Night Terrors (Sarah Beauhall Book 4) (33 page)

“Down,” Qindra shouted. I ducked behind the counter that was to my right, and the crystal beside the beetle exploded, showering the room with shrapnel.

The beetle screamed as it fell back on its shell. I could make it out enough to roll forward and stab its lightly armored underbelly. Gram sliced through the chitin with a crunch and black blood spewed across the floor.

“Damn it,” Qindra said behind me, her voice full of pain. I whirled and saw that two long shards of crystal jutting out of her chest. One had impaled her right breast, the second just below her ribs. She’d been turned with her right side exposed.

The counter had protected me from the blast.

“We need to get you out of here,” I said, wiping at my burning eyes.

“NO!” she said, leaning back against the wall by the door. “We need to get in there and close that breach.”

“Breach?” I asked, looking back. “The doorway you think?”

She grunted, but nodded. “Pull these out, will you?”

She had her wand poised and I stepped over to her, I was glad I still had my gloves on. The crystal was cold, colder than ice. The areas around the wound weren’t bleeding, but they were black. I adjusted my grip on the first shard and pulled.

Qindra gasped as the crystal came out slowly, shredding the blackened flesh around the edges of the wound and allowing a quick welling of blood to come to the surface. I threw the crystal back against the counter where it shattered.

“Hurry,” she said, her voice strained and breathy. I glanced over my shoulder, making sure nothing else was coming out of the bedroom.

The second shard was smaller. I could only get one hand on it, but it came out much quicker. She settled down onto the ground, sliding down the wall as her legs gave way. I caught her, slowing her fall.

“Keep watch,” she said, raising her wand.

I glanced at the bedroom and then over at the doorway out of the apartment. The door was no longer there.

“The door?” I started, but she shook her head at me.

“I know, let me concentrate, please.”

The wand sputtered and small flashes of red and blue flew from the wand.

“Not strong enough,” she whispered. I knelt down beside her, pulled the glove off my right hand and closed it over hers. I’d used Gram to channel away the excess energy when I opened Katie’s book, maybe I could reverse that and flow some of my chi, or whatever, into Qindra.

I held Gram tightly and concentrated on the way my body felt. I willed power to flow forward into Qindra. The runes across my scalp flared bright enough to cast a red glow on Qindra’s face. She didn’t seem to notice.

At first nothing happened. I concentrated, imagining a tap opening inside me, pulling magic from Gram, letting it flow through my hand and into Qindra.

A fat blob of blue goo burped out of the tip of her wand and blue light sprang forth. The blob fell onto the porcelain colored floor and sputtered like a bit of fat on a hot griddle.

Qindra bathed the blackened wounds in the light from the wand, and the skin closed, returning to a color more resembling the flesh of her belly.

I held her hand long enough for her to close both wounds. When I let go the energy from the wand waned, but didn’t sputter out like before.

I knelt down, placed my naked hand on the sputtering blob of magic goo, and it leapt upward against my palm, vanishing into my skin. The oddest prickling sensation ran up my arm and into my head. For a second the runes on my forehead felt like ice instead of forge fire, but the sensation was not unpleasant.

“That was surreal,” I said, standing. I pulled my glove back on and turned to watch the door to our old bedroom. Katie was going to freak.

“That threshold was trapped,” Qindra said. “It bollixed up my magic in a way I’ve never encountered before. It was almost as if I were constipated.”

Great, I thought. Magic is like taking a dump. Nice to know.

“Are you okay?” I asked, helping her to her feet.

“Sore and weak,” she said, smiling at me. “But we must see to the rest of this apartment and close the breach. This cannot be allowed to spread.”

My adrenaline was definitely in high gear at this point. The runes on my leg had me dancing from foot to foot, anxious for the next foe.

Qindra raised her wand and a stream of yellow sparks shot across the room. For a minute they seemed to punch a hole through the wall, then I realized it was just allowing us to look through the wall. Handy trick.

“There’s a nest in the bedroom,” she said. “There is something alive in there, as well as one or more items of power. Anything I should know before we go?”

“The book’s in there,” I said, remembering I’d stashed it in the bottom of the closet under a pile of winter boots.

