by Linda Howard
He’d have to risk turning the headlights on, otherwise he couldn’t see where he was going and this job would take more time than he could spare. The falling snow would help hide his actions.
Cursing with every step, keeping the bundle that was Amber balanced over his shoulder because that was less effort than putting her down and having to pick her back up would be, he opened the driver’s door and awkwardly maneuvered himself so he could reach the knob that turned on the headlights. The twin beams shot across the rough landscape, illuminating the dancing, swirling snow. Hurrying now, he carried Amber across the littered pavement and stepped up at the curb onto the grass, past the overflowing trash can. The darkness of some woods beyond the little park offered the best chance of concealment; he’d like to take her farther away from the road, but with the snow coming down and already accumulating on the winter-dead leaves, he couldn’t take the time.
He was about thirty feet past the trash can when he stepped in a shallow hole hidden by the leaves, lurched off balance, and dropped the blanket-wrapped body.
“Shit!” Breathing hard, sweat slicking his face despite the icy wind, he stared down at her. There was no way he could heft her back onto his shoulder, not from the ground; he’d barely managed getting her out of the trunk.
After only a moment’s hesitation, he bent down, grabbed the end of the bundle, and began dragging it. If he left a trail on the frozen ground, the damn snow would soon cover it.
He made it to the woods and stopped to rest, his breath huffing out in white clouds. The car’s headlights didn’t make much difference here; he was off to the side rather than directly in front. Looking around, he saw that what he’d thought was a nice section of woods was instead fairly thin, maybe twenty yards deep. Maybe dumping her on the far side would be better. Forcing himself to make the effort, grunting now with the exertion, he dragged her to the far edge of the woods and found himself standing on the edge of a rough ravine, a raw, uneven cut in the earth.
Perfect.
He tried pushing her with his foot, but even rolled in a blanket moving a dead person wasn’t that easy. Bending down, he gave the bundle a hard push and finally it rolled over the edge of the ravine and down, over brush and rocks, until he lost sight of her in the deep night shadows and the thickening snow.
It was done—all except for the asshole’s cell phone.
He pulled it out of his pocket and started to place it in the dirt, as if it had been accidentally dropped, but then he hesitated. He’d deleted the damnable video, and the texts that mentioned him, but what if they weren’t really deleted? What if the cops could still pull everything up somehow? One of his senate colleagues had been caught in an embarrassing situation because he thought he’d deleted something incriminating, only to find that the photo was still accessible to the right program.
Shit, shit, shit.
As much as he wanted to point the finger toward the asshole, he couldn’t take the risk.
Fumbling in the dark, he tried to remove the battery, but found that he couldn’t get the iPhone open. Hell, he couldn’t even get it out of the damn case, especially not in the dark and going mostly by feel. He’d take it … somewhere. Maybe throw it out the window as he crossed over a bridge. Yeah, that was a good idea, toss it in a river, a lake, get it out of his possession. It would be gone, likely never found.
But even when the asshole’s phone was gone, the asshole himself would still exist. He knew Amber had been seeing someone else, an older man. Did he know who Robert was? Could he point the police in this direction? Robert knew forensics in real life weren’t nearly as impressive as they were on television, but would a cleaning of his trunk remove all traces of Amber, or would a search turn up a hair, a fiber, a skin cell … ?
Robert wanted to dump ungrateful Amber’s body, walk away, and forget it. But he couldn’t. There was the asshole, and the kid.
He’d killed Amber in a fit of rage, but he wasn’t a stone-cold killer.
Fortunately, he knew someone who was.
Elijah woke with a strangled cry, shaking in terror. Uncle Bobby had his hands around his throat, choking him, and was looking at him with dead eyes. The dream—the memory—was so fresh and real he flailed his skinny arms, fighting the horror that wasn’t there. His fists tangled in fabric, fabric that seemed to dance away from him, then swing back and try to trap him. He sobbed, trying to scream again, fighting and kicking the invisible threat.
