14. Rayner
Rayner
Something has me before my second foot clears the crossing.
There’s a pull, low in the chest, steady, aimed past the trees toward the glow of the city. Like a hand closed around something behind my ribs the moment we landed and started, gently, to reel.
Huh.
I don’t know what that is, and I don’t fight it. I’ve never been any good at fighting the things I feel first, and I stopped trying a long time ago.
They’re usually right.
The clearing is wrong, though. That part gets my attention too. We come through hot, all four of us low and spread. Ready for whatever the Vestry couldn’t name to be standing here waiting. But there’s nothing standing here.
We’ve crossed through here more times than I can count in my four hundred years and I’ve never once seen the ground like this.
It’s always been green, alive — a place like any other in this realm.
But now? The grass around the stone has gone black and dead in a wide circle.
The tree line’s pulled back, every trunk leaning away.
Nothing grows here anymore.
It doesn’t look like it has for a very long time.
Gunnar swears under his breath. Nobody argues with him.
I take it in, and it should have all of my attention. It doesn’t, and I know why, and I’m not saying why. Whatever’s wrong with this ground, it isn’t the thing pulling on me. Whatever this pull is doesn’t care about the dead grass. It’s already past it, out toward the lights, patient and certain.
Something moves in the tree line, and all four of us are on it at once, predator instincts snapping to the same patch of dark —
A deer.
It steps half out of the trees and stops at the edge of the black grass. Puts a foot toward it, pulls the foot back. It won’t come onto the dead ground, so it stands there with its ears up, looking at the four of us like we’re the wrong thing in the woods, then turns and goes.
“I almost killed a deer,” Gunnar says.
“We all almost killed a deer,” Brock says.
“You made a noise.”
“Everyone made a noise.”
They didn’t all make a noise. Gunnar made the noise, and I don’t say so, because it’s the first easy thing since we crossed and I let it be easy.
“I think it’s called hunting,” Gunnar grins.
I love these idiots.
“I’ll walk it,” Brock says, already moving, low toward the tree line. Nobody moves to stop him because one of us should. Just because the space feels dead and empty, doesn’t mean it is.
We wait, and I’m bad at the waiting. The others are watching the trees, hands ready, doing the job, while I’m standing here with a rope on my heart. Every second we’re not moving makes it ache that much more.
I can’t tell any of them.
I don’t think they’d understand.
They all look like they always do on a mission.
If they’re feeling this too, I can’t see it.
I’ve stopped needing to know what’s at the other end. I just need to get to it, and standing in a dead clearing is keeping me from it.
Brock comes back. “Clear. Nothing’s here. Nobody’s been here but him.” He lets out a breath he’s been holding. “There’s just the stone. He sat on it. A lot.”
That lands on all of us as we all look at it. He didn’t give up trying to come home.
I should have known.
We all should have known.
Leif’s shoulders drop a half-inch — all-clear, from him — and the rest of us feel it and follow, the coil easing out one man at a time.
They ease. I don’t. Whatever’s wrong with this place let go of them the second Brock called it clear, and it hasn’t let go of me, because it was never this place. I don’t say that either.
“Which way,” Leif says.
I don’t have to think about it. “Toward the lights.”
Earth hits all at once — beautiful in its own way and overwhelming at the same time. It smells like exhaust and fried food and old rain. People outside a bar spilling loud into the street like nothing could ever reach them.
Gunnar stops walking.
“They’re still doing all of this,” he says.
“Yes,” Brock says.
“All of them. Out here. Like this.”
“Gunnar.”
“I’m moving.”
He’s not moving. He’s watching a man across the street lose a fight to a stroller, a coffee, and a dog all at the same time. The dog has the leash in its teeth and the high ground.
“Little late for a walk with a kid, isn’t it?”
“Gunnar.”
“Moving.”
He moves.
The city should be a lot. It slides off the more we move.
The closer we get to what’s making this ache build in my chest. The direction is straight ahead and I’ve quit doing anything but walking toward it.
The others think we’re following Erik, and we are — he’s laid over everything, years of him worn into these streets.
But Erik isn’t the pull. Erik’s just on the way.
There’s a bench, and a man asleep on it, newspaper over his face.
Gunnar slows. “Is he—”
“He’s fine,” Brock says.
