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His shields dropped with a sound akin to sheathing a sword, all metallic swooshing. I closed my eyes and stepped into the weirdest head I’d ever visited. Granted, I’d never been inside a naga’s head before, but his thoughts looked like neatly stacked, glowing shoeboxes. Well, maybe not shoeboxes, but multi-colored, glowing, glass bricks. Even the surface beneath my feet was bricks, emitting a soft golden light.
Follow the yellow brick road, indeed.
Were Heath’s memories organized by time, like a human? Or maybe grouped by event? If the latter, perhaps everything involving me would be close to the stack about the missing kids. Was there an Esther brick? Now that was a thought.
I conjured up a six-inch image of Esther’s Easter bunny in my hand. “Go find your girl,” I whispered in one floppy ear. Its sparkly nose wiggled, eyes blinked twice, and then it hopped right out of my palm and onto the floor. It looked over one shoulder at me, wiggled its tiny pouf of a tail, and disappeared into the stacks, leaving behind a trail of glitter.
Following behind with great caution, I rounded the corner just in time to see the cottony pouf go left. It was darker here, layered shadows that moved just enough to confirm my paranoia. I was rather certain something would jump from the darkness and attempt to eat me.
Unlike the gooey exterior of human memories, Heath’s individual bricks wore a coating of scales. I’d brushed one accidentally as I followed Esther’s bunny, and it felt like running my fingers through dark, downy feathers—odd and mildly disconcerting.
A tremor grew beneath my feet, building into a crescendo of sound and motion. Bricks fell from the tops of the stacks, and their lights flickered before guttering out in a chaotic shower of feathery scales.
What the hell was that?
Seth’s words to Heath echoed in my head: ‘How much more do you think your mind can take?’
Shit, his psyche is cracking. I covered my head with my hands and darted through the still-falling debris. Sure, it wasn’t ‘real,’ per se, but psychic damage was just as devastating as physical damage. As linked as Heath and I were, good chance we’d both come out as vegetables, if not worse.
“Bunny!” I yelled. “Find your girl now!”
Another couple of turns, and there she sat, ears up and alert, dark eyes looking at me, head cocked, as if to say, “What took you so long?”
“Show me.”
She dissolved in a mini-whirl of sparkle and floated into the air. The funnel touched a brick about two-thirds of the way up the ten-foot wall and melded against the surface in a popping lightshow.
I reached up, standing on my tiptoes, but my fingers couldn’t quite touch it. Fine. One irritated thought and a stepstool appeared. I stepped up and slapped my hand against the brick and was rewarded with another tremor. Yes, Zoë, memories are tied to physical white matter. Let’s try not to get ourselves buried, all right?
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, hoping that Heath could hear me. Wait, what was I apologizing for? The guy was a kidnapper and a murderer!
I shook my head and focused on the memory. I stroked the exterior rectangle. “Gimme something good.”
***
At first, I thought Heath’s mind had just collapsed into darkness, but I could hear water dripping somewhere behind me. That could be the last vestiges of his brain popping, but with the sound came the cool sensation that I knew from my youth to be the inside of a cave system—cool and a touch humid.
Where in the hell are there caves in Maryland?
I needed more clues. Maybe I’d get lucky and this would be some abandoned tourist trap with signs and maps. Didn’t know if my karma was strong enough for that, but a girl can dream.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness, aided by the baubles of light floating like giant fireflies in the cave ceiling. I made my way over the jagged boulders and around the stalagmites, not following any particular path. Light seemed to be a good general direction. Why would they light up an area they wouldn’t use?
After what felt like forever, a brighter circle of light filled the far cavern wall with silhouettes of several naga running through it like shadow puppets. One of them dropped something that let out a loud metal clang.
“Idiot!” a familiar voice hissed. “You’ll wake them up again. Do you know how long it took us to put them down?”
As if on cue, a baby cried out. The shadow of the irritated naga smacked the idiot in the back of the hood and disappeared out of the scene. He reappeared with a bulky bundle against his chest, patting the whimpering bundle rhythmically.
I was definitely in the right place, but that did me little good if I didn’t know where that was. Come on, Zoë, think! It wasn’t as if I could.... Oh, wait, this is a naga memory. Does this work like the memory on the scale? Can I make them see me?
My inner scientist clapped her hands together. Experiment time.
