Chapter 31
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
We hit the pavement hard. Refusing to release Ranth from my death grip, he’d landed on top of me.
My head throbbed like it had been cleaved by a greataxe.
I groaned, and he rolled off me. Dry heaving from the pain, I curled up on my side.
The sky was a blinding blue. Harold was gone.
We were on the street with the canal—again. But safe.
Ranth had pulled himself up against a brick wall; his eyes were closed.
I crawled to a sitting position and realized I had two working hands.
I rubbed my eyes, the images and sounds flooding back.
The wound on my shoulder was gone; my shirt hung in a ragged slice.
Ranth’s eyes flickered open, and he shielded them from the glare with one hand. I croaked out, “Are we…”
“Harold’s plane, I think.” He got up, leaning on the wall for support. Then, he reached out a hand. I slithered up his arm, acutely aware of his spicy scent. My teeth chattered. I swayed, and he caught me. The wall against my back held me up.
“Can you walk?” I asked, attempting to stand on my own and failing.
His arm banded around me, holding me up, and he laughed.
I grimaced. “Yeah, I guess I need a minute.” Whatever Harold had done to heal me hadn’t reenergized my soul, or whatever you wanted to call my energy.
I needed real sleep, some decent food, and some non-planar air.
I rested against the wall, Ranth’s arm around my waist bolstering my energy as I willed the illusion of sun to give me strength.
Leaning over me with one arm on the wall, he pushed the hair out of my face. His fingers lingered, trailing down my cheek like he was drawing on my skin.
Ranth stilled.
“Breathe with me,” he said, circling his other arm around me.
Caged in his heat and scent, I didn’t question him.
I closed my eyes. His breath hissed in and out in a steady beat.
I filled my lungs and then exhaled, finding the rhythm until our breaths synced.
The music of us spread warmth through me like ink on rice paper.
There was no space between us, his arms melded into mine.
Everything dropped away, and I breathed in his breath.
He breathed in me.
“Sorrel?” The delicate brush of his words mirrored his fingers against my cheek. My eyes fluttered open. His face was inches from mine, our scent warm and familiar. I leaned into his hand. He cupped my cheek and turned my chin up.
“How do you feel?”
Amazing was what I wanted to say. “Better,” is what I whispered.
His arm slid from my waist, and he stepped back. My body screamed out for him. But we needed to get out of here. To get home.
I stood, no longer needing the wall. My muscles were stronger, but inside me, a flame had been lit.
It was more than not wanting to let go of him.
Something had broken open, and it terrified me and thrilled me in equal parts.
Fighting with him like a team. Breathing with him.
What was between us required time to explore. “Which way is the shop?”
He pointed. “This way? I think?”
We walked down the deserted street bordering the canal. “Do you think the door will be open?” Without Harold to lead us, the houses and shops all looked alike. I stopped. “Are you sure it’s this way?”
“Didn’t we go straight here? Isn’t the street the one with the arch beside it?” Ranth pointed ahead.
My head was pounding again. My fingers, unconsciously seeking the energy connection with Ranth, had knitted with his. When I pulled away, I stumbled.
“Why did you let go?” he asked, catching my arm.
“Holding your hand felt weird.”
“You were still feeding off me. You still need more time to rebalance.”
I hugged myself. “What are you talking about?”
He swiped a hand through his hair. “You know you need energy infusions. You get it all the time from your salad and juices, but you can also feed off people if you are connected to them.”
“That’s wrong and—vampiric?”
“It’s a totally normal and a healthy way of rebalancing as long as the donor is willing.”
“You’re dead. How can you be willing?”
He crossed his arms. “What?”
“You’re dead. You’re undead, actually, so I’m feeding off a corpse. There’s nothing natural about that.” Saying that out loud was like shooting ice darts. “I’m sorry, that was harsh.”
“I don’t see your issue. Your house isn’t alive, and you feed off its energy. Your herbs and oils are all inanimate. Your salads and juices are also dead in a way.” His lips pressed as if he was sucking sour plums.
In perspective, he was entirely right. I used energy all the time. I’d even given him some at the club. But it was taking it I had the issue with.
His fingers traced down the silvery scar on his neck.
“Let’s leave this place, then you and I can discuss nature in detail.
How does that sound?” His eyes narrowed, and intensity rippled off him in leafy green waves.
Whatever drug we’d taken was still with us.
It wasn’t quite anger; it was like his power had puffed up for a second.
“That sounds sensible.” I walked forward and staggered. “Even if I don’t like having you help me, I think I need an arm.”
His arm circled my shoulders. Warmth rippled through me like waves kissing sand.
He leaned into my hair and whispered, “You know that makes you strong, right? The ability to ask for help?”
Mom’s words flooded back. Alone we are humbled by how far our hands can reach. Together our strength is infinite.
“That’s what my mom always said.” My voice cracked.
I hadn’t wanted to hear it when she said it.
Together our strength is infinite still tasted bitter.
I wanted her. I needed her. Her hands. Her words.
The echo stayed with me. Ranth’s arm was strong and present, holding and supporting me as we walked.
I appreciated him more in that moment than all the others before.
We made it halfway up the canal before we stopped to try to figure out where we were going. When Ranth’s arm left my shoulders, I wobbled from the loss, realizing how much I’d needed the contact. The street Harold had turned down, through an arch, was nowhere in sight.
“It should be here. It’s the same street, I’m sure,” he said.
Ranth’s hand clasped my shoulder. “Wait. There’s something odd about this…
” He placed his other hand on the wall, where we thought the street should have been, then pulled it back as if it burned.
