Free Silver-Tongued Devil by Jaye Wells Page A

me from the nightmare realm.

9
     
    W hen I woke, I didn’t care how long I’d been out. Or about the cold sweat gluing my body to the floor. Never in my life had I enjoyed the pungent scent of old sweat and vinyl so much. Thank the gods—I’d made it back to the gym.
    Rapid footsteps vibrated off the gym’s hardwood floor. I groaned and peeled my face from the mat. I rolled over in time to see Rhea’s face snap into focus.
    “Sabina! Gods, what happened?” She knelt beside me. Worry aged the planes of her face.
    “I don’t know.” I rubbed my eyes. “One minute I was focused on flashing to the hall and the next…” My voice trailed off. I tried to figure out how to describe the place I’d gone, the terror I’d felt there. “I went someplace else. Someplace… other.”
    She frowned and felt my forehead. “Are you okay?”
    I swallowed the clump of remembered fear in my throat. “I think so. How long was I gone?”
    “Just a few seconds. You disappeared as expected but when I ran to the hall you weren’t there. By the time I made it back to the door, I heard a thud and there you were.”
    I shook my head. “That can’t be right. I was there for at least five minutes, maybe longer.” She hooked her hands under my arms to help me stand. “Physically, I feel fine, but my brain feels like I spent too much time on a Tilt-a-Whirl.”
    She clucked sympathetically and led me to a chair. She disappeared for a moment but when she returned, she pressed a glass of blood into my hand. “Praise the gods you badgered me into keeping blood stocked in the gym.”
    “Amen.” I tilted the glass and gulped the liquid like someone who’d just stumbled out of the desert.
    Once I’d finished, she crossed her arms. “Okay, tell me what you saw.”
    I rolled the glass between my palms. “It’s hard to describe.” I went on to tell her the details I recalled. I told her about the odd light, the barren landscape, the crossroads. When I got to that part, I paused. “Wait a second.”
    “What is it?”
    “The crossroads. Remember that dream I keep having? The one about Cain?”
    Rhea frowned and nodded. “Sure.”
    “There’s this point in the dream where the setting changes and we’re suddenly in a crossroads. The one in this place wasn’t exactly like the one in my dreams, but I wonder if there’s a connection.”
    Rhea pursed her lips and frowned. “Describe the one in the other realm.”
    “Eight spokes, a tall pole in the center with a red flag.”
    “I’ll look into it. Chances are good it’s a coincidence, but it never hurts to check it out.” She dipped her chin at me to continue. “What else?”
    I got to the howling part and I gripped the glass so tightly it cracked. She took it from me and nodded for me to continue. “Wherever I went, it wasn’t of this world.”
    Rhea had gone very still. And too quiet. The kind of quiet a person gets when they’re busy restraining their fear for you to respond. Finally, she arranged her features into her best academic poker face. “From your description, I’m tempted to agree you left our world. But before we jump to conclusions I’d like to do some research.”
    “What kind of research?”
    “Everyone has different experiences when they do travel spells for the first time. It’s not unheard of to end up in a completely different place than where you’d intended. I’d like to look back through the archives to see if anyone else has ever left this plane of existence.”
    “Isn’t that the sort of thing you’d have heard about?”
    “Not necessarily.” Her eyes scanned the middle distance, as if the answer hung there waiting to be snatched. “But I’ve never trained a Chthonic before. Ameritat trained your father.”
    I tried not to be frustrated by her dropping the C bomb. By definition, a Chthonic mage was one who specialized in dark magic. Not black magic, exactly, but definitely not white either. If you needed a zombie raised or a spirit