Scrambling, I grabbed the teleporting glass out of my pocket. We only had three and we needed five to get everyone out safely. The pressure on my back had subsided and I was able to stand. Unfortunately, I made the stupid mistake of holding onto the glass with a shaky hand while I stood up. When I managed to get on both feet, I stumbled forward, and the glass left my weak grip. Time felt like it slowed to a crawl as it clattered in front of the knight.
“Shit, Alex, grab it!” Lori yelled. Despite her obvious rage and fury, she looked more composed than she had when the knight walked in.
When the knight heard Lori’s yelling, she raced toward it, faster than Alex could get there. With a yell—the first sound I’d heard ever heard her make—she stomped on it with her foot, hoping to destroy the item we deemed valuable.
Looking back at it and being honest, her doing that saved our bacon. There was the sound of rushing air and she was gone. The bright side was one of the most terrifying beings on the planet couldn’t immediately kill us. The downside was that we now could only get two of our five people out.
There was a pained grunt from Eric crumpled form. Being reminded of his presence, I looked over and saw the damage I’d done. The indent I saw in his chest was worse than I had originally thought, and blood was steadily leaking from his mouth. He made a gross gurgling noise when his sister ran to check on him. I wanted to stop and be mortified about what I’d done. I knew he was trying to kill me and wanted to take both Rebecca and Megan. That didn’t mean I had to feel good about what I’d done. I was grateful for my own injuries at that point since they acted as a distraction from the damage I’d done to Eric.
“Alex!” Lori yelled, breaking him out of his stunned silence. Without the knight’s fearsome presence looming, Lori had already calmed down. “You have to take Megan and get out of here.”
“No, I’m not leaving any of you,” he said, standing put. His eyes darted over to Heather. She was cradling her dying brother close to her chest.
Lori wasn’t listening. She was coaxing the terrified Megan away from Rebecca and bringing her over to Alex, only taking her eyes off the little girl to check on Heather. Getting a better look at him through my somewhat blurry vision, I saw his cuts and bruises really were minor compared to my own. I felt a whole lot of envy and shame that he could handle two opponents with minimal damage, while I struggled with just one. Eric’s Anomaly was creating illusions, so when I counted that, I felt even worse. I was carved up by what was essentially a normal guy with a knife who could do a few parlor tricks.
“This isn’t a fucking debate, Alex.” Lori brought Megan next to him, placed his hand on the child, and gave her one of the two remaining teleport stones. She was much softer and nicer toward the crying child. “Megs, I need you to imagine being with Alex, okay? Just start thinking, no matter where you are, that you’re with him. He’s your travel buddy, okay? Do not lose that thought. Can you do that for me?”
Megan shut her eyes and nodded.
“Alex, if this goes wrong, you are the only one that can protect her. She’s just a kid and I will not let her get hurt. As your leader, I’m ordering you to take her back with you.”
Heather had started letting out the kind of wails that one released if a part of them had been ripped away. I almost felt bad for her. If I hadn’t seen her end human lives already, I’d have felt much worse at her loss. I hated knowing that she still had some sort of human emotions and affection despite how evil of a woman she was. Mostly, I just felt normal miserable from killing someone and my numerous wounds that continued to freely leak blood all over the Tomb’s floor.
“I...” Alex trailed off, conflict evident in his expression. He looked toward Heather and knew Lori was making the best call she could. “Fine. How can we make this work without her knowing what Luna looks like?”
“You’re doing the heavy lifting. Put your stone in her hand, imagine Luna, and crush both yours and Megan’s at the same time. As long as she imagines that she’s with you, I think this should work.”
“You think it should work?” Alex asked, sounding desperate.
“Yes, I do. But if it doesn’t, and you both end up in Florida or something, you have the best means to keep her safe. Now get ready.” Lori stood up straight, daring Alex to be defiant. He looked like he was about to when he sighed and shook his head. He wrapped his arm around the still-trembling Megan. Before he crushed the stones, Lori leaned in and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”
She pushed Alex’s glowing hand down on the glass-like material and I heard both shatter. The sound of rushing air that accompanied the knight when she left made a return. I was able to exchange looks with both of them before they vanished. Gone was Alex’s usual calm, cool confidence. Joining its departure were Megan’s happiness and smile. We had no way of knowing if they made it to Luna yet. I could only hope they made it safely, or at the very least, were together. It was time to focus on ourselves.
