Chapter 7
Periwinkle
Rollick paces back and forth at the head of the table as if he isn’t sure where he wants to stand. I’d suggest to him that he shouldn’t worry about it because it doesn’t really make a difference, but he finally makes up his mind and spins toward all of us gathered in the trailer meeting room.
The gathering is a swarm now. He hasn’t included the random higher shadowkind who tumbled out along the fringes of the warped rift, even though several of them helped us finish evacuating the city, but the trailer is still packed.
There’s no point in trying to hide our presence here at the rift now. The cat’s out of the bag about us being inhuman with the military folks and many of the refugees. Making sure the weirdo rift’s flood doesn’t spread any farther than it already has is the most important thing.
I can sense various other beings watching from the shadows to avoid cramming us even more tightly in the enclosed space. I think they’re Rollick’s assistants and various other associates who are used to doing his bidding without much of a say.
“Well,” Rollick says. “The good news is that this is the only place in the mortal realm where the shadows have collided with an area of high human occupation. The bad news is they have collided with the mortal realm in several other locations.”
My heart skips a beat. “The other strange rifts?”
He nods. “All of them expanded and collapsed over the surrounding terrain much the same way ours here has. I’m getting reports from the beings I had monitoring the other rifts.
Thankfully the humans nearby have been smart enough not to go diving in where they obviously have no business going, but my people are having trouble holding back the deluge of new creatures emerging.
I’ve sent the other administrators from the academy to pitch in along with various helpers, but it’s a difficult business. ”
Riva frowns, twisting the end of her silvery braid around her finger. “Do they need more people pitching in? We shadowbloods could split up again—”
Before she can finish her offer, Rollick cuts her off with a raised hand. “The situation here is by far the most urgent. We’ve got mortals with large guns prowling all around the camps. Tens of thousands of humans getting at least a glimpse of shadowkind.”
He sighs and rubs his forehead. My stomach twists like it’s trying out for a gymnastics team.
The demon is thousands of years old. To see even him this taken aback by the catastrophe here… Are there words for something even more dire than a catastrophe?
And what do you do to de-catastrophize it?
Sorsha’s partner who sometimes turns into a magma-laced hellhound clears his throat, his expression even grimmer than Rollick’s. “Have the Highest had anything to say about the… incident?”
The Highest—the immense, ancient beings who hold a vague authority in the shadow realm and over shadowkind who venture mortal-side. At the thought of them, a fresh chill sweeps over my skin.
I hadn’t even considered their perspective. I’ve never encountered any of them myself. But from the murmurs I’ve heard over the years, they get a bee up their butts about shadowkind catching human attention.
It’s not as if it was our idea for a messed-up rift to bellyflop all over a city. Will that matter to them?
Rollick shakes his head, provoking a flutter of relief in both me and the various beings around me.
“Not much. They’ve been notified, of course, but I think the news is so bizarre they’re more concerned about their own safety than anything else.
The last I heard, they’re hiding even deeper in the depths of the shadow realm to avoid any strangeness from these rifts, demanding the rest of us keep control over the situation however we can. ”
“We have made some progress there,” Sorsha points out with her usual optimism, but I can’t help noticing the furrows in her forehead too. “At least the soldiers aren’t opening fire willy-nilly anymore.”
“Yes. We’re being riddled with fewer bullets than we were yesterday. And we’ve gotten all the humans we could locate out of the city. Let’s celebrate the wins we have.”
Rollick’s chuckle doesn’t sound particularly celebratory. He holds his emotions close, but I’m still picking up a vibe of uneasy frustration as unpalatable as days-old black coffee.
A hand shoots up in the midst of the crowd, as if we’re still at school. Rollick motions for the owner of the hand to speak.
A female shadowkind I recognize as one of my old bullies—one of Gloss’s friends, before Gloss got banished for nearly murdering me—pushes a little closer with a flick of her gleaming hair over her shoulders.
“Why do we need to worry about the humans at all now that they’ve got their own authority-type-people to help them?
Let the soldiers stay around the humans who left the city, defending them with those guns, and we’ll focus on the rift. ”
Rollick’s tone turns dry. “That would be fine, except I don’t think Colonel What’s His Face and Major Second In Command would agree. They barely trust us to wipe our asses, let alone contain what they see as some kind of level one-million biohazard.”
