Chapter 8
1620 Words
8
The juicy steak did hide the bitter taste of the numerous blood types that lingered in my mouth. I was nearly done with my steak when Margaret reappeared. “I suppose you’ll be wanting two rooms for the night.”
“One,” Shade corrected her.
My head shot up and I gaped at him with wide eyes. “Say what?”
“We will have one room,” he insisted.
“One room?” I squeaked.
Margaret arched an eyebrow as she looked from of us to the other. “Which is it?”
“We will take the same room, but we’d like an extra set of blankets,” he rephrased.
Margaret’s eyes flickered to me. “Is that okay with you?”
I glanced at Shade whose steady gaze looked back at me, and after a moment a sigh escaped my lips. I returned my attention to Margaret and smiled. “We’ll take one room with extra blankets.”
“The usual room?” she asked Shade, who inclined his head. “Well, get your food done with and I’ll have your blankets when you get up there.” She left us.
I looked to Shade. “The usual room?”
“I have been here a few times,” he admitted.
“With other women like me?” I guessed.
He turned his face away from me. “Not quite.”
I arched an eyebrow. “So you don’t usually go around saving damsels?”
“I keep myself occupied,” he vaguely replied before he downed the last of his drink and stood. “Are you finished?”
I sighed and dropped my fork onto the plate. “Yeah.”
Shade stood and offered me his gloved hand. I arched an eyebrow, but accepted his offer and he helped me to my feet. He led me through the maze of the now stupefied clientele and up the stairs to the second floor. The second flight of stairs was ignored for the long hallway that stretched across the whole of the building. Only two doors on either side of the stairs occupied the front of the inn. The others crowded about the central passage that ran perpendicular to the first hall.
Shade walked us past the stairs to the last door on our left. The entrance led into a small room, the windows of which looked out on the front of the inn and the dark, night-shrouded world. A small bed and nightstand stood opposite the door, and to the left was a dresser and two chairs. The walls were papered over with a flowery design that had faded long ago.
I walked over to one of the windows and pulled aside the curtains. The unnatural light of the lantern that hung from the crossroads porch loomed out of the gloom. “So how does the magic work?” I wondered as I looked over my shoulder to Shade.
The man had taken a seat in one of the chairs. He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eye. I wandered over to him and set a hand on his shoulder. “You okay?”
“Fine,” he assured me. He hadn’t opened his eye.
“Do you want the bed?” I offered.
He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”
“You don’t look fine,” I insisted.
“I’ll be fine,” he repeated.
“You look like a warmed corpse,” a voice spoke up, and I looked to the door and saw that Margaret stood in the doorway. She held a stack of blankets in her arms and a frown on her lips. The woman stomped over to us and dropped the blankets in Shade’s lap. He still didn’t open his eye. “Why don’t you get your pasty ass down the road and have that old geezer get a look at you?”
“We’ll be safe soon enough days after that,” Shade argued even as he grimaced and opened his eye.
She snorted. “I suppose if you think being dead is being safe, then yeah, you’ll be safe. But-” She jerked her thumb over her shoulder in my direction. “What about her? Whoever’s chasing you now will take her and do with her what they want. You really want that?” Shade’s eye darted away. Margaret rolled her eyes. “Suit yourself.” She turned and marched over to the door, but paused and caught my eye. “Watch yourself, and that i***t there. He needs a lot of babysitting.” She gave me a wink and left.
I leaned my back against the wall and looked over my rescuer. He was definitely the worse for wear, what with his horrible pallor and a slight tremor in his right arm. Shade appeared less than willing to speak, so I decided I’d do the talking.
“Who’s the old man Margaret was talking about?” I asked him.
“A sorcerer who resides in the woods,” Shade told me as he flexed his injured arm. “Hardly more than a quack.”
“So this world has those, too?” I mused as I sauntered over to the bed and plopped myself down on the foot. I swept my eyes over the room with its sturdy open-rafter ceiling and flowered wallpaper. “Margaret must keep these rooms pretty secure.”
