MetamorphosUS: Book 1 of the Mythfit Witch Mysteries Read online

  I centered myself as best I could, and moved onward again. Even though I’d feared encountering any strange beings here, I found myself almost wishing I’d stumble across something sentient and mobile, something that would prove me wrong in my theory and give me that small comfort of being in the presence of another living thing, so to speak. And then I reminded myself to be careful what I wished for.

  Through a dark archway, I found myself in another large chamber, shaped like a hive or a pod. The walls were lined with cells, rows of them stacked. They reminded me of the chambers of a shell or the hexagons of a beehive. In the center of the room were large, stained slabs. Some of the cells were broken and empty. But the rest were closed off with waxy seals, thick and yellowish, faint light glowing behind them. There was liquid in them, and dark things that floated motionless in the liquid.

  I hurried on.

  There were more walkways overlooking Morph. I saw a curtained alcove tucked into a dark corner, and I hesitated for a moment, but then stepped in. The curtain was heavy, almost fleshy. I recoiled from it.

  The room was fairly small. It had a plain, wide bench in the center of the floor. The walls were curved, and covered with shining hexagonal panels like the inside of the eye of a housefly. The panels flickered and shifted, and I realized they were screens or windows. The images were clearer in some, more dreamlike and blurred in others.

  I could see no rhyme or reason to what they showed, though I assumed they all had something to do with the demon. A handful of them blinked around to various moments at Morph like a surveillance camera feed. I studied them to see if I could tell if there was one person showing up in all of them, but it looked like just random scenes. Other panels showed places I didn’t recognize at all, with or without people in them.

  Some were playing repeating loops of moments. In most of them, I realized with dread, I was witnessing an instance of terror or of death. A face stretched into a scream, looking at something terrible outside the panel. Someone writhed in pain in the middle of a road, and then went still. Someone was running as if for their life. A man buried a body, pausing to cover his face as his shoulders shook with sobbing.

  Charlie’s face filled the screen in front of me and abruptly shrank as I realized I was watching him plummet from the train, seeing his leg torn over and over from his body by the relentless wheels. I felt dizzy, sick.

  And then I was looking at myself, hooked up to machines and tubes in a hospital bed, heavily bandaged with half my hair gone and my face distorted with fresh injury, lying there like a gruesome marionette in between shows. I backed away from it, repelled, and yet unable to look away from my mangled face. It was me after the accident.

  I bolted from the room and ran on. I felt for the cord, grasped it, thought about tugging it. I stopped myself. What would I do if I didn’t find my answers here? I had to go on. Still, if this place got any worse, I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

  I found my way to another overlook area; this one was much more level with Morph, only a small way above the surface. A walkway curved down toward the ground. It touched down right next to Science Faction’s yurt, and I could see some life essences hovering outside of it. A small black vulture flew from within, heading toward me. I skittered back and watched it fly toward the walkway, and then the air rippled around it and it was soaring up to the overlook, in this realm with me. It ignored me and sped down a corridor I had not yet explored. I ran after it.

  We raced what felt like a long way, twisting through the deadly quiet body of this place. At last we emerged into a gloomy, open area. Trees crowded the space, but they were withered and dry. A willow’s brown branches hung like lank hair over bare dirt and old grass. The vulture flew toward a bough thickly knotted with scraggly dead vines and landed on it. A tangy, sharp odor filled my senses-- ozone.

  The demon sat in the deep shadows below the bough, on a fallen log beside a patch of ground scattered with the bones of flowers and their shed petals. He wasn’t facing me. Two more vultures flanked him, and he laid a hand on one’s head in an absent way like it was a pet. “I see you’ve found me. How determined of you.”

  I slowed, and backed up a few steps, jumping when my face brushed the dry curled leaves of a low branch. That voice still reached into my darkest places. I felt like I was seventeen again, drowning in hopelessness, trapped in the anguish that threatened to smother me.

  And I was alone with him now, in this dead place, and he knew I was there.

