Chapter 15

T he heat is fucking unbearable. It's like standing in an oven. The hazy shimmer of heat ripples around me, the sun doesn't move, and each step seems to take me no closer to anything because there's nowhere to go; everything is the same in every direction.

I could be on a gigantic treadmill for all the progress I'm making. Once in a while, I look back and see the dark hazy hump that is Zirae's corpse, and for a while, it doesn't change. And then I look back and it's a barely visible smudge on the horizon.

And then there's nothing. And, oddly, that terrifies me. It was my only marker in the featureless wasteland.

I keep walking.

My feet leave no prints. There's not so much as a puff of wind nor a single scrap of cloud. Not a bush, not a blade of grass, not a speck of sand. Nothing.

I keep walking.

I'm not thirsty, though. That's weird, right?

There's no pain, no bond-sickness. No blood-lust. My skin remains pink and soft—no hardening, no fangs.

Again and again as I walk, I reach for my prana, and again and again I find nothing. It's like touching your tongue to your gum where a tooth used to be.

I walk. And walk. And walk. Slowly, imperceptibly, the sun lowers toward the horizon on my left—which means I'm going…south? Cardinal directions were never my strong suit.

Does it matter? I don't know where I am, so I have no destination, and thus, it doesn't matter which way I go. I'm just walking because it's something to do.

Am I still immortal? I don't seem to be getting thirsty, nor am I getting sunburned or suffering from heatstroke or anything you'd assume I would feel being stuck in an unforgiving wasteland without food, water, or shelter.

So then, what? Just wander aimlessly? Eventually, assuming I am still immortal, I'll arrive somewhere.

Fucking Zirae.

Since I can't solve my magic problem, I think back to how he appeared—what happened and how he managed the things he did.

I was able to enter The Dreaming in my body and exit again. I think I poked a hole in the fabric between the realms or dimensions or whatever. But did the hole I made close? Is it still open up there on the mountaintop, letting the creatures from The Dreaming enter our world? The thought makes me shudder in horror. What if I unwittingly unleashed those mana-eating monsters on the world?

Zirae was able to close the gaps he created. Or, so it seemed. Did they close on their own?

Was the dark, oily nowhere-place part of The Dreaming? Another layer? Or some other realm or dimension? How did he hijack my glamour? I meant to open the earth beneath the column of Mortal Federation machinery, like I did Zirae, here. Instead, Zirae turned the hole in the ground into a hole in reality —a portal to The Dreaming, or wherever that was. And then, somehow, he used a knife, a physical object, to cut open a hole to the other side, which led us here. From New York, through some strange section of The Dreaming, to this place…Death Valley? The Sahara? It's not either of those, I don't think. Death Valley has rocks and mountains and sand and stuff, I think, and the Saraha is nothing but sand dunes. What other large deserts are there? I mean, the North and South Poles are technically deserts, but this very clearly is not one of the poles. There's a desert in South America, but that one is way up on the top of the mountains, where some mysterious ancient people made giant line drawings—the Nazca lines, I think. What does that leave? Australia? This isn't the Outback. Wait! The Gobi! This must be the Gobi—it's the only other desert on the planet that I know of.

Great. So, I'm reasonably certain I'm in the Gobi Desert, which I think is in China. So we went from New York to China via…what? A wormhole? A portal through The Dreaming?

Perhaps the knife is the key. But…he couldn't have used the knife to make the entire half-a-mile-long prana leyline into a portal—it happened instantaneously. The hole he cut with the knife was just big enough to allow us to step through.

I shake my head—I'm no closer to understanding what Zirae did or how. I'd had a thought earlier, but it went out of my head. How could he have gone there in his physical body? I was under the impression—arrogantly, perhaps—that I am the only one who can, due to my unique genetic makeup, my status as a Secundus.

But then, that's how he escaped me the first time, and I was warned that he had that ability—something he should not be able to do.

I startle from my thoughts—the sun has set behind me, leaving me trudging through the soft orange glow of the gloaming. Heat dissipates swiftly, with nothing to hold it in.

With nothing else to do, I keep walking. My legs don't seem tired, and my feet don't hurt. I'm not thirsty. I'm not hungry. I'm not bond-sick or caught up in bloodlust.

Did I die? Is this some weird Purgatory?

I go back to the problem of Zirae and his ability to traverse The Dreaming. Could there be something to that? Some way of using The Dreaming as a means of travel? Did he have some way of navigating? Of knowing where we'd come out?

I ruminate about what he did, and how to replicate it safely. Portals, paths, and possibilities. Instead of relying on airplanes, boats, and cars—and the necessary accompanying materials and resources—we could simply open a portal and go where we want.

The journey itself was simple and easy—there was no disorientation, no vertigo, and no side effects. Just the danger of the mana-creatures. Which, to be fair, is not an insignificant hurdle.

My mind wanders to those things next. What are they? Creatures of pure mana? Creatures that subsist on mana? Both? They didn't have form or substance when they emerged in The Waking, looking like nothing so much as a heat haze shimmer in the vague shape of some kind of creature. But not a creature I recognized, even insofar as I could make out their shape to begin with. I could see something like legs, or arms, or pincers, or claws.

But then, once here, they sort of just…glommed onto things and changed them. One turned a bus into a monster, a living insectile creature that ate people. Another turned corpses into legs and a taxi into a body and became a spider. A third went into an apartment and came out a Cave Troll from Lord of the Rings.

