“I will see to it, taking a more active role now that the Great Awakening has occurred,” Adio promised.
I stared at the nightwalker that could still look into the beauty of the sunlight each morning and smile. I wanted to tell Adio to watch over Danaus as well. I wanted to tell him to protect Danaus from the nightwalkers that would tear him apart if I were not there at his side, but I didn’t dare utter the words out loud. I could only look at Adio with pleading eyes, praying that he understood what I so desperately wanted to say. To my surprise, he placed his right hand lightly over his heart and bowed to me.
“Are you sure you have the strength for this?” Adio asked after a moment of silence. “You’ve already been in quite a tussle this evening, and you need to be at your peak if you’re to have any hope of succeeding.”
I started walking across the ground to the main ceremonial clearing, which was up at another level. “The energy flowing through this sacred place is mind blowing. It will be enough to carry me through the tasks at hand.”
“Are you sure he will come?” Danaus asked.
“He will the moment he realizes what I have done, I’m counting on it.”
I paused at the massive clearing, my vision blurring for a moment to another time. Some of the walls of Machu Picchu were now lit with a handful of lamps, throwing broad swaths of yellow lights against the white stones, but the night I was remembering had been filled with torchlight and a bonfire. In the middle of the open area thirteen humans had been tied together in a circle. The naturi had in one smooth stroke cut out their hearts and offered them up as a sacrifice to whatever gods that might be listening, opening the door I had closed centuries earlier.
Tonight I would not need a flood of human blood to paint the grass, or the cries of the innocent to float into the air moments before their death. I could open the door on my own because I had made this door and I was its key.
“What’s the plan?” Danaus asked.
“I open the door. We go in. You and Adio will kill any naturi that attempts to escape through the opening. I doubt they will be paying much attention to me when they face potential freedom. I will go in looking for the goddess. When I find her, Danaus, you will take her out and get her somewhere safe.”
“And Nick?”
“He will follow me in.”
“And you’ve got some brilliant plan for trapping him and you getting out again?” he asked, his tone growing more brusque.
“I do.”
“Once I get the goddess settled—”
“You will stay by her side no matter what. You will not reenter the cage. Once I engage Nick in the cage, Adio is going to come out and help you guard her. She must be protected.”
“Mira!”
“No, Danaus!” I snapped, turning on my right heel to face him. “We follow my plan or I take you back to Savannah now and I will leave you there.” We glared at each other for several seconds. I could hear his heart pounding in his chest, and for a moment I could feel a pressure in my brain as he tried to enter my thoughts and read my full intentions, but I kept him blocked out. The only feelings I wanted him to sense from me at that moment were love and determination. I would not be swayed from this course. Nick had to be stopped, and he had to be stopped now, when the world was so precariously balanced on the cusp of a major transition. He could not be permitted to step in as the next major power.
Danaus said nothing as I turned to Adio. Pulling the sword from my side, I handed it to him. He tested the weight and the balance before giving it a few good swipes through the air. I was vastly relieved that it seemed he at least knew how to use a sword. I hadn’t been sure, but it was hard to live a long existence in this world without picking up a few skills in self-defense.
Stepping away from my companions, I approached the center of the field where I had last seen the rip in the sky through which the naturi escaped from their prison. I sucked in a deep breath and held it in my chest as I pulled all the earth energy swirling about me to my fingertips. It was so much easier now than it had been in the summer. Then, it had been like trying to swim upstream in a rushing torrent of water. Now, it was just another part of who I was. The power came to me fast and strong and hot, as if heated by the bowels of the earth before finally reaching my body.
With my eyes closed, I reached out with my fingers toward the open sky and easily felt where the scar was, marking the entrance into the naturi cage. A faint groan escaped me as I grasped the two jagged edges and pulled them apart. A bright light blinded me for only a moment before my eyes focused on a world that looked all too similar to my own.
There were green fields edged with dark trees sparsely decorated with shining green leaves. However, the sky above was a leaden gray instead of a deep blue. As I stepped through the opening, I also noticed that the ground was hard and unyielding, with patches of dried dirt showing through the thinning grass. The air was completely still and there were no sounds of singing birds or the scurry of wildlife. This world was dying.
Behind me, I heard the crunch of earth under heavy feet as Danaus quickly joined me, followed by the lighter step of Adio. I glanced over my shoulder to see that both men had their swords drawn and at the ready. And I felt guilty. Any naturi still trapped in this world were already sick and dying. If they ran, they faced death at the hands of Adio and Danaus, and if they stayed, they faced an even slower death of this world. Were they to escape to the real Earth, they had a chance at life again, this time under Cynnia’s enlightened rule. They had a chance to live.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said in a low voice. “Don’t attack anyone unless you are attacked first.”
“Are you sure?” Adio inquired.
“You want to give them the chance to escape?” Danaus said.
“They are already dying here and are doomed to death if they stay, even if we most likely succeed today. Cynnia will give them a second chance.”
“As you wish,” Adio said softly, to my surprise. I hadn’t expected Our Liege to so quickly follow my direction, but then I believed that his larger focus was on his own survival and the eventual survival of our people. Now that Aurora was dead, the naturi were a smaller concern for the nightwalkers.
“Do you know where you are going?” Danaus asked as we started across the field and into the surrounding woods. Off in the distance I could see the crumbling remnants of stone and thatch houses built among the trees. I could feel a faint swirling earth energy surrounding us as we preceded, marking the presence of the naturi, but they didn’t approach us. For now they were content to watch from a distance and edge closer to the opening that I was maintaining in the back of my mind. The pull of power to keep the door open was minimal, like a slowly growing headache in my temple. Nothing more than an annoyance.
“I can feel a great source of energy ahead of us. It has to be her,” I said as I continued to trudge forward. I placed the knife I had been carrying in my right hand back in its sheath. I wouldn’t need it for the time being.
“I can feel it as well,” Adio added.
Unfortunately, a second source of great energy was hovering around what felt to be the entrance to the naturi world. Nick was starting to grow suspicious of my absence from this world and he didn’t trust me. We were running out of time. Danaus and Adio needed to have the goddess in hand by the time Nick appeared or this was all for nothing.
Grabbing the arms of Danaus and Adio on either my side, I clenched my eyes shut and caused us all to disappear and then suddenly reappear closer to the source of the energy. I couldn’t pinpoint her exact location with the first jump, but we were significantly closer. It felt as if she was in the center of the world, and yet I didn’t know how vast this world was. I would have to rely on Adio to do the same thing with Danaus—to get him out again with the goddess.