“How are you?” he asked softly.
She steeled herself, willing her lip to stop trembling. “Hanging in there. If I could just feel her through spirit and know she’s okay…” She leaned against him. He was always so confident and strong. So sure of himself and the situation. “I feel responsible. I should’ve?—”
“We all do,” he cut in, not letting her devolve into the self-loathing and despair that had plagued her since Daisy’s abduction. He held her close. “Every single one of us is responsible for this, me most of all. I have a duty to protect my family, and I failed. But baby, I promise, wewillget her back. All she has to do is stay alive. If she can just stay alive, we’ll get her back. The fae think their twisted magic is all-powerful, but that’s because Demigods have always had a history of steering clear of them—those of us smart enough not to get shackled with a deal. There are two of us and a team of level five magical workers. They won’t know what hit them. We’ll get her back, and we’ll close these portals forever.”
She nodded into his chest.
“Now…” He pulled back to look into her eyes. “It’s time for war. Are you ready?”
She took a deep breath. Daisy needed her strength. “Yes.”
Kieran and Thane led the group into the portal. If something was waiting on the other side, they’d encounter a Demigod and a level five Berserker capable of laying waste to anyone and everyone in his path. Lexi’s huge cats bounded up to her. Each about as big as a Great Dane, they had magical powers of the Hades line, a special gift created in a somewhat gross way.They’d been kept in the cars until the last minute so as not to spook the horses.
Given there wasn’t a threat in the portal area, Lexi, the spirits, and the cats went next, grimacing as the magic raked through her body and across her skin. Winds tore at her and the pressure nearly snapped her spine…
Then she was walking into a similar place. Stables waited off to the sides with horses tied to wooden posts. A sheepbaa’ed somewhere behind a building that looked like a house. An attendant in the same uniform as the one on the other side had stopped, holding a horse by the lead and staring at Kieran with wide eyes.
“Made it this far,” John murmured as he, Mia, and a stark-faced Frank staggered out of the portal. “We could only make it through while clinging to you, Lexi. Remember that within the next phase.”
“What…” Lexi looked around in confusion. She’d expected a wasteland with barren ground and dirt for miles. Instead, it was a somewhat cultivated area with dried grasses, trees, wildflowers in the distance, and a garden harboring a pop of colorful flowers. This didn’t seem like a halfway human area at all. Were they already in the fae lands? But no, they couldn’t be, because it was a very obviously scared human cowering under Kieran’s questioning.
Mordecai and Dylan came through next.
“This is it?” Dylan asked in surprise.
“Come on,” Kieran said, motioning for Lexi to get moving. “Let’s get out of the way for the others.”
“What is this place?” Lexi asked as they followed his lead.
“Human lands but not. Whatever that means. This doesn’t look like what the texts suggest, and the attendant says this is normal.” He looked back at the portal. “We need to leave him here. There are a couple groups of fae in front of us. Apparently,at the other end near the Faegate, there is another portal through which to send the animals back here. At night, when things are usually quiet, the attendants send the livestock and supplies to the place we just came from. It’s…quite a system.”
“It’s some bullshit,” Thane said. “Some real fucking bullshit.”
Lexi couldn’t agree more.
“Huh,” Bria said after she came through, the last of them. She pulled a cart of bodies behind her. “This is pleasant.”
“The portal wasn’t that pleasant,” Jerry said, able to move anything to do with rock. Two of them rolled beside him, as part of his arsenal.
“Meh.” Bria shrugged, hitching her cart to the back of a wagon. “Try burying yourself alive.Thatisn’t pleasant.”
“Why…” Jerry cocked his head with an alarmed expression. “Why would you…? How did you…?”
She waved him away. “I wanted to see what it was like. The pipe didn’t give me as much oxygen as I would’ve liked that far down, but it’s fine. It all worked out. Okay then, we have”—she checked her empty wrist and looked at the sky—“some amount of hours until sundown. We best get a move on.”
Lexi rodeon the wagon’s driver’s box with Kieran, at the front of their caravan. They followed a large dirt path through the trees, the terrified attendant telling them to follow it all the way to the Faegate, not veer off, or they might never find their way back. So he’d heard, anyway. It could just be a fae tactic to keep him put, not that he needed any convincing.
The sun sank toward the horizon as the vegetation grew sparse, and then sparser still. It might become a wasteland yet. That wasn’t what interested Lexi, though. The Line pulsed beside her. Along the path, within the trees, wandering aimlessly, were a plethora of spirits. Animals, fae, and human,they were all mixed together in this strange way station between the living worlds. It had been created without thought of the dead. No one had set up a place for spirits to go. The veil didn’t lead anywhere, empty save for Frank, Mia, and John riding within it. Once a living being died here…here they stayed. Trapped.
“Now,thisis the life,” Frank said as they floated along, looking out with a pleasant smile. “We’re not being dragged, or yanked, or pushed, or flung—no, no, we’re riding in style. I feel like royalty.” He preened.
Lexi glared at him as John rolled his eyes.
“This is horrible,” Lexi said.
“It reminds me of the house Valens trapped us in,” John said, his eyes haunted. “I take it back. I’m not so inclined to take my chances.”
“Too late now,” Kieran murmured, his eyes flitting from spirit to spirit. Someone stood in the middle of the path, stooped over and bending to the side, watching them bear down on him. A creature walked along the side of the wagon, drool running over its long fangs, watching Lexi as though it were still alive and hunting them like prey.
