Free The Darkening (Dawn of Ascension) by Caris Roane

mind-to-mind, an explosion sounded behind them, much closer this time.
    She flowed faster than before, taking tunnel after tunnel. He could feel the dimensional crossing, like a bump in the road, but still they were pursued as another explosion sounded.
    Closer.
    She reached the end of a tunnel. A dead end. I don’t know what to do?
    What do you see? All he saw was darkness, like a wall of infinite black.
    I doorway with a kind of gold seal around it.
    Another explosion. Try knocking.
    An explosion sounded so close his ears rang.
    Fuck that. Samuel, use your sword.
    He didn’t pause to ask questions. He summoned his dark power and as his smoky mist swirled around him, he sliced at the wall with his blade and what do you know, an opening peeled back.
    A man in long black terry robe, a cigarette in one hand and martini glass in the other, stared back at him and muttered. “Oh, shit!”
    Samuel stepped through the opening, dragging Vela with him, turned and faced the breach but he saw nothing just the wall.
    But he heard another explosion.
    “Fuck.” Their host said. “The wreckers followed you.”
    Samuel turned back to face the robed stranger. “What do we do?”
    He rolled his eyes, settled his cigarette carefully on an ashtray, placed his martini glass on the coffee table then went to the wall.
    Samuel pulled Vela close as another not-so-distant explosion rocked the space.
     “I could use some help here,” the stranger called out.
    Vela went to the wall, and placed her hands on it alongside the man.
    “Shit, this isn’t working,” the man shouted.
    Samuel’s instincts kicked in and he went to the stranger. He placed his hand on the man’s back and his own power flowed. A kind of zing went through him, into the stranger, and the power amplified about a hundred fold.
    Then everything went black.
    Sometime later he woke up on his back.
    “He’s awake now,” Vela said.
    He shifted his head slightly. Vela had hold of his hand, her knees curled next to him. Her long, unruly hair, full of waves and curls, hung beside her face, an almost angelic look. He squeezed her hand.
    “You okay?” she asked.
    He glanced around. He was on the floor, in the same room, the stranger’s living room. “What happened?”
    “You amplified Merl’s power and he sealed the tunnel back up. Looks like we opened up an exit point that had been closed for about five decades.”
    He glanced at her other hand. She held a martini glass. “You’re drinking?”
    “Seemed like a good idea. Greygoose dirty. Very nice. And we were very lucky Merl was here.”
    She’d called him by name twice.
    He didn’t like that. At all.
    He sat up, his head spinning. Shit, where was his identified sword. Only he could touch the grip or the hilt. Jesus. “Where’s my sword?”
    Merl said. “It’s humming over there.” He gestured behind him.
    Samuel widened his eyes. His sword was stuck about ten inches into the wall, on the opposite side of the large room, at least thirty feet away from where he now sat. There were many issues to address right now like how much he didn’t like his new host since he could sense his male-hunting stench, but he needed to take care of his weapon first.
    As he rose to his feet, he said, “I take it we’ve reached some kind of safe haven here on Second and you must be from Third.”
    “Guilty.”
    Had Merl actually said that?
    Samuel crossed in front of him, catching his gaze and holding it hard, as he passed by.
    The man held up both hands in surrender, a new cigarette in one hand and a half full martini in the other.
    Samuel pulled his sword from the wall, the familiar feel of the grip a comfort in what had become an increasingly bizarre situation. “We’re on Second?”
    Merl nodded and took a slow drag on his cigarette, squinting, savoring. “Yeah, you can fold it anywhere you want. I don’t have shields up. Haven’t needed them. Of course your arrival, as well as Vela’s,” he offered her a smile as he