by Corwin, John
She leapt the short distance from Ryland's shoulder to mine and settled down.
"I guess so," Elyssa said, giving Nightliss a strange look. "That is one smart cat."
Stacey hugged me. "Good luck, my lamb. Please do be careful."
"Don't die or your father will murder me," Ryland said, his tone deadly serious as he tossed Elyssa the keys to the Prius.
"I don't plan to," Elyssa said.
We walked down the street and found the Prius parked behind a dumpster.
Then we went to meet with an assassin.
Chapter 24
On the way to the Grotto, we stopped for food and so I could recharge my supernatural batteries. Fifteen minutes later, we were back on the road, headed for Buckhead, one of the ritzier parts of town.
"Is the Grotto a big restaurant?" I asked as we reached Phipp's Plaza, a real uppity mall full of stores catering to folks with more money than sense.
Elyssa grinned. "Just wait. You'll like it."
She pulled into the parking deck and, ignoring the big green arrow pointing toward the mall parking spots, headed straight for a concrete wall to the right.
"Watch out!" I yelled, bracing for impact as we…went straight through the wall.
Elyssa laughed so hard tears of mirth leaked from her eyes. Nightliss flattened her ears and glared at her.
I released my death grip on the door handle and growled. "You punk."
"That was so totally worth it," she said between laughs. "It's an illusion so the noms won't find this place."
"Lovely."
As I recovered my wits, Elyssa wended the car down a dark spiraling ramp with rough-hewn rock walls on either side. Ten minutes later, we reached a cavernous underground garage rivaling the shopping mall on the surface in size. Massive marble columns reached from the asphalt and vanished into the darkness hiding the ceiling. Elyssa found a parking spot right behind what looked like a mobster car from the 1920's. I saw everything from plain-Jane Toyotas to a sleek red Maserati and a purple Lamborghini. Seriously, anyone who had the cash to buy a purple Lamborghini had to have a spare million or so I could have. Odder vehicles sat in roped-off sections and stalls of their own.
Horse-drawn carriages, rickshaws, and even an old wagon with a mule awaited their owners. A team of sleek white Clydesdales whickered softly to each other, munching on grub from the feedbags attached to their heads. The mule brayed at the horses, its lips splaying out from large buck teeth. It was probably jealous. In a large wooden stall to the right, a team of camels rested on the floor, their legs folded beneath them as they contentedly chewed their cud. Nightliss raced from our side and, using the camels as stepping stools, leapt to the top of one of the stall dividers.
A large red circle with yellow stripes painted diagonally across it dominated the center of the huge garage. In the center of the painted area sat an imposing black arch mounted upon a shiny black slab of circular stone. It looked big enough to drive several semi-trucks through side-by-side, though I couldn't imagine what purpose it had sitting there aside from decoration. The material making up the arch seemed to twist and bend in a peculiar way, hurting my eyes when I stared at it too long, even though the arch itself was flawlessly curved.
"What in the world is this place?" I asked, unable to stop gawking at the menagerie and bizarre structure.
The thrum of electricity filled the air before Elyssa could answer. A klaxon went off with a harsh growl and the animals brayed, whinnied, and even bleated. Apparently there were goats somewhere behind the carriages. Lights embedded in the concrete around the perimeter of the red circle flashed on and an azure sheet of shimmering energy flickered into existence. The space in the center of the black arch flashed black, gray, and then white, alternating with ever-increasing speed until the electric thrum turned to a crackle.
I looked at Elyssa. She looked back at me and grinned, probably enjoying my complete befuddlement. Nightliss sat atop one of the carriages, ears flat and eyes narrowed. I couldn't blame her for not liking the racket.
"Look, or you're gonna miss it," Elyssa said, pointing back at the arch.
I looked just in time to see the area in the center of the arch burst into crackling black and white static before clearing. Instead of seeing the garage on the other side, however, I saw a rolling gray mist and what looked like the green foliage of a jungle. A massive emerald waterfall cascaded down a rocky cliff face where people swam in the crystalline water. In the center of the arch stood a big gray pachyderm, almost tiny by comparison. The elephant carried a large covered deck atop its back where three people sat with imperious looks, as if arriving via elephant was the only way to travel. Obviously, they hadn't seen the purple Lamborghini yet.