I won't claim to be any great shakes when it comes to logic—in the mathematic, philosophical sense. But it seems to me that if those things live in The Dreaming and eat mana, then they must be drawn to mana in our world. Caleb has told me that mortals, and even immortal Once-Bloods, have and use mana because all living, sentient creatures do, but we produce more than we use. The rest is just sort of…there. Overflowing. Dripping from us. Leaking into our dreams. That excess is what shifters feed off of. But shifters, being denizens of The Waking, must feed on mana in The Dreaming, in their Dreaming forms. The creatures—I'll need a name for them, I suppose—seem able to feed on mana in The Waking and use it to take physical form. Twisted, freakish, magical form.

So what are they drawn to? Thought? Dreams? Creativity? I don't know. All of the above, I suppose. They enter The Waking, find some source of mana, eat it, and become physical. But the bus? Why a bus? Why turn a bus into a bug?

There are no answers.

I become aware of my surroundings again—I've just been sort of trudging forward aimlessly, not really seeing. Sort of like when you're driving somewhere and go on autopilot—you're driving, you're paying attention, but then you get where you're going and have no memory of the preceding trip.

Except I didn't get anywhere. There's nothing—more nothing. Endless amounts of absolutely fucking nothing . Cracked hardpan in every direction. Now, above, a dark sky strewn with countless diamond stars.

It's bitterly cold.

Part of me wants to just stop walking and sit down. But I think if I do, I won't get back up. I won't start walking again. I'll just lay there, undying, forever.

I keep walking. I watch the stars shifting overhead, rotating slowly around me—the motion of the planet itself, as if my perception of time has been stretched out.

My legs do not tire. I still feel no hunger, no thirst. I mean, I suppose it could be worse, right?

Wait, forget I asked that—I have no desire to tempt The Fates. You hear me, Fates? If you're real and you're out there and listening to my thoughts, I don't need things to be any worse. This is bad enough.

What are The Fates, anyway? Are they real? Are they a group of fae who sit on some mountain somewhere, watching the lives of humanity and toying with us through a glamour writ cosmic scale?

Stars fade and the black blanket sky becomes a dim gray. The bitter cold that doesn't quite bother me lessens to merely chilly. Slowly, the stars wink out one by one as the gray becomes hazy, and then the haze becomes pink stains on the edge of the horizon. The pink turns ombre, layered with orange. And then yellow begins to scar the orange and erases the pink entirely.

I wonder how far I've walked?

Twenty miles? Fifty?

I'm not walking especially fast. I haven't stopped; I'm untiring, and as far as I can tell, I've been walking in a straight line.

So hopefully, I've made at least twenty miles of progress.

Only, what, a few hundred more to go before I find something? How big is the Gobi Desert? What if I was on the edge and if I had picked a different direction, I'd have found something by now?

Maybe I should turn. I could be a few miles away from an oasis, or even a road, or a hotel.

I'm not hungry, but god, I could kill for a cheeseburger, french fries, and an ice-cold Diet Coke.

When was the last time I had a Diet Coke? Will I ever have one again? McDonalds probably won't exist for much longer.

And you know what? I don't understand why civilization ended anyway. Because there are magical people out there who live a long time? So fucking what? Why is that worth killing people over?

But then, we killed each other over the right to own other people, which is a vile, heinous practice. So it's not a big jump to hating people who are, in fact, vastly different than you. People who don't just look different but can kill you easily and who you can't easily hurt…and you didn't even know those people existed…and then suddenly, surprise! You're surrounded by people who turn into animals, can do magic, and enjoy drinking your blood.

So, I guess I do get it.

The sun makes its first appearance on the horizon on my left, a sliver of brilliance.

Something about the sun isn't right. But what? I glance at it—it's the right color. Moving slowly, imperceptibly above the horizon. It's generating heat—I can feel the chill of the night air fleeing before the streaming golden-yellow rays of the rising sun.

Walk, walk, walk.

My feet are moving on their own, I think. I'm not sure I could stop if I tried. I don't bother testing the theory, though. Why bother? I won't get anywhere sitting on my ass. And since I'm immortal enough not to need food, water, shade, or rest, I may as well cover the miles.

"Are you sure you're going the right way, Little Sparrow?" Caspian's voice comes from my right.

I turn my head, and there he is, tall, lean, muscular, and sexy as hell. He's wearing tight black jeans, vintage Nikes, and a fitted red V-neck sweater made from expensive cashmere, the sleeves tugged up around his veiny, powerful forearms.

"Cas!" I turn and lunge for him, intending to throw my arms around him.

I stumble, my arms wrapping around nothing but air. I whirl in place.

"Cas?" I bite back a sob. "Cas!"

"Who are you talking to?" Caleb, behind me.

Naked, sexy, all rippling muscles and hard angles, that huge, thick, perfect cock swaying and dangling…

I prowl toward him. "Caleb."

He grins. "Are you sure you're going the right way, Sparrow?"

"Why do you keep asking me that?"

I blink, and he's gone.

"NO!" I stomp my foot. "No, NO, NO !" I feel like a child. "Come back!

Wait. Which way was I going? I spin in place, looking for Caspian. Or is it Caleb?

The sun—it was on my left.

And…when it set last night, it set on my left. But then later it was behind me.

And now it's on my left again, rising.

Which means…

I'VE BEEN GOING IN FUCKING CIRCLES?