by Corwin, John
He drew in a sharp breath. "She'll be okay."
"Who are you?" I asked.
His head turned toward me. "I'm on your side, spawn." His voice was low and ominous and I got the impression having this guy on my side wasn't necessarily a good thing.
"Why?"
He regarded me for a moment. "Because I have to be."
"Not because we're besties?"
"It is my duty. Nothing more, nothing less."
"Just because you're dressed in black doesn't give you the right to talk all mysterious. The way you handled that sword—" I shook my head as an image flashed into my mind's eye and I realized something.
I knew who this man was.
Chapter 26
"You're the one who saved me from the moggy, aren't you?" I said to the man in black, wishing I could see more of his face and gauge his reaction. The first time I'd gone to Stacey's hideout, one of her monstrous house cats incapacitated me and was about to use me as a pincushion when a flash of black and silver had beheaded the creature. My guardian angel, I'd called the mysterious figure. And this had to be him.
He stood and faced me. A month or so ago he would have towered over me, but I'd sprouted like a weed since then. If I was just over six feet, this guy was somewhere around six feet, five inches. Maybe more. I'd grown some muscles since then but where I was lean, he was thick as a bull. As we faced each other, I could practically feel his glare through those sunglasses.
"I did." His voice was deep. Almost too deep and unnatural.
"Are you stalking me?" I almost shuddered at the thought. "What in the hell is going on? Are you with the Templars?"
His covered eyes regarded me for several seconds. "I cannot say."
"Can't or won't?"
"Can't." He folded his arms. "And won't."
Frustration stoked the embers of my earlier anger though I was too tired to do much. I looked at the bodies of the gray men. Not a one of them was bleeding, but some sagged like melting wax. "What are those things?"
"Golems."
The term rang a bell though I didn't know right away what it meant. "What else can you tell me? Why were these things trying to kill me? Why are you following me? I'm sick of being in the dark, especially when it puts her in danger." I motioned toward Elyssa.
He stiffened, fists clenching as though I'd just mortally insulted him. I could tell it cost him something to relax. "They were not here to kill you, only to capture you. As for the rest of your questions, suffice it to say some entities wish to take you off the board while others want you to remain. I am on the side of the latter, but I won't be around to help you every time the others make a move. I suggest you use greater caution in the future. Perhaps employ your felycan and sorcerer companions to assist you." He nodded his head toward Elyssa. "Keep her far from you if you truly care about her."
"My girlfriend is pretty badass," I said, "but those things knocked her out first. Otherwise she would've kicked their gray butts back to wherever they came from and you could've hung around on the roof eating corndogs or whatever the heck you were doing up there." I glanced back at the bodies for a moment and turned around in time to see a patch of black cloak as it vanished atop the roof of the three-story building. "Come back and visit any time," I shouted after him before cursing soundly under my breath.
Guardian angel? Check. Crazy insane, highly unstable guardian angel? Double-check. But aside from knowing he was built like a brick outhouse I didn't know a thing about who he really was or who he was working for. I had a feeling it all boiled down to stupid Foreseeance 4311, though. I checked Elyssa's pulse. It beat strongly, but she wasn't stirring. I locked her arm over my neck and shoulder and struggled to my feet. Carrying the dead weight of a human was tough without supernatural strength, and Elyssa had a robust figure packed with dense muscle.
"I help," said a female voice behind me.
I yelped and almost dropped Elyssa, staggering backwards and into the wall in an attempt to keep my balance.
The pretty young girl from the forest stood there, except this time she wasn't as naked. A simple green dress covered her tender bits down to about mid-thigh. From there down, her feet and legs remained bare and white dust covered her toes.
"Who are you?" I asked for probably the thousandth time that day.
She smiled, displaying pearly white teeth and walked to me, her hands touching my face and looking into my eyes like I was a wondrous thing to behold. "I help." Her voice was sweet and, if I had to use a ten-dollar word to describe it, mellifluous. For some reason, I trusted her without question. In my gut I knew she wasn't going to whip out a knife and disembowel me.
