Page 38 of Bizarre Bonds
As Jonah drives toward the outskirts of the city, I squirm impatiently on my seat in the back of the van.
We shadowkind can examine the rift in its new location from the shadows without the human employees at the nearby factories noticing, but our vehicles and our mortal companions can’t lurk the same way. What if one of those strange shadowkind creatures emerges while the workers are, well, working?
What if it’s in a fighting mood?
Will we be able to drag it into the shadows with us before the mortals realize something odd is going on? Before it hurts any of them?
Raze materializes next to me so he can take my hand. The firm squeeze of his fingers settles my nerves a little.
“If any beings come through while people are around, you can try using that new aspect of your powers,” he suggests. “Whywouldn’t it affect the creatures even from the shadows? It’s not like emotions are at all corporeal.”
“Thank fuck for that,” Hail mutters from the opposite bench where he’s sitting stiffly, but I can tell from the currents of emotion coursing into me that he’s more uneasy than annoyed.
The rift’s relocation has thrown us all for a loop. Why did Rollick have to leave right now?
Of course, the new rift that popped up is probably more urgent than this one that simply took a hike. Even before the protections were in place, only a few creatures emerged in the course of a day. We shouldn’t need to worry about a deluge.
Jonah pulls the van into a parking lot outside a long, squat building that’s down the road from the factories along the edges of the city. Half the letters have fallen off this business’s dented sign like gaps in a mouthful of teeth. The rusted doorframe and grimy windows suggest no one’s been doing any business in there for quite a while, unless they’re selling dust bunnies.
As Jonah parks, the rest of us spill out into the shadows beneath the van. Mirage weaves through the darkness near me, as do Rollick’s assistants who joined us.
The shadowbloods who were helping out haven’t learned how to merge with the shadows the way we can—Zian told us that it’s possible that they simply can’t. I guess that’s one downside of being a shadowkind-human smoothie.
He and Riva stayed at our old base of operations to send a message to Rollick and prepare the warding supplies. They might be able to leave some silver and iron around the rift after the factory closes for the night.
Any metal items we plant will have to blend into the environment so the mortals don’t notice and move them. Whether we can protect the area at all depends on exactly where the portal has reformed.
The unsettlingly dithery energy of the rift wavers through my being. It’s still faint, but it push-pulls me from a definite direction.
One of Rollick’s assistants takes charge, her voice warbled but understandable in our shadowy state. “We all go together. Stay close, avoid the mortals.”
We slink across the open ground, leaping between the splotches of darkness in the cracks in the concrete, beneath the leaves of a weed, along the edge of a chain-link fence. The tremor of dissonant energy gets stronger.
We come up on a thicker fence made of wooden posts with swaths of rippled metal in between. It’s easy enough to slip beneath it, but then I pause.
Several humans are walking across the cement yard on the other side. A couple are gabbing on their phones, one is getting into a truck, and a few others are shoving boxes into the back of that truck and another beside it.
The rift looms over all of them, hovering a few feet above the ground some ten feet away from us along the fence. It only distorts the air slightly, so vague none of the mortals appear to have noticed, but I can see that it stretches up three times the height of the fence.
I think it’s gotten bigger with the move. All the better to toss creatures out at us?
Would it be too much to hope that the beasts stay small even if the portal didn’t?
The assistant who directed us heads toward the rift first. We circle around it, checking the ground nearby.
The terrain is all plain concrete and asphalt, a few small cracks here and there but nothing we could drop more than some tiny silver and iron beads into. That won’t ward off more than a shadowkind flea.
One of the other assistants speaks up in a doubtful voice. “There’s a strip of bare earth on the far side of the fence. We could bury some metals there.”
I tip my ephemeral head. “They’ll only help if we can stop the creatures from wandering in every other direction instead. Could we surround the entire fence?”
Raze speaks up gruffly. “Then we’d be shutting the beasts in with the mortals. It might be better to let them roam and then collect them after they’ve moved farther away.”
Mirage darts past me with a shimmer of his upbeat energy. “The mixed-up beings are usually in a good mood when they first come through. We have a little time.”
Anywhere from hours to days, true. We just have to make sure the warped shadowkind move away from the city rather than deeper into it, and that they don’t appear too blatantly in front of the humans working here before that.
Our problems have expanded even more than the rift has.
