The Borderkind (The Veil #2)

The doors stood closed, but she felt sure this was the exit and started in that direction.

Elsewhere in the cathedral room she heard a shrill cry, followed by sobbing. The whimpering of a child.

No, she thought. Not again.

Escape called to her. But the whimpering continued and she could not simply walk away from that sound.

It took her a minute or two to locate the source of the child’s cries. Collette strode toward the door—a real door, it seemed, not something carved of sand—but as she did she glanced around. Her skin itched as though grains of sand were sliding over her flesh. A point at the center of her back felt warm and she searched the shadows all through that huge chamber, certain she was being observed.

“In your eyes,” she sang softly, “the light, the heat. In your eyes, I am complete…”

It comforted her, like whistling in the dark, though she was hardly aware she was doing it.

Something glittered in the center of the room, in the dark. Careful not to step on it, she bent to pick up a piece of what she thought was broken glass. Yet it didn’t seem like ordinary glass. More like crystal. Or diamond.

Another cry came from beyond that door and she tossed the glass down. The child needed her. She rushed now, certain that she had the right door. If she was being observed there was precious little she could do about it.

At the door she paused, hand on the knob, took a deep breath, and then turned, hauling it open.

On the other side stood a little girl with blond hair, hands covering her eyes as she sobbed, muttering words that might have been prayers. The dress she wore seemed familiar, much like something Collette herself had owned as a little girl, with all the bows and trim that her mother had loved.

The girl stood in shadows in a short corridor like the others in the castle, all sand and darkness, all color washed away. Beyond her stood another door, hanging open, the edges of it spilling sand. Through the open door Collette could see a child’s bedroom.

Her heart trembled at the scene, so like what she had stumbled upon before. But in this room were bunk beds, and in each bed there slept a small boy, twins from the look of them. Posters covered the walls. Books and video games covered the floor as if a tornado had struck.

The last time she had come upon a scene like this, the child had already been dead, murdered by the Sandman. But these boys still slept, untroubled, unharmed.

The sound of weeping grew louder.

The boys stirred in their bunks.

Collette put her hand against the wall to steady herself, one door behind her and another ahead. If the bedroom belonged to the boys, then who was—

The little girl, crying out in despair, lowered her hands and looked up. Collette gasped and staggered back a step. The girl was herself, a mirror image of Collette at five years old.

But her eyes had been torn out.

The girl’s cries turned to laughter as she began to change. Only then, in the shadows, did Collette see that she was not a flesh-and-blood thing but a construct of sand. The sand shifted and twisted and built itself up, a cloak draping around it.

Lemon-yellow eyes peered from beneath the cloak. From the sand.

“Did you think I wouldn’t sense your escape, Bascombe?” the Sandman asked.

Collette swore and took a step backward.

The door behind her slammed closed and she jumped at the noise it made. The Sandman blocked her view of the bedroom with the sleeping boys, but she wondered if the sound had woken them.

Slowly, that door closed as well. She whimpered as the light went away, and the blackness closed in around her. She ought to back up, to claw at the walls, to make herself a new door, but the fear gnawed at her heart.

In the darkness, there were only those yellow eyes.

Something brushed her cheek…the Sandman’s fingers. She batted them away.

There were sounds in the darkness. The swish of his cloak, the rasp of sand against sand. He struck her face, scraping flesh, and she fell to her knees, feeling the sting as blood began to well on her cheek.

Those yellow eyes loomed above her.

“I am not through with you yet,” the Sandman whispered.

“Fuck you,” she snarled, and pistoned her legs to thrust herself upward and grab hold of the Sandman.

Her fingers closed on his arm, and for just a moment his flesh gave way like sand. With a roar, the monster struck her down again, his strength terrible. Her head rang with the blow, but he did not stop there.

Cloak flapping in the darkness, he fell on top of her. His breath was like the desert, and his yellow eyes like poisoned stars. She felt the tips of his talons press against her cheeks, digging in, drawing blood, scratching furrows in her skin that led to the edges of her eyes.

