A Bridge of Stars Page 10

  Ben

  The message lingered on the page a while, as if she’d wanted me to read it many times, absorb it fully. And as the smoke cleared, revealing the ashes, I did.

  I could only assume that this was part of her “training”, whatever she had meant by that.

  Finally, the note changed:

  “Now, as an extension of this first task, follow my directions, for they will lead you to where you need to be.”

  An extension to this first task? What? She never said a single task might have several layers.

  “Ugh,” River muttered.

  The note changed again:

  “Travel to the bottom of this mountain.”

  We did as instructed.

  “Turn right.”

  We turned right.

  “Turn left.”

  We did.

  On and on the instructions went until, finally, she told us to stop outside the entrance to a tunnel.

  “Enter.”

  Tentatively, we entered the mouth of the tunnel and proceeded along its dank, winding depths.

  “Stop.”

  We stopped in our tracks, about halfway through.

  “Look at the wall on your left.”

  Huh? As I examined the grimy wall, at first I saw nothing but…wall. But as I examined it more closely I noticed a slight ridge, which led me to discover that it was actually a hidden door.

  “Open it.”

  We did, and it led us through to another tunnel, the ground and ceiling filled with stalagmites and stalactites. The note kept leading us onward through the gloom, through another door, until we reached a stone staircase leading downward.

  Where is this woman taking us?

  At the bottom of the staircase was another entrance, only this was locked with a bolt. I instinctively moved to open it, as I’d done the previous two, but then River grasped my arm and held me back. She pointed at the note:

  “Don’t open it yet, impatient child!”

  Annoyed, I waited for the note to change.

  “Ask Aisha for a sword.”

  Aisha handed me one of her blades.

  “Now, enter with Aisha and slay all that you see.”

  “What?” River and I gasped at once.

  Slay what inside? I look at the door with alarm.

  “Are we really doing this?” River whispered, looking more nervous than I’d seen her.

  “You stay here,” I told her.

  Clutching my sword, with Aisha close behind me, I slowly unbolted the stone entrance and ground it open to reveal… a dark chamber. Maybe even a dungeon. An apparently empty one. Pools of liquid scattered the ground, and a revolting smell hit me. Like… corpse juice mixed with mold. Yet there were no bodies on the floor.

  Aisha and I dared move further inside.

  “There’s nothing to slay here,” I whispered. “It’s just an empty cave.”

  “Oh no, it’s not!” Aisha gasped suddenly. She pointed up at the ceiling.

  The jagged ceiling was lined with… bodies? Bare, stark-white bodies, clinging to the ceiling. They were utterly emaciated, their skin disgustingly thin.

  Holy…

  Aisha finished my thought for me.

  “What the hell are they?” I hissed.

  “I know what these are,” she breathed. “They are Bloodless!”

  “Bloodless?”

  Before she could explain, the bodies began to peel off the ceiling and drop down to the floor. There were so many of them, I could barely even keep them all in my sight as they began lunging toward us.

  A yelp came from behind me. River.

  One of the “Bloodless” had circled Aisha and me and darted for the open door.

  “Don’t let it touch River!” Aisha screamed. “And don’t let it bite you either!”

  Bite?

  I hurtled toward the creature moving for River and managed to reach the door in time to shut it before it could reach her. Now we were in darkness. The aura of my body gave off some light, and Aisha quickly made a fire blaze in one corner of the room to help us see better. Several Bloodless lunged for me at once. What the hell are these things? They had fangs and claws, characteristics of vampires, and yet they were unlike any vampire I’d ever seen.

  “You need to hack them to bits!” Aisha bellowed from across the room, as she began to do just that.

  I lifted myself into the air and rained blows down on the creatures beneath me, even as they began springing up to reach me. I managed to sever several of their heads, and then, following Aisha’s example, descended to hack the rest of their bodies to bits. The name Aisha had given them was appropriate. As much as I chopped and slashed, there was not a single speck of blood on my sword.

