Truth Seer Book Four, page 16
… For a normal practitioner.
She hadn’t added that. I had.
I rose to my feet. “Beth, I’m gonna try something. It’s not gonna work. And you’re gonna laugh at me. So laugh now and get it out of your system.”
“I only laugh if something’s funny. This isn’t funny. This is very intriguing. Harper White, do you think you can follow that portal?”
I winced. “It’s a bad idea, right?”
“It ought to be impossible. Let’s stick with that. What does your gut tell you?”
I squeezed my eyes closed and winced. “That I should just give it a go. That I don’t really know the true extent of my powers. Lord Omega kept telling me that when I was fighting him at the Mystic Library. He kept saying that other truth seer is so much more powerful because I’ve been improperly trained.” I laughed. “I guess he’s right. I’ve trained myself. That’s not training, is it? It’s a series of guesses.”
“Made by a truth seer. The distinction between a guess and a fact for you is thinner. Harper, do you actually think you can follow this portal?”
I was done with her questioning me. Because I was done questioning myself. I lengthened, pulling myself to my full height. “I’m gonna try anyway. Direct me if you can. I don’t even know what I’m going to do if I find the location. It’s not like I can open a portal.”
Beth remained quiet for a few itchy seconds. “I might be able to help you there. I’ve been practicing casting spells. You know that. Baking has helped me immeasurably. I can now change my form and lengthen it to drive.”
“Beth?” I interrupted. “That’s seriously impressive. But do you honestly think you can open a portal?”
“I have no clue. We’re in this together, though, Harper. Give it a go, and I will.”
I grinned. And I gave it my best go.
I kept Beth on the lookout. I pulled her out of my pocket and left her by a heat pump. She didn’t care about the frigid air. She watched me and both mouths of the laneway.
If anyone turned down it, she’d tell me.
I just had to concentrate.
Who knows what Vince would tell me if he were here right now? He’d likely pluck me up, grab my hands, and freak out because they were so cold. Lux? Oh, Lux would be disappointed. And I’d never actually faced a truly disappointed Lux. He usually controlled his emotions around me. He also gave me a great deal of latitude – especially compared to the controlling Vince. That would end the second I followed Lux. I needed to know where he’d gone, though. My truth magic would not let me sit this one out. And if I was being seriously honest with myself, neither would my jealousy. I kept thinking of Jill and clamming up. I could imagine her hands all over Lux. She’d get what she wanted, sooner rather than later.
Sighing, I concentrated, stripping my mind of its every distraction. I felt like I anchored myself into some great big heavy rock. My feet even became heavier. I sank down to my knees. Cold wind blasted over my back, spraying snow down my side. I ignored it. One breath in. A longer breath out.
I repeated the move until I tuned in to my blood. While my body was chilled to the bone – my blood crackled with tantalizing warmth. I just had to follow it. I locked my hands on the asphalt, moving them around like someone smearing ink on glass.
There. One crackle. Another. I had to pay such intense attention to them, my brow should crack. Pain lanced from temple to temple. My teeth started to jitter.
There. Another hint. Another clue – it was like putting together a puzzle. But the puzzle didn’t have pieces. It had distant sensations I could only connect to via my blood.
Bethany remained quiet, and thankfully nobody was brave enough to head down this cold, snow-swept alley.
I don’t know how long it took. Five minutes? Ten? I was certain it wasn’t an hour… maybe.
By the time I gasped, I could barely move my frigid body. I felt carved from ice. But my blood still spoke of magic, and it helped me to my feet. “Beth, I think I know where they’ve gone. I… it’s weird as hell, but it’s like I’m holding a location in my hands. My truth magic is wrapped around it. This is insane.”
“No, it isn’t. You’ve done far crazier things,” she snapped over me as she pushed close. She rolled up my body and stopped in my hands. She could sense how cold they were, even if heat meant nothing to her.
She jittered, using the movement as best she could to warm me up.