A buffet of air knocked us sideways, and this time, I steadied him.
The red clay bricks swirled, growing into larger blocks and rebuilding the arch with knobs on top.
It now looked like the one we’d seen with Harold, complete with the copper plaques.
“Can you read these?” I squinted at the one closest to me. The symbols looked like cuneiform and Greek combined, which of course made no sense.
“No.” Ranth shook his head. “I don’t think they are of this world.”
The plaques had similarities in form, the Greek signs for omega and alpha, and something that was like a sideways theta, but I couldn’t decipher any words.
The plaques glowed and pushed out from the wall.
My chest tightened as tendrils grew from them.
Slithering, brown, snakelike things, which moved from plaque to plaque and fattened as they touched each other.
The arch disappeared under the many crosses of bulbous branch-like things.
A web of writhing brown, not unlike old leafless vines.
“What is that?”
Ranth’s wide-eyed amazement mirrored mine.
There was no signal on my phone, but I opened the camera and snapped a couple of pictures.
When I looked at the details, they were all gray.
Was I really seeing them, or was it a hallucination from the drug Fabra had given us?
The vines didn’t threaten us. It was like watching a performing art production, but the mechanism was obviously magic.
Was the wall itself magical? That made no sense to me—objects weren’t by their nature magical.
These bricks would have been created by a wizard’s hand. Perhaps this was just a large artifact?
“It’s not an artifact. It’s something else,” Ranth replied.
“Wait, how do you know what I was thinking?”
“Can’t you hear my thoughts?”
He wasn’t speaking. If he could hear me, that meant the bond had just gone another notch—dangerous and intimate.
I concentrated on him. Ranth was looking at my partially shredded T-shirt, noticing that my skin underneath had a creaminess like fresh camel’s milk.
“Holy moonflowers! I know what you’re thinking. And stop objectifying me.” I said it out loud, then realized I didn’t have to, still sparks burst inside me from the extra weirdness of knowing his attraction to me. “Why can we do this?”
“Maybe it’s this place, and it’s enhancing our connection?” Ranth replied out loud.
“Let’s go see if the portal works.” I tugged on the door. “Crocus, it’s locked.” I cupped my hands and peered through the window but couldn’t see anything.
Ranth had crouched down in front of the lock.
“If this is like those other bricks, perhaps there’s a trick to it.”
He covered the metal of the keyhole with his hand.
Marble-sized balls of shimmery green light rolled around his fingers.
He fell back onto his heels as the door shifted from an old-world, half-glassed shop door to a tracery carved wooden door with an oval glass inset.
The glass was filled with flames that swirled like a current.
I took a step back, blinking. I didn’t feel threatened, but what I was seeing didn’t make sense. “What’s going on?” I asked, but this time in my head.
Ranth’s voice came back. “I’m not sure either, but it’s worth studying. If this is Harold’s mastery, we underestimated him, but I don’t think it is. This seems made by the hands of many, but I don’t understand why it’s here, or why we are here.”
The flames flared up as if blown by an invisible wind, and the door clicked open.
I wasn’t waiting for a sign to get out of here.
I pushed at the door, being careful not to touch the glass, and entered the dark room.
Ranth followed me in and closed the door.
There was a click. An amber glow flowed down the walls, giving the entire room a coppery cast not unlike the light of a dozen candles.
“That helps.” The middle of the floor, where the inlaid stone portrait of Bacchus should have been, was brown and smooth. There was no hint of a mosaic ever being there.
“It’s not here,” I said, rubbing my arms to warm them up. My eyes traveled over the shelves with woven split-wood bins, copper pots, and wood-staved chests.
I reached up for a bin, where I remembered Harold had pulled the book down, but my hand went through the basket. I tried another box and got the same result. I’d really hoped to take another look at the book.
“Are these illusions?”
“I think they aren’t residing here. Instead, they are connected elsewhere. You have to have the key to bring the item here. It’s like a placeholder for an item.”
“Like plastic sushi?” I laughed, but the thought ricocheted around in my head.
If the bins weren’t really here, then, where were they?
And how were we going to get out of here?
Maybe the portal also could be called—or created.
“You said you could make a portal. This is an excellent time to show me how.”
“I can’t make a portal out of nothing, and it usually requires more than one trained wizard. Perhaps we are missing the obvious.” Ranth dropped to his knees and ran his hands over the stones. I crouched down beside him, touching his shoulder to get his attention.
A spark rolled down my arm and onto his, and the words on his arm glowed gold, then green.
The floor rippled like water as the face of Bacchus bloomed from the stone with twines of purple grapes, brown branches, and green leaves.
The body seemed like flesh, and the air filled with the scent of autumn in wine country.
A hint of crisp winter air, fading into grapes warmed by the sun, and the loam beneath the wine with the vinegary hints of fermentation. The freshness filled me with energy.
“Ready?” Ranth asked. His hands pulled at the air, turning it into the visible golden threads of a net.
He plucked at the strands, and the net burst with a pop.
The room blurred as I fell through syrupy space in a bubble of green, which turned to kaleidoscope rainbow.
The colors dimmed to gray and finally to no color.
When I opened my eyes, we were outside the bank vault door in the Marina.
I doubled over, sucking in air in great, gulping gasps.
I dragged myself up, and we sprinted up the nine flights of stairs. I paused at the top, visions of opening it and portals popping on us on our way out. But I was a different person than I’d been two days ago—and I wasn’t alone. Ranth and I were stronger together.