by TR Cameron
The warden shrugged. “We’re always in danger, I’m sure, but not much more than before. We have our fence, we have our drones, and we’re well protected underground.”
Cara tapped her chin with a finger. “And yet, something doesn’t feel quite right about all of this, does it?”
Yeah. Exactly.
Diana took her first steps toward the elevator lobby and assumed the others would follow. “We won't figure it out hanging around here. It’s time to hit the streets and see what we can find out—and to get Kayleigh working on some better surveillance patterns.” She sighed. “I guess our vacation is over, too.”
Cara laughed. “Every day is a vacation in this job, boss. Pass the sunscreen.”
Chapter Twelve
Vincente paced restlessly in front of the large windows that overlooked the warehouse below. His stomach itched where the artifact had sunk into his skin as though it somehow judged him for the failure. Summoning a portal to the World in Between had been a move planned long in advance as a way to dispose of the enemy with a minimum of fuss. The damn woman was defeated, right up until the moment the bloody troll knocked his magical second-in-command into the rift.
He snarled at the unfairness of it all. He’d lost both his seconds in one misadventure, and it was a challenge to keep their people in line. The human half proved easier to manage. The promise of riches and chaos as they continued to pursue the goals of the Remembrance sufficed to hold their interest. Factions jostled for position, but no clear frontrunner had emerged. He had reassured them that they would retrieve Marcus from his imprisonment as soon as it could be arranged.
Sarah’s followers were harder to distract and delay, so he had agreed to do something he absolutely did not want to do. Below, they prepared for the event and finalized the magical pattern on the cement floor of the space. He sighed, crossed to the safe, unlocked it, and withdrew his bracelet. He'd had the magic item for years. It was capable of generating an impenetrable shield for a short duration according to the research he’d undertaken after discovering it. Deciphering the activation phrase had taken far too much time and effort, but it had provided him with this one final backup. He hoped he wouldn’t need it but honestly feared that he would.
The wizard checked to ensure that his two wands were in place inside the sleeves of his jacket, ready to slide into his hands at the appropriate flick of the wrist. The coat was black, and the button-up shirt beneath it and the accompanying tie were the same. Even his boots and trousers matched. If today was to be his last day, he would go out in style. His low heels clicked on the steel stairs as he descended slowly while he focused his will on the task ahead.
He stopped halfway down and ran a critical eye over the circles that had been carved into the now empty floor of the space. A wide ring formed the perimeter, filled with shining white-grey metal engraved with magical runes. Inside it lay a narrower ring of an orange-tan metal engraved with similar runes. A circle was defined by crystals set into the floor at the eight points of the compass in the center. As he watched, Sarah’s followers stepped into position. Four stood in the area between the copper ring and the faceted gems, the most powerful witches and wizards of the group. The rest were positioned between the two metal rings, equally distributed around the circle.
Vincente finished his descent and strode to the center. They had used the crystals’ defenses each of the previous four nights as they sent signals into the World in Between to draw Sarah to them. Tonight would call for the ring’s full protection, as they would need to keep the portal open until he had retrieved her. It was the right thing to do for her, and it was also essential to maintain control over her followers. Loathe though he was to admit it, they comprised his power base, and he couldn’t afford to lose them.
Still, if he could have opted out, he would have done so without any qualms.
Well, without much hesitation, at least. There’s an argument to be made that I owe her something for her loyalty. Maybe.
He sighed, then rolled his neck and nodded at the people ahead of him.
Those in the silver ring raised their wands and channeled their power into a pair of shields. The outermost barrier would prevent any external magic from entering and disrupting the ceremony. The inner shield would hinder anything that made it out of the rift from escaping—provided, of course, that they were strong enough to sustain it. Those on the inside of the barriers with him would maintain the portal to the World In Between and deal with any creature from the void who broke free. That was the plan, at least.
At his next nod, the four nearest the gems focused their wands and created a thin hole in reality that revealed the chaotic middle ground that lay between Earth and Oriceran. Faces flickered in front of the translucent rift, and a hint of the nightmarish landscape was visible behind them, hidden by the mist that filled the space. Already, the ominous sense of monsters waiting immediately beyond with waving tentacles permeated the air. It was entirely likely that they knew something was coming and that a means had also been prepared to keep them on their plane of existence. Anything that came through would encounter determined resistance.
Vincente swallowed his fear.
I will not be denied. My glorious future awaits beyond this act.
He cast the spell to finish the bridge to the other world. The translucence faded into a reality with most of the color washed out of it, rendered in grey and sickly crimson. His forces created barriers to each side, which allowed him to step through and narrow the angle the denizens of the hellscape could use to attack him. Formless beings screamed but he ignored them. Sound was nothing. Hideous creatures danced in the distance, promising torment and demonstrating their prowess, but he ignored them as well. Their threats were nothing. Only his purpose and the imminent perils to it mattered.
The expected and feared tentacles materialized and attacked from every vector as two monsters from nightmare appeared on either side. Sharp teeth and spines complemented the barbs on the whips that lashed at him. A calm spell and gesture protected him from their impact, and another drove them screeching away with a bright beam of light. The power scattered the less dire beasts that accompanied them.
He sensed Sarah before she was close enough to see. The monsters seemed attracted to her living presence the way a plant reached toward the sun. He knew she approached from the right and cast his own wall before him, calling for her followers to create a gap for her to use. His vision cleared in that direction as they obeyed and he saw her in the middle distance, running headlong toward them. Her garments were ripped and shredded, her hair wild and unkempt, and there was a decided limp in her left leg that doubtless caused her pain with every step of her lurching sprint.
