The Inbetween Times

Amberlin hitched her too-large jeans up on her bony hips and glanced toward the sky. Clear, for now.

Trudging up the abandoned street, the sun beat down on her shoulders, and she wished for something cooler than the old denim jacket she had covering her arms. The bag on her back was heavy, causing sweat to trickle down her spine in that uncomfortably sticky way, giving her the shudders.

A cat darted from between buildings, hissing as it skittered past her and onto the other side of the street, back into the safety of the dark. Amber hissed right on back and shook her head at the stupid beast. Cats were not, in her opinion, a good omen at all.

Swiping her wrist across her forehead, she scowled at the black ink that peeked out of her sleeve and tugged the material down again. She didn't want to see the inked lines, who knew what anyone else would do if they knew just what the symbols stood for. No one wanted a dragonette in their company, particularly a reluctant one. She glanced at the sky again.

A breeze, dry and useless, whispered low through the street, stirring up the dust and dirt of the unused road enough to make her sneeze. Smacking her lips and looking around for somewhere to sit in the shade, Amber wiped at her mouth, imagining a large, shining pool of water she could dive into and sink slowly to the bottom. At least there, she wouldn't have cracked lips or sweaty pits.

A second sneeze and the dryness of the dust took her back to that first day, when she'd unwittingly encountered her master for the first time. The wind had picked up, tossing about the dust and grime from the city and the clouds had descended, blotting out the sun with a yellow grey haze.

Amberlin had been lying on her back forty odd floors up, basking in the last of the unusually warm days' rays, smoking the last cigarette in her pack as she listened in on her marks' afternoon tryst in the janitors closet in the next building over. The enchanted bug she had dropped in the other womans' purse had relayed the usual highrise office crap all day and Amber had only activated the record function half an hour earlier when one of the interns had asked for a private performance review. That had been back when technology still worked reliably and magic was a taboo subject in most areas.

Amber's hunch about her mark had paid off and she had been contemplating repainting her nails, their awkward, noisy fornication a background track when the sky had turned dark and a chill had crawled up her spine. Stubbing out her smoke- her last for a month, if she had any kind of will power- Amber sat up and stared out at the dusky horizon. Sunset wasn't due for at least another two hours, it wasn't close enough to winter to have such an early nightfall and something just felt plain off.

Almost forgetting the couple in the cupboard as they sent something crashing over in their apparent amorous excitement, Amber levered to her feet and stuck her thumbs in the belt loops of her worn jeans. She ambled toward the edge of the building and frowned. She was too high up for anyone to notice, the next forty-something story building was too far away and the others were well below her, but neither could she see the birds. Pigeons, seagulls, crows- London usually attracted all kinds of feathered friends with its plethora of wasted food and left-out trash but there wasn't a wing in sight.

The streets below seemed to hold their breath, horns became silent and a heavy, cottony silence blanketed the city of noise. She could just imagine faces turned up on the streets, parents collecting their children from school looking up at the sudden shroud above them, wondering. Most of the adults wouldn't understand, but they'd feel it. Humans hadn't evolved so much as to ignore their instincts and even now Amber was fighting her own to get out of sight, find cover and hunker down. In her pocket, her phone buzzed, but she ignored it, continuing to examine the scene, trying to memorize the feeling.

The shriek of a high voice, too nervous to bottle it, echoed up between the buildings, making Amber shiver and draw back from the edge. The children would know, just as Amber did. Something was coming.

Deactivating the listening and recording spells by pressing two separate charms on her bracelet, Amber stepped on the smoldering remains of her cigarette and headed to the door that led back inside. The wind picked up, slamming the fire exit door behind her and Amber fought the urge to look over her shoulder. Gran had always warned her that giving something substance only took a look and a whisper of belief. No way was she going to give whatever was coming a reason to stop by her.

Almost running down the hall to the elevator, Amber punched the button and ground her teeth together. Her fingers curled into balls, her arms became ram rod straight as the hair on the back of her neck stood to painful attention. A door down the corridor, back the way she had come moved with a slow, loud creak and Amberlin turned sharply, slapping open the stairwell door. Waiting wasn't an option.

