Chapter 30
CHAPTER THIRTY
Ori and I took a rideshare to the address at the Hunter’s edge of Bayview, saving us at least twenty minutes of Muni purgatory.
We split up, and Ori took the back. I snapped photos of the front and then blew them up on my phone to study them.
They looked pretty much the same as Ori’s satellite mapping and street view.
The store front was very Bayview-like, a warehouse-style building with a roll-up door and a parking lot on one side.
The symbol I’d seen around Fabra’s neck was spray painted on the corner of a mesh-covered window.
My phone buzzed and pics of the back of the building popped up. An iron-barred gate covered the back door, and there was a sign in a language I couldn’t read. A second later, Ori sent the translation. Members Only.
I smothered a chuckle and continued down the street to the restaurant.
Time ticked while I waited. How would I even know if something happened to Ranth?
If they killed him, would I drop dead? Or disappear?
Thinking about it was driving me wild, and that wasn’t going to help with my focus to get inside.
Rose crossed the street and walked over to me. We hung out in a space between two buildings across from the restaurant.
She leaned in close and shoved something into my denim jacket pocket.
“I got my people to meet. But only one would show their face to me. Not that it probably matters. One is going into the clubhouse, so he’ll be your inside person.
He’ll be wearing a red bandana like the one I put in your pocket.
Anyone with one of those is a friend and will help you out.
There’s a gun issue, but my man says the club isn’t likely to have many people in it tonight.
I pulled a focus and dropped it outside the back door. ”
“Thanks.” I tucked the piece of black tourmaline she handed me into my jacket along with the bandana.
Rose’s focus point tied to the door would be really useful if there were magical elements inside the club, and I’d be able to find it in the planar space.
“Awesome. Guess that’s it, then. Wish me luck. ”
“Hang on, you’ll need these too. Sorry about the plastic. I know how you hate it, but time was tight.” Rose palmed me two baggies. “The vanilla bean and the vinca I powdered together, and the other bag has the sliced areca with a kick of some stuff I’d rather not admit I have.”
“I bet I can guess, but that’s super pricey. Thank you. Hopefully, we won’t need it.”
“You’re worth it, honey. Don’t die. I’d miss you.”
My chest tightened. “All good—I have no intention of leaving. I still have things to do.” But that she’d miss me was heartfelt. I hugged her and lingered in her embrace, inhaling her roses.
“Promise me you’ll be careful,” she said as I stuffed the baggies in an empty slot on my belt.
“I will,” I promised. I didn’t look at her eyes because I could tell from the sound of her voice they’d be glassy. I needed to stay strong and focused.
Outside, the fog was starting to roll in. The edge of the parking lot nearest the building was shadowy, perfect for planar travel. Ori came around the back, keeping to the shadows, and spotted me. We met midway and crouched down.
“You ready?” she asked. I nodded, not sure if I’d ever be ready for this. Danger was pulsing in my head. But I took the eyebright and chomped down on a maca root and hoped for the best.
The plane movement turned the parking lot blurry and much brighter. I leaned against the wall while the transition passed, then I walked around the back. It was easy to spot the black tourmaline jutting out of the door frame. The door was gated, but locks didn’t bother me in the planes.
The fluidity of not-hands on non-metal was hard to get used to, but I got it open and walked through.
The lounge area had empty couches, a TV, and a bunch of magazines.
Why would they want a crash room or a waiting room?
What would someone wait for? Stairs led to the upper floor, and there was a hall to the front.
I tried to get a sense of Ranth and got nothing.
But then, other than the skin link, I didn’t really have much to go on.
I looked down at the tattoos on my arm, wondering if they would work, and they glowed back at me as if in answer.
I pulled on the glow, and it was like Plasticine snapping back, directing upwards.
Upstairs it was.
About halfway up, the portal pop echoed in my head like a balloon.
Flipping Foxgloves. Demons had bad timing.
With my back to the wall, I continued up.
Demons were not going to keep me away from Ranth.
The peachy edges of the portal were blurred by the rainbow smudge of two Auruan demons spilling out of it.
I crouched on the top stair, ready for the spring.
But it didn’t come. The demons toppled out and tottered off down the hall on their two leg-like appendages.
Auruan demons were minions you could put to work if you summoned them into a circle.
