Chapter Forty-Four • Busy Signal • Lillith #2
“That’s what we were figuring out over here,” I lie. “We figured out a solution, and I can leave now. No more big bad guy to worry about. At least not for me.”
“No shit? Fuck, Damien’s going to be elated. You can come with us on the rest of our stops over here.”
“Yeah...” I say despite knowing in my gut that won’t be happening. “Do you need anything else from me before I come?”
“No,” he says, exhaling a relieved breath. “God. Lillith. Thank you. I don’t know what we would have done if we didn’t meet you.”
I can’t bring myself to tell him that Damien probably wouldn’t even be in this position if it wasn’t for me. So I just say, “See you soon.”
“See you.”
It’s nice to at least have those next twenty minutes to rest. It gives me time to sit and breathe and banish the lingering waves of vertigo that often follow a seizure.
Bastion sits next to me eventually, and he braids the cloaking spell into my hair, tying the spell to one of his little trinkets as a taglock.
He promises to keep his intention on the spell as long as he can, and I thank him for it even though I’m certain it won’t be enough.
“I would come with you. But...”
“You should stay with The Buried City. One of us should always be here. That’s why I didn’t ask you.” I hold his hand and look into his eyes. “I know if Wren wasn’t here, you’d be coming with me. I know if you really thought I wasn’t coming back, you wouldn’t let me go.”
His pale eyelashes shimmer with tears as his dark irises flicker around my face. “You do?” he asks. “I was worried that—with the tension between us lately—”
I pull him into my arms, wrapping them around the back of his neck and squeezing him close. He wraps me up in his embrace. One hand braces the back of my head; the other presses comfortingly at the center of my back.
“I’m sorry for being wrong. For not trusting you more,” I whisper against his ear.
“I’m sorry for being so careless—for making you think that I hold you in anything but the highest regard,” Bastion says.
He holds me out from him, cupping one side of my face. “You and Wren are the only family I have, Lillith. Everyone else? They’re all inside glorified jars in my study. You two... You’re everything to me. You know that, right?”
“I do now,” I say, sniffling. “I promise not to ever forget it again.”
Footsteps draw to a stop in front of us, and Wren kicks her weight to one hip. “You losers getting sappy without me over here?” she asks, before squeezing herself between us and drawing us both in for another awkward, three way hug.
Bastion takes to braiding the same cloaking spell into Wren’s hair. I’d probably find some amusement in our matching hairstyles if it wasn’t for the grave situation at hand. It somehow takes both entirely too long and no time at all before Aemon calls us over to open the portal.
Wren takes my hand and we walk together to where Aemon’s etched an unfamiliar casting circle into the loamy ground.
It’s a quiltwork of all sorts of symbols and words that look unfamiliar to me.
The magic coming off of it feels ancient—unwieldy.
The same sort of wrongness that wrapped around my throat those couple weeks ago when the Aberrant’s creature nearly killed me.
It’s slimy and sticky on my senses. But we have no other options. And I’m not about to complain.
“Step into the circle please,” he says.
We do as instructed and Aemon exhales a tight breath. “Alright, you two should keep your hands clasped together as tightly as you can. It can get a bit rocky when I’m not around to keep things sailing smoothly.”
“You could always come with us,” Wren grumbles under her breath.
Aemon gives her a withering stare, but doesn’t respond.
Wren and I grasp onto each other’s hands like our lives depend on it.
The contact conjures memories of sleepovers in our teens, when we whispered to each other in the wee hours of the morning and made promises to always look after each other. And here she is, looking out for me. I turn toward her, grasping her other hand.
“Thank you for doing this,” I say only to her.
She smiles, her eyes a little sad. “I would do anything for you, babe. Anything.”
Aemon speaks in tongues, or at least in some language that means absolutely nothing to me. I can’t pick out a single consonant or vowel that resembles any of the romantic languages of our world. It must be some eldritch or otherworldly thing.
The circle around our feet shifts—not so much spinning—more like writhing.
The ground itself seems to be a living thing, squirming and twisting like maggots.
I squeeze a little closer to Wren, almost panicking that it’s going to slither up my legs.
She grimaces, a chill of disgust traveling from her body to mine. I press closer to her.
Just as I do, the ground snaps up like the angry maw of a Venus fly trap.
Almost as abruptly as the ground opened its unnerving jaws, it closes with the force of a mousetrap, burying us in damp soil and sticky, thick clay.
