I pawed through my bag until my hand landed on something solid and black. The brick-like Bureau phone lit up in my hands. Dorian let out a gasp beside me. I glanced up as the phone booted on to see an entire abandoned gas station before us. Juneau took a tentative, curious step toward it.
"I have my beacon, too," Laini told me excitedly. She must’ve seen me searching and dug in her own bag for the Bureau-issued beacon that had allowed us to find her last time she returned to the Mortal Plane. To my delight, her beacon lit up perfectly when she activated it. Things were dire, but we had some technology working… I hoped.
I immediately dialed my parents. They had gone to the front lines to help, so they must be tangled up in all this. I would have to tell them about Zach. My fingers shook slightly at that thought. The phone let out an error tone. "I’m sorry. The person you are—"
I snapped the phone shut with a racing heart, trying to argue with my sudden, gripping fear. Cell phone towers could be down, right? They had to be safe. Gina stared at me, drying tears on her sleeve. I shook my head.
Abruptly, Ruk straightened. He glanced down at the partially destroyed road beside the gas station. "My senses are coming back… There's something dark nearby. It's a huge energy signature.” He paused a beat. “I think it’s worth investigating."
Dorian shifted uneasily. "Think or know?" Potential was dangerous in the face of an oncoming apocalypse.
"The signature is too far away for me to be sure," Ruk muttered. The chaos around us doesn't help matters. "My senses won't work as well until we get closer. It’s big enough to investigate, unless you want to try your luck trudging around in the ever-shifting black mountains over there."
"My father would've stored a large amount of dark energy wherever he had his lair," Inkarri chimed in. "I think we should investigate it."
The prospect of finding Alan brought back my resolve. I stuffed the phone in my pocket. The gas station flickered away entirely for a moment. Sen let out a sigh.
"Whatever it is, it's currently destabilizing the area around us even further," she noted with a shudder. "Should we really go to where the dark energy is brewing? It seems like the perfect way to trap us."
The phone inside my pocket buzzed. I tried not to let my heart stop from the sheer shock of seeing my father’s name on the screen. It felt like Zach was beside me as I picked up the phone.
“Dad?” Every head swiveled my way.
I have to tell them. Tears threatened to work their way up. I wanted to focus completely on the other end of the line, but a massive crackle of static made my insides plummet with dreading anticipation.
“Lyra.” My father said something else, but it was lost in a garbled mess of noise. “You’re okay—”
“Dad, where are you?”
I wasn’t sure if he heard my question. He was scrambling to get his words out as fast as possible. “We arrived at the Black Rose base with the Bureau a few days ago. I don’t understand what’s happening. Things don’t look right. It’s an absolute nightmare in this place right now.” A shriek sounded in the background. “There are creatures here like nothing I’ve ever seen, far bigger than redbills.”
For the first time in my life, I registered panic in my father’s voice as he discussed Bureau business. Was Mom there with him? I bit my tongue to stop from asking him anything else as he forged on, afraid our connection might be interrupted.
“Half the base has turned into this glowing swamp. We have no idea how far it goes.” Finally, my mother’s voice broke through on the line.
“Lyra! Our power is about to go out again. I suspect the line will go down. We can’t seem to get good signal here.” My mother sucked in a breath of relief. My own relief at hearing their voices, alive and well, warred with the icy knowledge that I needed to tell them about Zach. My vision blurred with tears. Dorian and the others faded around me. “The swamp is swallowing up more of our base by the moment.”
They should know that not all of the continent was lost. I blurted out what Sen had told us, and the news that the tear was only affecting a few states, but my parents pressed on.
“We’re so glad to know you’re alive,” my father whispered. Had they heard me at all?
“Zach—” The sentence lodged in my throat as my mother talked over me.
