Nephilius - A Walker Saga Book 5 (25 page)

“
No
t happening, Abigail.” Brace
glared in my direction.

“No.” Colton was short and sweet.

I burst out with chortles of laughter. “Good
thing I’m an adult and can make my own decisions then.” I turned to
face Lucy. “I’m going to need some rope or chain. Any idea where to
get this?”

A big huff of breath emerged from Brace.
“Stay here.” His exasperation was made clear by his voice and
pointed finger.

His eyes were black as he opened a doorway
and took off. While he was gone the rest of us strolled up and down
the abyss searching for the best spot to lower a person. Finally,
we decided on one with a prominent edge. There seemed to be a few
more handholds in the cloud there. Brace was back in about ten
minutes, and I knew that he’d probably been to his place on
Abernath. In fact, I was almost sure I could smell the scent of the
flowers that coated the side of his beautiful home. He held a
coiled rope in his hands.

“Come here, Abby.” His voice was still low,
but he seemed less upset. Slivers of brown were back in his
eyes.

I stepped closer and he pulled me into the
heat of his body. His arms went around me and I felt him loop the
rope across my back. As it wrapped around my front I could see it
better; it was different to a normal rope, and sort of looked like
it had wire or something unbreakable increasing its tensile
strength.

“You will trace, scream or mentally let one
of us know the moment something is weird down there.” He lowered
his face to speak directly into my ear while he finished securing
the rope. “Do not be a hero.” I realized how truly worried he was
then. “Heroes die; and you have to live.”

I swallowed down my tears. He was the
sweetest, most over-protective man in the worlds. And I loved him
more than life itself. I lowered my lashes to hide the emotions I’m
sure were blaring in my eyes. Brace took the other end of the very
long rope and secured it around his waist.

“I’ll be careful,” I finally said, still
studying his chest.

Brace huffed
but didn’t speak again. Once we were secured to each
other, he stepped back.

Lucy moved in and gave me a quick hug, and
Colton followed with a pat on the back. They looked worried but
didn’t say anything else. Delane had her arms crossed over her
chest, and the look on her face told us we were too stupid for
words. It was a good look. I wished I could pull off that level of
condescending haughtiness.

“Alright, let’s do this.” I moved over to
the edge of the abyss. Looking down, I could see no further than
five or six feet. The mist was thick and still.

Brace
grasped my hands and lowered me slowly down the side of the cloud
land. With my
fingertips gripping the
edge, I let my feet fall below.

“Okay, I’ll slowly release sections of rope.
Just push off with your feet and drop in small increments.”

Without much hesitation I let go of the
side, gripping the rope instead; Brace supported my weight with
ease.

Alright, it was time to suck up my brave
words and move down the cliff.

“I admire your courage,” Delane said to me
just as I was bending my knees for the first step.

Okay, maybe she didn’t think I was the
stupidest person alive. Or it could be that she thought I was
stupid and courageous.

I gave her a smile before taking a deep
breath and pushing off with my feet. Brace loosened some of the
slack and I dropped. I wasn’t a big fan of the fact my feet were
descending into the unknown. I wished I was going head first.

I continued
to drop, over and over until there was no view of my friends
above.
The somber planes of Brace’s face
was the last thing I saw, as the mists closed over my head. It was
cool as I descended, although there was no breeze. If anything it
was deathly still in the cloudy abyss. I was looking down as I
lowered my body further, but still there was no clear view. This
went on for a long time. I wondered if we were going to run out of
rope before I found anything.

What are you doing, Abigail?

I shrieked as the voice of the Seventine
surrounded me. In my head and through the misty air, it flooded my
being.

You shouldn’t be here. You’re ruining our
plans and, as much as I need you to join us, I dare not annoy my
brothers any further. We are angry about the dark mountains.

Before I
could do anything to dispel its presence, the rope jerked a few
times, and then with a loud tearing sound the cable snapped. I
scrambled to grab the wall, my
frozen
fingertips screaming as I lodged them into small crevices, my body
slamming against the hard cloud.

I groaned, my breathing harsh in the
silence. The lump in my throat made it impossible to call for help,
and I knew I couldn’t hold on for much longer. There were just not
deep enough handholds. My weight was slowly dragging me down.

I was just
about to reach for a tether to take myself back to the surface when
something hard struck me on the side of t
he head. That was all I needed to be knocked off my
precarious hold. My arms and legs scissored in free air as I
started to plummet through the eerie white mist. And after a few
terrifying moments the white world turned gray around the edges.
Again, I searched for a tether, but before I could find anything
the world went dark.

“
Oh
, my gods above, a
Walker.”

Words started to penetrate the hazy darkness
surrounding my mind. I lay there for a few minutes, enjoying the
dark and calm. I hoped that voice would go away so that there was
nothing to disturb me.

“Can you hear me? You have to open your
eyes.”

Okay, clearly it was not going away. The
female voice was determined to disturb my inner peace.

“Open your eyes now.”

The command had my lids flying up. The
blinding light was the first thing I noticed, and it took me quite
a few blinks before anything else came into focus. A beautiful
woman was leaning over me. She had raven-dark hair that fell across
her shoulders, and her dark-brown eyes flashed at me as she leaned
closer.

“We only have a few moments before it’s all
gone,” she murmured close to my ear. “How are you wearing Walker
marks? You’re from the …” She paused, before rubbing her head. “I
can’t remember the clan, but you need to open a doorway before you
forget how.”

I stared up at her. My blinks were slow as I
attempted to think around the fuzziness in my head. Walker. The
word was vaguely familiar, but I really didn’t know what she was
talking about. My confusion must have been obvious because her head
fell forward. I frowned as tears sprinkled her eyes.

“Too late.” She sobbed a few times, her
chest heaving as she fisted large handfuls of grass.

