“There!” I said, finding some stairs on the side of a building that looked connected to the rock walls of the cavern. We charged up, then had to leap to reach a path. She grabbed me, wings bursting forth to carry me across, and then we landed on a platform with a cove to the left, and the path ahead. Whatever was out there had it in its mind to come after us, so I decided to not run, yet, but to hide. Pulling back into this cove, the two of us paused to take a breath.

  “Shit, you’re hurt,” I said, finally able to look and see that a line of blood showed through her shirt, on her side. “Did I…?”

  Lifting her shirt, she bit her lip. “Forget about it, I’ll heal soon.”

  The water hit then, spraying up in a mist past the opening to our little hideout, but then it pulled back. Whatever monster had been out there, if that’s what it was, didn’t appear. I wasn’t sure how long I’d held my breath, but I waited, hand out and ready to draw on the sword again.

  When it was silent, I chanced a cautious glance out, and saw no more water. The ruins were now completely collapsed, except for the area closest to us. From this angle, I could see the cliff beyond the pool of blood where we had landed—an area the water must have swept over. Several smaller structures still stood at the edge there, as if this were some other defensive position that the power that had ravaged this place felt needed to remain.

  I pulled back, haunted by this place.

  “Come here,” Jalee said, taking me and looking me over. My injuries from the Shades weren’t much more than scratches, but she ran her finger over the visible ones, zapping the skin to keep them from bleeding.

  “Electrotherapy,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  I chuckled, shaking my head. “Ignore me.”

  “Impossible.” Her hand moved around my waist, pulling me closer, and she pressed her lips to mine. We kissed for a moment, her sparks running through me and giving me courage. When she pulled back, she glanced around and said, “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “Not at all.”

  She grinned. “Right, it never truly is. But we have to get back, find the others and get them out of here.”

  I took the half disk and eyed it. “All this trouble… It’d better work.”

  “My sister will love you.”

  “Oh?” I blinked, not sure what she meant by those words.

  “You’ll take her, won’t you? I mean, I can’t imagine going back and being away from you, but… she would need to be part of the group. To link with you, too.”

  I gulped, then shrugged. “If it means that much to you, I’ll… Sure?”

  “Thank you.” She leaned into me again, head on my shoulder, then suddenly pulled back, turning me to look in the direction she had been facing.

  Humongous eyes. Something was watching us. Standing there in the near darkness, a pair of lamp-like eyes staring right at us. Neither of us moved. Those eyes hovered there, shifting between the two of us, then blinked.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  As if in answer, it stepped forward, or more like it shifted forward. Jalee’s sparks lit enough to give us light and show a reflection of the monster—only, it seemed to be a wall at the back of the hideout. A wall with eyes? I took a step toward it, but suddenly it was gone, the wall falling to pieces right there in front of us. The sound of it falling echoed, as a small, furry creature scampered up along the wall to my left.

  We stepped back as the dust rose up, creating a glowing haze from Jalee’s sparks. And that little creature, looking all Totoro at me, sat there on the wall. I didn’t know what the fuck was happening. One second a wall, and then this thing?

  “Basty,” Jalee mumbled.

  I frowned, knowing that name from somewhere. It started to come back to me. “A creature of nightmares?”

  “You’re familiar?”

  “Not much, but… is that right?” Looking at this little furball, I wasn’t sure it fit.

  “Shape-shifting beings that, yes, can influence the mind—especially in dreams.” She turned, gripped my arm, and said, “You hear that?”

  Thudding. Coming our way. A little yelp came from behind, and I turned to see the furball shaking. Was he afraid? Clearly, this wasn’t over.

  “Come on,” I said to the furball, and he jumped into my hands. We turned to ascend to the area above, only to find that the ruins hadn’t vanished after all—we were still in one!

  “More illusions,” Jalee said, shaking her head. “We need to get out of here.”

  Panic took hold, but I shook it away. Focusing on my link with her had worked before, so now I focused on my link with the others. Doing so gave me a sense of direction, and so I grasped it and led the way.

  Running through several doorways and up a set of stairs, we emerged to find the walls folding like cards. I knew I couldn’t trust my eyes, so focused instead on that link to Milkshake and Kinara. Doing so helped me see walls as if in another dimension but layered on top of what I was seeing. This had to be reality—this weird, translucent version.

  More thudding sounded. I turned toward it to see an eerie, deer-like creature that looked to be all marble, or maybe pure-white bone. Its face was angled, sharp at the tip, three horns coming out from its head, more from the body.

  I could see why Basty wouldn’t want to see this thing. The darkness warped around the creature, the ground shook and pulsated outward as it broke apart, and bursts of red shot out from the ground. As it charged us, I think it was the first time I’d been confronted by a monster that I was truly terrified of.

  Pulling Basty close in my arm with the half-disk still in that hand, my other hand reached out to grab Jalee. My head spun.

  “Get me out of here,” she said, and it hit me that, for some reason, this thing was affecting them more than myself. A monster to terrify monsters.

  The ground beneath my feet shook and more blood or whatever the red liquid was shot out. We were out of time, and I had no idea how to get us out of there. Shit, if that thing reached us, we were dead—I knew that much.