“Help me!” The words scraped from his throat as he threw himself to the side. He landed on something kind of hard and lumpy, but the darkness was so thick he couldn’t see anything. He heard his own sobs, and instinctively tried to control his panic. Where was he? What had happened? Had he dreamed everything about Uncle Bobby and Mom, or was it real?
The sense of panic, temporarily pushed back, surged over him again. “Help me!” he screamed, begging for someone, anyone, to come to his aid. His left arm hit something soft, something that fell over, and in the utter darkness he thought the thing and the sound was Uncle Bobby. He shrieked, over and over, scrambling backward as he tried desperately to get away from Uncle Bobby.
He slammed against some obstacle and in his terror he tried his best to simply go through it, anything he had to do to get away. But whatever it was also fell over, this time with a heavy thud. Something fluttered around him, like a bunch of birds in the darkness, touching his face, his arms. There was a kind of swishing sound, then … a hush. Silence. Elijah whimpered, almost as afraid of birds being after him as he was of Uncle Bobby. Birds? How could there be birds?
He couldn’t hear anything that sounded like Uncle Bobby. Uncle Bobby always breathed as if his nose was stuffy. Elijah couldn’t hear any breathing. Cautiously he reached out, felt nothing. Closet—he was in the closet. He remembered now. He wanted out, but where was the door? He couldn’t see anything. Maybe he could crawl around and find the crack under the door. He put his hand down and instead of carpet he felt some kind of paper, something thicker than normal, and slick.
He suddenly felt a little weird, as if he couldn’t quite catch his breath.
Because he was just seven, because he was terrified and alone, he said, “Help me,” again. This time he whispered the words. He was so tired, so scared and alone, he just couldn’t yell anymore.
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a bright light hit his eyes, and he squeaked in terror as he cowered down and covered his head with both arms, squeezing his eyes as tightly shut as he could. A flashlight, he thought. It was a flashlight. It was Uncle Bobby, with a flashlight. He’d called for help and had instead showed Uncle Bobby where he was hiding. Whimpering, he scooted back as far as he could and waited for whatever was going to happen.
A few seconds ticked by. Nothing. He couldn’t hear anything. Slowly, Elijah raised his head and peeked, just a little.
It wasn’t a flashlight.
No one was there.
The box he’d knocked over lay open on its side, and the light was coming from the box, spreading over a bunch of slick, funny-looking cards that had paintings on them. Most of the paintings were of people, though there was one cool picture of a sun that looked like it might be the sun in one of the Transformer movies. One card lay on top of the scattered spill, a card with a painting of a pretty woman and a lion. There was a word at the top, but it didn’t make any sense to him. It was a word he didn’t know, and the letters were crooked and funny; it didn’t even look like a word. It looked like some drawings.
Then they blurred and changed, the lines rearranging themselves. He blinked, because words weren’t supposed to change. Slowly he spelled it out. S.T.R.E.N.G.T.H. Strength. That was a word he knew, a word he had seen in a book he was reading for extra credit. Iron Man’s suit gave him superstrength. Maybe the lion gave the pretty woman strength. Maybe it was her pet.
He reached out and touched the card, tracing the image. It was warm, as if the woman painted on it was alive. She was so pretty, prettier even than his
mom. Thinking of Mom made a huge sense of sadness well up inside of him, so huge he didn’t think he could breathe. “Help me,” he said again, his voice small and strained, so small the words were just a thread of sound.
The picture on the card shimmered. Elijah jumped, peddling backward until he hit the opposite side of the closet, where he squashed himself into the smallest ball he could manage. Wildly he looked around, wondering what was happening. The funny light was still coming from the box and now he could see that he’d knocked over a bunch of stuff: shoes, purses, a box of old jewelry, some sweaters and scarves. The cards from the light box lay all over everything else.
The card he’d touched … moved.
He sucked in a breath, his eyes growing enormous as he stared at the Strength card. It grew. It stretched. It got kind of wavy, and floated up into the air. Elijah opened his mouth and tried to yell, but no sound came out. His lips moved, his throat strained, but he couldn’t speak at all.
