Hunters in the Night (19 page)

The
forest was dense and tricky to walk through. I didn’t see a single animal in
it. No birds. No rabbits. Not even any insects. As I went deeper into the
woods, the world seemed to quiet down. Even the wind stopped. I could only hear
the crunches and scuffs of my feet trampling along thick roots, fallen leaves,
and broken branches.

I
walked for a good while, until the edge of the forest was lost far behind me. I
moved along a winding path that was not marked by stones, signs, or walkways.
There was some invisible string pulling me gently forward until I found what I
had been unknowingly looking for.

A
cave.

The
cave entrance was an inconspicuous thing — just a six-foot tall hole in a
grassy hill surrounded by leafy trees and shrubs. I might have walked right
past it and never known it was there if I had just been using my eyes. But
there was something special in the darkness that only a nightcrafter could
follow. I went inside, without even a hint of fear.

The
cave went on for some time. It twisted and turned so much it felt like I was
walking through the insides of a giant snake. A sickly-sweet aroma tickled my
nose; the smell of things decaying in the dark for years, or decades. But the
cave floor was fairly smooth, and my feet weren’t caught up by bones or
carcasses.

When
the faint glow of daylight at the cave entrance disappeared, I kept moving
forward. I opened myself to the Rift for comfort and to get a better sense of
my surroundings, and I nearly fell over when I felt what the Rift was like
here. It wasn’t like the fountain of power that flowed in hot spots, like that
abandoned elementary school I used to train in. This was something different.
Everything here felt like it had been here since time began. It’s hard to
explain how I knew that. It’s kind of like how you visit an old European town and
you can just feel the history there. The roads are weathered and uneven. The
houses are made in a way that’s rough and unrefined. It’s kind of the same in
the Rift, but instead of roads and houses there’s a different physical
sensation surrounding you.

Normally,
using Rift magic makes me feel like I’m swimming in a vast inky ocean. But this
place gave me a strange and new feeling. When I felt the Rift-material around
me it was like diving into a ball pit — those padded areas full of hollow
plastic balls you see at playgrounds and play centers for kids. The stuff
oozing out of the Rift here didn’t feel like liquid that I could make waves in.
It was more solid here. It felt like I could just reach out and grab clumps of
it.

I
stayed in the cave for a good long while just so I could fully experience its
unique sensations, and I wondered if other nightcrafters knew about this. Was
this something that was part of the later training? Maybe Madison would know.
Kellar definitely would, but I doubted we’d ever rekindle that teacher-student
relationship.

My
internal alarm clock reminded me that I’d been gone for too long, and pretty
soon Newton would start to get suspicious. I reluctantly left the cave, and as
my eyes adjusted to the light outside, I decided I would have to come back
here. This place was too special to leave behind without exploring more.

Fatigue
forced me to do a slow jog back to the cabin, and I ended up walking the last
half mile. I was drenched in my own juices by the time I got to our lonely little
temporary home. I had only been gone for a couple hours, and I figured that
Newton would still be sequestered in the basement and working on his arcane
studies. Sure enough, he was sitting in front of several monitors displaying a
variety of readouts.

“Anything
new?” I asked.

“I
have a lot to figure out here,” Newton murmured.

“I
have a lot of things to figure out too,” I said. “There’s some interesting
magic around here.”

Only
Newton’s eyes moved toward me. The rest of him stayed stock still. “Oh really?”

“Yeah,”
I said. “I found a cave out in the forest. It’s got a different vibe in the
Rift.”

“Anything
I should be investigating?” Newton asked.

“I
don’t think so,” I said. “It’s not a particularly strong area it’s just . . .
different. I doubt your gadgets would help much. I just want to spend some time
there. I’ll give you a full report when I get back.”

“And
when will that be?”

I
shrugged. “Maybe a couple days.”

“You’re
going to sleep there?”

“Maybe.
Might not sleep at all. I’ve done it before.”

“Okay
then,” Newton said as he walked over to a tool box and retrieved a couple of
items. “But take these with you.” He handed me a radio and a GPS watch.

