by Jade Alters
“So you came by to see?”
“Well, no. I can sense that she’s not here. I was thinking about tracking her essence from here to wherever she is now. I might be able to trace the echoes of her trip in the Blue Plane-”
“Where is she then?” I can’t help but break in. Hoster shows no sign of unveiling anything actually significant. The arts of the Blue Plane are for men more patient than me.
“I said I was thinking about tracking her. I didn’t actually do it yet,” Hoster admits. There’s an odd note of hesitance in his tone. I try to dispel it with a firm:
“Go on, do it. Find her.”
“Is it really so simple to you?” Hoster counters with the first hint of something like passion. “Violation of privacy doesn’t begin to describe this. I’m looking into a playback of her soul.”
“When you put it that way…yes. It is that simple,” I answer him with equal fire. “If she’s not back yet, from dangerous territory, something went wrong. I’m sure Emery will appreciate backup more than privacy.”
“Are you…” Hoster can’t bring himself to ask me if I’m serious. He knows I am.
“Go on. If she’s pissed, you can tell her it was my idea,” I offer as a compromise. Hoster eyes me one last time to ask the silent question: you really want me to do this? I lower my brow over my eyes to answer the same way. Yes. He sighs into an about-face. Hoster puts both hands on Emery’s door. His eyelids scrunch up in focus. In seconds, I’m astonished to see him still upright when every muscle in his body seems to lose its tension.
“They stayed overnight in Dunnigan,” Hoster reads from the script of Emery’s spiritual trail.
Hoster,
The Blue Plane, Six Rivers National Forest
Emery’s spirit leaves a misty stardust trail of violet and silver. Once I feel it slip between the fingers of my Astral form, it’s impossible to lose. Impossible to mistake for anything else. I soar along it past the parking lot she slept in, in a beat up old Camry. I watch her shoot up, awake, right after our meeting of passion in her memory-world. I watch the way she covers her mouth and smirks at her reflection in the glass. It puts a similar expression on me. She falls right back asleep, which is where my smile vanishes.
“Who the hell…” I murmur, when a second passenger opens the back door in the dead of night. He wipes his jaw of something scarlet with a napkin from the back seat, then curls up in the back and falls asleep as well. A wide-lipped snore reveals two extended fangs.
“What is it?” Rock’s imposing voice booms through the Blue Plane, stinging my spiritual eardrums. God, he must be right next to my ear, back at the Academy.
“Emery’s with…a Vampire. I don’t recognize him. They slept in their car about halfway to Six Rivers,” I transmit to the lips of my physical form for him.
“Something’s off here… Why didn’t they drive straight through? And why is she with some Vampire, anyway?” Rock thunders.
“I don’t know. She didn’t want me along for some reason, but it looks like she anticipated needing help,” I tell him, just before. “Do me a favor and take a step back from wherever you are. I can’t hear shit with how loud you are.”
“Sorry,” Rock whispers. With some focus, I push the spiritual fast-forward button. Time accelerates through the night until Emery and her unknown partner wake up and drive off. I float along in the car with them, like I was right there all along. They pull off on a clay sidestreet and shoot through the forest on foot, with the Vampire in the lead. They cross a stream to a small, stony cabin.
“Looks like they found Helena,” I report, when I watch the Vampire pull her from the cabin. Then my heart plunks right down into my stomach acid. “Oh God.”
“What?” Rock booms through my skull. I hardly notice how loud he is with the chaos unfolding in the forest clearing before me. Emery’s skin is laced all over with slices from a powerful Warlock’s needle storm.
“There was a fight. A big one. Emery, the Vampire and Helena against a bunch of Witches and Warlocks. But…wait…they got away,” I count out as I see it. The combined wit of a Dalshak Magician and a Bartos Witch drew a line even Helena’s captors couldn’t cross. The three race for the edge of the forest. My relief is short-lived, however. They’re snared by a figure I hardly expect. One that I know.
“So what happened?” Rock demands.
“They were stopped by Fey Rorelia…holy shit- and VampKing Lucidous,” I tell him.
“What? Is there anyone else from the Council there?” Rock asks me.