It helped. Recreating this portal would help more.
I squeezed my eyes closed, and again a vision of Jill with her hands all over Lux struck me. My jaw hardened. “Sorry to push you along, Beth, but I don’t think Lux has much more time.”
“I do not believe those demons would be brazen enough to kill him.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
She watched me perceptively. “That’s not your fear though, is it?”
You know what? Time to be honest. “No, it isn’t. I don’t like the way Jill treats Lux.”
“Perhaps he likes it.”
“Beth, don’t push me right now. Help me get to him.”
Remarkably the sassy soul shard said nothing.
I didn’t know how to connect to her until she connected to me. She rolled up my body until she locked herself against my chest.
I crumpled down to my knees. I pushed my arms out. My hands were still clamped together as if I were physically holding on to the truth. I couldn’t access the location. Visions didn’t rush through my mind. My magic was doing this for me. I just had to feed it.
And Beth just had to direct it. “Harper, this will probably give you a headache.”
I laughed harshly. “I’ve had one all day.”
“By headache, it will feel like someone has shoved a cattle prod between your temples, scrambled your brains, and thrown them in the trash. You ready?”
I snorted. “When you put it like that, absolutely. Bring on the pain.”
“Ready to go through hell to get to your demon?”
I didn’t need to consider her snide remark. “Yes.”
“Then hold me harder. Give me access to your magic. I may be able to do the rest. I’m not promising anything.”
“It’s okay. Just try your hardest.”
“It’s not okay. We need to get your demon back before Jill can get her nasty little hands on him. Concentrate.”
I concentrated. I was however waiting with bated breath for the moment my damn brains would be scrambled. It came a second later. I gasped. I gave Beth access to my magic, and my brain tried to leak out of my ears. I rocked forward. I almost fell on my face. Ringing picked up in my skull, and a throbbing shook down my back.
“Concentrate. Keep concentrating. I’ve almost got it. Just a bit more magic. Give me a bit more magic,” she demanded in a harder tone.
“Take it all,” I snapped genuinely.
This sense that I had to get to Lux rose even sharper. Okay, I could admit this was less about the truth and more about Lux himself. Jealousy was driving me.
Jill might be a demoness, but she was wrong. Lux didn’t need her. He needed somebody to free him. I didn’t mean he needed to be freed from the Treaty. There are plenty of ways to be free even when you’re tied down by rules in your physical life.
I didn’t know what those were. I wondered if I could help Lux find out and, in doing so, he could help me too.
“You’re not concentrating. The connection’s almost broken, Harper—”
Crap. I gave it my all. I scrunched my brow, rocked forward on my knees, and just bled magic into Bethany. It worked. She shuddered, rose from my hands, spun, then created a portal. It was one of the hardest things I’d done. Vince used portal magic with the snap of his darned fingers. For me, I had to pretty much cut my veins and bleed all over the floor. But it worked.
I gasped and watched in wide-eyed wonder as a portal formed around us.
“Harper, do not let go of the truth, for God’s sake. Or we’ll end up somewhere random.”
I doubled down on the truth sense, protecting it with everything I had. The portal gobbled us up. For a snapped second, I wondered if we’d even arrive anywhere. Perhaps the portal would just dump us in some dead man’s zone, and we’d never even wake.
Just when my fears escalated, we appeared… somewhere.
I screamed. I fell to my knees, grabbed my face, and almost threw up.
I was alive. I think I’d even successfully followed Lux. But I hadn’t asked an important question. Where would three demons go?
Hell.
Chapter 13
Bethany grabbed my hands and pulled them from my face. “It’s okay. Harper, it’s okay. For the love of God, stop screaming. It isn’t hell.”
“It’s….” I opened my eyes.
“Is the place on fire? No.”
“It’s upside down,” I snapped over her.
“Granted,” she paused and answered. “But it’s not on fire. And we ought to take positives where we can find them.”
