by Gabi Moore
One mother watching her child in a plastic locomotive almost dropped her purse when the bull stepped off its platform and walked over to the door of the theater. The kids in the play area cheered it on, unaware of how it functioned.
The bull trotted over to the door and dropped its glossy head down to the level of the two handles on the other side. The door to the theater was not just one door, but two half doors which had handles on the mall side. The release bar was built to the inside of the theater for safety reasons. In an emergency, people were supposed to be able to push down on the bar and the door would release. Today, however, the bars didn’t function as they should.
As a small audience gathered around the plastic bull to watch it at work, Dion opened his eyes, the instructions to the earth elemental inside it now complete. He’s followed it up to the door to make sure it knew exactly what to do. The last thing he wanted to encounter was glass flying from the door if the bull charged.
The bull placed its horns down to the handles on the mall side and slid them into the grips. It reared back just enough to test them and then grunted. The next thing it did was to pull back hard on the handles and yank them back toward its synthetic neck. Plastic didn’t take such stress under normal circumstances, but the bull could hardly be considered normal.
There was a screeching sound as the aluminum door handles began to give way from the force generated by the bull. Dion stepped back and took Lilly with him as he waved people away from the door. The audience realized what was about to happen and moved back from the sound.
A loud pop came from one of the glass halves as the door began to move backwards and follow the motion of the bull. The glass cracked, but remained intact in the door. Both halves parted slightly as the metal frame yielded to the strength of the artificial bull when it forced its way back. The doors swung open as the plastic bull shot backwards.
It stopped a few feet from the door to make sure Dion and Lilly were safe as they emerged from the door. One of the door halves swung on its hinge as they passed it by. Dion watched the bull walk past the crowd of curious shoppers and stand back on the platform for the ride. It became still and assumed its previous position as the earth elemental left it and returned to the layer of soil beneath the ride in the children’s section.
Of course, every single kid in the mall near it lined up to ride the bull. They would be a little disappointed, but there was nothing he could do about that.
They found Emily and Sean a few minutes later. Dion somehow just knew they were going to be located inside the electronics store. There was a sign telling the public as to how the store would be closed for a few hours, but it opened when Dion put his hand on the door. Whatever he’d done to the other door had transferred to him and this one had no desire to be busted open.
Emily and Sean were in the back of the electronics store starring at an endless bank of televisions, all which showed static on the screens.
“What are they starring at?” Lilly asked him. “There’s nothing on the TV’s.”
“There doesn’t have to be,” Dion explained as he grabbed Sean by one shoulder and pulled him away. “It’s what they see in their minds. You lead Emily out; she won’t come unless someone takes her hand.”
A few minutes later, the four were sitting at a table next to a vending machine. Dion had brought both of them some coffee to drink. It took another few minutes, even with the coffee, for the effects of the TV’s to wear off, but they soon blinked their eyes and showed signs of recognition.
“Where were we?” Emily asked Dion. “A few minutes ago I was staring at a TV and then I don’t know what happened.”
“Same here,” Sean said. “I was doing the same thing and I don’t remember what happened afterward. Something about a terrible comedy show on that was so depressing.”
“Yeah,” Emily agreed. “Something like that too. What happened to us?”
“It sounds like a dirty little trick my uncle would pull,” Dion said. “He tried to do the same thing in a theater by showing a movie that was a veiled reference to my own life. I recognized what he was up to and left. The door was locked on the theater, but we were able to get it open. The door to the electronics store wasn’t locked to me. I walked in and found you two starring at some blank screens. He wanted to trap us in a reflection of our own fear. It didn’t work, so he’ll come up with something else.”
The rested for a while and watched the shoppers continue to file through the mall. A few minutes later, they watched a maintenance crew come and work on the door the plastic bull yanked open for Dion. The line to the bull ride died down when the kids realized it was never going to walk off the platform on its own.
“We need to go see Hobbs,” Dion said. “He’ll have what we need if we run into any other opposition in this part of the mall.”
“It’s a long way back to his part of the mall,” Lilly said. “Do we still have time to reach out to him?”
“You have to know how to get there quickly,” Dion explained. “For instance, that door over there works anywhere in the mall. It’s one of the special passages which run all over this place.”
They walked over to the door from the table and let Dion open it since he seemed to have a good relationship with the hidden parts of the mall. The door opened to reveal another long passage, but there were a few cryptic symbols on the transom, which Dion recognized. He looked at them for a few minutes and looked back to his friends.
“This one will take us right to the exterior of Hobbs’ store.” Dion held open the door and they walked inside the dim passage.
Lilly heard the door shut and lock behind them. “How is it you can open this door and it locks on its own?” she asked him.
“It recognized me.”
It took them another five minutes to find the door that opened to the outside of Hobb’s store in the other part of the mall. Dion examined a few other doors and looked at the markings over them as they passed. None of them could recognize the writing or what the cyphers meant, but they didn’t want to waste time by asking Dion how he knew. As in everything else, Dion had a knack for finding his way around the mall.
