The Skeleton Key Guild (The Doorknob Society Saga Book 5)

by MJ Fletcher

Jess reached the wall her long, strong arms reaching out and grasping the top. She pulled herself up and spun back offering her hand down to Erin as she jumped toward her. Their hands clasped and Jess hefted her over the wall, and I watched as my sister disappeared down over the other side. My heart skipped a beat for a moment, knowing we’d at least gotten her this far.

  Jess looked back at me, her eyes locking on mine. We didn’t have to speak. She nodded, and then jumped off the wall after Erin. With any luck she was already half way to a portal and getting my sister to safety.

  DeAndre launched himself toward the wall. His fingers gripped the top and he brought his body over in one fluid move, vanishing as he dropped over the side.

  The ground in front of me rumbled and I lost my footing as chunks of earth ripped apart and flew in all directions from a blast of portal energy. My shoulder hit the dirt and I rolled as best as I could, hoping I hadn’t broken anything. I came up on my feet to see a guard racing toward me, a Silver Star pointing my way.

  The air crackled with power as he activated his Star and let another blast of energy loose in my direction. I brought my Key up and concentrated on forming a shield. A crimson barrier took shape before me, it shifted and shimmered not fully whole. The blast hit, shattering it into a brilliant display of light and fury. The force of the destruction knocked me off my feet again, throwing me backward and slamming me into the wall.

  Breath exploded from my lungs, my eyes blinking rapidly. The guard was moving in, but I couldn’t catch my breath nor gather my thoughts to fend him off. He raised his Star for another blast and his hand jerked backward as he shot at me. I braced for the volley that never reached me.

  Darla’s crimson blade deflected it as she jumped in front of me swinging her weapon around her. She leapt forward and pressed her advantage, her blade connecting with the guard in a blur of red. The unexpected ferocity of the assault shoved him back, and she kept him on the defense.

  “Get over the wall,” she yelled.

  I held my breath and spun jumping into the air. The tips of my fingers hooked onto the edge and I pushed my feet against the wall heaving myself upward. I reached the top and swung my leg over the side straddling the wall.

  “Come on,” I called to Darla, reaching out my hand to her.

  She turned and ran for me, jumping the distance between us. Her hand wrapped around mine and I pulled. The guard reacted, letting fly one blast after the other, neither one of us could defend against. So I did the only thing I could think of, I let my weight shift to the side and held onto Darla’s hand as tightly as I could and fell backwards over the wall.

  We both flipped over and I twisted in time to get my hand up and stop myself from face planting on the street. My body ached from top to bottom, but I forced myself to my feet and yanked Darla’s arm, helping her to stand. She was unsteady and her face was pale.

  “You good?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  I pulled her down the street. DeAndre waved us forward as sounds of people jumping over the wall behind us echoed all around.

  We turned the corner next to DeAndre and activated his Key, creating a barrier behind us. Clicking noises sounded one after the other as he created a locking mechanism for them to try and break through.

  “I just bought us a few minutes, we need to move.”

  “My sister?” I asked as Darla held onto my arm, the drop over the wall having zapped her strength.

  “She’s headed to a portal with Jess. They’re safe as long as these jokers keep following us.”

  “Good, let’s go,” I said. We ran as fast as we could along the street, turning into an alleyway that Darla pointed out.

  DeAndre stopped and checked the nearby streets for pursuers. “We need to get to Rosalita.”

  Darla was breathing heavy and slid her arm around my shoulder and I took her weight, keeping her propped up. “Are you okay?” I asked, her face having gone from beyond pale to pure white.

  “No.” She laughed, though it sounded more like she was choking. She lifted her hand from under her shirt... it was covered in blood.

  “Damn it, how bad?” I shook my head. I should have realized the guard had hit her with one of his attacks.

  “Pretty bad.” Her body was beginning to tremble.

  “Can you walk?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “The woman we’re trying to get to is a Fixer, she can take care of you. You just need to keep it together for a few minutes.”

  “There are people in two of the three streets we need to access,” DeAndre spoke as he walked back to us. He stopped, looking over Darla with suspicious eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “She was hit, badly”

  “Shit.”

  “Can we portal to Rosalita?”

  “Not without sending off alarms throughout the Hollow. Tower has tracking all over the place for a situation just like this.”

  “Then we run for it. You have to carry Darla and I’ll run interference, in case we get in trouble.” I gripped my Skeleton Key in my hand. The image of my crimson shield shattering under the guard’s attack drifted through my mind.

  “We don’t have much choice.” DeAndre slipped his arm under Darla’s shoulder and began to lift her.

  She placed her hand on his chest and stopped him. “You can leave me. You’re both fine. You can make it quicker without me.” She was struggling to talk.

  “Not going to happen,” I said adamantly.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Bullshit, you can’t walk and when they find you I doubt they are going to be looking to help you. You’re coming with us and that’s final.”

  “No, just go.” She tried to push DeAndre away.

  “Shut the hell up and you,” —I pointed to DeAndre— “pick her up. I’m not leaving anyone behind, not even a pain-in-the-ass bitch.”

