The Law of Three: A New Wasteland (The Portal Arcane Series - Book II), Page 4

  “I’m not sure why I could see that,” Samuel said. “It was your reflection, and yet I was able to step into it. I think it happened to me before, but it felt as though I was part of their dreams. You weren’t sleeping.”

  “No,” Jack said. “I don’t think I was.”

  “I got to know Mara so well, most of it through a dream world we shared. Does that make the relationship real?”

  “Hell if I know. What kind of relationship was it?” Jack asked, putting emphasis on “relationship.”

  “Hell if I know, either,” Samuel said. “Honestly, it felt different.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Samuel sighed, knowing the question was inevitable. “She fulfilled her dharmic responsibility, her ahimsa.”

  “Buddhism? Hinduism?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah,” Samuel said, taken aback by Jack’s recognition of Eastern philosophies. “Something like that.”

  When Jack fell silent, Samuel shook his head and smiled, surprised the young man did not push further. He knew people craved answers. They needed explanations and closure. Maybe Jack doesn’t, Samuel thought.

  “I’m guessing we’re not just going to sit here until the fire rain burns us to the ground.”

  “You’re right. We’re not. I have a decision to make soon.”

  “Don’t I get a say in it?” Jack asked.

  “No. You do not.”

  The loud knocking threatened to split the petrified wood of the cabin door. Both men leapt to their feet, frozen by the unexpected sound trapped in the burning desert.

  ***

  The auburn tresses caught Samuel’s attention even against the amber glow of the fire outside the cabin. Hair spilled over her shoulders and cascaded toward the middle of her back covering a small ruck sack strapped around her waist. The woman shivered. Samuel caught a glimpse of a wholehearted soul within those eyes, one struggling to find the righteous path. She could have been twenty-five or thirty-five. The grime covering her bronzed skin made it difficult to tell. Samuel noticed her high cheekbones and brilliant teeth and thought she had to be a model, but could not bring himself to utter the cliché. Samuel felt trapped by her unavoidable and tragic gaze. Before he could ask about the purple bruise surrounding her neck, she spoke.

  “I need help. Please let me in.”

  The woman turned back toward the flaming sand dunes and raining fire. Samuel glanced past her, looking for her tracks in the sand and not seeing them.

  “Who are you?” Samuel asked.

  Jack had crept up behind him to get a better look at the woman.

  “Lindsay.”

  “Not what I meant.”

  The woman lifted her tattered, white T-shirt up until her hands brushed the bottom of her full breasts, exposing a flat, toned stomach. The filthy jeans clung to her ample hips, hugging low enough to show she was weaponless. Holding the shirt there for a second, Lindsay then bent at the waist and yanked the frayed bottom of her jeans up past her ankle and to her calves. She raised her eyebrows at Samuel.

  “Okay? It’s not like I can hide a weapon anywhere else, now, can I?”

  Samuel nodded and smiled, surprised at the thoughts springing into his head regarding the woman and a full search. “C’mon,” he said.

  He stepped to the side and held the door open for Lindsay. She gave him a forced smirk before entering. She took three steps inside the cabin and stopped, thrusting a hip at the men and rolling her eyes. Lindsay was almost six feet tall with long legs and curvy hips. She blew a wisp of hair from her face and squinted as if doing so would allow her to see their intentions.

  “You two aren’t rapists or something, are you?”

  “It’s not like you can do anything about that now, can you?” Samuel regretted it as soon as he spoke, but it brought a smile to Lindsay’s hardened face. Jack stood as if his feet were glued to the cabin floor, gazing at Lindsay. “Sorry,” Samuel said. “I’m Samuel, and this is Jack.”

  Lindsay nodded, remaining standing with her fists balled.

  “Would you like to sit down?” Samuel asked. He slid the rickety chair toward her and motioned at it while he moved toward the bunk. Samuel sat and grabbed Jack by the arm, pulling him down into a sitting position as well.

  Lindsay looked at the door and then back to the two men sitting on the bunk. She lowered her backside onto the chair, never taking her eyes off of them.