“No…but one…two more Magicians just appeared from behind a trick,” I say. I move in closer to the encounter, fingers spread wide to catch the echoes of sound waves, left behind as disturbances in the air. They were so long ago now that there’s hardly anything left. But maybe…if I can just focus. “Rock. I’m going to try and hear what they said. I need you to be silent.” His lack of answer is perfect. I cast my invisible, ultrasonic net but it catches only the tiniest remnants.
“Point Arena…” Emery says to one of the Magicians.
“Point Arena?” I repeat. “That’s where the VampKing wanted them to send Helena…”
“Fuck you, Horace,” Emery spits at the male Magician.
“One of the Magicians’ names is Horace,” I tell Rock.
“Horace?” he coughs, “Horace Dalshak is the old Magister! Emery’s father!”
“Looks like the VampKing and Fey Rorelia are working with them,” I tell Rock. Another battle breaks out with Emery’s sudden strike at her own father and the woman Magician. Presumably her mother, with how shocked she is. “They fought again… Emery and the Vampire escaped… Helena…”
“What happened to Helena?” Rock breaks in. But everything gets hazier as Emery and the Vampire move away from the scene. They head back through the forest, towards their beat up car.
“I’m not sure. Emery and the Vampire left, so I can’t see clearly. But the VampKing, Fey Rorelia and the Dalshaks got their hands on her. I bet I know where they’re going, too. I don’t understand… Emery would never leave her,” I mull over as sapphire mist swirls to cloud the whole scene.
“No she wouldn’t,” Rock agrees, “so get out here. We know where we need to go.”
“Wha-wha-what?” I counter, as the Blue Plane fades to black all around me. My eyes crack open to Rock with his hand on my shoulder again. I can’t help flinching every time. He looks like he could snap me in half with one arm tied behind his back, and he keeps picking the worst times to grab me.
“Well the Council’s out, for help,” Rock declares. “If Lucidous, Fey Rorelia and the former Magister are in on this, we can’t trust the rest of them and neither can Emery. We’re all she’s got.” Just then, something pushes into my back. I stumble forward, into just about the last place I want to be - Rock’s arms. He stands me up and turns me around in front of Emery’s third roommate.
“You are going to Point Arena?” she utters, like she’s been part of the conversation all along.
“Yo-you heard all that?” I stammer. Great. We might as well spill the Academy’s secrets of treason up and down the whole hallway.
“I did. If Emery’s going there with but one Vampire, to save Helena…it won’t work,” Fey Deller tells us.
“And why’s that?” Rock asks.
“It’s heavily guarded,” Fey Deller says. I can’t quite tell if it’s just the calmness of her Fey tone or if she sounds like she’s actually been there before.
“I thought the Point Arena facility was shut down,” Rock interjects.
“Only briefly,” Fey Deller tells him. “They’re doing the same twisted experiments there they’ve been doing since the thirties.”
“Then how do we get in?” I test her. Fey Deller looks at me with vacant, gemstone eyes.
“The same way I escaped,” she says.
Pitstop
Darius,
Myers Flat, California
“Hm… Hey, what the hell you doing?” Em
ery barks the very second she snores herself awake. Honestly, I’m more impressed than irritated. I snort as she flattens back in her seat, spreadeagled to brace for impact. A wall of trees flies up at us through the windshield of the car.
“Good evening to you, too,” I mock her in formality. “I’m getting us off the grid.”
“I can just hide the car with a trick! We don’t need to blow it up!” Emery screams as we bounce over a rocky little hill. I had to accelerate or we never would have gotten over it. I lean into the brake as soon as the nose of the car tilts down into the little valley on the other side.
“Take it easy,” I laugh. “We still need this piece of shit. I’m just getting us away from the road. Helena’s escort pulled over into a rest stop about a half-mile back. There was no sign of movement for about thirty minutes. It looks like they’re staying the night,” I tell her. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were full cots somewhere in the massive, armored vehicle the Kyrie took Helena away in.
“You…let me sleep through all that?” Emery asks me. There’s a suspicious lack of edge in her voice. I toy with the idea of digging on her for laziness or some other bullshit. The bags under her eyes are a little deep for that, though. And the way she fought for Helena… I didn’t think Emery Dalshak was capable of that kind of care.
