Fused in Fire (Page 22)

Silence drifted down onto the newly stilled path.

“I should go home and lock myself up. This can’t be good. I think I have a rage problem.” I wiped my sweating forehead, then clutched at my hammering heart. “A very bad rage problem. The cure is probably yoga. Yoga seems to cure everything. Maybe I should head back and enroll in some yoga classes.”

That was…effective. Not low profile, but effective.

This time the pride rang through his thoughts loud and clear. Also giddiness. The vampire part of him had loved the show of force and violence.

“I don’t know if I’m happy that you can understand me again, or severely worried that my ethics committee is a creature distinctly known for a lack of ethics.”

Both, I should think.

“Yes. Probably. Let’s find that freaking river before we meet any more bullies. I don’t want to know what I’m going to do next. It’ll probably make me faint. Or worse, make me giddy like you.”

Both, judging by the display a moment ago.

“Do me a favor. Stop thinking.”

I didn’t like his soft chuckle. He was getting way too much enjoyment out of my newfound talent for savagery.

The problem was, like them or not, I’d need a bigger dose of these new talents soon enough. The demons I’d just gone up against were probably level twos or threes, creatures that could readily be summoned to the Brink. Even the tough one earlier had only been a level four or so, even though he’d clearly had some special powers. These were the flunkies. The hacks. The ones who couldn’t make it in the big leagues. Except for a couple of new magical traits I hadn’t seen before, they were nothing.

Anxiety made my stomach churn.

If these were the lackeys, what would I find across the river?

Chapter Fifteen

We passed the charred remains of the demon that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. All it had probably wanted to do was trade a trinket or something, and instead it had witnessed a psycho thumping demons with their own extremities.

“You’re just relaxing and taking it easy, huh?” I asked Darius quietly as we made our way. A pair of growls sounded somewhere to the left beyond the rock, followed by snarling and hollering. A fight had started. “Letting the girl take care of everything.”

You are doing a wonderful job. I would hate to get in your way and prevent you from kicking heads.

“Super. I can see that you’ll forever remind me of that. In my defense, it was a tense situation and I wasn’t thinking. Or in control.”

Yes. It pulled at my primal side in…pleasant ways. Almost as alluring as ripping off arms and chasing demons around with them…

“Oh good. I needed to know that, thanks,” I grumbled. “And it was just the one arm.”

I slowed when the path opened up in front of us. My heart, which had nearly returned to normal speed, started to thump faster again. We were coming on an intersection. I worried I’d see demons in it.

“The good news is…” I said as I stalked forward, my power throbbing. I felt the earlier demon chant vibrating through me. Blood! Blood! Blood! “At this rate, no one will try to present me to my dad. They’ll ship me back to the surface as quickly as possible for fear I’ll kill them all.”

Or want to fight you in a show of bravado.

“Don’t help, please.” I gingerly touched the rock wall and felt a prick on my palm. Too sharp to flatten against—not that doing so would really help me.

Figuring I just had to go for it, I summoned all my power and stalked out into the space with a confident swagger. My sword pushed against my back, wanting to be taken out and swung around. The weight of my gun reminded me that demons could also be shot.

Stillness greeted me.

I let out a relieved breath and looked around.

Jagged rock walls on all sides, nearly uniform in height. We’d come from one prong of a fork in the road. I turned to look at the other prong, along which the scuffle from a moment ago must’ve taken place. No one walked out. Either they’d been going the opposite direction, or they were dead.

The pathway in front of us led away right. No hovels peeked over the walls, and no voices floated our direction.

Plunk.

I gritted my teeth. The leaking roof was starting to get on my freaking nerves.

Have you felt any of these demons? Darius thought-asked.

“What do you mean?” I started forward again, not wanting to curse my good luck.

The level-five demon in Seattle, and the one we called not long ago, seemed to feel your power. And you theirs, correct?

I thought back as we hurried along. “Their power made mine throb—either the fire or the ice, depending on their type of magic. But ever since we got down here, my power has become a beast all its own.”