“You want to ask questions,” he commented rather than guessed.
“I want answers,” I corrected him as I looked him over. “But I think you could use some sleep.” I patted the mattress underneath me. “You can have the bed if you-”
“I will take the floor,” he assured me as he tossed the blankets onto the floor.
“Oh. . .” I replied as he drew off his coat and dropped that onto the pile.
He settled himself atop the bundle and the room quieted. I hopped off the bed and walked over to the gas lantern that hung on the wall beside the door. A quick flip and the room darkened. The starlight from the open windows illuminated the room with its soft glow as I shuffled over to the bed and fell onto the soft sheets.
Sleep, however, wouldn’t be my companion as I lay there staring up at the ceiling. My mind whirled with unanswered questions and memories of the past few hours. A voice from the darkness made me jump.
“You move about quite a bit.”
I sat up and glared at the heap on the floor. “That happens when I’m in a new world. There’s just no getting comfortable with this new air. Just gimme a few days and I’ll have this breathing thing down.”
Silence for a moment, then a reluctant reply. “Your stay here will be longer than that.”
My heart skipped a beat. “What do you mean? Can’t you just push me back through the picture?”
“It isn’t as easy as that,” he warned me as he shifted atop his sheets. “There are certain. . .difficulties in traveling to your world.”
“But you went through it that way!” I reminded him.
“Yes, and the effort nearly destroyed me.”
I had to tamp down the panic rising within me, but I couldn’t stop my hands from shaking. “So I’m. . .am really I stuck here? For. . .forever?”
“Yes.” A pause. “I’m sorry.”
I shut my eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. Never had I felt so alone in a big world full of strange people. A bitter laugh escaped my lips. “Well, on the bright side at least I don’t have to worry about paying my car loan.” I cleared the lump in my throat and sat up straight. “So now that you’re awake and I know one truth, what about spilling the beans on a few others?”
A moment of silence followed my question. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
I snorted. “Of course I’m not sure, but thinking about that isn’t going to keep me out of the grips of Pawn and his piggish henchmen. Knowing why they’re after me will help a hell of a lot more than bawling my eyes out. So-” I clapped my hands together. “What’s going on? Who’s Pawn working for? Who are you working for? What kind of magic is in this world? Why am I in this world?” I licked my dry lips and wrinkled my nose when my tongue caught on some dried blood. “And why was everybody trying to force-feed me blood? Am I that low on iron?”
“The blood was the catalyst in pulling you into this world,” Shade explained as he sat up and leaned his back against a chair. “The blood of one from this world allowed you, a person of another, to come across.”
“And what would have happened if I’d tried to cross without the blood?” I asked him.
“The effort would have burned your body to nothing.”
I cringed, but a word from him caught my attention. “You said it took you a lot of effort to get through? How’d you even do that without blood from someone from my world?”
“Magic,” was the bland reply.
“And magic can’t take me back?” I guessed.
“The magic can only work so many ways.”
My blood began to boil, but I doused it with a deep breath and slid onto the floor so I knelt on my knees in front of him. “I just. . I mean, what sort of magic is this that it stops working?”
“The most dangerous kind,” he mused as he turned his face away, though his eye still darted over to me. “The blood is the life, and any magic that uses it is both powerful and dangerous. Kin ties is the highest form of that magic.”
“Kin ties?” I repeated.
“That’s the term used for blood magic,” he explained as he shifted atop his blankets. “Any number of possibilities can be derived from using blood as the source of the spell. The binding agent, if you would.”
“So it’s the egg in the cake?” I guessed.
I detected a faint hint of humor in his eye. “You could say that.”
“So how was blood used to bring you to my world if you didn’t have someone from there?” I inquired.
He shifted atop his blankets. “Synthetic blood was created.”
“Synthetic blood made from what?”
“Not from what. From whom.”
I rolled my eyes. “Alright, from whom was the blood taken to be used to cross worlds?”
“Me.”
- Writer
