Marked by Death (Necromancer #1) - Kaje Harper Page 0,33

He tightened his grip and pushed everything he had into those walls. The gap narrowed to a slit, a hole, a pinprick— and was gone. The recoil sent him flying, his hip and shoulder hitting the ground, pain flaring in his head.

That recoil was enough to know it was done. He didn’t even glance back at his collapsed Gate as he scrambled toward Darien. He didn’t stand, couldn’t run, just shoved himself across the ground and grabbed Darien’s shoulders.

Darien raised his lolling head and grinned, his eyes still shut. “That felt like a bomb going off. Is it gone?”

“You felt it? Yes. Banished.”

Darien blinked and stared up at him, pupils blown wide till his eyes looked almost black. “Hell yeah.” He pushed himself up more, and the motion pressed his chest against Silas’s.

Insanity was the only explanation for why Silas grabbed him in a tight hug and kissed him, desperately, like a man in the desert finding water. An instant later his brain caught up with his mouth, and he jerked back. “Sorry!”

“Don’t be.”

When he tried to arch further away, he was stopped by Darien’s fingers knotted in his hair. Darien pulled Silas’s head down again and he gave in. Darien’s lips parted, warm and soft under his own. The kiss was water; hells, it was air. Darien’s tongue touched his and some closed place deep inside him opened, in a rush of warmth.

Grim’s dry tones interrupted them. “As touching as this is, we’d better be getting back while we still can.”

Silas broke the kiss, his thumb drawing a caress along Darien’s lower lip. “We— what? Yes, of course.”

Idiot. The longer they stayed here, on the other side of the Veil, the more effort it was to get back. This had been his longest battle yet, and the one he’d come closest to losing. His head pounded like a drum, now that he took notice of it. He felt parched and dusty, echoing and hollow as a dry well. Wonderful as Darien’s kisses were, they didn’t fill that void or get them closer to home.

He sat up straighter and helped Darien steady himself. “Are you all right? Can you stand?”

“Maybe? Gimme a minute.”

Silas raised his hands and called a ball of light between his palms. It flickered and sputtered, like a bulb about to go dark. That’s not good. He dug deep for his last reserves to steady it, tipping it into one palm. The dark fog around them parted, off to the right. “That way.” He bent and boosted Darien up with his free hand. “Come on, we shouldn’t linger.”

They leaned on each other and trudged forward. Silas wasn’t sure who was keeping whom standing, but Darien’s living body under his arm, at his side, was a comfort as they moved into the fog. Usually this part was easy, the way between worlds like a well-lit street for him. Now it felt like being dumped onto gloom-shrouded British moors, where absolutely nothing was familiar and his sense of direction was muffled in smothering murk that closed in mere feet from his light. Smells, sounds— he strained for the normal cues calling him home, but nothing seemed to get past the soggy slowness of his thoughts.

Grim at their feet muttered, “Going home the long way, are we?”

Silas snarled. “Aargh. If you can do better, you lead.” He moderated his tone with an effort. “Seriously, if you can lead us, do it.”

“Not my gift.” Grim butted Silas’s knee with a head that felt big as a battering ram. “I get visions, like your boy there tearing ghosts out of his arm. You get the paths between worlds.”

I wish I did. The green globe in his palm sputtered feebly. He felt a faint pull and angled toward it, glad of any sense of direction. The pull grew stronger, then the mists lifted and ahead of him the glittering River stretched out, glints of light reflecting from the little waves streaming by.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Grim said.

No kidding. He stared at the River in dismay.

“Why not?” Darien asked. “Can’t you find your way home from here? We’ve been here before, at least.”

“That’s the problem,” Silas admitted. “We’re going in circles. The River has a pull of its own. It coaxes people. Usually the pull of home is equally strong for a necromancer, and we can easily choose, but I’m not sensing home now.”

He let the ball of power on his palm flicker out to conserve every drop, since they didn’t need the light.