Collette screamed.

“You tempt me so, Bascombe. I want to taste these eyes. The eyes of the Legend-Born. The wishes of my allies mean little when you tempt me so. I care not about the Legend-Born or the cataclysm you may cause. I merely want to feel your eyes pop in my teeth, to taste the warm fluid as it gushes over my tongue. It isn’t very much to ask, after all, is it?”

Those talons pressed harder, drawing tears of blood. Again, Collette cried out.

The Sandman released her. Those yellow eyes floated upward.

“The time has not come. If I were forced to wait much longer, temptation might overwhelm me. But it won’t be long now, girl. Word has come to me. No, it won’t be long at all now.

“We shall simply sit here in the dark together, and wait.”

CHAPTER 18

In the gray mists of the Winding Way, Oliver had never felt so far from home. The world beyond the Veil was a step beyond the reality that he’d known his whole life, but this mystical road clearly represented a further step. No matter how extraordinary and impossible everything felt in the world of the legendary, everything there was tangible. It might be surreal in Oliver’s mind, but his senses could react to it.

The Winding Way existed as little more than a dream, yet the most lucid of his life. The mist swirled around him and Kitsune with a pulsing, living rhythm—playful and dancing, and sometimes menacing. In the back of his mind Oliver could not shake the idea that, with its awareness, the mist seemed like a ghost…or perhaps an entire sea of ghosts, all reacting to their presence.

It ought to have been entirely dark on the twisting road, for there seemed no source of ambient light. Whatever sky might hang above this mystic limbo through which they passed, the mist blotted out any view of it. And no light from stars or moon—if indeed they existed here—came through that gray shroud. Yet enough light filtered through the mist that it seemed, if not dusk, to be perpetually on the verge of full night.

At first Oliver had been cold, but now the mist felt close and warm so that a film of moisture coated his skin. It was not at all pleasant.

Yet simultaneous with this feeling of separation from his past and distance from the familiar there surged up within him a desperate anticipation. When they left this gray road and emerged again into the realm of the legendary, they would be at the castle of the Sandman. If they survived the encounter, he would be reunited with his sister. When he could throw his arms around her and crush her to him, he knew that nothing in his circumstances would seem quite as terrible. Oliver needed that comfort, even if it was fleeting.

If she’s still alive…

On the Winding Way, doubts seemed to rise like ghosts in the mist and were not easily dispelled. He told himself that Collette was fine, that he would have known somehow if she had died, and that if all of the mysterious things he’d heard were true—or even a fraction of them—the Sandman would have kept her alive as a lure to draw him in.

Which meant that the moment approached where their fates would be decided.

“How much longer?” he whispered. Rather, he’d spoken the words, but something about the Winding Way and its mists turned his voice to a whisper.

Kitsune did not turn. Hidden beneath her hooded cloak, she moved swiftly along the Winding Way, neither walking nor quite running. Oliver hurried to keep up with her, to keep her in sight in the gray mist. The smooth black ribbon of road curved to the left now and he broke into a trot to catch up.

“Kit?” he said, reaching out to touch her.

She slowed and turned toward him even as his fingers grazed her fur cloak. From the abruptness of her reaction he’d thought she might be angry with him, but then he saw the confusion in her eyes. Kitsune blinked several times and shook her head like she was trying to work out some thought that just wouldn’t fit in her mind and could not make its way to her lips.

“What…Kit, what is it?”

They stood there, though the mist swirling around them seemed to urge them onward, trying to sweep them further along the Winding Way.

“We’re here,” she said. “Or very nearly, I think.”

Oliver peered ahead. The black glass road took one more twist. “How does that work?”

Kitsune pushed back her hood and shook her hair out. She glanced over her shoulder at the mist. “It isn’t my magic, but imagine it like a current in an ocean. We step into the Winding Way and we are cast adrift. Except that the magic that created it allows us to alter the current with our desire and our intent, so that we drift to the very shore that is our destination. The road ends for us at the place we wish to go.”

“Anywhere in the Two Kingdoms?”