“We’re so proud of you, honey. Please be careful in all this,” my mother said. A crackle came onto the line, and her voice weakened. “Take care of your brother. Tell him to—”
The tears threatened to spill over. I was breathing raggedly without even realizing it, my chest rising and falling with the panicked breath of the words I had to get out. I needed to tell them that he was gone. I needed them to mourn with me. I started to speak, to say his name—
The line went dead. I stared at the traitorous phone in my hand. For a moment, a wave of numb grief enveloped me, until Dorian gently cleared his throat. With great difficulty, I shoved the emotions down inside me. He will not go without justice. We will save this world that he loved so much.
“Let’s go,” I snapped. The faces around me tightened at the harshness of my voice, but I didn't care.
"It could be a trap," Juneau said, looking to Sen.
I let out an even breath. "We're all going to die anyway, so what does it matter? If it’s a trap, Alan will be there." Gina sniffed one last time and crossed her arms in front of her chest. I was being merciless, but I couldn't stop myself. A raging determination pushed me savagely forward. "If someone has a better idea than finding the giant nest of darkness, I'd love to hear it."
Silence greeted me. We would get to Alan, even if meant heading into darkness.
Ruk stared in the direction of the concentrated dark energy. "If we can stabilize the planes to stop the meld before it grows larger, then we might still be able to stop this. We should be able to find Alan by tracing that energy signature, but Juneau is right to be cautious. If Alan is behind the meld, then we might be able to find out what he did so we can reverse it… but he also might have something terrible to throw at us. I won’t know until we get there, unfortunately.”
That sounded simple enough. We needed to get closer. Sen cleared her throat, making me frustrated. Her acting the foil to Ruk was sensible, but at this point I just wanted them to get on the same page.
“We need a lot more energy,” Sen pointed out. “You’re exhausted from your fight, and I’ve been healing everyone. If Ruk and I combine our powers after getting more energy, then I agree that we can do something about the meld. We should at least be able to stop it.”
If the Higher Plane was so close to us, couldn’t they just call the other arbiters? It was about time for them to pay up, since they’d agreed to help. Technically, we did take down Irrikus already, so surely the arbiters could be bothered to offer energy at such an important crossroads. The world was going to end, and that included them.
“Your people should be able to help us if the planes are in chaos,” I told her. She pressed her lips together in a thin line as she threw a cautious look at our companions, who didn’t know the truth about the Higher Plane. I wasn’t planning on breaking the Mandate, but it didn’t make sense to not ask her to help us. “This is your problem too, after all. We need help with the barriers.”
Sen hedged. “It will be difficult to get them to part with their energy.” She wrung her fingers like she was twisting a dish rag. Her reluctance summoned a wave of irritation in me. She was supposed to be a powerful being. This was the end of the world. I was keeping her precious Mandate by not shouting at the top of my lungs about her being an arbiter and the presence of the Higher Plane, but enough was enough.
“Then you’ll figure it out,” I shot back. She raised her barely visible brows at me but said nothing. I pressed forward, finding my vision fuzzy at the edges. “It’s time for our allies to do their part in this.”
"Lyra," Dorian said warningly.
Sen sighed and shrugged. "She's not wrong. We did agree to help. I will attempt to
summon my people while we walk, but you'll have to decide what we're doing."
I ran my hand through my hair, feeling the harsh bite of determination. Fine. As long as she did her part, I could handle making the plan.
We set out on the road. It was split by a slice of black rock in the middle, giving me an uneasy feeling. Parts of the road gave way to more black rock and packed dirt.
Sen closed her eyes as we walked, communing with the arbiters. I hoped for all our sakes that they were paying attention to more than themselves right now.
The journey was strange. My limbs felt like they were passing through water, but the sensations made my skin twitch, like a ghostly hand was dragging itself along my skin. I gritted my teeth in concentration as Ruk pointed up a mountain peak. The melded gray and black met in an unsettling combination of light and darkness, the jagged meeting point of two worlds.
The land groaned beneath us. A row of trees shifted, blocking part of our view of the peak.
“The landscape keeps shifting, though,” Laini muttered worriedly. “The energy is moving.”