Sorsha’s hellhound shifter raises his eyebrows. “We could incinerate them all, and then we wouldn’t have to worry about them to begin with.”
As Sorsha elbows him chidingly, Rollick shakes his head. “Our new ‘friends’ may be frustrating, but I don’t think they’ve earned a massacre. And they are at least useful for corralling the evacuees and finding temporary homes for them farther from the morphing shadow deluge.”
“Is there definitely a problem, then?” grumbles Gnash, one of the academy’s administrators. “So the humans have a few new dark spots on their maps. They’ll survive. The shadowkind creatures will keep them on their toes. They’ve gotten pretty complacent.”
His colleague Shanty glowers at him. “You don’t really mean that. If all humans get it into their heads that they’ve got monsters to fight, they’ll come for us too.”
“That is one major concern,” Rollick agrees. “Another is the fact that I don’t think even the current state of affairs is secure. I’ve gotten reports of signs of instability at many other regular rifts around the world.”
Another chill washes over me, sharper than if Hail had flung a blizzard my way. “What if they all collapse?”
“I’d rather not find that out. So we need to work together to find ways to shove the shadows—and all the creatures coming with them—back where they belong. Which would be easier if we had more of an idea why they spilled out in the first place.”
A dazed looking guy off to one side of the room grunts. “Maybe the shadow realm got too big. It’s overflowing, like a bathtub.”
“With very aggressive bath toys!” someone else pipes up with a giggle.
One of Sorsha’s other men, the incubus whose voice always comes out smooth as chocolate, offers a wry grin. “Is another powerful higher shadowkind trying to take over the world again? That seems to be their favorite hobby these days.”
Rollick grimaces. “I’d prefer an explanation that easy, but no one’s noticed any odd activity other than the rifts themselves—and I’ve had people on the lookout ever since we found the first strange rift months ago.
It’d be difficult to create a problem this big while keeping all evidence imperceptively small. ”
I find myself raising my hand—tentatively, half expecting most of the room to laugh.
Gloss’s friend does snicker, and I think I catch a guffaw from elsewhere in the group of my one-time classmates, but Fen gives my other arm another approving squeeze.
Rollick’s expression stays thoughtful. “What is it, Peri?”
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I say. “Seeing all the strange ways the new shadowkind are behaving, and remembering the things Viscera said while she was tearing up the city… It seems like the warped beings have the impression that they’re supposed to merge with the mortal realm somehow.
That there’s a place for them, and they just can’t find it.
A lot of them are trying in very physical ways. ”
“Yes, I’ve seen some of that behavior myself. And?”
I clasp my hands together. “What if… What if after all the back and forth, all the times shadowkind have affected the mortal realm and mortals have affected shadowkind… the barrier between the realms is starting to merge? So that there isn’t really a barrier anymore.
Everything’s starting to get literally muddled together. ”
Someone else snorts, but the sound echoes out into deathly silence. I think I’d prefer laughter, actually.
“That does make a certain kind of sense,” Sorsha says after a moment, but I can’t say she looks happy about it either.
Mirage shivers where he’s standing near me. “But what would that mean? If the shadows all mix with the sunshine… There’s no sunshine left.”
Rollick drags in a breath. “We don’t know if that’s what’s happening yet.
And if it is, we may be able to keep the effect contained.
Let’s all keep that theory in mind while we continue to investigate.
And if anyone finds any power or action that makes the situation better rather than worse, let me know. ”
Raze touches my shoulder. When I look up at him, he tips his chin toward Rollick.
An image wavers up from my memory of the beams of light I shot out that one time yesterday—and the way the mass of shadow seemed to lighten as it absorbed them.
But that change didn’t really help anything. I have no idea if I could do anything even that small again.
The demon goes on with a motion toward Jonah.
“The new sorcerer I was bringing in to assist us has finally arrived. Let’s have the two of you talk, and maybe you can find a strategy for talking most of the warped creatures into heading home.
The rest of you, you have your assigned duties for the rest of the day. ”
Jonah follows Rollick out of the trailer first. My human lover at least looks steadier on his feet than he did in the middle of the fray yesterday. By the time I found him again, he insisted he’d only gotten momentarily overwhelmed.
