Immortal Bodies

Chapter 27--Low Notes

Riley regained conciousness by degrees. She was burning up, and her clothes, tattered already, were sweat soaked.

She got to her knees, ready to face anything before her, to see a huge, gaping hole, seperating she and Dylan. Annaliese was nowhere in sight. Debris was flying through the air, and the burnt smell of fresh smoke coated her lungs and poisoned her nose.

Dylan was getting to his feet as well.

"Where's Annaliese?" she asked him, across the hole that had been blown into te floor.

His eyebrows pinched together. "I--I don't know. Did the Keeper take her?"

Fear suddenly stitched it's way into her heart. "Wait a minute, the Keeper was in the blast as well, along with Christian!"

"Then he couldn't have," Dylan replied. "Did she fall into the hole?"

RIley looked down into it, only to see a dark abyss. But wouldn't there be floors below it? "If she did, there's no way she's surviving that fall."

"We have to find her and get out of here!" Dylan protested.

"i don't know--"

He interrupted her. "Look up." He said the two words slowly, fear coating his voice.

Riley tilted her head back.

And gasped.

A huge--colossal--thing was soaring above her head in the sky, in which the ceiling had been blown off.

But it wasn't the demon that she had seen before the explosion. This was a man--the Gatekeeper--with huge black wings with leathery black feathers, dark as the night, and he was rising.

Rising up, up, and up.

Suddenly Riley realized the bow still clutched in her hand, and the quiver of arrows on her back. Quickly she pulled an arrow out of the quiver that Christian had given her, and loaded it into the bow. Pulling it next to her mouth, she aimed.

"Riley, be careful!" Dylan warned.

She ignored him, gripping the bow so tightly her knuckles turned white--

She let the arrow fly.

At first, she didn't know what to think--that maybe she'd actually have a chance at hitting the Keeper--but quickly came to find out that it went straight through his body.

Fire erupted from the hole, making it so seemingly real that Riley backed away towards the wall. Dylan did the same on the other side, fear sparking in his eyes.

"Jump into the fire!" The Keeper cackled loudly, still rising highly, huge black wings flapping. "See where it get's you!"

Riley reached for another arrow from her quiver, and shot into the fire. It disappeared, going down, down, down....

"What's happening?!" Riley shouted to Dylan. "What's going on with the Gatekeeper?"

His eyes widened in fear. "Annaliese must've spilled blood on the Altar on accident! He's regaining power!"

"That means--"

He didn't let her finish. "We have to get out of here!"

"But--"

"Now!"

Riley looked into the swirling fire to see it rising higher, and higher. But, for some reason, it didn't look like fire. It looked like....

"A Portal!" Riley exclaimed. "Dylan, this thing is a Portal!"

Suddenly, a blast of fire exploded from the hole and shot up. It died away as quickly as it had come, but it made Riley scream. A second one came.

"We have to jump!" Riley said anxiously. "We have to jump into the Portal!"

"There's no way I'm leaving Annaliese!" Dylan replied.

Lightning struck all around them like strobe lights. More balls of "fire" came from the Portal.

"We won't find Annaliese if we don't survive," Riley argued angrily. "We need to jump!"

"Okay," Dylan agreed. For a split second they locked eyes, and Riley saw fear in them, fear, she knew, for Annaliese. Once she was missing, and now his cousin was, and she just didn't know what to do about it. And then, without warning, Riley dove into the Portal before she could change her mind, diving head first.

And, like wind picking up in a storm, it took her off with the most painful blast she had ever felt.