Once the last door opened, they emerged to find themselves back in the section of the mall where Hobbs and his store of curiosities was located. He’d provided Dion with all kinds of things he needed on his quest. They didn’t worry he might have another tool Dion would need.
When the door opened, Sean stopped and looked at the girl sitting across from the door at a table in the hallway. She had to be in her twenties, but was very tiny. At first, he thought she was younger than him, but her voice gave her away. She held some small object in her hand and appeared to be talking into it. Her hair was short, cut almost in a pageboy style, but seemed to have a pattern he hadn’t notice before. She was fair of skin and had deep blue eyes, which she used to train on him.
Emily yanked on his hand and Sean tried to figure out if the object the woman held was some kind of recording device. He wanted to look at her longer as the dress she wore seemed natural and not the sort of pattern he saw anywhere around his neighborhood, where the clothing material tended toward polyester. She had the largest copper medallions dangling from her tiny ears.
Finally, Emily pulled him along and he broke contact with her eyes. Sean continued on with the rest of the group.
“You have a fiancée and don’t you forget about it,” Emily whispered into his ear.”
The girl who talked into the rectangular object watched the group vanish into a store and returned to speaking into it. “What year did you say this was? Really? I need to put this thing away because they won’t have anything like it for another twenty years. See you in five minutes.” She placed the object into a purse she carried and vanished down the hall.
Chapter 9
Hobbs, the troll who supplied Dion with so many things, was waiting for the group when they stepped into his store. It resembled any other combination book and music store with too many psychede
lic posters. However, the owner could get you anything you might need to battle or control the rogue elementals who wandered in silence through the mall. Dion even had a line of credit with him.
“I was expecting you today,” Hobbs told him. “A package addressed to you arrived this morning, so it only made sense you would be by for it later in the day.”
Hobbs reached below the counter and pulled out a box with postal labels all over it. “This one came from overseas, so whoever sent it must be using a crystal ball. It has to be a good one too, because none of the ones I carry see that much detail.”
“Let’s see what’s in the box,” Dion said as Hobbs began to open it up with a letter knife.
Lilly noticed it wasn’t a regular letter opener, but one made of silver with mystic symbols on it. She guessed it came in handy if the box contained something the sender didn’t want on the run once it was free.
Emily noticed a small terrarium near the wall and went over to see what it contained. She walked over to it and looked inside. There were ten large rodents in it, but they seemed to be gathered around something in the middle. At first, she thought they might be artificial, but the creatures all turned and looked at her simultaneously. She was startled to notice they were joined at the tail.
“Don’t get too close to that tank,” Hobbs yelled to her. “They don’t like to be bothered.”
“What is it?” she asked. The rodents started to move at the same time to the other side of the aquarium. She wondered how they used the exercise wheel in the opposite end of the tank.
“A rat king. Like I said, don’t get too near to them, they get anxious around people. The man who bought it from me is supposed to pick it up today. You don’t want to know about all the regulations I had to go through to get it brought into the country. Damn customs officer acted like I wanted to import Black Death.”
The postage box was opened a few minutes later and Hobbs poured out all the packing material and picked up the shipping manifest as he pulled out the contents of the box. He carefully sat it down on the counter so everyone could look at it.
“I think I’ve seen one of these in a church,” Emily said as she went over to the counter and looked at the object.
It was about five inches tall and made out of brass. About the top of it was engraved a seven-pointed star with words around it in Greek. It was oblong and had holes punched into the top. The top portion was removable and was attached to the bottom with a series of chains. It had a small stand on it and a wooden handle on it so it could be carried across a room when in use. The top cover was to keep wind from blowing out the coals, which were placed in the bottom of the brass container.
“What is it?” Lilly asked as she bent over the object to look at it.
“It’s the censer,” Dion said. “The one for use in the fire elemental part of the mall. See? The coals go in the bottom. It doesn’t work unless lit, so I’m going to need some charcoal from you Hobbs.”
“I have just the thing,” Hobbs told him as he brought up a small package and shoved it to Dion. Next, he followed it with a pack of matches. “I know how you feel about smoking so I went out and got you some of these too. The charcoal is mixed with gunpowder so it’s self-igniting. I’ll put it on your bill.”
“Is this the kind Edward told us about?” Lilly asked him.
Dion nodded.
“You can use this against fire elementals?” Sean asked Dion. He couldn’t see how it could be used as any kind of weapon. “What happened to sacred swords and knives?”
“You pick the right tool for the right job,” Dion explained. “It just so happens this little censer is what you need to contain a fire elemental. It works on everything from random spirits to full-fledged salamanders. All I need to do is light the charcoal inside, toss in some frankincense and it will pull any fire elemental into it from a hundred foot radius. Oh, shoot.”
