Collision: The Alliance Series Book Three (30 page)

“You don’t trust the others.”

“I don’t trust them not to stop us,” I said. “And I don’t want Mathran to know I can amplify the tracker. What he told us doesn’t add up.” I peered down the landing. “Come on.”

I switched on the invisibility and slipped into the room, behind Ada. None of the others were even paying attention to the spheres, which lay on the table in the corner where Mathran had obviously left them after he’d shown us. No one turned around when we came in. They all watched the screen, which showed a series of glyphic images again.

While Ada struck up a brief conversation with the others, I crossed the room quickly and retrieved the three spheres from the corner, pocketing two of them. Then I returned to the empty meeting room, switching off the invisibility as soon as Ada came in and shut the door behind her.

“I don’t know about this…” she said as I turned the sphere over.

Unconsciously, I’d picked Veyak. The metal buzzed against my hands. The trail of magic was easy to pick up on, and as I laid out the other two, I detected three signals. One considerably stronger than the others.

“Wait,” I said, in a low voice. “I think they’re all tied together, somehow. This one has the strongest signal.” Veyak. Of course.

“What’re you going to do? You can’t go chasing after a random magic signal. And what about the Alliance’s rules against taking offworld substances into the Passages?”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. Taking the pendant was technically illegal, too. But I didn’t want to leave it lying around in here.

“I can follow the signal without touching it,” I said. “All right. You go and put those back in there. Just say you wanted to have a look, if they catch you.”

“If you say so.” She bit her lip, and her hands shook as they connected with Veyak’s sphere. “This feels… wrong.”

“I know,” I said. “I hope we can sort this out soon.”

And I felt like the biggest liar in the Multiverse, and like the deities themselves might strike me down for betraying her like this.

I didn’t want to drag Ada after me. Even though she was on my side. She’d said she wanted to
know
me. And part of me froze in terror at the very idea. She knew I was a killer, but not the extent of it. She’d been born to secrecy, like me, but I’d never told anyone how fucked-up my life before the Academy had been. Maybe even now, I physically couldn’t. The words just weren’t there.

Coward.

And I hated myself even more for lying to her. We had to stop Veyak, somehow, and letting emotions get in the way was the last thing I needed to do.

Which meant I had to try my last-ditch plan, and contact the deities. Alone.

Once she’d taken the spheres out of the room, I turned invisible, slipped around the corner and out the front door. Still following the signal, I crossed the doorway into the Passages and used the world-key to open another doorway, keeping at a distance.

But it didn’t lead into the abyss. Instead, the doorway opened onto the canyon I’d seen from a distance through the other door in the jungle. The sides of the canyon climbed into the sky, and burnt red ground extended towards the horizon where it disappeared into fog.

Or, what I’d thought was the horizon. Up close, though, the fog-wreathed edge of the world stretched from one side of the canyon to the other. It didn’t cover the whole continent, and it wasn’t a chasm, at all. It was another, giant doorway.

I stared for a moment, stunned. Someone had opened a doorway right here in the canyon, a good fifteen feet across. But it wasn’t a hole in the centre of the universe. It looked like it led nowhere because the doorway was at a side-angle, and the world on the other side was wreathed in fog. But it must lead to another world.
Which world?

The magic signal pulsed stronger. And it didn’t come from the doorway itself, but from a spot to the right of it. An encampment had been set up, and figures moved around, too distant for me to see what they were doing.

I crept closer. All figures wore indistinct robes–the summoners of Veyak came to mind immediately. And the signal was definitely Veyak. From here, I could still feel the three signals overlapping, and as the magic in the air heightened, it became clear Veyak’s power emanated from the abyss—or the doorway.

The same place the other two signals disappeared. Through my almost-sixth-sense tuned into magic, the difference was so unmistakable I couldn’t believe I’d never felt it before. From here, I could almost see the thin tendrils of power being drawn towards the abyss, at the same time as Veyak’s power grew stronger, more heightened. To hold open a doorway like that, the world on the other side must be high-magic… or there must be a source nearby.

Walking into the middle of that camp wasn’t the best option right now. But I’d planned to contact Veyak myself. Maybe…

I backed through my own door into the Passages again, and opened another one after closing the first. Thick jungle crowded the view. I closed the door and I opened another, repeatedly, until I found another part of the plain, out of sight of the group. The chasm was even closer from here. I must be on the other side of it. So it wasn’t a hole in the middle of the earth but a doorway opened through Vey-Xanetha itself, connecting one source to another. From this side, a faint gleaming line divided it from the ground. The source must be there somewhere.

Maybe I could stop it.

Magic pulsed below the surface of the atmosphere, making my skin hum all over. When I tapped into it, the buzzing sense all but rushed towards me, lighting the world in red and violet.

The deity’s presence flooded me. I gasped, eyes widening as light burned before my eyes, raging blood-red before it pulsed white, into colours the human eye couldn’t see–

I couldn’t control the magic pulsing to the heavens, vibrating in my bones. My mind blanked out. I was supposed to be doing something–to be…

A furious hum echoed through my head, a voice amplified, and not human. One word, over and over. And it came from my own mouth, too.

Veyak.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ADA

“Kay!” I shouted, throwing myself through the doorway. He stood outlined in red light, eyes black and gleaming.
Holy crap.
I’d seen him heading outside, but I hadn’t thought he’d actually go after the god.

He didn’t react when I called his name. In the sky overhead, lightning crackled, and each pulse brought a jolt of magic. Over and over, each bolt brighter, each jolt more intense.

A deep, horrible voice echoed in the back of my head, and at the same time, Kay said:
Veyak.

