The Arrivals. Melissa Marr

      “She hadn’t mentioned it yet.” Edgar’s characteristic calm failed a little; his nostrils flared and his lips pressed together tightly. In a blink, though, the expression vanished, and he asked in a deceptively calm voice, “Anything interesting happen?”

      “Katherine shot him,” Jack started, and then he summarized what he knew of the meeting. He paused a moment before adding, “He warned her that Ajani is crazier than usual of late. I trust my sister, but she’s far too forgiving where Daniel is concerned.”

      “I’m not.”

      “Likewise.” Out of habit, Jack flicked open the chambers of his revolvers. Neither the silver bullets in the right gun nor the cold iron ones in the left were much use against demons, but there were plenty of other monsters in the dark.

      Silently, Edgar held out one of the shotguns that they kept at the perimeter for patrols—or for any attempts at infiltration. Jack took it, cracked the barrel to check that it was loaded, and ignored Edgar’s small snort when he did so. They both knew it was loaded, and they both knew that neither one of them would be able to walk into the darkness without checking for himself. Trust didn’t outweigh habit.

      “I’ll be back within two hours,” Jack said, and he left camp. When he could, he patrolled on his own. The rest of the team usually worked in pairs, but Jack needed his space, especially in the wake of a death. They all dealt with defeat in their own way. Some of them didn’t seem to react to the losses at all, but Jack suspected that he and Kitty felt each death more powerfully because they had been here the longest. So many people had arrived, become part of their family of sorts, and then died.

      Jack couldn’t make sense of it, wasn’t sure what came after this life—or if anything they did made a difference. The others all looked to him for answers that he no longer even thought he might have. All he knew was that whether it was in the world he’d once known or here in the Wasteland, the only time he thought there might be some great divine deity out there was when he was alone with nature. So he patrolled in the Gallows Desert, watching for demons or monks as he trekked across sand and rock under constellations that were nothing like those he’d seen in the California desert.

      CHAPTER 7

      In a house far from the stifling heat and pervasive sand, Ajani rested in a darkened chamber. It wasn’t his most comfortable home, but it was opulent enough to be tolerable as he recovered from his latest endeavor. Somewhere nearby, an indoor waterfall splashed and murmured in soothing tones. He kept his eyes shut and tried to concentrate on the relaxing sounds, on the steady inhalations of breath, on anything but the raging headache that made him feel as if dying would be preferable to this pain.

      The headache had lessened some in the hours since the new Arrival had come through to the Wasteland. Ajani no longer felt like his body was being reorganized inside, and the vomiting had stopped. As long as he didn’t move, the nosebleed would stay away too. Better, however, didn’t mean well. Opening a gate to the other world was somewhere between magic and science. It felt like magic, like turning a body inside out and squashing it into space that didn’t quite want to hold body-shaped things. Regardless of whether it was magic, science, or something in between, it hurt like the devil.

      Sometimes it seemed that the headaches had grown worse over the years. Other times, Ajani suspected that he’d simply become less tolerant of pain. It didn’t matter, though: great men had always suffered for their causes. He would suffer for his, and in time, the natives would thank him for his sacrifices and those back home would know that he was a true visionary. He might not have discovered the path to a new world in the same fashion as most explorers had, but like the rest of those good men who’d expanded the queen’s empire, he’d made sacrifices. He was shaping an entire world for her empire instead of a mere island or continent. Numerous mines employed teams of natives extracting precious metals and gems from the ground to be delivered to the queen.

      There were no interesting artifacts here, as there had been in Egypt, and he had no desire to gather too many exotic species of animals. He’d collected a few in a private zoo, but jewels and metals were far more useful than lindwurms or cynanthropes. He wasn’t sure how well he could transport creatures either. Moving living beings through time and space was difficult as it was. It was a remarkable victory that he’d accomplished this much.

      The distance between worlds seemed so vast when seen from the ground. Wide swaths of darkness, sprinkled with stars, the distance between them so unfathomable—until a man realized that the dark distance was like fabric. With the right tools, the fabric could be bent, fashioned into waves, and then pierced like a needle through folded cloth. A tiny hole—a doorway to another world—could be opened, and vast spaces could be crossed in a moment.

      The consequence, unfortunately, was that it left him exhausted and sick. When he’d been in England, a place as removed from the Wasteland as possible, he’d learned that he could open a doorway rather by accident. Egyptology was the fashionable thing. The queen had been expanding her empire, and everyone had grasped whatever heathen artifacts they could. Ajani was no different.

      Only a third son, grateful not to be his father’s heir but not interested in pursuing a life of service either, Ajani had been at a loss—until he’d bought a mummified body. With the body came canopic jars, shabti, and a coffin text. The text was scrawled in the margins of a torn page from a book that had been tucked under the jar. While holding the canopic jar, he’d read that text aloud.

       I am lord of eternity in the crossing of the sky.

       I am not afraid in my limbs,

       I shall open the light-land, I shall enter and dwell in it …

       Make way for me … I am he who passes by the guards …

       I am equipped and effective in opening his portal!

       With the speaking of this spell, I am like Re in the eastern sky,

       like Osiris in the netherworld. I will go through the circle of

       darkness, without the breath stilling within me ever!

      And a doorway had opened. The universe folded as the words created a tunnel leading from his rather comfortable sitting room to somewhere he couldn’t see.

      If Ajani had known what waited, he might have hesitated, but he’d been well in his cups by then, and despite plenty of practice in the art of drunkenness, he’d failed to observe any of the logical principles he’d typically have employed. Fortunately, it was not the netherworld he found when he stepped through the portal. He’d ended up in the Wasteland, a godforsaken world filled with heathens and monsters, deviants and demons, and no aristocracy at all.

      So Ajani had done what any of the queen’s best men would’ve done: he began to work to correct the shortcomings of the Wasteland, to bring its inhabitants the benefit of the superiority of the British Empire, to guide and rule the natives of this primitive world.

      Reminding himself that what he did was for the betterment of the world was at least some small consolation today. Yesterday, he’d brought another useful soldier to this world. Today, he would wait for his body to repair the cost of yesterday’s success.

      CHAPTER 8

      That night, Kitty looked after Chloe as the new woman worked through the fevers that accompanied arrival in the Wasteland. The unexpected benefit of this was that it gave her an excuse to avoid Edgar. He’d stopped outside her tent when he’d finished his shift, but he wouldn’t come inside without invitation, especially when she was tending a new Arrival.

      Kitty had done this so often for so many people that it was almost routine. Unfortunately, being used to a thing didn’t make it any less wearying. She sat at the same bedside where Mary had once thrashed