He cupped her cheek, his smile widening. He looked almost childlike. “I trust you. Enough of this. Let’s go. I’ll show you the way.”
He held out his hand. Max took it, closing her fingers around his. He was right. Come hell or high water, she was going to do everything she could to save his life, promise or not. “Got any advice on holding on to my clothes when we go into the abyss? I’d rather not arrive in Chadaré naked.”
His hand tightened on hers like a vise. “Don’t leave them behind.”
“Thanks. That’s helpful.”
“Anytime. On the count of three. One. Two.
Three
.”
Max dove down inside herself, trying to focus on keeping hold of Scooter’s hand while she pushed her awareness out through her body and beyond, to her clothes. They gave her little to hold on to except for the texture of the fabric against her skin. At least they were old, well-worn friends, retrieved from her quarters by an obliging Scooter. She knew the bottom hem of the T-shirt was unraveling, the edges curling. The pants had faded creases at the crotch and behind the knees. The bottoms were ragged where she walked on the heels. She hadn’t thought to put on shoes, but she’d prefer to arrive in a strange and likely hostile city shoeless rather than stark naked.
Dragging herself through her fortress into the abyss hurt as much as before. Maybe worse. But when Max was through, her hand was still wrapped around Scooter’s, and she was wearing clothes. Scooter, on the other hand, was not.
He gasped silently in the rainbow-ribboned night. Tendrils of purple spread beneath his skin from the bruises on his chest and forehead. He still looked mostly human, but his buckskin pants had disappeared, and he was now covered head to toe in a pattern of red-brown scales webbed through with thin filaments of gold. Threads of gold also gleamed in his raven hair. He was still sweating, and the flesh of his hand holding hers was scorching, enough to blister.
Max tugged, and he floated closer. The gray bundle bobbled loosely in his grasp. She pulled it away. Hopefully she could pull it through. By the looks of him, Scooter would be lucky just to drag his own ass to Chadaré.
He was still panting, and his blue-flecked obsidian eyes were dazed. Max tucked the bundle under her arm and grabbed his chin. When he didn’t get the hint to give her his attention, she gave his cheek a sharp slap. That woke him up a little. He lifted his gaze to meet hers.
“Where now?” she mouthed slowly.
He did nothing for a long moment, and she lifted her hand to hit him again. This time with her fist. But before she could, he turned slowly away, closing his eyes and tipping his head. A moment later, he leaned forward, and they started flying through the night like Peter Pan through Neverland.
It didn’t seem as if they were going that fast, but they crossed the vastness of the abyss in little more than a blink of an eye. Soon they were weaving in and out of colored streamers that curled and twisted together in a baffling maze. Scooter didn’t slow down as the tangle grew more dense.
It came to the point where they could barely move without brushing through a ribbon. Scooter slowed to a stop. Ahead was a thick mass of colored strands wrapping around each other like a big yarn ball. Only not as organized as that. This ball had been attacked by a few thousand playful kittens, and the strings were a convoluted mess. Deep within, a heavy pulse of light brightened and dimmed in a slow beat. Max didn’t have to ask to know that Chadaré lay hidden inside.
After a moment, Scooter tugged her downward. They slowly maneuvered through the jungle of glowing streamers. At last, Scooter found what he was looking for. It was a pale pink ribbon, finer than most of the rest and slightly translucent. They drifted closer to it, and suddenly it filled Max’s entire field of vision, rising before them like an enormous wall.
They picked up speed. Max’s teeth ground together, and she held tightly to Scooter and the bundle of gray fabric. When they hit, a shower of sparks burst around them. Silky warmth enveloped Max, and she smelled mold, ash, and burned sugar.
There was no warning that the path was ending. One moment they were rushing through the pink light, the next they were sprawled out on the ground. Max jumped up and spun around in a circle. They were in a narrow space between two tall buildings. High above, the sky was a dark gray. Max twitched. Even the slightest sunlight could kill her. But oddly, she didn’t feel the usual urgency to duck into somewhere dark.
