Chapter Nineteen #2
But still, couldn’t he have waited two more minutes? I might have had a name to give him, then!
“Raine.” Remy crouched next to me. “Are you hurt?”
Back! I thought to the Beast. Those claws disappeared from my fingers. All its strength left me, too, and I slumped over.
Remy caught me before I face-planted onto the ground. “Raine! Did Travis hurt you?”
“Siphoned me,” I managed to say. My strength might have left along with the Beast’s claws, but at least I could still talk. And see. Maybe some of Remy’s accelerated healing abilities were finally kicking in, too.
“Travis … hired by someone,” I rasped out. “Wanted … extraction. Called someone.”
Remy whirled, searching what was left of Travis. It didn’t take long. There weren’t that many large-enough pieces.
“Ellie?” I asked with hope.
Remy picked me up, giving a cagey glance at the nearby pond. “Safe, but we’re not. It’s breeding season. An explosion next to her nursery will alarm her.”
“Her who?” I asked, only to gasp as the whole tunnel shook. A pair of slick, grayish forms popped up from the pond. They looked like eels, except they were the size of small cars.
“Time to go,” Remy muttered.
He vaulted us up through the hole. He’d barely steadied his feet on the ground when a huge serpentine form filled the open space below us.
A shriek clogged my throat, but the thing ignored us and continued through the tunnel.
Wind rushed up from its velocity. The thing was the size of a subway train, and just as fast. All I saw was a grayish-green, scaly blur followed by a whitish tail, and then it was gone.
Remy said a word that made the ground tremble. The debris that had killed Travis began filling in the huge hole. I looked away when I saw Travis’s hand and other bloody, recognizable parts of him among the rocks that were now acting like mortar.
“That’ll keep her from chasing us,” Remy said when the hole was filled in again.
“What in the hell was that?” I gasped out.
Remy repositioned me in his arms as he strode away.
His expression was very calm considering the circumstances.
“A Manasa. You already know that Basilisks are human-snake hybrids. Manasa are some of the ancient snake gods they worship, and Travis brought you inside the boundaries of Manasa territory.”
I had a million questions, but only one mattered at this exact moment. “Where are we? I know we’re not in Baltimore anymore. We might have rats the size of small dogs, but we don’t have massive snake gods!”
“We’re in Orion,” Remy said.
The same name Travis had used. “And that is?”
“One of many hidden kingdoms beyond your world.”
I gave a shocked look at our surroundings. We were on a hilly outcrop. Lights peeked out from multiple cone-shaped formations in the sloped landscape ahead of us, reminding me of Cappadocia, an ancient Turkish town where people built their homes directly into the rock foundations.
“Isn’t ‘Orion’ a collection of stars? You don’t mean ‘beyond your world’ as in outer freaking space, do you?”
Remy stifled a snort as he carried me uphill. “No. But almost every culture speaks of ancient, hidden lands. This is one of them. It’s named Orion because the three tallest towers in the main city resemble the star formation on Orion’s belt.”
Remy stopped walking and pointed. With our new, higher vantage point, I could now see a city awash with lights in the distance.
Dark water completely surrounded it, making the island look like a brightly lit jewel.
Other, far fewer lights dotted the sprawling landmass across the water behind the city, its landmarks too far away to make out.
The main city itself appeared to be a dazzling mixture of modern and medieval, with skyscrapers nestled tightly against gothic-looking castles.
Three towers loomed over all the other buildings, and yes, the towers were in that distinct, off-kilter formation that mimicked the stars on Orion’s belt.
They were also the least impressive thing about the city.
Dragons flew above it, their huge forms backlit by lightning that turned the sky daytime bright before darkness swallowed it back up.
The dragons looked reptilian, as if someone had slapped gargantuan wings onto a Tyrannosaurus rex.
And dear God, the city’s rivers. Lights from the many buildings revealed that the rivers lined the streets much like waterways lined the historic city of Venice, except these rivers twisted up and through the city, somehow impervious to gravity.
It was like the glass-free aquarium in Remy’s New York hotel, except on an unimaginable scale.
The rivers thinned out the higher they went, too.
The ones near the tops of those three towers were barely a sliver, while the ones at the base surrounded the city like a twisty, sparkling sea. …
“The sculpture,” I exclaimed, remembering the fantastical cityscape he’d destroyed the day we met to prove that he wasn’t human. “It was of this place!”
Remy winced. “Yes, and lower your voice. It’s not safe.”
I looked around again. Several bridges crossed the rivers leading into the city, one of them not far from us.
“How can a place like this exist?” I whispered.
“We don’t have time to go into that,” Remy muttered. “We need to leave, and you still can’t walk. It’ll take time for you to overcome being Siphoned.”
“Then talk while you walk,” I countered. “I’m tired of not knowing anything about people and places that could kill me.”
