Dagan dropped his hands. There was a red spark-spitting circle hanging in the air now, a fiery ring with a flat, glossy, black center. It had to be a portal, a door that opened into the unpleasant hallway that led to the Underworld. Dagan looked at us.
“After you,” he said, gesturing to it.
“What’s that?” Casey asked.
“A portal,” said Dagan. “What the hell does it look like?”
“A portal?” I said. “You can just … make …” I turned on Dagan. I amplified my voice to thunder, roaring, my words echoing through every hollow place in the world. “You’ve been able to do this the whole time?” I screamed at him.
Dagan shrugged, clapping the invisible dirt off his hands. “You didn’t ask me for passage,” he said. “You asked me for a location, which I gave you.”
I grabbed him by the back of his neck, digging my nails into his skin. He melted under me, moaning and groaning, but I didn’t stop or care.
“You useless,” I hissed, “pathetic, selfish, motherfucking—”
“Sam,” Casey said, getting between us. “We should really go.”
I looked back at him through a haze of red, and he shrugged.
The flames went out. I dropped Dagan—seeing blood on my fingers.
“Oops,” I said. “Um. Sorry.”
“Remind me to raise your hackles more often,” Dagan crooned. He touched the blood I left on his neck, bringing it to his lips, licking it, and sucking on his thumb—
“Where does the portal go?” Casey demanded from Dagan, clearly irked by the demon’s interest in my blood.
“Same spot we’re in right now,” he said. “Nether side. Empty lot.”
“Empty?” said Casey, frowning. “It shouldn’t be empty.”
“Well, it is. And you have about ten seconds before one of these fools works up the courage to raise a proper alarm, and thirty more seconds before that motley group of heavily armed non-friends I mentioned before arrives. So … if you’re keen on getting the fuck out of here, I’d hurry it up,” Dagan said.
Casey glowered at him, adjusting Silas on his shoulder. He eyed Judy, who looked between Marcus and Kent. They both shrugged as they looked at me. I stared at all of them and turned to Dagan.
“If you’re lying, I’m going to cut off your dick and feed it to Kent,” I said.
Kent choked on his own spit and stared at me, wide-eyed. “You can do that?”
“Yes. She can,” Dagan said. I couldn’t tell if he sounded apprehensive or eager. But this was Dagan, so maybe it was a little of both.
Kent giggled. “That’s feckin’ brilliant.”
Dagan rolled his eyes, noticeably more tense than before. “Come on, then.”
The lights went out, replaced by a blinding. red and white strobe accompanied by a screaming alarm. The technicians ducked behind their consoles, cowering. Dagan sighed.
“I warned you,” he said.
I turned to Casey, sighing and stammering wordlessly for a moment. Scrambling for a different way out that just wasn’t there, I sighed. “Anybody got a better plan?”
Silence. Well, not silence, but nobody suggested another plan.
“Eh. Moost be worse ways ta die,” said Kent.
Running at the portal, he catapulted himself through. The black sheen rippled and spun around him until we heard a faint Wheeeee! echoing from the other side. We waited. Listened. And then came a muffled Scottish accent. “Joost joomp, ye feckin’ pansies!”
Casey and I exchanged a look. Behind us, the elevator door slid open.
“Ah,” said Dagan. “Right on time. Shall we?”
Somebody cocked a gun behind us. Lots of them. We jumped—and the room exploded into a shower of bullets behind us. Seconds later, we tumbled out on the other side, and I felt like I’d just been spat out of a pinball machine. Rolling in the dirt, gasping, grunting, I could only hope we didn’t land on anything sharp.
Dirt, I thought. Not hard veneer floors or glossy tile. Just open dirt.
I sat up slowly and looked around. A vast, greenish sky spread out above us, halfway to being starry—a Netherworldian twilight, and the sun scalded the horizon. Buildings were all around us: tall, old, angry concrete and tempered glass. And everywhere else? Just dirt, dirt, dirt. Grey and red and brown and black dirt. Soil and ash and brick dust.
Empty. Just like Dagan said it’d be.
Shit.
