Heart of Vengeance (Alice Worth #6) - Lisa Edmonds Page 0,47
rose, moving a little stiffly. “I wish you a safe journey and a swift return.”
“Thanks.” I tightened the strap around my waist and bounced to test that the backpack was cinched as tightly as it could be.
I took a deep breath and approached the mirror. The reflection in the glass seemed a mile deep. Vertigo made my stomach lurch.
Ten seconds to midnight.
Based on previous experience, I knew it was best not to bring anything with me in my head. I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths, clearing my mind and relaxing my shoulders. Just fall, I reminded myself. Just fall, and the spell will do the rest.
I opened my eyes. Midnight exactly. The glass shimmered like the surface of a lake.
With my fingertip, I traced the spellwork I’d drawn in blood on the glass. The humming of the magic on my skin surged until I vibrated with power. The mirror’s power rose as well, building to a crescendo along with my own, but the vibrations were discordant. The discomfort made my teeth ache. My chest heaved as breathing became difficult.
Finally, the vibrations synced as the spellwork on my body and my blood magic aligned to match that of the mirror. The sudden lack of pain was almost euphoric.
On the other side of the glass, the chasm yawned. I’d never looked into the mouth of Hell, but I imagined it might look something like this.
Voices whispered just on the edge of my awareness—so many, I couldn’t distinguish any one sound. The mirror was full of echoes. This would be one hell of a rough trip.
“Bombs away,” I muttered. I pressed my palms against the glass. “Tollat me.”
The glass gave way under my hands. I thought the mirror was falling over. By the time I realized it was me who was falling, the spell had me and there was no turning back.
As I slipped through the glass, Valas’s voice hissed something in my ear—or maybe in my mind. When her words registered, I raised my hands to stop my fall into the mirror, but there was nothing for me to grab onto and nowhere to go but down, down, down.
A wall of wind that smelled of old earth blasted my face and carried my scream of rage away into the darkness as I fell out of the world.
I fell and fell.
Formless faces and bodies that were little more than eyes, mouths, and hands clutched and clawed at me as I passed. They screamed in many languages I didn’t recognize and a few I did: German, French, maybe Middle English. Every traveler who’d passed through had left an echo of themselves, and the blasted mirror had to be a thousand years old. It was an artifact of enormous power. I wasn’t sure what kind of deal Valas had made with Elizabeth of the Chicago Vampire Court to get this mirror, but I had no doubt she’d paid a king’s ransom for it. Clearly she’d wanted to make damn sure I made it to the Broken World and back.
The farther down the rabbit hole I went, the darker, angrier, and more solid the echoes became. Streaks of fire on my arms, legs, and back told me they were leaving wounds as I passed. The oldest echoes had become something else entirely—more like shades, and shades were angry and potentially deadly. Instead of passing through them, I hit each one and careened off, only to hit another.
The speed at which I fell was probably the only reason none of them had managed to injure me seriously. If I didn’t get to the other side soon, one of the shades was likely to score a serious wound.
My right shoulder erupted in agony. If I screamed, I couldn’t hear myself. Another blast of pain, this time in my left thigh. Something laughed.
At this rate, I wasn’t going to make it to the other side; the shades would carve me up in transit and I’d come out looking like a broken doll.
Just as I thought that, there were no more shades—only darkness. I barely had a chance to feel relieved before the mirror spat me out on the other side.
9
I landed face down on a cold, dirt-covered stone floor. The pain of the impact registered only in a distant way.
I was bloody, bruised, and too disoriented to process more than three basic facts: I was alive, I still had my backpack and arm cuffs, and I was terribly sick.