“I can’t imagine holding back a Core Line Warlock’s spell is easy,” I tell her, “You looked like you needed the rest.”
“Thanks,” Emery murmurs. I throw the car in park at the bottom of the hill. An odd kind of quiet rests between us when the engine rumbles off. “And…thanks for sticking with me back there.”
“Just shut up,” I wave her off. I pop the door open to get out and stretch my legs.
“I mean it,” Emery persists, following me outside. “I know it was a big risk for little reward. Stepping between her and her father like that. And getting me out of there. You could have just run yourself. Especially after Lucidous-”
“Let’s not rub salt in it, shall we?” I bite.
“So-sorry,” Emery toys with an apology like it’s the first one that’s ever left her lips. For all I know, it might well be.
“You hit the nail on the head, though. Lucidous couldn’t find two shits to give about me in a public bathroom. Your family wants me dead. I can’t exactly go back to the Academy, after helping the Kyrie. Emery Dalshak…” I throw my head back to the sky with a wild grin for the irony. “You’re all I’ve got.”
“Well, right now, I’m not much better off,” Emery admits. “You’re the one in the car with me.”
“Guess I am,” I laugh.
I walk around the outside of the car to slide up on the hood. I savor the stark difference in temperature between the engine beneath me and the glass behind me. I turn a surprised face sideways when Emery slides up beside me. Why wouldn’t she? A gorgeous palette of mauve and scarlet is jumping through the late evening clouds. The breeze sweeping down to rustle the trees does wonders for our hot skin. The stars are just starting to peek through the atmosphere. Oh, right, the Vampire her family taught her to hate. Her brother’s best friend turned rogue. Serge… I wonder what he would think if he saw this? Then it crosses my mind - I guess Emery’s gone rogue too.
“Darius…what do you know about the Point Arena Facility?” Emery asks me, eyes full of twilight.
“Probably no more than what your family’s already told you,” I say.
“Why don’t you go ahead and assume that’s not true,” Emery tells me. There’s something so emotional about the sound of it. I can’t pin down just which emotion it is, and I’m not sure she can either. It’s like the dam holding everything back just folded over and let it all out, from the moment she flung tricks at her parents.
“They do fucked up stuff there, to everyone and everything they can get their hands on,” I tell her. “Fey, Vampires, Demons, Astrals. Even the occasional patient of the Original Three.”
“Original Three?” Emery echoes.
“Jesus, you don’t even know what your family preaches to everyone else?” I marvel, but her eyes show true ignorance.
“The Original Three races that formed the Council and lifted the Academy up in the first place. Witches and Warlocks, Magicians and Shifters,” I fill her in. “Anyway, Point Arena is where the old Council initially opened the Runic Gates and brought the Shadewalkers into our Realm.”
“Looking for…the Realms of Power?” Emery tries.
“So you do know a little bit. Yeah,” I confirm, “but they didn’t find any Realms they were looking for. They found Hell, Thornegarde and the Blue Plane. Since the Facility has started up again, they’ve tried some…new methods to narrow down the search.”
“Like what?” What she’s asking me to explain makes even me shudder.
“Calibrating the Runic Gates with…material from different races. I mean it’s solid logic. There has to be some connection between the organics and the energy. But to actually do it…last I checked, they were rooting around in gray matter to see if there’s some sort of buried, innate knowledge in the parts of our brains that activate when we use our abilities. Like tracing a missile back to where it was launched from.”
“We?” Emery asks. She turns to me with these big eyes that look like they belong more to the little girl I used to know. That little girl never had such wonder, such curiosity, though.
“Yeah. Vampires. Witches. Magicians. All of us. Everyone’s got a reason to find their own Realm of Power. I mean, it’s right in the name. Supremacy. An unshakable spot at the top of the food chain,” I tell her. I watch dots connect behind the glossy screen that lowers over Emery’s eyes. Cloudy as they are, they’re seeing the truth for the first time. The truth about her family. About her whole life - everything.
“God…what are they going to do to Helena?” Emery shudders.
“Same thing they’re going to do to us, if we get caught,” I tell her. It chills my own body as much as hers.