“The Book?” she asked me, shock painted on her face. “You said you buried it somewhere.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t say in the earth. I buried it under a pile of old boots and coats.”

“Unbelievable,” she said, letting the yellow streamers fall away and sending green globules against the bedroom wall like paint pellets.

“There’s also a weak barrier to the Sideways,” I added, thinking. “A mirror and … oh, and the shield.”

“Great,” Qindra growled. “You go first. We have to clean that mess out and see what’s left of the room.”

She was good with that wand, now that it was operating, even at partial force—used it like a popgun. There were several more feeders of various shapes and leg configurations in the room. I got most of them, but Qindra brought down two on her own. I have no idea what spell she was using, but when the pretty lights struck the feeder, one melted and one burst into flames. Green flames that didn’t seem to burn anything other than the creepy.

Once we had killed everything that wanted to eat us I stood in the middle of what used to be a bedroom and examined the situation. There was definitely a nest here and an opening to the Sideways. The wall between our apartments was more of a gaping crack into a land of glass shards and fluorescent skies. Crystals spread all over the room reminding me of the melted candles on our threshold.

“This I can fix,” she said, standing in front of the wall and weaving a net of energy across the opening. I watched her as the critters and the webbing and such in the room began to melt away. Without the connection to the Sideways, they had no real place in this world.

Qindra looked like she was patching the wall with fiberglass like da used to do on our old beater cars. A mesh of energy went over the hole first, then a wide swath of various colored light melted it all together. The more layers she put over the hole between worlds, the stronger her magic grew. By the time the room was clear of debris, the wall was completely whole once again and her power was back to full force. She took a few moments to tend to her previous wounds and helped with a couple of small cuts and bruises I’d gotten in the purging.

Once the mess cleared, three items remained. The shield, the book, and the mirror.

“They took everything else to the other side?” Qindra asked. “How strange. But they left two powerful magical items?”

I had no idea what feeders collected or not. “Maybe they couldn’t touch the book. You couldn’t.”

“True. Or maybe they didn’t think of it as an item of power. I’ve never understood this Sideways as you called it.”

“Something you don’t know about?” I asked, honestly perplexed. “Seriously?”

Qindra shrugged and pushed the mirror with the toe of her fancy black wedges. “Getting something odd about that mirror,” she said, glancing up at me. “Something you need to tell me?”

“No,” I said, squatting down and glancing at my own reflection. “Maybe something happened to it while this place was open to the Sideways.”

“Maybe.” She did a bit of fiddling, testing out various spells, and nothing seemed to please her. “Can you pick up the book?” she asked.

I grabbed the thing without hesitating, and she stepped back from me.

“Okay, good enough. And the shield?”

I held the book between my knees long enough to re-sheath Gram, scooped the shield up off the floor and grabbed the book in my left hand.

For some reason they felt equal. They both had a strong, nearly sentient feeling of protection. The book scared the hell out of me, but the shield had been mine.

“You getting the mirror?” I asked.

She glanced around the room one last time. The porcelain sheen to everything had finally dispersed. She knelt, picked the mirror up and stood, holding it out in front of her, looking at her own reflection. Her clothing was torn and bloodstained, and her hair was not its usual coifed perfection. She was pretty damned sexy in a disheveled badass sort of way.

“I’m taking the shield when I leave,” she said, walking to the door to the rest of the apartment. “I’m thinking you should keep the mirror,” she offered, setting it on the crystal-free bar top.

I nodded without really thinking anything about her comment. She tapped me on the shoulder as I stepped past her, and she turned me to look at the mirror. In the bottom corner there were several words scratched into the reflective surface of the glass.

,haraS

?uoy era erehw

.deracs m’I

.emoh yaw ym dnif t’nac I

Oh, damn! “Katie?”

Qindra looked up. “She was here? Looking out through this mirror?” she asked.

“Is that why I keep being drawn back here?” I asked, running my hand over the mirror. “I’ll need to figure out where this place is in context to the Sideways,” I said, glancing up at Qindra. “And we just sealed a breach. Maybe it opened because of her trying to find her way home.”