I pulled myself up to a sitting position and
the woman scooted back from me, taking the clutched greenery with
her. I went to ask her what was wrong, but just as I opened my
mouth the scenery captured my attention. I scrambled forward,
getting to my feet.

I was in a grass field and beyond me was the
most beautiful place I’d ever seen. Well, I guessed I’d ever seen;
I couldn’t exactly remember any other place. That thought worried
me a little, but I wasn’t sure why it worried me. Oh, well. My
troubled mind cleared as I stared around again. The land was green
enough to be blinding. Beyond the immediate landscape were flowered
mountains, lush fields of grass and picturesque waterfalls.

It was beautiful.

Gee, I was saying that a lot today. But I
seemed to be lacking the words to describe this place I’d just
woken in.

“Can you speak?” the woman asked me.

“What is this place? It’s so crazily …
beautiful.”

She looked surprised when the words fell
easily from my lips. Her brows drew close together as she gave a
harsh, grating chuckle. “Yep, welcome to Utopia, the one place
you’ll never want to leave.” She stood and I realized she nearly
matched me in height. Actually, she was a little taller.

“And you’ll never want to leave, because you
won’t remember anything of your life outside of here.”

I wrinkled my nose as I stared at her. Why
was she so angry? And what was Utopia? I forgot my questions then
as a breeze blew in to surround us, bringing with it the most
delicious scent.

“Oh, my god, what is that?” I was distracted
again as I started to laugh and twirl my way toward the tasty
smell. “I love Utopia.”

I stumbled a
little as a brush of unease entered my happy thoughts. Why couldn’t
I
recall arriving here? My thoughts were
very scattered at that moment: one minute happy and tranquil, the
next confused and worried.

“What’s your name?” the woman asked me. “I’m
Caty.”

I stopped my twirling and faced her, tilting
my head to the side as I observed her perfect face. She was dressed
in what looked like two-piece, purple-striped silk pajamas.

“Your name?” she reminded me.

“Oh, right. Well, my name is …” I paused as
I shuffled through the compartments of my mind. Surely I had a
name? Everyone had a name, right?

“
Try to
remember your name,” Caty encouraged me. “It’s taken me a long
time, but I’m slowly piecing together what happened to me. I still
can’t open a doorway, but I’ll figure
that out eventually.”

Slivers of
panic started to wind their way around my brain and down my spine.
Shivers wracked me as I searched harder for some answers. Caty said
it had taken her a long time to simply remember her name, but for
some reason I knew I didn’t have a long time. There was something
important I needed to
be
doing.

“Are there others like us here?” I
asked.

She nodded.
“Yes, there’re quite a few. Some Angelica have fallen, and my
mother and I are Walkers; I don’t
recall
everything.” She sighed heavily. “But I think I was stashed here to
be out of the way.”

“Fallen?” I was turning into a parrot,
repeating her words. I glanced up into the sky, which was a perfect
blue, although there looked to be some clouds very high up. “Who
would have stashed you here?” I couldn’t imagine why that would
happen.

“My father.” The tears were back in her
familiar eyes.

Wait, why the hell were her eyes familiar? I
dropped my own eyelids, squeezing them tightly as I tried to figure
out what was happening to me. Who was I? How did I get there? I
sighed before re-opening my eyes and meeting Caty’s gaze.

“
Come on,”
she said, “I’ll show you where everyone else is. You’re only going
to hurt yourself trying to
recollect
everything in one go.”

I followed her across the brilliant green
field. The perfectly warm day surrounded me in sunshine and
joy.

“Does everyone remember?” For some reason I
wanted her to keep talking.

She shook her head. “No, my mother and I
have slowly started to piece it together, and we help each other by
reminding ourselves every day, otherwise the world dissolves our
memories again. But the Angelica don’t remember, and I doubt
they’ll ever have the mental strength to break the magicks
here.”

I wanted to laugh at the word magicks – such
a funny word. What did it mean?

We came to a stunning lake, bordered on one
side by white sand and the other by snowcapped mountains. I figured
it would be extremely cold and frigid in the water, but as we
passed along the edge, I dropped down and my hand was engulfed by
the warm silky lake. I noticed then, on the beach part, there were
about two dozen figures sprawled out.

“Is that everyone else?” I asked. It seemed
odd to me that some of them had colored wings, but at the same time
it wasn’t really odd. Was it?

“Yes, we spend our days here,” Caty said.
“This world will offer you anything you want or need, eventually,
except a way to escape.”

I looked away from the winged creatures to
stare back at the lake. Reflected back to me in the crystal clear
water was … nothing. There was not one image staring back at me.
And since there were mountains and trees everywhere, something
should reflect off the water. And … wait, what about my own
reflection?

I couldn’t remember what I looked like, and
nothing there was showing me. The only thing I knew about my
appearance was the incredible and detailed marks that littered one
side of my body, which I noticed when I raised my left arm. They
were like a pattern, something I’d seen before but couldn’t
remember. I wanted to see the entire mark, but again, I got nothing
from the lake.

“Why can I not see myself?” I felt my
features tighten again, as those nagging tendrils swirled through
my body. The worry. The fear. And the very real concern that my
time was running out.

“There’re no reflections here. If you could
see yourself, you might remember who you are. So much of our sense
of worth is tied to our outer shell it would be a huge trigger to
remember. No one here knows what they look like.”

She linked her arm through mine and began to
lead me around the lake.

“You’re stunning, though; exotically
beautiful, really,” she murmured to me. “But that will do you no
good down here. If we have any chance of escape you need to be
exceptional on the inside, not just the outside.”

I don’t know why her words rankled me a
little. Something about being thought of as a mindless and useless
person was frustrating. I was sure that I had uses. I didn’t feel
like a person who just sat around looking pretty.