C.E. Murphy - Truthseeker

In his world, calling on the trinity of her faith was a spell of significant power: the godless Barrow-lands were vulnerable to it. In hers , a world of many gods and faiths, the simple exorcism she’d called on was only the beginning of a ritual that could banish demons. “But I don’t know the longer version!”

Dafydd was there, cutting through nightwings with a blade of electricity in one hand and offering help up with the other. Lara seized his hand and flew to her feet. For the space of a breath they were nose to nose, and Dafydd’s voice was quiet under the screams of monsters and mortals alike: “Call on the heart of your magic. Nightwings fail before the light.”

“I don’t know how,” Lara whispered, but he was gone, pulling lightning from the air and wielding it with faultless precision. It had to exhaust him, Lara realized abruptly: his magic wasn’t natural to her world, forcing him to fight against the same faith and laws that had weakened her attempted exorcism.

But the nightwings still drew power from the Barrow-lands, its magic feeding their strength as much as the bleak riders on their backs pushing them forward. Lara could see it in scatter-shot glimpses, truth ringing short sharp chimes in her head.

The heart of her magic was the music of truth. She had wished, earlier, for a way to couch harsh words in softening song, and it suddenly seemed a viable path. She dropped to her knees—making herself a smaller target, putting herself in a position of prayer—and began to sing, a thin weak version of the only song she could think of.

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me …” In the space of a breath Lara whispered, “Kelly, I need help. I need faith.”

Kelly’s screams broke off, replaced by astonishment. “You know I don’t believe in God.”

Forget God! Lara wanted to shout. Believe in me ! But there was no time: she sang the next words, still struggling to put power behind them. “I once was lost, but now am found …”

Big hands folded over hers. Lara’s eyes popped open and Dickon gave her an embarrassed smile. His baritone, though, was deep and powerful, lending strength to Lara’s voice as they sang, “… was blind, but now I see.”

The nightwings etched into brilliant white light, coming vividly clear in Lara’s gaze. They were warped: that was the impression of riders she’d glimpsed. The creatures she’d encountered in the Barrow-lands were sleek killing machines: these leeched back to the breach between the worlds, as if the Barrow-lands pulled them back. They became more ephemeral the farther they were from the split, though the leaders still struck with vicious, painful attacks.

Lara lurched to her feet, forgetting the words to the hymn herself, but Dickon continued to sing, strong and certain. A second voice joined in over the rupture of gunshots: Washington, singing harmony to Dickon’s melody, their voices entwining like they’d practiced in choir a hundred times.

Buoyed by the song, by the tones that rang through it—not just what they sang, but the passion and conviction beneath it—Lara walked forward, eyes on the rip in the air. The bleached-out nightwings shrieked and wheeled to escape her, as if her presence was anathema to them. Some drove back through the black tear, but more simply scattered, tearing away from the hole that dragged them back. Those who escaped it snapped into the sleeker shape she’d seen in the Barrow-lands and winged forward, skreeing triumph. Where they broke free, the breach bled thick black ichor that spat and sizzled when it hit the concrete floor.

Power leaped in Lara as she stared at the rip, chimes ringing with such violence there could be no music to it. It grew worse as she lifted a hand, bringing it nearer still to the rip.

The raging bells told her the doorway wasn’t true in the way an arrow might not be true: it was warped, a thing not meant to be. That was what the worldwalking spell did, created a mistake between two disparate lands that allowed them, briefly, to touch. It could be set right, the magic undone, closed off again, by one who understood the inherent untruth of its making.

Lara put her hand over the tear in the world, drew breath, and sang it closed.

Power rushed out of her, clashing bells turning by slow degrees to chords, then to single notes, and finally to a thin sweet sound of purity as the gash shriveled and shrank to nothing beneath her palm. Lara sagged against a concrete pillar, dizzy with exhaustion as she tried to focus on the fight.

Dickon’s song stopped, his jaw fallen open as he knelt where Lara had left him. Kelly was crouched a few feet away, knees drawn up so she could just barely see over them. She’d never begun screaming again, though her eyes looked like she still might decide to.

Dafydd and Washington stood between Lara and her friends, each fighting in their own way. The attacking nightwings paled as Lara watched, turning gray with the sudden break in the link to the Barrow-lands. Dafydd roared triumph, lightning cracking from his hands to destroy dozens of the creatures at once. The survivors screeched, making a flurry around Dafydd and falling back again as fresh electricity snapped around him.

Under the sound of wings, of screams, of lightning leashed, a familiar click rang loud in Lara’s ears. Familiar, but only from film; a quiet sound, something she shouldn’t have been able to hear in the noise. The sound of a gun chamber coming up empty, no bullet to fire.

Lara screamed, much too late. The nightwings wheeled away from Dafydd and descended on Washington as if they sensed his vulnerability. Dafydd bellowed and spread his hands, but this time no lightning came, nothing to tear black beasts away from the detective’s fighting form. Claws dug into his flesh, the nightwings struggling to steal him as they fled.

His weight proved too much: almost as one, they dropped him, one straggler with tangled claws crashing to the concrete with him as he fell. Kelly screamed this time; Lara’s hands were fisted against her mouth, cutting off any sound.

She could not, from the small distance, see if the detective still breathed. Gashes and punctures tore his body, made a red bleeding mess of his clothes, and his eyes were open, staring at the ceiling, mouth pulled in a rictus of pain.

The nightwings grew increasingly pale as they spun together, their amorphous mass darting from one exhausted form to another. Kelly shrieked and slashed at their cloud as they came toward her, but Dafydd threw lightning and they retreated with a howl. A funnel formed, rushing the sole open path in the garage.

Rich Cooper stood in the gates, duty weapon still lifted but emptied of rounds, and had no chance at all as the nightwings slammed into his chest, and disappeared.

The silence left in the wake of their screams was astonishing. Cooper broke it with a faint sick sound, fingers plastered against his chest as though he could find, or draw out, what had entered him. Then he snarled; a feral expression that showed too-long teeth and nightwing-dark eyes before he flung his gun away and ran.

Lara managed one step after him, then caught herself on the pillar again, utterly drained of energy. The door she’d torn to return home hadn’t exhausted her as much as closing this one had. But then, the Barrow-lands were meant for working magic in. Earth was not, and she paid the price for that.

They all paid the price for that. Dafydd took a step forward, staring down at Washington and drawing all their gazes. Lara, abruptly, saw what Dickon and Kelly must see: a slim form, alien with arrogance. The angular lines of his face, the inhuman slant to his eyes and the upsweep of exposed ears, were all pronounced as he looked down an aquiline nose at the detective as if he was an inexplicable thing, lying there bleeding as he did.