  Sensing, blur, and my other abilities… useless.

  Except, the ground had further broken and there was that liquid. Did my power only work in water? Fuck that. I had another idea.

  All of my terror gone, I could see that the creature was just a scared little animal only there to try and do its duty—to protect the sun disk half it had been left behind to protect. We had the disk, and that wasn’t going to change.

  “Basty, you made the illusions, didn’t you?” I asked. “Or others like you. Can you… do what you did to me, but to that thing?”

  The creature in my hands turned to look at me, eyes wide—a series of strange images flashed through my head like clashing symbols, and then I actually felt the images push out to hit our pursuer.

  What happened next was a blur. Basty leaped from my arms, becoming one with the ground. Those large eyes were part of the stone, then closed as the enemy creature charged onto it. A piercing scream sounded, then the white creature pulled back, rearing up on its hind legs, and started to morph, to turn and shriek. Its body fluctuated as if made of liquid, but then just as suddenly as it had started, it reformed and took another step.

  This time it started again, but the creature was resisting.

  “Hit it,” I said to Jalee. “With all you’ve got. And… I’ll do the same.”

  She nodded, braced herself, and as the creature started to pull itself together, unleashed. I clicked my tongue and, not sure what would happen, thrust my hands to the ground. The result was that I harnessed that strange force again. It rocked the ground, shot out at the creature, and then hit a split second after the electricity.

  Ground gave way, the creature shaking and convulsing, then falling into the red liquid below. For a few heartbeats I stared, unable to believe it had worked, but then saw something shimmering as it slid in after the monster.

  “Basty!” I shouted, and ran. Leaping that last bit, I landed with hands out, gripping the creature as it transformed into a little furball. I had him. Only now I was starting to fall!

  Jalee grabbed me by the back of my shirt, blue light shining all around as she fluttered her electric wings to pull us back and away from the opening. We landed a few feet away, and I held the little furball, worried it was dead.

  “This is cute,” Jalee said. “But you realize you just risked your life to save a nightmare creature?”

  I frowned, then shrugged. “He helped us, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s why I had no choice.”

  A horrific thought hit me. The sun disk! I spun round, searching and saw it on the edge of the ground next to more of that blood lake. My gut clenched with each step, expecting at any second that the creature would appear, take it and vanish into the blood.

  That never happened, though, and when I scooped it up, a strange thing happened. The Basty made a cooing sound, eyes alert and staring at the half of the disk.

  “You’re connected somehow, aren’t you?” I asked.

  The Basty turned his eyes to me, and that seemed to be enough of an answer. I nodded, then laughed as the little guy scurried up my arm, coming to a rest on my shoulder. With him standing there, I felt like a pirate with my parrot. To my surprise, he started to change color and took on the form of a parrot. Too cool.

  I looked down at myself, and sure enough—pirate clothes. Straight out of a Johnny movie. As cool as that was, I knew it wouldn’t fly once we got back into the real world out there, so thought of my old clothes and watched them shift back.

  Whatever the deal was with this little nightmare monster, I never wanted him to leave my side. I nodded to Jalee, and we started looking for a way to get back up to join the others.

  23

  To get back up, we risked the path that first monkey monster had attempted to climb down. Approaching from the bottom was tricky, because cave-ins over the years had led to piles of rocks blocking the path. We climbed in places and used short flight-bursts from Jalee in others.

  “I can’t believe we did it,” Jalee said, pausing to stare back at the destruction we’d left behind. “Half of my ticket back home is now in your hands—don’t fucking lose it.”

  With a laugh, I promised not to.

  We were near the top when the crocodile woman appeared, reaching for us and shouting about throwing her the half of the sun disk. Bitch, I’d seen Aladdin, I knew how this Jafar bullshit worked. Ignoring her and seeing Kinara give me a nod toward the exit, I shook my head and said, “Not this time.”

  I thought about the monster in front of me, about her seeing me as that scary, white creature from below. It worked! Or, at least, she suddenly stumbled back in terror, tripping over her own tail, and covering her face. I leaped over her, grabbed Milkshake from one of the other monsters, and then kicked a monkey monster to my left.

  My team unleashed, too, and the other monsters were in a state of confusion now with their leader on the ground shrieking, apparently still seeing things. Basty was proving to be quite the badass, and useful. The only issue was that he could fall off.

  “Basty,” I said, turning to duck under a punch from another monkey monster. “Any chance you could take the form of a coat or scarf to—”

  Before I could finish, he had done exactly that, becoming a furry scarf around my neck. The idea of a monster around my neck was a little scary but right now we had bigger issues. For one, I’d forgotten that our way in was blocked.

  Thinking quickly, I had an idea. I lifted my wrist and focused on my drones outside, telling them to shoot their way in. It was a distant pinging, a thud as they started doing more than shooting to try to get to me. What caught my attention though was the sound from the other direction. We were on a narrow ledge without much room to go, but considering that we’d traveled into this hill, I was surprised I could hear anything from that direction. I called out for my team to follow and ran over, hearing it clearer as I clicked my tongue and started tracing the wall. There, one gave off a weaker rebounding signal—there was open air on the other side! We had broken through the wall before, but I still wasn’t sure exactly what allowed this strange vibration power to work. Panic? Bravery? I had no clue.