“No sun in Chadaré,” Scooter mumbled as he sat up slowly. “You are safe.” A grimace twisted his lips. “As far as the sun goes. We should move before we get caught. This path is a lesser-used one, but it hardly matters. Every entrance will be watched. They’ll be sending someone to meet us very soon.”
“I take it we don’t want to be met,” Max said.
“Only if you want to die.”
Max pulled him to his feet and held him as he swayed drunkenly. The blue flecks had faded from his eyes, and the remaining black looked opaque, like scuffed marbles. The ugly bruising on his chest and forehead was shrinking as she watched. He straightened and pulled away. “Give me my robe.”
She handed him the bundle, and he unrolled it. His fingers had long, curving black talons patterned with the gold that wove through his scales. His toenails were the same. Wicked hooks grew out of the sides of his forearms, and his muscles were all sharply defined beneath the taut covering of scales. His teeth were pointed, the canines long and curved. His cheekbones had sharpened, as had his jaw, and his brow bone had thickened and grown more protruded. His ears were upswept and pointed, and the cables of his neck had thickened and widened. It was as if a soft covering had been peeled away and what was left was not human. Which, of course, he wasn’t. But then, Max wasn’t, either. Despite his blindness and lack of magical power, he was still dangerous. A predator, like her.
“Help me put this on.”
The robe was voluminous and fell over him in a multitude of gossamer layers. He pulled the deep hood over his head and reached out for Max. She put his hand in her right rear pocket and started down the alleyway.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It has been centuries since I was in the city. Find somewhere for us to hide until you can scout and get our bearings.”
Oh, goody
. Instead of just impossibly hard, they were treading into the territory of definitely fatal. “How many people are looking for you?”
“Too many.”
“Is this robe going to be enough of a disguise? Or can they track you other ways?”
“If they smell me, they will know me. Otherwise, the cloak will hide me well enough.”
“Dressed like we are, how much are we going to stand out like sore thumbs when we go walking down the sidewalks?”
He shook his head, his fingers tightening on her pocket. “Chadaré is full of creatures from many places and times. Variety is expected.”
“At least, it was the last time you were here,” Max muttered as she pulled him along, staying close to the left wall. She glanced up. No one was coming for them from above, unless they were flying, which she wasn’t about to rule out. Behind them, the alley led away into deeper shadows that she couldn’t see through. That made her teeth itch. She could see in total darkness. These shadows should have been as clear as windows.
She started to ask about it, then stopped herself. There’d be time to ask questions once they found a safe place to hole up.
The alley fed into a mostly deserted street. It was paved with cracked and potholed asphalt. The buildings were blocky and made out of dull concrete, and the windows and doors were protected with iron grilles. A motorcycle roared past as Max peered out of the alley. She was startled. She didn’t know what to expect of this place, but a motorcycle wasn’t on the list.
The air was full of both familiar and odd smells. Divine and Uncanny magics were thick, sliding through the air like heavy snakes. Nothing in either direction indicated which was better, so Max went left in the direction the motorcycle had come from. She walked swiftly and was glad when Scooter seemed to have no trouble keeping up, despite his blindness and the uneven road.
She turned right at the next corner and again at the next, weaving back and forth in a nonsensical path. If anyone was coming to find them, they wouldn’t be able to reason out where they were going. Max sure as hell had no clue.
The city changed around her from one street to the next. She found herself walking through an area straight out of the
Arabian Nights,
with stone buildings and bulb-topped towers. Then they passed through a forest of soaring blue crystal buildings. Next was a block of squat igloo-shaped dwellings, behind that a collection of medieval castles. People—for lack of a better word—filled the sidewalks and roads indiscriminately.
Most of them were magical creatures of some sort. Many looked human, but only a few actually were, and many of those were branded on their cheeks. Max saw giants and a few centaurs, tall fairies—or maybe they were elves, she didn’t know. There were beings that came only up to her knees and some with four arms. Skins were every color and texture. The smells made her want to wrinkle her nose. She’d thought American cities had strong smells, but they were nothing compared with this place.
“Why does everyone keep looking at me like I’m meat?” she asked Scooter as she began climbing up a steep hill.
“If you were human and unmarked, you would be fair game.”