Dorian’s hand brushed against my own. “If that place is close, we can try focusing our intentions.” His whisper was hushed to keep the others from hearing. It was easy to think of Alan’s face. I loathed him more than anyone else in the world. His blank expression when he shot Zach played over and over in my mind.
The ascent was rough. We all struggled; even Dorian and Laini appeared a bit winded. As vampires, they weren’t affected by the Mortal Plane like Juneau and Inkarri, who held up the back of the group with their slower pace. Vampires usually had heightened power in both the Mortal and Immortal Planes, but now… it was as if the melding had diminished all of us.
I estimated only a mile to the top, but every step was a fight against the disastrous physics of our new environment. We pushed like pack mules against the heavy atmosphere. The souls, for their parts, seemed oddly attracted to us. They clustered around us like a cloud of fireflies as we walked. I tried not to look at them, afraid they would make me think of Zach.
Dorian stopped as the world shifted around us again. I held on to the rock, but it was the area in front of us that was moving. Of course, the exact place we need to go. At this point, the mountain veered into an impossibly steep angle with trees jutting out from the side. Unless we suddenly gained the skills of mountain goats, I doubted we could make it up.
“Everyone, I need to ask you to focus on imagining yourself at the top of the mountain,” Ruk said in his teaching voice. Laini shot him a strange look. “I know it sounds odd, but just imagine it as a destination in your mind, like the vampires have been doing with the tear.”
I took a step forward. The top of the peak ran through my mind, along with flashes of Zach’s face. The latter, I couldn’t help. My body adjusted to the angle as my feet traversed the stone beneath me. A heavy, invisible weight sat on my chest, but I could actually walk straight up the side. My stomach rolled uneasily from the strangeness of the climb, but we would have to manage. The meld was completely disrupting physics right now.
Walking up a mountain at a right angle? Now I’ve done everything.
A deer startled me as it suddenly lurched out from behind a tree. It gracefully leapt down the side of the wall, easily adjusting to the physics, but it moved quickly, like it was fleeing something. We forged on. Sometimes, the faint cry of what I suspected was a shrieking decay made me grimace with anticipation, but we passed more birds and souls than shadowy creatures.
The light gradually shifted as we climbed. I paused for a second to note that the souls were actually following us. Was our odd combination of species attracting them? It could’ve been Ruk or Sen. The souls were pleasant enough and added an extra level of illumination to the night, but the swarm unnerved me. It was like a sentient cloud trailing along with us. If I looked up, sometimes I saw a human shape in the mix. A tingling chill of fear and excitement ran down my spine when I saw the fuzzy outlines of faces and limbs, detached from bodies. I whispered to Dorian as much, but he shook his head. He hadn’t seen anything.
Focus on what’s ahead of you. I couldn’t allow myself to be distracted.
“Ruk, how far are we?” I asked. He was beside me, his brow dotted with sweat as we climbed onto a flat ledge with no gravity-defying angles. He stared up the last bit of the mountain, which was less jagged than it had looked at the beginning of our hike.
“Close,” he promised, and frowned. “There’s a lot of dark energy… more than I thought.”
“I’ll say,” Dorian chimed in. Despite his recent feedings, he and Laini had their fangs out, although their satiated hunger left them clear-headed. He squinted up ahead. “There’s a shifting tornado at the peak.” He sounded deeply resigned at this latest development.
I followed his gaze. I’d been so busy trying not to look at the souls or fall off the side of the mountain that I’d somehow missed the swirling mass of shadows at the peak, the mixture of a starry night and oily pools. The two skies of the Immortal and Mortal Planes had merged in this area. We were on the highest peak, compared to the other mountains. Did this mean the planes were closest to one another here? Altitude could have an effect, I reasoned.
A sudden gust of wind battered us from the side. I lost my balance for a moment, and Ruk threw his hand out to grab me before I tumbled off the edge. Dorian grabbed Laini and Juneau at the same time, saving them from similar fates. The mountain trembled.