“What’s wrong?” Lilly said.
“I need frankincense. Do you have any, Hobbs?”
The small man vanished behind the counter and came up with a small bag of amber crystals. “I have only the best. Blessed by a holy man in a monastery outside Beirut.” He shoved it toward Dion who took the bag and placed it in the pocket of his jacket.
“Thanks, Hobbs. I wouldn’t know what to do without you.”
“Always glad to be of help.”
Dion bade his friend and supplier farewell and then left the store with his companions. They went right to the door for the passage they used to take them to Hobb’s store.
Just as before, Dion opened the door and held it for his friends to pass in front of him. He waited until they were all inside, which allowed Sean time to check for the little woman who spoke into the tiny rectangle. Dion closed it behind him as he entered it.
This time the door opened into a huge department store.
Dion and his friends looked around. People were beside them busy with their shopping as usual, and didn’t notice their sudden appearance. Dion turned around and looked behind him. Perhaps he’d grabbed the wrong door.
There was no door behind them.
“Where are we?” Lilly asked. “I didn’t even see the corridor we took the last time. What happened?”
Dion rubbed the back of his neck. “This sometimes happens. These temporal passages don’t always work like they’re supposed to work. I just hope we ended up inside the same mall we left.”
“What do you mean?” Emily said. “The door opened right up to this place.”
“These things don’t work on physical reality. They can dump you just about any place if they’re not functioning right. I’ve heard stories of people ending up in the middle of a jungle after they used one to get around in a building. The temporal authority is supposed to adjust them every month, but I’ll bet my uncle paid someone off.”
“So we don’t even know where we are,” Sean said.
“I don’t think we’re too far away from where we started,” Dion explained. “Look at the people around us; they seemed to be dressed the same way were.” He looked at his wristwatch and compared it to the one on the wall. “Same time too. I don’t think there is much to worry about.” He walked over to a lady shopping with three small children. He tapped her on the shoulder and asked for the date.
“Same date as when we last used the door,” he returned and told his friends. “We’re simply in a different part of the mall than where we want to be. All we need to do is find our way outside and I can continue on the quest. Shouldn’t be much of a problem.”
No one was familiar with the name of the department store- Crowley’s- but there were many stores inside the mall they didn’t know about. The four of them spread out and tried to figure out the best way out of the store. They were in some kind of huge furniture center where tables, chairs and desks made it hard to get around. As a matter of fact, it appeared the entire floor level was dedicated to furniture.
“I didn’t know there were so many bedroom sets to choose from,” Lilly said. “This place is full of them. How many levels are in this store? Are you sure we’re in the same mall?”
Dion walked over to a window and looked outside. This had to be the same place. He could even see some cars in the parking lot he recognized from the last time today he’d looked out the window. There were in the same mall at the same time of day they’d crossed through the door. He simply had no idea what part of the mall they were inside. Other than the red color, which predominated and told him they were in the section dedicated to the fire element, he didn’t know. With the map partially destroyed, there was no way to be sure.
“So no one knows where we get to the main floor,” Lilly asked Dion. “I’ve never been inside this one before, I’m guessing it’s connected somewhere to the rest of the mall, but who really knows for sure?”
“You ever been in this one?” Sean asked Emily.
She tossed her hair to one side and turned to look back at him. “No, it doesn’t look familiar at all.” Emily cri
nkled her nose and looked over at a perfume counter. Women in black were busy trying to attract the attention of shoppers who wandered by.
Dion was about to say something when he noticed a security guard wandering inside the building. This was not one of Karanzen’s usual goons, this man was different, and he had a look of steel attention to him. He scanned the store with intensity, as if he was searching for something. Even the uniform he wore wasn’t the same as the normal guards in the mall wore. This man was from some kind of outside contractor service. Where were the usual guards who gave him so much trouble?
Dion still had the censer with him. He was carrying it in a plain paper bag, which Hobbs used to place it inside. Hobbs didn’t care for designer bags our anything else with his logo on it. His feeling was that the reputation of his shop was all he needed to make it successful. Since he was the only person in the United States who could get you certain items, word of mouth propelled him along. Dion had been there one day when he was placing a selection of arrows away from prying eyes.
“Silver-tipped,” Hobbs told him. “Works against werewolves, but I’m only supposed to sell them to people in law enforcement.”
Dion checked the censer inside the bag and made sure it was still intact. The charcoal and incense packages were next to it along with the matches. If any elemental in this section tried to make a run at him, he had adequate protection. It all depended on how fast he could get the charcoal lit and the incense in the chamber. Some elementals communicated by smells; they would be able to detect the censer from the other side of the room.
“Did you notice the guard,” Sean said as he slipped up to him. “Something about that guy worries me. He doesn’t seem to be one of the usual ones Karanzen’s had around him. Does he work for the store?”
