Emilia woke that morning, fresh from strange dreams. A baby, swaddled in red, floated toward her on a pillow of green light. Moaning followed the babe, drifting toward Emilia inexorably. Black stone held her ankles fast as Emilia tried to flee. She woke as Cary crossed the green mist to save her. Cary was in grave danger, Emilia felt it in her chest as she opened her eyes.
The link between herself and Cary had grown faint in the night, fainter even than when Emilia stood within the black spire. Mirabel and Betsy snored in their beds, Mirabel on her pillow and Betsy atop her covers with her arms and legs splayed over the edge of her bed.
Emilia stank of fear sweat and only when she focused on the link between herself and Cary could she sense any details in the connection. This feeling of dread within her heart was deeper than a dream. The danger Cary faced was real.
“Mirabel! Wake up!” Emilia all but levitated off of her bed, flying to her closet as she pulled out fresh clothing. “Wake up! Something’s wrong with Cary!”
Betsy shot up from her bed, tangling herself in her sheets and covers as she scrambled up. “What’s going on now?”
“Cary’s hurt or unconscious. And I don’t mean sleeping. Wake up!”
Mirabel rolled off of her pillow and into the air as if she’d planned the maneuver. “Holy pink titties, what’s the shouting about?”
Betsy pointed to the fairy. “That’s what I want to know.”
“Holy shit, wake up and get it together people! Cary’s fucking injured!”
Mirabel recovered her wits first and flew to the closet. “What did you sense? Tell me?”
Flicking her gaze between her two friends, Emilia relayed her dream.
“Come on Em, that’s just a dream. And after last night…”
Mirabel cut Betsy off and pointed to Emilia. “Calm down a second sit down on your bed. What did you feel, exactly.”
The fairy’s serious attitude scared Emilia more than the pit of dread growing in her chest. But she complied with the fairy’s orders with haste. “I can feel her unconscious, but not asleep. I know what sleeping feels like, this is something else. Something bad.”
Alighting onto Emilia’s shoulder, Mirabel said, “I want to you to close your eyes…”
“Can I go back to sleep?” Betsy sounded more like Max this morning than herself. Even with Cary in danger, Emilia couldn’t hold her attitude against Betsy. Last night was terrifying, and escaping from the masters had been worrisome enough for all of them.
Mirabel wasn’t hearing any of Betsy’s complaints thought. “You can, but if you do, you’re a jerk! Now shut up and let Emilia concentrate!” Pointing back toward Emilia, Mirabel said, “Seriously now, close your eyes and focus on the connection between you and Cary. Try to follow the line between the two of you back to its source, back to your servant’s mind and body.”
Emilia closed her eyes and silently prayed that Mirabel’s instructions would work even if the relationship between Cary and her was reversed. With the fairy’s instructions, Emilia found the link in her chest, like a silvered cord that reached out of her chest and flowed out of the room and out of sight. In her mind’s eye, she followed the thread through the camp and out into the real world of Armenia. Strangely enough, she passed through a keyhole in the sky, so tiny only Mirabel would be able to fit.
Outside of the Sanctorum, the cord actually shrank and grew fainter, as if the magic of the extra-dimensional space somehow amplified the signal between them. Despite the weakness in the thread, Emilia followed it through the air. As she neared, she began to sense a pulsing in the thread, as if it echoed with the steady tattoo of Cary’s heartbeat. The pulse grew stronger as Emilia flew over the city and toward the outskirts of the unknown Armenian town. She’d lived her for weeks and still didn’t know where the Sanctorum’s gate passed from the real world into the demiplane. It didn’t matter now, all that mattered was finding Cary as fast as she could.
High above the city now, Emilia’s psychic vision focused in on a building where the cord ended against a concrete wall. Rather than pass through the wall without touching, her astral body struck a boundary with enough force to give her a headache. The voices of Mirabel and Betsy had faded into the background, but as Emilia struck the building, they grew in volume. Tuning them out, Emilia extended the force of her Consumption toward the building.
As her power reached out to the concrete, it flared with lines of red, streaked over the stone and instilled into the mortar. A coppery smell reached her nose and she knew the lines of red to be blood. Ignoring the provenance of the protection about the building, Emilia thrust her power into the stones and sucked with the essence of herself.
