Pale Demon (The Hollows #9)(108)
Author: Kim Harrison

I shook my head, or at least I would have if I had one. I don’t know.

Well, when you’re done, bring Gally in to separate your construct from your conscious thought. Let him in, Rachel. Ignore the fact that he will see everything. Moment by moment, every little desire and hate you have, your soul sifting through his fingers as he pulls the construct free. What he doesn’t see might be left here, so let him entirely in, she thought, and I had a moment of perfect panic. It’s rather more intimate than pinning you to the wall for a kiss, she mocked.

I didn’t like this, but what choice did I have? It wasn’t as if Al hadn’t been in my thoughts before. Wait! I don’t know what to do! I thought as I felt her start to distance herself.

Newt’s consciousness swooped and dipped about mine, making me dizzy. Creating a collective thought real enough to touch is to prove you have the ability to shelter another soul within yours without absorbing it or accidentally changing what should not be changed. I felt a wave of melancholy come from her, dimming the stars. Do you know why demons are born able to twist curses? Their mothers curse them while still in the womb so they can defend themselves from birth. But it takes finesse to lay a curse within another’s soul while you’re sheltering it within your own. Making a tulpa and allowing another to exist freely in it is the same. It’s also why Algaliarept can’t remember what he looks like under all that prettiness he shows the world. He can’t pick out what is rightfully his and what his mother added. Beautiful, beautiful baby. I never had any, but if I had, I’d have made her look just like you.

It was starting to make sense. Making a construct would show I was fit to be a mother-a mother to demon children I would never have. So…what do I do? I asked, wondering if the demon who had helped Newt make that memory of an upscale bar was still alive, or if she’d killed him. Maybe it had been Minias.

Newt swam in circles around me, sending out ripples to the edge of the empty collective. I do so like it when no one is here. Quiet.

Newt? I prompted, and she returned.

Remember a place. Make it real in your mind. Fill the void here, and Al will separate it from you and make it real. That’s their part. All you have to do is let him in.

I had to trust him. Damn it! How did I get here? Just think of a place?

In my mind, it was as if I could see her bobbing in the water before me, silver stars running down her face like water drops. What do you miss the most? Now that you’re here forever?

What do I miss? I echoed, thinking immediately of Jenks, Ivy, and my church, but sharing that with the demons wasn’t going to happen. My garden in the sun. The sun I would never see again.

Heartache seemed to double me over. The sun. I was going to miss the sun. That was what I could show them. Not the sun in my garden, but somewhere else, where the sun ruled everything, not just now, but for all the past and all the future. I would give the demons a forest so old and dead that only stones remained. I’d give them that, and nothing more.

With a ping that hurt my soul, I felt the memory of the desert rise in me, carrying all the lonely, empty desperation I’d felt when I thought I’d lost Jenks. I hunched, my eyes pinched tightly shut as my heart ached, resonating with the reality that I’d lost everything. Empty. Everything was empty, and the echo of space washed through my skull.

Heat soaked into me like an internal blanket, first frightening, then soothing. The hint of the abandoned ley lines in the desert seemed to glow, dead and gone and useless. From the inside of my eyelids came a reflection of them, etching through the collective like girders bracketing time. And from there, everything built upon itself, the entire desert melting back into existence. The chirp of insects; the soft click of a beetle; the wind pushing against me, oily and slippery, not recognizing me as I stood in the middle of a lost field of power and begged for a miracle.

The memory resonated in me, pulsing from me like a wave. It cascaded over my mental landscape, coloring everything, making it deeper, solid, real. I had been helpless then, and I was helpless now, and I held back a sob, refusing to cry. The scent of rock rose, strong, ancient air that dinosaurs breathed, finally loosed by a rockslide-once frozen by chance but now free to move again. I felt the immensity of my loneliness, and it hurt.

Open your eyes, little demon, Newt whispered in my thoughts.

I opened my eyes, blinking at the glare.

"Oh my God," I said, my lips drying out in the sun that existed in my thoughts. I was in the desert. Almost high noon. I was wearing dusty sneakers, and a short-sleeved shirt clung to me from a sweat that barely existed before the dry air stripped it from me. Grit ground under my feet as I turned, taking it in, hearing the emptiness, feeling the space. I knew it wasn’t real, but it felt real.

I stood on a paved road, my shadow small under me. Behind me was my mother’s car. Before me spilled the world, so vast that my eyes defined the edges with their very failure to comprehend. The sun was high, savagely baking the pinks, purples, and oranges out of the rock. The ground fell from my feet like a mountain turned inside out. A wind I knew existed only in my thoughts pushed on me with the affronted force of a god being asked to stop.

And I had made this.

Shocked, I turned to Newt, beside me. She was dressed in tight capri jeans and a brightly colored top. Dark sunglasses hid her eyes, and a ribbon of moisture ran beside her nose. A silk scarf covering her hair made her look like a fifties movie star out on location. I think she had dressed me, because I certainly hadn’t.

"Is it real?" I asked. "Is it done?" The sky was so blue. I might never see it again, but I had it here-in my memory.

She smiled, her lips too red and an overabundance of blush on her cheeks. "Let Al in. Only Al. This needs to be remembered. They all need to remember this."

I had no idea what she meant, but I thought of Al.

A quiver went through me and the world seemed to hiccup. In a cascading wash, he spilled into my mind as if he had been there waiting, and when I opened the door, he fell in. He stood beside me in his Mesopotamia robes, his mouth open and his pupils so small his eyes were like pools of blood. Shock poured from him as he saw what I had done-and fear, but if it was because of what I had done or because now he had to peel it out of my brain, I didn’t know.

"My God," he whispered, taking it in. "She even has the old ley lines."

"Al?" I warbled, scared, and it was as if he caught my soul as he grabbed my shoulder when my knees gave out. He hoisted me into his arms, trying to see my construct and search my eyes at the same time.

"Take it, Al," Newt said softly. "Before she loses consciousness."