Shimmer: A Novel (27 page)

Smaller, faster creatures were scrabbling over the bodies of the larger ones and presented more difficult targets for Barrett and his sword. Liana stomped a few of the smaller creatures, but her flats were definitely no match for the lobster-sized monstrosities. Again, she attempted the spell.

One large creature, with three twitching, venom-dripping tails, launched itself from the top of a nearby slab of rock, aiming for Liana’s face, pincers clicking in anticipation. In the middle of casting her spell she was almost mesmerized by its lethal descent.

Barrett must have heard her gasp.

He spun on his heel and swung his sword like a major league batter going after a wild pitch. The flat of the blade caught the falling menace with such force that it split in half, spraying them with noxious white fluid. Three tails continued to twitch as they sailed away into the encroaching darkness.

“Grab my arm!” Liana shouted.

“What?”

“Now!”

Barret gripped her upper arm with his left hand, but continued to stab, slash and toss the scorpion creatures with the sword in his right. Sweat streamed down his body. His breathing was rapid, if not yet irregular. Clearly, the sustained effort of the battle had finally taxed his meta-human physique and constitution.

Wiping her mind of anxiety and distractions, Liana began her incantation,
“Sonus vibris—intumis… intumis… intumis…”

A dissonant humming filled the air around them. Beneath Liana’s feet, the ground began to rumble, at first no more than a slight vibration, but she could feel the power increasing, like an engine racing toward red-lined RPMs.

“What is it?” Barrett asked breathlessly. “Another hell-quake?”

Liana shook her head and continued to chant.
“Intumis…intumis…intumis…”

She took a deep breath.

Barrett looked at her expectantly.

She expelled her breath with one potent command.
“EXOS!”

The ground shuddered beneath them with such force that they both staggered to catch their balance. Liana clutched Barrett for his own safety.

With a deep and resounding
WHOOM!
the air rippled away from them in every direction with enough power to shake the ring of rock slabs surrounding them. The rolling shockwave scattered pebbles and stones and, more importantly, had a devastating effect on the scorpion-like creatures. The smaller ones skittered backward, quivered and collapsed. But the largest among them appeared to suffer some sort of inner turmoil, writhing in agony as their limbs, tails and pincers twitched. Many burst open with a series of sharp pops, like a string of fireworks exploding. White goo oozed out of their shells and dribbled out of their orifices.

In the fifteen seconds needed to cast her spell, Liana had killed several hundred of the hideous creatures. The shockwave that ruptured their insides had lasted no more than a second.

With a trembling sigh, Liana released her grip on Barrett.

He chuckled. “Now that was one ass-kicking scream.”

“I have a lot of inner rage,” Liana said with a satisfied grin.

Barrett glanced down at the white imprint of her fingers lingering on his arm. “I don’t suppose that grip was about moral support?”

“You needed to be in direct physical contact with me when I released the shockwave,” she said. “For your own protection.”

“You mean I could’ve ended up… belly up, like those things.”

Liana shrugged, faking nonchalance. “Maybe a ruptured internal organ or two.”

“My spleen thanks you.”

“How did you know?”

“What?”

“The spleen,” Liana said mischievously. “Always the first to go.”

“Uh-huh,” Barrett said, probably wondering if she was being serious. He surveyed the utter devastation left in the wake of Liana’s shockwave. “Well, I certainly see how you sorcerous types come in handy in a situation like this.”

“Magic responds well here.”

“Your magic?”

“All magic,” she said. “It’s stronger here. On this world.”

“So magic varies, world to world?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Earth—our Earth, I mean—is notoriously resistant to magic. Has been for centuries.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“Ambrose believes it faded when a Walker, sometime in the past, sealed a recurring rift. Magical energy leaked into our world from that rift, since the beginning of recorded history. Eventually nothing magical will work. My kind—the magic users—will be powerless. Magically speaking.”

“But not here?”

“No,” she said. “I’m more powerful here. Not that I want to stay.” She shuddered at the thought of spending the rest of her life trapped on this world. “Actually, I can’t wait to get out of here.”

“We’re no closer to finding and stopping Carnifex.”

“I know,” she admitted. “Now what?”