I staggered to my feet. I was starting to regret this. I mean really regret it. My stomach was sinking, my heart was stopping, and my brain was going fizzle, pop, bang. What the heck had I done? Lux was trustworthy. He’d told me not to follow for an excellent reason. I wasn’t cut out for… this place.
“Interesting. I believe it is a mirror spell. A massive, enormous mirror spell. I cannot tell you who cast it. It feels ancient.” Either Beth was having the time of her life, or she’d had a stroke and forgotten how to respond properly to threats.
“Beth, what are you doing? Come back here.”
She tried to dart off down the street. A problem. Because we were standing on the street, but we were upside down and the sky was above us. No, below.
I stupidly took a step, staggered, ignored the spinning world, and threw up.
Gravity didn’t take my hurl and lift it into the air. We were upside down. But we weren’t upside down. I knew the world had been inverted, but it hadn’t altered how I could interact with it.
I actually slapped myself. This wasn’t making any sense.
“Do not harm yourself prematurely, Harper. Stick around here, and I imagine someone else will do it for us.”
“You said this place wasn’t hell.”
She snorted. “Plenty of other places are far more dangerous, trust me. We did follow three demons.”
“But where the heck did they take us?” I pressed my hand against the back of my mouth. I was woozy, sore, and entirely freaked out. But about 1% of me was curious too. I winced my eyes open and stared at the street. It was… a street. It looked functional. It had the same houses as the laneway I’d left behind. It was just… upside down.
My brain screamed at me that it wasn’t just upside down. One can’t use a term like just when describing an inverted world.
Everything struck me again, and I almost staggered to my knees. A curious Beth wouldn’t let me. She shoved me up. “This is no time to overreact.”
“Sure. No time to overreact. We’re in a massive mirror spell that has inverted the world. I’ve stupidly followed three demons. This is absolutely fine. No. It’s perfect,” I spat.
“You’re being irritating, Harper.”
“I’m being reasonable. Beth, this is insane.”
“It will get worse if you simply stick around and do nothing. Follow me. We need to find Lux. There’s something different about this place.”
“Yes. The fact it’s inverted,” I snapped.
“No. I’m getting a sense….” She darted down the laneway.
I had to run to follow her. The worst experience of my life, by the way. Every time I lifted my foot, I thought I’d drift into the sky. Or fall into it.
I couldn’t let Beth get too far away. What if something attacked her here?
Ignoring my churning stomach again, I finally found the gumption to run. I did not fall into the sky. After a while, I did slip into a steady pace.
I had no clue what Beth had sensed. It soon became apparent. We ran down a block. We reached a section with shorter buildings. In the distance, not too far away, somewhere near the middle of town, a castle rose from the city like a hand pointing to the sky.
Flabbergasted, for several seconds I couldn’t move. My feet felt soldered to the asphalt. My mouth took an age to open. “What the hell?” I hissed. Stupidly, I waved a hand in front of my face.
Fortunately Beth hadn’t left me completely alone. She raced back down the street and banged into my shoulder. “Are you checking you’re not dreaming? Of course you aren’t,” she spat. “This is incredibly real. It’s a mirror spell. And like I said, it’s massive and old.” The word old shivered in the air like she’d just released it from a 1000-year ice prison.
My skin itched. I clenched my trapezius and sank my fingers in, my freaked-out gaze never moving from the castle. “What… is it?”
“If I had to guess, it’s our destination.”
My eyebrows twitched. “Huh? You want me to go there?” My voice shook worse than before. For a good reason. I’d told you there was a castle. I hadn’t described it yet.
Gird your loins.
Massive, it towered over the city like a skyscraper. But unlike most towers, its girth was huge. It took up probably… I don’t know… four or five blocks?
It was made from some dark, obsidian-like stone. It absorbed the light, giving off this menacing vibe.
“Pull yourself together,” Beth snorted. “I’ve never seen a place more likely to house demons. Seriously. If the place isn’t throbbing with those snide little buggers, I’ll eat my hat.”
