by Hunter Blain
“You can’t enhance perfection,” Father Thomes said with a sly smile.
“I mean, you kinda just did. Right?”
“Not at all. I only tethered the key to its intended target.”
“Right. Enhanced.”
“I—”
“Enhanced!”
Father Thomes sighed in defeat and I softly said to him, “Thank you, Papa T. Wish me luck. Or better yet, pray for me, won’t ya?”
“Of course I will, my son.”
I started making my way to the spiral staircase when my friend called out, “Be careful, my son, for you won’t know what horrors you will face in Hell. Keep your friends in your mind. They will give you strength.”
I turned to face him as he craned his neck to watch me.
“Get back to working out, old man!” I called back as my voice cracked.
Chapter 2
Iblurred down the street back to my Fortress of Solitaire. Stopping just outside a blacked-out SUV, I knocked on the limo-tinted glass.
The window slid down and Collin Baker beamed an ultrafriendly smile at me.
“Are you ready?”
“Two seconds. Need to grab something from inside and then I’m good to go.”
“No worries, my friend.”
I made my way through the cemetery a little slower than intended, feeling as every step brought the horrifying realization that I was about to go to Hell. This must be what it’s like to be a death row prisoner walking the line on their final day. It was as if my legs were on autopilot and all I could do was watch as the last place I would ever enter grew closer and closer, helpless to stop it.
Making my way to the mausoleum, I stopped at the pin pad and cursed under my breath.
“Oh, right,” I said as I brought my phone up and went through my unread texts. I selected the message from Locke and saw my pin number.
“One, one, one, two. Neat,” I laughed to myself.
The door slid open and I made my way down the stairs and into my home. Depweg and Locke were in the living room, with Locke in his usual spot on the couch. There was a steaming bowl of chicken noodle soup in his hands and a wool blanket around his shoulders. Black rings decorated his eyes, and his face looked gaunt. I hadn’t noticed until then how his face had plumped up since I had created his living body.
“Locke!” I yelled in excitement. “Is he okay?” I asked Depweg, shutting the door behind me and making my way to my chair.
As I went to sit in my recliner, I noticed Hayley was there, enjoying a cup of tea.
“He’ll be fine, big guy,” Hayley said, blowing on her cup. “Locke has gone through one heck of a transition, and it’ll probably take him some time to fully recover.”
“What do you mean? I thought you went all Hagrid and said something like, ‘You’re a wizard, Lock-y.’”
“Do you even hear yourself talk, sometimes?”
“Eh, I drift in and out.”
“Anyway,” Hayley continued as she leaned forward — in my chair — and set her cup on the coffee table, “if you were to go to the hospital because your appendix ruptured and they did an emergency surgery, you wouldn’t be jumping up and down or running a marathon immediately after they sewed your ass up.”
“Bad example, Freckles; I heal immediately. So, I would do exactly what you just said.”
“Are you seriously going to start calling me Freckles?” she asked with eyes that dared me to continue down the path of dooooom.
“Tried it on. Didn’t fit. Already returned.”
“Smart.”
“Don—” Depweg started with a hand out to the warden, but it was too late.
“Would you look at that?” I asked, looking at a spot on the coffee table that was empty. “Is that box for me?” I asked Depweg as I pretended to lean over and pick up the invisible package. “Wonder what it could be?” I pretended to shake the box, alternating between different sides of my face so both ears could assess its contents. “Guess there’s only one way to find out what’s inside, huh?”
“John, please don’t,” Depweg pleaded.
I reached my hand inside the box that wasn’t there and pulled out my fist, which I lifted for the whole room to see. “I wonder if it’s a nickname for Hayley? ’Cause that’d be some damn fine timing if it was after someone said I was, what was it? Smart for not calling someone who has a ton of freckles, Freckles.”
I opened my hand in front of Hayley before continuing. “Look at that. It is Freck—” I was cut off as I looked at my own extended hand and saw something was there.
In my palm sat a vial of blood.