They should feel your magic.

“At first I thought they couldn’t, but maybe they do. As you’ve seen—safely from the sidelines, I might add—I am constantly noticed. I should invite them to tea so I can ask if it’s my power they are feeling or my mug they are seeing. Or both.” I analyzed the rock walls, which were reducing again. There wasn’t any apparent rhyme or reason for their fluctuating size. “Why did they put in walls, anyway? Why create corridors that essentially lead to the same places? It’s not like these are streets with homes, and the occupants want privacy. They’ve made it so you have to stay on the path. You can’t go over the walls unless you want to cut yourself up. It feels like we’re rats in some science experiment in the Brink. I don’t get the reason for it.”

Being that the creatures in this section of the edges are extremely volatile, maybe privacy is exactly what they’re after. The fewer demons each sees, the fewer problems there will be.

I frowned, because maybe, but there weren’t exactly tons of nooks and crannies on the paths. Hiding wasn’t really a legitimate option. Besides, the paths just dumped out into the open. Privacy en route to the meeting didn’t mean much if you didn’t also have it while conducting business.

The rocks around us fell away. Another step and the imagery around us changed dramatically, blanking out my thoughts. I turned around with wide eyes as Darius pressed up against me. Behind us, the corridors of rough rock walls had disappeared, replaced with a desolate landscape stretching as far as I could see. Gray stone had turned to hard mud or clay, run through with cracks.

I turned back around, gripping Darius’s arm.

Directly in front of us, a single pier led into the smooth water of the river. It stretched out in front of us until it disappeared behind a thick layer of gray fog. No ripples or current disturbed the surface. Desolate beach ran along it, and just like behind us, there wasn’t another person or creature as far as the eye could see.

“Only one dock,” Darius said out loud, clearly wanting to interrupt the unnatural silence.

“Right in front of us.” I patted my gun for comfort. “Was that the only path to get to the river, or would that pier have magically appeared in front of no matter where we’d entered?” I looked around again. “This smells like mind-fuckery to me.”

I walked along the beach, watching the dock as though it would follow. It stayed right where I’d left it. So did the fog, not shifting and rolling like normal fog. The dried mud under my feet didn’t feel as smooth as it looked, nor did it give way like that substance normally would have. In fact, the hardness felt like the stone we’d just left.

I stopped and looked up. The canopy of rock from the edges of the underworld had been replaced by limitless gray sky, the same color as the fog. Seeing it stretch forever, like the beach, like the new canvas of dried desert behind me, gave me vertigo.

Yanking my gaze away, I looked back toward Darius.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach.

He was gone. The spot he’d been standing in was empty.

I glanced to the side. The dock was lined up with me. It was no longer where I had been.

“Holy tater tits, Batman.” I broke out in a cold sweat, fighting the urge to sprint back in his direction. If I did that, and he was just obscured by fog or an illusion, I’d miss him, and in this place, it was entirely possible I’d never find him again.

Plunk.

I froze. And looked up.

The gray sky was there, same as before, but that had been a drop of water. I was sure of it. Which meant the leaking rock ceiling was up there somewhere.

An illusion. That’s all this was. Trickery of the eye. Magic intended to do what those walls had done: force us on a certain path.

Mental fuckery, like I’d thought before.

I closed my eyes, focusing on my connection with Darius. I could feel his beating heart, pounding rhythmically deep inside me. Strong and sure, it wasn’t at an elevated speed, which meant he wasn’t freaking out like I was.

Could he see me?

Instead of opening my eyes and looking around wildly, like I’d just done to no avail, I looked internally, feeling the natural homing device assured by the bond. It was a beacon that would allow me to find him anywhere. In any world. We would never be lost from each other.

I walked like a blind person, waving my arms in front of me to keep from bumping into anything. With my luck, a pole would randomly appear just so I’d knock my head against it. If there was YouTube in this place, the residents would go to town thumbs-upping that little nugget. It would be right up there with the whole head-kicking debacle.