Shimmer: A Novel (41 page)

“Wanted your complete attention.”

“You got it. Now what?”

“You don’t need a canned spell, Fallon,” Logan said. “Liana uses spell commands and sigil traceries. Thalia can whisper and subvocalize complex spells. It’s simple. Whatever works, okay? Just imagine there’s light here and… make it happen.”

“Simple, huh?”

Logan might have smiled or shrugged; she couldn’t tell in the darkness. “If you can tap into the magic here, yeah, it could be that simple.”

Fallon slowed her breathing, closed her eyes to focus on the goal, imagining light shining over their shoulders, lighting the way ahead. Her mother had magical ability. And she had demonstrated magical ability herself on more than one occasion. She believed she could do it. In everyday life, seeing was believing. With magic, the reverse was true.

“Look!” Logan said excitedly, squeezing her hand.

She opened her eyes and laughed.

A pale wash of light shone before them, illuminating a harsh rocky landscape beneath a pitch black sky. “Wow! I did that?”

“First try,” Logan said. “I’m impressed.”

“Actually, I’ve always been good under pressure,” Fallon said with mock seriousness. “Usually it’s not life and death, but good training, right?”

Logan nodded, and this time she could see him. “Thalia thinks you can boost my dousing ability to help find Liana and Barrett. Said she sensed Liana was alive in here somewhere.” Logan closed his eyes then, and his head drifted side to side before locking on one direction. “She’s right. This way!” he shouted.

Mindful of the treacherous footing, they raced across the rocky ground. Fallon glanced quickly at Logan before returning her attention to the rocky debris in front of them and asked, “Does the magic that protects Outsiders from bullets on our side work in reverse for us over here? Are we invulnerable on their world?”

“No, and they’re not really invulnerable in ours,” Logan said. “Just…hardened. Ambrose’s theory—and he’s the oldest living expert on this stuff—is that the magic they use to tear a rift into our world violates our physical laws and that it somehow extends immunity to them. Their bodies literally violate the physical laws governing our world. Our magic users, on the other hand, create rifts into other worlds that are, I don’t know, less invasive, more like finding overlaps or seams between dimensions rather than slashing through a separate reality. And we didn’t even create the rift we just crossed.”

“Figures the loophole works against us.”

“Yeah.”

At some point they broke contact, Fallon’s hand slipping out of his. At first nothing changed, but within moments, Fallon started crying and succumbed to hitching sobs. She stumbled and fell to her knees. Logan stopped and came back to her. “What’s wrong?”

She couldn’t ignore it anymore. The knowledge bubbled to the surface of her consciousness like poison gas. “It was me, Logan,” Fallon said disconsolately. “I killed her.”

Logan looked confused, almost panicked. “No, Liana’s still alive. I sense her. But she’s in danger.”

“No, it’s my fault she killed herself,” Fallon said. “Don’t you see? I did it to her. I
boosted
her.” She fell forward, her forearms striking the hard ground. “She had some magic, but I made it worse. She didn’t understand what was happening, what I was doing to her.” She looked up at his face guiltily and felt the magical light dimming around them. She wanted to hide in the darkness, to never examine what she’d done again. But how could she ever forget? “I killer her…” she sobbed. “Killed my own mother.”

“Fallon, she didn’t know about the magic,” Logan said. “But her death wasn’t your fault. Your own magic probably hadn’t even manifested yet.”

She shook her head vigorously, convulsing with uncontrollable sobs. He was wrong. It
was
her fault. She was never more certain of anything in her life.
I’m worthless,
she thought hysterically.
Completely, utterly, worthless daughter. I should have died instead of—

Logan grabbed her hand and shoved something hard and round into her palm.

A pure white glow blossomed around their clenched hands.

“Protective amulet,” Logan said. “This place roots out your deepest irrational fears and feeds them, uses them to destroy you. Your own personal hell.”

She climbed shakily to her feet, nodding. The fear had overcome her after she lost physical contact with Logan, who had been holding the amulet by its chain.

“Never let go again, Logan,” Fallon said, her throat thick with raw emotion. “Promise me.”

“I have no intention of letting you go, Fallon Maguire,” Logan said seriously. “That’s a promise.”

“Good,” she said, sniffling. “You ever break that promise, I’ll kick your ass.”

