Read Sudden Backtrack: A Hollows Short Online
Authors: Kim Harrison
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban, #30 Minutes (12-21 Pages)
Sudden Backtrack: A Hollows Short (2 page)
“Oh, God. That hurt . . .” A woman swore, and then there was the sound of someone vomiting.
Newt?
Shocked, Gally peeked over his arm, taking in the smallest slip of air though his lungs screamed for more. A horn lifted anew, and together they turned. It was her sudden hunch of fear that struck him. It was Newt.
“Newt!” he whispered as he scrambled up, and she started, almost falling again.
“No!” she shrilled, and he sprang forward, clamping a hand over her mouth and dragging her into the shadows.
“It’s me! Be still. It’s me!” he exclaimed, voice hardly more than a breath in her ear. His mind was spinning. He’d left her. He thought she was dead! But here she was, wearing a black shift, as unadorned and plain as if in mourning. No demon wore black. And when had she had time to put it on?
An elbow hit him in the gut, and he tightened his grip. “Quiet!” he hissed. “Can you run? They’re right behind us.”
She became still, and he cautiously eased his grip. Something was wrong with her eyes, and he watched her squint, her eyes almost screwed shut though the moonlight was thin. “This way,” he whispered, never letting go of her hand as he stood and began to run. Immediately he slowed as she stumbled into motion. “I thought you were dead,” he whispered, turning to help her over a fallen tree. “You told me to run. I saw him hit you.” He hesitated, slowing to orient himself. There was a hole nearby. If they could make it, the hunters would never follow them belowground. “Newt?”
He stopped, and she came to a breathless halt, lungs heaving as if having run the length of the ever-after. Eyes on the sky, she stared at the swollen moon as if lost. Behind them, the horns blew, closer.
“I wouldn’t have left you if I thought you were alive,” he said. “It did work, didn’t it?”
Her eyes met his, and his lips parted. They were black, as black as the robe she wore.
“Where . . . ,” she rasped, then shook her head as if it were buzzing. “Do I know you? I do, don’t I?”
The horns were getting closer. Panic edged out his earlier anger. He had something to protect now. He had to get her underground. Lips pressed together, he scooped her up and began to run. “Kalla hit you hard,” he said, struggling though she didn’t weigh more than a child. The scent of linen and silk lifted to him, carried by the moist night. She smelled clean. Had they dressed her for auction and she’d slipped them again? He hadn’t been running that long! “Newt, did it work?” The stars help them if it hadn’t.
“Did what work?” she whispered, almost oblivious as she stared at the trees overhead.
“The curse! Did it fixate on Kalla? Will it spread like a plague to the rest until they’re all infected and can bear nothing but a child destined to fail?”
“I . . . I—,” she stammered, and then, “Why are we running?”
Gally frowned. “Maybe you’ll remember later,” he said, not knowing what he was going to tell Dali—if they managed to survive. That she was alive was a miracle. “You hit your head really hard. Maybe that’s why you didn’t fry your brain doing the curse.”
“Curse?”
The faintest thump of hoofbeats echoed against the insect-laden air. Instinct pulled him to a stop, his eyes darting upward as a light exploded into existence. Blinking profusely, Newt lifted her head, her black eyes glinting. It was Kalla. He was close, or he wouldn’t have given his position away.
“We’re not going to make it,” Gally said, shifting her light weight to set her feet on the ground. “We’ll have to hide and hope they pass us over. Here. Down here!”
“On the dirt?” she protested loudly, and his expression twisted.
“Just do it!” he whispered, dragging her down with him and covering her with a fold of his dirty robe.
But she wouldn’t stay still, head cocked as she fingered the moss before her nose as if never having seen it before. The scent of her clothes reminded him of a fresh winter night. She dug beneath the green, lips parting when her fingers came away red, as if she’d found the earth’s blood.
“We’re in the ever-after,” she whispered.