“GPS
won’t work in a cave,” I said.

“Correct,”
Newton said. “But it will tell me your last position before you entered the
cave. And if something unexpected happens and you are forced to leave the
immediate area, I’ll know that too.”

“Worried?”
I asked.

“Just
taking precautions.”

I
smiled. “I’ll be back in forty-eight hours, tops.”

“I’m
sure you will be. And I’ll be right here waiting for you. Or coming to save
your ass if you don’t show up.”

“I’ll
be sure to be on time then.”

I
walked into the bathroom and took a quick shower. Then I grabbed some fresh
clothes and a bottle of water. I had one foot out the patio door when I heard
Newton’s voice.

“Kal.”

I
turned. Newton stood in the kitchen doorway, his face stoic and unreadable.
“Why are you really going?”

That
was a good question. Hadn’t thought about it much. “I don’t know,” I said. “It just
feels like I have to. Maybe there’s a bunch of other places like it in the
world, but I’ve never felt this way about anything in the Rift zone before. I
have to take advantage of this while I can, even if I can only enjoy it for a
little while.”

Newton
nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”

I
stood there for a moment and tried to think of the perfect response for that.
When I couldn’t find the words, I just left. The sun was sinking below the
horizon, and for the first time in a while I was eager to see what the night
would bring.

* * *

There
were creatures here.

They
appeared about three hours after I went back into the cave. I didn’t even know
they were there at first. The Rift-kind here didn’t make the kind of ripples in
the Rift that I was used to. In this strange clumpy pool of Rift matter I
couldn’t even detect Rift-kind until they were right next to me. But I was
happy that they found me. They were beautiful.

I
didn’t sense their beauty through sight. The cave was totally dark and my eyes were
useless. But I could detect them through some different sense. It was like all
my other senses combined into something new. I could smell, hear, and feel them
all at once. I remembered something about synesthesia in a movie about an LSD
addict. Synesthesia is a condition where sensation pathways in the brain get
all mixed up and colors have tastes and sounds have smells. It felt like I was
going through that now. For some reason, in this deep cave where the Rift had
been coalescing for centuries without the faintest hint of light, I could “see”
things differently.

There
were Rift creatures roughly shaped like mini manta rays gliding through the air
on undetectable breezes. In my mind’s eye I associated them with all sorts of
sensations. They were surrounded by spots of fluorescent greens and oranges,
and when I looked at them I tasted a hint of citrus in my mouth and I could
hear tiny bells. The darkness was unchanged, and my eyes weren’t actually
involved in this process at all. Instead, the awareness of the Rift I’d
developed through my nightcrafter training was being used differently than I’d
ever experienced before. It was a completely new type of sensory input, and my
mind was just making the best translation it could by involving my other
senses.

It
was an amazing experience. All I could do was stand there and observe as the
creatures went about their business. I was sure they knew I was there, as they
casually veered away whenever their lazy flight paths put them on a collision
course with me. But they didn’t seem to care about my presence, and I was left
to study them in peace.

After
some hours, all the creatures left and the cave was still again. I stayed there
long after they vanished. It wasn’t because I was waiting for them to come back
or anything. I was just awed. It had been a long time since I’d felt something
new. It was comforting. It was
magical
.

For
the first time in years, I was amazed by the Rift. It wasn’t what I thought it
was. Maybe it wasn’t even what any of the nightcrafters thought it was. I
hadn’t been seeing the whole thing. I’d only been aware of the shadows of a
vibrant world. The Rift had so much more to offer beyond what I’d been taught.
My time in that cave gave me new perspective, and reawakened something in me.

I
loved the dark again.

I
spent another day in the cave. The creatures came back twice more, and each
time was pretty much the same as before. But I didn’t get bored with them. I
was totally captivated each time. The creatures never did anything spectacular,
but just having them around was a wonderful, relaxing experience. It was almost
as comforting as spending the night with Newton.

