Chapter 5 Carla
CARLA
Something feels strange. Something is calling to me from another void.
I jolt myself awake, sitting up as if I’ve had a nightmare. Amari sits up with me. He’s fully awake, naked beside me, gently rubbing my back.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yes, but it’s limbo.” I feel it again. Then all of a sudden, another call hits me. The call to limbo always feels like some strange electric charge running through my veins, but this is different. Stronger. More urgent.
I slide out of bed, flipping the blanket from me. I look around, smoothing out my nightgown. I smile at Amari because I don’t remember putting it on. I remember taking a shower with him after our night together, but I don’t remember getting dressed.
Amari doesn’t smile back. He’s looking concerned, his brow furrowing.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s happening again.”
“What?” I look around and that’s when I realize he’s right. I look at my hands and see glowing pink magic that I didn’t call for. What the hell is going on?
I look up at him, confused, not understanding what’s happening. But then a burst of energy hits me. I can feel so much power coming from me that it scares me.
“Carla!” Amari shouts.
I look up at him with fear in my eyes. I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t control my magic. Amari starts to climb out of bed, but something happens. The energy gets bigger, like a tidal wave building inside me, and it’s like a blink. I disappear, teleporting right out of the room.
Before I know it, I’m suddenly in limbo, standing around looking at the void. The energy is still pulsing around me.
“Shit.”I’m getting frustrated because I hadn’t planned to come to limbo for a couple of days. I need to be home for the opening event for Amari’s technology center.
I look around and start walking. I’m in a different part of the void, somewhere I haven’t explored before.
The darkness here is absolute, like someone snuffed out every star in the universe at once.
It’s not just the absence of light. It’s the absence of everything.
No sound except my own breathing. No sensation except the strange energy still crackling around my fingers.
Even gravity feels wrong here, like I’m standing on solid ground but could just as easily be floating.
The magic still pulses from my fingers, pink threads weaving between them like living things.
Vertro suddenly appears, his massive form towering over me.
He’s even bigger than I remember, his body easily the size of a small car.
His legs are thick as tree trunks, covered in bristly hairs that seem to absorb what little light exists here.
He seems to have a protective stance, his body positioned between me and something I can’t yet see.
Vertro doesn’t communicate like the others. He doesn’t send images since he’s not born of Mother Fate but born of man. But he’s still made of the two children Brookstone and Blackburn used to create him. Verde and Petra live on in him somehow.
I look at Vertro. “What are you protecting me from?”
Then I turn around and start walking again. My footsteps make no sound in this place. I stop when my magic pulses more around my fingers. I hold up my hand, staring at it. The pink light grows brighter, more intense. Then I gasp when the magic spills from my fingers and a door suddenly appears.
A door. In limbo. Where nothing exists unless I make it.
I furrow my brow. “What is this?”
I look to Vertro who’s still watching me, guarding me. The void of limbo is nothing but an endless void of darkness unless it’s something I make. I wonder if this is something Tabatha left behind.
The door is ornate, carved from what looks like dark mahogany with silver inlays forming patterns I don’t recognize.
Spirals and geometric shapes that seem to shift when I’m not looking directly at them.
I reach for the brass handle shaped like a twisted vine, my fingers trembling slightly.
When I touch it, another surge of power shoots through me.
I turn the knob and pull.
The door opens to reveal a small room. It’s strange.
There’s a bed pushed against one wall, a dresser on the other, some dim lighting from a source I can’t identify.
The space is maybe ten feet by ten feet, claustrophobic.
But what draws my attention are the other doors.
Four of them. Each one different from the others, positioned on different walls of the cramped space.
I step inside, looking around nervously.
The door suddenly slams shut behind me with a deafening bang. I spin around and grab the handle, yanking on it. Locked. I try to use my magic, pink threads wrapping around the knob, pulling, pushing, burning. Nothing works.
“What the hell is going on?”
