Chapter 9
1429 Words
9
I leaned back and blinked at him. “You?”
“Yes. Does that surprise you?”
“Well, unless you’re wearing contacts you’re kind of of this world,” I returned as I looked over his yellow eye.
“My employer is very adept at kin ties,” Shade admitted with a slight sigh. “He altered my blood to allow me to go across and to return, bringing you with me.”
“So anybody, with your blood, could have traveled to my world, given me their blood, and dragged me back?” I guessed.
“Yes.”
A thought struck me. “So how did Pawn get the blood to go across?”
Shade closed his eye. “He stole it from me.”
“So he captured you?” I guessed.
“Yes.”
There was a tinge of frustration in his voice, and something else. “He tortured you, didn’t he?”
A pause, then a slightly hoarse response. “Yes.”
The tone in his voice touched my heart. I slipped one of my hands over his. He opened his eye and I looked down to hide my face from his prying orb. “I’m sorry. Nobody should have to go through that. . .”
“I escaped,” he returned as he drew my hand away.
I cleared my throat and lifted my head to smile at him. “I’m sure it was an epic escape, too. You’re pretty good at those.”
“I knocked out an unwary guard, stole his keys, and strolled out the back door of the prison.”
I snorted. “Okay, that doesn’t sound quite as exciting as I thought it’d be, but you still escaped with most of your blood intact. So if they wanted your blood, then Pawn knows someone who’s really good at playing with blood, too?”
“His employer has a great amount of wealth which he uses for his own means,” Shade answered.
“Sounds like a nice guy,” I quipped as I swept my eyes over the room. “So how does the magic work around this place? Does tapping the lantern dispel some cloak over the inn that’s lifted when the lantern is tapped?”
“Tapping the lantern merely identifies you according to your fingerprints, even through gauntlets. The magic is then commanded to lift and reveal the inn,” he explained.
“So if I didn’t tap the lantern could I still walk into the building?” I wondered.
He shook his head. “The magic allows for the inn to exist in a pocket of its own existence.”
“Wow,” I breathed as I sat back on my rear. “That’s sounds like some serious magic.”
“Margaret is very serious about keeping her clients safe,” he affirmed as he draped an arm over the chair. “Only those who have earned her trust may enter.”
“Sounds like a safe place,” I mused. Me and my big mouth.
One of the windows exploded and shattered glass rained down on us. Shade leapt on top of me and covered me with his body, shielding me from the largest of the shards. As the rain stopped he looked over his shoulder, and I followed his gaze.
My breath caught in my throat when I recognized the shrunken visage of Pawn. His piggish men clambered through the window after him and dropped with heavy thuds onto the floor.
“Not so safe, is it?” the piggish lean snorted as he tossed something at us.
The object bounced across the floor and stopped against Shade. My heart dropped into my stomach when I saw it was a severed human hand with a familiar ring on the finger. The fools Shade had ejected from the inn, or what remained of one of them.
“They were so bitching mad at ya that they spilled what they knew about this place,” he piggish man revealed as he drew out his short sword. Fresh blood shimmered on the blade. “Didn’t take very long to convince them they’d told the wrong guys.”
Pawn stretched out one of his ghostly hands to me. “Come with me.”
I felt a strange gnawing in my gut, and the insane idea to take his hand slipped into my mind.
Shade darted forward and slashed as Pawn’s arm with his gauntlet-covered hand. The razor-sharp fingers sliced the man’s long sleeve and cut deep into the pale flesh. Thick, black blood oozed out of the gashes, but quickly congealed and sealed themselves.
Pawn stepped back and flicked his arm. Dried blood splattered against the far wall, and as the wounds were cleared I saw to my horror that there were no wounds on his limb. They had vanished.
With the litheness of a tiger Pawn dashed forward and drew his arm back for an attack. Shade threw one arm up and blocked the fist that was aimed at his face. The block was effective, but the force behind the swing sent Shade flying backward into the wall beside the door.
The door flung open and Margaret towered in the doorway. She held a blunderbuss in each hand and a wild look of fury on her face. “Get out of my inn!” she bellowed, and backed up her words with a boom from one of her guns.
Shade grabbed me around the waist and dove us both to the ground as the gun projected shot across much of the room. The piggish men flung themselves out the window, but the last two got hit hard in the back as they made their escape.
Pawn, however, merely stood there as though the shot were mere spatters of rain. His clothes were left with countless holes and little rings dotted his body. Blood oozed out of the wounds, but quickly healed over.
“What are you doing down there?” Margaret snapped at us as Pawn stalked toward her. “Get going!”
She shot off the second gun and the boom hadn’t subsided before Shade picked me up and tossed me over his shoulder. He raced past Margaret as she was reloading. The shot had hardly slowed Pawn and Margaret was forced to drop one weapon and hold the other like a bat. She swung and connected with the side of Pawn’s face. His facial expression didn’t change, but his location did as the blow knocked him into the left-hand wall.
That was the last view I had as I was unceremoniously packed down the stairs and out into the cold night air. The piggish men stumbled around the side of the inn, ever the worse for wear, but unsheathed their short swords.
“Stop!” one of them shouted.
They may as well have been commanding the wind to calm for all Shade listened to them. He darted like a rabbit across the open field and into the forest. The thick trees and brush soon swallowed us in their shadowed domain.
Shade didn’t slow until we were several miles in that darkness. Draped over his shoulder as I was, I could feel the rising tension in his body. I looked across his back at his right shoulder and noticed a dark wet spot.
“Stop!” I shouted as I tried to twist around to catch his eye. “Your shoulder!”
“I’ll be fine,” he insisted.
My eyebrows crashed down and I pounded my fist against his back. “Let me down or I’m going to scream so hard you’ll wish you’d left me back in my world!”
There was an annoyed grunt, but he stopped and knelt down. His foot stumbled over the uneven terrain and we nearly tumbled forward. Shade caught himself and opened his arm. I slid off and took a few steps back to face him. He knelt with one arm over his bent knee and his other leg almost dragging behind him. His face was nearly as pale as that of Pawn and his breathing was shallow and erratic.
“That wound’s getting worse, isn’t it?” I asked him.
He gritted his teeth before he climbed to his feet. “I’ll be fine.”
“You said that before and I don’t think even you believe what you’re saying,” I retorted as I looked around. “Which way is that wizard Margaret mentioned?”
“I don’t need-”
“What you need is a slap in the face, now either take that or tell me which way,” I snapped.
Shade narrowed his eye at me, but nodded in a general direction to my right. “That way.”
“Good.” I grabbed his hand and tugged him along behind me. “Let’s get you patched up.”
“I’m-”
“Fine, and you’re going to stay that way whether you want it or not,” I quipped as I pulled a tree branch back and let it loose on passing.
Shade barely missed eating leaf. “Are you always this pushy?” he asked me.
“I’m always this worried after being dragged into another world, and the last thing I want is for my rescuer to get a fever of a hundred and decide this is a good spot to meet his maker,” I teased as I gave his hand a tug. “Now stop complaining and start letting me rescue you.”
- Writer