The huge animal stepped through the arch, coming from the jungle and into the garage, tracking mud and other debris across the circular slab. As it lumbered toward a large stall supplied with fresh hay, a boy raced from a small building I hadn't noticed before and took hold of a rein the elephant driver dropped down to him. The boy led the creature to what I supposed was the elephant unloading zone and stopped it next to a set of stairs.
One of the riders, a dark-skinned man dressed in vibrant clothes reminding me of something out of a Bollywood film about ancient royalty, stepped to the top of the stairs and helped a woman and girl step from the deck. The girl, who looked about my age, flashed me a bright smile as I stared dumbfounded at them.
"It's not polite to stare," Elyssa said, taking my chin in her hand and turning me to face her.
"Wh—what in the world is this place? What the heck is that arch?"
"This is the entryway to the Grotto, one of the major marketplace hubs of the Overworld. The Obsidian Arch is a gateway connected to others like it across the world. It can transport people almost instantly from one place to another if they have the money."
"You have to pay to use it?"
"Yeah. The Arcane Council has a monopoly since they're the only ones who know how to activate and use them."
"No buttons to push?"
She smiled. "No, silly."
"How does it do that? Does it fold space or create some kind of quantum gateway?"
"Someone's been watching too much Star Trek."
"It's so cool," I said, walking toward the arch.
Elyssa grabbed my arm to keep me from stepping inside the circle. "You don't want to do that."
"Why not?"
"When the arch is activating, it apparently makes little cracks in our realm that could drop someone in the Gloom if they're not careful. And then you need a sorcerer to come drag you out before you're lost forever."
My skin went cold. "The Gloom?"
"Yeah. It's kind of like an in-between place buffering our reality from the demon plane and other nasty places. I've never been there but I know Templars who have. You don't want to know the sorts of creatures who try to sneak into our world." She shuddered. "Hope I never have to leave this plane."
"Unbelievable," I said in a whisper. Despite being a demon spawn, I still found it hard to conceive such a thing as a demon plane existed, much less other worlds or realms.
"I think it's creepy," Elyssa said with a grimace. "Our world is hard enough to worry about without wondering if someone's gonna figure out how to open a door demons can walk through at will."
"It sounds like a mess," I said watching as the elephant riders stepped through a pair of large wooden doors up ahead. The faint strains of music and people talking filtered through the doorway. "Maybe we should go on in."
Elyssa smiled wistfully. "I was kind of hoping an ostrich rider would come through the arch."
I laughed at the image in my head. "I'll take the Lamborghini any day."
As we made our way toward the door, the boy who'd led the elephant to its stall gave me a cheerful grin and bowed. "G'day, guvnah!" His cockney accent sounded straight out of Oliver Twist.
"Hi," I said, trying not to laugh. I nodded toward the elephant. "What happens when the thing d
rops a load of poo?"
A sad look replaced his cheerful smile. "A lot of bloody shoveling, sir. But that's what Rachel is for."
"You get a girl to clean up the mess?"
He laughed in the high-pitched way kids do and pointed at the mule. "That's Rachel. She pulls the dung wagon."
I wondered what the normal people shopping in the ritzy mall above would think about having a poop wagon and a mule right under their noses.
The boy pulled open one of the dark-stained wooden doors for us as Nightliss appeared from nowhere and brushed against my leg. "Enjoy yourselves, guvnah and young miss!"
Elyssa ruffled the kid's hair and smiled. "Thanks."
We stepped through the door and into bedlam.
People scurried everywhere along a shop-lined cobblestone street from an era long past. The shops were crafted of marble with roofs of a greenish slate, though further down I could see buildings of rougher stone varying wildly in color. Some of the stores were connected while others stood apart. One nearby shop stocked old-style female attire that looked like a complete nightmare to put on. A black velvet-looking affair complete with gloves reminded me of the Goth dresses Elyssa favored when she went to school. Nightliss scrambled atop my shoulder and made herself at home, her green eyes darting this way and that at the myriad of sights and sounds.