“Wha-tha-fuh . . .” I breathed as I brought the glass container up to my face, knowing immediately who it had come from.
“Not what you ordered, cuck-cake?” Hayley asked. I ignored her stupid (epic) nickname and stared dumbly at the vial.
“Lily,” Depweg said as I looked over at him. All I could do was nod my head slowly up and down with wide eyes and a slack jaw. I had really wanted to see her, and now I didn’t have a reason to go to Faerie.
“What’s a cuck-cake?” Magni asked, entering the room. Tiny Tim was hot on his heels with a little chew toy.
“Don’t Google that,” I commanded while pointing a finger at the young man.
As if his head was precariously balanced on his neck, Locke slowly turned and looked at me with sunken eyes. What worried me was that I could tell he was trying to focus his gaze on me, and losing.
Pocketing the blood, I turned my attention where it should be and softly asked Locke, “You alright, buddy?”
Locke returned his gaze to the wall between Depweg and me before losing the battle against gravity and letting his chin rest on his chest. He was gasping shallow breaths like he didn’t have the strength to suck in a full chest of air.
I looked at my enemy turned friend with a new respect.
“Ulric gave him an ultimatum: betray his friends and keep his power, or suffer a fate worse than death.” As I spoke, the words seemed to cure in my mind, forming a cold brick of mixed emotions behind my forehead. I stepped over Hayley and moved to the couch and sat right next to my friend.
Resting my hand on his knee, I asked gently, “Hey, Locke, is there anything I can do for you, man?” I snapped my fingers to get his attention. He lifted his head once again and looked at me with foggy eyes. They were almost pleading, or maybe I was projecting.
My eyes shifted to Depweg, who met my gaze as he shrugged, knowing what I was going to ask without my having to say a word.
I turned my head to Hayley and asked, “Well? Any suggestions?”
“Hey, listen, I honestly have no idea what to expect here, alright?”
“Great help. Thanks.” I returned my gaze to Depweg. “Get him to Doc. Maybe he can at least provide some comfort or something.”
Hayley lifted a finger before saying, “I honestly don’t think we should move him.”
Depweg chimed in with, “I’ll call Doc Jim and get him to make a house call. Or at least see if he has anything I could maybe pick up and bring back.”
“Good idea! Tip him extra,” I suggested.
“You might have to take care of that,” Depweg said.
“Ah, right. Well, if I don’t make it back and he fixes Locke, have the warrrr-hrr-hrr . . . um, wizard do it. Yeah. That’s what I meant to say. Wizard.”
“If you don’t make it back, it won’t matter, numbnuts,” Hayley added helpfully.
“She has a point,” Depweg admitted.
“What did I tell you about ganging up on me?”
“That you’re a pussy, but that’s none of my business,” Hayley said as she reached for her tea and made a show of taking a sip.
“Don’t you Kermit-meme me, Freckles! We need to focus on Locke. H-he sacrificed everything for us.”
Locke’s eyes became focused and showed a moment of clarity as a single tear rolled down his cheek.
“I-I’d do it again . . . for my family . . .” he br
eathed, barely audible. Only Depweg’s and my sensitive ears picked up the words.
Magni seemed uncomfortable as he looked at the near-dead Locke. I smiled weakly at him, knowing he was still getting used to the dangers of being on my team. Tim posted up two paws on Magni’s leg, drawing the apprentice’s attention to the chew toy that was still in the pup’s mouth. He leaned down and lightly tugged at it as the puppy play-growled and tried to pull it away.
Depweg got up and disappeared into his room as I leaned in a little closer to Locke.
“You did good, man,” I said to my hurting friend. “Let us take it from here. Besides, you got a mansion to plan and build for us.” I patted his knee twice, stood up, and made my way to the door, squeezing by Hayley a tad more aggressively than was needed.
Depweg came out of his room with a bug-out bag and his keys, ready to go to Doc Jim’s.
“Expecting trouble?”
