Chapter 18 Hollow City
HOLLOW CITY
Marina
Snowflakes drifted down from the night sky, the flurries glistening in the city lights.
Flecks dusted the tops of Marina’s shoulders as she peered down from the skyscraper’s ledge. This far up, the heavy traffic and their chain of bright headlights blurred into a glossy, luminous alloy. The nearby buildings were obscure silhouettes through the cloud of white.
She preferred this side of Hollow City, the non-magical side. It was mostly the same, except the air felt lighter from the lack of witchcraft that hovered like heavy clouds.
She held out her hand, entranced by the falling snow.
Tenebris and its harsh, inescapable cold this time of year, it slipped into her thoughts.
It’d been a few weeks since she’d gone home.
By this time, the mountain peaks would be dipped in winter, the frigid air sculpting hoarfrost along the trees.
Did seasons even exist in Tavora?
She watched the flakes melt when they landed on her skin.
Was Acacius fond of the snow like she was?
Her fingers curled, forcibly obstructing her train of thought.
A faint, distorted whisper sounded behind her.
Marina lowered her arm back down to her side.
“The blonde hair is really doing it for me.” Soren came up beside her, his scent of cardamom and iris wafting up her nose.
She acknowledged him with a terse look. He wore his usual black mask with a dark, fitted jacket, which had a high collar that zipped up to his chin. Under his drawn hood, he hid his hair with a low-fitted baseball cap.
The glacial tips of his inky bangs curled into his eyelashes, and Marina reached out and tugged them. “I am surprised that you don’t hide your true appearance.”
He inclined his head, the shape of his eyes squinting into what she knew was a devilish smirk. “Who says I am not?”
Marina flicked the bill of his hat, exposing his eyes—a shade of biting frost. “You shed your glamor for me, as if I enjoy the sight of what little I can see of your face.”
He chuckled, rubbing a hand over the cloth covering his mouth. “Is that your way of saying you wish to see what lies beneath my mask?”
Marina pursed her lips, redirecting her attention out onto the city and its murmuring blizzard.
“Your arrogance knows no bounds.” Her pride flared, refusing to confess her curiosity.
In all the years she’d known Soren, not once had he ever seriously offered to reveal his true appearance to her. Only in informal, flirtatious babble.
“All one must do is ask, Nina,” he teased with a wink.
There were small moments where he teetered on the line between friendly and too friendly, making her uncertain if his cheeky behavior was just his personality or hopeful advances.
While she cared for him, the prospect of being anything more held a road she never let herself go down.
Soren’s friendship meant too much to her, and he was also Viviana’s ex.
Marina would fully admit to being a bitch, but her loyalty to her two closest friends was everlasting.
The playful ire in her shifted, and she faced him, her expression stiffening. “How many more sightings?”
Soren crossed his arms, shaking his head. Ice began to form on the top of his hood. “Straight down to business, I see.”
Marina pinned him with an impatient glare. “You enjoy playing in circles, Soren. Your appearance is the least of my interests at the moment.”
He exhaled, his shoulders wilted in defeat, knowing when not to quarrel with her. “Three more. They are lingering in set areas. The Blood Heretics are stretched thin, trying to triage the damage they are causing. Their leader knows the Heralds are in his city.”
Marina’s lips formed a thin line. “Take me to them.”
“You want to go confront an Olethros?” He cocked an eyebrow up at her.
“Yes.”
“He will know you are here if you do so.”
After her betrayal, Acacius would never trust her enough to let her in on his plans involving Ash. But sitting around in an attempt to coax the information out of him would only waste time—time she couldn’t afford to lose when the monsters were invading the crevices of the city.
Not only that, but with each passing hour, deities and witches plotted to tear apart Ash like a fine meal. His fragility was foreign and unsettling to Marina, and her mind often submerged into macabre nightmares, considering each of the various ways in which the child could die that day.
“Acacius does not frighten me,” she said with resolve, disregarding the sharp stone in her gut.
Her skin recalled the warmth of his hot spring, the comfort of his body around hers—a moment that had stuck with her since she’d left him.
Acacius’s motives and actions were a contradiction, though. Hate would constantly spit from his mouth, blaming her for Ruelle’s death, but a moment later he’d be calming her during a panicked episode or regarding her with affection as he thrusted inside of her.
