Hidden Realms

by Dean Murray

  Callie’s eyes swept nervously up and down the dark street.

  “Will you be okay for a few minutes?” I asked her.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Just hurry back with the guys so we can get the hell out of here.”

  I nodded in agreement before I started across the yard, in the direction of the front door. I was about half way there when a static voice called out behind me, “Roger. Copy that. Mission complete. On our way out. Over.”

  Alec. Being Alec. He loved playing on the walky-talkies. I turned and flashed Callie a smile as she returned, “Hurry the hell up. Over.”

  About that time, the guys emerged from the house, looking disheveled, but unharmed. Actually, they seemed in good spirits, and I swore I saw a smile on Nathan’s face. Either he was laughing at Alec joking around—and I highly doubted that—or they had found something worth smiling about.

  My pulse jumped, but I held it in check. The inevitable disappointment hurt so much more when I got my hopes up.

  But this time, something was different.

  Nathan looked at me and my stomach flip-flopped like it did every time I met his eyes, but then, he gave me something else to be excited about.

  “We got the name of a town,” he said after he had drawn close enough for me to hear. “Supposedly, there’s a warehouse there that the Skotadi have been working out of and experimenting on changing Kala for years.”

  My jaw dropped. That was exactly the kind of intel we had been waiting for. “Really? That’s great. Where is this place?”

  “Little town in the middle of nowhere. Smithfield, West Virginia.”

  The guys had both reached me where I stood in the yard. They were close enough that I had to mask the reaction the name of that town had on me. I didn’t want them to know that I had heard that name before—only I hadn’t realized I had until Nathan said it out loud.

  Smithfield. That was the word I had been hearing in my dreams. I knew it now. And it was then that I knew where we were really going, and where my destiny was leading me.

  It wasn’t just a warehouse in a small town.

  I was going to go find the boy in white.

  The story continues with Sacrificed, the next book in The Ignited Series, and is available here.

  About the Author

  Desni Dantone resides in Western Pennsylvania with her family. She is a devoted mother to three young boys, an avid reader, and a serious Pittsburgh Penguins fan. You can subscribe to her mailing list here.

  When monsters break through the veil separating their worlds, Mackenzie Scott has nothing left to lose. Her brother is marked, her future has vanished, and all that remains is a desperate need for revenge.

  After discovering the breach the monsters used as a gateway, Mackenzie devises a plan to stop them, whatever the cost. It isn't exactly luck when she finds an injured stranger in the street, but he just might be the key she needs to succeed.

  What Mackenzie doesn't know, is that this stranger isn't the helpless boy he appears to be. He's one of them. And he's got plans of his own.

  King of Ash and Bone

  by Melissa Wright

  Copyright 2016 by Melissa Wright

  Part One

  Iron Bound

  Chapter One

  It started with a crack. A roll of thunder. It might have been any other storm. It might not have been world-altering.

  And then came the howl—the roar of wind like a train blasting past just outside—and the rush of air as it was stolen from their living room. Mackenzie opened her mouth to scream for her brother, to tell him to take cover, but they could barely make out the debris pelting the windows and the creaking shift of the house’s wood frame over the noise. He looked at her, eyes wide, and she had a remembered flash of terror, of a younger Riley calling her name.

  “Kenzie!” His voice broke through, a desperate shout in the squall of the tempest, and she was running, both of them frantic as they headed for the safety of the basement. She shoved him through the hallway, his arms rising to cover his face as the kitchen door slammed open, throwing leaves and limbs and dirt onto a rain-slicked linoleum floor. The sight seemed strange to her, so unnatural against the lifelong image of it clean. And there was something on the wind, some strange mix of ozone and cinnamon that burned her nose, that made her wonder if lightning had struck outside. But there was no flash. Only darkness. Wind.

  The roar.

  “Go!” she yelled, but Riley couldn’t hear her. He was seventeen, but suddenly a boy again, shielding his face from a coming blow. She had to force him through the door that led downstairs. Her eyes caught on the wooden trim, the peeling paint and the worn metal of the lock chain. They hadn’t stopped running, but it was as if every detail caught her eye, stretched time so she could afford its notice. And she would remember those details, those tiny, insignificant parts of that moment.

  Because it was the moment their lives had changed forever.

  Mackenzie Scott had covered her brother’s ears that night, shielded him from the otherworldly scream of uprooted wood and twisting metal as they crouched in the tiny alcove behind the basement’s heating system, huddled into each other, waiting for the fury to cease. She had no idea how long its rage had lasted, though she’d relived it in a thousand nightmares. She only knew one thing: it had been no true storm.

  She stared into the wispy clouds outside her window now, alone in the house since the weeks had passed. She wasn’t simply unaccompanied in their home, but the entire street, most of the neighborhood. They had run, all of them. She couldn’t blame them. She’d have gone too if she’d had some place to go.

  But she didn’t. And she was alone. There was nothing left to do but face the facts: There were creatures outside her window, and there was no place safe on this earth.