"Is this where you shop for clothes?" I asked Elyssa.
She snorted. "No way. This street is Golden Way which pretty much describes how expensive these stores are. I prefer Under Alley, personally. Great character and some cool little stores that won't rip you off."
"You're telling me the Grotto is like a town with streets and all?" I looked up and saw sunlight filtering through clouds. My mouth dropped open, probably for the millionth time in the last ten minutes.
"Think of it like an old-school outdoors mall."
"But we're underground. How can I see the sun?" I looked left and right for the cavern walls that should border the place but couldn't see past the buildings.
"We're not exactly underground. We're in a nexus."
"So we're not really underground?"
Elyssa touched her chin in a thoughtful manner before answering. "Think of this place as being mostly on Earth but partly in another plane."
My eyebrows climbed my forehead. "You just lost me."
"I don't know how it works." She shrugged. "Someone told me this place shares space with another plane of reality which is why you have the sky even if technically we're on Earth. If you walk far enough, you'll hit an invisible wall which keeps you from going any further."
I peered at the sky, looking for any hint of an alien landscape. "You can see more of the other place it shares space with?"
"No, just gray mist."
I nodded and looked for the edges anyway. "Sounds like we're in a bubble."
"That's as good an explanation as any I've heard." She motioned at our surroundings. "It's not like anyone else understands how this place works."
"Wait, so how did it get here? Who made it?"
Elyssa shrugged. "It was here already, just like the Obsidian Arch. A few buildings already existed—those are located in the historical district—but the rest was just empty space and people built up over time. There are others like the Grotto scattered across the planet, but only a few are this large."
"Isn't that kind of spooky? What if bad people or things made them?"
She pressed a lock of hair behind her ear. "Believe me, the Templars and Arcane Council studied these places and concluded whoever made them had an understanding of magic we've long forgotten."
"Like Stonehenge?"
She smiled. "No, that place really is just a collection of rocks."
"That's kind of a disappointment."
We walked down Golden Way and I followed Elyssa through small twisting alleys and along smaller streets lined with what looked like houses, restaurants, and other stores. Though the place wasn't exactly bustling with life, I saw all sorts of supers. A group of vampires were having their teeth whitened at a shop claiming to have the best teeth-cleaning spells in the Overworld. Several young sorcerers emerged from a shop, flourishing velvety new robes, the girls wearing yellow, purple, or pink, and the boys mostly in black. A pack of what Elyssa told me were lycans sat in front of a restaurant, gnawing on huge haunches of meat, their rowdy conversation echoing up and down the street.
Everything about this part of the Grotto had an old world appeal, from the cobblestones, to the carved wooden placards above the quaint shops, to the live music from people playing what looked like lutes, pan flutes, bulbous guitars things, and even a crazy-looking nut job prancing around with bongo drums and an oboe strapped to his chest.
"This place is like Disney World without all the snot-nosed little kids," I said. "I think I like it."
Elyssa grinned. "It's pretty quiet here today but it gets crazy around the full and new moon."
We turned down a street absolutely packed with booths and stores. Every nook and cranny seemed to be filled with merchants of all sorts, yelling and shouting about their wares. One woman was selling exotic purple snakes. A man with a turban sold flutes he claimed would charm any animal. There was even a joke shop. I couldn't help myself and swung inside, staring at the wild array of items.
I found a box of spider marbles, guaranteed to cover anything with illusionary creepy-crawlers when one was broken, and grabbed a few. "How much are these?" I asked the thin-faced proprietor behind the counter.
"Barter or tinsel?" he said.
I had no idea what he meant. "Barter for what?" I asked.
"Anything which might be of use. I always need more ingredients for my products."
"I don't have anything like that on me," I said. "What's tinsel?" All I could think of was the silvery stuff people put on Christmas trees.
"It's Overworld currency," Elyssa said giving the shopkeeper an apologetic smile. "He's kind of new to all this."
