Ever After (The Hollows #11)(34)
Author: Kim Harrison

"Sorry," I said, and he spun, coattails furling and heartache carefully hidden.

"That’s what the rings do," he said, urging me away with his gloved hands. "It’s not anything I wasn’t expecting. Go."

Nodding, I took a breath and moved myself into reality. Again I breathed the fresh air, relishing the warmth of the yellow sun and the soft hush of the wind in the trees. It was no wonder demons were bad-tempered. They lived in a virtual hell.

Remembering Al, I toned down my thoughts of relief.

Good, they work, he thought, and I squirmed as his masculine, domineering presence solidified in mine. I wasn’t sure if they would between realities.

"Good Lord, can you ease up?" I asked, feeling as if he was breathing down my neck, and I felt him chuckle.

Uncomfortable?

I looked over the fallow, weed-choked garden, seeing the outlines of a man’s dream of a perfect spot of truth. "A little, yes," I said, then sighed in relief when the spun-adrenaline feeling he was instilling in me seemed to fade. He was everything masculine, and having it so close was unnerving. "Thanks," I said, backing out of the line and looking at it with my second sight. I could see Al watching me like a foppish ghost from a romance novel. "So, how do I fix it?"

I changed my mind. You watch. I’ll investigate. I’m going to follow the purple line inward, see if there’s an aura signature on it. Maybe I can plug it. It’s clearly a manufactured flaw, and as such, it will have a beginning and an end with which to unravel it.

I smiled. "And with proof, they will go after Ku’Sox!"

I’d rather fix it, he thought at me wryly. If we can’t do that, we will all still die. That is, everyone but you and Ku’Sox.

My attention came up from where I’d been scuffing the grass. "Then you think he has a way around that curse?"

He nodded, and my heart pounded. "But you said not to step into the purple line."

That was before the rings.

Distrusting this, I stared at him, the red sheen of a dimensional barrier between us.

There’s nothing in either reality that will sever our connection through the rings, he thought, glaring at me. If I get stuck, pull me out. Ah, without physically going into the purple shit, that is. If both of us are in there, what’s the point of a lifeline?

Still I looked at him, weighing his body language against the emotions I was sensing through the rings. He was better than me at blocking them, and I wasn’t sure why he was nervous. Al, I thought at him, hands on my hips. I don’t like this plan.

We don’t have time to find a plan you like. His thoughts slipped into mine, oily with deceit. Newt is paying for the volume lost with her own space. The sooner we get this hole plugged, the better. I just got my atrium back, and I don’t want to lose it.

He was moving toward the purple line, and fear slid down my spine, magnified by Al’s own worry. "Al!" I cried out, hand outstretched.

Al stopped, turned, and gave me a last look. Hold on to me, I saw him say, hearing it echo in my thoughts as well. Don’t let go.

And then, he stepped into the purple line.

I gasped-it felt as if an ice pick was hammered into my skull from the top right to the bottom left. I screamed, falling to my knees. Al’s pain. It was Al’s pain, and I floundered, forcing my eyes open. I couldn’t see him, and I panted, almost losing him in my thoughts. Forcing the bile down, I closed my eyes and searched for him with my mind. I was swimming in a black cloud of acid, unable to open my eyes, arms outstretched and burning as I followed down a rising trace of agony like bubbles to find him.

"Got you!" I gasped, and I wrapped my soul around his.

I flung myself backward with him, crying out because it felt as if my thoughts had been ripped apart. My back hit the scattered tufts of grass, and I stared up at a perfect blue sky. The pain was gone. Al wasn’t with me.

"Al!" I scrambled to my feet, realizing what happened. I’d tried to pull him into reality when the sun was up. It wasn’t happening. I couldn’t feel him anymore, and in a panic, I rushed back into the line, willing myself into the ever-after with wild abandonment.

The line burned, scraping across me like sandpaper. Even with my second sight, I couldn’t see Al, and I wondered if he had been sucked into that purple line. If I physically went in after him, we’d both be lost. I had to stay where I was. But perhaps with the rings . . . Maybe I could find him with my mind and bring both his body and soul back?

I gave one last look at the broken, red-sheened world the demons were consigned to-a hell of their own making designed to entrap and kill the elves but that had only damned themselves. And then, falling to my knees, I closed my eyes and sent my mind into the line, letting it be pulled into the purple-black nothing.

My breath came out in a pained whimper, and I fell against the dry earth, my hands spasmodically clenching on the broken rock, my cheek pressed into the dirt. My mind was squished to a thin line, my thoughts reduced to a colorless state. My heart beat, and that hurt even more.

Al! I thought, and the pain redoubled as I found him, struggling to think, starved for thought under the crushing pressure. There were sparkles in my distant fingertips and toes. I was suffocating. If I didn’t get us out of here soon, I was going to forget how to breathe and we’d both die.

My skin and thoughts on fire, I wrapped what I could of myself around the echo of emotion that was left of Al. With one last agonizing push of will, I sent us home, back to where my body jerked in convulsions in the red dust.

The harsh wind of the ever-after hit me like a slap. The heavy weight of Al slammed into me, and we both cried out as he slid to the earth. Sharp fragments of stone bit into my side, and I heard him take a sobbing breath of air. I tried to move, my scream of pain coming out as a whimper. My thoughts still burned, and I finally got my eyes open.

We were in the ever-after, the humming ley line still unchanged above us, still holding that core of purple nothing. Beside me, Al lay askew, his green velvet coat charred, mimicking the state of his mind, his aura. Pain-racked, I managed to sit up, tears running down my face as my eyes tried to clear. My clothes were untouched, and I wondered how much of this pain was mine and how much was Al’s.

Al’s body shifted as he took a ragged breath, and I touched him, my hand shaking and the ring glinting a bright silver white in the red air. It was black no longer, the tarnish burned away.

"Al?" I croaked. The sun hurt, but I couldn’t reach the parasol, shifting back and forth in the wind that scoured me to my bones.

"I thought you’d . . . left . . . me."

I could barely hear him, and I leaned on his shoulder as I scooted closer. He gasped at the added weight, and the pain in my head doubled. "I couldn’t pull you out into reality," I explained. "I had to move to the ever-after to do it."