  DeAndre nodded and scooped her up cradling her in his arms, then gave a nod to the safest street for them to take “That way.”

  The street was empty and night had fallen on the Hollow. Street lamps were lit in both directions. We walked off keeping to the shadows, sincerely hoping we could avoid any patrols before we reached Rosalita or before Darla succumbed to her wounds.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Status: Things are more complicated than I thought…again.

  “They went this way,” a guard called out as he walked past us. He never bothered looking down the alleyway where we stood huddled together in the darkness. We had avoided most of the patrols, but this last one had actually spotted us and been on our tail for the last few blocks.

  Darla had passed out in DeAndre’s arms and her breathing had become erratic. We needed to get her to Rosalita quickly, if we had any chance of saving her. I’d thought about using my Polymorph case to create a quick healing potion, but those only really worked on Polymorphs. In order to make one that worked on her, the potion would need to be more specific, and I hadn’t practiced enough with it to risk not killing her.

  “I think they’re gone,” DeAndre whispered to me.

  I nodded and held up my hand for him to wait. I edged forward along the wall until I reached the corner and peeked out onto the street. It was empty and I stood and stepped out waving him forward.

  “How much further?” I looked at Darla’s ashen face and worried that any distance would be too far for her to get help.

  “A few blocks.”

  “We need to be quick.”

  The Hollow was eerily silent as we crept through the night to our destination. No birds chirped or motors hummed, everything had gone silent. I wanted to scream just so I could hear something and make sure I wasn’t going crazy. But I kept my mouth shut and just kept moving.

  We made our way one block after another and with each step I grew more nervous. We hadn’t seen any patrols since the one who had spotted us briefly quite a few blocks earlier. We’d moved back into the older section of the Hollow, and I
wondered if perhaps that was why. Maybe they didn’t think this section was worth patrolling.

  The Library came into view and we rushed forward. I slipped the old Key that Rosalita had given me into the wall and turned it, hearing the click as it unlocked and we entered the library. We both ran toward where we’d left Rosalita and found her sitting at a table surrounded by stacks of books on either side.

  “We need help!” I yelled to her. She was on her feet and next to DeAndre with such speed that my mouth hung open in wonder.

  “Get her on the table.” She pointed to a nearby one and DeAndre placed Darla down gently.

  Rosalita activated a pocket dimension. She slid her hand into a crimson gap in midair and pulled out her Polymorph case, placing it on the table beside Darla. Popping it open, she retrieved several containers and vials quickly mixing them into one bottle. She eased back Darla’s blood-soaked shirt, revealing the extent of the wound.

  I gritted my teeth at the wide wound that sliced through her hip. How she had even walked after that type of damage amazed me.

  “Chloe, come help me,” Rosalita ordered.

  I held my tongue and walked over to her. I didn’t want to, but we were at war and sometimes we all have to do things we didn’t like.

  “What do I do?”

  “Get all the bits of cloth from her clothes out of the wound and then you need to hold the skin together while I pour this concoction on it.” She tilted her head at the bottle she was still pouring other liquids into.

  “Will she live?”

  “Not sure, it’s pretty bad. Let’s hope you got her here in time.”

  Rosalita answered so matter of factly that I winced. I didn’t want to lose anyone else, not even Darla who I couldn’t stand most of the time, though she had jumped to my defense in that battle. If it hadn’t been for her, I might be the one lying on the table right now.

  I did as Rosalita ordered and used the tweezers she handed me to pull out pieces of cloth that were clinging to the cut and cleaned her up as best I could. She barely moved and I noticed that her skin was turning cold.

  “That’ll do,”—Rosalita nodded— “now pull the skin together as close as possible.”

  I placed my hands on Darla’s hip and pushed the skin on either side of the wound closer together. Darla finally reacted, moaning and trying to jerk away from the pain.

  “DeAndre get over here and help hold her still, damn it.” Rosalita snapped as she hovered over the wound with the bottle of blue liquid.

  DeAndre held her firm, while she continued to whimper and groan.

  Rosalita poured the liquid along the wound in a straight line and Darla struggled meekly to move away. It sizzled like bacon thrown on a hot skillet, and I did my best not to lose the contents of my stomach. When she reached the end of the wound, she stuck a cork in the bottle top and looked over her handy work. The slice had closed into an ugly looking scar that turned bright red.

  Darla stopped struggling and DeAndre moved away from her, and I stepped back.

  “Is she okay?” I asked.

  “We’ll have to wait and see. We’ve done all we can for now.” Rosalita began cleaning up her equipment, placing it back in its case.

  I stepped away and grabbed a rag she had left out wiping my hands clean of the blood that covered them. I closed my eyes and tried to block it all out. I had to think of the bigger picture, I’d gotten my sister out. Jess had to have her out of the Hollow by now. Or did she? I dug into my pocket and tore out my phone tapping it to life and saw it blinking with a new text message. I tapped it and smiled.

  Safe.

  It was all Jess had to write. I felt a huge weight lift off my shoulders. I’d done what my mom had asked, and now I could worry about the plethora of other problems I was still facing.

  “We need to talk.”