She frowned and he could see she was distracted. “In the eastern region of Euphrasia, almost anywhere. But only within the region. I have heard that there are other places where the Winding Way leads elsewhere—other currents in the ocean—but have never traveled those roads.”

Oliver studied her face; her eyes were troubled.

“I don’t like it here,” he said.

Kitsune shivered. “Neither do I. But I fear we will soon long for the isolation this place provides.”

They ought to be going. Oliver glanced toward the final twist in the road and then looked at the fox-woman again. The confusion lingered in her face.

“We should go.”

“Yes,” Kitsune said.

“My sister—”

“You asked about the Legend-Born…”

Oliver stared at Kitsune. “Yeah. One of the Hunters used the term, referring to me. You know what it means?”

Kitsune frowned. “Not precisely. But I have heard the term before. Since we set foot upon this road I have been searching my memory for anything I can remember.”

Almost stern, she narrowed her eyes and gazed at him. “You should never have been able to enter the Winding Way, Oliver. I told you—”

“You weren’t sure, though. You said yourself, it’s not your magic. You said—”

A curtain of gray mist swept between them, momentarily obscuring his view of Kitsune so that she was nothing but a vague outline.

“All of that is true, Oliver,” she said, her voice even more of a muffled whisper than it had been before. “I am not like you. I am one of the legendary, a Borderkind. But simply because we’re different does not mean I am some omniscient creature. I know only what I have learned. Legends have facets because they change with the telling, and not every aspect is always true. What I had heard about the Winding Way was that only the legendary could travel upon it.”

“Yes,” Oliver agreed. “And now we’ve obviously proven that isn’t true.”

“Have we?”

The words sounded far away and a chill raced through Oliver as he began to unravel precisely what Kitsune was asking.

The mist cleared and they were face-to-face again.

“Kit, I—”

“Oliver, just…listen,” she said. “When I heard the phrase Legend-Born, I recognized it from bits of folklore I have heard the Lost Ones discuss in the past. And not only Lost Ones, but legends as well. A legend amongst legends. What is most unique about this is that the stories I have heard…they’re from everywhere. Snatches of conversation in a jungle village in Yucatazca, curses in a pub in Perinthia, prayers in Shangri-La—”

He grinned. “There’s a Shangri-La?”

“Of course there is. Have you forgotten where you are? Please, just listen. I do not know the whole story because it is not in my nature to pay attention to such things. I am normally skittish around too many people and prefer my own company. But I have heard enough to understand the gist of the story.”

“Which is?”

“In all of the ages since the creation of the Veil, the Borderkind have moved back and forth between worlds, sometimes living amongst humans for long periods. Many of our kind have a fascination for the mundane world, and for humanity. Some even prefer that side to this one. A great many Borderkind chose to keep their tether to your world because they love humans. They watch from the shadows and the forests and from beneath the water. Or they walk amongst you. Borderkind have been known to take human lovers, Oliver. But this is strictly forbidden.”

Oliver shook his head. “Why?”

Kitsune frowned. “I’d always thought it superstition. Now I am not sure. There are stories, you see, from centuries past, about children being born from the union between human and Borderkind, and those children being hunted, and captured, and destroyed.”

He stared at her. “I don’t understand what this—”

“Of all of these stories, there’s only one that is recent. It concerns a Borderkind called Melisande, a French legend, a beautiful woman who loved fine dresses and pretty things. She was not simply a woman. She had the wings of a terrible dragon and from the waist down her body was that of a serpent.”

Frustrated, Oliver shook his head. “Look, Kit, we’re so close now. Collette is so close. We’ve got to…I mean, what does this have to do with anything?”

Her jade eyes flashed with impatience. “Everything! It has everything to do with you and Collette, if I’m right.”

Oliver nodded. “All right. Go on.”

Kitsune softened. She gnawed her lower lip for a moment and took a breath. “The legend amongst the Lost Ones says that Melisande—a Borderkind, remember—fell in love with an ordinary man and had children by him, and that they still live on the other side of the Veil. Happily ever after.”