Beginner's Luck_An Urban Fantasy Adventure

by J. A. Cipriano

  What I saw beyond the cliff took my breath away. There was a massive castle almost directly below me, and someone … no, something standing on the ramparts. It was male and human-like, except the figure had to be nine or ten feet tall, not counting the massive, multi-pronged antlers sprouting from its head. But whatever that thing was, it didn’t give me the biggest shock.

  That came from the two white tigers flanking the horned creature like security guards. Tigers that looked an awful lot like Princess.

  As I stared down, trying to process what I was seeing, my world solidified, and I was suddenly staring at a brick wall a few inches from my face. The back of the alley. My heart skipped a few beats and then kicked into frantic gear as I realized I’d come damned close to shifting back to the world inside that wall. Didn’t know what would happen if I did that, but I imagined it wouldn’t be good. I really had to be more careful.

  But seeing that monster and his white tigers had shaken me. Because if Princess came from that world …

  “Hey, Princess. You awake?” I said as I made my way out of the alley, already looking for a taxi to flag down. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what I’d tell her, or what to ask.

  Yes, unfortunately, she replied. I’m afraid I can’t sleep through one of those creatures attacking.

  “Okay, so you saw what I did?” I asked her. “The castle, the big horned guy, the, uh …”

  The other tigers. There was a slight wince in her voice, a sad note. I did see them. I wanted to recognize them, to have some kind of memory, but … nothing. There is still nothing from before, other than those damned dogs.

  The first cab I flagged pulled to the curb, and I climbed in the back and gave the West Flamingo Road address for the abandoned church. As the car accelerated onto the street, I said, “I have an idea about where we might be able to find out more.”

  The cabbie glanced nervously in the rearview, like he hadn’t quite heard me but suspected he’d picked up a crazy man for a fare. “What was that, buddy?” he said.

  “Nothing. Just ending a quick call,” I said, quickly producing my cell phone to show him. I didn’t want any of the normals looking too closely at me, remembering me. When I was in Vegas, I needed anonymity.

  He nodded with a relieved look and went back to driving, and I settled into the seat. I already knew Golar didn’t have much information on alterspace, but I was willing to bet that somewhere in his huge, expensive library, Elias did.

  So I’d make him my first stop when I got home, where I belonged.

  26

  I felt slightly better when I got back underground, away from the sun and the normies and the huge, invisible pressure of the real world. It was raining again, a light mist that eventually permeated everything, including my clothes. By the time I got to Elias’s mansion, I was definitely on the damp side. And yet, it was still somehow better than being around people. By a huge margin.

  Even though it was dark as night, the place still looked different in the daytime. Without the parties and lights and people spilling through like champagne, the massive Gothic structure was a brooding hulk, a sleeping demon waiting for the stroke of midnight to reclaim the world. Most of the time, the ominous atmosphere worked to Elias’s advantage, since it kept people who didn’t really know him from bothering him at all hours of the day.

  I rang the front doorbell, listening to the deep chimes that echoed the opening notes of Beethoven’s 5th through the house as I stepped back and waited. It was still before noon, so it’d take Elias a few minutes to get to the door.

  But when it finally opened, instead of Elias, there was an older woman in a silk robe with apparently nothing beneath. She looked somewhat familiar. I blinked and searched my mind for a name to go with the face, and finally recalled her from the party.

  “Leila Monro,” I said, attempting to hide my knowing smile. Considering how Elias had been acting around her, there was no way she’d been ‘just business.’ “You’re a much prettier greeting than I expected.”

  She blushed slightly and smiled back. “Hello, Seth. Elias is … well, er, he’ll be right down.” She stepped back and held the door open. “Please, come in.”

  I walked inside just in time to catch Elias thumping down the wide spiral staircase, grumbling under his breath. Also wearing nothing but a bathrobe. “Morning, old man,” I called out. “Did I come at a bad time?”