“You’re not wearing one.”
“I’ll go out and buy one and eat that. And before you say I can’t eat anything, head to the castle. I’d say that’s where Lux’s gone. Have you forgotten Jill?”
No.
Remarkably, the mere thought of her unstuck my feet. I wiped my itchy, sweaty palms on my jeans and pivoted, following Beth. While this city nominally looked like the same one I’d left, it had a dirty great castle where downtown should be. I could technically navigate to it. Beth was quicker.
She only darted a meter and a half ahead. If I ever slowed, the view of the sky beneath making me too woozy, she darted back and thwacked me on the shoulder. “I’m certain our little demon doesn’t have much time.”
I didn’t object. Our little demon? Two things were wrong with that statement. They were obvious. And while Lux certainly didn’t belong to either me or Beth, I couldn’t shake the feeling by the end of tonight he’d belonged to Jill.
We reached the castle. When I threw myself down a laneway and skidded to a stop in front of it, my body recoiled from my feet up to my head and back again. I swore every cell jittered and lurched back.
Beth knew I was about to run. She pushed into my shoulders. “I’ll admit,” she dropped into silence, “it’s quite an imposing sight. Really makes the hackles rise, doesn’t it? Who cares?” she snapped hard. “Your demon man is inside.”
“He’s a demon – not a man.”
She snorted. “We’ve been through that particular distinction before. You’re the one who’s kissed him. Tell me, Harper White, is Lux a man?” she purred.
Usually I’d finish an argument like this. Now I had to concentrate on the boiling sense rising through my blood with tornado-like force. I could sense magic. From the beginning, the day I’d found Bethany, I’d started sensing magic. This was beyond a mere sense. I felt like a pot of water sitting over an inferno. My whole body vibrated with the knowledge real magic was being practiced within that castle. And if I was stupid enough, I’d venture in and it’d eat me.
I opened my hands, tightened them into fists, then opened them again. “Beth? Beth… how the hell do we even get in?”
“Bravo, Harper. I thought in your current scaredy-cat mode you’d ask me how to escape. No clue, by the way.”
“Sorry? You don’t know how to get in?” Relief but fear crashed together within me. My mind kept imagining examples of Jill seducing Lux.
I had to do something—
“No clue how to escape,” Beth explained with a chuckle.
“Surely we just… use another portal, right? Wait, no, it’s a mirror spell. We just break it.”
She cackled. “Break through a spell this massive? Good luck. You know the interconnected concrete tunnels beneath the city? You know, the mirror spell you were sucked into a month ago?”
“I’d never forget it,” I commented dryly.
“This is about 1,000 times more powerful than that, Harper. Good luck simply breaking through it. Not unless you have a demon-sized tank.”
My blood chilled. A nice change from its never-ending boiling.
If we couldn’t go back, that left only one direction, right?
I winced. I went to ask how we’d get into the castle. It was time to concentrate.
When I focused beyond the roiling force in my blood, I picked up the tiniest fragment of truth. My real power called to me, warning me there were hidden facts within.
I could follow them.
Sure, it was crazy – what choice did I have?
I flexed my hands one last time but didn’t pump them back into fists. I dropped them loosely by my sides. “This way,” I grunted.
Beth pushed close. “Finally, the competent Harper has returned. Don’t screw up. I imagine that place has considerable defenses. They aren’t watching the outside of the castle, presumably because they don’t think any non-demon creature can come here. They’ve never met you. But within—”
“There will likely be banshees, harpies, demons, and trouble.” I ticked those items off on my fingers. “Got it.” Clenching my teeth, I breathed hard. Then I followed my magic. The castle didn’t appear to have any entrances. It didn’t even have any windows. I could find a way to scale the smooth walls – or get Bethany to help me fly. It’d lead nowhere.
Half squeezing my eyes closed, I realized my blood always knew the answers.
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