"Thanks."
The girl positioned herself on Elyssa's other side. Where Elyssa was tall, fair-skinned, and muscular, this girl was short, petite, and olive-toned. But she had no problems holding up my girlfriend. If anything, she had an easier time of it than I did even if Elyssa's feet were dragging.
I turned to head back to the street but the girl shook her head and pointed toward the sharp turn in the alley ahead. Right at the door the gray men had emerged from.
"You want to go to the park?"
She nodded.
So we headed on, though my stomach knotted and twisted at the thought of another group of golem dudes attacking us. As we passed the last of the gray men's bodies, I noticed it was dissolving into a puddle of gray sludge, leaving behind nothing but the suit. From the little contact I'd had with the things, the flesh had felt real, though it was hard to remember now in the fading heat of battle. The one whose head I'd ripped off had felt flesh-like, but the way the head had popped off like a doll made me shudder in revulsion. Vamplings. Hellhounds. Golems. Seemed there was no end to the kinds of monsters out to kill or capture me.
"Where do you come from?" I asked the girl.
She smiled shyly but said nothing.
"Lovely," I muttered. "Well, at least you're nicer than mystery man."
She beamed at me.
After a couple more turns we reached a large marble-paved roundabout bordered by five-story buildings, curved and molded in designs that didn't seem physically possible. These buildings looked modern—no, futuristic—and were spotless. One building was stark white with stainless balconies and appeared to be made from shiny glowing plastic. Another was a checkered black reminding me of carbon fiber. I felt my pie hole hanging open as the woman and I carried Elyssa through a sprawling park, green and lush, in the middle of the roundabout.
Hardwood trees similar to maples towered above the glade while well-manicured hedges bloomed with flowers of more colors than the paint section of a hardware store. We moved Elyssa to a bench made of the checkered black material and set her down. I remained standing and gaped at the amazing scenery. The buildings looked like apartments, each one of unearthly design, as if a series of architects had tried to outdo the last one. Ordinary items like bicycles and flower pots on the balconies added a surreal touch. Designs like this were the last thing I expected after touring the old-world areas.
On the opposite side of the park, I saw a blue sign proclaiming MagicSoft affixed to a building made from what appeared to be liquid glass. People walked up shimmering stairs and beneath an arching entrance. Just across from it was a stark white sign with an orange on it, identical to the ones I'd seen on Meghan and Smith's tablet computers. I sighed in relief, happy to finally be in the right area.
"You like?" the girl asked, startling me from my reverie.
I nodded. "Very much."
She smiled—it seemed like the thing she did most. And she did it very well.
I looked at her dark olive skin, the slight slant to her eyes and wondered where she was from. Maybe she didn't speak much English. At least one thing was sure. "You're not a woodlander are you?"
Her large eyes blinked and she tilted her head slightly to the side.
"You know, like a wood nymph."
She shook her head. "No."
Her accent wasn't what I wou
ld consider Asian, but she definitely had some kind of a weird lilt to her speech.
Elyssa groaned. The girl looked at her. Her smile faltered and flattened. She looked at me and the smile returned, lighting her features with happiness. A sweet sigh escaped her lips. "I go." She pecked a kiss on my nose and giggled, covering her mouth with a hand like a shy teenybopper on the first date. With that, she bolted away in a flash, vanishing into the same alley mouth we'd just come from. I gaped for a moment until Elyssa groaned again.
I pressed my hands to her cheeks, her forehead. "Sweetie? Can you hear me? Are you okay?"
One eyelid fluttered open followed by the next. "Huh? What?" She bolted upright, hands going for the knives that were no longer in their sheaths. I'd left them embedded in the backs of a couple of golems.
"It's okay. You're safe."
Elyssa rose from the bench, staggered and pressed a hand to her head with a wince. "What did they hit me with?"
