CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I MUST HAVE closed my eyes in fear, because when I opened them, everything had changed. The small, comfy office was gone. So was the mosque, the streets around it and, in fact, the entire city of Trier.
In its place was an endless, 3-D corridor filled with what looked like countless television screens. Each one showed different people, places and things, right down to various animals, birds and fish. If it were possible to have the satellite feed of every television on earth simultaneously streamed to the same place, it would look like this.
“They’re all mirrors.”
Adrian’s voice held an odd echo. His shadows were even more prominently on display now, swirling around him like dark swaths of silk even below his feet. How did they do that?
I looked down and wished I hadn’t. There was no ground beneath me. It was only blackness interrupted by countless mirrors showing whatever was in front of them at the moment. I clutched Adrian’s arm, trying to stifle my instant surge of panic. Now I knew what cartoon characters felt like when they looked down and discovered that they’d run off the edge of a cliff. I even had to fight the urge to start flailing my arms and legs the way they usually did right before they fell.
“Why is there no ground?” My voice was a squeak.
“I don’t know,” Adrian said, closing his eyes. “There just isn’t, but I need you to trust me and stay quiet for a moment. We’re alone in here now, but we won’t be for long.”
That wasn’t helping me control my fear! Yet I clamped my mouth shut and didn’t ask any of the other thousand questions I had. Adrian was obviously trying to concentrate enough to do something, and if that something got us out of this groundless, endless oblivion, I was all for it.
We were suddenly jerked forward with the momentum of a roller coaster gearing up to do a double loop. I might have screamed, but I couldn’t be sure. Noise now surrounded us, indistinct yet roaring. Then light exploded in the darkness and we hit something. Hard.
Adrian rolled until I was on top of him and his back took the brunt of our impact. I looked around, squinting at the halogen lights above us that, after the former darkness, seemed like long, thin slices of the sun.
“You okay?” he asked, helping me to my feet and then immediately smashing the mirror on the wall.
“Yes,” I said, then proved that to be a lie when I threw up. Good thing we’d tumbled into a bathroom. I made it to the sink just in time.
“That might be worse than traveling through Archon and demon gateways,” I croaked.
Adrian was giving me a very concerned look. “This is the second time today you’ve gotten sick. You might have gotten food poisoning from that street vendor this morning.”
“Wouldn’t that be wonderful?” I said fervently, and got a strange look in response.
Right, Adrian had no idea about my pregnancy concerns. He’d been gone for three weeks during the time frame that I should have gotten my period, so he probably didn’t realize that I was almost two months late. And he didn’t know I’d gotten sick multiple times today, too.
I should tell him all these things. I really, really should. But as I stared at him, I realized that I couldn’t. Saying it would make it real, and I wasn’t ready to face that possibility myself, let alone dump it onto Adrian. Besides, it might be food poisoning. The thought cheered me.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, and didn’t hurl after saying it this time. To prove it, I rinsed my mouth out and splashed water onto my face, dried it with a paper towel that felt rougher than sandpaper and then stared at him expectantly.
“Now where?”
Adrian took my hand.
“Now we see if you feel anything hallowed.”
The bathroom door opened and a group of women came inside. They stopped short when they saw us and the broken mirror behind us, then started speaking in a language that wasn’t German.
“Where are we?” I whispered, following Adrian as he shouldered past them with a muttered reply in the same language.
“Moscow. One of the places on my list.”
We left the bathroom and went down a long hallway with red carpet and numerous doors. When I saw tall cardboard display posters featuring famous actors and actresses every few feet, I realized where we were.
“One of your former favorite places is a movie theater?”
“No,” Adrian said with a snort, leading me to the nearest exit. Once we went outside, he pointed at a building with dazzling splashes of color that stood out in stark relief against the drab gray sky. “That’s where I want you to search.”
I recognized Saint Basil’s Cathedral at once, and not just because I was a history major. Many people would know it from the famed, brightly colored domes in the shape of Hershey’s Kisses chocolates. At least, that was what they’d reminded me of when I first saw pictures of them as a child. Even now, the cathedral’s exterior struck me as so fantastically whimsical, it seemed better suited to be located in Whoville from How the Grinch Stole Christmas than reality.
“Good choice,” I told Adrian.
He grunted. “I denied it to myself at first, but now I think the extravagant architecture reminded me of home.”
What an endorsement. Come to Saint Basil’s—it’s just like visiting a palace in a demon realm! There was something no tourist group would use as an advertisement anytime soon.
“Well, let’s see if it’s got something even more impressive inside it.”
* * *
“IT DIDN’T,” I TOLD Adrian an hour later. He’d stayed on the outskirts of the cathedral because when I walked up holding the pilum, I was flatly denied entry. I’d tried to say that it was a necessary balance support, like a cane, but that lie hadn’t gone over. The entrance staff had simply told me to rent a wheelchair. Despite Adrian arguing with them in Russian and even attempting to bribe them, they hadn’t budged. In the end, we decided to have him wait outside with it while I searched.