Taking the cement stairs two at a time, Amber rested one hand lightly on the metal rail, ignoring the chipped and flaking paint and practically flew down the first four flights. She darted out the stairwell into a more occupied floor but no one noticed, too busy looking out their huge glass windows to notice an intruder. Taking opportunity of an open elevator, Amberlin hit G and held her breath as the doors closed. Only once they dinged shut, and she began moving, did the feeling of being watched, chased, ease up. Hopefully, she had left, whatever it was, behind.

Amber glanced in the floor to ceiling mirror as the elevator shot down the shaft and grimaced at herself. Her jeans were just this side of threadbare and hung a little too loosely on her to be strictly fashionable, the points of her hip bones peeking over the belt loops. Her thick strapped singlet top had a hole just under her belly button and it had been worn to shrinking, exposing a couple fingers worth of skin between her top and her jeans. Amber's sneakers had seen better days and her dark-come-blonde ponytail, full of regrowth she was choosing to ignore, had all but given in, sagging to one side so the hair at the front of her face on the opposite side was free to waft about uselessly.

She hesitated in exiting the elevator when it finally stopped then forced herself out. There had to be other Otherworlders out there shook up by the sudden blanketing of an entire city. Maybe, too, there was a simple natural explanation for it, like air pollution or global warming.

Sure.

Snorting to herself, Amber ducked her head and swept through the lobby with purpose. Most people ignored you if you looked like you had somewhere important to be, no matter your dress. She needn't have worried as most people were still frowning at the sky. There was evidence from the movement picking up again out on the footpath that people were beginning to regroup and put into place whatever excuses they needed to in order to forget that feeling of wrongness that had stopped the city. A horn sounded and, like a signal, the world started to speed up again. More horns joined in and the roads were moving again, bicycles were tinkling their obnoxious bells and people were muttering about the weather. Typical London chatter, except, it wasn't.

She didn't know it at the time, but that had been just the beginning. The master had followed her all the way right back to her daughter and mother, right to the heart of what was most important to her and that was how, in the end, he had snagged her.

Turning off the street, Amber found herself in a shaded alley filled with toppled and wild growing pot plants. No one had tended the greenery for some time, judging by the broken windows and open doors of the building. Looters had already been through and picked the bones out of the place. Still, the greenery had managed to survive and seemed to be thriving, breaking through the cracks in the cement and pooling about the great divots carved out by enormous Otherworldly claws. There were scars all around this place, and she assumed a rogue dragonette had hit the town early on in the invasion.

Sitting as far as she could from the gauges in the cement, she dropped the backpack to the ground, then her tired self with her back to the bricks, which were warm from the sun. She dragged the bag between her knees and shrugged off the jacket, allowing herself some space to breathe. Her arms flexed in the slight breeze that kept following her, making the lines of ink crossing over her biceps and down to her wrists shift slightly. Sometimes, when she looked at them, she thought she saw scales amongst the lines. Other times, she could have sworn they moved on their own.

The breeze whizzed around in a small tornado near her feet, kicking up the smell of green and soil, along with the dust of the empty street. Amber closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the bricks. Soil and plants reminded her of the forests near where she had grown up, where she had met the master for the first time. He had been all scales and teeth and claws. He had demanded she go with him and, when she had run instead...

Amber huffed out a breath, shutting that thought down, her side already ached from the memory of his claws and the heat of the flame on his breath. Those forests were gone now. Her master had a temper.

She unzipped the bag, fiddling with the tough old zipper for a moment, before pulling out a canteen filled with precious water. She had managed to find a working faucet in the last town, a ridiculously good stroke of luck. She supposed she was only due for some ill fortune, now.

As she was sipping at the previous liquid, a shadow passed overhead, enormous and languid. Amber froze then recapped her canteen. She shoved it in her bag and levered into a crouch. Trying to remain as quiet and small as possible, she slid the backpack onto her shoulders and craned her neck toward the sky. Nothing.

A great whump of sound and air sounded from the street and Amber looked for an escape route. The alleyway was blocked off beyond the plants by crates and other broken refuse. Beyond it was a towering brick wall connecting the two abandoned buildings. Her luck, it seemed, was done. She should have drunk more of the water.

There were footsteps on the road, now, deceptively human. She glanced at the half open doorway of the building across the alley, a potential escape route, or a potential trap if there was no other way out.

"I wouldn't." A deep voice rumbled as he stepped into sight of the alleyway.