The
memory of Newton brought me crashing back to the reality of my present
predicament. My time in the cave had been inspiring and educational, but not
particularly useful for solving the matter at hand. Newton was back at the
cabin, working on a solution for keeping Kellar and his cronies from having a
dangerous power. He was doing real work. I was out here just satisfying my own
curiosity. And, of course, I was running away from the emotions that had been
slowly developing ever since I met Newton. My escape to the cave provided me
the space I needed to come to terms with a relationship that died before it could
be born. Now it was time to get back to work.

So
I jogged back to the cabin in the morning.

The
little lonely house with the hunter green siding was quiet and unlit when I
arrived. I figured Newton would still be sequestered in the basement and poring
over data. But as soon as I opened the cabin’s front door, he grabbed me by the
arms. His eyes were wide open and his hair was wilder than usual.

“I
figured it out!” he said. “It makes sense now. You gotta come down here. Where
have you been? God, you’re soaked. Do you always sweat this much? It doesn’t
matter, come with me.” The words tumbled out of his mouth at machine gun pace.
I barely had time to comprehend what he was saying before he grabbed me by the
hand and dragged me downstairs.

“I
was totally stuck for a while,” Newton said quickly. “Everything seemed
contradictory but then I understood what was going on because at first I
thought the nightcrafters were phase shifting somehow just like what happens
when you push objects into the Rift but that’s not it at all it’s something
totally different which I guess makes sense because it would be harder to phase
shift something that was alive and keep it alive but—”

“Stop,”
I said, placing a hand over his mouth. “Take a breath, think for a second, and
just give me the quick and dirty version. Okay?”

Newton
nodded. I removed my hand.

“When
I first met you,” he said, “you showed me that spell that made my voltmeter
disappear and reappear. But I also had you put my chocolate in the Rift, and it
came back different. It tasted different and it looked different under the
microscope. Then I remembered how you said that fake magicians came up with the
rabbit out of the hat trick because nightcrafters couldn’t actually do that.
That’s when I realized that the ordinary phase shifting spell must not work
perfectly for organic matter. The spell ends up altering biological cells. Not
much, but just enough to make it impossible to shift something that’s living
and not kill it. Just a tiny change to the molecules in your brain or your
nervous system would kill you quick. So I figured that the nightcrafters didn’t
actually come up with a system to phase shift people over to the Rift like they
do with inorganic objects. Instead, they’re making tiny
rips
in the
membrane between the two dimensions. They’re temporary, of course. The fissures
only last for a fraction of a second before the membrane of the Rift snaps back
together, but it would be enough time to send a person through. That’s how it
works. I think.”

“You
think
?” I said.

“Well
the math works,” Newton said as he gestured to the walls. It was then that I
realized the formerly plain white walls were now covered in frantic
scribblings. It looked like Newton had been scratching out mathematical
formulas like a mad scientist.

“The
math works,” Newton said again. “But I can’t be one hundred percent sure until
we test it out by analyzing the actual magic.”

“I’d
love to help you,” I said. “But I don’t know the spell.”

“But
I do,” Newton said with a giggle. He jumped over to his computer and pulled up
a media player app. He hit the play button and I heard words that made me
shiver.

“Night
comes swiftly and quietly on padded feet. The boy knows nothing beyond fear.
Red and green and orange flowing madly through the sky.”

My
jaw fell open. Then I asked him, “Is that the new phasing spell?”

“Yup,”
Newton said. “Kind of sounds like somebody reading a William S. Burroughs
novel, right?”

“It
sounds pretty standard for our spells,” I said. “The words don’t always have
literal meaning. They’re just there to put the mind in the right state for the
task. How the hell did you get this?”

“Blind
luck,” Newton said. “One of the nightcrafters in Times Square was near a brand
new ATM machine with an advanced security system. He was out of view of the
camera, but the microphone picked up his voice. When we did a collection sweep
of all the electronic surveillance equipment in the area, this got picked up.
It didn’t raise any flags from the automated data scrubbing algorithms, but I
decided it would be worth it to go through everything manually. Good thing I
did.”