Page 9 of Another Damned Storm (Another Damned #3)

I tucked as best I could as I tumbled, trying to protect the more sensitive parts of myself. Healing might go a lot faster these days, but avoiding pain in the first place was still my driving instinct.

When I finally came to rest on a pile of broken branches and brown leaves, I just laid there gasping.

I obviously wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

A quick glance around had me backtracking on that thought. “Or maybe I am?”

I sat up and tried to get a sense of where I’d ended up. I was hoping to land in the park. The same one where Hook and Petra had both come through when they’d dropped in on the human world.

But this sure as shit didn’t look like that.

How far off course am I?

It didn’t help that the thicket I’d tumbled into towered over me. Wild wisteria had taken over, choking out everything around it until it too had died.

“Weird,” I whispered, dragging myself to my feet.

It could have been worse. What if I’d landed in some random cornfield? I’d had plenty of nightmares about creepy shit happening to me in a cornfield after reading Stephen King’s “Children of the Corn” when I was way too young for that story.

And what was my mom’s response when I finally fessed up about what was giving me those nightmares? “That’s what you get for taking my books without permission.”

No sympathy at all .

But it wasn’t like the story deterred me from sneak-reading more of her books later on.

I closed my eyes, blocked out the memories of her, and listened. The warm breeze was weirdly loud coming through the dry leaves and peeling branches, creating a rustle that drowned out almost everything else.

If I was in the park—damn near anywhere in it—I should have at least picked up on the hum of traffic.

I opened my eyes and looked up, only to shake my head.

I didn’t know where I was or even what time of year it was.

Which meant figuring out which way was north was really just a guessing game.

Since right looked as good a direction as any, I headed out, holding my arms up in front of me to keep the clawing branches from slapping me in the face.

At least I’d made it out of the Alius. Even with the unfamiliar surroundings, there was a different current of energy in the air wherever I’d ended up.

Minutes later, with mud caking my boots and my hair plastered to my head from the sticky air, I found a battered chain-link fence and beyond it, a road.

I gripped the chain-link and just stared for a minute.

The road was riddled with potholes that could swallow a tire whole, and virtually every ground level window on the shops across the street was boarded over.

A few buildings down, a burned-out car rested on its roof like an upended turtle. Even the double yellow stripes down the middle of the asphalt were so faded they were barely visible.

Then there were the people. They all looked like the rest of the neighborhood, like they’d been through some kind of hell. There were no suits walking to the deli on their lunch break. No women in skin-tight pants out for a power walk.

“Is this really home?” I squinted. Like that would help. Still, it felt too much like home for it to be anywhere else .

I thought of the apartment Matty, Lily, and I shared. Of the beat up old couch and the scarred dining table. But when I pumped power into those thoughts the way Hook taught me, nothing happened.

I wasn’t exactly shocked.

He’d said something about magic working differently in different realms, right? I mean, I was fucking glowing in the Alius. Also, from how sluggish my muscles felt, my energy was just about tapped.

I shook out my shoulders, ignoring the chill that swept through me for no obvious reason. “Round two.” It probably wasn’t the smartest thing to flash where people could see me, but I was willing to risk it. Maybe they’d just assume they’d imagined me.

I focused on a point just on the other side of the fence and flashed.

Nothing.

“Come on, really?”

After my third, fourth, and fifth attempts ended the same way, it was time to shift gears.

Instead of thinking about a place, I thought about Matty again, picturing his sandy hair and that youthful defiance that only irritated me so much because I could see my own teenage years reflected in his eyes.

“Flash, dammit,” I muttered under my breath.

Someone may as well have rung a buzzer like I’d chosen the wrong answer on a game show. A fresh twinge of dread chipped away at my confidence.

“This world is different now.”

I whirled around at the voice, bracing for a fight, but my shoulders slumped when I recognized the black cloak. “Goddammit, Tenebris. You scared the shit out of me.”

His response was, well, nothing. He just stood there.

“You followed me? ”

“You shouldn’t be here,” he replied.

“No, I’m right where I need to be,” I fired back.

“You have to go back, Never.”

“If you really think I’m going to take orders from a faceless cloak, you’re delusional.”

His responding silence seemed to amplify even the sound of my own blood coursing through my veins. Then, with one hand, he reached up and slowly pulled back his hood.

I couldn’t say what exactly I was expecting, but a normal guy sure as shit wasn’t it.

Tenebris was handsome enough, with dark hair cut close to his scalp. He had thick eyebrows that loomed over big, dark brown eyes, and he definitely looked way too young to be any kind of immortal being. At least Nerebis had the sense to choose the appearance of a middle-aged human.

“There. Now the cloak has a face,” he said, and I’d be damned if he didn’t sound different now. “As I was saying, you must return to the Alius.”

I narrowed my eyes. “No.”

He arched one of those impressive brows, then motioned toward the park like that was the way back to the damned realm filled with demons. “I really must?—”

“Can you make me go back?” I asked point blank.

His grip on his scythe tightened, but he didn’t answer.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” See, being some weird ass unicorn had its perks. “Here’s how this is going to go, Ten: I’m going to find my brother and my friend and make sure they’re okay. If they are, then I’ll go back.” Okay, maybe not entirely true, but it might be in a roundabout way.

He was silent for several seconds before saying, “This isn’t your world anymore, Never. You must understand that.”

I did, sort of. I was still me, Never Darling. I was born into this world, grew up in it. It would always be mine. I just might not fit in so much anymore.

Not that I’d ever really fit in to begin with.

I offered him a curt nod. “I just need to find Matty and Lily. That’s all.”

“Every moment you spend here will put them and everyone else in the human realm at risk,” he countered.

No shit. “Tell me something I don’t know.”