Draper’s suggestion that he go first through the portal really made a good deal of sense. Not only was he the one among them with the highest constitution, he was still also a very accomplished wizard. Whether he met up with magic or might on the other side, he should be able to handle it and clear the way for the others to follow.
He nodded. “How long will this doorway stay open?” It wasn’t his spell; he had no idea how powerful it was.
“Not long,” said Meagan. Dietrich glanced down at her. It was her magic that was keeping the door open. She was hiding it well, but now that he looked closely, he noticed a furrow in her brow and a set to her jaw. “A minute or so for sure, but I wouldn’t bet on much longer.”
“Okay, give me forty-five seconds,” Dietrich said. “Then come through after me.” He took a deep breath and stepped through.
Chapter Five
Sam stood tall and still before the massive mirror. It rose from the damp earth in the foggy clearing and towered to a height of ten feet, seemingly unsupported – just a lone mirror with a frame of dark gray carved marble in faces and grotesques of all manners and dispositions. Mists shrouded the edges of the looking glass, cloying and unnatural. There were fingers, limbs, and wisps of hair in those mists, floating and passing, remnants of every person who had ever peered into this glass. It was more than a mirror.
It was a looking glass. This was Sam’s window to the mortal world, through upon which he could view every visage or article reflected in every surface in everyday life.
Death was the opposite of life. It was its reflection, in this respect.
And through this reflection, death looked upon life as it occurred day-to-day. Every once in a while, a mortal would peer into his bathroom or hallway mirror and pause, suddenly disconcerted. This mortal would see something there, reflected in the depths of his own eyes. Something troubling. Something even frightening.
It was Death looking back at them. Only there, visible for a fraction of a moment, before the mortal pulled back, blinked, or looked away.
Now, however, the looking glass in Samhain’s realm showed the Lord of the Dead something it never had before.
In the in-between, he had been as ghost-like as the souls that waited there. There was no choice, for nothing of substance could pass through that barrier. It was the sole reason he had not been able to bring Logan back to his realm while she still breathed. Only death could cross through the in-between and into Samhain’s world.
However, once he had left the in-between and entered his realm, he began to take solid form. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
There was substance to a pair of lungs, a living brain, a set of hands and teeth used to manipulate and hold and bite and drink. That substance Logan’s words had given him in the mortal realm had stayed with him. It made sense; a body was adhesive when it came to a soul. How else to keep them attached?
And now as Sam peered into his looking glass, for the first time in eons, there was no window to the mortal world. Instead, he was faced with his own reflection.
Sam raised his hand and watched the mirror do the same. Never before in the Realm of the Dead had he possessed a solid reflection.
Sam touched his cheek. Stubble greeted his fingers. It was what the mortals called a five o’clock shadow. His cheek bones were defined, his chin strong. He stepped closer and gazed into his own eyes – eyes a silver gray, like the lining of a cloud or the mists hugging a tombstone. He ran his reflected hand through his hair, hair as dark as the night, utterly devoid of color, thick and wavy and real.
She had given him this. She hadn’t even come into his world yet and already she was changing it. Logan.
A presence niggled at him, drawing his attention. They were here.
Sam smiled. A flash of fangs reflected at him, and something dark and fleeting passed through the gray of his eyes. It was an unsettling smile; the kind Logan so often wrote about in her stories.
He turned away from the mirror and faced the edges of the clearing, where mist and fog curled heavy, thick enough to block out the rest of his realm. Something dangerous waited in those mists, restless and blood-thirsty. It had taken them a while to traverse the borders between the mortal realm and the Realm of the Dead, but as he’d known they would, they’d managed.
“Welcome,” he greeted.
Sam’s voice rang out with crystal clarity, deep and unnaturally melodic. It was the first time he’d spoken since his immaterial form had coalesced into this new body.
The mists along one edge of the clearing parted, and what appeared to be two very young, fairly handsome men stepped forward. The fog curled around them, hugging and wanton, clinging to the boys as if they belonged to it.
These two were the only creatures ever to walk the Earth that he could viably pull from the mortal world into his own. They could pass through the barriers that separated the living from the dead because they themselves were neither.
Shawn Briggs and Nathan McCay were vampires. Vampires were not alive, but they yet possessed working material forms.
Briggs stood a little ahead of his companion, his jaw set, his razor-sharp fangs sitting easily atop his bottom lip. He sported shoulder-length black-brown hair, darkened by the terrible wrong Sam had committed against his soul. Now it shunned light and color, just as did the rest of him. His pallor was pale, starkly empty against the contrast of his sable locks. He’d become a black and white photograph of himself. Except for his eyes. Where once they had been the greenish hazel of a troubled sea, they were now lit up like simmering embers, angry and red.
They had been friends of Dominic Maldovan’s once.
Just like the late Alec Sheffield.
“Lehrer and his students have recruited the help of another wizard. They’ve found a way into October Land,” Sam said.
“We’ll see to them,” Shawn replied at once, his own voice amplified by his vampirism.