Power flooded over her, thick as syrup and tasting of chalk and torment. It tried to overwhelm her, to bite back at her assault, but she absorbed even the attacks. Pulling the hostile energy into herself proved as easily as spooning cereal into her mouth. And like a hearty breakfast, the power strengthened her as she drank it down.
A portion of the stone wall finally crumbled under her draining attacks and Emilia passed though the structure unharmed. Behind her, the mystical boundary repaired itself, but Emilia ignored it for now. She only cared about finding Cary.
Dozens of rooms, all of them ephemeral and flashing into and out of existence flew by her astral body. Without the cord between her and Cary providing direction, Emilia might have fallen for those rooms. Each of them called to her with the promise of her goal and Emilia recognized them as dangerous magical traps intended to capture someone like her who dared to project their consciousness into this place.
The magical protections here terrified Emilia with their ruthless pull. But she’d begun her journey focused on Cary, so she recognized them as false projections, even the ones who claimed to be her mother. Those gave Emilia the most pause, provided the greatest temptation. But after several such attempts, Emilia knew them as lies.
At the end of a long hallway, Emilia found a doorway covered with black runes and lines of power. They mirrored the golden lines she’d seen the night before on the black spire and the Fel Slaves. Instinct informed her that these lines shared an origin, a magical background with the lines of the spire, but she dismissed the link. She didn’t have time to puzzle over them and knew one way to force through them.
The Consumption flowed out of Emilia like a black miasma of force, streaked with the red power she’d already drained from the exterior of this place. Upon contact with the black lines on the door, Emilia screamed from her real body. Barbs of black thorns stabbed through the clouds wrapped around her and dug into her skin, both her astral body and her real one. Ignoring the pain, Emilia drew and consumed, released her innate power upon the black wards and saw the light-draining power within them fade. As they did, the black thorns writhed and sunk into Emilia’s bodies, leaving marks on her soul as she drained them of their magical essence.
When the last of the power drained away into her, the thorns finally died. At the same time, the door flew open and a figure stood within. He wore an elaborate headdress: a horned skull mounted on the top like a crown. It was humanoid and almost certainly demonic. Blood streaked the headdress, which made the runes carved into the bone stand out to Emilia’s magical vision.
He wore a brown robe, streaked with dark fluids and wielded a knife in his left hand that sucked the light away with far greater potency than the runes on the door had. A voice echoed from within the room, behind the man. “What breaches our stronghold, Maurice?” It was another male voice, who’s source Emilia could not locate.
“I don’t see anything. Let me check the Astral…”
Before Maurice could find her, Emilia darted by him. A black and scarlet figure loomed larger than a man, larger than Boris in the back corner of the room. Sliding her vision over the figure made Emilia’s head pound with agony, so she avoided looking. Two women sat tied to chairs in the center of the room, with a golden scroll before them on a raised altar. Both women were bleeding from multiple cuts, and one of them was Cary.
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Emilia screamed into the void at the sight of the demoness. They’d flayed parts of her skin, cutting it away in large sections as if trying to keep the pieces intact. Her rage struck both men in the room with the force of her anger, but the black and red figure out of nightmares ignored the force. Instinct driving her, Emilia shot to Cary and deposited most of the magical energy she’d collected along her trip. Projected as she was, only a trickle managed its way down the line, as if something on her physical end stopped her, or consumed the energy before it reached Cary.
But the demoness raised her head at last, looking into Emilia’s eyes as if she could see them. “Flee, my love. Do not come here with anything less than…”
“Emilia! Holy shit, save her!” the voice broke into Emilia’s consciousness, interrupting Cary’s words and dragging her back. A foul odor surrounded her, pulling her out of her trance with its disgusting, acrid bite. Engaging every last bit of her will, Emilia poured the last bit of power she could manage into Cary.
As she did, her eyes fluttered open. Emilia lay on her back with Regina and Mirabel hovering over her. Regina held her arm over Emilia’s chest, bleeding freely over Emilia as she poured a small mountain’s worth of pungent herbs atop Emilia’s chest.
“Is it her? She could have a rider!” Regina’s voice echoed through Emilia’s ears as if they all lay in a massive room and she stood on the opposite side.
Emilia raised her hand and patted Regina’s cheek. “Pretty voodoo girl. Did I die?”