“You mean like a rhino? No. Not at all.”
“Ah, point taken.”
“Doc is getting a kit set up for me to grab. He says,” Depweg said, holding up his phone and reading a text, “‘It should invigorate his cells while providing a slight analgesic.’”
“Ha! You said anal.”
“Night . . . stand . . .” Locke whispered with a pained smile. I let him have that one.
Knowing Collin was still outside, I stepped to the door, opened it, and turned to my best friend. “Tell everyone . . . that I, ah . . . said something magnanimous.”
Depweg nodded once, smiling. Behind the face he wore, I could sense the worry that he was attempting to keep below the surface: this might be the last time we ever saw each other.
Chapter 3
Walking up the stairs, I pressed against the wall as a silent Joey walked past, apparently deep in thought. He smelled . . . off.
“Hey, man,” I greeted lamely, sensing something was wrong. Then again, with Joey, everything seemed wrong. He had become a glass half-empty kind of guy after his brother died, though we had made some progress lately.
Doing a quick once-over, I saw that his body was in good shape, though there was something in his eyes that he was trying to hide.
Joey ignored me, clutching at a bag, and disappeared into the Fortress of Solitaire, leaving me alone on the steps.
“Joey!” I heard Ludvig’s cry before the door shut.
“Well alrighty, then,” I whispered to myself before making my way into the cemetery. Odd that the Swede was so excited to see Joey.
I checked my phone and cursed as I saw that it was almost five in the morning. We didn’t have long to get to the airport. I suppose I could hide in the bathroom the whole time or something. I didn’t trust those flimsy window covers to fully protect me.
Once in the parking lot, I went around to the opposite door to the one that Collin had been in, and slid into the spacious SUV.
“All set?” Collin asked.
“As ready as I’ll ever be. Just wanted to see my friends one more time. You know . . .” I answered as the driver put the idling beast of a vehicle in reverse. We pulled onto the road and accelerated.
“Completely understandable,” Collin reassured me with a quick pat to my shoulder.
“How long will it take to get there? ’Cause dawn isn’t far away. Are we gonna, like, fly in a private jet or somethin’?” I asked as a flash of light started at the front of the SUV and rushed over to the rear, like passing under an insanely bright streetlight.
“We’re already here,” Collin said with a playful smile.
My eyes shot out my side window and I saw we were on a dirt road in the middle of a desert, a solitary building to my right.
“What the fu—” I started to say, but awe stole my breath before I could finish. Or maybe it was the fact that where we were was apparently the middle of the Lilith-damned day. My eyelids felt heavy and my energy drained away, fleeing from the daylight.
I tried to recoil away from the light, but there was nowhere to go. Collin stifled a chuckle and I glared at him while urgently lifting my coat collar above my head.
He tapped his window twice with a knuckle before saying, “One-way bulletproof glass with tint that entirely blocks out the sun.”
I hesitantly raised a bare hand to rest against the glass, noting that I didn’t feel any warmth at all. Lowering my coat collar, I stared with a face that telegraphed my confusion.
“But, uh, I can see clearly outside.”
“Magic.”
I met Collin’s deadpan gaze, trying to decipher if he was joking. His continued blank expression let me know that he was, in fact, serious.
The SUV pulled down another road, and I shifted my gaze out the windshield, leaning forward in my seat and ducking down to better see. I felt heavy and ungraceful as I did, placing a hand on the floor for added support.
We were approaching a small one-story building that looked more like a bunker than, say, an office building.
“Welcome to Area 666,” Collin informed me.
I pivoted my head to look at him with a scrunched-up, confused face.
“Not the official name, mind you. Just the one the soldiers gave it.”
“We-we’re in Israel? Like, right now?”
Collin nodded his head, his grin never wavering. I could tell this wasn’t his first magic show, and it apparently never grew old.
“How?”
“Government secret, I’m afraid.”