My heart races. I look around the room more carefully. The bed is neatly made with dark sheets. The dresser has notebooks stacked on top of it, their covers worn and weathered. The lighting comes from nowhere and everywhere at once, a sourceless glow that makes the whole space feel unreal.
I walk over to the dresser where I see the notebooks. I start to pick one up, my fingers brushing the cover, but I stop when I hear the sound of a crying toddler coming from one of the four doors.
My head snaps toward the sound. A child. There’s a child crying.
I turn around and walk over to the door cautiously. My hand hovers over the doorknob. Every instinct tells me this is wrong. This is a trap. But that crying. That helpless, frightened crying.
I put my hand on the doorknob and turn.
When I open it, I’m shocked.
I know this room. The soft blue walls. The mobile hanging over the crib with little bears and moons. The scent of lavender and baby powder. It’s the nursery of little Prince Solomon on the Royal Island. Queen Anora’s son. My cousin’s baby. King Amir’s heir.
I step through the doorway and suddenly, I’m no longer in limbo. The transition is seamless, like stepping through a curtain. The door to limbo is still open behind me, a rectangle of darkness against the nursery wall.
I turn my head and see a large male in a cloak standing over Solomon’s crib. Blue magic swirls around him, streams of it pulling from the crying toddler and flowing into the cloaked man like water.
Rage floods through me. “What the fuck are you doing to my cousin?”
I use my magic immediately, pink threads shooting from my fingers like spears aimed at his head.
The man turns around and grins at me. He’s a Black man with grey short curly hair and a grey beard.
His face is unfamiliar, but striking. Sharp cheekbones.
Intense eyes the color of sapphires. He’s wearing clothing from my timeline during King Henry the First’s reign.
Long robes with intricate embroidery. A belt with strange symbols.
He moves quickly, evading my magic like he’s done this a thousand times. He appears on the other side of the crib in a blur of motion.
“I knew you’d find me eventually. It was only a matter of time.”
The air shifts and Anora and Amir are suddenly in the room with me. Then the door kicks open. Yara and Kofi, my massive spider children, charge through.
The spiders attack without hesitation, their legs moving faster than the eye can follow. But the man manages to create a door portal that looks just like the one I came through. Dark wood. Silver inlays. Twisted brass handle.
“You’ll see me again.” He winks at me.
I use my magic on him, pink threads shooting from my hands, but he quickly opens the door. What I see behind it is the void of limbo. My limbo.
I start to run after him, but he quickly closes the door and it vanishes like smoke.
Amir and Anora are focused on Solomon. Anora picks him up and cradles him against her chest while Amir looks over them. Then he looks to me.
“When are you going to stop this from happening? You are the queen of limbo.” His voice is sharp, accusing. “So it’s not just my sister who’s after my son.”
He teleports in front of me, then looks over at the door I stepped out of from limbo. It’s still there, a rectangle of pure darkness against the nursery wall.
“One of the lost souls there seems to have access to some magic.”
I grow frustrated. “Look, I’ll figure it out. I’m not sure what this is about, but I’m going to find out.”
Anora glares at me over Solomon’s head. “You better deal with it, or I will.”
I narrow my eyes at Anora. We haven’t really had been close with each other since our battle on the tourist island. We’ve chatted here and there, but it’s never been the same since, and I don’t think it ever will be.
I know I need to try to find whoever this was that got out of limbo.
I look to Amir. “I’ll do something about this.”
I look to Yara and Kofi. “Who was this?”
Yara and Kofi start sending images to me in response.
A man battling with Tabatha in limbo, in the void of darkness.
But not the Tabatha who helped guide me through limbo.
She looks different. This Tabatha looks different.
She’s striking, with deep brown skin that seems to glow even in the darkness of limbo.
Her blue eyes are vivid, almost luminescent, like someone captured the sky and placed it in her irises.
Her black hair is twisted into elaborate braids with golden threads woven throughout, and tiny points of light adorn her ears, pulsing softly like captured starfire.
She’s wearing robes similar to the man’s, covered in symbols. The man fights with her magic. The same magic. Blackwood magic.