  “What the fuck?” she asked.

  Samuel sighed and waited, sensing more was coming.

  “What is this place?” Lindsay asked, expecting an answer.

  “A random locality that’s about to become dinner for a reversion,” Samuel said.

  “Oh, that explains everything. Thanks.”

  The sarcasm lit a fire in Samuel’s heart. He chuckled and nodded. “Just about. Ain’t that right, Jack?”

  Jack gave Samuel an uneasy smile and turned back to Lindsay. Samuel noticed Jack could not avert his eyes from the bruise stretching across her neck.

  “Why don’t you start with what you can remember? Tell us how you ended up here.”

  Jack nodded along with Samuel’s question. Lindsay bit her bottom lip and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She closed her eyes and inhaled.

  “I woke up. Well, at least I think I woke up, on the ground in this dark, silent forest. It had to have been the creepiest place I’ve ever seen. Huge trees towered above and blocked out the sunlight. I sat up and saw a rope next to me, and my neck hurt. I looked around and saw dozens of ropes hanging from trees. My first thought was I had survived some kind of murder, a mass hanging or something. Some of the trees even had yellow police tape stuck to them.

  “I stood up and could see trash littering the forest. Coats, shoes, even nylon camping tents. But I didn’t see another person, not even a dead body.”

  Samuel leaned back. He watched Lindsay’s right hand move toward a slight bump underneath her T-shirt, something placed strategically between her breasts.

  “Eyes up here,” she said.

  Samuel felt his face catch fire like the pools outside the cabin. He rubbed his eyes with his hand before speaking. “You’re wearing something around your neck. Your hand was moving toward it.”

  This time it was Lindsay’s turn to blush. She drew the thin chain up and dropped a silver, cross pendant on top of her T-shirt. “From my grandfather. I never take it off.”

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Samuel said. “Please continue.”

  “I started walking and just knew something was off about the place. I could barely smell anything. It didn’t stink. It didn’t have a smell at all. I walked and walked for what felt like miles. The sun never broke through the trees, and I didn’t find anyone else. Just more and more personal items in the forest, as if everyone had gotten up and ran off. When I found the abandoned teddy bear, I knew the place was different. Kids don’t leave that kind of stuff, ever.”

  Jack rose, and Lindsay’s muscles tensed. She stood and took a step toward the door. Jack held both palms out to her as he glanced out the window. When he saw nothing of interest, he backpedaled to his spot next to Samuel on the bunk. Lindsay sighed and sat back down.

  “So you were walking . . .” Samuel said, trying to refocus her mind.

  “Yeah,” Lindsay said. She shook her head and tucked the nagging piece of hair back behind her ear. “I remember walking up the side of a hill, maybe a mountain. I don’t know. When I got to the top, I could see rolling hills and nothing but trees stretching forever. I’ve been to Colorado and Montana, and I know what wilderness looks like. This, this was nothing like that. It felt dead.”

  Samuel glanced at Jack. The young man dropped his stare to the floor.

  “Something caught my eye,” Lindsay said. “A shiny flash, something I knew was way out of the ordinary for this place. I walked toward it, and at first I thought it was a cave. The opening was black and warm. A humid breeze came from it. But the edges weren’t rock. They were light, and as I got closer,
the opening grew. I stood in front of this black hole and I felt the urge to step into it. Absolutely insane, even when I think about it now. But I did it. For some ungodly reason, I stepped right into that fucking thing.”

  “And when you opened your eyes again, you were standing on our front porch,” Jack said, speaking for the first time.

  “Your front yard. But yeah, close.”

  Samuel put both hands behind his head and whistled long and low. He thought about Lindsay’s story and decided now was not the time for explanations. Lindsay and Jack would need to trust him if they wanted to escape the reversion.

  “That’s all you remember?” Samuel asked.

  “That’s it,” she said.

  A lengthy silence filled the cabin while the three sat looking at each other. Jack found himself staring at her again and forced his eyes to the floor. The fire continued to fall, and the flames in the puddles seemed to reach higher into the sky.

