hum vibrating through the earth and zipping up the back of my legs to my spinal column. I can feel him standing behind and over us like a guardian angel.
Maebry named him Aison after a character in Greek myth. He’s a gargoyle. And not a little one.
His appearance is basically the same as a stone gargoyle you’d see on a Gothic church in Europe, but rather than being small and impish, Aison stands eight feet tall . . . and that’s in a crouch with his wings folded over his entire body. His eyes glow deep crimson, nearly black really, and wisps of smoke sometimes trail from the corners of his eyes like misty gray tears.
“Whoa, hey!” the guy in the pink shirt says, pulling up short about twenty feet away.
His buddies stop too, their eyes lifting to take in Aison’s pig-like snout and glowing eyes. Two massive fangs jut up from his lower jaw over his upper lip. They are about as long as my forearm.
To my surprise,
Pink Shirt smiles and says to me, “Nice! He yours?”
The shift in his demeanor confuses me until I realize that of course he wouldn’t be shocked by Aison’s sudden appearance; he was just in the mirror world arena, presumably betting on the fight. He knows all about Familiars.
Which then makes me focus my senses on him, to see if he’s a Counterpart. But he’s not. Neither are the other guys.
I whisper over to Mae: “They’re not—”
“I know,” she whispers back. “That makes them worse, trust me. Just be cool.”
Being cool is terribly difficult as the four men split apart and surround us. They keep back a ways, maybe fifteen feet, but they are definitely encircling us. Fortunately, they’re more interested in Aison than in us.
“Nice,” Pink Shirt says again, and I feel a tiny bit better as his walk takes him full-circle around us so he’s back where he began. He crosses his arms, appraising the gargoyle who stares back at him impassively. The guy reminds me of the men who gather around and talk about old classic cars, only not as cool. Like, at all.
“What can he do?” Pink Shirt says.
“Come any closer and you’ll find out!” I shout back. My legs feel about as sturdy as drinking straws. I want to go home. This whole night has been too much.
But Maebry rests her fingers on my wrist; down low, sort of clandestine. “He can do enough. We need to get going now.”
“He sure is nice,” Pink Shirt says, ignoring Maebry’s mention of leaving. “You fight him?”
“I said we need to get going,” Maebry says.
Pink Shirt trades glances with the other three, and my heart triples its speed. It’s just an instinct, but I am sure the look conveys to them, You wanna jump ’em?
I can’t wait any more. I call Ezzy.
My giant wolf pops into the world beside me, just a bit in front of Aison. Sensing my fear, he immediately issues a low growl.
“Just not feeling real comfy right now, buddy,” I say, pretending it’s to my Fam but glaring at Pink Shirt. At least he can’t bring a Familiar to this little shitshow. Maybe he has a gun, though. Maybe they all do. They definitely seem like the kind of guys who would carry firearms.
