Oblivion Heart (Darkling Mage 4)

“Should be the right spot, according to what their last location is supposed to be.”

I scratched my head. “Is there some kind of supernatural newsletter I’m not subscribed to? How do you guys know about this place?”

“Shut up.”

Sterling muttered soundlessly to himself, then, using one of his fangs, bit down into the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger.

He dripped a single bead of blood into the open manhole, which just sat there, because it was an open manhole. Granted, you might be wondering why no one was stopping to see why some tall, skinny rockstar wannabe was dripping his blood into a hole in the ground, but for all anyone cared, we were just a couple of street performers. The more likely explanation was that the hole was surrounded by a weak enchantment, and we were close enough to be shrouded in its glamour. We were probably already invisible to the rest of the world.

“Well,” Sterling said. “We’ve knocked on the door, and I don’t think anyone has reason to keep us out. Get in there.”

I peered into the hole, so dark that it very nearly looked like a black circle that had been painted into the asphalt.

“Nah,” I said. “You first.”

Sterling sighed, and I thought, at first, that he’d acquiesced. But using his crazy vampire reflexes, he moved inhumanly fast, blurring into position behind me – then shoving me into the open manhole.

Chapter 7

I screamed as I fell – which was when I realized that I had really only fallen a couple of feet. It was like jumping off the side of your bed. My shoes clomped on the ground as I landed, but my brain hadn’t caught up with my body’s realization that we were, in fact, totally safe, so I was still screaming.

Two women walked past me, aghast, tittering into their open hands. “Must be his first time,” one of them whispered.

Sterling landed beside me with feline grace, hardly mussed and barely wrinkled. He ran his hand through his hair, then clapped me on the back.

“You okay there, buddy? You were screaming. A lot.”

“Little warning would have been nice.” I cleared my throat. “Let’s just get going. Gotta find what we’re looking for.”

The question was, where to start? The Black Market was massive, and as I can tell you now, absolutely mesmerizing.

There happened to be a very clear reason for the bazaar’s name. We were in some kind of parallel dimension, an inverse of Silk Road, where every physical structure – the streets, the sidewalks, the buildings themselves – was made of a glimmering black material. It looked as if everything had been sculpted out of solid shadow, like every surface in this reality was made of midnight velvet. It’s what the Dark Room would look like if it wasn’t so terrifying, and abstract, and populated with its violent, hungering mists.

The Black Market’s occupants were very much human, practically indistinguishable from the parade of shoppers we’d left behind at Silk Road. Or so I thought, until I looked closer. There were definitely a few outliers from the general Californian population here – a couple of gentlemen with green skin, for example, or the woman with a blue face and four arms. So this was where the arcane underground could actually go to let its hair down. Well, its hair, and its wings, and its tentacles, and –

“Follow me,” Sterling said. “We’re looking for a word-eater, right?”

“Yeah. But where do we even start?”

Sterling, it seemed, had an approximate idea, and I was quietly grateful that Carver had asked him to accompany me in the first place. Labyrinthine wasn’t even the right word to describe the Black Market. Bright signs and symbols hovered in midair to indicate which stall sold what, and even then it was all so confusing. Okay, maybe not so much with the plumes of fire that indicated where we could go to buy miniature pet dragons – I made a mental note to go back and check those out – but the place was just massive.

There were shops for reagents, grimoires, magical creatures, wands, and ensorcelled weapons, and I caught glimpses of way too many different kinds of currencies changing hands. Some paid in dollars, but others traded in gold coins, seashells, old bones. That night I learned that little phials of blood were commonly used as payment at the Black Market. The question, of course, was who the blood actually came from.

More than twice I had to stop and spin in place, taking in the sights and lights. The pervasive blackness of the dimension made anything colorful pop that much brighter. It was like Vegas, in a way. Ultra-Vegas.

I tapped Sterling on the shoulder. “I’m guessing there are other places for non-humans to visit, too? Say, like bars and stuff.”

Sterling nodded, his cigarette smoke helping me keep track of where we were headed. “Lots of them walk around in glamours in Valero because they have to. Don’t think that I’m not aware of my human privilege. These guys have to go the extra mile just to blend in, so it’s a nice change for them. They’ve got their own establishments here and everything.”

“So what happens when the tether has to change? Everyone uproots and rebuilds the Black Market someplace else?”

“Not at all. Only the tether actually switches locations. You’re just moving the front door around. The building stays put.” Sterling tapped the side of his nose. “Anyway. We’re here.” He pointed down a narrow alley, past a streetlight tipped not with a bulb, but what looked like a crystal ball. “Wizard’s Quarter.”

Which, apart from the aforementioned crystal ball, looked nearly indistinguishable from the rest of the Black Market. As we moved in, though, I suppose I did notice that there were a lot more old men with wispy white beards in the vicinity.

“I thought we were looking for imps,” I said, nudging Sterling with my elbow.

“Yeah. And it’s not like you’re going to find a free imp just wandering around the world. Either they’re working in hell, or for someone who contracted them.”