She’d meant her apology, but she wasn’t sure if it reached him. Words never seemed to get them anywhere. Perhaps they were better as enemies.
“Okay then.” Soren reached over and ruffled a hand over the top of her head. Frozen particles scattered over her arms.
Marina huffed out a stale breath, batting his hand away. If he weren’t a friend doing her a favor, she’d have removed his wrist for daring to touch her.
He laughed.
She yanked her hood over her head, scowling. “Take me to where you know they linger.”
“If you get caught, you’re on your own.” Soren’s sly tone reminded her of a competitive child, baiting her to some kind of challenge.
She tilted her head in a mocking manner, eyes beginning to glaze over. “Are all assassins born with such egocentrism?”
“I think that’s just something I honed from watching you.” He tugged on the drawstrings of her hood, shrinking it around her head.
She kicked him in the shin.
Soren let out a grunt, backing away with quick footwork. “Keep up, Nina.”
Like the cocky son-of-a-bitch he was, he backed right off the edge of the building, flicking his fingers off his forehead in a lazy salute.
Marina rolled her eyes, loosening her hood. “The damn show-off.”
She teleported away in dense, wispy plumes, following the threads of his divine power as he wove through the city.
They stepped out into a shadowy, isolated alleyway, tucked inside a labyrinth of brick structures. The air was charged with a mystic current that raised the hairs across her skin. She recognized it from the times she stood in Finnian’s presence.
They’d ventured into the magical side of Hollow City.
Marina took a sweep of her surroundings. The neighborhood was quiet, only filled by the faint echo of tires treading on pavement and distant horns ricocheting through the layers of the city.
She narrowed her eyes on the playground across the street. Snowfall continued around her in a peaceful interim. In front of the jungle gym held a large, backlit sign that read: TEMPEST PRESCHOOL.
Marina’s pulse flickered.
She swung to Soren, who stood further ahead in the alleyway, waiting for her. “Ash’s school?” Fury burned up her throat.
Soren held his finger up to the front of his mask and signaled her to follow him.
She peered past his frame into the oily black expanse of the narrow alley, to the burnt-orange glow of the fiend’s eyes beaming through the darkness.
Soren’s shoulders stiffened as he turned to Marina. “Well fuck.” His words were muffled through the material that covered his mouth.
The Herald stepped out of the alley’s dark belly and into the dim gleam of the streetlamp.
It stood upright, in a humanoid form, and wore a tattered robe, the thick fabric of its veil obscuring its face.
Atop the crown of its head protruded a ring of birch branches stripped of bark—a skeletal halo of nature’s inevitable wintering.
This really was a Herald, the same kind that infested the arboreal isle where she last met Acacius.
Bile flooded up her esophagus at the sight of it. He positioned the beast less than a block from Ash’s school, like a fucking vulture circling its prey, attracting Chaos and Ruin to the child.
Marina stepped in front of Soren, eyeing the eldritch monster while envisioning all the ways she planned to turn it to ribbons. “Return to Tavora and never come back,” she commanded.
A low growl rumbled out of it as it cocked its sinister mask at her.
By the time Marina blinked, she was thrown off her feet.
The creature’s talons locked around her throat mid-air as they soared across the road.
Pressure exploded in her skull. The Herald hurled her weight like she was a paper doll.
Marina raised her arms over her head, bracing herself as she crashed through the wooden planks of the school’s fence and into the playground’s green metal bars.
The hard plastic of the slide snapped into jagged pieces, penetrating through her torso. The iron rods holding up the structure bent and creaked from the impact. Gravel flew like pellets of hail, bruising her skin.
Fresh blood gushed down her pelvis as she climbed up, yanking out the debris from the depths of her chest.
Marina gritted her teeth against the waves of pain echoing through her body. She locked her focus on the Herald in front of her as she limped out of the hazy sheen of dust and sleet, back under the streetlamp.
Its speed matched Acacius’s. She expected it to be powerful, but not as quick as he. It sparked worry in her.
The monster’s figure distorted, and Marina went to rip her arm up in defense. It fabricated to her, catching her by the wrist and violently bending its hold. Marina’s bone snapped. The sound reverberated up into the dome of her skull.
She reared her foot up to kick as its other arm shot up.
Soren flickered in her periphery.
A clean slice sounded.
The Herald’s arm severed and fell at its feet.