  Aisha and I continued dodging and slicing as they attempted to bite us, and eventually, we managed to fell them all. It was hard to count now that they were all mangled up, but there appeared to be over two dozen.

  We backed out of the room and returned to River. She flung herself at me the second I stepped through the door.

  “What were those things?” she breathed, holding me in a trembling embrace.

  “Bloodless,” Aisha wheezed, still catching her breath. I wondered why she hadn’t just used her magic, as she seemed to have recovered much of it since we’d retrieved some of her family. Maybe she enjoyed the fight. “They’re a kind of vampire,” she explained.

  Then the jinni began to recount what had happened to her before her arrival in The Shade. By the time she was finished, my jaw was on the floor. Bloodless. A kind of mutation of vampires, who’d been deprived of blood. Who could turn humans, and even other vampires into one of them? Could they turn other species? And why did the oracle ask us to kill them? And Julie had become one of them. According to Aisha, she had been turned by one on the small island that connected the ogres’ realm to Earth. And then the two of them had ventured away from it… to where exactly? Disconcertingly, Aisha didn’t know. “They could be anywhere,” she said with a shrug.

  My head swam with questions as we whizzed back up the staircase and along the tunnels.

  When we arrived outside again, the note changed:

  “There exists evil in the world that should never be given a second chance.”

  * * *

  The three of us were still mulling over her words as a new instruction appeared on the faded parchment:

  “Your second task awaits you in Dagger Mountain. Flutter there now, fairy.”

  “I wish she would stop calling me that,” I muttered.

  River snorted. “At least we’re officially on the ‘second task’ now,” she said.

  “So.” I heaved a sigh. “Dagger Mountain. Where is that exactly?” I asked Aisha.

  I felt worried when Aisha tensed. “Uh, yeah… that’s back in The Dunes.”

  “What?” River and I exclaimed at once.

  “But it’s well away from any jinn settlement,” Aisha added quickly. “I’m just trying to recall where exactly it is. Definitely far away from the Drizans’ palace. I’ve visited there perhaps twice in my entire life, but I should be able to remember how to get back… hopefully.”

  “You’d better,” I said.

  Aisha ended up getting us lost. We drifted aimlessly around the menacing land of The Dunes looking for the mountain. We found a mountain range—several actually—but none looked right to Aisha, and as night fell, we still hadn’t found it.

  “Let’s… let’s wait till morning,” Aisha said, as we moved deeper into the night. She looked nervous while we gazed down upon the eerily quiet landscape.

  “That’s like, hours wasted,” I seethed.

  “Yes, but I-I don’t feel comfortable roaming around now,” Aisha said. “I mean it. There are… strange things that lurk in The Dunes after dark.”

  “What strange things?” River whispered, her face paling.

  What strange things? I almost laughed. How about giant jinni-scorpion mutants?

  “Neither of you need to know,”
Aisha snapped, quite flustered all of a sudden. What could be worse than what I’ve already seen? “Because we won’t meet any of them, if we do as I say and stop for the night.”

  It so disturbed me to see Aisha nervous like this that I didn’t question her any more. “Okay,” I said. “Where should we rest?”

  “We’ll find a cave, somewhere in these mountains,” she said.

  “Uh, yeah. You’ll need to smoke out any scorpions before I take River into one of those.”

  “Obviously,” Aisha breathed, still irritable.

  We drifted around for the next half hour scouting for a suitable cave. Once Aisha had chosen one, she told us to wait outside while she drifted in. She literally did smoke the place out. Smoke billowed out from the entrance, bringing with it a toxic smell. Coughing, River and I moved farther back, waiting for Aisha to emerge.

  “All right,” she said, dusting off her hands as she walked out. “There were definitely no giant scorpions in there and…” She pointed to a dozen rats, spiders and other creepy-crawlies scampering out of the cave and into cracks in the walls. “There shouldn’t be anything else left either.”

  “That stuff smells strong enough to poison us, too,” River said, still coughing.

