I could barely hear him, and I leaned on his shoulder as I scooted closer. He gasped at the added weight, and the pain in my head doubled. "I couldn't pull you out into reality," I explained. "I had to move to the ever-after to do it."
"I'm out?" he said, and his jaw clenched as he opened his eyes. He'd lost his glasses somewhere, and his eyes were black-like Newt's. He closed his eyes at my fear.
"We're out," I said, still panting at the pain. We were out, but I didn't think it mattered.
"I'll get us home," he said, and then we both screamed as he tried to jump to a line. Fire burned down both our synaptic lines, and I fell back, groaning as I forced my lungs to keep working. If I was breathing, I was alive, right? How could it hurt so much? I was on fire. We were burning to death from the inside out.
"Oh God. Oh God," I moaned, looking in my hand in wonder. It looked the same, but it felt like it was burning, charring. "Don't. Don't do that again. Please."
"I can't jump us, Celfnnah. I'm sorry. Save yourself."
The heartache in Al's voice cut through the agony, and I focused on him, seeing him curled up against the pain. Celfnnah? "You want me to leave?" I said in disbelief as my tears started again, but whether they were to clear my eyes of the grit or because of Al, I couldn't tell.
Al groaned, and with a sudden jerk, he finally got the ring off his finger. My breath sucked in as the pain vanished. He took one last shuddering breath, and then he passed out, his entire body going limp. My hand flashed out as Al's ring pinged against the rock and I caught it.
Silence filled me, the cessation of pain almost unreal as the wind shifted a lank curl into my line of vision. There was only a fading ache, deep in my tissues as if I had been in a fever. "Al?"
I touched his shoulder, my hand coming away with a sheen of sweat bleeding all the way through his clothes. He still breathed, but he was out cold. "Don't you go to sleep, Al!" I shouted, shifting to kneel before him. "Stay with me!" I might as well be talking to the dead, and I put his ring on my thumb so I wouldn't lose it. Stretching, I reached for my parasol, holding it over both our heads. Damn it, we were in big trouble now.
My head jerked up at a clink of rock, and my heart seemed to clench at the skinny, raw figure silhouetted against the red sky, his tattered clothes drifting in the never-stopping wind, looking like the remnants of an aura as it fluttered. I tensed. Where there was one surface demon, there were many, and they only attacked the weak.
Yeah, we fit that category now.
"Al!" I hissed, shaking his shoulder, but he only groaned. "Wake up! I can't jump us. Damn it, I knew this was a bad idea!"
A huge shadow covered us and was gone. Looking up, I tapped my broken line, crying out and shoving it away as the discordant jangle cut through me. Either I'd damaged my aura, or the line was truly poison. Eyes on the empty sky, I scrambled up, not knowing if I could reach another line from here, but willing to try. But I froze when I saw what had made the shadow. It was a huge gargoyle-his skin gray and pebbly, and his leathery wings bigger than a bus is long. Slowly my panic ebbed to a cautious alarm, leaving me shaking and standing askew.
The surface demon had vanished, and I stared as the huge gargoyle made one last circle and landed where it had been, as if daring it to return. My gaze flicked to the sun. Either this gargoyle was very old or they went by different rules here in the ever-after.
My attention dropped to the heavy, notched sword he had in his clawlike hand, and I edged back to Al, feeling scared for an entirely new reason.
"Who are you?" the gargoyle said, his vowels sounding like rocks grinding, his consonants like iron shavings stuck to a magnet, sharp and pointy. "What are you doing to the new rift?"
His sword had drooped slightly, and I took a slow breath. Gargoyles were protectors. Either I was in big trouble or I finally caught a break. "We were trying to balance it. Please, can you help us? He's burned. We need to get out of the sun."
The gargoyle dropped the sword as if it were a worthless stick, and it pinged against the rock until it wedged itself. His craggy hind feet cracked the stone as he shifted his grip. "Balance the line?" he said, his voice rising and falling. "That's short term, but possibly the only answer that I will allow. For now. I know you. Your gargoyle is too young to facilitate fixing the new. This is your line. It rings with your aura. You let him break it. Why?"
Him? I thought, trying to shade Al with my body. He must be talking of Ku'Sox, and I wished a gargoyle's testimony would hold up in a demon court. "I didn't let him break it. He did it to blame me for destroying the ever-after. Do you know how I can fix what he did?"
The gargoyle yawned and looked at the sun. "Change damaged it. Change will fix it. In time it will fix itself, destroying everything here along with it."
From my feet, Al moved, whispering, "Newt. Call Newt."
My gaze jerked to him, glad he was conscious. "Newt?"
His eyes opened, and I started at his black eyes. "She can jump us," he breathed, clearly not seeing anything. "She'll be listening for you. She's worried about you, the insane bat." Wincing, he tried to move, then thought better of it. "Do hurry. I feel less up to par than usual."
Nauseated, I loosened my hold on my thoughts, searching for the demon collective. I'd never tried to contact anyone without a scrying mirror, but as he said, she was listening. "Newt!" I shouted, and the gargoyle lifted his wings in alarm. "Newt, I need you. We need you!"
The gargoyle made one leathery down pulse of air, then hesitated, his feet still gripping the ruins of the castle. "You won't find enough time to fix it before it fixes itself. The lines are failing. The world breaker wakes. We need to leave. Save who you can."
