Reluctant Adept: Book Three of A Clairvoyant's Complicated Life (35 page)

The horses had slowed to a speed more akin to an easy canter, which had rendered the panorama clear to my view but no less bleak. All around us, the brownish-gray surface appeared parched and, as far as my unaided sight could discern, devoid of life and contour. Flat and barren, even its resonance felt as hollow and inert as the unremarkable landscape. The sky, which appeared gray and dead, possessed a uniform dullness that hardly distinguished it from the color of the landscape. Here, there was no sun, no moon, no stars, nothing to mark the passage of time, nor, even, of distance.

To our left, a river of quicksilver paralleled our level path, flowing from horizon to horizon, providing the sole source of relief to the unrelenting desolation in every direction. With nothing nearby to offer any sense of scale, it was difficult to get a sense of its width or how far away it was.

"What is this place?" I asked. "It feels empty and … wrong somehow."

Strangely, though, I no longer felt cold. I speculated that it had something to do with being fully immersed in this plane's resonance, as opposed to sitting at the doorway and feeling its draft. Now that I considered it, both Drustan and the rest of his contingent seemed to appear more solid here, too—less ghostly.

"
Nàsaig
," he replied and then added, "The shore where alone the forsaken linger."

I shivered and pointed to our left. "And what's that?"

His head swiveled to regard the undulating swath of silver. "The river
Crònathir
. I believe humans call it Styx, the unending boundary between the land of the living and death's domain. To enter without sufferance is to be drowned by its waters for all eternity. Be warned,
Cúairtine
, none have the power to escape its grasp, not even one such as you."

With a shudder, I considered the stripe. "Not much to look at, is it? Nothing like it's portrayed in stories … or the movies. According to myth, there's supposed to be a ferryman, Charon. He carries souls across for a toll—a gold coin, usually."

He snorted, still looking toward the river. "If there is a ferryman, I have yet to see him."

Something told me he'd endured countless opportunities to see everything there was to be seen in this place.

"Is this where you go when you and your men aren't off hunting for the king?"

He nodded, a stiff up and down jerk of his helm.

"And … I guess you've been bound to this collar thing for a long time, then?"

He didn't deign that with an answer, but I knew he'd been bound for a minimum of three thousand years, because I remembered Kieran saying that's about how long King Faonaín had reigned. Of course, Drustan didn't mention which prior king he'd committed himself to. For all I knew, he'd been stuck as Master of the Hunt for tens of thousands of years.

A sobering thought.

With my core finally filled to the brim, a crazy impulse went through my mind, one that would provide Drustan with a long overdue change of scenery and also give King Faonaín the middle finger.

"So … I know I told you that I'd come with you and everything," I began. "But if I were to, let's say, sidestep to Earth and maybe accidentally take you along for the ride … what would happen?"

His whole body stiffened as he jerked his head to stare down at me. "I am compelled to bring you to the king."

"Uh-huh. So, on Earth, you won't die or dissolve into mist or turn into goo or something like that, right?"

He shook his head, I suspected, more in bewilderment than anything else.

"What about your men?" I asked. "What will happen to them if I take you to Earth for a little R & R?"

"The hunt cannot be thwarted," he replied. "We hunt until our quarry is captured or killed, as charged by our master."

"And your horse? Nothing bad will happen if you're parted from each other, right?"

When he stared down at me, in what I guessed was confusion, I blew out a breath. "Look, I don't know the constraints of your binding. Can you dismount from your horse without anything bad happening, or not?"

"Of course I can dismount," he replied as though I'd asked him if he knew the horse's withers from its tail.

"Fine. Hang on. We're gonna take ourselves a little detour."

Before he could argue, I enfolded him within my telekinetic grasp (which, incidentally, drew an entertaining grunt of surprise from beneath his helm), thought of my destination, and sidestepped my magic through the nether.

As soon as my tendril pierced the veil between our worlds, slipping into my building's conference room, the exuberant torrent of Earth's magic, combined with the reassuring tether of Tíereachán's bond, filled me with such utter relief I might have stumbled without the support of my telekinesis.