"No idea." I told her about the fight and the guardian angel mystery man.
"Did he have any tattoos or scars? Rings? Other jewelry or markings?"
"No, not that I could see. But his voice sounded weird. Like it was deeper than a normal voice."
"Disguised?"
I shrugged. "It didn't sound normal. Kind of reminded me of this toy android mask I used to have that made my voice sound like a nuclear space robot."
"Uh, okay." The corner of her lip lifted in a half grin.
"He was ripped. Huge arms and shoulders, a little taller than me—well, half a head or so—and he knew how to handle a sword. Those golems were inhumanly fast but they couldn't touch him."
She frowned, furrowed her brow. "There are a lot of blade masters in the Overworld, so that doesn't narrow it down much."
"What's the deal with swords anyway? What's to stop someone from whipping out an automatic rifle and blowing away a guy with a blade?"
She flicked a hand in disgust. "Guns are considered cowardly weapons."
"So? I'll bet there are plenty of bad dudes who don't give a crap about honor when it comes to fighting."
"There are also plenty of sorcerers who don't need guns," she said, rubbing her eyes and blinking them. "I've fought them as well and I'll tell you something: I'd rather face someone with a gun."
"I'd rather go without all the bloodshed. I'm a peacenik."
She laughed. "This coming from the guy who plays Kings and Castles."
"Yeah, but that's make-believe murder and mayhem."
Elyssa glanced at the MagicSoft sign and motioned toward it with her head. "Want to continue this little quest or go home?"
I was scared, no doubt about it. The golems had shattered any pretense of a pleasant outing, but what had I expected? I was trying to meet with the guy hired to kill my father. He might very well kill me himself.
"Let's do this."
She nodded and we walked across the park and sat on the bench facing the MagicSoft sign. A line of people wearing everything from jeans to suits and ties, to long flowing sorcerer robes stretched around the front of the store and vanished around the corner. The inside of the store, clearly visible through the odd liquid glass material making up the walls of the building, was packed. Several very tired-looking sorcerers stood behind a shiny metallic counter, talking to people and taking money. A poster on one of the windows showed a smiling man in fancy black robes holding a laptop computer in one hand. He wore thick rimmed square glasses reminding me of Smith a little bit, though this guy looked older.
Across the road was a very similar scene aside from the orange on the sign and the glowing white material of the building. The line of people waiting there looked very much like the one at MagicSoft. Every so often one of the people in the Orange line shouted an insult at someone in the MagicSoft line. Some of the banter was playful; some of it was downright mean.
Orange's posters featured a thin balding man with a goatee holding various devices. A tagline on the poster read: Now you can compare Apples to Oranges!
"What the freak is going on there?"
Elyssa raised an eyebrow and shrugged. "Must be some new release I guess. Orange and MagicSoft are super-competitive and their tablets and smartphones are pretty popular."
"Good lord. I guess there's an Overworld equivalent for everything."
She took my hand and squeezed it. "I know it must all seem crazy to you. I grew up in this world so it's not such a big deal to me. I've been here tons of times, some for shopping and having a fun day out with my mom." Her eyes grew distant and welled with emotion. "But I guess that's done now." She pressed a hand over her eyes and took a deep breath.
I hugged her. "It'll be okay, babe. We'll work this out somehow."
She nodded and kissed me on the cheek but I noticed her eyes were already dry and she'd forced her face back to neutrality. "Yeah. Maybe pigs will fly, too."
I chuckled. "Hey, I'll bet Shelton could make it happen."
A smile broke through her steadfast façade. "I'd like to see that."
I opened the cardboard box and sniffed the angel biscuit again before pinching off a piece and nibbling it. It tasted like roasted almonds. "Hey, this thing isn't half bad."
Elyssa took a bit herself and nodded. "Nutty."
"Well, it is Mr. Nutter's Angel Biscuit." I nodded at the posters on the MagicSoft and Orange windows. "Who are the guys in the posters?"