  Aisha rolled her eyes as I landed with River on the ridge outside the cave. Then she sparked up a fire in the center.

  “The Dunes’ nights are harsh,” she said, stoking the flames and raising them higher. “Almost as harsh as the days’ heat.”

  I had to be sure to keep my distance from the bonfire. I moved to a wall and sat down. River flopped down next to me. Aisha sat with her back facing us.

  River nuzzled her head against me. I kissed the top of it. “Do you want to get some sleep?”

  She leaned closer against me. “I’ll try.”

  “Then let’s lie flat.” I lay down on my side across the dry ground and gathered River to me as she did the same. Her skin was cold as always. I kissed her lips, tasting them one at a time. She reached for my hand and flattened our palms against each other.

  “You still don’t have a ring,” I remembered.

  River smiled and planted kisses over my knuckles. “I will soon.” Her turquoise eyes were filled with such conviction. I wished I could believe her without doubt.

  As the night progressed, we kissed some more and cuddled, but didn’t talk much. There was not much more that we could say that we weren’t already saying with our eyes. We both shared the same desperate hope, the same blind faith that however crazy this path was that Hortencia was leading us on, it had to work out. I couldn’t bring myself to think about what would happen if it didn’t. I’d spiral into a depression I’d never escape from. It just has to work out.

  Once River’s eyes began to droop and she eventually fell asleep, I scooped her up from the ground—realizing it was too cold for her here—and moved a little closer to the fire. I positioned her on my lap and cradled her, one arm beneath her legs and the other around her waist, while her head rested against my chest. I gazed down at her beautiful, peaceful face. Unable to keep my lips off her, I trailed them softly down the bridge of her nose.

  Aisha still sat in the same spot, back turned. Was she keeping watch? Or did she just want her own space?

  “Hey,” I called to her in a whisper. She twisted to face me, raising a brow. “Come sit with us.”

  Heaving a sigh, she ambled over and sank down next to me against the wall. Her eyes returned to the shadowy desert stretched out all around us.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Yeah.”

  “Still feeling nervous?”

  She slanted me a glance. “Yes,” she replied, as though it was a stupid question. “But up here… we should be okay. I just need to keep watch.”

  “Keep watch for what?”

  She shivered. “They say it’s bad luck to talk about monsters at night-time. They say it attracts them.”

  “They? Them?”

  “Just stop asking, Benjamin,” Aisha snapped, loud enough to cause River to stir.

  I hushed the jinni.

  “Don’t ask again,” she said in a low tone.

  I joined Aisha in staring out at the dunes. A span of silence fell between us, the only sounds being the crackling fire and the distant chirping of some kind of nocturnal animal.

  “At least I have half my family back,” Aisha said, changing the subject. She drew a shuddering breath. “I really thought I’d lost them all.”

  “I’m… truly sorry for the loss of your men.”

  She nodded, swallowing hard. “Well, I should thank you for helping us… me.” She chewed on her lower lip, her eyes flickering from me to River. Then she looked down at her hands, which were clenched. “I missed you, you know,” she said in a whisper, meeting my eyes again. The look of longing in her eyes took me aback. She’d never hidden the fact that she had a crush on me, but I’d never really thought it was much more than that.

  “I, uh, should tell you that I proposed to River,” I said, not wanting her to think she had any leeway with me.

  A flash of bitterness curled her lips.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Another silence.

  “You know,” I said, clearing my throat, “I noticed Horatio seems to—”

  “Yes, I know,” Aisha said.

  “Know what?” I prodded.

  “That he likes me.”

  “Don’t you like him?”

  She looked away, and a blush crept to her cheeks. She bit down hard on her lower lip. “I, um… I suppose I do,” she said.

  The shade of her cheeks betrayed just what an understatement that was.

  Then she swiveled, looking restless all of a sudden. She exhaled sharply, and her mouth twitched, as if to say something but holding herself back.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I-I just wonder. Did you ever like me, like, at all? Or have you always hated me?”

