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At last.
He quickly glanced around, expecting to see the interior of the empty cabin. What he saw instead was an endless landscape of flat, barren sand and overhead a sickly green sky with two moons that circled a black hole. It was as alien as if they’d been transported to a distant planet.
“Where did you take us?” he growled. “Where’s Peri?”
“I made the opening you demanded.” Tia yanked her arm out of his grasp. “How dare you force me in here?”
Valen sent her a frustrated glare. “You were the one who followed us to take control of the miasma, right? You should be thanking me.”
Tia stepped away, but her gaze remained locked on him, as if she was too terrified to actually glance toward the eerie surroundings.
“Gratitude is the last thing I feel,” she managed to mutter.
Valen turned away, not daring to move in case there was a hidden trap. “This isn’t the cabin.” He stated the obvious.
“It has to be.”
Valen glanced around. Could the miasma be creating an illusion? That seemed the most logical answer. But then again, they had no idea what sort of power the evil magic possessed. They might have been whisked to another dimension.
Unease prickled over his skin. The foreign landscape hadn’t changed, but the fine sand was beginning to stir as a breeze rushed past them. In that breeze was a faint hint of sulfur. Tiagrimaced, but Valen stiffened as a fragmented memory stitched together in the back of his mind.
He’d been in this place. Or at least the most primordial part of him had been there. This was where the vampire retreated after his human body had been destroyed. And it remained here waiting for the proper host to summon him. He had no actual memory of being here, but while it’d been two thousand years ago, he would never forget that stench.
“This is the afterworld,” he rasped.
Tia clutched the potion case against her chest, as if it might protect her. “Hell?”
“No. The world of spirits trapped between life and death.”
Tia paled until her skin looked like ash in the greenish glow, but amazingly, she didn’t faint, or crumble into a ball of fear.
“Did the miasma bring us here?”
Did it? Valen considered the question. “It would make sense,” he finally conceded, recalling Peri’s description of testing the shard in the playroom. And how the residue from the miasma had struck out in an effort to steal her magic. “The miasma absorbs its power by draining mages. Usually to the death.”
“Like a vampire,” Tia muttered.
That was his thought exactly. And why he was willing to believe that the miasma would have the ability to enter the afterlife. Just like vampires.
Not that he was going to admit as much to Tia. How vampires remained immortal was Cabal business, and not shared with the public.
He shrugged. “There are similarities.”
Tia at last forced herself to glance around, her jaw clenched as she caught sight of the black hole swirling above their heads.
“How do we get out of here?”
“We need to find Peri,” he stubbornly insisted.
“She’s here?”
Valen stepped away, allowing his concentration to focus on the woman who had become more important than life itself. Closing his eyes, he opened himself to his surroundings. The nasty stench of sulfur assaulted his senses, along with the sting of sand as the breeze scooped up the fine grains. In the distance there was a bone-chilling emptiness that revealed the presence of a spirit. There was no rich scent of lilies, which meant that she wasn’t in this dimension, but he could feel her presence. Almost as if he could reach out and touch her.
“She’s not here, but she’s close.”
“Then lead us to her,” Tia commanded.
“I can’t,” he admitted, his voice sharp with frustration.