“Way to spoil the mood, Maguire.”

She had been scared, and filled with more self-loathing than she could have imagined possible. Consumed by the darkness of grief and guilt lurking within her. How much had been real? How much imagined? She refused to examine those emotions, at least never while in this desolate place. “Let’s find them.”

In a few moments, they ran down a steep grade, bringing light and hope into the bowels of despair. Fallon saw a weak light below even as she heard a woman screaming.

“Liana!” Logan said and sprinted downhill with Fallon in tow.

She concentrated on the light, embracing it, and feeding it, and watched amazed as it swelled forward, banishing the darkness. When she saw the spindly-legged spider creatures harrying Liana and Barrett she gasped in dismay. “What the hell are those things?”

“Does it matter?”

“Logan! Fallon—help me! They’re killing Barrett!”

Liana was bleeding from several wounds, but Barrett was staggering around, falling to one knee, pushing himself upright, slashing at a spider-thing, and falling again, in a diminishing cycle of defiance.

“God, Logan, his right arm is gone!”

“Help me!” Liana cried again.

Suddenly Fallon knew what she meant. “Logan, get me through to her! She needs a boost.”

Logan led the way, slashing at the spider creatures with hi star-dagger while their beady eyes focused on their weakened prey. He thrust the blade into the meaty body of one on either side, creating a gap they could squeeze through. Several others pounced on the fallen ones, buying Logan and Fallon extra moments and space to slip within the circle.

Fallon gripped Liana’s shoulder, her palm to the woman’s bare flesh. “Go!”

Logan still gripped Fallon’s other hand.

“Logan, touch Barrett’s skin. Anywhere. Just do it!”

Logan complied without question, placing his hand on Barrett’s neck. “Got him.”

A moment later, Liana’s arms were aglow and she was chanting with haunting authority,
“Sonus vibris… intumis… intumis… intumis.”
The ground began to tremble alarmingly and a deep bass rumble filled the air. Liana took a deep breath and expelled it with one shouted command,
“EXOS!”

A concussive wave rippled outward from Liana and slammed into the encircling creatures en masse. Their lumpy bodies exploded. No other word for it. As if they’d each swallowed an armed grenade at the same moment. Riding the outbound waves of Liana’s concussive spell, most of the creatures’ ruptured fleshy matter was blown away from the group. Spindly legs teetered and fell all about them.

A fleeting smiled danced across Barrett’s bloodless lips. “Good stuff, Liana,” he said with grim satisfaction. Then he collapsed.

Logan knelt beside him, shook his face. “Barrett! Barrett, hold on!”

Barrett’s eyes opened, staring upward for a moment before focusing on Logan’s face. “Not bad, kid,” he said. His body tensed, riding out a coughing spasm. “You’ve got potential, Logan. No—doubt about it.”

Liana whispered urgently, “They tore him up, but he kept fighting. Wouldn’t let them get me. He’s dying, Logan. Too many wounds, too much blood loss. We can’t let him—if he dies here his soul could be lost forever.”

“We’ll get you out of here,” Logan said, but his voice was tight. “We’re taking you home.”

Barrett shook his head weakly, defiant to the end. “Forget about me. Get the ladies out… before something else… before it’s too late.”

“Why should I start listening to you now?” Logan said. He turned to Fallon. “Help me.”

She nodded, supporting Barrett’s other side. Together they lifted him upright. Covered in blood, he continued to bleed freely, but refused to let go of his sword.

“How far….d’you think… can carry me, Logan?”

“Far enough,” Logan said. “Liana find a rift. Take us home.”

“I tried, Logan,” Liana said, tears running down her face as she stared at Barrett’s brutalized face and body. “God, I’ve been trying so hard!”

“That’s okay,” Fallon said, reaching out to grasp Liana’s hand. “We’ll find it together.”

Chapter 53

It was Chief Grainger, and not Gideon, who took out Carnifex’s last functioning eye. And he inflicted the critical wound with a titanium driver. After he’d expended his ammunition, he ducked into a sporting goods store and returned with the golf club. When Gideon took a particularly hard spill, Grainger rushed in front of Carnifex and brandished the golf club to distract the demon. Roaring with laugher, Carnifex bent over and, with one massive hand, grabbed Grainger around the waist. Then, as blood-tinged drool spilled between his jagged, mismatched teeth, the demon began to squeeze.