  He turned toward me. His dark suit was impeccable. His face was the same deep void, in which the sickly-glowing globes that served as eyes rolled and floated unanchored. Shadows moved within the void; he was smiling, smirking really. He could tell I was afraid. He enjoyed it. “Feeling brave today?”

  The vultures ruffled their feathers and glared. His gloved hands rested in his lap. My eyes went to the cuff of his sleeve. It hid the raw redness at the edge of his right glove. Flies crawled along the fabric.

  I forced myself to stand straighter, to fight back against the nausea, to keep my hands at my sides and not let them move toward my navel. “Why shouldn’t I?” I managed to push the words out without quavering. “I know you can’t touch me anymore.”

  The drifting eyes glittered, a harsh rumble echoing where a throat should have been. “Is that what you think? What a shame that would be, and just when we’ve met again. I thought we could make up for lost time.”

  I couldn’t hide my shudder. But he was welcome to enjoy scoring that point, because his poker face had failed too. I could feel it. He was angry that I was off-limits. Rosa was right.

  “It must be hard for you,” I said with a sudden rush of boldness. “To be here in this realm that you murdered yourself, maybe even feeling high off of claiming its soul, that’s got to be a rush, isn’t it? And yet here you sit, absolutely soaking in power, and I’m the one thing you can’t have. One mere little human, that you should be able to crush like a bug, and you’re completely emasculated.”

  The vultures hissed, lifting their wings. Flies buzzed around me. It felt like a storm gathering as the demon stood. I stepped back again, bumping into the tree.

  “Don’t get smug.” The edge in his voice cut deep and fine. “Circumstances can change. Nothing is forever. And you wouldn’t want me to remember this later.”

  “I know why you’re here.” I tried to ignore the threat. “I know about the one you’ve marked, who’s at a crossroads right now. I intend to stop you.”

  I can’t explain how, but he looked amused. “Do you?”

  “You know you could just let them go.” I had to try.

  He looked me over, the spheres slowly rolling. “Why would I do that?”

  “Perhaps there’s something you’d want instead.”

  “A bargain?” He tipped his head. “Intellectually intriguing, but I’m afraid you have nothing to offer me that I’d want.”

  “Satisfy my curiosity,” I said. “What could someone give you to make you give up your mark?”

  He was silent. Just long enough to tell me that there was something. “A soul for a soul. If this person matters so much to you, I will allow you to help me exchange them for another.”

  “You mean kill someone for you? Are you serious?” I stared at him.

  He came closer. I stumbled trying to get around the tree, to put it between us. “Why are you afraid? Didn’t you tell me yourself that you no longer have anything to fear from me?”

  The air around us crackled, and prickles ran across my body. Panic choked me and I reminded myself that I wasn’t physical, that I could get out. My hand went to my navel.

  He was so close. “Perhaps it’s time for a new relationship between us. A more mature one, befitting a woman grown. Get me what I want, and you can guide my hand in the details. Protect whomever you like. Make me happy, and you need never want again. What would it be like, do you think
, to have money again? Comfort? Even luxury?”

  I was falling into that deep emptiness where a face should be. My fingers crept upward. It was hard to think of words. “I...”

  He filled my vision, his presence pressing heavy on me. “We were so good together, once.”

  I felt my key beneath my shirt. “Stop,” I said. “I serve another now.”

  The glinting spheres regarded me. “Things can change. Think about it.”

  “Or instead, I’ll just get in your way, and then you’ll get nothing this weekend.” Fear was turning to anger, and it made me defiant.

  “And that, my sleepless one, I would be certain to remember.” The ice in his voice burned.

  “I found you,” I said. “I found my way here. I figured out what this place is and what you did to it--I did, didn’t I? I’m learning quickly, wouldn’t you say? Who knows what else I’ll learn to do now that I’m free of you?”

  He placed his gloved hand on the tree beside me and leaned in, the void of his face nearly swallowing me. The buzzing around me grew louder. “Just because I can’t touch you for now, doesn’t mean you’ll ever be free.” The rumble again. “I don’t have to harm you to hurt you.”