“Fair game for what?”
“For taking. Humans hold special interest for many who live here.”
“Yeah? Why’s that?” She glanced over her shoulder. A horn honked, and a stubby-looking car pushed through the crowd and turned off down a small street. The middle of her back prickled like they were being followed. No one in the shifting swirl of the street looked familiar. She hurried her steps.
“For games, for toys. Humans provide a great deal of entertainment in Chadaré.”
Max glared at a pale, blocky man with red-slotted eyes who was scrutinizing her. When he caught her looking back, he opened his mouth to expose a red cave with short broken knobs of gray that looked more like rocks than teeth. His flat tongue lolled over his lips and licked up around where his eyebrows should have been. Strings of green saliva dripped down his broad chin.
Ew
. Max wanted to stick her finger down her throat in the universal sign for “You make me want to puke,” but she resisted. Instead, she kept moving.
At the top of the hill, the buildings gave way to a park. Or maybe a small country, Max wasn’t entirely sure. It must have been at least twenty square miles. Bunches of towering trees dotted the landscape. Boulders like small mountains thrust up here and there, and a lacy pattern of rivers and ponds wove in between. Fruit trees and berry bushes of all kinds crowded into little copses. Rippling fields of grain ran up over a swell of hill, and animals grazed in lush pastures. It was Eden. And all around it as far as Max could see, the city rose, the impossible architecture defying the eye.
It was as if every period of architecture from all over the earth and far beyond had been imported into Chadaré, then a horde of bored witches, goblins, and whatever other beasties lived here had shaped and twisted and sculpted until they’d created a bizarre landscape of insane structures. Max could see spires that were so slender they were little more than spikes. Some buildings appeared to float. Others grew in zigzag shapes or leaned nearly parallel to the ground. The streets were a knotted mess, and people, cars, wagons, bikes, and mounts that Max couldn’t identify swarmed through them like New York at rush hour.
“How did this place come to exist?” she wondered out loud.
“Your world was the root of it,” Scooter said. “When magic began to drain away and so many were forced into hiding, some of us came here to create a haven. The city quickly grew, drawing more and more magical beings.”
“Us? You were one of the founders?”
“I was.”
He didn’t seem inclined to say more, and the prickle was back between Max’s shoulders. She looked back and was disconcerted to see that the street behind them had suddenly become deserted. The shadows hid far too much. An army could be massing, and she wouldn’t know. One thing she was sure of: someone was watching them.
“We should go,” she said, and urged him out into the park.
It wasn’t the best place to hide. Their trail was too easy to follow. At least Scooter’s robe faded into the gray light, making him nearly invisible. Smart bastard. He could have brought one for her.
Max guided them toward a thicket of trees overgrown with grapevines. On the other side, she peered out. Not far ahead was a pile of boulders with a creek running around one side of it. It wasn’t perfect, but they’d have the high ground, and she’d be able to see anyone coming for a ways out. She dug around on the ground and found a couple of lengths of wood, one about three feet long, the other five. They were hardwood and wouldn’t break when she started beating heads.
“We’re going to crawl,” she told Scooter. “It won’t confuse anybody for long, but it will give us a little time.”
She ducked down onto her stomach and pushed through the tall grass. She went slowly. Scooter was right behind.
At the creek, she got up in a crouch. She looked behind them. So far, she still saw no one, but every instinct told her they were there. “Across the creek now,” she whispered.
Scooter grabbed her pocket again, and they crouched low as they waded across. The water was warmer than Max expected and came up to midthigh. Scooter’s robe floated on top.
They were halfway across when something grabbed her ankle and bit her calf. Max kicked out viciously. Whatever it was let go, but a second later, another one chomped down. She gritted her teeth and started striding for the other side. Three more had fastened on before she stepped into the shallows. She swung the shorter club and knocked two away as she kicked off the other two. They looked a lot like scrawny little Muppets, with fuzzy green skin, bloated faces with doughy features, and yarnlike hair. Their mouths were full of teeth. They squalled and lunged at Max as her blood swirled away in the water, no doubt calling more of them to the feast.