Grimacing in pain, Grainger whacked the titanium club against Carnifex’s face and, with that single blow, pulped his last remaining eye. Blind and shrieking in pain, the demon flung the police chief aside. Grainger slid across the smooth tile floor on his back and slammed into a wooden kiosk with dozens of oil paintings on display. The plywood walls and canvases collapsed on top of him, but not before Thalia caught the look of astonishment in the man’s eyes. After expending every round of ammunition at his disposal, he couldn’t believe a simple golf club had successfully blinded the giant demon. Thalia knew it was a question of will, of weapons simultaneously in contact with wielder and prey. Earth-bound projectile weapons were too remote to counter rift protection. They were inanimate things, lacking the will of the warrior.

Gideon staggered to his feet and called to Thalia, “It’s time! Do it!”

Ambrose had learned from the ancient documents of the millennia-old battle with Carnifex that destroying some of his eyes had weakened the demon, as if diminished sight equated to diminished will to stay on the foreign side of the rift. But the horns were the real anchor, invested with the power to keep Carnifex solid in a world not his own. Thousands of years ago, his horns had been much shorter and the battle turned on the loss of one of those horns.

Thalia raised her arms as she whispered her incantations. Throughout the mall lights winked out and bulbs popped as electricity siphoned out of the building flowed into her spell casting. During the battle she had maintained a primer charge, enough to allow the energy to flow through her easily, but now she would need as much power as she could contain.

The stabbing pain in the back of her eyes became a distant annoyance, and the pressure that squeezed her neck and pounded her head was a toll to be collected later. She remained focused, taking careful aim, imagining she had already struck her target—then she lashed out, as if she was simply fulfilling her own prophecy of destruction.

The jagged blue arc of lightning shot from her extended fingers and battered Carnifex’s head repeatedly, no matter where he turned, or how he attempted to spin away or duck for cover. His sheer size worked against him. He couldn’t hide from her blasts.

“You can’t do this to me woman!” the demon wailed in incredulous agony. “Not you! Not
you
! It’s impossible!”

She whispered in fierce determination, “Watch me!”

She had to be sure. There would be no second chances. If she failed, everyone trapped in the mall would die, no matter that Carnifex was blind. He would seek them out by scent alone and make them pay a hideous price for his own suffering. Thalia exhausted the accumulated energy she had stoked within herself, unleashing every last shred of power she could channel at him until, finally, her vision blurred and her legs gave out. Dripping with sweat, she dropped to her knees and gasped for breath.

The rest would depend on Gideon.

Carnifex was groggy, on hands and knees, attempting to recover from multiple lightning strikes. As soon as the last blue sparks popped and fizzled around the demon’s scorched head, Gideon appeared from behind a support column and charged. He launched himself into the air and drove the soles of both feet into the side of the blind demon’s head, rattling his wide skull. Probably an attempt to snap Carnifex’s neck. The blow failed to kill the demon, but Carnifex fell on his side, groaning in renewed pain. Gideon sprang to his feet and drove the point of this sword into the base of the demon’s right corkscrew horn. A normal sword might have skated off the bone. A star-sword however had a special potency against rift crossers. The pointed tip wedged itself deep into Carnifex’s skull. Without hesitating, Gideon rocked the sword upward, as if trying to uproot a diseased bush. Bone cracked and the horn leaned at an extreme angle.

Carnifex roared again, bloody spittle spraying from his hideous mouth. The demon tried to rise, pushing himself up with his left arm.

Gideon wrapped his own left arm around the damaged horn as Carnifex tried to stand. With Gideon’s entire weight dangling from the horn, bone cracked again. Gideon slipped free. The horn dangled like a broken branch on a winter tree. As he fell, Gideon swung his sword overhead in an arc that drove the sharp edge against the last sliver of bone keeping the horn attached to the demon’s skull. The severed horn clattered to the floor.

Thalia tried to rise, pushing up from one knee but lacking the strength to finish the motion. Physically exhausted and magically drained, she was more concerned about the painful pounding in her head. Gideon was halfway through his daunting task, and though Thalia entertained no possibility she could provide further assistance, she was determined to stay focused—to stay awake!—long enough to see the end of it.