Chapter 13
Three days without sleep. Three days of teeth-gritting, adrenaline-pumping madness was unraveling my sanity.
The moment someone dared to close their eyes, the alarms shrieked. Another wave of something new and lethal surging toward the tear. New tears attracted chaos, but spread as thin as we were, sometimes things still crossed, which was why the electric barriers and tape existed on both sides.
Gnomes came first. Tiny, grinning mechanical menaces who could reduce a truck to nuts and bolts in thirty seconds flat.
Then the will-o’-the-wisps, floating like harmless lanterns until their sparkle dust turned the air to poison.
The worst were the unicorns. not glittering steeds, but razor-hooved killers with horns crusted in dried blood, their eyes black and hungry.
All my childhood fantasies shattered by the assault of toxic glitter and deadly ponies.
By hour seventy-two, my magic buzzed under my skin like an open wound, tired, underfed, and reacting to every shift in the Veil. My nerves were frayed. My reflexes shot. And the entire team was on edge, taken to silence rather than snapping at each other.
I glared into the darkness behind my mask, standing a dozen yards from the barrier, watching the trucks and everything beyond them for any sign of movement.
My heavy breathing beneath the mask muffled more noise than I’d have liked, but since our entire group spread itself across the length of the barrier, back to the building, we didn’t need to worry about something coming in behind us.
But I was dozing on my feet.
“Jude.”
I jolted, thinking Angel or one of the team had called me, but when I glanced back and forth, I saw them all standing in the same place, none of them focused on me.
Maybe it had been in my head? I scanned the horizon, the unchanging colors making it hard to keep track of the time.
Daytime or nighttime, it all looked the same.
Nothing moved, and I slowed my breathing, straining to hear beyond the breeze.
“Jude.”
I whirled around, yanking my Taser free from my belt in one move, expecting someone to be right behind me.
No one. Just the shadowed building, dark and vacant.
“What the fuck,” I cursed, expecting Angel to react from his spot a half dozen yards away, but he didn’t move and neither did Wade on my other side. In fact, the whole team stood frozen, as if locked in time.
A shadow detached itself from the building’s exterior, lengthening and turning more solid. I gasped and took a step back as it turned my way.
My breath caught as familiar eyes met mine.
Ivan?
Holy fuck!
He slipped through the broken front door, vanishing into the shadowed interior like he was some kind of shade instead of a person.
“No, no, no, no.” I chanted, racing after him. “Stop!”
Why was he here? Had he followed me? I’d only gotten a handful of texts from him between all the chaos, but he’d sounded fine, and Xavier, the supernatural bastard, had promised to protect him.
“Ivy!”
I charged forward, determined to rescue my little brother from whatever trouble he’d found himself in again.
As I burst through the broken doorway, my boots hit concrete and broken glass, while behind me, my team remained frozen statues.
That should have been a red flag, but I couldn’t let Ivan vanish from sight. What if something nabbed him?
Inside, the lobby stretched longer than it should have.
The walls breathed, pulsing like living tissue.
Ivan’s shadow flickered at the end of the hall, his form vanishing and reappearing with each stuttering fluorescent light overhead.
Had the building had fluorescent lights before?
I couldn’t remember why everything looked unfamiliar, narrow, and dim.
Perhaps the Veil crossing had warped it.
The floor tilted, sending me crashing against a wall that yielded like rotten fruit. Something warm and sticky soaked through my sleeve as Ivan slipped down a hall toward the stairwell.
“Ivy?” I whispered, fearing something else would hear me. I swallowed hard, remembering the last time I’d tried to enter that stairwell and ended up in some otherworldly prison. How was any of this real? Why would Ivan run away?
“Ivy?” I reached for him, mind whirling but slow. It caught up as I reached the doorway, reminding me that the team should have been right behind me, yet inside the building I was alone, and Ivan had no reason to be there.
I stood staring into the doorway, terror making my heart race as I feared stepping through it would take me back to that nightmare prison. Would I find Ivan on the other side? Slowly dissolving in goo?
The stairwell yawned before me, not the sterile concrete of Brandon’s building, but the same endless black pit from my nightmares. The air reeked of mold and copper, thick enough to choke on. Above, something moved. Footsteps, the thick clunk of someone racing up the stairs.
Ivan?
I jolted through the doorway, racing up the stairs after him, though it felt like they stretched for ages into the gaping darkness overhead. My throat caught as I tried to shout for my brother again, the air thick as if the building were on fire. That couldn’t be right.
A dozen floors and I plodded upward, or at least it felt like a dozen though I had yet to encounter any other door. Then one opened at the top, someone darting through and slamming it, and I burst after it, catching the handle and yanking it open to leap after Ivan.
I plunged into complete darkness, the door slamming hard behind me, and I reached for it in panic, finding it gone.
“Jude Alexander Holt.”