“Ethan, if we get past her, do you have enough to run like hell out of the cave?” Lori asked, her voice barely even a whisper. I only nodded in response. I wasn’t sure I had enough to speak, let alone get out of there. With the adrenaline dying down, the pain from my injuries somehow got worse.
Heather picked up her brother’s body and turned toward us. Her eyes locked onto me, and her hateful glare was suffocating. Lori’s eyes were terrifying when the knight appeared, but Heather was legitimately a dangerous human being on top of being an enraged griever. Her creepy appearance was just exacerbated by the tears running down her pale cheeks. She never took a moment to even blink at me.
“You did this!” she yelled. The room started to rumble around us, bits of the ceiling falling in.
Then it hit me that a cave may have been the single worst place to fight a woman who could control earth.
There was a loud explosion from Lori’s gun as she fired a shot toward Heather without any hesitation. The bullet harmlessly hit Eric’s corpse, which did a few things. First, it left Heather alive, which was not great for keeping us alive. Second, it pissed her off even more, which was more than fair. Third, it distracted her enough to let Lori run up and shoulder tackle her out of the doorway.
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“Run, now!” she commanded, and I didn’t hesitate, though I ended up limping along more than doing any proper running. Somewhere in the chaos, I remembered to turn the lamp I was still wearing on.
Lori didn’t have any trouble racing to the front of the cave. Some relief hit me knowing she’d make it out. Maybe it was the chaos of everything, or the fact that she felt like my first real friend, or because I stopped a bullet for her, or some combination of everything, but I needed her to make it out. They all had to. None of the people who depended on me, even a little, were going to die. It wasn’t an option.
My right foot dropped in a hole I didn’t see, causing me to stumble worse than I had been. Rebecca paid me back for protecting her in the Tomb by catching me. In a better state, I would have felt bad about bleeding all over a lady. She didn’t care much, propping her solid body up under my right arm to support me. Realizing she didn’t have a lamp of her own, and to keep my sorry ass upright, I held her as tight as I could manage. Me as the light and her as the support, we guided ourselves toward the mouth of the cave. There were more screams behind us and sounds of rocks crashing down to the hard ground. She was really bringing the whole damn cave down trying to get us.
I nearly slipped at least half a dozen times. Rebecca never left my side to save herself, even when I needed a few seconds to catch my breath. After the first time, I stopped shining the light right in her eyes by mistake. Every step felt like it was killing me. I was positive it was impossible the path from the entrance to the Tomb had been as long as it felt when I was injured. If Heather could control the earth around her, maybe she somehow made it longer.
After a walk that had to have taken ten years, and aged me thirty, I saw the exit of the cave. I had to dodge a falling rock the size of a baseball, barely managing to tug Rebecca just enough to get her away too. My legs were sluggish and they refused to cooperate. They seemed to enjoy slipping and sliding all over the place, threatening to have me plant face-first into the ground. Rebecca started to drag me along when I couldn’t get a solid footing. All the while, the front of the collapsing structure got closer and closer. If Heather hadn’t been so grief-stricken, I don’t think we would have made it out. She could have brought the whole thing down at the same time. Maybe she couldn’t do that and save herself. I wasn’t sure. Monsters like her had a really annoying tendency to survive no matter what.
Finally, sunlight welcomed us, but we weren’t out of the woods just yet. The SUV was still 50 feet away, give or take, and we were standing on Heather’s weapon. Hell, even if we got to the vehicle and started driving, it’s not like we were off the ground. There had to be a limit to Heather’s range, but I didn’t want to test what it was.