  Rosalita broke me from my thoughts and the tone of her voice sent a chill up my spine. “What now?”

  “I know what the Artifact is.”

  “I take it that’s not a good thing.”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Wonderful, let’s hear it.”

  “We already figured this had to do with the true First Kind.” She walked back to the table filled with stacks of books and pulled one forward, pointing to a story of the battle with the First Kind. “The First Kind was banished to Accadia, locked away for all time by the Societies of the Old Kind. Each of the societies used their abilities to close off that dimension from all others, but by doing so they also left a way out.”

  “Which is what the Artifacts are for and why Tower’s been after them for the last few years?”

  “Partly, by having access to the Artifacts it can increase the strength of the Bridge device used to open a portal to Accadia and release the First Kind.” She flipped the page showing a drawing of people battling over a long energy bridge, one group pushing the other through a portal. It was similar to the image Hawk had shown me at the Boneyard.

  “This all happened so long ago that maybe the First Kind all killed each other off, if we’re lucky.”

  “I wish that were the case, but after researching this more I discovered a few things. For one, in Accadia time works differently. For us it’s been thousands of years since they were locked away, for them only a few months have passed at most.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, if he opens the portal, not only will the First Kind come back, but they will be at the full height of their power.”

  “Crap.”

  “It gets worse.”

  “Oh, come on!”

  “The most important Artifacts were the ones from the Doorknob Society and Skeleton Key Guild. They worked in unison to open, and then lock down Accadia. They were the most powerful Artifacts ever created. With them, you wouldn’t need the other Artifacts.

  “In the beginning DS and the Guild were two sides of the same coin and worked together in all things. So the two most adept members of each Society were chosen to wield the Artifacts during the final battle with the First Kind. They bonded to the devices and used them to close the portal winning the war... but there was a catch. The power the Artifacts possessed was so immense that it bound the people who wielded it to them.” She flipped the page again and this time the picture showed a man and a woman standing side by side, one holding a Doorknob, the other a Skeleton Key above their heads surrounded by cascading energy.

  “What does that mean?”

  She tapped the page. “It means the Artifacts were subsumed by the wielders.”

  “Huh?”

  “The Artifact didn’t just bond with the person; it became a part of the person. In essence... the person is the Artifact.”

  “Well, that’s good right? That means the artifacts died with them.”

  “No, they didn’t. It means the Artifacts are actually people and most likely they are related to the wielders of those Artifacts.” She pointed to the picture once again.

  My stomach sank. It was all beginning to make sense now, the pieces of the puzzle I had known about all this time finally fell into place. The reason for Mr.Tower’s hatred and obsession with my family, and it could also explain the size of the power Uncle Thomas was able to wield. I was just praying I was wrong. “We’re looking for actual people?”

  “Yes.”

  “Those people are dead, so I gather the Artifacts travel down a family line somehow,” I gulped, my skin prickling at the thought.

  “Correct.”

  “Who the hell were they?” I pointed at the people in the picture even though I already knew the answer.

  “That’s part of the problem.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Rosalita.”

  “Their names were Cassandra Grimm and Dustin Masters, and they’re your ancestors.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Status: I mean seriously WTF!?!

  “Are you effing serious?” I gripped the edge of the table staring at th
e picture of my ancestors fighting the First Kind. It all came together, the curse of the Grimm family that Uncle Thomas was carrying around and why Tower wanted him so badly. Why he needed Erin or me as well, even why he hated us so much, our ancestors were the ones who locked away his people.

  “Completely,” Rosalita assured.

  “This is why he wanted Uncle Thomas.” I ran my hands through my hair pulling it into a pony tail and tugging it, trying to understand it all.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Uncle Thomas has tattoos on his forearms of Skeleton Keys, but they aren’t just tattoos. I felt the power coming from them... they are something much more.”

  “That certainly sounds like an Artifact that has been bonded to a person.”

  “So this curse that the Grimm family has been carrying around all these generations is really an Artifact used to defeat the First Kind.” I shook my head in disbelief. How could this even be possible?

  “That seems to be the most logical explanation.”

  “What about the Masters family?”

  “The Masters family is like most Old Kind, it has more secrets than you can shake a stick at.”

  I sometimes forgot that Rosalita was over a hundred years old and my great-great grandmother. She probably knew more about the Masters family than anyone. “You know more about our family than most. Is one of us secretly an Artifact?”

  “Not that I know of, dear.”

  “What did Bodie know? No more secrets or lies Rosalita. Tell me everything, did you know about this?”

  She took a deep breath and pushed it out as she spoke. “Bodie had many secrets, even from me. I found out about you only what he was ready to tell me. He was worried if I knew too much that someone could come after me and use it against you. He juggled secrets to try and protect you.”

  “Does that mean I’m an Artifact? Is that why I’m a Polymorph?” I demanded wanting to know everything.

  “Chloe, I honestly don’t know. Bodie told me the Masters’ family had more secrets than I could ever know and this was one of them. I knew he dealt with some very dangerous objects, but he never mentioned a Doorknob Society Artifact. He did tell me one thing though.”