“Does this mean ’e gits ta keep ’is dick?” inquired Kent, almost sounding disappointed.
“Yes,” I answered absently, standing up. A massive square of dirt that was pockmarked with slabs of grey stone was all that was left of the broken foundation. Surrounded by scorched buildings, the delicate hum of a city on the edge was punctuated with screams and pops and car alarms. Everything had black streaks, red spots, orange shadows, and the signature hallmarks of offensive arcana. Not to mention a unique smell that tainted the air—charcoal, gas, and the incessant haze of a burnt-out fire.
“Rowena?” I said. She didn’t have to reply. The look on her face was tight and painful, like she could feel every scratch in every building on her skin.
“Something happened here. Something beyond what we can see,” she said quietly, wheeling to look around. Concrete monsters towered around us, scorched, grey-red towers with holes in their sides, eaten away by acid and magma, dematerialized by warlocks, and crumpled like paper by giants or necromancers with uncanny, powerful friends. We were sitting in the middle of a magicked warzone.
And there, at the base of the wall, spray-painted on the stone by someone obviously in a hurry, was their message: Humans go home! Civilian humans did not live in the Netherworld, so it could only mean the ANC.
Shit on a stick. So they knew about the explosions—or, more likely, the explosions must have been mirrored on this side. The general population of the Netherworld was probably making some really unhealthy assumptions.
Kent was sitting on the ground, his legs splayed out in front of him. He sniffed and stuck out his tongue, tasting the air. “Smells like soomebody ruptured a propane tank.”
“Casey,” I said, staring at everything.
“I know, I know.” He was standing now, spinning in circles with Silas at his feet. Staring agape at the Netherworld’s Los Angeles equivalent, so clearly out of sorts, it was just burnt enough, and loud enough, and silent enough to prove something was wrong. Smoke, so much of it, and deep gouges in the earth from massive claws, along with humanoid silhouettes plastered against the walls and black shadows were all the remnants of vaporization. Distant sirens, and still, so much screaming and shouting.
The ongoing chaos of a riot.
Or not, I thought. Maybe it’s a party. Or a city council meeting. Maybe it’s a peaceful protest.
Jitter-smack-pop! went an automatic rifle. Then another and another. Distant, but too close for comfort. Coming from somewhere north—close to the ANC.
“You hear that?” Casey asked. Stupid question, but I almost asked it, too. I’m not dreaming, am I? Somebody’s got a gun. A big one. And they’re using it in a place where there’s lots and lots of people screaming. You heard it too, right?
“Yeah, I heard it,” I answered.
I didn’t know why I was surprised. The Darkness wanted all the ANC offices obliterated. Off the map, eradicated, Netherworld branches included. Corporate genocide—it’s the only thing that explained how all fifty different bases could go up at once. That’s fifty portal hubs, gone! He couldn’t want the ANC for their portals, not if he were wrecking them to shit. Portals are hellishly sophisticated things, but even magical rips in space and time aren’t immune to flat-out explosions.
And if his murderous party existed in the underside, that would mean he’d have entire cities of supernatural citizens to contend with, most of whom were passively supportive of the ANC. It allowed them and their children a chance to escape the drab, seventies-locked Netherworld and visit more interesting places like Fresno. Most of the Netherwor
ld civilians wouldn’t allow their sole anchor to a moderately less destructive world go up in flames, especially if the explosion seemed so premeditated and deliberate.
If this ANC were still intact, there’d be people: protesters, vigilantes, and protectors, defending one of the last links to a slightly better world.
A riot. A protest. And a gun. Probably more than just one.
“Do we check it out?” asked Judy, a gun in her hand, she was already slumped into a halfhearted but low and ready stance.
Casey looked toward the noise, scowling. We all glanced between each other uncertainly. Our primary goal: find the Darkness and put a bullet in his skull—assuming he had a skull to put a bullet through. We didn’t have the time or the resources to try and diffuse an angry mob. We’d do more harm than help.