He jumped into the air, the wind from his departure making me squint and sending my lank hair blowing back. He circled once before becoming lost in the red sun. Desperately worried, I looked at Al, out cold again. The sweat had dried on him, and he was shaking.
"Maybe I should've asked him for help," I whispered, then spun at the clink of stone on wood. It was Newt, and I was struck dumb for a moment, reminded of the first time we'd met. She'd been a referee to see how long I'd last after the sun went down, marooned in the ever-after by Trent's "best friend." She was wearing a long, flowing robe like a desert sheik, her black staff in one hand, the other holding her robe closed against the wind. Her awareness, though, was clear this time, her step sure as she made her way to us with a new urgency.
"Help me get him home," I said before she had closed the gap, and I shocked myself with the knowledge that I'd pay just about anything for it.
Her long, somewhat bony hands were gentle as she crouched beside him, holding a hand over him as if testing his aura. "What did he do?" she asked tersely, then paused as her glance fell on the sword the gargoyle had left behind.
I sniffed, backing up a step with my arms wrapped around my middle. "He tried to find out if Ku'Sox made that purple line and fell to the bottom of it."
Newt spun, finding her feet in an instant. "And you let him?"
"He didn't say it was going to scrape his aura off!" I yelled back. "I got him out, but . . ." My words faltered, and I felt the prick of tears, hating them. It was Al, for God's sake.
"You got him out?" Newt blinked her black eyes at me, drawing herself up when she saw the ring on my hand. "Oh." She hesitated. "He gave you . . . Where is the other one?"
Nervous, I held up my other hand to show her my thumb. "He took it off. He took all the pain so I could call you."
Newt made a harrumph of disagreement. "He took all the pain so it wouldn't kill you."
Fidgeting, I came closer. Was she going to help or not? "Newt. Please. The sun."
Her androgynous face twisting to look more feminine somehow, she squinted up at it. "Indeed," she said sourly, twitching the hem of her robe off Al. "It's like breathing in acid."
The gritty wind gusted against me with a sudden force, and I closed my eyes, feeling the dust suddenly halt and drop away before it could hit me. It was Newt yanking me into a ley line, and with a nauseating twist, the horrid red sky winked out of existence.
My heart thudded once, twice, and still we hadn't reemerged anywhere. My lungs started to ache, and at the last moment, when I thought she might have forgotten me and I was going to have to scrape another line into existence trying to get out, she yanked me into reality.
Stumbling, I caught myself against the bedpost in Al's room. The oil lamp beside the bed was lit, making shadows at the edges of the smallish chamber. Browns, golds, and greens mimicked a primeval forest, and plush, sinking textures made it a close, secure space.
"Sorry about that," Newt murmured, looking matronly as she tucked the cover over Al, already resting in my, or rather, his bed. "It took me a moment to get around the room's safeguards. I thought one jump right to his bed would be better than sliding into the library and having to drag him."
"Yes," I whispered, suitably cowed. Al had told me his old bedchamber was absolutely foolproof, but apparently it wasn't crazy-proof. I let go of the bedpost, and Newt sat on the bed beside Al, looking like a bedside nurse. I couldn't see anything but his face, the rest of him lost in the voluptuous coverings.
Giving Al's cheek a little pat, Newt looked up, her black eyes taking in everything in a single sweep. "This is not Al's bedroom. It's far too . . . plush."
"It's mine," I rushed. "He gave it to me. Made me take it. He sleeps in the closet."
"You make him sleep in a closet? Very good. You might survive him after all."
I edged closer to look down at Al, the bed between Newt and me. "It's not really a closet. I just call it that. It's a tiny nine by twelve I got for making Tron that car."
"Oh." Her hand touched Al's, turning it over as if looking for the ring on my thumb.
"Is he going to be okay?"
Again, Newt blinked at me, her eyes looking almost normal in the dim light. "You care?" Her gaze was on the ring he had given me, and I hid it behind my other hand. My thoughts went to Celfnnah, but I wasn't going to ask Newt.
From the bed, Al's voice rasped out, "Of course she cares. I'm a god to her."
"Al!" I leaned forward over him, and he squirmed as if hurt.
"Mother pus bucket," he swore, running a sweat-stained, dirt-caked hand over his forehead. "I feel like I've been across a cheese grater several times in quick succession." His gaze sharpened, and he tried to sit up, panic edging him. "Where are my rings? My rings!"
"Here," I said as Newt forced him to lie back down, and I wedged both rings off my finger and thumb, dropping them into his waiting palm. He slumped, eyes closing as his thick fingers wrapped around them. His hand was shaking, and I remembered the pain we'd shared. Taking that doubled would have killed me.
"I let go of him," I said, backing up from the bed and feeling as if this was my fault. "I had to. I couldn't pull him through to reality while the sun was up. I had to let go so I could move to the ever-after to get him!"
"Stop babbling," Al grumped, trying to smack Newt's hand away as she tried to see his eyes. "It wasn't your fault. Let me sleep." He opened an eye to glare at Newt. "What is your problem, bitch?"
Newt stopped trying to lift his eyelids, and I shut my mouth.
"I'm not babbling," I said, sounding sullen even to myself.