“Wait,” Sam warned, drawing them both into absolute stillness. “There are some things you need to know. Most importantly – I am the only one who can kill in October Land. All other wounds, mortal or not, will be healed by the land.”
“This realm is a doorway to mine,” he continued. “Spirits of the dead gather here in a place called Fall Fields. There, the harvesting portals open. The dead are sent through a portal to enter my realm. The living are returned to the mortal realm. Like Logan.”
They were running a race against time. All Logan and her companions had to do was find their way to Fall Fields, and the portals that sent spirits to their designated realms would take care of the rest, at once sending them back to the mortal realm.
Sam could of course follow them back – except that it was already Halloween in Logan’s realm. The door between the realms would close at midnight. And his time would be up.
If they made it to Fall Fields, Sam’s only hope would be to distract them, keeping them from entering the portals long enough for Sam to get to Logan.
A thought drifted and uncoiled in Sam’s mind…. He pressed it back, hanging on to it like an ace up his sleeve.
“So all we need to do is keep the others away from Logan,” Shawn suggested, “and keep them all away from Fall Fields.”
“So you can finish whammy-ing the bard and get her to join you,” finished Nathan.
Sam smiled. It appeared they understood perfectly.
He nodded, just once, and he could feel his eyes glint inhumanly in the low light. “This is your final chance,” Sam warned. “If I have to kill them, I will. Fail again and I will tend to it myself, and I won’t bother sparing the witch. She’s too much of a liability.”
A red light flashed momentarily brighter in Shawn’s vampire gaze. He nodded as well.
Sam raised his chin, taking a slow, deep breath. It felt good. “Fortunately for you, you’ll be more powerful here. This is something else you need to understand about October. Here, magic is amplified. On the down side, theirs will be as well, so you’ll need to st
rike before they realize as much and figure out how to use it.”
Shawn and Nathan exchanged looks.
Sam closed his eyes. He could feel the others out there… waiting before a portal. He could sense the exact location where they would arrive.
October Land was one massive ring-like realm consisting of six different environments. There was the Forest, a seemingly never-ending thicket of overhanging branches dripping with red, orange and gold. There were the Patches, field after field of pumpkin patches brimming with perfectly round pumpkins of various sizes and colors. There were the Falls, a watery place consisting of little swimming holes connected by babbling brooks, streams, and falls. There were the Villages, where the Harvesters resided; they were the natives of October Land. There were the Fields, otherwise known as Fall Fields – the graveyard that went on forever. And then there were the Orchards, acre upon acre of sweet, ripe apple trees where Logan’s friends were just now arriving in October Land.
“The goblin is about to appear in the Orchards.” He opened his eyes. “Take care of them.”
He waited as they took to the skies, disappearing with vampire speed. He didn’t actually have much faith that they would be successful. But it didn’t really matter.
Because he had a plan B.
Chapter Six
Logan ran. She had no idea where she was going; the forest moved around her in an orange blur as she kicked up leaves and took in heaving lungs full of cinnamon and spiced air. There was no pain in her body any longer, only an intense and driving, all-encompassing need to survive.
Run, she told herself. Run, or you will die.
While she ran, her mind spun as quickly and erratically as the rest of the world around her. She thought of Dominic, of her parents, of Taylor, of October Land, and then of Dominic again. Run! She thought of James, of Beth, of Meagan and Katelyn, and of Dominic again.
Dominic Maldovan… who was somewhere else in this forest, left behind, possibly permanently damaged. Bleeding, unconscious, alone.
Everything she had ever enjoyed in her life, everything she’d ever looked forward to or hoped about or dreamed of in her teenage existence was injured and maybe dying, possessed by evil and trapped in a world so far removed from her own, it was in another universe.
Her heart ached, but it wasn’t the running that caused it.
Logan ran, one foot after the other, each boot crunching layers of fallen leaves beneath its tread. After a while, so long it felt surreal, Logan realized she wasn’t reaching the end of the multi-hued forest. It wasn’t changing at all, in fact. She slowed a little, jogging as she looked left and right, her long golden hair flying. Finally, she began walking.
The forest seemed to stretch for miles. Its canopy of amber was stunningly beautiful; the kind of image one would almost pay to have as their screen saver. Streams of light peeked through the leaves like angel beams, highlighting circles all along the thick carpet below. They blinked in and out of existence in the gentle breeze, adding another dimension of quiet life to the forest. It was peaceful here.
But there was no food, as far as Logan could see. There was no water. She had no idea what direction in which to turn next. She could very well die in this peaceful, sun be-speckled orange and yellow place.
I can try the open thing again, she thought. She could scribble the word “open” in something and see if speaking it aloud would have any effect. She doubted it. She was a bard, not a witch. But it was worth a shot.
She crouched down, ran her finger in the soft, moist soil, and then stood back up again. “Open,” she said aloud, startling a touch at the sound of her own voice in the relative silence.
Nothing happened.
She sighed. I can’t see anything from down here. She was about to begin looking around for a tree with branches low enough to climb, when she caught the scent of something new on the air. It smelled like wood smoke.