The card slowly floated higher, twisting, getting bigger and bigger and spreading out. Unable to look away, Elijah sat frozen as the card began to look like … a door? Yes, a strange-looking door, but not like the closet door; it wasn’t solid, but he couldn’t see through it. There was some kind of weird fog filling it, but not spilling out.
Suddenly a hand—a real, living hand—poked out of the card/door into the closet. Elijah jerked back, banged his head on the wall because he was already as far back as he could get, then dived sideways beneath the skirts of the dresses hanging on the rack above him. Frantically he pulled the skirts around him, trying his best to hide from the undead hand. It was a zombie hand! But he grabbed one of Zack’s mom’s dresses and moved it just a tiny bit to the side, so he could see, because he felt as if he couldn’t not see. The hand … it was kind of pretty, like Mom’s, with painted fingernails and rings and stuff.
There was more movement in the foggy doorway: the hand, a foot—more painted nails and jewelry—followed by a leg, and a scrap of white fabric that moved around like it was caught in a wind. He gasped, but didn’t cover his eyes. He had to see; he had to.
Then she was there.
She stepped out of that card doorway and into the closet as if this was her closet and she wanted to get a dress. Snow and ice formed everywhere, on the floor and in the air, outlining where the doorway had been, glistening and shimmering like the 3-D fireworks he’d seen in a movie.
And then the snow and the ice and the card were gone.
The woman … the woman with the long blond hair and the white dress was still there.
Chapter 3
Something slammed into Lenna, something that had force but no substance. A bright light blinded her, and searing cold enveloped her. She’d known cold before, but not like this. This was piercing, as if it went all the way to the bone. She heard words whispering in her ear, words that were sound without meaning. Her lungs seized, costing her the ability to call out in alarm, in plea.
She had the sensation of spinning, of being weightless, of not existing. What was happening? She wasn’t given to panic, but if panic would stop this madness she would gladly begin shrieking.
She was lost in nothingness in which nothing existed except the cold and the light and the sense of not being.
Then, gradually, the spinning slowed. She tried to reach out, to grasp something solid, but her hands closed on emptiness. There was a silent but definite snap! that she felt against her skin, and her surroundings once more clicked into welcome solidity. She felt ice beneath her bare feet, but it was quickly melting. She stood there gasping for breath, fighting to right herself because while everything around her had stopped spinning, she felt as if she herself hadn’t. She wasn’t accustomed to being out of control, and she didn’t like it. At. All.
She was in a tiny room, a room completely unlike her own regal apartments. A bit annoyed, a bit curious, Lenna studied her surroundings. There were unimpressive garments of some sort hanging from bent tubes, piles of shoes on the floor—and she saw some that she admired—a crumpled blanket pushed against a far wall, and finally, a pair of small bare feet. The bright light illuminated all, including the small shivering person clutching some of the garments over itself as it tried, unsuccessfully, to hide from her.
The bright light began fading as she looked around, trying to decipher what had happened. One moment she’d been in her home, studying a long ago war that had taken place in another realm, and then without warning she’d been—
What? Jerked from her home, certainly. Transported? Possibly, maybe even probably. Such things had happened, she’d heard, though not to those of her class.
Had she been kidnapped? But who would dare? Certainly not the small being whose feet she could see.
In the dimming light she saw, at her feet, brightly painted tarot cards spread across the floor. The images were ornate but oddly that wasn’t what most caught her attention. Power throbbed from them, a power so strong it caused a slight glow around the cards. She had seen many manifestations of the Arcane, but none like this.
Her own card, Strength, lay on top. It was almost glittering, perhaps in reaction to her nearness.
A shock of recognition went through her. This wasn’t just any deck; it was the Alexandria Deck, supposedly destroyed in the fires that devastated the Alexandria Library. The Alexandria Deck was unique in the world of the Arcane, capable of imparting powers beyond those designated to each card by the One. She had never seen the deck before but she knew it, knew it by the power that radiated from the cards.