I crept around the edge of the nursery cave and poked my head in.
A dozen bassinets lined the far wall with about two feet between them, the whole line bookended by tables covered in baby supplies. Esther’s bunny appeared beneath one, sitting in a tight, alert ball.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Good girl.
There were only six naga in the cave: Heath with the newly-awakened baby, two in human form rocking babies in rocking chairs, while the others tended to bottles and blankets and even diapers.
“Take that out of the cave!” Heath hissed at one of the smaller naga. “It’ll stink up the place faster than you can say ‘pile of shit’!”
“Yes, Harteij.” He nodded, the offending diaper in his hands, then weaved and bobbed between his brethren and headed in my direction.
Time to test out my hypothesis.
I let him pass, and crept up behind him as he wandered deeper into the twilight darkness.
The diaper was a doozy, and he wasn’t paying any attention to his surroundings. I tapped him on the shoulder, and when he turned, his eyes grew wide as saucers. “You should not be here!”
“It’s okay, I’m not really here.” And I punched him.
Then I rolled my eyes. Force of will made me stronger psychically, and my little naga took a while to rouse.
“You should not—”
I covered his mouth with one hand. “I know. You already said that, and I’ll be gone just as fast as I can, but you need to tell me where we are.” I removed my hand.
“Harteij will kill you!”
“He’s already tried and failed. Technically, twice.”
Confusion colored his features.
I groaned. “This isn’t real. This is actually one of Hea—er, Harteij’s memories. I’m just wandering through, trying to figure out where this lovely cave set-up is located. Tell me how I, as a human, get here.”
He shook his head. “You’re not a human.”
I shrugged. “So I keep being told. Are you going to help a fellow non-human out? Or should I see what happens when you die in someone else’s memory?”
The naga raised his hands. “No, no, I’ll tell you. We are deep in Luray Caverns.”
“Are you shitting me?” I shook my head. “How? It’s a tourist trap!”
He raised his hands skyward. “Our Great Naga is a powerful magus.”
I grunted. I bet he is.
***
Stepping out the memory, I was dismayed to find that Heath had continued falling apart. I could see over most of the brick stacks, and the tremors grew gradually, like a slow-building crescendo. I needed to get out while that was still an option. I didn’t want Heath to die. No, I wanted him to stand trial for his crimes.
“Okay, bunny, time to go.” I opened one hand, and the sparkly swirl emerged from the brick and landed on my palm. I closed my hands around her until the magick poofed like a glitter fountain between my fingers.
Esther was alive. At least she was when Heath was last in that cave. It seems he’d left there to take care of the issues at the warehouse—tying up loose ends. That meant they would soon leave with the babies.
It also meant we were running out of time.
Speaking of time; it ran differently when I was in someone’s head. What felt like a solid hour in Heath’s head equated to a loss of about ten minutes once I stepped back into the warehouse. The tricky part, at this point, was trying to detangle myself from Heath. The pain must’ve been unbearable for him, as he had big handfuls of my legs caught between his fingers. That seemed impossible, given that I was in an astrally projected form, but it must’ve been naga magick that made me tangible to him.
I sighed. It didn’t matter. I needed to pull away and get back into my body. Let me go. I pushed at him as gently as I could manage.
He murmured something into the floor, so I nudged him again, this time with a little more force. You have to let me go. If you don’t, there will be damage, and I don’t have time for that. I have babies to rescue.
Heath moaned, and his magick tightened like so many tendrils. Well, shit. “I don’t have time for this!” I shoved him with the full force of my energy.
And he exploded.
“Holy hell, Zoë!” Seth yelled from behind me. “What the fuck did you do?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t mean to! I just wanted him to let me go.”
“Well, I think he’s done that. He’s definitely let you go... all over the damn room.”
Bits and pieces of the dead naga fell from the sky like bloody acid rain. I turned to see that Seth got the brunt of the blast, as it went right through my intangible form.
He wiped the gore off his face and arms.
“I’m really sorry,” I insisted, hoping my regret showed on my sparkling face.
He raised a hand. “Oh, this is about to get much worse. You might want to get back in your body now.” I started to ask a question, but he gave me one tight shake of his head. “Body. Now. Seriously.”
I stepped around him, amid the mess, and slipped back into my body. Damn if it didn’t feel heavier.
Seth reached back and touched my arm. “The cavalry is here.”