“You don’t know that.”
“He’s snoring.”
Gunnar listens. The man is snoring. Gunnar pokes him in the shoulder anyway, and the man smacks his lips and burrows deeper into the newspaper. Gunnar puts his hands back in his pockets, satisfied.
He’d tell you he didn’t check.
He checked.
I love him.
We keep walking.
The coffee shop on the corner is closing. A woman inside flips the sign, coat already on, keys in her hand. She sees four of us coming and holds the door on instinct, then gets a real look and stops with it half open.
“Sorry. Habit. We’re actually just closing—”
“We’re good,” Brock says, easy, already turning her toward the street like they’re old friends. “Long night?”
“Always.” She pulls her coat tight. “You looking for somebody? You’ve got the look. We get a regular with that exact look.”
“Big guy,” Brock says. “Dark hair.”
Her whole face opens. “You know Erik?”
Leif goes still beside me.
“Old friends,” Brock says. “Been a while.”
“He’s in here every single night.” She’s smiling, the tired gone off her face for a second. “Same order. Takes it to go. Tell him Priya says hi.” She stops. “On second thought, don’t tell him.”
She goes red, locks up fast, and hurries off.
He’s been living.
Fucker.
The city blurs after that.
I follow the pull.
A horn snaps me back just long enough to realize Gunnar’s wandered into the street again.
Then we’re moving.
The pull is very close now.
The building’s nothing — brick, a door, a row of buzzers. A man comes out as we reach it, holds the door, gets four of us filling the frame all at once, and decides wherever he’s going, he needs to be there faster.
The trail goes straight in and up.
The metal box at the end of the lobby is small. I know it before the doors part. Leif is not going to like this.
I hold back the laugh that wants out. Barely.
Leif looks at the open box and doesn’t move.
“You wanna take the stairs?” I ask, gesturing to the door beside it.
He gives me a look and gets in. Of course he gets in. We all get in.
We should probably not all be in here at the same time.
The doors close.
Gunnar’s chin is about four inches from Leif’s jaw.
“Isn’t there a weight limit on these things?” Brock asks. He’s standing sideways like he’s trying to be smaller. It’s not working.
There are more buttons on the panel than this box has any right to, and Gunnar hits the wrong one immediately.
“That’s not it,” Leif says.
“I know.”
“Then—”
“I know, Leif. Fixing it.” He presses a second wrong one. I catch the reflection of his grin in the metal.
Brock reaches past both of them, presses the right floor, and says nothing about it. The box starts to climb. Slowly.
Leif’s gone quiet — not the calm quiet, the other one — staring at the doors like holding still will make them open faster. His breath is careful. He was not built for a box and he knows it and the box knows it and he hates that the box knows it.
Gunnar opens his mouth.
“Don’t,” Leif says.
Gunnar shuts it.
I’m shaking.
My hands won’t stop but it’s not from fear. It’s from the pull. Every floor we climb winds it tighter. I need to move.
The doors open.
Down the hall — a woman screams.
I’m moving before the sound finishes, past Leif, out of the box, and the pull isn’t a pull anymore, it’s a straight line and I’m the thing traveling it. Second door from the end. A man’s voice under the scream, low, and I hit the door and it breaks and the scream comes again and I—
Erik.
Right there, solid and real, and something that’s been braced since the night we lost him lets go all at once, and it should be the whole world—
And then I see her.
She’s in a heap of blankets and pillows with Erik’s hands on her, huge green eyes aimed at the door. At me. The pull that’s had me since the crossing doesn’t drop into place so much as crash into me.
I’ve never been more sure of anything.
Home.
I’ve been with her in dreams and now she’s right in front of me.
My dreams crossed realms for her.
Only for her.
And then it happens to her too. Her lips part — half a second, and she’s all the way in it with me, both of us feeling everything, all at once and —
She blinks.
Her eyes drop, her hand finds the blanket and grips it, and when she looks back up, I’m a stranger who broke her door.
For half a second. She knew me.
And now…
“Holy shit,” Gunnar breathes behind me. Almost a laugh. Not quite.
Leif — I don’t know where Leif went.
I look at Erik. The fucker is grinning.
“Wondered when you’d show up.”
He’s alive.
I’m going to kill him.