Not far to my left, Dagan stood up from the dirt, making a show of dusting himself off and adjusting the cufflinks he didn’t wear. He was different here, like every magical creature was in the Netherworld. His skin was paler, and his cheekbones more pronounced. Lankier, skinnier, and all at once, more muscular—he seemed stretched thin before ballooning out into something excessively tall and angry-looking. He seemed mostly Dagan, except for his eyes—that were now black vials filled with red, merciless fire.
“That sounds unpleasant,” he said, nodding towards the shouting. “Shall we have a look-see?”
Judy shook her head. “We don’t have enough time. And we can’t do anything anyhow.”
“We should drop by it,” Rowena announced, “if only to read the climate. Something’s happened here, city-wide. We should know what it is before we attempt anything else.”
We looked between each other and swallowed collectively. Rowena was right, but that didn’t mean we had to like it.
“Fine,” said Casey. “But we stay on the periphery. And we get in and out, got it?”
“We should send some someone ahead,” Judy announced. “Separate the group. Seven people on the edge of an angry crowd will surely stand out to somebody.”
Casey nodded. “Okay. Rowena, Judy—”
“And me,” I said, stepping forward.
“No,” Casey said immediately. “Absolutely not.”
“Rowena and I can perceive magic and auras in ways the rest of you can’t,” I said, placing my hands on my hips defiantly. “If the crowd’s been magically coerced into screaming, or somebody’s carrying a dragon’s-eye cluster bomb, we’ll be able to tell. You can’t.” And beyond that, I also knew the Netherworld and its social expectations far better than they did. If a draconian female stumbled up to them and asked how the sky’s color suited them today, none of them would know the correct reply, (fuck off, Janice, that’s how). No one would have known that it was an old joke from their folklore. Not being aware of that could result in significantly less skin on their bodies.
But I could tell Casey still didn’t like the idea at all. His face compressed itself into an expression I couldn’t quite read—something between unadulterated rage, outright denial, and fear. His voice sounded way deeper than I’d ever heard him use.
“No!” he said, before his arms started glowing.
No, not his arms—the runes on his arms. The glyphs and designs of shining blue that were carved into his skin. The only cosmetic manifestation of his magic. Weird. Hot, but weird. I wondered if those glyphs meant something to him, and if branding his skin with invisible ink was an integral part of becoming a Siphon.
“I can help,” I started.
Casey shook his head, and every part of him was as solid as steel. “No! Rowena can see enough for both of you.”
Rowena screwed up her mouth to one side. She was thinking maybe that we couldn’t, since every creature perceived the magical planes in different ways. Although I might be able to detect the calculated heat of a dragon bomb, she could point out who was actually carrying it, and where they intended to drop it.
“She should come,” Rowena said. “Or you should. You can see a bit too.” However, a bit couldn’t help us if things got hairy. “Or Captain Leather over there,” she added, waving her hand at Dagan.
“I could go with both of them,” Dagan said. “They can keep me in check, as you say.”
“And you want to help? Why? Out of the goodness of your heart, or what?” I asked, eyeing him with visible doubt. “I’m still trying to figure out what’s in it for you.”
Dagan grinned. “Maybe I just want to watch people shoot each other.”
Everyone ignored him.
Rowena sighed. “We’ll be quick.”
“We’re running low on time, ya’ll,” said Judy.
“I promise I won’t let your girlfriend get trampled,” Dagan said to Casey.
“Fine. You’ve got five minutes. If you do anything to Sam,” Casey started.
“I know, I know, you’ll cut off my dick and feed it to Kent,” Dagan said with practiced ennui. “You have my word as a businessman with precious assets he’d like to keep intact.”
“Uh-huh,” Casey said. He looked at Rowena, setting his jaw. “Go. And hurry.”
And then, before any of us could move, something barreled around a corner. It was bloody and smothered in grey and running like she had the Megalodon on her heels.
Christina. A fairy, and part of the ANC. Also a friend of mine.
She was screaming.
“Duck!”
But none of us did in time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dulcie
I lay in bed, slick with sweat, but still freezing. Sebastian. He was breathing heavily, splayed across my stomach, smiling stupidly, lost in something between sleep and drunken stupor. At least he had the presence of mind to pay me a compliment every ten seconds or so, but not quite enough acuity to turn the sounds he made into actual words.