  Chuck Taylors folded at the ankle, she tugged the strap of the backpack higher on her shoulder before wrapping a hand around the hollow metal bat. Her other hand hesitated, hovering above the door handle so that she had to force herself to release the latch.

  “Batter up, Mackenzie,” she muttered, resisting the urge to take one last glance at the room behind her. “The world’s not going to save itself.”

  They’d been her brother’s words to her over endless video games when they were children, and a nervous chuckle escaped as she touched the silver lever. It was the last sound she made before stepping into the bright light of sun.

  She’d barely seen the daylight since the incident, spending most of her hours holed up in the basement on a makeshift cot as they hid from what their neighbors had called spirits and fae. Mackenzie didn’t know what those monsters were, but she knew this wasn’t magic. This was real life, not some ridiculous fairytale. They were in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. It was about the most unmagical place she could think of.

  As far as she was concerned, these were beasts. And beasts could hear footsteps, they could smell their prey. So her steps were as quick and quiet as they’d ever been, though she might have been able to run cleaner without the two-handed death grip on Riley’s West Ridge Sluggers Little League bat.

  The sights made her chest hurt, as they always did. It had been disorienting at first, a mess of half-formed houses among piles of lumber and overturned cars. But once she’d understood, she could barely stand to look. Not that she’d given herself much time for that. She and her brother had gone back inside, latching a cover over their hiding spot and cowering for a full day after he’d been scratched.

  A scratch, she thought again, it was only a scratch.

  Mackenzie would regret that moment forever. It had been her fault. She hadn’t been brave, she’d been stupid.

  They’d been in shock, she suspected, to make such a disastrous decision. They’d decided the creatures were gone, moved on to some other area of town. And in the tinted light of daybreak, they had walked the center line dividing their street.

  It was one of the most incredible, terrifying things she could remember. Their steps were slow,
measured by a dreamlike sense of timelessness, and Riley, nearly eighteen and on a constant tear to prove he was a man, had slipped his fingers into hers. They’d been children once more, misplaced and alone in a way they’d never been, not even on the day they’d lost their parents.

  So stupid, she thought again, wiping at her cheek with the back of her hand. There were no tears there; she hadn’t truly cried since she was a girl, but somehow the shame of it remained, and the instinct to clean the dampness away before anyone would see. She bit down hard against it, determined to pay attention to her surroundings despite the hammering of her heart.

  It didn’t look much different than it had the morning after the attack, aside from the absence of people. She remembered seeing them during that early dawn, though no one was doing much more than looking toward the horizon, staring in the direction the creatures that destroyed their homes had flown. Except for Mrs. Miller. She’d just screamed. It had been a never-ending shriek, like rending metal, a fitting background to the scene before them.

  “The Johnsons’ house,” Mackenzie whispered now beneath her breath, determined not to lose her way. She’d not left the safety of the road, but she needed to keep track this time. On her own, knowing exactly where she was suddenly seemed more important.

  A flattened patch of yellowed plants spread across the square of land that had once been Arnie Jackson’s house. He was retired, a lawyer or accountant, she couldn’t remember. But he’d spent nearly every afternoon in that garden, unable to bear the sight of a single weed. Mackenzie had never taken food from him in the past, but she would have given just about anything to have a chance at one of those red, ripe tomatoes now.

  “Fourth Street,” she said, glancing at the crossroad with a growing unease in the pit of her stomach. She was getting nearer and nearer to the spot they’d gotten Riley.

  Movement caught her attention, a small, skittering mass near the front of what was once the Ellis place, and she froze, grasping the bat with the loose, ready-to-swing grip her mother had taught her. Heart racing, chest heaving, she watched, waiting for the thing to move for her. But it did not. Its glassy black eyes narrowed for a moment before flicking to the ground beneath a shattered wooden door where a wad of paper rested. It must have smelled of food; the creature’s clawed hands, nimble as a squirrel’s and in contrast with its spiky, matted fur, clasped the garbage, shredding it to bits as it searched for the source of the scent.

  Mackenzie slid slowly to the side, away from the creature. It was a small thing, hidden in the shadows. It would not hurt her. It was not like the others.

  She glanced back as she moved, uncertain now that the daylight held as much safety as she’d hoped, but when she reached the next crossroad, she realized it was mere blocks from the spot near the park where the truly dangerous ones—the ones that had come at her brother—had been. She wiped a hand across her forehead, brushing back a loop of chestnut hair that had somehow managed to escape her ponytail, and fought the instinct that told her to run. It was safer now, so much easier since the others had moved on.

  But she couldn’t keep from remembering, couldn’t stop the image of that first up-close encounter with the thing that had cut her brother. She could still feel Riley’s fingers tighten in her grip, sense his terror that not only mirrored, but magnified her own as creatures filled the sky, soaring birdlike overhead. They had arms and legs, humanesque forms. But they were no humans. Feathers and horns, claws, teeth… God, their teeth. They had laughed and cackled, screamed in incoherent streams that sounded at turns tribal and Latin, and some other long-lost tongue Mackenzie had never truly heard. She and Riley had been stunned into mute disbelief as the creatures dove and withdrew, circling closer and closer as they went.