“Darius,” a single word slams into me with such feeling. I have no choice but to look. Then something else hits me. Something so wildly unpredictable that I don’t have time to fight it. Emery’s lips. Then her body. I feel her breasts swell up against my chest, red hot compared to my own temperature. Her lips graze across my fangs without so much as a flinch. It takes me a second to dissect the surge of feeling it sends through me. Am I surprised? Repulsed? Enchanted? I can’t decide, before my instincts catch up to my suddenly drumming heart. My head snaps back.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“There’s a decent chance we die tomorrow, right?” Emery asks.
“Or worse,” I tell her.
“Exactly,” Emery says. The devious look in her eye is so out of place on her. It’s calamitously sexy. “And you’re the one in the car with me.”
“I…I guess I am,” I laugh. Despite my own bewilderment, when Emery leans in for another kiss, I meet her halfway. We crash together like two barrels on a sinking ship, then roll away from one another just the same. The back doors of the Camry fly open. Emery slides in first, and pulls me down on top of her.
I can hardly believe this is happening at all - let alone how fast and how hard. The door hardly closes behind me when Emery’s shirt hits the window. I’m not even sure where her bra goes. All I know is I never pictured a more perfect circle than the one her breasts bounce in when she lays back down. I don’t even realize I’m frozen, staring, until she wiggles her hips between my legs to slip her underwear off with her hands.
“This is an interactive show, Darius. What the hell are you waiting for?” Emery prods me. I get the distinct feeling it’s to hide the flush climbing up through her cheeks. I tear my shirt off. The last violet rays of sunset cast a brilliant palette of color over my pale chest. Emery throws her arms around my neck and pulls me down.
Emery’s heat leeches up into me, until our temperatures equalize. Her nipples poke all over my chest and bony collar as she works her lips between mine and my neck. I
t wakes a pulse from my heart usually so faint, the average doctor can’t even detect it. Blood courses to every extremity, including the one between my legs. The second Emery feels it up against her, she slides my boxers down. My penis slides out against her. She rocks back and forth beneath me, arching her back to press up. Each crest of each wave of her body sends a tingle of pleasure down my shaft, up into my gut. I can’t believe the shudder it sends across my lip. It has been a while since I’ve been with anyone.
Emery’s fingers slide down my chest, awakening sensations I thought Vampirism had stolen from me. Sensations bordering on…human. Warmth. Excitement. Intensity. It all swirls out from the wake of her smooth skin as it works down my body. It meanders like a river, down my abdomen, over the ridge of my skinny waist, all the way to my throbbing penis. Emery’s fingers swirl around it and climb back up. She slides down with each repetition, until I can’t take the anticipation. My head pokes up into her lower lips. Her upper ones pull back from me just long enough to say:
“Go ahead.” She must know. Either she knows Vampires can’t procreate, or she has even more of a pessimistic prediction for tomorrow than I do. I lean my hips forward. Emery parts the gates of her vagina with her fingers to take me in. I take it slow, but the way is smooth. I slide deep into the warm embrace of her body, until our hips lock together. Emery hugs my back with her thighs to take me in even further. A blanket of warmth spreads out from my pelvis to my face.
I pull back just a few inches. Emery pumps me into her with the push of her legs. Our lips hang beside one another to moan out a breath of elation. With each retreat, I thrust harder. Emery rocks back into the car door. She grunts and groans, yearning for more, even as her head taps the glass of the window. She hardly notices, too preoccupied with the rub of my head up past her clitoris.
Heightening tension rocks the car. Its old wheels squeak under the groove of our horizontal dance. I hold myself up with one arm to graze a hand over Emery’s breast. Her nipple goes rock hard between each of my fingers. Then I squeeze. It works like a switch. Emery puts her head of lush dark hair back and clenches her jaw. Each hard thrust shoves a breath of pleasure out between her teeth. Then one comes through louder than all the rest, and doesn’t stop with my continued push. It is only broken into pieces by each shove. Her legs fold up against my chest as I push it in as hard as I can. I feel Emery’s muscles contort inside her. Little shivers of her climax jump up and down my penis, which sends me right over the edge.