  “We can’t stay here,” Samuel said.

  Lindsay and Jack stood, Lindsay placing her hands on her hips, turning her head at an angle.

  “Excuse me? Did you just say we can’t stay here?”

  “We can’t leave the cabin, Samuel,” Jack said. “Have you seen the forecast for today?”

  “It’s the reversion trying to pin us down,” Samuel said. “If there is any hope for salvation, we have to get to the peak before the cloud eats us.”

  Lindsay and Jack shuddered, and even though they did not understand what Samuel meant, they felt the truth in his words.

  “Well, we can’t exactly walk through the fire without an asbestos umbrella, now, can we?”

  Jack laughed at Lindsay’s comment much the same way a brother laughs at his back-talking sister.

  “I picked up a few skills in my last visit here. I’d like to try something with both of you. I can’t guarantee it will work, and if it doesn’t, your soul will most likely be lost in the damnation of an eternal abyss.”

  “I’m in,” Jack said.

  “Me too,” Lindsay said.

  Chapter 4

  Samuel stood with his arm around Jack. Lindsay gripped the crucifix in her hand the way Samuel instructed. It felt cool to the touch, as if it were vibrating slightly. Jack looked out of the greasy window one more time to confirm that the thunderstorm of fire was still falling.

  “I’m ready,” he said to Samuel after turning away from the window.

  They stood facing each other, arms outstretched but not touching. Samuel instructed them to close their eyes and clear their heads.

  Samuel waited several minutes until Jack and Lindsay’s breathing slowed to a more relaxed rhythm. He heard the crackling of the fire from outside the cabin and closed his eyes. He felt a spark inside that blossomed into a ball of light on the inside of his eyelids. The ball of light swelled into a rectangular form with an electric-blue border Samuel recognized as the edge of a portal. It felt similar to the one he summoned and used to dispel Major into another locality. He communicated with Lindsay and Jack without speaking. The portal is opening.

  He felt them mentally nod, acknowledging his statement.

  When I say so, push your energies toward the threshold. Can you do that?

  Again, he received nonverbal confirmation from each of them. Samuel steadied his nerves and approached the gaping maw of the portal opening inside his head. Maroon swirls of light danced before it, and Samuel felt the distance between them. He used his mind’s eye to gaze into the portal.

  In the distance, like an out-of-focus object in a photograph, Samuel spotted the cabin. At least he believed it to be their cabin. It stood as a gray speck on a landscape dotted with windswept dunes. The structure was afloat in a vast sea of empty sand. He saw the mountain and its ominous peak jutting upward from the far reaches of the portal’s window. It hovered over the desert as if it had been there for eons. Samuel noticed the fire storm falling around the cabin, but it did not fall in the foreground of the portal. He estimated a half-mile radius of fire around the cabin. The pools of fire glistened on the sand, the flames dancing back and forth, determined to keep the occupants inside.

  When Samuel looked to the right and left, he saw more dunes but no rain of fire. He used his mental vision to scan as far as possible inside the portal. To the west, the reversion held fast, while its cloud continued crawling to the east, where a vast plain of desert stretched beyond the cabin and ran to the foot of the mountain. Whether or not he could find a Barren in this locality would not matter as much as getting to the peak ahead of the reversion. The complex, paradoxical feeling Samuel had about the peak was the same one he had about the cave where he made a last stand with Mara. As much as it pained him, he had to get to the peak ahead of the reversion. He had to.

  Samuel did not know Mara earned her release from the cycle and her freedom from the reversion. She fulfilled her karmic duty even though Samuel did not. She left the previous reversion through the cave and entered the infinite realm of eternity.

  His vision shifted back until he could see images of his feet edging over the outer frame of the portal. The point of Samuel’s black leather boots aimed at the area of the locality beyond the reach of the thunderstorm of fire.

  Almost.

  Samuel felt Lindsay’s communication but nothing from Jack.

  Jack?

  No response.

  Lindsay, can you feel Jack? Is he with us?