“But her body isn’t here,” Qindra said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “Even if she could come through, she has no place to go into.”

Before I could answer two things happened. A screeching came from the hallway, the high-pitched squall of a woman in danger, and Skella appeared in the mirror.

“Sarah?” Skella asked, her face streaked with tears. Her eyes were red and puffy, and for the first time since I’d known her, there was no hint of make-up on her face.

“I got this,” Qindra said, stepping to the door that had reappeared with the closing of the Sideways.

I nodded at her and turned back to the mirror. “Hey, Kiddo. What’s up?”

A sob caught in Skella’s throat. “It’s Gletts,” she said, scrubbing his face. “He woke up today.”

I glanced down at the words scratched into the mirror. “Holy cats, really?” the little pisher. He’d been gone for weeks now. I thought I’d lost him in the Sideways. “That’s great news,” I offered, grinning. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Sarah?” Qindra called from the hallway. “I need—”

“Smith?” a male voice called. “Is she here?”

“—you out here.”

“What’s that?” Skella asked, looking past her fingers.

“No idea,” I said. “Maybe you should pop over here. I gotta check on …”

“Sarah?” Qindra’s voice was loud and an octave higher than normal. Not a good sign.

“Hang on,” I said to Skella, holding Gram up to the mirror. “Trouble.”

She nodded at me, and I bolted for the door. Another scream rattled the apartment as I careened around the doorframe, nearly smashing into Qindra.

In the hallway, the chick from next door was pinned against the wall at the head of the stairs by a crazed homeless man. He was dressed in a mishmash of ragged clothing and a long grey overcoat. His head was a shaggy mess of grey hair and he had a wild beard halfway down his chest. He had the girl pinned against the wall with a long staff.

This wasn’t Joe, the homeless guy who was also Odin. No, this was another in his place, a mummer like I’d seen before, a puppet dancing to the strings of the mad god. “Calm down,” I said, stepping past Qindra who had her wand raised. “What’s the problem here?”

The old man turned his head toward me, and I saw the glint in his eyes, the frigid blue and the light of worlds.

“Smith?” the man asked me, his swollen lips pulled back from his broken teeth.

“I’m here,” I said, stepping forward. “Let the girl go.”

“This whore?” he said, grinning. “She defiles this holy place.”

Holy place? What the hell was he talking about? “She can’t breathe,” I said, noticing how purple she was getting. “Will killing her help you deliver your message?” I reached forward with my right hand, placing it on his where he held one end of his stave. At my touch he stepped back, letting the girl fall to the ground along with his cane. He grabbed my hand in both of his, turning to face me, massaging my hand with his.

“Dragon fire,” he whispered, turning my wrist, looking at the palm. “I can feel the taint. Yet the flesh is whole.”

“You’re welcome,” Qindra said, squinting at me before stepping past us to check on the girl who lay on the floor, gasping.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, as she knelt, passing the wand over the stricken woman. Qindra had helped heal me after my hand had been maimed by dragon fire.

“Blackened flesh, white bones, and the smell of burnt meat,” the old man said, his voice husky, his eyes brimming with tears. “Is it truly you, dragon slayer?”

I pulled my hand from his and stepped back. “Yeah, that’s me. Who are you?”

He looked at me, quizzically. “The shriven king bids you listen,” he said, a glint of the madness in his eyes. “Let the world tremble at his words.”

Qindra looked up at me with one of those incredulous looks.

“I know you are here, witch,” the man said, his voice suddenly a richer timbre, the words smoother and clipped with a rough accent. “Tell your mistress her sins are unanswered and the time of her reckoning is coming.”

Instead of righteous indignation, Qindra lowered her gaze and bowed her head. “I will share your words, o’ king of old.”

The old man chuckled and turned back to face me, his shoulders back, and his head high. “Listen to my words, heed my warning. Worlds are breached.”

He held his hand out, palm down, and his staff flew up into his hands. “The well has returned. The hidden bridge fills the sky once more.”

Well? Bridge? Did he mean the rainbow bridge? The one that Heimdall had shattered the day the dragons destroyed the gods?