Chapter 46
We all hit the floor in a heap. I had the breath knocked out of me as someone landed a knee in my gut. Angel was at my back, and his magic swarmed over me, calming the raging panic in a heartbeat.
“Stay awake,” he commanded as he tried to untangle himself from our mess of bodies, and I realized he was in his human form.
Ezra rolled off me, struggling to his feet. The stranger lay on his stomach, half across my legs, his breath uneven. I blinked a half dozen times, my struggle to keep awake dragging me deeper. Was Angel naked?
“Eyes up here, pretty boy,” Angel snapped.
I tried to focus on him. “You’re naked.”
“I was in my cat form, remember?”
“Vaguely,” I said, feeling like that was a lifetime ago.
“I’m seriously putting a tracker on you and assigning you some hellhounds. Why are your pants down? Do I even want to know?”
“Goo burning through fabric…” was all I could offer in explanation as I shut my eyes again. Something had sucked all the energy out of me, not unlike the faerie lights that had burst as the darkness swam toward me. I had no doubt that thing would have eaten me, too.
“He’s bleeding,” Ezra pointed out as he bent in half and breathed hard. “Not sure who our blue-haired friend is. You okay?” he asked.
Angel cursed and tugged me out from under the stranger. My blood smeared over both of us, or maybe it wasn’t all mine. “Glass shards?” Angel asked as he carefully glanced over the other man before focusing on me.
“Lots of specimen containers exploded,” Ezra said. He dropped down beside the stranger and examined his back. “Shit. Why did you do that?”
“I’ll be fine,” the blue-haired guy wheezed. “Just give me a minute.”
“Not sure how long we have,” Ezra complained, glancing over the long hallway of gap-toothed doorways. At least I was back with Angel. “Looks like we are in some otherworld nightmare.”
“Hi,” I said to Angel.
He glanced up to meet my eyes. “Why are you bleeding? Why is your skin blistered on your legs?”
“Goo from a jar I broke,” I said, blinking past him as faces seemed to press to doorways nearby.
How many of them were filled with captives like Ezra and Blue-hair?
“Burned through pants,” I told him, too tired to do more than lie there and breathe.
“It doesn’t hurt, just feels numb. I think the faeries died.
They were lights, and then something destroyed them. Ate them. Wanted to eat me, too.”
Other than my rough breathing, silence stretched through the hall, only occasionally peppered by a small plink.
“Are you pushing the glass out?” Ezra asked.
Blue-hair grunted.
“Handy skill,” Ezra said.
“We can’t stay,” Angel said as he dug through my gear and pulled out the mini first-aid kit. He swabbed my knees, which burned, and wrapped bandages around them. He sniffed at me, frowning. “Fae?”
“Are fae and faeries the same things? Like Hanna and tiny things with wings?”
“About as much as we have in common with dogs,” he said.
“Mammals, and that’s about it. Fae are fae and faeries comprise of about a million different species with more animal than humanoid tendencies.
You said there were dead faeries? And goo?
What type of goo? I’ve never seen anything eat through tactical pants like this.
” He cut the last of the fabric away with my utility knife, leaving my shoes and socks in place.
“Didn’t stop to break out a science kit,” I sighed heavily.
“Species specific,” blue-hair said. He swallowed a few more groans as the glass slid out of him and clattered to the floor. Ezra swept a careful, gloved hand over the man, brushing away the remaining shards.
Angel leaned in close, sniffing my face and neck, and down my chest. I could feel the little creature snuggled up under my shirt. Was he smelling it? I hoped it wasn’t something bad.
“Uh…” I protested.
“Never mind,” he said. “Let’s get out of here first.”
“Sure,” I agreed. “As soon as I can feel my legs again. Does everything across the Veil try to kill us all the time?”
He cursed. “Only you. What did you do to piss them off?”
“Hey, Ezra was in some sort of dissolving tube, so it’s not just me.”
“I was watching the Veil split one minute while waiting for Cassidy to reappear, then waking up as the tube broke and your boyfriend was sans pants,” Ezra complained.
“Did Cassidy come back?” Angel asked.
“Not that I saw,” Ezra answered as he helped the blue-haired guy up.
“The fissure blossomed through the center of the building. Normally it takes a few hours to split, but this one went from visibility to full tear in the time it took me to make a call to headquarters.” Ezra stared at the stranger. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I’ll heal,” he said gruffly, his gaze flitting back and forth from one end of the hall to the other. “We need to get out of here.”
I agreed as I followed the direction of his gaze down the hall. Every now and then, I’d catch a glimpse of something moving at the edge of my vision, a flicker of movement darting out of sight.
Things peered from doorways; ghostly faces filled with sadness. I saw moving mouths, though I couldn’t hear what they said. I blinked again, thinking it was from hitting my head a half dozen times, but realized my helmet was missing. When had I lost that?
Angel stood up, leaving me to stare up at his divinely sculpted body covered in tattoos and feel very overwhelmed. He hauled me up and over his back. “Can you hold on?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said without any inkling if I could or not, as my body felt like a giant noodle.