  He lifted his head and did a quick double-take, and then coughed and turned aside as his pace down the stairs slowed. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  “Yeah, and I didn’t plan on stopping over right now. Sorry about that.” I meant to apologize for the obvious interruption, which I was sure he understood. “So I was just wondering if I could borrow your library. You don’t even have to keep me company since you already have some of that,” I said with a quick, smiling glance at Leila.

  Elias reached the bottom of the stairs and started across the great room. “Sure, that’s fine. I’ll show you in,” he said as he reached us and gave Leila a slightly embarrassed look. “I’m sorry, this will only take a minute.”

  “No, I’m sorry. Don’t hold it against him,” I said to the woman. “But I do have to mention, if a certain person hadn’t insisted that a certain matter was business-related —”

  “All right. I get the point,” Elias interrupted, shaking his head with a smirk. “Now you know, so just … call ahead next time, will you?”

  “You got it,” I said. “Good to see you again, Leila.”

  “And you as well.” She laid a hand on Elias’s arm. “I’ll just … wait upstairs, shall I?”

  He swallowed once. “Of course. I’ll be right up.”

  She walked away, and as Elias started for the library, I chuckled and fell into step beside him. “Sorry about the business thing. I just had to tease you a little,” I said. “It’s been a while for you, hasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it has. Far too long.” He tried to look stern, but a genuinely happy smile broke through. “She is wonderful, isn’t she?”

  “She must be, if you think so,” I said. Elias was generally an excellent judge of character. “So, how long has this business arrangement been going on?”

  He shrugged as he stopped in front of the library doors. “A few weeks,” he said, and turned to me with concern. “If you don’t mind my asking, Seth, what are you looking for in here?”

  “To be honest, I’m not exactly sure yet.” I considered not telling him for about half a second, and then decided to spill the details. About Cayn and Zorah and Oberon, and Princess remembering the alterhounds, and what I’d seen in alterspace when I shifted. The massive horned creature, the castle, the white tigers.

  Elias didn’t look happy to hear any of that. “That monster you saw, the castle. It’s probably Oberon, don’t you think?” he said. “I mean, alterspace is the realm of the dark elves, and he’s apparently their ruler. So what are you getting yourself into here? Because it sounds like you’re going to start screwing with the dark elves on their own turf.”

  “Yeah, maybe. If that’s what it takes,” I said as I watched him unlock the library.

  He pursed his lips. “Seth … maybe you should just give this Oberon his watch back.”

  “Hell, no. Didn’t you hear what I said about it being a lock that he wants to open?” I said. “Golar called him the conqueror king and said he has unstoppable armies. And if this watch shifts between alterspace and here, where do you think he’s going to try conquering next?”

  Elias blanched slightly and shook his head. “Just don’t do anything rash, okay?” he said. “You have a tendency to take on problems alone, even when they’re way too big for you. Remember that you have friends, people who care about you. Find out what you can … and tell me about it this time.” He gave me a thin smile. “Everything I have on alternate realms is in the H section, for Hell No. Knock yourself out, and just close the door when you’re done.”

  I grinned. “I take it
you’ll be busy when I leave.”

  “If everything goes well, yes, I plan to be very busy.” He patted my shoulder, gave a nod, and walked off.

  I wandered into the vast library, scanning the shelves slowly until I found the H section. There was a shelf labeled Alternate Realms, which was helpful given Elias’s unique filing system. I scanned titles like ‘Is Your Soul Damned? What You Need to Know About Hell’ and ‘Thomas Mariner’s Guide to the World of the Fair Folk’ and ‘Witches Are From Mars, Warlocks Are From Venus,’ and eventually found a few likely candidates for information. A slim volume, more pamphlet than book, called ‘Oberon, Titania, and Their Chyldren’; and ‘Alterspace: Hub of Realms.’