If someone had told me a bomb had detonated in the conference room while I was away, I wouldn't have questioned it. The conference table laid in two jagged pieces, overturned chairs were scattered everywhere, and I had a heck of a time finding a clear spot to slide us into. With the exception of Red and Diedra, my building's djinn had restrained everyone inside individual, nearly transparent bubbles.

I gaped at the spectacle. Besides the wrecked furniture, Kim looked as though she'd been through a wind tunnel; Wade's clothing was somewhat charred but he appeared otherwise okay; Fisk had a seeping gash on his forehead, bloody scratches down his neck, and his suit jacket was tattered; Tíereachán's left eye had swollen shut, his arms bore slash wounds as though he'd been raked by a clawed animal and his clothes were blackened in spots; Kieran's shoulder was covered in a mass of bloody, clotted punctures; and, lastly, there was Alex, curled into the fetal position, unconscious, his clothing covered in soot, blood clotting at his ears, mouth, nose, and staining the tips of every finger.

The smell of ozone, blood, and burnt fabric assailed my nose, but what caught me flatfooted was the intensity of Tíer's astonishment at my appearance and the overwhelming surge of relief that followed. For a moment, my own surprise mingled with his before his injuries (which were painful but not life threatening) sparked my anger.

"Jesus H. Christ," I shouted, glaring at the lot of them. "I leave for half a goddamned hour and you guys destroy the conference room trying to kill each other? Are you all insane?"

More than one of them gasped at my abrupt return. Or it might have had to do with the enormous armored warrior standing next to me.

Fisk blurted, "What the …?" His eyes nearly bugged out as he stared at my horn-helmed companion. "You brought us the Master of the fucking Hunt? What the hell happened to Caiside?"

"A certain someone decided to send the Hunt to collect me before I got the chance to sidestep the both of us out of Evgrenya's prison." I lowered my voice. "I don't take kindly to being abducted."

Kim drew herself up straight, nose held high, and it wasn't hard to imagine Brassal doing the same thing in the Otherworld while he used her as his conduit. "Ungrateful human, the king was rescuing you!"

Their lack of reaction to my 'Evgrenya' bombshell told me it was something Kim, Brassal, and Kieran already knew about or, at the very least, suspected.

"I'm a world walker," I snapped. "I don't need rescuing. Caiside—he needs rescuing. My friends—they're the ones who need rescuing."

I took a cleansing breath and fought for a more conversational tone. "You know, I'd be a little more understanding had the king instructed the Hunt to rescue Caiside too. But His Royal Highness didn't bother. The Hunt took only me, and I had to watch Caiside's face when they carried me off, leaving him to rot where he's already spent the past century and a half. Can you even begin to imagine how devastating that must be for him—to have freedom so close at hand just to see it plucked away at the last second?"

Clenching my hands into useless fists, I added, "So don't you dare characterize that as a heroic move. Sending the Hunt for me when the king knew I couldn't get away was anything but heroic. It was a power grab, and you know it."

Turning my back on them, I strode to Alex's unmoving body. I knelt next to him, outside the strange bubble's shimmering shell. Curious, I hesitantly extended my naked hand, now remembering that I'd lost my right glove. When I received no warning from Maya and Tanu, I skimmed my fingers over the surface of their handiwork. Although the bubble's tactile feedback told my brain that I touched something smooth and unyielding, the resonance vibrating beneath my fingertips said something quite …
other
.

This was not a construct of Earth.

I marveled at it until curiosity got the better of me and I plucked at the bubble with my telekinesis. As the resulting tremor rippled through the shell, I understood what the djinn had done. They'd forged a magic circle around Alex, but instead of utilizing Earth's resonance in its construction, it rang of their own world's.

It hadn't occurred to me that when a spellcaster on Earth crafted a circle, they naturally drew in Earth's resonance when sealing it with their own blood. It made sense. It was all they knew. But the djinn weren't creatures of Earth and, as far as I knew, they didn't have blood. Yet, somehow, they'd forged a circle utilizing their home world's resonance and their own will, which had the effect of creating an unbreakable barrier, a ward of sorts, through which nothing of this physical plane could pass.

Ingenious.