I just lay expressionless, absently staring at the ceiling. I’d already cried myself dry, and now I just felt … numb. Empty. Like all my insides had painfully dissolved, leaving me with only a hollow shell of a person. I started drifting off while listening to the thunder of my own breath.
I’d burst into the room screaming and wailing, telling the stupid voice to shut up, shut up, shut up! but it wouldn’t go away. Sebastian, ever the gentleman-in-training, decided the best way to soothe me would be by paper-blank sex. He tried to be slow, sensuous, perhaps his version of gentle, but he didn’t have it in him, certainly not in the capacity he was aiming for. Awkward, clumsy, and painful to see but much worse to experience, he had the gall to think he was doing well, and I failed to correct him. I tried to lose myself in it—if only to bury the persistent voice in his pathetically ill-timed strokes and caresses—but the voice never faltered.
Or maybe it did. When it seemed to have gone quiet, I could only torture myself with everything it made me see.
My reverie was interrupted briefly when the sounds of an enormous explosion rocked the entire house. Another strong earthquake? Moments later, the rumbling settled and I imagined the streets would soon be rife with chaos. It’s not everyday a dryad meets her doom—just another warning to the Netherworldians that they had better comply with Mother or else. Fall in line or fall flat. It was as simple as that.
“Lovely,” Sebastian murmured as he looped a tendril of my hair around one finger. He seemed absolutely impervious to what had just happened. Like he hadn’t even felt the house shifting abruptly with the intense, magical explosion.
Sebastian was drunk long before I entered the room. He was boozing himself up in preparation for the angry Dulcie. She always emerged after prolonged exposure to Mother’s damned dignitaries: all those self-important, dogmatic, heaps of skin, bone, and scale, tenaciously clinging to their romantic, pre-Earth ideals. Nothing they could think of could function any better than the system they’d just torn down. They must have known I’d be spitting bloody murder through my teeth by the time they stopped gawking at me.
My eyes roved across the ceiling, following the shallow sheen of recent paint until t
hey landed on a mirror hung in the center of the far wall. In the reflection, I saw the burning scarlet bedsheets and their shadows, the gold tassels hanging from the bedframe, Sebastian’s limp smile and his effeminate physique …
Then I saw my face. Catatonic. Placid. Aloof. Resigned. The face of death.
I blinked at myself, trying to smile, frown, sneer, or do anything. But the muscles wouldn’t respond. I stayed stuck exactly where I was, the weary expression of a sleepy schoolteacher who abandoned her students and her responsibilities. Like shock or rigor mortis, my reflection revealed the emptiness of someone who couldn’t quite comprehend what was happening around her.
You can’t, she said. You’re missing something.
I turned away from the mirror in a huff and looked back at the ceiling.
“Quiet,” I whispered. All at once, the false cracks and aesthetic imperfections in the molding began to morph, and I saw a face. Blue eyes, a shock of black hair. Smiling. Perfectly content just to look at me.
I sat up suddenly, tossing Sebastian off me like a throw blanket. He clattered to the floor with a groan, then a grumble, and a loud thunk when his head took most of the impact, and I pushed myself sideways. Grabbing a fluttery, white silk robe, I tied it on hastily, walking to the French doors and throwing them open. I found myself inhaling deeply, and breathing fast like a drowning victim. The vision stayed in the back of my head, the blue eyes boring holes through my brain, looking down on the dark woods and chuckling softly. We were wondering what kind of beasts lived in there … and I began remembering one time when he and I were almost devoured by a river monster—
Enough! I thought, Of what?! I couldn’t say exactly what I’d had enough of. The voice? The memories? Sebastian’s feeble attempts at lovemaking? I didn’t know. Everything. This ragtag string of days and incessant hours, so full of confusion and pain accompanied by the vague sense that something was very wrong. And that stupid man Mother brought home! Now her prisoner, was he also a plaything? A toy? An instructive aid? No. He was too particular, too handsome, and too strong for sex to be the only reason Mother wanted him. He was my enemy. A traitor. A murderer. A usurper.