The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [255]
Listen to me, Travis! The voice seemed to call from far away. I know what happened—I can see it all. And she would never have wanted you to do this. Alice loved you.…
Travis’s eyes flew open.
Yes, why hadn’t he seen it? The voice was right. This is what they would have wanted, not Alice. She had forgiven him even before she shut her eyes; she would never have demanded such vengeance. The shadow strangled him, shoved itself against his mouth, trying to force him to swallow.
With a moan of pain, Travis turned his head and spat out the pills. They fell upon the bedspread in a glistening mass. The shadow rose above him, drawing in all its mass to fall back down on him and crush him with its dark weight.
Silver-green light burst into being, tearing the shadow to shreds and flinging them aside.
Travis looked up, into the light. His breath caught in his chest. A small, slight figure stood before him, arm outstretched. A stone rested on her hand. It was from this that the light welled forth.
“Alice?”
She smiled, displaying crooked teeth. “It’s me, Big Brother,” she said in that voice that always seemed too grown-up despite the slight lisp. “Here. I brought you this.” She held up the Stone. Its surface was a mottled gray-green. Sinfathisar.
He stared at her. “But how …?”
She shrugged thin shoulders. “Beats me, Big Brother. But I think you need this, so I brought it to you. Okay?”
Travis reached out a trembling hand, took the Stone from her. “Okay.”
He tightened his fingers around the smooth surface of the Stone. Alice looked just as he remembered her, with her brown pigtails, her blue dress that matched her eyes.
“You can’t really be here, you know.”
Alice smiled again, but the expression was quizzical, and sad as well. She tilted her head to one side. “I love you, too, Travis.” Then she turned and walked through the door, vanishing into the dark beyond.
Travis started to get up, to go after her.
You can’t follow her, Travis.
The voice was close once more, gentle in his mind. Fractured memories began to shine in his brain, and he fought to fit them together.
“Grace?” he whispered.
It’s me, Travis.
“I have to go after her.”
But you can’t. She was never really here. None of this is here. I think I finally understand what it’s been doing. It’s creating the illusion as a way to bind you, as a way to bind all of us until it’s strong enough to consume us. You’ve got to use the Stone to stop it before it’s too late.
“Use the Stone to stop what?”
The shadow of the past.…
And at last he understood.
Oh, Grace—help me.
For a moment he was horribly alone, suspended in the void between past and present. Then a cool and comforting presence drew near, and green-gold light encapsulated him.
84.
Travis woke. This was no illusion.
He sprawled on the floor of the Etherion, a howling wind tearing at him, pelting his face with small stones. A gaping hole had been ripped into the blue dome high above, and in places the walls had collapsed inward. Even as he watched, a nearby row of marble columns bulged and burst outward. However, the rubble did not fall on him. Instead, the chunks of stone began to spiral in a circle thirty feet above his head, like water going down a drain. More chunks of stone moved round the Etherion, drawing closer with each pass to the dark spot that hovered at the very center.
In sharp, painful jabs to his mind, Travis remembered everything. He had followed Sareth, Durge, and Lirith through the gate, and they had found themselves on a crumbling balcony on the edge of the Etherion. A wind had roared around them, tugging violently, and they had gripped what was left of the railing to keep from being snatched into the air.
The demon was there, in the center of the Etherion, and it pulled at every piece of inert matter—marble, wood, cloth—drawing it inward to the center. Each time something reached the demon, there was a flash of light, and the object was no more. So Xemeth had been right. The demon was still weak, waiting for its food to come to it—just as Xemeth and the Scirathi had