by Hanna Peach
“Don’t thank me yet. We still have to get in there.” Israel pointed over her shoulder.
She spun. There was a large door set into the rock, so huge that it almost took up this side of the mountain. She hadn’t noticed it at first because it was the same gray color as the rock. She frowned for a second before she recognized the two matching angels with outstretched wings engraved into it. “That’s the door of Saint Paul’s Cathedral,” she exclaimed. Where this had all started.
She walked to the center of the door, Israel close behind her. Looking closely, she could see a thin hairline crack delineating where the two doors should swing open.
Israel pushed at one of the doors with both hands. “It’s not moving.”
“Together.”
Alyx placed her hands beside his on the cool steel. They were much smaller than his, thinner and daintier. Her porcelain skin to his caramel. But they looked so good beside each other, supporting each other, working together.
“You ready?” he asked, breaking through her thoughts.
She nodded.
“And…go.”
Alyx shoved forward with all her might, her heels sliding out in the snow behind her. She pushed and he pushed, the air filling with their grunts of effort.
But the door still wouldn’t budge.
She let out a cry of frustration and dropped her hands. “It’s locked.”
“How do we open it?”
“A password maybe?”
Israel waved his hands in front of the door. “Open…sesame.”
Alyx snorted. “Open sesame?”
He gave the door a thoughtful look. “Abracadabra?”
Still nothing.
She raised her eyebrow. “Did you really think that would work?”
Israel gave her an unaffected shrug. “Didn’t hurt to try it. But now I’m out of magical words.”
“Maybe it’s not a magical word. Maybe there’s some other way of getting this thing to open.” She peered at the door, running her fingers across the cool surface. She spotted a small hole near the center of the door, something that didn’t exist in the real doors of Saint Paul’s Cathedral. “Look. This looks like it could be a keyhole.”
Israel cursed. “But we don’t have a damn key.”
They didn’t have a key. This realization sank into her bones, making her feel cold from the inside. The Elder hadn’t told them that they needed a key to get through this last door. Why hadn’t he told them?
“We can’t have come all this way just to fail now.” She stared at the door that was just standing there, mocking her with its silence. A crushing feeling threatened to crumple her ribcage like waste paper. It was no use. She had failed. She should have just not tried at all. She would have saved herself this hopeless pain now.
Something inside her spoke in a voice that sounded exactly like her own. It’s always hardest just before the end. Don’t give up.
Alyx felt her body fill up with resolve. She wasn’t giving up. She had come all this way. There had to be a way out through these doors. There had to be.
What had the Elder said? “Find the Mapmaker. He has the map. The map is the key to getting out of here.”
She frowned, turning the words over and over inside her head. “Maybe he meant it literally,” she muttered.
“Meant what literally?” Israel asked.
She could scarcely dare to hope as she pulled out the snow globe from her canvas bag. “The Elder said that the map is the key to getting out of here. What if he meant that it literally was a key?” She shook the snow globe. The snowflakes shook about the globe and the insides swirled as buildings rose up out of the base. It was part of the city of Saint Joseph again.
But there was no key or even anything resembling a key inside it. Hope shrugged off her shoulders and puddled in the thick snow at her feet. “It didn’t work.”
Israel took the globe from her and peered at it, frowning. “I wonder why the globe is showing us the cathedral instead of the mountain that we’re on.”
“I don’t know.”
“Does that look like Saint Paul’s Cathedral to you?” He pointed to the building in the center of the globe, the unmistakable spire soaring up like a spear almost to the underside of the glass.
“It does. I guess because the doors in the mountain are from the cathedral.”
Israel shook his head. “I think it’s more than that. I think it’s showing us this for a reason.”
“What reason?”
He stared up at the cathedral door and back to the globe.
She faced the door head on. Israel was right, she could sense it. There must be some sort of link, some sort of reason why they were seeing the cathedral doors here and the cathedral building in the globe.
“It can’t be that simple,” she heard Israel mutter. He was frowning at the keyhole.
“What isn’t that simple?”
Israel didn’t answer but he bent over and stared closely at the lock. He straightened, a grin showed on his face. “It is.”
“What?” she asked again, her body strumming with anticipation.
Israel took a step away from her. “Watch out for your eyes.” Before she could ask why, he swung the globe and struck the side of the door. She shielded her face as the glass exploded with a smash.
“What are you doing?”
Israel didn’t answer. He held up the globe, now glassless, its tiny flecks of magical snow falling over the edges. The miniature cathedral towered over the other smaller buildings in the circular base. “Look at the keyhole.” He turned to the lock. “This spire is the key.”
She stared at the circular keyhole with a long spire-like void. He was right. “Oh my God.”
“Just call me Israel.” He shot her a grin before he slid the tip of the spire into the hole. It slid in with a soft click. He paused. “This is it,” he said, his voice soft and filled with reverence.
“It is,” she said thickly. She knew what this meant. Once they stepped through this door they wouldn’t be a team anymore. They would go back to their normal lives, two strangers with two different lives. Her heart filled with a crushing pain and she almost let out a sob. If that’s what she had to go back to, she didn’t want to go back.