They weren’t very smart, and it was rare to see them portal in by their own volition. This was truly bizarre.
I followed them.
They disappeared into a room that was far too big to be on the top floor of the building we’d scoped from outside. Then it occurred to me, I wasn’t looking at it from the normal-room point of view. This room was planar.
Holy hellebore. The Marahk understood planes—and maybe better than I did.
I needed to get out of here.
I walked backwards down the hall and bumped into something. Whirling, Fabra kicked me back against the wall with a sneer which reverberated through my head as I bounced.
“Well, look who’s come to visit. Did you forget to ring the doorbell?” I sidestepped her attack, but she grabbed my jacket sleeve. I slid out of it, leaving her holding the empty denim but rattled by how she was doing planar without magic.
I dropped to a crouch. Planar walking was a skill I’d spent the last eight years mastering.
Ever since my mom let me do my first walk, I had pushed the limits of the mantra “Be safe, follow the margins, respect the natural forms, and don’t go through planar portals.
” When I got to walk on my own, I discovered the rules Mom had set out could be broken, not just bent.
After that, I’d looked at planar in a whole new shiny way.
Fabra whipped my jacket at me, at the same time a squeaky walking sound crawled up my spine. The demons who had wandered down the hall must have turned around.
I braced myself.
The Auruan demons pounced. I shot two silver balls, and they dissipated in rainbow droplets. Champing down hard on the maca, the last thing I saw was Fabra’s wide-eyed shock as I disappeared through the hole I punched in the floor. My fall was softened by a human body, which groaned under me.
Ranth.
“Chestnut, you’re here. You should not have come,” he rasped. His eyes were balls of chocolate with huge black chocolate chips in the center. He could see me—that was a good thing.
“You’re my annoying wizard, and nothing would stop me from coming for you.” I grabbed his arm and tried to pull him up, but his weight was more than I could take planar. I spit the root out, and the world turned solid and regular-colored. “Did they drug you?”
He shook his head as if he were barely alive. “They gave me something, but it’s not that. Your distance has drained all the life from me.”
Concern stabbed me. I heaved him onto one shoulder, but his weight was crushing. There was no time to call for help.
I dug into my belt pouch and ripped open the baggy of areca slices.
The fibrous nut pieces splintered between my teeth, leaving behind a throat-closing bitterness. With a couple more chews, a power burst surged through me.
I forced the silvery energy into Ranth’s forearm. As long as we were touching, I could move some of my energy through him. It was dangerous, though, if something else touched us… but I was only thinking about getting him out of there.
“You good? Don’t let go—if you let go, we die.” He nodded weakly in a daze, but he grasped my hand. The tingle of his contact shot up my arm to the shoulder, and adrenaline spiked through. We were going to do this.
The door was locked. I’d have to use energy to open it. I was going to be short, but there wasn’t any choice. I pulled a ball and threw it. The sparking energy was far hotter than I was used to. It was probably whatever the areca was laced with, but the lock glowed red, and the door cracked open.
I popped out my right silver pin and shoved another areca slice into my mouth.
Then we ambled down the hall like twins high on energy drinks.
We made it to the lounge area before two men, born to be linebackers, blocked the door. Both were in solid black, but one had a red bandana. Boots clomped down the stairs behind us.
“What are you waiting for?” Fabra yelled over our heads at them, jumping the last four stairs and landing beside Ranth with a thud. She slammed a metal syringe into Ranth’s arm.
A jolt of pain ricocheted from my arm to my throat, followed by blurry vision and a flood of bizarre images which I was pretty sure weren’t there—but I wasn’t waiting to find out.
I ramped into survival mode and planted a boot in Fabra’s gut.
She let go of Ranth and landed against the TV with a bang.
The screen slid off its base and shattered as I shambled, half mad with visions of neon poster-painted Auruan demons crawling out of the walls toward the linebackers.
The non-red bandana guard advanced, tugging what I assumed was a gun from the back of his pants, but he went wide-eyed as the second man cuffed his wrist with silver handcuffs.
Then they went down in wrestling holds. I saw everything through eyes with cartoon animation-style blurs, overset POWs and swirling demons and ghosts screaming in kaleidoscope rainbow circles.
We stumbled through the door, and I tore down the alley as a biting pain sliced through my shoulder.
