“That one took something out of me,’ Rose said, from somewhere nearby. She sounded weaker.
Duncan was holding one side of his face. He had a dark look in his eyes when he looked over at me. He wiped one hand at his eye, and it came away with blood on it.
He lunged, taser in hand, and I threw myself back. Weak as I was, I moved a little too far, a little too fast, and I hit the wall hard enough that it hurt, cracking my head on it.
My hair was waving like I was in the midst of a strong breeze.
The wind rune.
He was fueling the runes with something on his person. I’d seen the connection earlier.
I’d already given so much. A little more…
I let go of my right arm, and my hand was so sticky it pulled at the open wound. With my bloody hand, I reached over to the window, planted my hand down on the second rune, smeared until I broke the connection, and vaulted over.
This time I made it through.
Something, a lot of somethings, broke, all through the building.
My exit was followed by an spray of glass, bloodstained feathers, and dust. The wind rune’s wake, perhaps, or the change in pressure that came with the breaking of the effect in the stairwell, releasing the pent up energy and whatever else.
I hit the ground. I was lighter, buoyed by the wind, but it still wasn’t the most graceful landing.
I gripped my right arm and staggered to my feet.
Not in Kansas anymore.
I hadn’t landed in the parking lot. Not exactly.
There, in the distance, I could see Conquest’s tower.
The buildings around me were subtly distorted, the streets largely empty. Where there were people, they were far away, more twisted than the buildings.
Evan jumped down from the shattered window, landing on the roof of a car with an audible thud.
“Um,” I said.
“Blake?” Rose spoke up. Reflected in the rear window of a parked car. The car looked like it had been sitting there for years. Other cars were only partially there. Derelicts.
“Something’s wrong,” I said. Did Conquest make a move?
“You look like hell,” Rose said. “Does that count?”
“Maybe,” I said, my voice low. “I’m… seeing things.”
“What things?”
“Conquest’s tower-”
I had to stop. I hurt.
“-A world that’s sort of like Johannes’ demesne.” I turned my head, looking around.
“You’re sinking,” Rose said. “Something like that. There are different terms for it in different books.”
“Sinking?”
“Losing your footing. I can’t say, since I don’t really see it, I can’t see much at all, frankly, but it could be you have one foot in the spirit world and one in the real world. Maybe it’s both feet.”
Losing touch with reality.
Too much me given away.
“What… what happens?” I ask.
“You go where anyone goes, if they slip through the cracks.”
“Vague,” I said. My heard hurt. My body hurt more.
“It changes from place to place, urban area to rural. But it’s the spiritual equivalent of rock bottom. It’s where people like Dowght might go or be chased off to by locals when the imp is done with him, or where things like the goblin you fought might dwell, if they weren’t quite strong enough to hold a territory. Dark places, dog-eat-dog, unpredictable, hard to navigate. The spirit analogue to the deep wilderness.”
“No shit?” I asked.
“Sometimes there’s shit,” she said. “Sometimes fire, sometimes a garbage dump or a lightless pit or it’s a frozen wasteland without any light to go by… like I said, it varies from place to place. It’s a place defined by the misery and self loathing and desperation of those who dwell in it.”
My arms were throbbing, and I was cold.
“I already had a taste of rock bottom before,” I said. “Before this. I don’t want to experience the practitioner-hell version of it.”
“Then don’t use more blood for power,” she said. “Because I don’t want you to go there, especially if it means you drag me there with you.”
I nodded.
“He’ll come after us if we don’t run,” Rose said. “That Duncan guy will.”
“Probably,” I said.
“Half the day has passed already,” Rose told me. “We need to get moving, start planning.”
“We do,” I said. “But we also need to be ready.”
“You want to go back in?”
“I… think we have to,” I said.
“For June? For the locket, I presume?”
I ran the edge of my thumb along one of the sore spots where the locket’s chain had rubbed me raw. “Those things too.”
I turned and headed for the side door that Evan had mentioned.
Duncan was making his way down.
Evan led the way. Passing through the door.
I couldn’t move it. Either it was locked, or I was just that weak, now.
I saw Rose’s face in the small, chicken-wire covered window.
The window shattered, glass scattering into the building. I saw a glimpse of her arm, reaching inside-
I heard a click. I pulled on the door.
I didn’t have the strength to open it, not completely. It might as well have been ten times the size. I had to leverage all my strength to haul it open enough to fit my body between it and the frame, the cuts on my arms screaming with pain.
The walls were stark, cracked to the point that I could see through them. The stairs were too steep, and I had to catch one railing with both hands to keep from falling. Every door was barred. Ghosts… if they could even be called ghosts, lurked in places I couldn’t access. Shadows of high emotion and desperation, despair and rage. It was an exaggeration. A police station as drawn by spirits that were drawing from memory.
“I want to see you, Evan,” I said.
He didn’t react.
“Are you sure, Blake?”
“Do you really want to second guess me, with Duncan bearing down on us?”
She made a face. “Where’s your body, Evan?”
He didn’t respond, but he turned. A sharp left.
I saw staff members, police officers, but they were as abstract in this world as some Others were in ours. Blurry, indistinct.
I’d dug myself in too deep.
That boded ill.
“Rose-” I started.
“Him?”
“Feels right,” I said.
“It feels wrong to me,” she said. “He’s a soul. A person. For real.”
“He’s a person that’s said he wants to stick around,” I said.
“You don’t have to like it,” I said. I was too tired, too insubstantial, to pick my words carefully. “-have to decide. Either call him back, tell him to take us to the inventory lockup, or go get the book.”
“This is something huge for both of us. I’m attached to you, and I’m attached to him by association.”
“Are you saying you don’t like him?”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I don’t know him. This is something that takes time.”
“Time’s a luxury we don’t have,” I said. My voice was ragged, came off harsher than it otherwise could. “I just carried out your plan, binding the imp, giving it to Conquest. I fought the Hyena, and that was a bitch in its own way. I’m spent. Say no, say yes, but don’t fucking dither when every second counts!”