They weren’t anything I’d ever seen before or wanted to see again. Just darkness, but not the normal kind. This was the limitless, unending black of a sky without stars. The emptiness an astronaut sees when his tether has just been cut, and his only way home destroyed. A void, horrible and deep and soul-destroying.
And pulling me in.
I screamed, and the fiery face laughed, laughed as I was drawn down, as I felt pieces of myself begin to disappear into that darkness, as my soul stretched and split and started to tear—
I screamed again, mindlessly, because right then I didn’t have a mind. Right then I barely had anything. It had been just that fast, from shock to terror to terrible, mind-shattering loss, with no tether even in sight anymore as darkness boiled overhead, as it took my sight, as it poured down my throat, as I felt the world slip away. And like that astronaut, began to wheel in endless parabolas, still screaming—
Until someone grasped my fingers.
It wasn’t a grip. It was barely a touch. But in the darkness of absolutely nothing, it felt like everything. I grasped it like a scared child caught in a nightmare, hugged it to me, tried to wrap myself around it, whimpering and sobbing and utterly, utterly terrified.
And that was before something hooked me on the other side, like a barb thrust into my side. Something that didn’t want to lose its prize, something that was trying to drag me down into nothingness, something that was massive and strong and powerful, like no mage could ever be. Something—
That hadn’t expected me to have help.
“Will you challenge me for her, vampire?” An amused voice shivered through the nothingness, as the fiery face looked upward.
And then around, as if it couldn’t quite find its challenger.
“Looking for me?” Mircea’s voice was a whisper, an echo that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. I was holding on to his fingers, but I couldn’t have said for certain where he was. And it didn’t look like my captor was having any better luck.
“You dare play games with me?” It almost sounded more surprised than angry.
“You’d be surprised what I dare,” Mircea hissed. And this time, I was sure the voice had come from the left.
So was the face, which abruptly turned that way.
And as it did, a tiny bit of its grip on me loosened.
“No, no. As the humans say, you’re getting colder,” Mircea said, and this time, there was a definite thread of mockery in the tone.
It caused the face to flame up, so hot I could swear it burned me. And to twist to the right, where the voice had come from that time. But Mircea wasn’t there, either.
Because a moment later, he was overhead whispering, “Surely, you can do better than that?” And then from the left again. “See, I was here all the time.” And then from everywhere at once, forming an echo chamber that didn’t make sense, because there was nothing for his voice to echo from—
Only there was.
I could see it suddenly, a hazy vision of the battle on the drag. Not clear, not even close. But like I was viewing it through some type of barrier, thick but transparent, and vaguely tinte
d. Something like . . .
Someone’s skin.
Because I was out; I was almost out!
The power that gripped me had been so focused on finding Mircea that I had slipped away from it little by little. But it realized that at the same moment I did, and the fire that had been flaring in anger was suddenly burning everywhere. I saw it like an impenetrable wall, blazing all around me. Felt it like acid, etching into my soul. Heard it in my voice as I screamed and screamed and screamed—
And fell, as heavily as if I had a body again, slamming into something that I vaguely recognized as a floor.
For a moment, I just lay there, stunned and whimpering, barely conscious.
“Mircea?” I whispered, after a long moment.
But I couldn’t hear him anymore. No more than I could that other voice, or feel its talons. I couldn’t feel much of anything, except for aching loss, the memory of terror, and overwhelming confusion.
None of which I had the strength to do anything about.
So I just stayed there, feeling wet tile against my face, because the overhead sprinklers were still on. Eventually, I noticed that the water was pattering down on the rest of me, too, tiny drops hitting my body and face and rolling down my cheek. I lay there some more.