The Hour of Dust and Ashes (28 page)

“I can try.”

“I guess we run like hell.” He was already surging to his feet.

I ran after him. Brim bolted past me in a blur of speed.

We made it halfway across the plain before the nithyn spotted us. Hank stopped and lured the one coming in fast.

He stood still, waiting and mumbling, luring, enticing the beast to dive faster and faster. Closer and closer. I stopped running and screamed his name. Hank dove at the very last second. The nithyn crashed into the ground. Hank rolled, leapt up, grabbed its neck before it could get its bearings, twisted, and broke it. Patient. Efficient. Deadly.

“Charlie, duck!”

I belly flopped immediately, not even looking at the incoming bird. Wind blew over my face. Sand pinged me. Claws dug into my back. I screamed. Air rushed down all around me as the nithyn lifted.

A shot of nitro hit the tip of its wing.

I flailed, reaching around to grab at the leathery ankle. After three tries I got a good hold, sending everything I had into my grip.

Cold, cold, cold,
I chanted, I imagined, I felt …

It dropped me six feet above the ground and let out a wounded cry. I landed belly first in the sand, flipped over, finally able to pull my gun, only to see the largest nithyn crash into the wounded one.

They tumbled through the air, landing in a rolling ball. I looked away from the macabre scene and focused on getting back on my feet.

A few feet in front of me, Brim circled and whined. He lay down and rested his jaw between his front legs. Alarm crept up my spine. I went for Brim, but only made it one step before I came face-to-face with the shadow creature.

I drew up short and gasped. Brim whined again.

It hovered inches from the ground. A tall, black form without solid mass and as terrifying as before.

Had it jumped planes? Jesus. My mind raced. Had it sensed my use of power earlier and had come after me? Come this far? Sensed it from another world?

What the hell was this thing?

My fingers flexed on the grip of my gun.

I saw beyond it to Hank. He was running toward me. Sand kicked up and circled around me and this creature. It spoke and the ground under my feet trembled.

Shadowy tendrils reached out, wrapping around me. The main mass of the creature pulled toward me in a blink so fast it seemed like one minute it was a few feet from me and the next it was inches from my face.

I swallowed, poised and still, utterly at the mercy of this thing.

Darkness that went on forever is the only thing I saw on the inside of this creature. Yet somewhere inside of it was a voice, a mouth, some type of creature, I was sure of it. Maybe one that didn’t
want
to be seen …

It spoke again, this time with an inflection that suggested a question had been posed. My body thrummed, the words ebbing deep into my bones. A question I had no idea how to answer.

Then it drew back, spun, drawing all of the shadows back into itself. It disappeared like a puff of wind, gone on a breeze. The sand tornado around me dropped. Brim lifted his head, stood, and shook off the sand as Hank came to a stop, heaving from the run. “That was it? That was the creature?”

I nodded, rubbing my arms as the nithyn’s death cries drew goose bumps along my skin. It made me shiver, cold despite the heat of the hot, dry dunes. At least it hadn’t gone
through
me this time.

Hank was staring oddly at me. “You realize it jumped planes.”

Yeah. I did. And it scared the shit out of me. If that thing was lured by my power and had the ability to cross dimensions whenever I used it … Not good. It had probably felt the first time I used my power fighting off the sand lizards and it had just taken some time to get here. All it had to do was hang around and wait for me to use it again and voilà.

“Come on, they can’t be far behind us.” I took off toward the ruins.

The ruins of the Temple of the Moon were colossal. Stone blocks the size of city buses littered the ground. Yet another testament to the god-like structures of the off-worlders.

“Rex said the portal is under the altar.” I climbed onto a fallen column where I stood to survey the complex, trying to envision it as it had once been, to get a better idea of where the main temple might be. A piece of Bryn’s skirt had been wedged between two stones, a marker from Rex no doubt. “Hank! Over here!” I slid off the column and scrambled over the ruins.

Hank studied the narrow, slanted opening near the stones. “Footprints, too,” he noted, looking around. Brim trotted over and began sniffing. He darted inside the dark passageway. I pulled out my flashlight.

The passage was only wide enough for us to go single file. Blocks of stones stuck out of the walls, making us twist and angle our bodies around to make way. Eventually the space opened up to a larger area filled with fallen stones. The floor was streaked with footsteps. Rex must’ve cleared enough stone away to make the small passage.

I climbed through. “Be careful. This leads down into steps.”

Stone debris littered the way, but the going was
relatively simple and soon we came to a dark chamber deep beneath the temple complex. Our lights beamed over large stones, fitted perfectly together. Side reliefs of jinn warriors had been carved into the walls, enemies and creatures subdued beneath their feet. Two ancient fire basins of black marble sat at opposite sides of the room.

In the center of the floor ringed in smooth black stones was a circular pool. Very shallow and filled with a substance that looked like liquid mercury.

“What is that?”

Hank stopped beside me. “The portal; I don’t see anything else down here that could be it.”

“Well, they were here. Their footprints are all over the place.” My light trailed over the dusty floor. “And look, there’s a dusty handprint on the stones. They must’ve made it through …”

Hank knelt down, examining the stones.

“Rex said to feed my power and think of where we wanted to go. He said the station, to concentrate on the station. The cell block.”

“Using your power draws that creature. I’ll use mine.”

“You think Elysian power is going to work in a Charbydon-created portal?” I asked dubiously.

“We can try.” He placed his hands on the stones and closed his eyes. Instantly the energy in the place changed. A soft yellow glow began to form beneath his palms.

And nothing else happened.

Finally he opened his eyes, his brow furrowed. “Let me try this.” This time he stuck his hands into the pool. The strange liquid seemed to conduct power and the entire thing shimmered in a golden light and then dimmed. Again, nothing.