Remy sighed, but started talking as he walked. “Some say these lands predate our world. Legends claim they were sealed off after the Great Flood. I don’t know if that’s true, but what is true is that most supernatural creatures choose to live in them versus the human world.”
“Wait.” My head started to hurt again. “You told me that supernatural creatures lived in your territory, and in territories that other Wardens manage.”
We passed some of those adobe-styled structures in the rock. Remy kept to the shadows. It was steeper there. His legs must be getting a hell of a workout.
“The hybrids and human-looking ones do. Other creatures, like Manasas, could never live in our world. They’re too large or too primal.
You wouldn’t expect a whale to obey no-wake zones, would you?
Or a cheetah to follow speed limits? Neither can you expect certain creatures to obey a Warden’s rules enough to remain undetected by humans. ”
“But they’re … this is…” Words failed me.
Remy’s brow arched. “I did warn you that there were lands where no Warden reigned. I just didn’t mention that those lands were adjacent to our world instead of inside it.”
He’d also said those lands were ruled by whichever creature was the strongest. “Survival of the fittest,” I believe he’d put it, and we were in one of those lands now.
Wondrous beauty aside, that meant we were in deep shit.
“How did Travis get me here? Aren’t the entrances to these lands guarded?”
Remy’s mouth tightened. “They’re sealed by gateways that are controlled by the land’s ruler on this end, and whichever Warden is on the other side in our world.”
So, in this case, him.
All at once, I remembered what Remy had said when I told him that his aura was nearly bleeding from all his inner violence: Oh, I drench myself in violence to protect my territory because I am the dam that holds back much, much worse.
Minutes ago, I’d seen a snake the size of a subway train. There were also T. rex–sized dragons, and that was only two creatures out of who knew how many in Orion. The thought of them loose in my world was a whole helluva lot of “much, much worse.”
“When my Fells Point hotel was breached, I sent you to my tower here,” Remy continued. “The roof on it exists in two dimensions at once; Orion, and our world. As such, no one from either world can cross onto it without the magical version of a passcode.”
A soft bark of laughter left me. “Which Travis had because you sent Brendan there, and Travis was one of his guards. Brendan! Is he okay?” Had Travis hurt him when he left with me?
“He’s fine.”
Relief made me sag in Remy’s arms, but only for a moment.
“Travis said the person doing this wants you to look weak. That they picked Brendan and Ellie because if you can’t protect your own family, no one will trust you to protect them.”
A hard smile curved Remy’s mouth. “True, and while Brendan and Ellie are still alive, word has and will get out about their capture. Yours, too. People will start to question my competence, and my position as Warden will be weakened. Soon, the person responsible for this will probably want to see for themselves just how rattled they’ve made me. ”
And Travis had thought he had a terrible job. Being a Warden wasn’t something I’d wish on someone I hated.
Speaking of Travis … “Travis said he used the ‘Hourglass spell’ to get Brendan out of your hotel before.”
His mouth tightened. “That’s what the maid who kidnapped Ellie used, too. She wasn’t recorded on the cameras in the hours before or after Ellie went missing because she stayed under the bed the entire day and night, waiting until everyone was asleep to activate the spell and take Ellie.”
What was the matter with people? “And it just … whooshed both of them away without a trace?”
“Yes, though that spell’s too strong for just anyone to incant. It must have been given to her and Travis.”
My brows rose. “You can give someone a spell?”
Remy ducked under a rock formation that formed a natural barrier across our path. “If you’re powerful enough. You implant the spell in their skin so it’s invisible, and give them the words to activate it. But few people are that powerful.”
“Are you?” I couldn’t help but ask.
He nearly rolled his eyes. “Of course.”
A laugh puffed out of me. The only thing that probably matched Remy’s power was his arrogance. Then my laughter died.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before?”
Remy’s smile was as jagged as the rocks around us.
“I didn’t trust you. You don’t know what the Beast’s normal host choices are, but I do.
Even when the Beast picks an innocent out of necessity, they don’t stay innocent long.
The Beast’s power is corruptive as well as bloodthirsty.
That’s why, when I realized I couldn’t cage you, I wanted you right by my side so I could limit the damage you’d inflict.
I expected you to be like the other Beast’s hosts, and kept waiting to be proved right, all while you kept proving me wrong. ”
I swallowed the lump that rose in my throat. How ironic that I’d agreed to be right by his side as his fake girlfriend because I didn’t trust him, either. Now, staring into his glacial blue eyes was like walking on thin ice: dangerous, but so beautiful it was impossible to resist.
“You keep proving me wrong, too,” I said softly.
Remy stopped walking. For a blazing moment, I thought he was going to kiss me. I even parted my lips in anticipation, but he turned away, staring at the city.
“We need to make it back to my tower before we’re spotted.”
“Spotted by whom?” I asked, stifling my disappointment.
His jaw tightened. “Anyone who’d report back to the dragon that runs these lands, because I just violated our truce by coming after you myself.”