  I felt that elevator-plummet sensation and tears burned my eyelids. I struggled to think clearly. I didn’t want to return here, not ever, and I needed answers before I went or the whole thing would be a waste. I gestured to the vulture egregore. “I know what that is. I can use it against you to keep track of your prey. It will help me stop you.”

  The small vulture eyed me balefully, then took flight back in the direction we’d come from. The demon watched it go, then flicked his gaze back at me. The spheres spun sharply. “You can try,” he said, sounding too calm for my liking. “You understand so little, and you don’t have much time. I wouldn’t take those odds.” He stepped back. The sense of crushing pressure eased, but left me weak and wobbling. “Please, enjoy the pleasures of my little home-away-from-home. For as long as you like.”

  He turned and strode away, and the two other vultures spread their wings and flew after him. They merged into a deep shadow and scattered into dark motes that drifted and faded, and then all three of them were gone.

  And I was alone here, in this dead place.

  Would I be able to find my way out? What had he meant? Was he trapping me here? Panic flared inside my ribs and I ran back toward where I’d come from. Everything looked strange and looming and I wasn’t sure whether it was the same as it had been before. I’d been watching the vulture egregore when I ran here. I wasn’t sure I knew where we’d been.

  I remembered that I wasn’t bound by the limits of muscle and lung capacity here. I ran faster than I ever would have been able to if I were in my body, and as an idea burst into sudden bloom, I concentrated on pushing my vision out ahead of me. Now that was an alien sensation--to feel the presence of my spirit-body running, the sensation of motion and rhythm, while my sight zoomed out ahead and snaked through the corridors, out of sync with the rest of me. I tried my best to ignore the seasick feeling it created, and to keep my focus on finding the egregore.

  There was a tickling sensation around my navel and I tried to ignore that too, lest my vision snap back to normal. I found my way back to the spot where the vulture had entered this realm. Below me, the flaps to Science Faction’s yurt hung closed and a few life-essences hovered around outside. My body caught up to my vision. I couldn’t see the vulture, but there, on the yurt beside the doorway--a wet red handprint. I gathered my courage around me, what there was of it, and started down the curving path. I wasn’t sure if I could pass through the veil without being yanked back into my physical self, but if I stayed on this side long enough to go into the yurt, I might be able to see the demon’s victim, or at least their essence.

  I stumbled, staggered, and slid a few steps down the path. My belly hurt. Shaking it off, I pushed myself to my feet again and took another step. This time I collapsed and the realm swam around me. I tried to push forward, crawling, desperate. Was the demon making this place lasso me, pull me back in?

  Space whooshed around me and I tumbled, confused, unable to make sense of the speeding blur whirling in my fading vision. I flung out my arms, grasping, trying to find anything at all to hold onto and steady myself. There was a suffocating feeling and my vision went black.

  I snapped into a sitting position, gasping, flailing my arms, my physical body jerking with panic. I felt hands on me but flinched away from them. Someone grunted as I smacked them, and then I felt a strong grip on my upper arms as my hands rested on something solid. My gaze slowly focused, and I found myself looking into Mr. Frosty’s electric-blue, slightly bloodshot eyes staring out from under his ranger’s hat. His large hands held me still and grounded me enough to pull my molecules back together--at least, that’s what it felt like. My hands on his beefy shoulders buzzed and I felt like my arms were straws, sucking his steady earthy energy into myself.

  As my awareness congealed, I registered Tamar ranting at him, livid. “You could have hurt her, you gorilla! I had the situation under control. I know how to pull her safely out of trance--you don’t.”

  He ignored her, his gaze fixed on me with the careful searching firmness of a first responder. “Are you all right? How do you feel?” His words were slow and even.

  I was drenched with sweat and trembling. My limbs felt like a baby’s. The sun glared down from the late afternoon sky that was as hot and blue as Mr. Frosty’s eyes, and the brightness made me squint. My stomach was turned inside out and I swallowed a rush of saliva, trying not to heave. “I’m fine,” I lied, looking around at the broken and scattered circle, at my friends glowering at the ranger, at passersby casting curious glances our way. “What happened?”

