Kim Harrison - The Undead Pool

“Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Jenks said, still hiding in my hair. We’d taken a moment after fleeing the train to get me on Etude’s back instead of in his grip, but Jenks had opted to stay where he was, tangled and close.

“Like the fires of hell leaking out?” I said, and he snickered. “Yep.” Oh, she was pissed.

Etude shifted his balance as the earth seemed to rise up, and with his wings making one last pulse of motion, we were down.

The silence was deafening. Not even a cricket or frog from the nearby stream. It was as if the humming force from the line was pressing all other sounds out of existence. My mystics swarmed at my apprehension as I swung my leg over and slid to the ground. The shock reverberated up to my knees and jolted the numbness from me. Faint in the distance was Loveland’s siren. The splintered mystics were coming.

“Thank you, Etude.”

He was a lumpy shadow in the moonlight, the gargoyle flicking an ear to acknowledge me. “It’s a small thing. I’ll wait over there if you need a ride home.”

Home? The memory of my front stoop with the sign over the door shadowy in the dim light rose up, and the mystics in me pooled their excitement. None of them left to go into the line, worrying me as I pulled my fog-damp hair from my shoulder so Bis could land on it. His presence joined mine with a soft thump, and turning to the glowing line, I sighed. I’d left Ivy and Trent. If I had stayed, I would’ve gone insane as Bancroft had.

“They’ll get over it,” Jenks said, seeming to know where my thoughts were as he clambered his way out of my hair and onto Bis’s head where he stood between his ears, hands on his hips and feet spread wide.

Where my thoughts were was actually a pretty good analogy, because as soon as I turned my mind to Ivy and Trent, an image surfaced. It had been there for a while, ignored as I flew to the Loveland ley line. It was of Ivy, leaning against a FIB car, arms over her chest and her lips pressed tight. Nearby, Trent was talking persuasively to another officer, the news crews waiting by the grounded copter. Landon’s men were being led away, most of them limping. We’d got them, but the victory seemed hollow.

Are you sure you want to lose this? I thought, then quashed it. Sure, it was great seeing the world through a thousand eyes, but it had hurt. No wonder Bancroft had committed suicide. The Goddess could have them—have them all. It was like being connected to a line all the time. They were never quiet, and I just wanted to sleep.

“Oh, for Tink’s ever-loving humping,” Jenks whispered, a dull red dust seeping from him. “I think that’s them. Rachel, can you see?”

I nodded, feet shifting in the knee-high grass as I tried to dampen my aura. I didn’t know what I was going to do if they ignored the line glowing like a miniature sun between us and fell into me again. If the sirens rising up in our wake hadn’t been enough, I would’ve known it was them by little pings of energy they gave off like heat lightning. Thirty seconds. I guessed thirty seconds, and we’d know if everything was for naught or not.

Bis’s tail circling around my back and armpit tightened. “You want me to do anything?”

I shook my head, heart pounding as a cloud of mystics boiled over the tree line in a glow rivaling the moonlight. You go first, I thought at the mystics in me, and in a reluctant, swirling wave, they lifted from my soul. All of you, I reiterated, and disjointed images of the last few days sparked through my mind as they left.

My thoughts were finally empty, and I took a slow breath, relishing the silence. An adrenaline-based shiver shook me when the glow from the line jumped as my mystics entered it.

“Go, go, go . . .” Jenks whispered, and I found myself backing away from the line as a cloud of splintered mystics eddied to it and balked.

“Take them!” I shouted. “Damn it all to hell! Take them!”

“Rache!” Jenks shrilled. “Get down!”

I dropped, instinctively tapping the line and making a circle. Fear rolled up as the wet earth hit me and the long grass scraped my face. Every time I touched a line, mystics overwhelmed me. But this time there was nothing but the pure clean force of the line. She had them. She had them and they were no longer mine!

Relief echoed in my new emptiness, and with Bis standing beside me, I looked up as a white flash of energy exploded from my ley line. It lit the grove, turning the leaves razor sharp and the grass into slivers of glass. Lips parted, I watched in awe as for an instant, the world hung unmoving, and then the pure light was sucked back into the line taking everything not real with it.

The sudden silence was a shock, broken by the running creek and the lowering wail of a distant emergency siren fading to nothing. Before me, the ley line was a hint of presence, invisible as it should be. The energy in my protection circle hummed. It was simple, the one dimension of sound feeling hollow. Hand shaking, I reached out to feel the strength of it until I got too close and my aura broke the charm. I shook as the flow shifted to run through me back to the line. They were gone. Everything felt normal.

Everything felt . . . dull.

“Did we do it?” Bis asked, and I slowly sat up and brushed the dampness from my palms.

“I think we did.” Aching, I rose to my feet and looked at the moon, not believing it was finished. My brow eased and I almost cried. They were gone, and all I wanted to do was go home and go to bed.

“Bis, if your dad’s still around, I’d like to take him up on his offer of a ride,” I said as I thought of Ivy and then Trent. I didn’t want to travel through the lines right now. Maybe not ever.

He smiled, his black teeth catching the moonlight. “I’ll get him.” He lifted off in a downward pulse of wings, and Jenks darted after him. Somehow, I thought it would have been harder than that, and I sighed, feeling empty and one-dimensional.

Pain! Betrayal! Mystic emotion slammed into me, and I spun to the line as they darted into me, burrowing deep.

“No!” I shouted, hands over my head and cowering as more arrowed out of the line. I stumbled, falling to my hands and knees as wild magic flashed through me, and my hands gripped the soil as it burned, and burned, and never eased. What had happened? They’d gone in. I’d felt them leave me!

“You!” thundered a familiar voice, and I looked up past my stringy hair, gaping at Ayer standing before me, sopping wet and pale—too pale to be alive anymore. A cement block was tied to his leg, and he shambled forward, oblivious to it even as it brought him to a halt.

“Ayer?” I gasped, confused and unable to think past the mystics pouring into me, all of them frightened and making my head pound. How had he gotten here? How had he gotten twice dead?

But the answer was obvious, and I pushed up until I sat back on my heels, trying to breathe around the mystics in my head. Landon had killed Ayer. He’d dumped him in the Ohio River by the looks of it, where the cold had kept his neural net somewhat functional—because everything seemed to be working. As zombies went, he was a good one, because it wasn’t Ayer anymore. It was the Goddess.

“Ah, I can explain,” I said as I wobbled to my feet. The mystics were pooling in familiar places, making the pinch of wild magic almost bearable. It hurt though, solidifying my idea that the mystics would eventually kill me, even if they didn’t mean to. I wasn’t a being of energy and space. I was made of mass, and I felt the power squeeze from me as my muscles bunched.