At least, that was what I had to believe if I didn’t want to go insane for good.
Beware, said the figure. You go to the realm of the one who waits. He watches. He schemes. He knows that you are coming.
Before I could reply, I touched the edge of the black floor of this place, and it enveloped me.
When I opened my eyes, I was on solid ground, and I knew for sure from the cold and my lack of breathing that I was dead.
10
Deadlands
I LAY ON A road, paved in crushed white shells that poked into me every which way. I got up and brushed myself off. My skin was gray and I felt no heartbeat in my chest, nor air drawn into and out of my lungs. My soul was here, covered in the white dust. My physical body, I hoped, was still suspended somewhere in Chinatown, between life and death, and relying on Conrad, Cal and Chang to bring me back before I became permanently attached to the Deadlands and my body withered away, devoid of everything that made me Aoife Grayson.
I turned in a slow circle, examining the landscape. The road wound through black sand, a switchback snake as far as I could see. Red clay mountains rose to the east; their plateaus and spires looked as if real mountains had melted, peaks and valleys turned to slurry. In the other direction, I saw the faint outline of a distant city wreathed in noxious green-yellow smoke. I could hear the faint whine of air-raid sirens.
Some sort of bird with leathery wings and stained white feathers flew low over me and landed with a squawk on a lumpy object at the edge of the road.
I flinched when I realized that the object it perched on was a body, bloated with decay and covered with drab brown rags. A little farther away, I saw a wheeled caravan, the type pulled by horses, burned out and on its side. Picked-over bones scattered across the sand told me what had happened to the rest of the passengers.
Looking between the city and the mountains again, I picked the city and started walking. There would be someone there, I hoped, who could tell me what I was looking for.
The heat was oppressive—I had never thought about the Deadlands in terms of being a real place, a physical place with gravity and geography and atmosphere. I’d pictured a vast nothingness where the dead, if they still existed in some form, collected like pennies dropped into a bucket.
But it felt as real as any place I’d ever walked as a live person. The heat, the grit on my face, the sounds and certainly the smells, all real. Unpleasantly real.
I tried to tell myself that I seemed as if I belonged here, that no one could harm me. There was nobody here to do it, anyway.
As I walked, the shells crunching under my feet, I saw the air waver on the horizon, where a purple-cast sun burned. There was a dot in the sky here, too—the pernicious influence of the Old Ones had extended even into the land of the dead.
I was distracted by the movement, which had grown larger and faster, a wave of advancing chaos across the black sand.
I stopped walking and watched, mesmerized, as the horizon ceased to be a line and became a lacy black pattern against the pale violet sky.
A buzzing reached my ears, overriding the air-raid sirens and the wailing of the wind across the vast sands, and too late I realized that whatever was coming at me was sentient, alive and hungry.
The sand moved as if it were the skin of a living thing, lifted and formed into a swirling mass that appeared to be made of mouths and teeth.
I screamed, I think, as the first stinging bits of the thing touched my exposed skin, and then turned to run. It was all too clear now what had chewed those bodies on the road to pieces.
It was a curious sensation, to run but not breathe. I didn’t get winded, but my limbs got heavier and heavier, and I started to feel detached from my body as I sprinted, as if I were floating just outside, watching the black tide encroach on me.
As I passed the overturned caravan, something darted out and grabbed me by the arm, whipping me around and slamming me to the ground.
Hands jerked me inside the wreckage of the caravan, and I thrashed reflexively to get free. “Quiet!” someone hissed in my ear. “They hunt by sound. I need you to be quiet.”
I stilled myself. If I had had a beating heart it would have been thundering in my ribs. I’d gotten used to danger, enough so that when somebody who could get me out of it told me what I needed to do, I didn’t panic. I’d have to thank my father for that, if I ever saw him again.
And apologize, because I was rapidly realizing that this entire expedition had been a terrible, terrible mistake.
The black cloud passed over the caravan with a scream, and the hands relaxed their grip on my arms. “Sorry,” the voice said. “But I’m not about to get eaten on account of some Walker too stupid to know about the screaming sand.”
I crawled out of the caravan and slumped in the dirt, grit digging into my palms. “Sorry. I’m new here.”
The figure, who turned out to be a man not much older than me, snorted. “Yeah, I figured that out on my own.”
“Well, you don’t have to be a prat about it,” I told him. “It’s not my fault I didn’t know about those things.”
“Thing,” said the man. “The sand is alive, a parasitic hive mind that tracks its prey by noise.” He pushed his dark hair out of his eyes. It was as unruly as my own and covered with a thin layer of dust.
“All right,” I said. “Thanks for the information. I’ll try to stay quiet on the road, but I’ve got to be going.”
I stood, and the man regarded me with such intensity that I folded my arms across my middle, self-conscious under his gaze. “You’re not just a Walker, are you?” he said at last.
I sighed. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“Souls who escape the Catacombs,” said the man. “They wander, lost, unable to ever find rest. But you’re not wandering. You have a purpose.”
“I’m looking for someone,” I said. I filed away the information about the Catacombs. If Dean was here, that was as good a place as any to start.
“Aren’t we all,” the man muttered. “I’ve been waiting for my brother for decades, but unlike me, he’s got the good sense to keep on living.”
“Well, good luck with that,” I said, unwilling to be sidetracked by another soul who just wanted to keep my attention and freedom for themselves. “I really do have to be going.”
“I’m sorry,” the man said, standing and following me back to the road. “But I have the strangest feeling that I’ve seen you somewhere before.”
“I don’t think so,” I told him, taking a step away to keep my distance. “I don’t know you.”
Yet there was something familiar about him as well, even though I didn’t want to admit it. Something about the way the man carried himself, his direct stare, his mossy green eyes …
It clicked, like a gear slotting into its mate. “You’re Ian,” I said, my voice coming out so soft with shock that the wind nearly carried it away. “You’re Ian Grayson. My uncle.”
The man’s face slackened, and he took a step away from me. “Archie’s child?” He blinked and swiped a hand over his face. “I mean, I suppose it’s not so outlandish that he’d have a child, but …” He reached for me, but I still didn’t trust him that much, so I took another step back. “It’s unbelievable. You look just like him.”
Ian was staring at me as if I were his brother in a wig. “I’m sorry,” I said. “But I really do need to be going.”
“You can’t go by yourself!” Ian exclaimed. “This place is an eternal hell. Nothing good can survive here.”
I turned back to him and fixed him with my own gimlet stare. “You don’t know me. Ian. What makes you think I’m any good?”