Tears flowed from Regina’s cheeks as Mirabel sank out of Emilia’s vision. “It’s her. I’ve tasted her soul before and only Emilia would pat me like that.” Regina sounded closer this time, but her voice still echoed as if they lay in a large, opened room. Every part of Emilia’s body ached, as if she’d been crushed or worse. She tried to sit up, but Regina put her hands on her shoulders. “You’re hurt. You need to stay down…”
For a moment, Emilia agreed. She was hurt, maybe even severely so. But then the image of Cary’s flayed body flashed before her eyes. “No!” She shot up into a sitting position to find herself entirely naked, her skin covered with tiny cuts and holes. A puddle of blood lay beneath her, as if Emilia had soiled herself in her dreams.
“What the fuck?” Betsy, her hands covered with blood, pointe at Emilia. “How is she even conscious?”
Many of the holes in Emilia’s body still leaked, as if the injuries she bore ran deeper than she could imagine. The expression of horror and disbelief written across Betsy’s face and in her words made sense in light of appearances.
“Emilia, you need to rest.” Regina tried to push her down again, but the slippery blood made her grip unsure.
Emilia twisted away and stood, uncaring that she was nude or that her lifeblood trickled onto the floor. “No! They’re torturing Cary! We need to find her!” For the first time, Cary saw where they stood, in a large room with multiple sets of shelves on the walls and a wide open space with a permanent silver-edged circle in the center. Emilia had bled over the circle, the puddle breaking the perimeter.
Mirabel’s voice all but moaned as she floated up to meet Emilia’s eyes. “Is that the demon speaking or her?”
In a flash, Emilia understood the full import of Mirabel’s question. She turned her rage-filled gaze onto Betsy and Regina. “You fucking told her? You betrayed me!”
Mirabel slapped Emilia then, the blow ringing her head with more force than the little fairy should have been capable of. “Are you an idiot? They just saved your stupid little mortal life. And if I hadn’t known you were some demon’s slave, my first attempts at saving your dumbass would have ended it. You should be thanking them!” Mirabel flew away, a look of disgust spread across her face as she kept her eyes on Emilia. “We don’t even know if this is the demon speaking. We can’t trust her.”
“Shut your stupid little pixie mouth, this is Emilia you’re talking about!” Betsy rose to Emilia’s defense, and though her head swam from the blood loss and pain, she silently thanked her best friend.
“You have no idea what you’re saying, child!” Mirabel shook her hand at Betsy, fury growing as her normally still wings began to flutter. “The demon is her master, she could speak through Emilia’s mouth and none of us would be any wiser. Not that you were wise to begin with.”
“You little fucking bitch…” Betsy began a tirade as power built where Regina stood.
A rumble sounded in Regina’s throat as two separate, but harmonizing tones erupted from her mouth. “ENOUGH!” Red motes of power gathered about Regina’s body as she stood up tall, even taller than she did normally. Many of the motes concentrated themselves around the fingers of her left hand, as if forming rings there.
Mirabel sputtered and made an unexpected sign of the cross over herself as she whispered, “Granne Erzuli…”
Regina’s voice took on a Creole accent as she nodded to the fairy. “The ancient one has the right of it, children. But she is also wrong about the slaveries. Granne knows slaves, has known slaves for a thousand years and that little girl there ain’t no slave.” Regina walked to Emilia as the red motes of light collected about her body formed a crimson wedding gown. “Unless you count love, this girl is a slave to no one.” She patted Emilia on the cheek. “But her love gonna die unless you do something to save her.” With an almost mechanical twist of her head, Regina faced Mirabel. “You gonna let another love die, Mir of the White Belle?”
Mirabel gasped at the name and brought her hand to her mouth. A single tear rolled down her cheek as she shook her head. Before she could speak, Betsy said, “What do we need to do?”
Regina dropped her hand to her hip and turned away from Mirabel and Emilia. “I like you, Mon Cher. Your friend gonna die before you reach her lover if you don’t find a way to save her. My horse knows a way, but you gotta ask her right, you hear me?” Granne Erzuli turned about the room, a crimson glint in Regina’s eyes as she met Emilia and Mirabel’s gaze. “Trust the lightning in your veins, children, if’n you wanna live through this. But don’t you even think a’bringing my horse, or she’s gonna die now.”