  With both books in hand, I took a seat at one of the tables and looked at the Oberon book first. The pages were old and yellowed, and the lace binding had frayed and loosened several of them. I flipped through with care and found that most of it was full-color illustrations, done in styles like the old European masters. Though the paintings varied pretty widely, most of them that were labeled Oberon showed a tall, man-like figure with antlers and furry, back-bent legs like a deer’s, ending in hooves instead of feet. Titania, who was apparently his wife, was depicted as elfin, a human with pointed ears and no horns. Their ‘chyldren’ were sometimes human, sometimes satyr, and occasionally deformed shadows with glowing eyes.

  As I got toward the end of the thin book, I realized some of the loose pages had actually been shoved in and weren’t part of the original volume. More paintings, but these took on a definitively darker tone. Oberon’s silhouette rising above a landscape in flames. Oberon with long spears in both hands, each of them strung with multiple bleeding, mangled corpses like people-kabobs. Oberon holding a whip, towering over huddles masses of figures in chains.

  Oberon eating his wife and all of his ‘chyldren.’

  Okay, so that was disturbing. If there was any truth to these images, then Oberon was more than just a bag of dicks. He was a true monster.

  I put the little book aside and moved on to ‘Alterspace: Hub of Realms.’ Like the picture book, this volume was old and battered, its spine frayed and cracked and its pages musty, like no one had opened it in a long time. The front page, where most books listed the publisher and date and copyright information, just repeated the title, and the text started on the next page.

  But where I expected to read about dark elves, this book claimed that alterspace was the world of the ‘Changelings.’ Not fairy substitutes for human kids, like the way I’d heard the term before, but a race of dream walkers and spirit guides who existed between realms and were connected to all of them. Apparently, they took different forms, many of them animal, and were shapeshifters.

  If the tigers I’d seen on the castle ramparts, and possibly Princess too, were the native beings of alterspace … then what the hell was Oberon doing there?

  I read on, hoping for some clues. It took a while to understand a lot of this stuff since it was written in an archaic dialect with a bunch of vague, mystifying phrases thrown in for good measure. From what I could tell, according to the book, alterspace was the one realm with a connection to all other realms, and its native people worked to spread peace to every race in existence. There was a royal family, but they didn’t rule so much as guide their people.

  And then I came to the last chapter, which was called ‘The Fall of the Great House of Lucian,’ and read with dawning unease:

  It came to passe that a great darkness fell upon the lands; the hornéd shadow of the conqueror king. Great was his thirst for the blood of the peoples, and he did slew the House of Lucian, that most benevolent of rulers, gentle to the last they were. And though he did strike the beating harte of the realm, and cause all manner of blight and desecration, we take solace that his power cannot be completed, and his mighty reache cannot exceed the boundaries of the realm. For he is Bound within by the seal of the House of Lucian, and the way to other Realms is shut to him, and only the Changeling forever lost can open the way.

  The text went on, basically rehashing the same thing over and over. Somehow, the Changeling race had managed to neuter Oberon and keep him trapped in alterspace. But obviously, he was searching for a way out, and it sure as hell seemed like the roulette watch was part of that way.

  And I was almost a hundred percent sure that Princess came from this place. Not only that, but Zorah had definitely recognized her, or at least what she really was, from my tattoo.

  I needed to have a word with a certain red-headed Collector.

  27

  I’d seen Zorah at the Chute before, trolling for victims, so I thought I’d check there first. Now that it was later in the day, the place was packed. But I figured she’d stand out with that shock of red hair, even in the crowds.

  Unfortunately, the only bright red I’d seen so far were a few women’s dresses and an outlandish feather boa.

  I hadn’t seen anyone I knew well enough to ask if they’d happened to spot Zorah, though none of my friends would know her. Like I said, I wouldn’t hang around with anyone who liked the Collectors … which was probably going to create a little bit of awkwardness when they found out what happened between Zorah and me.

  But I did believe her story, especially now that I knew more about Oberon. I just had to know why she’d reacted that way when she saw my tattoo.

