by J. L. Ray
They started down the hallway, occasionally smiling in disbelief at each other from the relief of finally getting free of the threat of imminent danger to Bogart. Suddenly they heard a commotion ahead of them.
“What are you doing, Strawberry lady? Mommy told me those are too dangerous to play with and that I should wait until I’m a big boy to try that again.”
Pernella shot a horrified look at Tooley. “Is your girl opening a portal? Right here in the station?”
Tooley ran and she darted after him. The sight they came upon turned their blood cold.
“Caridwen!” Pernella growled and threw up her hands to gather power. Unfortunately, in Mundania, she gathered a single small flame instead of a roaring ball of fire. The flame fizzled out as she flung it at the witch standing on the edge of an illegal portal open right in the middle of the SCIB hallway.
Caridwen had dropped the body that she had ridden to death and now hovered in spectral form while the remains of Crystal Winkowski lay on the floor a few feet from the portal, the stink of necrotic flesh already rising from the corpse, though it seemed to be trying to drag itself toward the two Beings standing in the hallway. Crystal had been dead for hours, burnt out from the use Caridwen had put her through. But Caridwen couldn’t leave that body without another Natty to hag-ride, and she hadn’t wanted to waste that much power for what she assumed would be a short time. All she needed to do was wait for Berry to bring Tony to her to open the portal, so she had kept the body despite the drawback of quickly rotting flesh and had forced Glinda to hide her on the premises. Glinda had hoped Berry would betray Caridwen, but she herself could not, not if she wanted to live another day. Unfortunately, Berry had been pressed to complete her compulsion.
Berry stood next to the portal, the unconscious body of her sister slung over her shoulder. Bogey had come around the corner and seen them just as Berry was about to join Caridwen at the opening to the Fairie Realm. She turned around and saw Bogey and moaned. Then Tooley and Pernella came flying around the corner and for a moment, she thought she might be saved from an action that would forever damn her in the eyes of her newfound family.
What happened next proved to her that no matter how bad things were, they could always get worse. When Pernella threw her tiny flame, Caridwen’s spectral form absorbed it and the little bit of magic it held. She brightened and almost formed corporally. Her grinning face, transparent enough to suggest Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire cat, turned from Bogey to her old enemy Pernella.
“My, my, Nel, you have been busy, haven’t you, dear?” she flicked a finger at Bogey, and drawing on the power of Fairie bleeding through the portal, she dragged him forward to the edge by the twins. “Well, I’m a bit busy myself, and I could use a little help, so I think I’ll borrow your boy for a while, shall I?” Her form drifted over to the twins. “Come along, Adele. We have an apocalypse to prepare.”
Berry turned pleading eyes to Tooley and Pernella and opened her mouth in a scream. Then all four figures vanished through the roiling opening, the only sound a fading yell from Bogey, “Mommmmmmy...”
A few minutes later, Pernella’s frantic screams for help attracted a nearby officer. After a few minutes of wild conversation with Pernella, the officer cuffed the feebly moving remains of Crystal Winkowski to a nearby door, and then ran for Azeem, Phil, and Cal. Tooley had collapsed to his knees on the floor as he watched his brother and Berry disappear, and his mother had grabbed him as he sank. When the others found them, Tooley lay curled up in his mother’s arms while she stared at the spot where Caridwen had disappeared, taking her baby and the twin dollies. Her red-rimmed eyes burned with anger.
“What’s going on?” Cal asked. “Where is everyone?” He walked over to the twitching corpse and stared at it, shaking his head. “Damn. That’s just wrong.”
Phil walked over to the two on the floor. “Where is Tony?” he demanded.
Pernella looked up at him from the floor where she’d dropped to grab Tooley when the portal closed. “That’s the 64,000 dollar question, now, ain’t it, demon? And I hope you’re ready to answer it, cause that bitch Caridwen just hijacked my baby boy, your girl, and Tooley’s...well, whatever she is.” Tooley, who had been crying into her lap as he hadn’t since his baby days, sat up abruptly.
“She is my nothing!” he shouted. “She has played us all for fools. She must have planned this all along!”
“What do you mean?” Cal asked. “That’s the witch that made the deal with Tony’s ancestor, right? So she could grab her twin.”
“Yes, and her twin is still a tool of Caridwen,” Tooley said grimly. “Bringing Berry over to Mundania wasn’t a happy accident for the Newmans. It was deliberate. Caridwen must have needed her to kidnap her sister in the station. It is easier to open illegal portals here because a legal one exists.” He looked over at the lieutenant, guilt in his face. “I should have told you that.” He took a deep breath and dashed the tears away from his face. “Berry...Adele,” he emphasized the name she had hated, “has played us all for fools, and all to steal Tony away as well.”
Phil had gone completely still as the ramifications occurred to him. He turned to Azeem.
“We have to get them back.”
“I understand, old friend. We will,” Azeem tried to calm Mephistopheles.
He brushed off Azeem’s attempts at calming him down. “I do not think that you understand at all. The Great Divide…” he said flatly, those simple words causing everyone in the hallway to freeze.
Azeem twitched and his face tightened. “What about it?”
“I think that Caridwen has a plan and if we do not get the twins back here, to Mundania, that the Divide will be filled and the Realms combined.”
Tooley stood up, ashamed of his breakdown but past it. “But...but...that can’t happen, can it? They are the antithesis of each other! They repel each other! That’s why the portals hurt!”
“Oh, it can happen, under the right circumstances.” Phil’s voice was cold and deadly. “Calvin. The third riddle. I am an idiot. I did not even see it.”
Pernella folded her arms. “Say, what third riddle, demon? What’s the deal?”
Phil recited it. “A life of shame, a life of grief, a soul on fire, underneath. The one to heal, the one to save, the both to keep out of a grave. If proof she needs, and proof she gets, your love will shine with no regrets, but magic steals and magic rules, and proof is hard and makes us fools.” He sighed. “I should have realized that Naamah’s riddle refers to the twins of legend.”
“Don’t blame yourself. I would have missed the connection as well.” Azeem thought for a minute, “It does explain Tony’s convulsions, her proof. It wasn’t just her connection to her twin that forced her latent power. It was her connection to far more power than she should be able to manifest, especially here.”
Cal frowned in confusion. “Whatdya mean, Lieutenant?”
“The twins of the prophecy—” he began but Cal’s eyes bugged out as he realized what the two were talking about and Azeem nodded.
Phil gripped Azeem’s shoulder and repeated, “We have to get them back!” Then he looked at Tooley. “Do not be so quick to condemn your friend, boy-witch. She is undoubtedly spelled and cannot fight the compulsion.”
Tooley shook his head, but his heart traitor heart lightened a bit.
Phil looked at Cal. “We’ll need Naamah.”
“Copy that!” Cal turned and trotted down the hall, an ogre on a mission.
Tony woke in darkness, pain flooding her body, the medallion a warm weight under her shirt that felt hotter than it should. She was convulsing, as she had when she first sensed her sister. She felt a hand on her arm, making its way up to her head and then pulling her head into a lap. She knew, as if she had been with Berry her whole life, that it was her twin’s lap that her head lay in. After a moment, the convulsions stopped.
When Tony gathered some strength to talk, she asked her sister through chapped lips, “Where? Where...are..
.we?” It was hard to get the words out and she realized that she must have been unconscious for a while.
“Oh, Tony, I am so sorry.” Tony heard a little sob come out of her sister’s mouth, somewhere above her head. “We are in Hell.”