  “Sixth,” she said now in a breathless whisper. “Sixth Street. Only three blocks to go.”

  She could still see the thin black pupils piercing the gold irises of the beast that had come at them, the way its deep-set eyes narrowed on its prey, the darkness that lined them making them only more alien. She and Riley had run. At its first dive, a primal drive had taken over and she and her brother had moved, pulling their grip free to save themselves.

  His instinct had been to run toward home, to the house they’d grown up in, to the one place he’d always felt safe. But not Mackenzie. Mackenzie hadn’t felt those feelings of home for the last nine years. There was only one place she could go. One place she could remember that sense of safety. To the park. To the tree where she’d sat with her mother so many years ago, and her only sanctuary since.

  The tree that would be gone now. The tree these monsters would have taken from her.

  Now her feet stopped of their own accord, and she looked up, searching the sky for the unearthly crack she’d seen when her brother had been attacked. This was exactly where she’d stood then, but the shock of that event was gone. It felt so different now, less like awe and more like pain.

  Then she had gazed at the vast opening that tore through the sky, lost in wonder for unmeasured moments. Moments that might have helped her save her brother, might have kept the beast from reaching him.

  When she had looked back, seen that Riley had turned, she’d run for him, leaving the gaping hole in the universe at her back. She’d come upon them just as the creature, cloaked in fur and painted with a dark red that she would later decide was blood, struck out at him, thrusting its claws forward to hook Riley’s arm, scarring him.

  Marked, the shaken news anchors were calling it. Bits and pieces of information were all they’d been able to get, scratchy clips they could barely decipher through the static of a battery-operated radio she’d played with as a kid, and a few wild postulations they’d found on Riley’s wireless tablet before the internet had quit. Since then, they’d been mostly without power, though now and again the lights would flicker, a low brownout-type draw that destroyed more appliances than helped her get any sort of contact with the outside world. And that was what she needed: to let them know.

  But as she stared at the sky, thin wisps of cloud ornamenting a cerulean blue, she did not see an otherworldly glow. There were no lights, no colors, no sounds that vibrated through her skin. The gap was gone.

  She took a breath, glancing around for some sign, some indication of the epicenter she’d been so certain was here. Shifting her pack, and not bothering to take out the camera she’d intended to use for proof, she stepped forward, almost afraid to disturb the scene. To wake a sleeping dragon.

  Even more so here than at their home, the trees were uprooted, buildings demolished, walkways deserted. A small, wiry-haired dog skittered across the roadway, head dipped low and shoulders hunched, searching for home, or food, or fleeing from something Mackenzie couldn’t see. Water rushed somewhere beyond what was left of the park. The scent of smoke, acrid and cough-inducing, lingered everywhere. Metal road signs skewered the ground, nowhere near their original stations. The ground was littered with splinters of wood, shards of glass, but nothing looked familiar. Nothing seemed the same.

  She moved hesitantly forward, simultaneously yearning for and dreading the site of the tree.

  In the scope of what had happened, it was such a small thing. But it was the one place her mother had taken her, a spot where the two of them could read and talk and simply be.

  It was all she had left.

  Chapter Two

  Mackenzie had a sinking feeling the tree, like everything else, was gone. That this one last link had been taken from her too. She feared it almost more than the other truths, because now that the hole in the sky had disappeared, her entire plan for redemption was wrecked.

  She glanced one more time over her shoulder at the place the opening had been. She hadn’t imagined the purpled, cosmic-photo-looking rays encompassing the gaping crack in the sky. A portal, an effing sci-fi movie-worthy gateway that had released the apocalypse on West Ridge, Ohio.

  It couldn’t have been. Portals weren’t real. But when she’d turned that day, no longer tr
ansfixed in its sheer impossibility, she’d known it was. That thing that was attacking her brother was no illusion. It was all real. Mackenzie had found the epicenter, the source of these monsters, and no amount of disbelief would make it go away.

  She hadn’t told Riley. Once she’d seen him with the creature, all either of them had cared about was getting to safety. She should have told him. She should have said she needed him. It might have kept him from leaving.

  An unearthly shriek jerked her head up. There was a laugh, some hideous, skin-prickling cackle, and the sound of breaking glass. Mackenzie dropped into a crouch, unceremoniously dumping the pack to get a better grip on her bat.

  The sound had come from the landing near the bridge, the seating area for the narrow runner’s path that eventually crossed over a rocky ledge on the east side of the park. She hurried forward to the only remaining cover within reach. It was an overturned pickup, windows busted and cab mangled, but large enough to hide her slender frame. She fought for calm, pressing her fingers tight into the grip of the bat to steady her breath.

  One…

  Two…

  Three…

  She cursed. Counting wasn’t going to work. There was no way she was going to keep her cool with these monsters so near.

  Her mouth was parched, her neck beading with sweat. “Get it together, Mackenzie,” she muttered, closing her eyes for one long instant to gather the courage she’d need to come up with a plan. “See where they are, that’s all you need. Find them, and then you’ll know how to get away.”

  She drew the bat up tighter, leaning so, so slowly to peer around the bed of the truck.