Israel dropped his hand from the globe-key. Apparently he didn’t want to go back either.
They stood there for a few seconds, each waiting for the other to say…something.
Finally Israel turned to face her. “Alyx.”
“Yeah,” she breathed.
He swallowed. “Despite this crazy situation, I really enjoyed doing this…with you.”
Her heart grew wings and flapped wildly around her ribcage. “Oh.” Come on, Alyx, you can do better than that. “Me too. I’m really glad you were here…with me.”
She finally lifted her eyes up to meet Israel’s warm and steady gaze. He licked his lips. He looked like he had something more to say. She had so much she wanted to say but no words to say them. After all, what is the language of the soul?
“Before I unlock this door,” he said, “I just wanted to say…”
“To say?”
“That is…I wanted to…”
“Yes?”
He let out a soft sigh. Then grabbed behind her head and covered her lips with his.
There was a moment of stillness, a moment of complete peace. Like the pause between heartbeats. The silence between breaths. Then something began to grow, like the lighting of the sky just before the first rays of the sun broke through across the horizon. He pulled away and inside Alyx, the feeling slipped back down behind the surface.
She tried to speak but couldn’t. Her mouth had turned to a desert as if his kiss had sucked all the moisture out of her. She cleared her throat and tried again. “What was that for?” And why did you stop?
Israel’s eyes seemed to darken with intensity as he stared back at her. “Once I open this door, you’ll be back in the real world and so will I. I just…I just needed to do tha
t, just in case we don’t remember this when we get out.”
“Israel, I couldn’t forget you.”
He smiled but it was tinged with sadness. “If you believe that we lived a past life together, then…yes, you could.”
She was suddenly struck with a horror. What if he was right? What if they forgot each other when they woke up? What if this was all they had?
If this was all they could have, would it be worth it?
She wasn’t prepared to find out yet. She grabbed his jacket, fisted her hands in it, and brought her mouth up to his. He tasted like mint and smelled like the desert wind. For a second he didn’t react. She heard a soft groan come from him. His arms went around her, pulling her in close. He tilted his head and deepened the kiss, their tongues coming together in a soft dance. She felt the sensation that she was suddenly flying.
This was what she had been missing. This was what she had been waiting for. She felt a thread of connection shoot through him and her and back through time and space. Whatever this was, it was infinite and timeless, beyond love, beyond magic. Now that she knew this, how was she ever going to live without it?
Above the roar of her blood in her ears was the rustle of a hundred sunflowers growing, pushing up through the snow and filling her ears, their petals brushing up against her body as she clung on to Israel, her head tilting so that she could kiss him deeper, her hands finding their way into his hair.
The memories of all their past kisses rose up from the very depths of her soul.
…Alyx traced her fingers across his top lip and pressed her mouth to it, soft like the first drops of spring rain, her thumb trapped between the corners of their mouths. A rush filled her head. He gasped. Or did she? She wasn’t sure. She pulled back to look at him. The way he was looking at her was...like he was seeing the stars for the first time…
…“Damn you,” he all but whispered. “Despite everything you’ve done, I still love you, Alyx.” He pulled at her and her body slammed against his, causing her to gasp. A gasp which he stifled when his lips closed roughly over hers…
…He gripped her as if he feared that she might disappear. Alyx felt herself melting into him, her mind disappearing into this complete bliss that only Israel could weave around her. She deepened the kiss and pressed her body against his.
This time it was her turn to groan when he pulled away. “Why did you stop?” she moaned. “We don’t have to stop. What about naked kisses?”
He leaned his forehead on hers, his breath rushing hard around her cheeks. “I don’t know. Something about saving the world.”…
The feeling from each past kiss multiplied and folded and compounded on the one before it until she felt like her heart would explode out of her ribcage. The final kiss rose up like a phoenix, like an ember floating up out of a fire.
…“I love you, angel,” he whispered to her. “In this life and the next.”
“I love you too.” In this life and the next. Alyx closed her mouth over his in their last kiss on this Earth, tasting salt and copper. Their blood and tears were mixing together. Soon their souls, freed from these two bodies, would too. She slipped her hand under his shirt to find his heart. She felt it slow under her fingers, then finally it beat its last beat, and all that was left was the echo of her own racing heart. She kissed the very last breath from him as his body slackened in her arms…
The intensity of their past kisses, all at once, the knowledge that this hadn’t been their first kiss…it was all too much. The force of these memories threw her back and she broke off the present kiss, gasping.
Israel’s breath was heaving out of his lungs. “Holy shit…” He trailed off.
She knew he’d seen them all too, felt them all too. He’d remembered them.
They stood staring at each other, their breaths heaving in and out of their chests, a wariness to their stares, as if the other had suddenly become dangerous.
How… How would they move forward from this?
“What if you do forget me?” he asked. “What if we step through this door and this becomes just a dream? I can’t forget that…this…us.”
Neither could she. The thought of it tore at her.
