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She got in the limousine, Klay following behind her. When the door banged shut, an eerie silence swept in, blocking off her way to the outside world. Trapping her in here with Quinton Lucent, Klay’s father, who sat at the far end of the limousine, hands resting on his knees.
The imperator was a hellseher. He had to be pushing a hundred years old, but like most immortals, he displayed few signs of aging. His black hair was flecked with silver, his gray eyes sharp, just like Klay’s. He was one of those men who might’ve been considered handsome, were it not for the look of hatred in his stare, the kind that suggested he rarely felt emotion at all.
Loren cleared her throat. “Klay said you wanted to check in.”
Quinton Lucent said nothing.
Leather groaned as Loren fidgeted, the seat sticking to her thighs. “I haven’t told anyone about Kalendae, I swear. And my powers…they’re still gone—”
“Stop talking,” the imperator said calmly. Quietly. “Just stop talking, Miss Calla.”
She swallowed. Her heart was pounding so fast, she couldn’t separate the beats. She thought she might throw up.
The limousine started moving.
Loren swiveled in her seat to look out the back window as the school disappeared into the distance. “Where are we going? Where are you taking me?”
“You don’t listen very well, do you? Keep your mouth shut and maybe I won’t kill you.”
With effort, she forced herself to relax in her seat, interlocking her fingers between her knees to keep them from shaking.
Though the limousine drove the speed limit through Angelthene’s downtown core, it still felt like it was moving too quickly. Loren watched the vehicles passing by—sputtering city buses, impatient yellow taxis, airport shuttles, and marketing vehicles advertising nightclubs, blood bars, magic staves, and home security spells.
Eventually, the driver slowed to a stop on a street corner not far from the Temple of the Scarlet Star.
Loren turned to look out the back window.
She remembered this place. This was exactly the same spot where Darien had brought her and a few of the Devils that night they were forced to meet with Randal Slade.
When she turned back around, she saw that the imperator was watching her, a curious tilt to his lips. “We’re here.”
—
Loren never imagined she would be back here again.
The rushing of the underground waterfalls engulfed every other sound in the area. It swallowed up the pounding of boots and the echo of voices, making her feel like she was being held prisoner in a glass bubble. The many armed men lining the tunnels, all of them heavily muscled and dressed in black, certainly didn’t help. The cool temperature of the waterfall’s overspray raised a chill on her arms as she walked by, fenced in on all sides by the imperator’s men, every one of them carrying machine guns in gloved hands.
Where the Well replica had once sat was now nothing but a pit in the ground. Broken rock and debris had been cleared from the tunnel path, making the trek to wherever they were heading quicker and easier than she’d hoped. Klay stayed at her side the whole time. When she dared a glance in his direction, she could’ve sworn he looked just as nervous as she felt. His eyes flicked about the interconnecting tunnels, his throat bobbing with every swallow. The way he was reacting made her own nerves worse than they already were, but she fought them, willing herself to stay strong long enough to get through this and back to Darien.
The group came to a stop several feet past the pit. Loren stopped too, the mist from the waterfalls chilling her to the bone.
The Terran Imperator turned to face her, folding his hands before him. “We’re here.”
Loren glanced about. “And where is here? You led me all this way to stare down a dead end?” They were going to kill her. Her heart was in her throat, but she would go down fighting until the bitter end. Singer was at full attention in her shadow. Maybe, with his help, they could get out of here alive. If she could get to Hell’s Gate, Darien and the others would know what to do.
The imperator gestured to the cement wall at his back. “Maybe you need to change your perspective. Come beside me, will you?”
She looked at Klay. He was staring at the floor, jaw flexed. With shaking legs, she stepped forward, pulse racing. The imperator lightly placed his hand on her arm and guided her toward the wall, and then he turned her body so she was facing west.
“What exactly am I looking—” Her words stuck in her throat, because she saw it then.
The wall was rippling as if it were alive. The motion was only visible from certain angles, just like the forcefield, but instead of green it was a shimmering black. It stretched from floor to ceiling, and it moved with an undulating motion, like fabric caught in a breeze.
Loren stumbled back. “What is this? What am I looking at?”
“While some call it the Barrier, we prefer Veil or Divide,” Quinton replied, his gravelly voice rising above the rushing of the waterfalls. “I’m going to explain this as simply as I can.” Gesturing to the pit in the floor, he told her, “There on that floor was a magical artifact that should never have been created. When it exploded on Kalendae, it gave off such a powerful blast of raw magic that it tore a hole into a realm that has not been accessed in thousands of years. That realm goes by many names, but the most common is Spirit Terra. Some prefer Afterlife or Lower World. It is the place of all things dead and dying. A place that is neither here nor there—”
“Betwixt and between,” Loren finished on a quiet breath.