But he adjusted me to piggyback him, hands under my thighs with my arms around his neck.
Since I had dressed in the dark, my undies were boxer briefs with little rubber duckies on them, dressed as different characters.
Not the first choice for a day my ass would be on display in the middle of a tactical nightmare, but no one had commented yet.
“I marked the door back to the other side in my cat form. I could cross, at least partially, but the others couldn’t. They can’t see the door. I stayed to look for you.”
“We’re not in the same building across the Veil?”
“No. I have no idea where the fuck we are. Whatever you saw that you stepped through… that wasn’t a normal Veil splice, and you brought me with you.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, wincing as we passed a couple of doors with dead faces peering out of them. Did they all go to rooms like the one I’d stumbled into? Filled with dead and dying things preserved in supernatural liquid?
“What are you seeing?” he asked.
“It’s a prison,” I said. “There are ghostly faces looking at us, and I’m trying to figure out if it’s because I hit my head, or if I’m really seeing shit.”
“Let’s go with you seeing shit. I can’t see them, but I smell dead. Lots of dead. And magic, and fae, and demons. This place is wild. I don’t know where the fuck we are, but this place is insane.” He pressed his taser into my grip. Where had mine gone? “If something comes at us, shoot it.”
“Sure,” I agreed, holding onto the tool and him, grateful for his body heat. I worried I’d crush the little creature as it had been on my chest, and my chest was pressed to Angel’s back, but it felt as if the warmth of it had slid around to my back. Strange.
“The fuck?” Ezra asked as he followed Angel and me down the hall.
“Honestly, more of a refrigerator than a prison, and all the captives are snacks,” blue-hair said.
“I wondered why the gel you were in was cold,” I said as we passed a dozen doorways. Some were more see-through than others.
Angel stalked down the hall, keeping a careful path down the middle, gaze on the doorways.
Ghosts lingered in some, and I studied each group we passed.
They pounded on the open doorways as though there was an invisible barrier between us and them.
Were these the remaining spirits of those who hadn’t survived?
The tubes of dissolved human-like remains had felt like nothing, not even a spirit remaining.
“They are ghosts, I think.”
“There isn’t much left of them,” blue-hair said.
“I can sense them, but they feel really weak.”
Maybe the mark he’d made had vanished? I searched each door with my gaze as we passed. Some of the things we passed felt stronger, as if I could reach out and pull them free. Others slid by my senses with a cool shiver or something barely perceivable.
“Wait, stop, Angel.”
He froze. “What?”
“Go back two doors on the right.”
The entire group paused and walked back two doors. I stared inside, heart flipping over in my chest. “It’s the kid.”
“What?” Ezra asked.
“Jonah,” I said, pointing at the doorway and seeing the kid coloring at a table on the other side.
“I see nothing,” Ezra said. He smacked his hand on the doorway but it hit as though he’d found the wall instead. “It’s black, like a painted-on door.”
“There’s a barrier,” blue-hair said. “All of the rooms have them to keep the captives in.”
I was not leaving that kid there. “Angel…”
“Do not let go. You’re not going in that room without me.”
Ezra’s fingers curled into fists, and Angel’s breath hitched as I reached for the doorway, determined to free Jonah.
My magic hummed—weak, but focused. The little fae on my back tingled as if in agreement.
A connection flared between me and the ghosts, their memories fluttering by the edges of my awareness though they were distant, but adding strength as my power flared white hot for half a heartbeat.
Something cracked, the sound shattering like a thousand windows of glass bursting, sharp and sudden.
Jonah’s door splintered, spiderwebbing from the center outward before it crumpled with shimmering fragments of broken magic.
And it didn’t stop there. Every other door cracked in the shockwave, barriers broken, and then chaos.
A howl erupted from somewhere deeper down the hall, then skittering claws sounded; a shifter, maybe? Or a couple dozen of them? The air turned thick, darkening at the edges as the fracture spread, draining power from me to break everyone free.
Ezra lunged through the doorway and grabbed Jonah up in his arms. The crayons scattered, but the kid remained silent as Ezra hauled him over a shoulder like a sack of potatoes and raced for the door.
“Run,” Blue-hair said, backing away as something dark burst from a room four doors down, tendrils of darkness reaching for us.
“Fuck,” Angel cursed, catching Ezra’s arm to steer him in the right direction as we ran.
The hall became a nightmare of supernatural critters, spirits, and shadows, racing in both directions. And I had set them all loose. Angel raced with me on his back, the others following, zigzagging around things I couldn’t begin to explain.
“There it is,” Angel said, veering toward a far door. Claw marks glowed around the edge of the doorway, but inside the frame, all I could see was an inky well of darkness.
“Shit,” I said as Angel tightened his grip on me, the other two grabbed onto me, and we all went sailing through the doorway.
My gut churned and heaved again, stars sparkling around the edges of my vision.
Noise spurted through Ezra’s earpiece loud enough for me to flinch as the world lurched, my stomach flipping. We crashed back into the mortal world and the lobby of the apartment building. We’d made it.
For about three seconds, I reveled in our freedom.