  “On it,” Milkshake said, apparently seeing what the problem was. She pulled her fist back and I cringed as she brought it into the wall with full force. To my surprise, the stone cracked. Her grin didn’t betray any pain. When she punched again, I felt incredibly lucky to have never been on the receiving end of one of those punches.

  More stone gave way, and then I felt the vibration. But it wasn’t me who used it this time, it was Kinara, stepping up to press and send a shock through the rest of the wall, to blow it out and away from us. Monsters behind were recovering from the fight, but we weren’t going to wait to see what they’d do. We charged into this new tunnel, Jalee sending sparks of light out ahead to light the way.

  A bullet hit the tunnel ahead and I called off my drones. No more bullets came, and I was glad I hadn’t hurt any of our group. As we skidded around the corner, I had to wonder if those things ever ran out of ammunition. Something to figure out later.

  At the moment, we had just come to a bit of a cliff that we needed to climb.

  “Shit, I won’t be able to make it up that,” Kinara said. “Especially not carrying anyone.”

  “I can manage,” Jalee said, but that left quite a few of us still.

  Lucky them, I was there. “I have an idea,” I said, and focused on the drones. One came zooming down right away, two more soon after. Without knowing if this would work, and as growling and shouting came from behind, I shouted, “Grab hold!”

  While Jalee helped Milkshake, the rest of us grabbed onto the drones and yelped and laughed as they pulled us up and over the cliff face, to a short tunnel. Judging by the light, even as dark as it was at night, this was a way to the outside!

  I was halfway to the exit when my drone dropped me and spun, some flying monster appearing there and brandishing a pistol. My mind didn’t register that I should attack, but Ahlaksiz dove to grab me, so that we rolled down to the exit and out of the way of the shot.

  Next, a flying monster appeared with something in its arms—the crocodile lady! It dropped her, screaming and clawing, then turned to try and take on Jalee and Kinara at once, who had both risen up for the fight.

  Milkshake was already at the exit and couldn’t get back to us in time, so she wouldn’t miss the sword if I summoned it. Reaching out my hand, the blade appeared. Only, as it did so the croc lady’s tail hit my legs to knock me off my feet. She was on me, teeth gnashing, but I saw the blur, knew which way she’d bite. Moving out of the way, I released the blade again and put my hands under her, calling it back as I’d done against one of the Shades.

  Sure enough, the blade appeared—right through her chest. She was there, teeth slamming into rock one second, my blade ripping through her the next. I released it so it faded, then pushed off of her as Milkshake finally made it back, now summoning the blade into her own hands to bring down and sever the bitch’s head.

  “You have to be certain,” Milkshake said, when she saw me looking at the sight of the decapitated head with a bit of disgust.

  “Sure, sure…”

  A ball of red light formed from the corpse, floating up. This time I knew it to be Ichor.

  “Take it,” I said.

  Milkshake shook her head. “Your kill, and you need it.”

  A blast of electricity went off so that I knew Jalee had taken her counter shot, and I knelt, absorbing the Ichor. We didn’t have time to figure out how to make it work or do whatever it was supposed to do right then, but knowing I had more filled me with excitement. We charged outside, only shouts following us.

  “You got it?” Ahlaksiz asked. I grinned, held up the half of the sun disk, and said, “Now let’s get out of here before they manage to follow us out.”

  “Agreed.”

  There were no paths, exactly, but we found a way down. Each step made my knees feel like they were going to blow, and at one point I had to rest. From there we had curved around a bit and couldn’t see if we were being pursued, but I had no doubt we were. I was about to start up again, when Kinara stepped in front of me, eyes narrowed with worry. She leaned over, tongue out, and licked my neck. Then my cheek.

  “What’re you doing?” I asked. Not protesting, but confused.

  “You had cuts. My saliva will help.”

  I flashed back to that day in my apartment when that had proven true.

  “Wait, why didn’t you do it with the glass injuries?”

  She grinned, then licked my forehead before saying, “At the time, I didn’t know. The first lick was more out of pity, and after that I didn’t put it together. It was only now, when I was feeling horrible at seeing all your cuts, that I thought it might have been why. And…” She backed up, eyeing my neck. “Yes! I think we have a winner here.”

  This was a good thing, of course. But I couldn’t help thinking about all the pain that could have been avoided if we had tried this earlier. It was possible her saliva only healed me, not other monsters. Either way, it was a huge plus.

  We continued on, soon finding our way back to the car. That’s when the other monsters emerged. One visible there in the distance, staring at us. They didn’t attack, though. Instead they turned and walked off, vanishing around the curve of the land.

  For a moment we lingered, not sure what to do with that, but I held open the car door and said, “After you.”

  We had completed our mission, though hadn’t expected the conflict with that other group, supposedly there on the lamia’s orders. Had they turned on us at her command, or on their own? We were most certainly going to ask her when we returned.

  Once we were piled in, so much of the strange underground adventure started to feel like a dream. A distant memory.

  “You know what that place was?” Milkshake asked, her voice eerie.