  I sighed. “I have never hated you, Aisha. And I certainly don’t hate you now. I’m not going to deny you were annoying as hell when we first met… but now you’re my friend. A friend who, quite honestly, I wouldn’t be able to do without right now.”

  Dimples formed in her cheeks as she smiled. Her eyes glistened in the firelight, and for a moment I thought she was about to get all teary.

  “Okay,” she said, swallowing. “I guess that’s good enough.”

  There was another pause before I broached the subject of Horatio again. “If you like that prince, you should tell him, you know.” I cast her a teasing glance. “Don’t forget, now that your sisters and cousins are free, he’s got a lot of girls to choose from…”

  Aisha shoved me in the shoulder. “What are you now, a matchmaker as well as a fairy?”

  I cracked a tired smile as I stroked River’s forehead. “Not exactly. Just… a firm believer in never taking anything for granted in this life.”

  * * *

  Aisha and I sat together, chatting quietly and trying to keep our thoughts on brighter things than the obstacles ahead of us. She told me more about her childhood and her history with Horatio, which soon transformed into a monologue of endless circular arguments about why she might, or might not, end up dating him.

  “I mean, I like him but… do I really like him?” She posed the question with a profound expression, as though she were pondering the meaning of life.

  “Uh… I’m pretty sure that you do.”

  “What would you know?” She shoved me in the shoulder again, after which I shut up and let her sink back into her logic-forsaken rambling. Heaven forbid I suggest something, like, conclusive…

  I was glad when River woke up an hour or so later. The conversation became a bit more stimulating.

  We’d just started speculating again about the oracle’s true intention for this bizarre quest she was leading me on when Aisha abruptly raised a hand and shushed us with such urgency, spit flew from her mouth.

  Her eyes were frozen on a spot in the deser
t and the next thing I knew, she’d extinguished the fire, plunging us all into darkness.

  “What?” I breathed.

  “There,” Aisha mouthed, pointing.

  I strained to see through the night. Finally I spotted it. A hulking stick-like figure in the distance, standing motionless in the sand. It was only a silhouette in the moonlight, but I could make out two long legs which seemed to curve into feet, and long, thin arms that extended to flat… webbed hands? Its head was perhaps the creepiest thing about it. It was thrice the size it should have been in comparison to the rest of its body, and it was almost perfectly circular. What has a head that round and that big? Something told me it wasn’t a creature I’d recognize from Earth.

  It moved suddenly—shockingly fast—and in a very unsettling way. It hopped almost like a kangaroo, only adding to its eerie appearance.

  “What is that?” I demanded beneath my breath.

  “It’s a hunkri,” Aisha whispered.

  “A what?” I hissed.

  “A hunkri. Just… shh. Be quiet and it should pass.”

  It didn’t look like it was passing. It looked like it was heading straight for our mountain.

  “Shouldn’t we move from—?” I whispered.

  “Yes,” Aisha breathed, realizing her wishful thinking was just that. “Let’s leave.”

  “Oh!” River let out a gasp. “There’s another one!”

  She was pointing to our right, where, shockingly close, another one of the creatures slunk against the mountain wall, climbing rapidly toward us. This one I could see more clearly beneath the light of the moon. What the… Its thin, sticklike body was covered in mud-brown scales, and its huge head… most of that was a frilled, pleated skin flap surrounding its bulging-eyed, lizard-like face.

  “I thought you said we’d be safe in a cave,” I hissed through gritted teeth.

  “I didn’t expect us to come across freaking hunkris!”Aisha shot back. “I didn’t even think they lived in these p—”

  “Let’s get out of here!” I bundled River onto my back and we launched into the sky.

  A piercing scream emanated from the creatures’ throats in unison, matching eerily in pitch. Then, to my horror, wings I hadn’t even noticed unfolded behind their back. Wings like a bat’s. Without warning, they bolted into the sky after us.