  “The White Knight here got called in by some nosy parker who thought you were suffering heatstroke.” Tamar glared at him. “He didn’t bother to check what was up before he barged in and smashed the circle. I tried to ease you out before he could do anything, but when he broke the circle, you started tossing and jerking like you were having a seizure.”

  “Maybe she was,” shot back Mr. Frosty. “Ever consider that?” He looked back at me, lowering me down. “Are you epileptic? Any neurological conditions?”

  I shook my head. “I’m fine.”

  “Why don’t you come back to the first aid tent with me?” he said, still in that tone of soothing authority. “You should have someone take a look at you, and maybe lie down in the shade for a little while. Did anyone mix you a drink today?”

  I remembered the vulture flying into the yurt and shook my head more vehemently. “I can’t,” I said, pushing up on my elbows and struggling to get to my feet. My stomach lurched and my head throbbed. “I have to--I have to go. Something I have to do.”

  “You need to rest.” He raised his voice to drown out Tamar’s as she bitched at him.

  He was one of those. In the foggy recesses of my brain, I knew he wasn’t going to leave me alone until someone with first aid training looked at me. Dammit. If I didn’t get to Science Faction, right away, whoever was in there might leave and I’d have lost my only lead. I was scared that it’d be Dove or Chris, especially because they would never believe me.

  Mr. Frosty and Tamar faced off. He met her glare for glare. “I can make you leave the premises if you’re going to keep causing trouble.”

  I licked my dry lips. “Please don’t,” I pleaded with him, sitting up as much as I could. “She really does know what she’s doing. None of them were hurting me, I swear it. They’re my friends. Nobody drugged my drink.” Dimly, an idea formed. “Can you help me get to Science Faction? It’s not too far from here and it’s nice and cool inside the yurt. I promise I’ll rest there. You can tell someone to come check on me if you want.” I made big eyes at him, hoping his chivalry would kick in.

  It did. Grudgingly, he backed off of Tamar and re
ached out a hand to me. “Fine. Do you think you can stand up?”

  I took his hand, gripped his muscled forearm with my other hand, and got to my feet. The world swam around me, but I was already a little better off than I’d been a minute ago. “Yes. I’m good.”

  “I’ll come along,” said Joe, and the feminist in me wanted to protest, but a glance at his face told me he was trying to make nice with the ranger. Cherry and Sara were drawing close to Tamar and murmuring, and her angry gaze softened a little. She met my eyes and nodded. Good, she was onto me.

  The enchanted sunglasses slid from my hair onto my forehead as I steadied myself, and I pulled them down against the fierce sun. Each of the guys took one of my arms as we walked, ignoring the stares of people around us. I glanced at Joe, not daring yet to say anything about what was going on. I was startled to see how worried he was. I must have looked like complete hell. “Figures,” I said weakly, trying to joke. “Just had a dip in the pond, and now I’ve sweated up a whole other set of clothes.”

  Joe tried and failed to smile. Mr. Frosty patted my arm. “You’re sounding a little better already. We’ll get you some rest, get you checked out, get some water for you, and if it seems like you’re okay, I want you to get a nice long shower and a nap, all right?”

  “Sure.” I felt a little guilty that his presence was irritating me so much. He seemed like a good guy who didn’t understand the first thing about what was going on here, just doing what he thought best to help a woman in trouble.

  We reached Science Faction and my heart began to pound. What if the victim was already gone? What if there were a bunch of people in there and I couldn’t sort it out?

  We came up to the lowered flaps. The handprint was still there on the wall--fading, but there. I turned to Joe. He didn’t seem like he’d seen it.

  I pushed the flaps aside, my eyes flooding with darkness. I stood inside the entrance for a moment, letting the beautiful cold wash over my hot skin. There was a rustle and a hiss and a dark shape flew over my head out the door, just missing me. I ducked, and Joe and Mr. Frosty clutched my arms to catch me.