“Let’s go,” Dorian said urgently. We ran. If walking was hard, running felt twice as bad. My stomach rolled constantly, earning me waves of nausea. I kept my focus on the vortex as our goal. The ground stopped shaking as we came to the top of the slope beneath the final peak.
“We’re climbing up so high, yet the air feels thicker rather than thinner,” Sonia pointed out. I nodded, noting she was right, but my attention was divided. I was already scanning our surroundings to look for our next step.
Ruk let out a furious growl. “I know what this is.” His eyes dropped to the ground. His tone plunged to an icy, violent whisper. “Somewhere, the machine that Irrikus and I worked on many hundreds of years ago is here… I can sense it. I would know that magic anywhere. He trapped me with it by using it to drain my powers, although I didn’t realize it at the time.”
“Is it the source of all this energy?” Gina asked.
“Yes, sort of. It’s being run to gather energy from nearby dark souls, which explains the vortex up ahead. The machine calls to the newly trapped dark souls fresh from the air. It’s obvious that this area is far more unstable than the surrounding area. It makes sense to me now.” He frowned and paused, as if straining to sense something else. My impatience grew inside me.
“Is it what caused the tear?” I demanded.
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. Irrikus kept many secrets, even from those he called friends.” His brows knitted with anger. The hostility over Irrikus’s betrayal and the machine’s proximity brought all his old rage to the surface again, not that I could blame him. I hoped he could channel that anger into energy when we finally met Alan again. My hands formed determined fists as I took a step toward the vortex.
“Can you tell if it’ll hurt us or not?” I asked Ruk. He mulled over my question. As he did, Gina’s blonde head jerking back made me look at her. She stared up ahead of us with quivering lips.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. She looked as if someone had struck her across the face. Then I turned and saw them, too.
While we had been focused on our talk, the cloud of light souls had clustered behind and around us. A woman’s face emerged from the floating souls. The amber soul was in human form. She stared at us, her head tilting curiously at our presence. Several souls were in ghostly human forms. They emerged from the bustling crowd as if their bodies were still among the living, except that they hovered a few inches off the ground. One of the souls pushed forward, floating to the front. The others parted to let him through.
This w
as the one that had caught Gina’s eye. Now, I knew why.
The translucent amber figure stared right at me.
It was Zach.
33
Lyra
Back in my Bureau days, someone once told me that fallen soldiers never haunted their loved ones if they died in battle. It was where soldiers were supposed to die. They must have been wrong, because Zach was here, and he was looking right at me. I'd know that messy brown hair anywhere, even if it was currently tinged with the amber of soul-light. Immediately, I thought of Lanzon in the Higher Plane and how convincing he’d looked. This was a trick, right? A cruel illusion created by my grieving mind as it grasped for Zach in my unconscious.
"It's not him," I shouted at Gina, desperate to keep her from being hurt. She had taken a step forward to meet the spirit. I shook my head wildly. It couldn't be him. "I've seen stuff like this before." Was the universe trying to conjure him up as a messenger, since we were so close to the Higher Plane? What message could it possibly have now, when we were so close? Laini stitched her brows together. She, Juneau, and Sonia stared at me like I'd grown a second head. My anger was lost on them. They'd never experienced the Higher Plane. They didn't know how tricky that place could be.
"It's the plane's work," I tried to explain, but Sen cut me off sharply by throwing her hand out. She didn't need to. Zach moved forward suddenly, and we all watched him. His ghostly foot never made contact with the ground, but the stride was the same loping gait my brother had in life. Grief punched me straight in the belly. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. It truly looked like him.
"Gina, I'm sorry. I didn't want it to end like that," Zach whispered. His voice was so like him. I shuddered, an unsettled chill washing over me as he spoke. His eyes were on Gina. She sobbed softly, her hand clasped over her mouth. Was the apparition targeting her because she was most likely to believe him? I clenched my eyes shut, whispering that this was all an illusion.
Darklight 7: Darkfall Page 29