Rebecca helped drag my nearly useless body to the SUV. Lori had long beat us there and opened the back doors for us. She was sitting in the driver’s seat, ready to go, throwing concerned glances back at me. It took the last bit of my strength to sort of slide my body into the seat and shut my door. Rebecca raced around to the other side and did the same. I buckled the seat belt, something that looked like it confused Rebecca, but she got it after a couple tries.
Lori slammed on the gas and put us in reverse. As deftly she could, she maneuvered the SUV out of the parking lot and got us on the road. I looked behind us as much as my body would allow, and I saw dust rising up from the space where the cave was. A healthy number of trees were falling down next to it. I didn’t feel great about the distance between us and the collapsed cave until we were ten minutes on the road, Lori doing her best to speed just the right amount to avoid getting us pulled over.
After a half hour of driving, Lori was finally brave enough to speak. “How’re you holding up, Ethan?”
I figured she was talking about my physical injuries. When I opened my mouth to reply, I sort of broke down. I’d never been good at looking strong if I was upset, and Shelly encouraged me to let it out in a healthy way if I needed it. All the horror of taking a life and nearly losing my own came crashing down on me. Tears stung my eyes, threatening to flood over and run down my face. Physical pain and emotional distress didn’t make for a fun combo on a long car trip. Lori could see me in the rearview mirror. I could only see her eyes, and that was all I needed to know she was trying not to let my emotions affect her. She had to drive, so trying to deal with me might’ve been a death sentence for us.
To my surprise, Rebecca reached over and held me in an awkward hug. Like physical pain and emotional distress being a bad mix for a trip, cars didn’t make for the best places to exchange embraces. Still, my skin didn’t want to crawl at her touch. I didn’t know if that was part of the shock, me getting over my phobia after all those years, or something else. Whatever the reason, I put my head on her shoulder and let myself freak out mentally. I barely managed to keep it together.
Whenever I shut my eyes, I kept seeing Eric’s corpse hanging limply from his sister’s arms. He was certainly an evil man. Evil enough to kill me and kidnap two defenseless girls. If I hadn’t figured out his power, the three of us would have been screwed. He could create illusions that could affect every sense but touch. That’s why he needed the knife, because as impressive as everything he created was, they didn’t pose any kind of danger to me. If he hadn’t tried to be so flashy with what he showed me, he probably could have killed me. I only knew something was wrong because some of those grand locations should have had made me feel something, like the wind on the top of the skyscraper.
I effectively killed some random, defenseless guy with a knife with a desperate use of a power I couldn’t control. Yeah, that shook my foundation a little bit.
Everything felt dull and not real. I had to keep touching my seat and my chest just to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating anything. The pain from my wounds kept me grounded, as unpleasant as they were. Even in Rebecca’s arms, I had to convince myself that I really existed. I wanted to attribute how weird and disconnected I felt to my blood loss. It would have been the best outcome. I knew that everything was happening because of my mind though.
After some time passed, I pulled away from the warm embrace. I’d finally stopped bleeding, which gave me some time to examine my wounds. The bleeding had largely stopped, only threatening to start back up if I moved too suddenly. I took great care to move as slowly as possible. Movements were going to be a finite resource that I could only use if I really had to. Rebecca, bless that woman, helped hold a bottle of water up to my lips so I could take a few swigs.
I had completely managed to lose track of time when I heard a small grunt come from the seat next to me. I realized it was the first noise I’d heard Rebecca make, so I looked over to see if she was able to speak again. She was looking at her hand with a wince as a black target-looking symbol appeared on her palm.
“Guess that means I’m free?” she asked. The words were uneven and they all sounded like they were spoken by a different person. That did another small number on my mind. She shut her eyes and shook her head. She brought a hand up to her throat and she started rubbing. “Sorry, I was trying to get your speech patterns down. Everything is still a bit messy.”
Those words came out sounding much better.
“You must have a million questions,” Lori said, not taking her eyes off the road in front of her.
“I do, but those can wait,” she turned to me and gave me a tiny, sad smile. Fitting for a woman who had just regained her freedom while losing so much in the process. “My name is Rebecca Briars. It’s nice to meet you and finally speak with you.”