I stumbled to my knees, dragging Ranth down with me.
My fingers slipped off him, but his arm curled around me, and he hauled me up and supported me to the parking lot.
His closeness and scent infused me with new energy.
Ori was there, and Fabra’s dark image was the silhouette at the end of a long hall, which was getting longer every second.
“You need to go,” I slurred, half blinded from the pain radiating down my arm from my shoulder.
“You’re bleeding, honey.” Rose pressed some linen against my shoulder, and the fire flared through my body, shredding my insides. Red swirls of hell burst out of my mouth as I stared down the real threat coming toward us and heard the portal pop.
Two in one hour was a phenomenal coincidence, but the pink trails coming out of this one said “Essifer” in big letters.
Fabra was running toward us. I pushed Ori and Rose behind me with my good hand.
The other one hung uselessly at my side.
Whatever Rose had put on my shoulder might have stopped the bleeding and the fiery pain, but now my right side felt like a balloon full of cotton. Ranth’s fingers closed around my wrist.
Rose lingered behind me. I whipped around and yelled, “Run,” but she stood her ground. I didn’t have time to fight with her. “Jaggery. Now!” I screamed, hoping she’d at least heed that.
There were three Essifers. One of them lunged at Fabra, and the other two locked on to Ranth and I. With my damaged arm, I could only use one of my silver pins.
“You need to hold my other wrist,” I snapped at Ranth through the haze of pain, making sure I didn’t break skin contact with him.
Although I’d always done this on my own, this time I had a partner I could trust. I twisted my hand, palm up, and moved his arm to my useless one.
I dipped my head to his bare upper arm and kissed it while his fingers transferred.
It was just enough time for the first Essifer to attack.
With the colored, animated haze in my brain, the Essifer looked entirely too much like a Saturday-morning cartoon dog, clouded with pink smoke and a detached jaw dripping goo. A cartoon-demon dog.
Ranth kicked out at the demon and missed. The motion of his leg sent pistachio green waves of air at the dog, which sent it off-kilter. The second Essifer made for me, but I had my silver pin out and sliced through its open mouth. It dissipated into pink ooze.
The drug coursing through my system had turned time molasses-slow. My attack was silvery white beams with sparkles. If you’d told me that my energy sparkled last week, I probably would have laughed at you, but today it was beautiful. Like vanilla ice cream with diamond sugar.
The first Essifer Ranth had kicked was closing in on him, and the blurs of motion from Fabra were distracting me.
Anything moving caught my attention. Ranth’s hand reached out into the leafy energy gauntlet, but this time, it was tugging the inside of me like it would rip my guts out.
Before I could scream “Stop,” the Essifer was covered in some sort of glittery goo.
It shriveled into an ever-diminishing ember, then disappeared with a pop. My attention went back to Fabra fighting the Essifer. Without magic, she was going to lose. Technically, she shouldn’t have been able to see it.
I staggered forward. Whatever Rose had done to my shoulder and arm had numbed them. The effect of the root magic was fading, and Ranth was sucking more and more energy from me. I couldn’t help Fabra without putting us all in danger. I turned to Rose. “Get us out of here?”
By the time Rose got to us, Ori, Freddie, and some man in black with a red bandana around his neck had already half dragged us toward Freddie’s black vintage Plymouth. Then a limo glowing with orange sooty magic squealed into the lot, cutting us off. I pushed Rose away from me.
“Go,” I screamed at her. She ignored me and held her ground.
I hauled myself up, using strength I didn’t think I had left, and squared off with the two tunic-clad wizards with faces blurred by soot-tinged orange.
The air shimmered beside me, and I blinked to make sure I wasn’t imagining the blue swirl.
What I didn’t expect was Harold stepping out of it and beckoning to us.
I glanced between the sooty orange and blue swirl and decided that since Harold hadn’t killed us yet, he was a better choice.
Dragging Ranth with me, I bolted at the swirl.
A buzzing engulfed us as Harold grew bigger, and mosquito-sized insects swarmed us.
I latched on to Harold’s outstretched hand and dug my fingers into his wrist. The fire in my shoulder skittered down my arm into my fingers, turning into a tingle.
The blue swirl of the portal twisted my insides, and I clamped my eyes shut.