“I may lack Logan’s precognitive abilities,” Barrett said, “but I have a bad feeling about these stone slabs surrounding us.”

“Makes two of us.”

Barrett started walking toward the nearest slab, negotiating a path through dozens of dead scorpion things. “Watch your step. Those tail stingers look nasty and they’re still dripping venom.”

He flicked some of the carcasses aside with the sword tip. Careful and methodical, now that the battle frenzy had passed.

The dimming light orb followed them to the perimeter of the unnatural ring of stone. Barrett stopped and peered around the nearest slab of stone. “Coast is clear,” he said. “Dark, but clear. Let’s go.”

As they slipped past the ring of stones, an eerie silence engulfed them. Even the slight sounds of their passage—the scuffing of their shoes, the plinking of pebbles into smoky fissures, the puffing rhythm of their breathing—seemed unnaturally muffled.

“You found Logan,” Barrett said at length. “With a spell.”

“Yes…?”

“Can you use the same spell to find Carnifex?”

She shook her head, a useless gesture while his back was to her. “I held an image of Logan in my mind when I cast that spell. I’ve never seen Carnifex, other than that damn tentacle.”

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Barrett said. “I chopped it off in Chelsea’s house. But it was back again, on the bus.”

“So he has more than one.”

“Maybe,” Barrett said. “But I don’t get a sense of him from that… appendage.”

“Probably regenerates,” she said. “On Earth, amphibians can regenerate entire limbs and tails.”

“Just the same,” Barrett said. “It feels like a cheat to me.”

Liana stepped across a fissure nearly eighteen inches wide and stared briefly into the steaming gap, wondering what else might live underground. “How so?”

“Call it a hunch,” Barrett shrugged. “A Walker hunch, if you like,” he added with a wry smile delivered with a darting backward glance at her, “but I have this feeling Carnifex wasn’t putting himself at risk with those attacks in our world.”

“You don’t think he’s wounded?”

“No,” Barrett said. “But maybe he wants us to think he is. To underestimate…”

Barrett stopped before finishing the thought.

Liana followed his gaze. Since their arrival, the sky had been dark and oppressive, devoid of moon, stars or clouds, almost like a black shroud covering the pocket of whatever universe they now inhabited. Barrett noticed the change first.

“Something’s wrong,” Liana said.

“Understatement of the year.”

“The sky…” Liana said. “It’s… bleeding.”

“No,” Barrett said, shaking his head. “Not blood.”

Magma.

Gobs and rivulets of molten rock spilled down jagged fissures in the broken sky. The illusion held for a moment before the shimmering heat and light cast by the oozing lava revealed a sheer cliff in the space they had assumed was boundless dark sky.

The ground rumbled. Aftershocks? Or precursory tremors of the next earthquake? A distant shriek seemed to call to them, more threat than warning. Again, Barrett saw it first.

The shriek erupted again, much closer this time. The descent of the leathery-winged creature was backlit by the molten veins delineating the sheer cliff. Ropy arms and legs, viciously hooked claws. Long, twisted snout lined with rows of pointed teeth. Wingspan to rival that of a Learjet.

“Oh, God, it’s big!” Liana whispered.

Chapter 41

Unable to shake a growing sense of anxiety, Fallon had hurried home after school to find empty soup cans on the kitchen counter, a used bowl and spoon in the sink, a balled up newspaper on the floor inches from the trash can and, in the family room, her father asleep in his recliner. Four empty beer bottles stood on the floor beside the chair, aligned with military precision. Draped over the padded arm of the chair was a section of the Courier Post, folded open to the daily Sudoku number puzzle, which her father had partially completed before dozing. The television displayed a daytime cable access channel talk show with poor lighting, the volume set so low that the animated voices barely rose above the level of white noise.

Thankful that her father had already eaten something, tacitly freeing her from the responsibility of preparing dinner, Fallon gathered the empties and tip-toed out of the family room.

She lowered the glass bottles into the commingled recyclables can and was about to toss the crumpled ball of newsprint into the other container when curiosity got the better of her. She turned on her heel, retreating from their one-car garage to the kitchen where she spread the newspaper on the table, flattening the creases with the palm of her hand: classified section. With mixed emotions, she noticed that her father had circled several help wanted ads before crossing them out. He’d been looking for a job. Had he called and made inquiries only to find the positions unsuitable or already filled? Or had he lost his nerve before picking up the phone? She needed to talk to him without appearing to have spied on him. For now, though, she’d let him sleep.