  He waited until he felt Lindsay’s voice inside his head.

  Not sure.

  He felt the urge to panic. Samuel waited and scanned the landscape again, searching for anything out of the ordinary, anything that could explain why Jack had gone dark. Samuel caught a quick flash coming from somewhere on the peak, as if a tiny mirror had caught the reflection of whatever celestial body passed for the sun here. Before he could think about it, Lindsay spoke again.

  He’s here. Jack is here and ready.

  Samuel felt the relief wash through him. He fought the doubt in his head and knew this was their only chance. He could outrun an undead horde or climb over them through the trees, but escaping a rain of fire was something else entirely. The risk remained as it did for any slip, and Samuel hoped a localized slip could minimize it.

  When I finish speaking, I want you to visualize your hand grasping the hand closest to you so we can close the triangle. When I feel that, we’ll slip.

  He felt the nod from Lindsay. After several seconds, it came from Jack, as well.

  Although the portal opened in the silent space of his mind, Samuel felt as though the winds had picked up and were now howling in protest. He felt the resistance of the locality to the impending slip and hoped they could overcome it. He briefly thought of the alpha male and the possibility of him and the pack sabotaging their efforts, but Samuel didn’t think that was how the wolf operated. He would prefer a frontal attack, jaws snapping at their necks.

  Even his thoughts seem to distract him from the slip, and he recognized the portal’s energies pushing back, trying to preserve its dominion. Samuel refocused his energy. He found the furthest point from the cabin and the easternmost point of the landscape in hopes of putting as much distance between them and the cloud as possible. He identified a coordinate and wished he had something more substantial than a patch of sand to use as their beacon. The winds in Samuel’s mind now raced, and he thought they started to scream in protest. The silent noise almost distracted him from the sensation of locking hands with Jack and Lindsay. He figured that was the reversions’ intention. It did not like him slipping, and bringing others along made it even worse.

  Three, two, one.

  Samuel gave one last jolt of energy to Lindsay and Jack to confirm they remained in his hands before he stepped from the edge of the void. He went over the electrified perimeter of the portal and into the nowhere, between his physical body and the slip’s destination. He felt the heady sensation of weightlessness, like the days of his youth spent floating on his back in the middle of a pond. Sound a
nd light rushed back and forth through his vision and inside his head. Samuel felt the physical movement of his cells, and he recognized the shock and fear coming from the others. He welcomed their sensations as evidence the three were still tethered. He lost sense of direction as well as time. Samuel wanted to clasp his hands to his head, as helpless to stop the spinning sensation as a drunk at the bottom of an empty bottle of whiskey. He screamed, yet he could not hear his own desperation. The force of the slip tugged at his eyes, slowly trying to extricate them from his skull. Samuel’s bladder released its contents, and he felt as though his body were being ripped apart one molecule at a time. He was about to reach the point where he hoped his brain would shut down and release him from the experience when everything went black.

  ***

  “Help.”

  The whisper was so soft that Samuel did not realize it came from his own lips. He opened his eyes and immediately felt the insidious sand caking the corners of them. He blinked twice as what little light existed in the locality threatened to burn his retinas. Samuel’s body ached from within, and he felt an itch inside his chest he could not scratch. His throat felt as though it was stuffed with cotton, and his ears were ringing. Samuel flexed his hand, thankful for the pain radiating through his palm. Pain ceased in death. At least he hoped so.

  “Samuel?”

  The voice came from the same place of fear and desperation as his own but with the unmistakable timbre of a woman.

  “Here,” he said through a mouth of sand. “I’m right here.”

  He opened his eyes again, seeing his outstretched arms, each connected with another. They both came through, but he only heard Lindsay speak.

  “Jack.”

  No reply.

  Samuel remembered having Lindsay on his right, so he turned his head to the left. Jack’s form was there, but he had yet to communicate with them.

  “Jack,” Samuel said again.

  This time the young man stirred, his head shifting in the sand. He mumbled and turned it again.

  “He’s here,” Samuel said, turning to Lindsay.