Something is chasing me. I can hear it, the click-clacking of… something. Nails? Whatever it is sounds metallic. These objects scrape against each other and my stomach goes cold every time the awful sound touches my ears. My heart doesn’t stop pounding. It can’t. I need the adrenaline if I want to get away, but it’s dark in the movie theater and I’m running out of places to hide. The auditorium is the only place I can turn into, so I do, and it follows, whistling a happy tune as it goes. I know what the objects it’s carrying are, now. I don’t need to see them.
They’re scalpels, and if he catches me, he’ll cut me open again.
The sound of grumbling thunder rolling overhead dragged Alice out of a deep but restless sleep. When the dream slipped away like morning mist, Alice grabbed her phone from the bedside table and looked at the time. Seven in the evening had come and gone. She had laid her head down for a nap with the intention of only resting for half an hour, but had somehow managed to sleep for three. The thunder rolled off into the distance in a series of cascading explosions of sound.
Alice rubbed her eyes.
The silence in the house suggested Dustin wasn’t around and Isaac… the last time she had seen Isaac had been in the Greek exhibit at the Ashwood Imperial Museum. He had kissed her on the forehead and told her, promised her, everything would be okay. And she had believed him. She had allowed herself to be ushered along the staff corridor, through a hidden door nestled between the male and female restrooms, and into a car where Emily and Nate were waiting.
She thought he would have been right behind her, and for what seemed like forever she had waited in that car, hoping to see the door she had just come out of open up again. But then Dustin’s phone had chirped. He read the message, and then started the engine and told her they had to leave. She was about to throw some questions at him when her own phone buzzed inside her pocket with a message from Isaac.
“Whatever you do, don’t try to help me.”
“What the fuck?” she had said aloud.
Dustin had told her not to worry about it, that he just needed to answer a couple of questions. Standard procedure when this kind of thing goes down. Isaac would be back in no time. But then there was the text message. “Whatever you do, don’t try to help me.” It seemed pretty final, more like a full stop than a comma. By the time the car had peeled out of a back alley and into the harshly lit city streets of Ashwood proper, Alice knew he wouldn’t be joining them that night.
She was right.
The big security guard assistant had driven Alice to her place so she could gather some things, only with her body being in as much pain as it had been in, the task fell to Nate and Emily to do her a favor and grab a couple changes of clothes out of her bedroom. They were happy to do it and promised they, too, would be doing something similar soon enough; in the back seat of Dustin’s car, they had decided to get out of Ashwood and go someplace else. Maybe Seattle, or San Francisco. Didn’t matter which as long as it was on the other coast.
She wondered how they were doing now.
When the grogginess of waking disappeared, Alice rose, with a little effort, from the bed and immediately transitioned into a series of stretches. Her back still complained about the pain, but not as much as it had the morning after the night at the museum. Partly this was thanks to the exercising, but mostly it had to do with the strange infusions she had been drinking.
Isaac had promised she would have help with her injuries. She thought he meant he would be sending someone over, a mage skilled at the arts of healing, maybe. What she had found instead, though, was a box of specially made coffee beans which would apparently speed the healing process. It tasted like earth and milk, but after a couple of cups she didn’t mind the taste much, and she had to admit moving around was starting to feel a whole lot easier.
She also didn’t much mind the safe house she had been brought to. From her upstairs bedroom window, she could see the twinkling lights of the city off in the distance, skyscrapers standing tall above a sea of trees. Where exactly she was, she didn’t know. Somewhere south, she supposed, given she could see the Ashwood International Airport towers from here. But she also supposed it was a good thing she didn’t know where she was. If she didn’t know where she was, then neither did Nyx.
Alice had been cooped up in here for a week with strict instructions not to leave under any circumstances. The place was stocked with food, and Dustin came around at least once a day with fresh fruit, vegetables, and—if she asked for it—takeout. He also went back to her place occasionally and fed her cat; something she truly was grateful for. But how long was she expected to stay here? She had heard nothing from Isaac, and Dustin didn’t know any more than she did.
Alice went downstairs into the kitchen and made herself a cup of earth-coffee, making sure to keep the lights off. She didn’t leave the lights off in the interest of safety; the area was about as remote as it got. But she enjoyed looking out of the kitchen window and seeing the orange glow of the city impressed upon the clouds floating above. A single sip of earth-coffee—she could really taste the herbs this time—caused her body to fill with warmth, and when she had her fill of the city lights, she walked over to the kitchen table where a large box sat.