“Here.” She pulled her necklace from around her neck and placed it in his palm. “It was my mother’s.”
His eyes were shiny when he looked back up from the plain silver wedding band hanging at the end of a matching chain. “I can’t take it.”
“You can. I want you to. I don’t know how this works. I don’t know whether you can take this back into the real world with you, but I hope you can. I hope you wake up with it. Even if you don’t remember me. Even if I don’t remember you. Then at least you have something of mine…” She let out a small breath as she remembered a different ring in a different life. “Perhaps one day this ring will lead you back to me, just like your mother’s ring in our last life led me to you.”
Israel closed his hand over hers before he grabbed her and kissed her again.
She didn’t know how long they stood there wrapped in each other’s kiss, tasting each other, exploring each other, remembering each other. But even as the seconds ticked by, the lessening snow brushing at their faces reminding them that winter was coming to an end. She almost didn’t care. She could die here in his kiss.
Israel pulled away and she let out a sigh. He leaned his forehead on hers.
“Why did you stop?” Her tongue felt thick and her head spun. She still felt like she was flying.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Something about saving your life.”
She let out a small laugh. “It’s not the world we’re saving this time.”
“It is for me.”
Her heart turned molten and slid down the insides of her chest. It tore at her when he pulled away but she let him. They had this one last thing to do so she could wake up.
He lowered the necklace over his head, her mother’s ring settling against his heart. He placed his hand on the globe-turned-key. “Here we go.” He turned it and there was a loud click.
The doors rumbled as they drew apart. How would this work? Would she see herself in the hospital bed? Or would there just be a lot of light?
The doors finally clanged open, revealing a dark cave, tiny grains of rock and sand falling in a soft cloud.
As the dust cleared, Alyx peered inside. Her stomach dropped. It wasn’t the way out. “This doesn’t look like the outside world. This looks like a dark, scary cave.”
“You scared?”
She snorted to cover up the tremor of apprehension running through her veins. “No.”
Israel reached for her hand and squeezed it. “I am too.”
She squeezed his hand back and her nerves calmed.
He peered into the darkness. “Let’s go, but be careful. And stay close.”
They stepped inside together. Alyx squinted as her eyes adjusted to the dim light. The cave disappeared higher and farther back than the light from the outside reached, large boulders jutting about the place and creating shadowy areas. Every tiny noise seemed to echo in here; even her breathing seemed to shudder back to her. She heard a noise emanating from deep in the shadows and she flinched. “What was that?” she whispered.
They paused, listening.
There was another noise. This time she was able to hear it more clearly. It was the sound of something scraping the stony floor.
“There’s something in here.”
Chapter 18
Something moved deep inside the cavern. Alyx only knew it was there because she could hear sharp clicking against the stone floor and the heavy rasping of its breath.
“Can you see it?” Israel whispered as he unsheathed his sword.
“No.”
“It sounds…big.”
“And pointy.” She unsheathed her own weapon, her muscles coiled with fear, her heart skittering.
“Don’t worry,” Israel said, shooting her a grin. “You and me, we’re unbeatable together. We got this.”
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She met his eyes for a second. The confidence clear in his face fell over her like a light veil, causing some of the tension to drop from her shoulders. They did make a good team. He was right. They’d get through this. Together.
The creature let out a screech that echoed from inside the cavern. It cut into her ears and pain sliced through her head. She dropped her sword as her hands flew up to cover her ears. Israel was writhing around too. The screech faded, leaving behind a throbbing, ringing sound like…like she was underwater.
“Israel?” But she could only hear her muffled voice from inside her own head. Worse still, Israel didn’t turn towards her. She grabbed his arm to get his attention. “Can you hear me?”
As she spoke his eyes dropped to her mouth with a frown, then his face broke out into a mask of horror.
He couldn’t hear her either. They were both deaf. Dear God. How do you fight something you couldn’t hear coming?
Movement caught her eye. The creature moved close enough that the pale light from the outside of the cave fell upon it. A useless cry tore from her lips. It had claws at the end of its hands, folded wings, thin and black like a bat’s, a black hairless torso with breasts and legs like a female human, but this thing was definitely not human. Its bony face was veiny and hairless, with eyes so dark that they were almost indistinguishable from the rest of it. It was those eyes like slits, focused right on her, that pinned her to where she stood. She froze, her muscles seizing, even as the creature flapped its wings and flew towards her.
Just give up.
It would be so easy to just let this creature win. It would be so easy to just give in. Yes, Alyx thought she heard hissing inside her head. Just slip away. It won’t hurt a bit.
The creature lunged for her, mouth open and long needle-like fangs extending out and dripping with viscose saliva. But she couldn’t move. This was it. This was the end for her.
Israel jumped between them, breaking her eye contact with the beast. She shook herself. What the hell?
Israel swung his sword. The hell-creature lashed out a muscular arm, meeting his blade with one of its claws that hooked right around it. It twisted his weapon out of his hand, throwing it aside, and swiped at Israel with its other hand. He went flying after his sword and landed in a crumpled heap, blood already oozing from where the claws had slashed him.