There was barely a hint of it, mixed and mingled with the fall scents of the forest. But it was enough to draw her up short and bring her spinning around. She sniffed, trying to find it again. She took a few steps in the opposite direction, her head up, her eyes closed.
There it was again! It was stronger this time, and Logan’s heart hammered with hope. She followed the scent, moving carefully on a new path through the gem-like woods. The scent grew stronger, and eventually the air thickened a touch with the ash of expelled wood smoke.
She rounded several more trees until they thinned and separated and she found herself at last at the edge of the forest, overlooking a hill. At the bottom of the hill sprawled a village.
There were several rows of two-story houses, three or four on either side of a single, long cobbled stone road. The houses were built of weathered and hand-shaped stone, had thatch or tiled roofs, and wooden crossbeam windowpanes. They were painted in somber tones, but the paint looked new and neat.
Small front yards sported bright grinning jack-o’-lanterns and trees that bore sparse, bright colored leaves. Rows of lit candles were placed along the front windowpanes.
At the center of the town, there was a structure of some kind. It was very large and reaching, but terribly dark and indistinct. There appeared to be a round white pool at its base, suggesting it might be a fountain, but it was hard for Logan to tell from this distance.
Each house had a chimney, and each chimney smoked. The clouds of ash swirled and climbed, crossing the white face of the full moon to form images and visages that came and went with the breeze.
Logan started – and blinked. It’s night?
Only a moment ago, it had been daylight! Only seconds ago, in fact!
She turned around to face the forest she’d come from. But it had changed. Suddenly it looked deep and dark and uninviting, completely different from how it had been when she’d been in it.
Logan hugged herself and spun back around to face the village. The full moon had a bluish tint to it above. It was bright and enormous, and it illuminated the town with incredible clarity. Now that Logan took a better look, she could see some differences in the buildings below. Some of them were larger than others and seemed to have stables attached, or barns perhaps. There didn’t appear to be any sign of automotive industry, no cars, no trucks, no gas stations.
Some of the windows in the houses seemed to be emitting light but they were either curtained or boarded up; she couldn’t tell. The yellow glow coming from them was very faint.
Logan looked down at the hill she stood atop. A trail began a few feet away. It was dirt, but appeared hard-packed, and where it reached the bottom of the hill, it had been immediately cobbled with stones.
She screwed up her courage and started down the hill. It was an easy trek; her boots made a firm clicking sound as she walked. She normally loved that sound. It was the entire reason she wore boots with leather soles – the sound. She was an aesthetic person, enveloping senses, processing them, and placing them upon paper in her stories. They were like fuel to her.
However, at the moment, her boots echoed loudly in the night, making her feel conspicuous. She tried to walk softly, but that had never been something she was particularly good at.
As she drew closer to the first houses of the village, she moved more slowly, a chill running through her. There was a bite to the air here that she hadn’t felt before. That promise of cold she’d noticed earlier had delivered, and the crispness was now very slightly painful. She pulled her jacket more tightly around her and approached the first house.
It was a medium-sized cottage constructed of strong stones and thick, hard wooden crossbeams. The window appeared sealed up airtight, the workmanship careful and exact. Small orange and black tea candles lined the bottom windowpane, flickering warmly from the other side of the glass. Melted wax and stains from previous candles marred the wood, suggesting this was a common custom.
The light coming from the inside of the cottage flickered as well, suggesting it was cast by more fire, perhaps a large hearth and several oil lamps.
The door to the cottage was thick and reinforced with metal bands. There was no way of opening it from the outside, which made Logan wonder how people got in.
There was a knocker on the door, composed of brass that possessed a light green verdigris aging. The knocker had been artistically drawn in the shape of a fat, grinning jack-o’-lantern, its stem an attractive curlicue that rose in ringlets off to the side.
Logan raised her hand, and her fingers stilled, poised over the metal ring that dangled from the carved pumpkin’s mouth. She could hear something coming from inside.
It was music. Violin music.
It was a sad and low melody, heart-breakingly sweet. Logan instinctively began to lower her hand again. It was an impulse; she didn’t want to interrupt such beautiful music.
But when she realized what she was doing, she forced herself to grasp the metal of the knocker and slam it down with resolute firmness. She knocked three times.
The music from inside stopped. Footsteps left one room and drew closer and louder, heading for the door. Logan stepped back as she heard something being scraped along wood from the other side.
Then she gasped as the grinning jack-o’-lantern suddenly had glowing violet eyes and they were staring directly at her. She took another step back, tripping a bit on the ledge of the cottage’s walk way.
But the jack-o’-lantern’s eyes narrowed. They blinked.
Logan heard a woman’s voice timidly but fiercely ask, “Is it the Dearg?”
A man gruffly replied, “Nah. This one’s not nearly buxom enough to be the Dearg.”
Logan stood several feet from the front door of the cottage when it was unlocked and began to swing outward. An old man appeared in the doorway. He had gray skin and purple eyes so light they seemed to glow as they gazed out at her from the threshold of the cottage.
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