Jeremy Robinson - MirrorWorld

He shakes his head. “You look… normal. Better than normal.” He motions for me to look, and I do. My body is healed. No cuts. No scrapes. No scabs. And the vast amount of bruising covering my torso is gone. I might not look like a Dread, but this kind of healing must come from them. And now that I’m thinking about it, I feel stronger and more energized than I can remember feeling ever before.

“So, I guess that’s good news,” he says, then changes topics, perhaps sensing my discomfort. “What did you see?”

“You don’t want to know.” I head for the back of the SUV, pop the back door, and open my gear bag.

Before I can dig inside, Blair steps up next to me, holding out a smartphone. “Still nothing on the local tracking app, but—”

The phone chimes. We all flinch.

“It’s got a signal,” Blair says, as I take the device.

A map of New Orleans centered on my location is displayed on the phone. A blue dot reveals my position just before the bridge. Using my thumb to move the map, I scroll upward. A red dot appears, dead center in the park, on the north end of Scout Island, surrounded by Couturie Forest, the only swath of forested bayou to be found in the city. On the plus side, she’s not far. Not so much on the plus side, it’s going to be a slog reaching her, in either dimension. Despite the good news of locating Maya, something confuses me. “This is more than a half mile away.”

Blair looks at the screen without taking it from me. “It’s a GPS signal. She’s in our frequency again.”

Why? I think. What’s the point in bringing her back and forth between frequencies? The answer is obvious. “They’re luring us in.”

“Us?” Cobb says, sounding as worried as I feel. None of us wants to walk into a trap.

“Lyons,” I say, hoping I’m right. “They don’t just know he’s coming; they want him, too.”

A sudden chill runs over my arms. The hair stands on end.

“Do you feel that?” Cobb asks.

I don’t answer.

I can’t.

The Dread are near, and some unlocked primal part of my mind says that if I acknowledge their presence, they’ll acknowledge mine in a horrible way. It turns out, that is their intention, regardless of my actions.

“Ah!” Blair shouts. He’s by the driver’s-side door, looking about for something that isn’t there, or at least can’t be seen. I haven’t shifted my vision yet, but I know we’re not alone.

Suddenly, Blair starts scratching at his face, like someone’s just dumped a bucket of spiders over him. He shouts and hops, his cries warbling. For a moment, I’m paralyzed as fear spilling over from Blair takes hold. He screams, and it feels like a lightning bolt has struck my chest.

I hate fear. Even more than the Dread, it is my enemy.

“What do we do to our enemies?” The voice belongs to a drill sergeant, his words returning as a fresh memory.

“Kill them,” I respond, both in memory and in the present. “Fucking kill them.”

I step around the side of the SUV, weapons forgotten, fists clenched, but am stopped by Blair. He levels a shaking handgun toward my chest. I nearly retreat but manage to stand my ground. A subtle shift in the frequency of my vision reveals Blair’s company. A Medusa-hands has its tendrils buried deep in his head while a mothman hovers above, whispering waves of fear into the man, the little limbs lining its abdomen shaking frantically. It’s a lethal combination, and for a moment, I think it’s directed toward me. But it’s not.

“Don’t let… them… win.” They’re Blair’s last words before he turns the gun on himself and pulls the trigger.

The sharp report of the handgun and sight of this brave man’s brains bursting out of his skull both increase my fear and galvanize my course of action. With a scream, I charge, lunging at the Medusa-hands as it retracts its tendrils from Blair’s head.

Halfway to the creature, I realize I probably should have taken a weapon. But it’s too late now. I’m committed. And I’m not exactly defenseless.

I leap into the air, painlessly shift my body between frequencies to the world between—which I note is a mix of Dread world trees and New Orleans city—cock my fist back, and drive it into the bottom of the thing’s triangular head, impacting the yellow vein-covered flesh beneath two of its four eyes. The impact is solid. The monster flails away, sliding smoothly at first but then stumbling and falling. As it falls, the black shroud covering its lower limbs falls aside, revealing at least twenty thin, triple-jointed legs, all ending in sharp barbs.

If the Medusa-hands were alone, there might be time to rush back and grab a gun or knife, but it’s not alone, and there isn’t time. Before I can even think about what to do next, a wave of fear tears through me, scouring away my fragile emotional defenses the way a nuclear blast would remove my skin.

But I stand against it. Maybe it’s the rage, or the part of me that’s becoming more Dread, but the fear, while powerful, doesn’t completely undo me. It does, however, freeze me in place, all my energy going toward overcoming the effect.

A memory surfaces. My first kiss with Maya. In the rain. Like some Hollywood cliché except soaking wet, cold, and out of our heads in love. I scream, but not in fear. A vibration moves through my body, curbing the effect of the Dread’s influence. When my mind clears enough, I turn my eyes up toward the mothman. It’s ten feet away, four wings beating, hovering beyond the reach of my physical body. Its four red eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. I’m not sure the things can even blink, but this slight expression of emotion, of doubt, in the monster’s split-pupil eyes is the last bit of encouragement I need.

I stand on shaking legs. Feels like I’m lifting a bulldozer. But the harder I fight, the less the weight, until suddenly I’m free. Like a snapped elastic band, the wave of fear generated by the mothman pulls back, the whisper cut short, pursued by an attack of my own. My body buzzes with energy, static whispering-roaring. And the Dread… it arches back and clutches its head. The furiously beating wings go rigid and the monster plunges from the sky, landing in a heap. The pain of pushing fear is gone, replaced by a sense of power.

I slip back into the real world for a moment to check on Cobb.

He gasps at my return, clutching the side of the SUV, Faithful in hand. But rather than take the weapon from him, I decide to enable his recovery from the fear effect. “Cobb, I’m going to bring one of them to you! Get ready for a fight!”

“What?” he shouts in what I now easily recognize as terror.

I slip back into the world between and bend over the recovering mothman, grasping its arm, which is covered in short, thick hairs. I pull it up, lean back hard, and propel the thing toward the side of the SUV. Before letting go, I force it into our reality and slam it into the vehicle. It crashes against the door and falls to its hands and knees.

Cobb shouts in surprise, jumping back, but quickly realizes the monster isn’t affecting him. With a battle cry, Cobb raises the machete into the air.

I don’t watch it come down. Back in the world between, the Medusa-hands is back on its many feet, scrabbling toward me over pavement, tendrils stretching for my head. There’s no avoiding it—by conventional means. I slip fully out of the world between and dive forward, passing through the Dread’s location. I feel a chill through my body, but nothing more. I roll to my feet just as I reenter the world between, coming up behind the not-so-spry Dread.

I sweep its legs out, snapping some of them. The Dread retreats fully to the mirror world before hitting the ground, and I follow it. The thing lands with a splash, much of it now underwater. I jump on its chest, which feels like thin skin wrapped over bony nodules, and stare into its yellow eyes, seething with anger.