With those final words, Regina sank to her knees and shuddered. The red light flowed away from her, leaving only a crimson mark on her left ring finger in the shape of a skull and crossbones. “What the fuck just happened?” Sweat poured down her brow as she tried to stand.
At the same time as Betsy ran to help Regina, Emilia’s legs wobbled and she dropped to the floor. A fourth set of hands grabbed her under her armpits, hands that couldn’t belong to anyone else in the room, as only Mirabel remained and she was too small to hold Emilia like that. Craning her head over her neck, Emilia discovered that she was wrong, Mirabel had grown to human height, or about a head shorter. “Relax, let’s get you back on the floor and see if we can’t patch you up, Emilia.” Patting her on the forehead, Mirabel guided Emilia back to the circle.
“How in the actual fuck do we heal her?” Betsy’s voice brought Emilia back out of slumber. Exhaustion and blood loss pulled her in and out of consciousness.
Hands patted Emilia’s cheek tearing her back to the painful bright light of consciousness. “Emilia, none of us knows how to heal you, but Granne said we have to ask her right. Do you know?” It was Mirabel’s voice, but wrong somehow. Or maybe the voice belonged to Betsy, Emilia couldn’t be sure. “Can you hear us? Open your eyes, hon.”
At the sound of Cary’s voice, Emilia’s eyes shot open. A black void formed in her middle, from which flowed impossible amounts of power. On the other end, Emilia could feel Cary trying to stem the flow, trying to keep from drawing upon Emilia’s essence to keep herself alive. But, like water siphoned from a pump, the flow had started — Emilia herself set it into motion — and nothing she did would stem the tide.
She felt as though she were back studying under Boris, drained of her magic due to over-exertion and awaiting the tiny vial of power he let her draw from to replenish. “Water.” Emilia’s voice came faint to her own ears, and it wasn’t what she’d intended to say. She coughed and cleared her throat. Someone drizzled a few sips of water into her open mouth and she could speak clearly. “There’s a glowing vial. Boris…”
The effort to speak pained her, drove her back into the darkness at her center. Where the sucking force pulled her in, Emilia could easily just let go. Peace dwelled at the other end of surrender. No more effort, no more pain, no more anything.
On the verge of accepting her end, hanging in the blackness as she was, Cary appeared as an apparition. At the same time Emilia felt the steady flow of Prajna draining into the demoness, she felt tremendous sorrow from Cary. “Please, Emilia. Do not give up. Please don’t die because of me.” Kneeling before her, washing Emilia’s feet with her hair and tears, Cary stared up at her. “I cannot stop the flow. They are trying to end me, and the only thing sustaining me is you. I am truly sorry.”
Emilia bent down and cradled Cary’s face with her hands. “I gave myself to you in the darkness. I was sure you were dead back then and I would do it again. Live for me, Cary. Survive and remember my name, remember that I love you, wherever I am.”
Cary screamed in rage at Emilia, as if the force of her anger would reverse the course of power between them, as if her will alone could sustain Emilia in the face of the power she lost. In a way, Emilia though it fitting she would die this way. She’d tried to end Esme like this, justice demanded she meet her own end at the complement to her power. Has she hurt Esme this much when Emilia had tried to finish her?
Emilia closed her eyes within her vision, stroking Cary’s head as she did. Letting go was good, it would bring her to completion. It would ensure Cary would survive. This was okay. She felt her heart stop beating, heard the screams of those around her as they discovered the same. As her very soul began to depart her body, a brilliant light reached out and grabbed her by the ankle.
The hand was tiny, absurdly small for the force it applied. And it belonged to a children’s toy, held together with bubble gum, ceiling wax, and a myriad of string and other frivolities. Eyes that bounced about their sockets stared up at Emilia and power flowed into her.
Upon her death, when her heart stopped beating, the flow of energy from her body to Cary stopped. An incredible flow of energy began from her chest while the paper mache and toy figure pulled Emilia back into her physical body. The link between her and Cary bloomed into force, highlighting the demoness’s location like a blazing beacon in the night and assuring Emilia she still lived. As magical force poured into her, Emilia sighed, her heart beat and she passed into a comfortable slumber.