  “You there, Princess?” I said under my breath as I wandered through the crowds, still hoping for a glimpse of red hair. I’d told her about alterspace and Oberon and the Changelings on the walk to the casino from Elias’s, but none of it rang a bell for her. She still only remembered the alterhounds, and being terrified of them.

  Yes, I’m here, she replied. I haven’t remembered anything new, in case you’re wondering.

  “I was actually going to ask about Zorah since I didn’t before,” I said. “Do you recognize her at all?”

  I felt her vaguely puzzled silence before she said, The female Collector? No. Should I?

  “I’m not sure. But she seemed to recognize you, or at least my tattoo of you,” I answered. “She actually looked kind of scared for a minute.”

  Well, I couldn’t say why, Princess said. I’ve never attacked her, as far as I know.

  “Yeah, I didn’t exactly get the impression that she was scared of your teeth, even though she should be. She sure did seem familiar with you though,” I said, my steps slowing as I heard heated voices coming from a nearby alcove. Two males, talking in rapid whisper-shouts, and both of them sounded familiar. In fact, they sounded exactly like Cayn and Joad, my two biggest current enemies.

  I decided to try finding out what they were arguing about.

  I moved closer, staying hidden behind passing people until I reached the wall next to the alcove, where I pressed back to listen. This could be interesting.

  “… have no idea what you’re doing, human scum.” That was Cayn, and if tone could kill, Joad would’ve exploded into bloody chunks with those words. “You’ve damned yourself, but I don’t care what happens to you. Do not meddle in my affairs.”

  “He’s my affair, freak. And I’ll handle him however I want,” Joad shot back in a sharp hiss. “I don’t work for you. I work for him.”

  “And you truly believe that is somehow better?” Cayn said scathingly. “Do you think he will reward you? Which doesn’t matter in the slightest now because he’ll destroy you whether you succeed or fail.”

  “He is going to reward me, actually. With your job,” Joad said. “But I guess you already knew that, so that’s why you’re trying to stop me.”

  “Fool!” Cayn grated. “You cannot kill him. If you do—”

  “Then I’ll win,” Joad said. “Which means you lose.”

  Cayn started to say something else, but there was a flurry of movement from the dim alcove. I turned away just as one of them stomped out and plunged into the crowds, and caught sight of Joad’s furious expression as he pushed people out of the way.

  I was thinking about following th
e bastard when Cayn spoke just behind me. “It seems your damnable luck still hasn’t run out, Mr. Wyatt. Now I may actually have to protect you from that arrogant piece of filth.”

  Damn it. I’d suspected I’d understood their conversation, but now I was sure. “So, Joad’s planning to kill me so I can’t play in the tournament,” I said as I turned slowly to face the enraged Collector. “And you can’t let him, because if I die, the watch stops working.”

  Cayn looked stunned. “How do you know this?”

  “I’ve been doing a little digging on my own,” I said, not even the least bit worried about Cayn trying anything against me here. With so many witnesses, his hands were completely tied. “And I gotta tell you, I don’t like what I’m finding out. Your boss, for example. Oberon.”

  He flinched when I said the name and glanced around wildly as if he expected the guy to turn up here. “You’re as great a fool as your friend Baylor then,” he said tightly. “Just give me the watch. End this now, or you will live to regret it … which is a prospect worse than death, believe me.”

  “First of all, Joad Baylor is not my friend,” I said. “Why the hell would I be friends with a guy who’s trying to kill me? And second, no way in hell. I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but I have a good idea what your boss wants with this thing, and he’s not getting it back.”

  “If only that were true.” Cayn actually looked sorry for a few seconds. “He will retrieve the watch, one way or another. You could save yourself immeasurable pain and sorrow if you surrender it to me willingly.”

  “Not happening,” I said. “And no ten-foot-tall, bloodthirsty monster with antlers is gonna change my mind, so what the hell makes you think you can?”

  This time Cayn blanched along with the flinch. “He’s come to you?” he said hoarsely. “Not possible. If he had …”