"Do you take dollars?" I asked, showing him a twenty and feeling kind of stupid for assuming an international marketplace like this would take normal money.
"Of course!" he said with a big smile. "I just need to figure out the exchange rate." He pulled out a tablet computer—I wondered if any sorcerer worth his salt didn't have one—and pulled up a website named "Moogle" which showed him a tinsel was trading for just under a buck.
I ended up buying a bag of the spider marbles for about twenty bucks and walking out of the shop a very happy man. I couldn't wait to test them out at school.
"You realize we might have to run for our lives in a little while?" Elyssa said, her eyes bright with amusement.
I shrugged. "I gotta live just to try this stuff out."
She laughed. "Maybe we should send it to the exit so we can pick it up later."
"You can do that?"
She nodded and, taking my hand, guided me to what looked like a large black mailbox. She stapled the bag shut and then spoke to it. "Justin is a dork."
"Hey, I'm no dorkier than you are."
A giggle escaped her lips. "That's the passcode to unlock the bag when we leave." She dropped the bag into the mail bin and closed it.
"Someone picks it up and takes it to the exit?"
She nodded.
"I love this place," I said. "We're definitely coming back." And I absolutely had to go over that joke shop from top to bottom. It was a gold mine.
Her hand tightened on mine. "I'm glad. I'll have to show you a couple of my favorite restaurants."
"We can finally have a real first date," I said. "I saw a playhouse earlier. Maybe dinner and a play?"
"That would be so nice," she said, her eyes growing soft. "Oh, and next month is Unification Day."
"What's that?"
"Every year they celebrate the founding of the Overworld Conclave and the Obsidian Arch is free to use. People come from all over the world, they have fireworks, a big festival, everything. We should definitely go."
"Heck yeah!" My body
tingled and for a moment, I forgot all about my dangerous mission, about my dad, my missing mom, and the sister I'd never met. Just when I thought the supernatural gig couldn't get any cooler, I found something else to surprise the heck out of me.
Elyssa's eyes glowed with amusement and in that moment, I loved her more than ever.
"You're getting a really far-off look, Justin," she said with a big smile.
"Yeah, just fantasizing."
She looked up and down the alley we'd just entered, then pressed me against a wall and smothered me with a passionate kiss. "Fantasizing about that?"
I nodded dumbly then pulled her in for another kiss, spinning us around and pressing her against the wall. Our breathing grew heavier and I felt the clawing of my inner demon as it sensed the building excitement.
"Blasted kids these days," muttered a young-looking guy as he walked past.
"That dude couldn't be more than a few years older than we are," I said, laughing.
"Never can tell with supers," Elyssa replied. She grabbed my hand and led me out of the mouth of the alley and into a huge square. Nightliss was already sitting there staring at an amazing sight.
At each corner and side of the square stood gargantuan marble statues facing the center where the likeness of two planets dwarfed everything else. The faces on the statues were intricately detailed. In the corner nearest us stood the statue of an old man wearing a flowing robe and clutching a staff in one hand. Inscribed upon its large square base was a golden crescent moon cradling a silver star beneath which were words written in a language I didn't understand.
The next statue was of a beautiful woman, her marble hair carved with such minute care it truly seemed to flow across her shoulders and down to her waist. Upon her head rested a jeweled crown and rings decorated each finger on her detailed hands. A drop of red liquid falling into a crimson ocean had been carved into the pedestal, standing out in sharp relief to the otherwise pale marble of the statue.
Each of the other statues was much the same—white marble with a colored symbol carved into the large square base. The next one I noticed sent a shiver of apprehension through my body. Across the way and to the left of a large arch stood the statue of a man with lips so full and hair so long it made him look more beautiful than handsome. Aside from a fig leaf to preserve his modesty, he was nude, his body lean and well-muscled. Two large horns curved up from his forehead, jutting above narrowed eyes that seemed to bore into my very soul. He held his arms out, fingers splayed and palms facing each other, as though he wanted to grip the massive planets in the center of the square. A carving of a blue snake curled around a skeletal tree adorned the pedestal.