With all the chaotic emotions that were whirling around me in the moment, I couldn’t even tell if he was lying.
My other marked men head out of the trailer with me on foot.
Technically we’ve been ordered to rest after the long hours we put into evacuating the city over the past two days.
We’ll recover better in the shadows. But too much uncomfortable energy is wriggling under my skin for me to want to lounge around and ignore the problems literally looming over us.
The second my feet hit the ground with a faint pang of old pain, Falkor scuttles out from under the trailer and winds around one of my ankles. He gives a warbled arf and peers up at me with his puppyish eyes.
Hail’s lips curl in distaste. “That thing is still clinging to you?”
I thought the shadowkind creature that seems to have adopted me got bored of my company, but apparently he just had other temporary business to take care of.
“He’s allowed to cling.” I bend down to give Falkor a scratch under his chin, which results in the entire back half of his serpentine body wagging behind his two paws. “That’s a good boy.”
“And here I thought it was bad having to share your attention with this lug.” Hail’s gaze slides to Raze. He keeps his tone dry, but the basilisk shifter growls at him anyway.
“You both need to behave,” I tell them, moving to rubbing the puppy-snake’s neck. “Maybe then I’ll call you two good boys.”
Oh. From the flare of hot-cocoa desire that floods me at my remark, both of them approve of that idea quite a lot.
Mirage spins around on the patchy grass with a swirl of his tail. “But you’re the good-est of all girls.”
Hmm, it does feel tingly-nice when someone says that. I grin at him. “Thank you!”
My gaze slides toward the mass of darkness in the near distance. “It doesn’t feel right to be standing around when the rift could vomit up more shadows at any moment, does it?”
Raze slides his arm around me. “We won’t be able to help anyone if we run ourselves totally ragged. That goes for you too.”
“I know. I just—”
As we spoke, Falkor unwound from my leg. He’s squirming off toward a grasshopper jumping between patches of grass when a knee-high, ridged spidery creature comes scrambling from around the side of the trailer.
The warped shadowkind lets out a whistly sort of shriek at the sight of my self-appointed pet and launches itself forward.
I yelp, but Falkor manages to wriggle away even faster. He shoots between my feet and coils behind my heels, quivering.
The armored spider jerks to a halt a few paces away from me. Its legs twitch. Its feet dig into the dirt beneath them, scraping back and forth in little hitches.
Raze has tensed to pounce. “Is it still looking to attack?”
The emotions spiking off the creature taste as prickly as horseradish, with a searing thread of aggression winding through. My own emotions surge up with the urge to blast it away.
I catch myself, remembering how our bonds wobbled when I lashed out defensively yesterday. I deflected that other attack in a more peaceful way. “Wait. Maybe I can…”
I summon all the sympathy and affection I drew on before.
No matter how creepy this crawly thing looks, it’s a shadowkind just like me. It didn’t ask to be here or to be so confused.
Even while it simmers with fierceness, it’s trying to meld itself with the ground.
“We’ll help you find a place,” I tell it, holding out my hands. “If you want to belong here, there has to be a way to make it happen.”
A teal glow spills out from my hands. It washes over the creature.
The hitching of its many feet stills. It sinks down on the dirt and stretches out its legs as if it’s decided it’d rather sunbathe than skirmish.
The acidic emotions that were jabbing into me smooth out into a gentle lemon cream.
Around it, my men are gaping.
Hail chokes on a laugh. “I hope you’re not making offers you’re going to go back on.”
I raise my chin. “I’m not. Any being that wants to live here should be able to. We’ll figure it out. We just… we just have to make sure that here stays here and doesn’t become some warped part of the shadow realm.”
Raze hums low in his chest. “Peri, I think this power of yours might be the key to that. If you can calm down the creatures and make them feel like they’ve already settled in… We should see what it can do on the rift when you really try.”
I look at the swell of roiling shadow that cloaks the city, and my throat closes up. I can soothe a creature here and there, but… Does a cream puff like me really stand a chance at fixing a problem that huge?
I guess there’s only one way to find out.
“Come on,” I say. “We’d better find Rollick.”