She set the cup down on the table next to the box, which she then opened. Inside there were four shiny metal film cases and a sword carefully placed so that it would fit. The sword and the metal cases gleamed even in the dim light, seeming as if to wink up at her. Alice ran her fingertips along the length of the blade and over the curve of the discs, but felt nothing besides the cold.
“Talk to me,” she said to it. “Tell me something, anything.”
But if the objects in the box had the ability to speak, they weren’t talking. Alice wasn’t sure if the problem was that they didn’t have any secrets for her to learn, or that after the destruction of her camera she had lost her powers. She didn’t think she had; Alice didn’t feel any less like herself. But the possibility was there, and the fact that after a week of studying these damn things she had learned nothing only served to add more weight to the idea that Alice had lost something crucial when Trapper smashed into a hundred little pieces.
“This box cost me a lot of money,” she said to herself, “And it’s been fucking useless.”
Neither of these things was strictly true, but vocalizing her frustration made her feel better. She had struck a deal with Nate to dismiss the rest of the fee he owed her if he would break into the Cinema Royale and retrieve this box. Alice hadn’t thought he would be able to pay her anyway, and since he was skipping town this was the next best thing she could get from him. It hadn’t been entirely useless either. The film reels inside were blank, or at least they looked blank. Maybe they needed to be played on a projector, but Alice wasn’t about to try that out even if she did have one lying around. However, there had definitely been more film reels in the box when she first saw it, and now there weren’t.
This told Alice that more of those things, Nyx’s Pain Children, had gotten out and were now roaming the city like rabid animals. So what the hell was she still doing here?
Waiting, she thought as she closed the box. She picked her cup of coffee up and took another sip. A comfortable wave of warmth gently pulsed through her system causing her to shudder, and when it passed, she padded toward the front door of the house. As far as houses went, this one was pretty bare. The walls were a kind of asphalt gray, black wooden support beams raced along ceilings and around door frames, and the wooden floors creaked with every step she took upon them.
The night was dark, and only the barest sliver of light was coming through the window. Alice approached and, as she did so, noticed the markings drawn into the door. More symbols, only these she didn’t recognize at all. Squares, semi-circles, and hexagons were knitted together. Within the shapes there were more shapes; straight lines, jagged lines, and Roman numerals. Lots of Roman numerals.
She touched them lightly with the tips of her fingers, just as she had done to the items in the box a moment ago… and felt nothing. Not a buzz, not a chill, not so much as a whisper of energy. This time she had been expecting something. These markings were magic. Dustin had told her the entire safe house had been protected against spying and intrusion from physical and ethereal beings, so it stood to reason that she should feel something from them as she did whenever she got close enough to the wards in her own apartment.
Not good, she thought. But then another thought occurred to her. What if her being inside the house was somehow stunting her senses, too? This nugget of inspiration made a lot of sense and Alice chewed on it like a dog with a bone, but she didn’t act upon it. Not immediately. The neurons in her brain were firing, connections were being made, and choices were being laid before her.
“I could leave,” she said to herself in a soft whisper. “I could open this door right now, step outside, and leave. Find Isaac. Find… her. Find out if my powers truly are gone.”
She grabbed the handle but didn’t turn it. If she opened the door, would the magical protection around the house disappear? She doubted it. Dustin had been coming and going, and he didn’t have the ability to create and dismantle magical wards that she was aware of. This meant that the wards would remain even if Alice didn’t, but then, if she left, she would forfeit the magic protection built around this place and would expose herself for Nyx to find. Assuming Nyx was even looking for Alice, but why wouldn’t she be?
The thought of staying here another day, though, with Nyx and her beasts out there, was a tough pill to swallow.
Alice decided at the last moment not to do it, to remain in the safe-house, but just as she was about to walk away someone knocked on the door and she jumped like a startled cat. Her heart shot from zero to sixty in milliseconds, setting her body alight with fear like fire. But it wasn’t the sound of the rapping on the door or even the vibrations that had done the damage.
A cool, wet, earthy night air spilled into the corridor on the back of a cricket’s song. The door hit the wall with a thud when it opened all the way, before inching across again about a foot or so. There, standing in the open frame, was the silhouette of a man too well built to be Dustin and too broad shouldered to be Isaac. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t supposed to be here.
No one was supposed to be here but her.
