Wolf Island (24 page)

Beranabus roars,
“Kernel!”
and tries to grab me, but I wheel away from him as insanity and pain claim me. I whip around, flailing, shrieking, wild.
The demon strikes again and punctures my left eye. Darkness consumes me. I’m in hell.

A lifetime later, someone picks me up from where I’ve fallen and drags me forward. It might be Beranabus or Grubbs, or maybe
it’s Lord Loss. I don’t know or care. All I can focus on is the blind hellish pain.

I pull away from the person or demon and run from the madness, but crash into something hard. I fall, moaning and screaming,
but not crying — I no longer have eyes to weep with. The creatures that were spat into my eyes are muching on my brain now.
I try to scrape them out with my fingers, but that just adds to the torment.

Then magic sears through my ruined sockets. The things in my head burn and drop away. The pain lessens. I sigh blissfully
and slump.

We return to the universe of the Demonata.

I’m stronger in the universe of magic. I numb the pain and set to work on building a new set of eyes. I’m not sure that I
can. Magic varies from person to person. We all have different capabilities. Some can restore a missing limb or organ. Others
can’t. You never know until you try.

Thankfully I’m one of those who can. With only the slightest guidance from Beranabus I construct a pair of sparkling blue
eyes. I build them from the rear of my sockets outwards, repairing severed nerve endings, linking them with the growing globes,
letting the orbs expand to fill the gaps.

I keep my eyelids shut for a minute when the eyes are complete, afraid I won’t be able to see anything when I open them. I
hardly breathe, heart beating fast, contemplating a life of darkness, the worst punishment I can imagine.

Then Beranabus stamps on my foot. I yell and my eyes snap open. I turn on the magician angrily, raising a fist, but stop when
I see his cunning smile. I
see
it.

“You looked like an idiot with your eyes shut,” Bernabus grunts.

“You’re a bully,” I pout, then laugh with relief and hug him. He’s laughing too but Grubbs isn’t. The teenager glares at us.
He’s lost his brother and abandoned his uncle and home. He’s in no mood to give a crap about my well-being. But that’s fine.
Right now I can’t sympathize with him either. All I care about is that I can see. I relish my new eyes, drinking in the sights
of the demon world.

I’m so happy, it’s several hours before I realize I can see more than before, that my eyes have opened up to a wonder of the
universe previously hidden to me.

I’ve always been able to see patches of light that are invisible to everybody else. For years I thought they were products
of my imagination, that I was slightly (
light
ly) crazy. Then I learned they were part of the realm of magic. I have a unique talent. I can manually slot the patches together
and create windows between universes, far faster than anyone else.

I thought I might not be able to see the lights with my new eyes, but they work the same as my original pair. I can still
see the multicolored patches, and when I think of a specific place, person or thing, some of the lights flash and I can slot
them together to create a window. In fact, I can do it quicker than before, and my powers on Earth are greater than they were.
Where I used to struggle to open windows to my own world, now I can do it swiftly and easily.

But now there are other lights. At first I thought they were illusionary specks, that my new eyes weren’t working properly.
But I soon realized the lights were real and fundamentally different from those I was familiar with. They’re smaller, they
change shape, and their colors mutate. The regular lights never alter in size or shade, but these new patches grow and subside,
bleed from one color to another. A square pink panel can lengthen into a triangular blue patch, then gradually twist into
an orange octagon, and so on.

They shimmer too. Their edges flicker like faulty fluorescent tubes. Sometimes creases run through them, like ripples spreading
across the face of a pond.

I can’t control the lights. They ignore me when I try to manipulate them. In fact, if I start to get close, they glide away
from me.

There aren’t many of them, no more than twenty or thirty anywhere I go. But they worry me. There’s something deeply unsettling
about them. I initially thought that I was nervous of them just because they were new. But several weeks later, as I was trying
to coax them nearer and link them up, they whispered to me.

I know it’s ridiculous. Lights can’t whisper. But I swear I heard a voice calling to me. It sounded like static to begin with,
but then it came into focus, a single word repeated over and over. It’s the same word the lights have been whispering to me
ever since, softly, shyly, seductively.

“Come…”