Sandy Williams - The Shattered Dark

“I’m calling the cops—”

The fae slams the hilt of her sword into the side of his head. He drops, pulling me down with him. His hand goes limp when he lands, though. I’m off-balance, but I’m free.

I scramble back as the fae approaches. A quick glance over my shoulder shows that Trev is still occupied with the taller remnant. I’m unarmed. If they wanted me dead, I’d be thoroughly screwed. The fact that I’m still alive means I might have a chance—and I think I might be able to buy some time. She knocked out the manager—I hate that he was caught up in this—so there’s a good possibility she doesn’t want to draw the attention of normal humans.

Before she reaches me, I slam my heel into the nearest car. Its alarm blares a second later. It’s loud—loud enough to startle me even though I’m expecting it—and it stops the fae in her tracks. She shuffles back, staring at the car as if it’s about to attack.

I throw myself over the hood, scramble off the other side, then sprint deeper into the parking lot before she realizes the alarm isn’t a huge amount of tech—it’s not going to screw with her magic. I’m near the apartment building on the opposite side of the lot when my skin tingles.

A fissure opens to my left. Trev. He steps to my side just as two more bright slashes of light rip through the atmosphere, one in front of us, one behind. The remaining male remnant stalks forward, bloody sword raised. I glance behind us and see the woman, who’s trying to gauge if she can get to me without Trev interfering.

I look at Trev, see blood gushing from the gap between the lower part of his cuirass and the jaedric armor protecting his right thigh. Shit.

“Get out of here,” I tell him. He’ll bleed to death if he doesn’t get the help of a fae healer soon.

He shakes his head and takes an unsteady step forward, putting himself between me and the approaching remnant. For one brief moment, I consider letting them take me. Trev could fissure out, and it would be the quickest and easiest way to get to Paige. But then, I have no way of knowing if she’s alive.

My throat tightens, but I force my worry for my friend down as I face the woman. When she raises her sword, I say, “There’s tech trained on this parking lot. It’s recording everything. Drag me out of here, and the whole world will see.” My words might be true. I’m sure a few security cameras are trained on the parking lot, but I have no clue where they are or how many.

“They’ll see only you,” she says.

Yeah, me being hauled across the parking lot kicking and screaming. People would most likely write me off as crazy rather then guess that fae exist, but she doesn’t need to know that, so I start to point out how suspicious that would look when half a dozen fissures erupt around us.

Rebels. Nalst has fissured back with more fae wearing shoddy jaedric armor. The woman recognizes whose side they’re on the same instant I do. She opens her own fissure and disappears before Nalst, the nearest rebel, can attack. The remnant fighting Trev isn’t as lucky. He opens a fissure, but isn’t able to leap through it before Trev kills him.

“The shadows,” Trev says, his voice strained. “Read them.”

Since the dead fae disappeared into the ether—into the fae afterlife—and not into a fissure, those misty white soul-shadows tell me nothing, but the shadows from the woman’s fissure are weaving themselves into a pattern. I focus on them, my fingers itching to draw a row of…houses? Storefronts? Without actually sketching the shadows, I can’t be sure what they are or where she went. They don’t really become concrete unless I draw them out. All I know is she’s gone to the Realm. Possibly someplace in the north.

“I need a…” My sketchbook. It’s in the suitcase left behind in my living room, but even if it was safe to go back for it, the shadows wouldn’t remain in my memory long enough to map them.

“There’s no time,” Nalst says, stepping to my side. “The remnants will return with reinforcements.” To Trev, he says in Fae, “Go.”

Trev nods, then fissures out as the rebels Nalst brought with him take up positions around me. I don’t recognize anyone else, but that’s not surprising. A month ago, I was the rebels’ prisoner. They didn’t exactly make a lot of introductions.

“The nearest gate’s ten minutes from here,” I tell Nalst. A gate is the only way I can enter a fissure with a fae and survive. They’re places in the atmosphere, always over water, where fae can enter the In-Between while escorting a human, or anything else they can’t wear or hold themselves. The magic of how to make more is lost, so we’ve always had to work with the ones that already exist.

It would take me twenty minutes to get there if I walked, but I head to the north side of my apartment complex at a run. If a fae doesn’t have an anchor-stone imprinted with a location, or if they haven’t been to a place before, they can only fissure within their line of sight. My apartment is still within view. I need to get the hell out of this parking lot before a new wave of remnants arrives.

I’m just a few strides away from the walkway between the buildings when I sense the fissures. A second later, just as I’m darting into the narrow space, I hear them opening. I have no clue if they’ve seen me, but I’m certain they’ve seen the rebels, so I force my legs to move faster, stretch farther.

I reach the back of the building, sharp shrrips and flashes of light erupting behind me.

“Get to the gate!” Nalst orders. A tall, thick hedge lines the back of the property, so I have to cut to the right. The hedge is to my left as I run. The rebels hold their position at the junction of the back alley and the gap between the buildings—that’s where the remnants have to be to get a glimpse of me. If they make it there, they’ll be able to reappear at my side.

I’m at a full sprint, passing another gap between buildings, when a strip of white light splits the atmosphere directly in front of me. Not only does it cut off my escape route, it’s so close, I nearly run into it. I lose my balance evading it, but I’m not able to avoid the fae stepping into this world.

My fist rises instinctively, aiming for the fae’s face, until I recognize Aren. Even though my heart thuds at the sight of his silver eyes and wild, disheveled hair, I’m tempted to keep swinging. His fissure could have killed me.

He grabs my fist in the air, then uses his body to maneuver me out of the back alley and into the narrow space between the buildings.

“You’re missing something, nalkin-shom,” he says before I can yell at him for opening his fissure so close to me.

Missing something? “My suitcase? That’s hardly import—”

He ushers me farther down the walkway. “I gave you a weapon.”

I scowl at him over my shoulder. The sun is directly overhead, so even though we’re hiding between two tall apartment buildings, his light brown hair is streaked with gold. It doesn’t quite touch his shoulders, which are protected by jaedric armor, but it’s long enough that, if we had more time, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from touching the slightly curled ends.

“You gave me a sword, Aren. Where am I supposed to hide that?” He can run around this world all he wants with his sword waving about, but I can’t. Not even the strongest fae illusionist can make a human invisible.

“Then you should have asked for a dagger,” he says, coming to a stop just before we reach the front edge of the apartment building.

“My apartment was supposed to be safe.”

“Shh.” He puts a finger to my lips as he presses me against the side of the brick building and, of course, that’s when the edarratae, the chaos lusters, decide to react. The blue lightning leaps from his fingertip to my lips. I suck in a breath. It’s an involuntary reaction to the hot, addictive sensation traveling down my neck. It sinks into my core, making my stomach tighten, and even though I try to hide how much the sensation affects me, Aren sees it.