He gave a short nod. “Four more to go, then. Do you want to stop for the day? You’re still looking a little pale.”
“No,” I said instantly. “Let’s keep going.”
I couldn’t stop yet. If I did and we found hallowed ground to wait out the rest of the day and night in, I’d have nothing to distract me from what I suspected to be true, and all the ramifications of that. More mirror hopping was far preferable.
Adrian glanced at the sky, where the sun was shining hazily through the clouds. “It’s a little after one o’clock here, so the sun should be coming up in Ohio. We’ll go to the ancient Serpent Mound that’s there next. That should give us plenty of hours of sunlight in case we’re still being tracked.”
“Sunlight didn’t stop the demons from attacking us before,” I pointed out.
He gave me a jaded look. “Yeah, and using that kind of power is draining. It probably took both Demetrius and Blinky to pull that off. They’ll be able to do it again, but it might take them a day or so to recharge enough before they can try.”
Even more reason why we had to keep searching the places on Adrian’s list right away, I told myself. See? It wasn’t only me trying to hold on to my paralyzing state of denial.
“But we need to find a more private place to make the next jump,” he said, nudging me.
Yeah, the heart of Red Square was hardly clandestine. I let Adrian lead me past the other impressive buildings while trying to ignore the tantalizing aromas that came from the restaurants and cafés interspersed between all the famous landmarks. If I ate now, I’d probably puke again. Wasn’t it called morning sickness for a reason?
If I had that, I corrected myself at once. If.
Adrian bought a small makeup mirror from one of the shops, then picked a narrow alley with a smelly Dumpster for our portal jump. Like before, it didn’t take long for him to do whatever prep work was necessary to make the small mirror navigable, and for that, I was thankful. If I had to smell that garbage container one more minute, I was going to spray it with puke.
This time, when it seemed like the mirror swallowed us, I was less panicked to find myself suspended in the strange floating waiting room, which was how I thought of the bottomless expanse containing countless live-action mirror feeds against a backdrop of pure darkness. But my relative calm didn’t last.
“Davidian,” a familiar voice hissed, sounding oddly echoing and disembodied. Then every alarm bell in my body went off as I saw a dark form streak by the screens, heading right toward us.
Demetrius.
“Fuck,” Adrian muttered, and dived us through the nearest mirror.
We landed with the same painful thud as last time, and Adrian immediately leapt up and smashed the mirror we’d come through with a roundhouse kick. Glass rained down on both of us, yet Adrian didn’t pause to brush any of it off. Instead, he began jumping up and down on the larger shards.
I got why he was doing that, and I set the pilum down to start stomping on them, too. Demetrius shouldn’t be able to get through these pieces, since breaking a mirror somehow negated its use as a portal, but Demetrius had surprised us before. No point in taking any chances now.
The pilum, oddly, spun around for a second, then seemed to hop toward the wall, the floor no doubt vibrating from the impact of Adrian and me both jumping up and down on the mirror pieces. Good thing I was wearing sneakers instead of sandals or heels. Even still, it didn’t take long before red drops splattered the broken pieces. Whether it was my blood or Adrian’s, I wasn’t sure, but we had manna in the satchel, so I didn’t stop. Whichever one of us had gotten cut, we’d heal ourselves once we made sure that Demetrius wouldn’t be following us through to here.
“I think we’re good,” Adrian said, then cursed when he got his first good look around. “Damn. This is someone’s home.”
It was, and an expensive one, too, from the looks of the sumptuous furnishings, artwork and other high-end items. We were in a bedroom, and we’d broken the large, lovely mahogany dresser we’d landed on after we came through the mirror that it had been positioned behind.
“It probably has a bathroom mirror, too,” I said, gesturing at the partially open door that I was betting led to an en suite master bath. Adrian went inside, and moments later, I heard the sound of more glass breaking. Guess I’d been right.
He came out, and both of us froze when we heard mutterings in a different language downstairs, followed by the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being cocked. Someone was at home in this fancy house, and that someone was armed.
“This way,” Adrian whispered, and strode over to the bedroom window. It had a sweeping view of a large lake in the distance, but what really claimed my attention after I hurried over was the drop below. It had to be three stories.
“We don’t have a choice,” Adrian whispered grimly.
I grabbed the pilum, surprised when it felt resistant, as if it had suddenly become sentient and didn’t like the idea of jumping out a three-story window, either. I didn’t have time to wonder about that, so I wrestled it between my body and the satchel straps, then put my arms around Adrian’s neck. He hissed when the hallowed object came into contact with him from our tight proximity, but he clamped his lips shut and tightened one arm around me. With his free hand, he opened the window. It was a slide-up, thankfully, and large enough that we both fit through. Right as I heard the sound of running footsteps coming up the stairs, Adrian jumped.