Except it wasn’t his voice. I took a step towards him, and the magic shook along with it.

There was so much magic here, the slightest movement disturbed it. Just like when the level had been out of control on Earth. The Balance…

Kay’s hand raised, his eyes gleaming. Lightning surged down.

I threw myself at him, and my hands grabbed his as the magic hit. I gasped, the world exploding in blinding white light, but I held on tight.
I’m adamantine, unbreakable. We can’t break. Please!

“Veyak,” I gasped. “Stop!”

I blinked rapidly to clear my vision, not daring to let go of Kay’s hands, hoping with everything I had that I’d got here in time to save him.

The ground trembled violently, knocking both of us off our feet. My back slammed into the ground and my hands dropped Kay’s.

The whiteness cleared from my vision, penetrated by the red-purple haze ever-present here. And Kay…

He lay still. Eyes closed.

“No,” I whispered. I shook him, hard. “Kay!”

His heartbeat fluttered against my hands, but though he was breathing, his eyes remained closed. Pure, ice-cold fear lodged itself in my heart.

“Kay, wake
up
!”

“Ow.” He twitched one hand.

I fell off him with a shriek. “Holy shit, Kay. You’re alive.” And I collapsed onto my side, half-laughing, half-crying with relief.

“Whoa there,” said Kay, his hand on my arm. “We should get out of here.”

I shifted upright and hit him on the arm. “You total asshat,” I said, swatting him with my other hand. “You moronic
imbecile!
You–”

“Save the insults for later.” He pushed himself to his feet, not even flinching.

I joined him, placed my hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. They were clear, steady. “Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?”

“Absolutely sure,” he said, pulling away from me. “I didn’t get knocked out, I just got dazzled for a bit. I’m fine.”

“You scared me to
death!”
I spluttered, anger and relief warring within me. What the hell had he done, tried to
talk
to the deity?

“Come on.” He moved towards the doorway to the Passages, and I followed, fuming.

Once in the Passages, he made to step through the door to the base, but I barred the way.

“I don’t know what you were doing out there,” I said, “but I
really
don’t care for this martyr complex thing you’ve got going on.”

“Martyr complex?”
He frowned. “Ada, that’s not what happened.”

“Yeah? Could have fooled me. What the
hell
were you trying to prove? Or do you think your life doesn’t matter? Maybe you do have a death wish.”

Kay blinked, mouth pulled down in confusion. “I didn’t know. I wanted to see where the deity’s power was focused. I blacked out. What happened?”

“You said
Veyak.
” I shuddered. “And you were going to call on third level magic. You were totally out of it. I thought–”

“Damn,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ada. I didn’t know. I’m not about to die anytime soon.”

“You are if you keep doing stupid things like that!” I glared at him. “You know what? I’ve changed my mind. I
don’t
trust you. I don’t trust you not to put your life on the line for some
stupid
reason–” I moved to hit him, but he didn’t block me, and I ended up hugging him instead. I buried my head in the front of his jacket, breathed in the tangible scent of magic surrounding both of us and something underneath that, something uniquely him.

“Screw this,” I muttered. “It’s nearly the end of the world.” And I kissed him.

Kay went completely still for a moment, then responded, kissing me back. Right then, lightning might have struck right next to us and I’d have hardly noticed. The heady combination of adrenaline and longing made me sway on my feet.

With difficulty, I broke away, flushed and breathless. “You’re an idiot of the highest order. If we survive this, you’re gonna get the lecture of a lifetime.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Kay said, in a similar condition, and half-smiled at me. “Right. I was going to head back to the base. Did you see the light around the chasm?”

“What?” I gave him an incredulous look. “Did you think I was looking at that? You almost died, you idiot.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’ve seen it before. The chasm isn’t this world at all. If it really was a gaping hole in the universe, there wouldn’t be anything of Vey-Xanetha left.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

“It’s a doorway,” he said. “Which means someone must have opened it. Where it leads, I’ve no idea. But that’s no chasm. Someone’s playing games with us.”

“Yeah. I thought so. But the others… they don’t know.”

“We have to warn them,” said Kay, and I heard the unspoken words,
before it’s too late.

***

KAY

At first, the base looked as we’d left it, the stone structure grown out of the cliff itself. Then a bone-shaking thud shook the ground as a huge chunk of rock fell from the building’s side. Bronze rock-fragments already scattered across the cliff top.

No way.

Behind me, Ada gasped. “God, no.”

“The others,” I said, and sprinted through the doorway and uphill.
Damn.
Raj and Iriel had been there, with Mathran, and…

How could this have happened so fast?

That symbol—carved into the ground, splitting the stone, like it had been gouged there by a gigantic hand.

“Kay, wait!” Ada grabbed my arm, and I stopped as another piece of bronze rock fell, smashing to pieces less than a metre away from us.

“Shit,” I said, backing out the doorway again. “Okay, Ada, you stay out the way. I’m going to try and stop it.”

“The hell you are!” she yelled in my ear, over the sound of falling rubble.

“Trust me,” I said, and pulled on the magic–not from Vey-Xanetha, but from the Passages. Ada stopped tugging my arm, understanding, and faced the rubble, too.

Magic from the Passages was wild, unrestrained by nature, but right now, I’d take that over a mad deity. I used the magic to pull on a piece of rock as it fell, so instead of crushing what remained of the building, it tumbled over the mountainside. I sensed Ada supporting me, too, her power adding to mine, which amplified it. The crumbling rock slowed enough for us to move pieces away from the danger zone. Sweat beaded on my forehead as the momentum rocked me on the spot, but I held my ground.