“Here, let me try.” I returned my flashlight to my belt. “If this works, we’ll be gone before the Grim Reaper gets here. If he jumps planes behind us, we’ll deal with it at the station.” All that mattered was getting home. “You ready?” I asked.

Hank nodded. I shoved my dirty hands into the liquid. It closed around my skin, heavy and thick, the consistency of honey, but dry and cool. I closed my eyes and brought to mind the hum, the memory of the power—how it tingled through my body, set me alive …

“It’s working.” Hank said.

I peeked. The pool shimmered blue, very similar to the colors of the sphere back at the terminals in Telmath and Atlanta. It began to swirl, going around and around until it resembled a whirlpool, the middle a long, bottomless pit.

“Hook your arm in mine,” I said. “Think of the station, the cell block …”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” I just hoped Bryn had been strong enough to think for herself and concentrate on the cell block, too.

“And the hellhound?”

I whistled Brim over. “I sure as hell hope he’s
thinking about Emma, or his bed, or his ball …” But he was going in that portal with us. It was better than leaving him here. “You whistle for him when we go,” I told Hank. “I’m going to put all my concentration on the cell. Ready?”

He nodded. I closed my eyes and focused on our destination, seeing it in my mind, the colors, the smells, the architecture … I remembered it until I felt as though I was standing there.

I let my body fall forward, one hand in the liquid, my other arm crooked around Hank’s. He moved with me. I heard his soft whistle to Brim and then we were falling into the spinning pool of liquid.

It sucked me in, coated me, and squeezed me tightly; taking me away from everything I’d ever known until the only thing remaining was silence. A vast, black silence. Slowly I became aware of Hank, our elbows still locked together. I held on tightly, linking my fingers and clinging for dear life.

The cell, the cell, the cell …

Being weightless with no sense of place or time didn’t prepare me for my face meeting the hard tile floor of Station One. I sucked in a shocked gasp as pain exploded. Blood, warm and thick, spilled from my nose and onto the floor. “Fuck,” I slurred as the sense of physical weight settled into me and the coppery taste of my own blood hit the back of my throat.

Hank cursed and groaned. “Note to self,” he rasped. “Don’t go in face-first.”

My fingers curled. I swallowed. The veins in my head pounded. I pushed up—very slowly—more nauseous than when I’d stepped through the terminal portal. Blood ran down and along the crease of my lips. I wiped it away with the back of my hand and then gazed around, finding the light very bright.

“Whoa. That’s some funky-ass shit right there,” came Kyle’s voice.

Kyle. Kyle was an
ash
victim. In the cell block.

We’d made it.

“You guys just appeared out of nowhere, man.”

I struggled to my feet, falling once before I got up and then grabbed the wall for support. My vision wavered. “Where’s my sister? Was she here? Did she come here?”

“Fuck you, Charlie Brown,” Kyle said, snickering at his lame joke.

I shot him the middle finger.
Right back at ya, buddy.

“She came out of nowhere just like you two,” said the
ash
victim who’d helped me before, “with another guy. She ran out of here, and he ran after her.”

“Shit.” I shook my head, trying to clear the drunken-like haze. “How long?”

“Like a couple minutes ago. They were like you, though. Drugged or something. It took them a while to get up.”

Yeah. Not drugged; screwed up by an ancient portal. There had probably been some kind of spell or pill the traveler took before jumping into that spinning pool. Or maybe you just had to be a jinn to go through without ill effects.

I sniffed in blood and coughed, wiping at my nose again as I staggered from the cell block.

Frustration ate at me as I struggled slowly up the steps to the main floor of Station One.
Brim wasn’t in the cell block.
He hadn’t come with us, and I could only
hope he’d made it somewhere safe. Once I reached the main floor and staggered out of the back door and onto the landing, I pushed the worrisome thought from my mind and scanned the parking lot.

Bryn stumbled across the parking lot with Rex hot on her heels. Hank burst out behind me.

“BRYN!” I ran down the steps, missing the last one, and hit the pavement in a sprawl. My palms slid over the concrete, peeling skin as they went. I kept my fuzzy vision on my sister, though, determined to not lose her. Not again.

Surprisingly she heard me, stopped, and shouted, “I have to get to—”

Rex slammed into her and they went down.

I sucked in a breath with a single-minded purpose—get to my sister—and forced myself up. Hank’s hand gripped my elbow, helping me to stand. We swayed together. He was pale. Sweat glistened on his face and his steps were more unbalanced than mine. Being Elysian, I bet he’d gotten a shittier dose of Charbydon travel sickness than me.

We were halfway across the lot when two sirens stepped out of shadows.

No.

“Don’t
make
me hurt you,” Rex’s words echoed over the lot as he finally got the upper hand and sat on top of my sister, pinning her front to the ground. She screamed, kicking and flailing with drunken limbs.

“Let. Me. Go!” she wailed in a tired, desperate voice.

“So it is true,” one of the sirens said as he moved to block our way to Bryn and Rex. He and his friend were as tall as Hank and their expressions held intense loathing and a gleam that said they’d just
love
to take him down right there.

“Traitor. Murderer,” the other one growled, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“The king got the same punishment he inflicted on every
Malakim
who ever served him,” Hank forced out. “He was a lia—”

The siren’s fist shot out and connected with Hank’s jaw with a sickening crack. The force sent him to his knees. The fact that he didn’t lay flat-out cold was a testament to his strength. I grabbed his bicep and tried to help him to his feet.

“The others will be here soon and then we’ll have a nice little …
talk
before we take you back to Fiallan. The Circe are eager to get their hands on you.”

Rex cursed, drawing my attention. He was doubled over, holding his privates. Bryn struggled out from his hold, turned to glance over her shoulder. Her eyes went wide when she saw me. And then she started running, weaving drunkenly into the darkness.