Something else required her attention. Specifically, the source of her increasing apprehension. And that was a topic she didn’t dare discuss with her father.

Aware of the moments slipping away, she sliced and ate a plump red apple, then cleaned the kitchen, rinsing the dirty dishes before stacking them in the dishwasher, taking the trash bag out to the garage. She peeked into the family room, confirmed her father was still asleep, then scribbled a note telling him she was studying at a friend’s house, and left it on the kitchen table. She grabbed her backpack and slipped out the front door, locking it behind her.

As she jogged to the Walker house, an unpleasant certainty fell upon her like a suffocating black shroud. She became convinced something terrible had happened, even before Logan answered her frantic knocking and she saw the look of shock and loss in his eyes. “Logan, I had a…”
Call it what it is,
she thought. “A premonition.”

He nodded bleakly. “Come in.”

She stepped inside, rubbing her elbow nervously; he closed the door as if he was afraid it would fall off its hinges. He heaved a sigh before turning to face her.

“I should have left school,” she said. “I was worthless. Staring at the clock the whole time. Couldn’t pay attention. I knew something awful had happened or was about to happen.”

He nodded again. “Past tense.”

“But you…? You’re okay, right? I mean, you look okay, but…but where is everyone?”

“Gideon’s with Ambrose, in his office, discussing strategy.”

“What about the others?”

“It’s…Liana and Barrett,” Logan said softly. “They’re gone. But we—”

“Gone? Oh, my God!” Fallon gasped. “Logan, I’m…” She reached out and clutched his hand, and had to fight off the fluttery sensation of taking the first plunge on a rollercoaster ride, the delicious but disorienting swoop and tingle that happened whenever she touched him. “I’m so sorry. How… how did they…? No, it doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t—Oh, I don’t know what to—”

“No, you’re wrong,” Logan said hastily, flashing a weak smile, “it does matter. How they’re gone, that is.”

“What? I don’t understand.”

“They’re not dead,” he said. “At least I hope not. But, for now, they are gone.”

She frowned, confused. “To a better place…?”

“Hardly,” Logan said with an abrupt shake of his head. “Where they’ve gone is the exact opposite of a better place.”

“Through a rift?”

“Yes,” Logan said. “I was drawn to a bus stop. Boarded the first bus to arrive, followed by Barrett, Liana and Gideon. The rift appeared on the bus, in transit.”

“Did the rift swallow them somehow?” she asked, but then recalled the scene at Chelsea’s house when Barrett stood at the bottom of the stairs and she had another thought. “They went through on purpose.”

“Barrett dove through. Liana followed him. That’s her…role.”

“But why? If it’s as bad as you think, that’s crazy.”

Logan smiled grimly. “My father used to say that insanity doesn’t run in our family, but occasionally it power walks.”

Fallon frowned at his attempt at humor. “This is so hard to understand.”

“Sometimes you can do more damage behind enemy lines.”

“So they went through the rift, but otherwise nobody is hurt? As far as you know?” But Fallon’s faint optimism was no match for the grim intuition that had plagued her all day. Even before he shook his head, she knew it was bad.

Logan recounted the bus rift incident, hinting at massive carnage without lingering on specifics. Despite his chivalrous attempt to protect her from the gruesome details, her imagination had no such reservations, and filled in the gory blanks with a shudder-inducing thoroughness of its own.

“Believe me,” Logan said. “You would not have wanted to be on that bus.”

She swallowed hard. “I feel stupid, complaining about classes, after what you’ve been through.” Fallon squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, more than a reflex.

“If Liana and Barrett succeed,” Fallon began, “they’ll come back, right?”

Logan sighed. “If everything had gone well,” he said, “they would have been back by now.”

“Maybe it’s taking longer than usual.”

From the direction of Ambrose’s office, they heard hysterical screaming followed by determined shouting. Startled, Logan snatched his hand back and said, “That’s Thalia.”