Will she just shut up?
he wished, wondering if the clean smell of her was going to give them away. “Yes, we’re in the ever-after. And the elves are alive and hunting us. Just . . . bear with me. You hit your head. It’s bound to come back. And be quiet unless you want them to catch you and beat you.”
She became still, the moving moon finding her face and lighting it to show her sudden confusion. “I don’t remember. The Goddess is laughing. Can you hear her?”
“Will you close your mouth!”
“I remember . . . I was alone,” Newt said, shaking her head again until Gally put a thick, scarred hand on her skull and shoved her face down. “She said she could fix that. If I trusted her,” she finished, muffled and whispering.
Trust the elves’ Goddess. That’s what had started all this—belief in something that never existed. Hand still on her head, Gally listened. The insects were silent. Either she’d shut up or he’d knock her unconscious. Maybe she’d burned her brain out after all. He couldn’t believe she was alive.
“What did you do to your thumb?” she said, and he stiffened when she ran a slow finger across the missing tip.
“If you don’t be quiet, I’m going to kill you myself—” He gasped, fire lighting through him as the strength of a line jolted him. His hand ached, and he snatched it from her, only now seeing that her cracked and damaged skin was whole and unblemished.
She is communing with the lines,
he thought, the impossibility pushed out by another.
My hand is whole!
Shocked, he felt his hand, jerking back at the sensitivity of it. “How . . . Who taught you that?” Grabbing her wrists, he traced her clean skin. “Your burns are gone! Newt . . .”
“I, ah, did a healing charm,” she said, the moonlight showing those eerie black eyes of hers. Something was very wrong with Newt, something more than a knock on the head.
Did she steal a healing charm from Kalla, or is this just another one of his traps to snare all five of us?
The first hints of mistrust trickled through him and he let go, peering into the silent, foggy night and wondering if the hunters had gone by and they were safe to move. “Maybe you should hit your head more often. If we survive this, you’re teaching me. Can you walk? It’s not far.”
“I can walk. Yes,” she said, but her upward motion froze and she flung herself backward.
Instinctively Gally spun the other way, finding his feet only to come to a helpless stop. Kalla stood before them as if he’d been there for some time, his smile curling cruelly.
“Here!” Kalla called, a burst of light in his hand making razor-edged shadows. “I’ve found them!”
“Run!” Gally shouted, but his leap to the darkness was cut short, and he felt the ground hit him before he even knew he’d fallen. Pain lanced through his eyes, and he groaned, unable to move as Kalla’s magic wormed its way through his aura to find his heart and squeeze. His defiance had been for nothing. He was a fool to think they’d even had a chance, and the bitterness of that seeped into him like a stain.
“Predictable,” Kalla said, the soft thumps of his hunters falling like rain about him as they searched for Newt. “Wait here for my convenience. I have just the buyer for you, Gally.”
“You have already . . . lost . . . ,” Gally panted, gasping for air as Kalla’s hold on him tightened. If he could only tap a line, he might be able to do something, but he could not. Helpless, he watched as Kalla jerked to a halt as his hunters returned, shoving Newt pliantly before them. It was done, then, and the addled demon couldn’t even tell him if the curse had been spun or not. By the looks of it, he didn’t think so.
“You should have run,” he whispered, then groaned as Kalla’s foot jammed into his middle.
“I said be still!”
But Newt was laughing. The eerie sound lifted through him, silencing Kalla’s tirade and making his hunters uneasy. Grim, Kalla turned to her, tight in the grip of two hunters. He started, only now noticing her eyes. “What is wrong with your eyes?”
Her chuckle drifted into the sound of the wind. “I saw the bottom of the lines,” she said, and Gally shivered, remembering the burning agony of them, peeling his aura and then his soul from him. They’d once traveled the lines to flee this place, and it hadn’t turned anyone’s eyes black—just killed most of them.
“And do you know what I found there?” she added.
Kalla motioned for one of his hunters to bind her wrists. “No.”