What follows is the most terrifying twenty seconds of my life. The ground swallows us both whole while pulling us apart. We’re chewed up and slammed around. Tendrils of root systems squeeze between our hands, trying to pry us away from each other.
Seismic force tears us sideways. A wedge of stone divides us, requiring us to loose one hand, before dragging us down into a swirling vortex of choking mud.
I manage to grasp the remaining point of contact between us with both of my hands. And just when I think I might die—just when I think we’ve both been fooled into being buried alive by Aemon...
Moonlight. Fireflies.
Fresh air.
I cough and spit out a mouthful of dirt and gravel. Wren retches, her pinky still laced with mine despite the indignity of it all.
“What,” she pants, as she spits more mud from her mouth, “the fuck.”
“That wasn’t so much of a portal as it was a near death experience,” I wheeze.
“No shit,” she says, falling onto her back. “I’m going to fucking kill him for that.”
“So much for being a gentleman,” I say, rolling onto my back, too. Waiting for the discomfort of another aura to hopefully pass without another seizure. That’s the last thing I need right now.
“Don’t remind me,” she mumbles as I close my eyes and practice slow, steady breathing. “I’m so pissed off at him right now. What a chickenshit.”
“He’s had a lot of practice at being a selfish prick,” I mumble.
“Yeeeep,” she says, really popping the ‘P’.
“At least you have a verifiable type,” I say as the aura fades.
“You’re such an asshole,” she says.
We’re covered in dirt and smell like soil. My eyes are still shut when she snaps her fingers, and the filth miraculously vanishes. I lift a brow at her as I open my eyes, wondering if that was the wisest use of her magic when we have a lot of healing to do.
“If we walk into an ICU covered in dirt like that, they’re going to try to commit us,” she says.
Despite everything, I laugh.
It’s a hysterical, reedy sound. The comment wasn’t even that funny. But we must both be delirious with the anxiety over The Aberrant and the relief of breathing fresh air after going through the world’s most horrific underground waterslide that Wren starts to laughing too.
As the giggle fit subsides, I take in our surroundings and register that we’re next to a small pond on the opposite side of a parking garage. The night is quiet except for the sound of the crickets chirping and the fireflies buzzing overhead.
I heave out a soft breath. “I’ve never seen them before,” I say.
“Fireflies?” she asks.
I nod. “Yeah. They’re beautiful. And god, it’s so...wet here. I feel like I’m in a steam room.”
She laughs. “Humidity,” she says as she stands up and offers me her hand. I take it and stand up with her. “Let’s go save your boyfriend’s ass,” she says.
“Maybe some of his other parts, too,” I agree.
While we speed walk to the hospital, I call Oren again for Damien’s room number and directions for getting there. The less we ask for help getting to Damien, the easier it will be to get into his room without having to kick a fuss with Hospital staff.
It takes way too long to get to the elevator we need, but as I press the button to take us to Damien’s floor, my heart hammers in my chest.
Now that the initial adrenaline is wearing off, it’s starting to land that I have left Del Lune.
Hell, I’ve left California—the west coast, even.
It’s strangely thrilling. Everything smells different.
The air feels different. The landscape outside of the windows is so verdant that, even in the pale silver moonlight, it feels like a fae realm.
When we arrive to the ICU, I’m relieved to find the nurse’s station empty.
Less to worry about, less chance for interception.
We take the turns Oren detailed in his text and before long, at the end of a dimly lit corridor, we find Satoshi and Roxie sitting on the floor, facing each other from either side of the hallway.
“Oh, thank fuck,” Roxie says breathlessly, as they stand up and pull me into a tight hug. “Thank god you’re here.”
Satoshi doesn’t say anything, and at first, I think it’s because he’s being sullen and pissy with me for taking so long. But when I glance at him, his eyes are closed. He’s sleeping, fitfully it seems. And his forearms have been covered in thick layers of gauze.
“He got the worst of it out of all of us aside from Damien,” Roxie says. “They wanted to admit him, but he discharged himself against their recommendations.”
Wren shakes her head. “Stubborn idiot,” she says.
“He’s in a lot of pain. I gave him about twenty gummies to ride it out,” Roxie says.
“I’ll get everyone healed if I can,” I say. I look at Roxie’s hands. “How are you?”
“Nothing major. I was in the sound booth, so by the time I got down to help, most of the fire had burned out.” They show me their hands, and there are just a few angry looking blisters, but nothing that looks worse than second degree. “Definitely keep that energy for Dame and Tosh if you can.”