There had been rumors that the magical deck had survived the fires, but she had never really believed—no one in the Arcane had—that the rumors were true.
Yet here it was, and the implications meant her situation was now far more complicated than she had initially imagined. She had not been simply taken from her home, but had been removed from her very world, from Aeonia to … She went still, a chill running down her back. If that was truly the Alexandria Deck, she was in Seven—Three in the modern times, but Seven in the initial creation, the one that mattered. There were many worlds, but Seven was the one in which the deck had been created, and supposedly destroyed. Instead, the deck had survived.
Being brought here was complicated, and potentially catastrophic.
The light that had accompanied her from Aeonia into this world finally faded entirely. The small person who was trying to hide gave a piteous whimper as the darkness enveloped them.
That, at least, was easily alleviated; Lenna simply lifted her hand, spread her fingers, and a ball of light appeared on her palm. It wasn’t as bright as the other, but it would suffice. She started to order the small human who had apparently called her here to come forth and send her home, when a memory of the words that had accompanied her trip to this place stopped her.
Help me.
Had the plea come from this small person? It must have, for it was the only other being here, with the cards.
She could see part of a face that wasn’t hidden by the tumble of garments. She bent closer to more carefully study the partial features, and a measure of surprise lifted her brows. Ah! Unless she was mistaken, this was a child. There were no children in Aeonia, because there was no need for them. Aeonia was home to the twenty-two Major Arcana—not actual tarot cards, as they were known in most worlds, but living representations of those cards. They had existed for much longer than the cards some used for guidance and divination, since the One created all.
Two warring concerns filled her. She knew she shouldn’t be here. She couldn’t stay. Returning to Aeonia was an imperative, one she couldn’t ignore. And yet—this child needed aid. Before she returned home, perhaps she could provide some sort of help, even if it was only to soothe and encourage. So many times that was all the support humans asked for, or needed.
The clothing parted a little, and a large brown eye peeked out, growing even larger at the sight of the light in Lenna’s hand.
“Hello, child,” she said easily
. “What assistance do you require?”
The brown eye blinked, but the child didn’t respond.
Perhaps it didn’t hear well. She raised her voice and tried again. “Child. What sort of help is it you need?”
After a moment the clothing shifted more, and the child mostly emerged from hiding. It was a boy child, she saw. Hesitantly he pointed at her hand. “Is that magic?”
It was a simple question, but the answer was complicated. She supposed that to a being who didn’t have certain abilities, those abilities might be called magic. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Cool, but why didn’t you just turn on the light?”
Confused, she looked from him to her hand, back to him. She moved her hand up and down, making the light dance. “I did.”
“No, the real light.”
“This is a real light.”
He gave her a cautious look, then scrambled from his hiding place and pointed behind her at the wall. Lenna turned and saw a white rectangle with a switch in it. “There,” he said. “I didn’t turn it on before because I didn’t want anyone to see me.” His little voice quavered.
Mentally shrugging, wondering what difference it made which light she used, and then wondering why the child thought someone might see him in this small space whether there was light or not, Lenna use a fingertip to nudge the switch upward, and a harsh light appeared overhead.
She closed her fingers and extinguished the ball of light. In the glaring light she got her first good look at the child who had somehow pulled her from her world into his, a feat made possible by the Alexandria Deck. Had he known what he was doing? Was he perhaps an Arcane prodigy, capable of things others couldn’t accomplish?
She reminded herself that she needed to be both cautious and calm. She was Strength, but right now she would almost rather be the High Priestess, because wisdom was what was more needed.
The child brought forth a softening inside, and made a smile curve her lips. He looked delicious, in a strangely joyous way. He had flawless skin, like velvet, that invited her touch. The curve of his plump cheeks would just fit in her palm, and his deep brown eyes were full of both innocence and pain. His thick dark hair was mussed, his clothing loose and rumpled. He wore no shoes, but then, neither did she.