She looked down, watching the cord tighten until her perfect, utterly unblemished skin reddened. “Me either,” she said, but it wasn’t comforting. “I can’t remember. But you . . .” She hesitated, her horrible black eyes shutting in a slow, languorous blink. “I know
what
you are.”
Kalla glanced at Gally, then back to her. “Easy now, Newt. I’m not going to hurt you. Even crazy, you’ll bring some profit.”
“Profit?” she scoffed, proud despite the hands that gripped her. “Do you really think that you can hold me?
Sell me?
I thought I was the one with the missing memories, not you. I am a demon! And you will treat me as such.”
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Kalla said, motioning for two more of his hunters to pull Gally to his feet.
“Wrong answer!” Newt shouted, shoving the hunters from her. “
Adaperire!
”
Pain tore through Gally’s wrists. He was free. He rolled, sending Kalla dancing back out of the way, the elf looking more irritated than anything else.
“Easy, Newt,” the hunter soothed, hand out and ticked, as he looked at his men as if wondering why she still had contact with the ley lines. Gally knew he was. “Be a good girl. We can end this right now and go home.”
“This is my home,” she snarled, hunched and dangerous. “And you have been warned.
Abyssus abyssum invocate!
”
Light exploded from her. Gally cowered, feeling it wash over him and delve deep, the pinpricks pulling back and vanishing in an instant. Howls of pain echoed in his ears, and the scream of a horse going suddenly silent.
He fell to the ground, the wind of power stunning his ears. Sharp rock bit his palms, and he crawled to Newt. “Enough!” he shouted, eyes clamped shut as the scent of burnt pine choked him. “Don’t kill him! We need him to spread the curse! Newt, don’t kill them!”
“Then he lives,” she intoned with a dark, gray voice.
And then the magic was gone. He breathed in, choking out smoke. Eyes watering, he let go of her, shocked at the white ash he left on her black robe. Astounded, he sat up and away. Rocks the color of black blood shifted under his weight. A wide circle of destruction lay bare in the moonlight, the very trees cut in half where her power had ended, held in check with a circle.
A ragged gasp caught his attention. It was the hunters, fallen where they had stood, each and every one covered with a fine ash, turning them into wraiths.
Silent, Newt picked her careful way among the now bare rocks, her long feet looking sensitive and out of place on the parched red earth her curse had left. Face expressionless, she gathered her robes and crouched beside Kalla, whispering in his ear.
The elf spat at her, and she laughed, turning her back on him and carefully making her way back to Gally.
“Newt?” he questioned, hearing the first of the insects begin to chirp and rustle where the vegetation had been spared.
“It will do for now.” She gestured, and his shoulders straightened as his connection to the ley lines came flooding back. There was grass under him where he’d lain on the earth. She held out a hand, but he didn’t take it, using the warm, red earth to lever himself up instead.
“Where did you learn to do that?” he questioned, glancing back once as they left the charred circle behind and stepped onto the soothing moss once more.
“The truth?” She gave him a nervous, askance look. “I have no idea. But it was effective. Perhaps I should write it down. I do know how to write, don’t I? I’m really not sure anymore.”
“I’d think so. You hit your head kind of hard. Ah, how long have you been able to do that? And just when were you going to share with the rest of us?
And Newt smiled, face turned to the moon as she breathed deep. “Forever and always. Forever and always.”
New York Times
bestselling author KIM HARRISON was born and raised in the upper Midwest. Her bestselling Hollows novels include
Dead Witch Walking; The Good, the Bad, and the Undead; Every Which Way but Dead; A Fistful of Charms; For a Few Demons More; The Outlaw Demon Wails; White Witch, Black Curse; Black Magic Sanction; Pale Demon; A Perfect Blood; Ever After;
and
The Undead Pool,
plus the short story collections
Into the Woods
and
The Hollows Insider,
and the graphic novels
Blood Work
and
Blood Crime
. She also writes the Madison Avery series for young adults.
Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at
hc.com
.