"Is he okay?" I asked the two djinn, who hovered nearby, their gray misty forms swirling like two miniature tornadoes.

"The cursed human is healing his wounds," one of them replied. With both of their incorporeal bodies churning so close to each other, it was impossible to tell which had spoken.

"The djinn interfered before unalterable damage occurred," the other added.

Not sure the conference table would agree
, I thought to myself as I surveyed the room. It was pretty clear that the djinn had waited until the last second to intervene. I puzzled over whether they'd done this on purpose. Had watching the fight entertained them?

I gasped as something cold clamped my upper arm and hauled me to my feet.

Drustan, in full master-mode, yanked me toward him. "
Cúairtine
or not, you cannot escape the Hunt. I will bring you to my king, regardless," he boomed, towering over me, once again appearing ghostly.

I cast a withering glance at his grip and stifled an involuntary shiver at the drop in temperature. "Would you lighten up? I already told you, I'm not trying to escape. I'm still your captured quarry, all right? This is just a detour so I can finish what I was doing before I was so rudely interrupted." I shot Kim a pointed glare.

Looking back to my helmed specter, I added, "There's no gateway that you can drag me through, so you may as well relax and enjoy the change of scenery. Don't worry, we'll see the king soon enough."

And when we did, he was going to wish he'd never messed with me. I was done being threatened and intimidated.

I yanked my arm out of Drustan's slackening grip. "By the way, you're on Earth now. No offense, but the helm is a little overkill for a business meeting, even if it does look like the aftermath of a drunken brawl in here."

What was I saying? The armor and helm were overkill period, here or elsewhere. He couldn't be killed. He was already dead! Though, now that I considered it, despite his spectral appearance, he possessed a corporeal form. Was it possible he could be injured? Was that why he wore all that armor?

As I gazed at him, wondering about all this, his helm dissolved to reveal a thick-necked sidhe with smooth plaits of shoulder-length black hair, henna-brown skin, narrowed eyes, and a mouth pinched in displeasure. He also possessed one of the most expertly groomed beards I'd ever seen, which enhanced his high cheekbones and intensely blue eyes.

Wow
.

Apparently, the sidhe weren't as homogenous as I'd come to believe.

He was so striking, with his tawny skin and bright eyes, it was hard not to stare, but I managed to stop goggling and looked for a chair that was still intact. "Here," I said, pulling one upright, which was somewhat awkward since I was forced to use my left hand. "Have a seat. This won't take long."

His expression turned caustic. "I have no need to sit."

"Fine. Loom all you want. Just stay out of my way or you'll find yourself in another dimension faster than you can say 'Doctor Who.'" I briefly tightened my TK around his body for emphasis. "Understand?"

He glared down at me and folded his arms, his expression telling me he wasn't impressed but planned to behave—for the moment, anyway.

"Lire, tell your heavy-handed djinn to release us," Kim demanded.

"I have an idea. How about I grab Caiside and let him decide whether they were heavy-handed or not?" I snapped.

"Lire," Tíereachán said, turning my name into a mild reprimand.

"Fine," I groused and shot a look at the two djinn. "Maya, Tanu, please release— "

"Not the vampire," Wade said. "Not until he regains his senses."

As I reexamined Alex, it dawned on me that it probably took a lot of effort to overcome a strigoi as powerful as the domn—hence, the destroyed room. And, I didn't have to be an experienced blood patron to know that an injured strigoi might not wake up well.

"Okay, release everyone except Alex," I clarified.

"As the Lire wishes," the entities replied in unison, prompting the disappearance of their force fields.

I cast a scathing glare at Kim and Kieran. "You know, it's a good thing I figured out a few things while I was over there, otherwise I'd be pretty pissed off at you guys right about now."

I sat down in the chair I'd initially pulled upright for Drustan, careful to avoid touching it with my right hand. I speculated whether my glove had floated to the floor of Caiside's prison or if it was trapped in
Nàsaig
, somewhere along that forsaken shore.

I grumbled at them, "Think you guys can avoid wrecking anything else for the next two minutes while I get Caiside?"

"That's what started this mess in the first place!" Kim exploded.