The floor vanished beneath me, and I plummeted into the darkness screaming. A half second later I jerked up, opening my eyes to find myself on a couch in a vaguely familiar apartment. My heart raced in my chest as though I’d run a marathon chased by axe murderers.
Where the hell was I?
Soft lighting filtered from under the kitchen cabinets in a high-end kitchen forty feet away.
The sectional I lay on was made of gleaming black leather with that sort of lingering scent I’d never come to like, as it always reminded me of the fabric’s origin.
A set of coffee cups rested on the counter, steaming as if they’d just been poured, one on each side of the granite island countertop.
A jacket sat draped over a stool beside one. Not mine, that much I knew.
“Hello?” I called, standing up and studying the massive living room. Wait, I knew this place. Only ever visited twice as he didn’t want to chance someone seeing us together. Brandon’s apartment.
I sucked in a deep breath, heart not slowing as I froze, listening for any sound.
“Brandon?” I whispered his name, fearing he’d pop out of somewhere and scare the shit out of me. But the entire place stretched silent and partially dark, only illuminated by a handful of lamps, one in the living room and one in the bedroom.
Stalking around the apartment, opening doors, waiting for something to pop out like some biscuit-can nightmare, I found it empty.
In the bedroom, the bed was made, furniture spare, as if barely lived in, though I heard a strange buzzing sound.
Where was that coming from? Why would chasing Ivan lead me here? Why would Ivan be here at all?
I stared at the closet door, closed tight, the vague glimmer of shifting light underneath. My stomach flipped over in fear, but I reached for the handle, unwilling to chance losing Ivan. With a held breath, I yanked the door open, jumping to the side in case anything lunged at me.
But the walk-in closet flickered with a half dozen monitors, all showing different locations like some sort of security detail. What the actual hell?
I took a step forward into the closet, trying to focus on the screens but unable to clarify any of them as they flickered and flipped from snow to shapes back and forth. The floor creaked behind me. I spun around, Taser raised, ready but hesitant as I feared hitting Ivan.
A tall figure stood in the bedroom, half blocking the door to the closet and my retreat. His shadow towered over me, adding bulk and height, which had never bothered me until he’d tried to kill me in a vacant lot.
Brandon stood swaying in the doorway, face stretched thin, eyes like black onyx, jaw set with a smirk. I took a step back, and he stepped forward, a smile curving his lips too wide.
“Missed you,” he said, sounding hoarse.
“I haven’t missed you,” I snarled back.
Brandon’s grin widened; his teeth too white, too sharp in the dim light. “Liar,” he crooned. “You always miss me.”
I tightened my grip on the Taser. “Where’s Ivan?”
His head tilted, birdlike. “Who?”
“My brother, you prick!”
Brandon lunged.
I fired the Taser, but he slammed his hand into my wrist, dislodging my aim. The Taser clattered to the floor. I threw myself backward, reaching for it, but he caught me by the throat and smashed me into the wall beside the door, squeezing.
“I think you’ve forgotten your place,” Brandon growled, “beneath me.”
“Fuck you!” I wheezed, trying to pry his hands off me. I smashed my hands into the bend of his elbows and cracked my forehead against his face to escape. He cursed, his nose busted, spurting blood, cold and sticky.
Brandon staggered back, black blood dripping from his ruined nose, too dark and thick to be human. His fingers brushed the mess, then came away glistening with that unnatural ichor, like shadows oozed from inside him. When he laughed, it bubbled wet in his throat.
“Jude Alexander Holt.”
Brandon Cassidy didn’t know my middle name.
He knew very little about me. And that familiar refrain made my blood run cold.
I dove for the Taser, fingers scraping the polymer grip just as Brandon’s foot came down hard on my wrist. Bone ground against hardwood.
A gasp tore from me, the pain white-hot up my arm.
The Taser was just inches away. I twisted, ignoring the scream in my wrist, and drove my free elbow into Brandon’s knee. Something cracked. He howled, the sound twisted, warped, more like an animal than anything human.
I wrenched my hand free and grabbed the Taser, jammed the prongs into his stomach, and fired. His body seized for a half second, then his edges blurred, shadows writhing under his skin like eels. The stench of burning ozone filled the closet.
Shadows peeled off the walls around me, dripping from the ceiling in inky ropes, lashing around my limbs as if to keep me immobile. I screamed, struggling to get free, the Taser vanished from my grip as I tried to break their hold.
“Jude! Baby! Look at me!” someone demanded, and warm hands cupped my face.
I sucked in air, blinked, and found myself staring into Angel’s concerned gaze, his forehead pressed to mine, his hands holding my head in place. The team held me down, and I gasped, horrified by the restriction.
“Baby, you were seizing. Breathe, please,” Angel begged.
The world came into focus around me, and I realized I was on the ground outside the building, staring up at the high-rise as if I hadn’t just been running through it. Through one window, far above, I caught a glimpse of movement and a face staring down at me.
Brandon Cassidy.