"That's Thaddeus Crumble, the guy who founded MagicSoft, and he," she said, nodding at the Orange poster, "is Enias Glover, founder of Orange. They used to be partners at one point before splitting up to do their own thing."
I gestured at the MagicSoft poster. "I'll bet he got a few wedgies in school."
"Even if he did, I'm sure he's more than made up for it," Elyssa said. "He's one of the richest people in the Overworld and that's saying something considering how many centuries some of the older members have had to collect their fortunes."
"He still looks like a nerd. Especially with those square glasses."
"I think the glasses are rather stylish," said someone with a haughty British accent from behind us.
I twisted so quickly in the bench I fell off it and onto my butt. Elyssa, meanwhile, sprang away from the voice, her hands held in a fighting pose.
"Did I startle you?" asked the very short man standing several feet back from the bench. His voice was much deeper than I would have expected from someone so short—he barely reached up to Elyssa's waist. But he wore a dark green suit with a silky sheen and a funny little red bowtie. He wore his auburn hair combed neatly to the side. Long sideburns stopped well short of the mutton chops Ryland had favored, and a prominent nose gave his small face far more gravitas than his tiny stature should have carried.
Just as I was about to ask who someone was for the millionth time that day, the small man smiled and said, "I am Phissilinth. If you would be so kind as to follow me, I'll show you the way."
What the hell kind of name was Phissilinth? I wanted to ask. His name was longer than he was. But my stomach clenched and folded itself into a tiny ball of anxiety when I realized this guy was going to lead me to Underborn. Elyssa seemed to realize the same thing and relaxed a bit though she still stared at the tiny man with caution.
"Don't you need to blindfold us or something?" I asked.
He chuckled. "No, no, good sir. You'd never be able to find the place I'm taking you unless we wanted you to." A wicked gleam entered his otherwise jovial eyes. "And even if you did, you'd never survive to tell of it."
Chapter 27
My legs tried to turn and carry me as far away from Phissilinth as possible, but the shame of running from him, even if he was a highly qualified midget assassin, caused my ego to revolt and prod the coward inside to go with the little man. Aside from the one crack about killing me if I ever did find their hideout, Phissilinth sounded like a very pleasant British chap. Short as he was, he didn't walk with the same waddle small folk usually did, instead keeping the limber stride of a very agile child
.
"Don't let his size fool you," Elyssa whispered as we walked behind our guide. "I get the feeling anyone who thinks he's easy prey ends up dead."
"The same thought occurred to me," I muttered. "He's probably like the British version of Yoda without the bad grammar."
"This way, please," Phissilinth said, leading us to a nondescript brown door set in one of the many alleys leading away from GrottoPark. He gripped the brass handle on the door—it was several inches above his head—and twisted it open.
After a moment of hesitation, I stepped into a small marble foyer where antique chandeliers hovered overhead and dark green-and-purple striped wallpaper covered the walls. A burgundy-carpeted stairwell led up to a small dimly-lit balcony. Elyssa stood to my side, her eyes searching every square inch of the place.
"How are we not supposed to find this place?" I asked her under my breath. "It's right off the stupid park, for goodness sake."
Phissilinth shut the door behind us and, removing an old-style skeleton key from his pocket, locked it. My ego suddenly joined hands with my cowardice and they fell like heavy jagged rocks into my midsection, weighing me down with a feeling of doom. Had he brought us here to kill us?
Elyssa looked up the stairs then back to Phissilinth who stood next to the door, counting quietly to himself.
"Well?" she asked. "Are we going to stand here all day or—"
Phissilinth held up a hand to quiet her, then slipped the skeleton key back into the lock, twisted it again. The door unlocked with a click. He opened it and my eyes bulged. Instead of seeing the alley we'd come down and the park beyond, a grim stony passageway greeted us with a belch of dank mildew-scented air. Flickering neon lights attached to the wooden support beams in the corridor bumped up the creepy factor by a bazillion.