“Did you open a wormhole? Or were we broken down to our base atoms and transported? No, it couldn’t be that one.” I thought about all the TED Talks I had ever watched, and an idea electrified my brain like a metal detector over a submarine. “You sons of bitches can access higher dimensions, can’t you?”
“Whether you are right or wrong, I can neither confirm nor—”
“Deny. Yeah, yeah, government boy. I get it. The real question is, if it isn’t a higher plane, how did you create enough energy to open a bridge between the two points? In the SUV, I mean,” I said, looking around the compartment in search of nuclear-powered batteries. My mind flashed to when Lily and I had shifted planes. “Or a frequency,” I whispered, “allowing a door to open, like a key.”
“Very good, John. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
My eyes slowly shifted to lock onto Collin’s, and comprehension dawned like the morning sun, shedding a new light on my ally. “You learned that trick from the Fae, using the world tree, Yggdrasil, as a navigation system. Which means you had to dissect and study one of the High Court in order to learn how their cells give off the frequency.”
Collin moved to push a button on the ceiling, and a dense screen came up just behind the driver’s seat.
“Off the record?” Collin asked in a hushed tone.
I nodded in agreement.
“You aren’t wrong. But before you potentially let slip your theory, know that any Fae would have needed to meet a . . . certain criteria.”
“Like what?”
“Like walking around Midworld wearing a coat made from human skin.”
“Ah. That criteria.”
“Exactly. I anticipated you would follow our line of reasoning. So, if you wouldn’t mind terribly, could you keep this between us? We don’t want a war with Faerie. Especially with the fate of the universe already on the line.”
“I understand,” I said, not liking the forced secrecy.
Collin pressed the button again, lowering the screen so I could see out the windshield.
An impressive metal entrance split open at the building, allowing us to enter. As we passed, I could see that the door was several feet thick. Inside, we slowed down as we approached another entry, but this one was set into the ground. Beyond it was a long concrete ramp that delved deep into the earth.
As we started our way down, LED lights sprang to life, illuminating a path that vanished into a pinprick several miles down.
“Whoa,” I drawled.
“I know. Impressive, isn’t it?”
“I’m a government agent. We don’t debase ourselves to such childish humor.”
“Well, isn’t that just pathetic,” I said as I sat back in my seat.
“That’s what she said,” Collin said with a smirk.
“You!” I said with an accusing index finger pointed in his general direction. “I’m gonna have to keep my eye on you, ain’t I, government man?”
“Not bad advice.”
Looking back out the windshield, I saw the pinprick was expanding, and I could tell we were coming up on another massive door.
As it approached — rather, as we approached — I could feel my chest getting tighter with each revolution of the tires. I began rubbing the palms of my hands on my knees as I stretched out my fingers. I could feel my shoulders were almost touching my ears, and I tried to force them to relax. They declined the invitation to do so, deciding to host a coup d’état and form their own network of impulses that revolved around maximum tension.
“Nervous?” Collin asked casually.
“Nervous? Me?” I snorted. “No. No, not at— Lilith, YES, I’m freaking nervous! I’m about to go to Hell, man! I-I thought I had more time before I actually had to do it.”
“Better to get it out of the way. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.”
“A freaking Band-Aid with demons! A lot of which I personally sent back to Hell and probably want a piece of my tender, sexy body! Man, I’ve seen that show on HBO about the guys in prison. The only difference is if I drop the soap, there could be a monster the size of a Lilith-damned house sauntering up behind me! You feel me, bro? I mean, I can heal pretty damn good, but even I have my limits!” I blabbered, clenching my glutes together enough to make my head rise a full inch closer to the roof.
“Then, might I suggest you don’t drop the soap?”
I looked over at Collin, who had a deadpan face on.
“I can never tell when you’re serious.”
“Well, I do work for the government.”
As we spoke, the final set of doors opened and every window in the SUV fogged in an instant. The driver, not fazed in the least, turned on the wipers and pressed a button on the rectangular computer screen that made up the dash. The heater kicked on and started to defog the windows.