Anora walks over to Amir and passes Solomon to him. He takes his son willingly and tries to comfort him, bouncing the boy gently.
“He’s a Blackwood.”
“That’s Tabatha, the Blackwood witch from our bloodline.” I stare at the images still flooding my mind. “Why is she fighting another Blackwood in limbo?”
Anora looks to me and we both say in unison, “Angie.”
We know she has much more knowledge of our history from the books.
“I’ve gotta go try to find him. It’s clear that I need to keep him in limbo and he’s finding a way out.”
Anora shifts Solomon in Amir’s arms. “Come find me when you get back.”
I nod to her, running back through the door. It shuts immediately behind me, sucking all the noise out of the air in one violent pull.
Now I’m back in that strange room. The bed. The dresser. The dim, sourceless lighting. And the other doors.
Three more, all different, all waiting.
The space itself feels wrong. Like a waiting room between worlds. The air is thick, almost syrupy, and it makes my skin prickle. This place wasn’t here before. Someone made it. Or something made it.
I walk over to the remaining doors. The first one is plain, wooden, unremarkable except for the strange warmth radiating from it.
I open it and gasp when I see the dorm hallway of the academy.
Students walk past, unaware that I’m watching them from another realm.
I can hear their laughter, feel the warmth of the heating system. I immediately close it.
Then I go to the third door. This one is sleek, modern, with a silver handle that feels cold even from here. Corporate. Professional. My stomach turns before I even touch it.
I open it, and rage fuels through my body.
I’m staring at the Brookstone and Blackburn tower.
It rises fifty stories into the gray Michigan sky, all glass and steel and corporate arrogance.
The building is a monolith of modern architecture, with its facade of dark glass that reflects the city like a black mirror.
At the top, massive letters spell out brOOKSTONE & BLACKBURN in white that glows even during the day.
The logo between the words is a double helix wrapped around a gear, representing their twisted combination of biotech and industrial manufacturing.
From this angle, I can see into some of the floors. Labs with people in white coats. Conference rooms with men in suits. And somewhere in there, my children were cut open. Verde and Petra were dissected like specimens.
What the fuck.
I quickly close the door, my hands shaking with fury. I hurry to the door I came through, the one that should lead me back to Amari. I try to open it, but it’s sealed shut. I try to use magic, pink threads wrapping around the handle, pulling, pushing, burning, freezing. Nothing works.
Maybe my only way out is to go through those doors.
But then I hear Vertro beating on the door from the other side. His massive legs pound against it, trying to break through to get to me. The entire room shakes with each impact. Then Vertro stops.
Silence.
I wonder what the hell is going on.
The doorknob suddenly turns.
I become defensive, preparing myself for battle. My magic pulses in my hands, bright and ready, threads weaving between my fingers like weapons. But when the door opens, I see the last person I’d expect to see.
Aya Bailey.
And Vertro doesn’t see her as a threat.
She’s not solid. Not really. She’s translucent, like looking at someone through frosted glass.
Her form flickers at the edges, fading in and out of existence.
She has rich brown skin, but it’s muted now, ghostly.
Her hair is a mass of wild black curls that seem to move with a wind that doesn’t exist here, falling past her shoulders in waves.
But it’s her eyes that capture me. They’re piercing blue, bright even through her ghostly form, and they burn with an intelligence that makes me want to step back.
She’s wearing a cloak that flows around her like liquid smoke, shifting between solid black and transparent gray.
The fabric moves independently of her body, swirling and eddying as if it has its own life.
Beneath it, I can see robes covered in symbols similar to Tabatha’s, but these are fading, losing their power.
She stands in the doorway between the room and the void of limbo. She’s just watching me with those knowing eyes.
Aya smiles, and it’s not a kind expression. It’s knowing. Amused. Like she’s been waiting for me to figure something out and I’m finally catching up.
“Ah, you’ve finally found Nathaniel. So when are you going to get out of that fucking honeymoon phase you’re having with Amari and deal with this?”
What in the actual fuck?