Behind her ran hordes of the trapped, those whose deeds in the real world were so dire that they wound up here by one mechanism or another. They lived a half-life at best, as the place drained the vitality from them.
If I had to choose this or Trevilsom, I’d choose the prison.
A winged creature attacked from above, and he barely managed to raise his second wand to deflect it, as focused as he was on holding the enemy at bay until she arrived.
His foes on the ground took advantage of this moment of distraction and threw themselves into the gap between him and the woman he was there to rescue. He growled defiance, called upon the artifact within, and summoned his own shadow tentacles to eliminate the monsters that threatened her. The appendages seemed extraordinarily powerful, unlike the rest of his magic which pulled vital energy from him with each spell. They stretched and swayed and cleared the way for the fleeing witch before the enemies could complete their blockade.
In the next moment, she was through. Her momentum didn’t stop and she continued to run, and Vincente threw himself after her. One of her followers had disobeyed instructions and entered behind him, doubtless seeking to distinguish himself to her with his bravery. It was a foolish sentiment. The man was captured by a swarm of tentacles and dragged beyond hope of assis
tance. Vincente had neither the time nor the inclination to intervene. He barely had the time slide through the rift himself after the foolish acolyte’s supporting power drained from the spell that maintained the portal.
The aperture collapsed as he crossed the threshold. A severed tentacle flopped behind him until a mage in the inner ring vaporized it with a venomous incantation. Sarah crumpled on the floor, her face down, huddled inside herself. The air of menace that radiated from her dissuaded anyone who might have offered assistance from approaching.
Vincente pushed slowly to his feet and checked to make sure the portal had fully closed. He poked at the charred tentacle with a toe, then pointed at those around them and indicated they should depart. Some did so with alacrity. Others clearly resented the dismissal, but they all complied. Small sounds between whimpers and laughter emerged from beneath Sarah's dark hair. He was prepared to stand there for as long as she needed to regain herself and definitely was neither brave nor foolish enough to attempt to brace her before she was ready.
She finally shuffled first to her hands and knees, then stood with an awkward, stiff struggle. Her shoulders indicated her heavy breathing as she kept her back to her superior while she pieced her composure together. Finally, she straightened with an obvious effort and ran her fingers through the rat’s nest of hair atop her head. She succeeded in pushing it out of her face, but it remained knotted and disheveled when she turned. Vincente steeled himself.
It was good that he had. Her skin was ashen as if her stay in that hellscape had scoured the color away. Three partially healed diagonal wounds covered each cheek and appeared to be the right size to have come from her own nails. Her eyes showed the greatest change, however. What had once been sarcastic mirth and zealous devotion had frozen into the harsh gaze of a survivor, filled with cruelty and rimmed by madness. She grinned and displayed several broken teeth. Her voice rasped accusingly. “You took your time, didn’t you?”
He flinched at the sound but forced steel into his spine. “Recovery took time. Finding you took time. Drawing you took time. We worked as quickly as we could.”
Once it became obvious that you were still needed, anyway.
Her grin widened, and he barely suppressed an involuntary shudder.
Has she developed telepathy as well?
Vincente actually stumbled over his words in his haste to continue. “I’m sorry for the loss of your follower.” He gestured toward where the rift had been.
She rubbed her hands slowly down her arms and on to smooth what remained of her long dress. “No matter. He served his purpose, and in doing so, served my purpose. Now, I am free to bring Rhazdon’s vision to life, to make the humans kneel or die.” The way she licked her teeth so openly indicated exactly how much she desired the latter. When she’d finished feasting on that thought, she turned her gaze on him. The cruelty and madness came to a sharpened focus as her stare bored into him. “You will secure a wand for me. And an artifact, as you promised.”
Shit. I’d hoped she’d forgotten about that.
He nodded but didn’t trust himself to speak. His feet shifted and his body swayed, then froze as the stare became a glare. She clearly didn’t want to show any signs of weakness. He waited in silence as she finished primping herself. The various actions and movements proved awkward and somehow sensual. Then again, perhaps it was the danger that attracted him. He’d always made bad decisions about women in his personal life.
She noticed his study and smiled at him from under the hair that had slipped past her ear as she finished adjusting her clothes. “Perhaps, when the humans are brought to heel, there will be time for other…diversions.”
Vincente wondered for a brief moment if it would be better for everyone concerned if she was no longer counted among the living. Sarah grinned and raised an eyebrow as if she again listened in on his thoughts. After a small shrug, she turned and stalked out of the front door of the warehouse without another word. Her destination was unknown, but she would be back. That much was certain.
He stared at where she’d been for a protracted time after she’d left. Two things were clear. First, he would need to keep his human followers far, far away from his magical lieutenant and her people lest they be killed out of hand. Second, the odds that he would survive a battle with her were even at best—and probably worse—which meant he needed to accede to her wishes as long as they didn’t stop his progress toward his own goals.
He sighed and shook his head as he began his ascent to the office.
I guess I’d better arrange that artifact for her.
Chapter Thirteen
Rath waited while the flood of students passed through the doorway and tapped Max to slip inside before it closed. The classroom was located in a different building a couple of streets away from the tower that held Professor Stanley’s office. This structure was smaller, far less interesting, and would have been a good candidate for something to blow up in an action movie, given how out of date it looked.
The classroom itself was wonderful, with a huge display mounted on the front wall. Tables sat on risers that ascended to the back of the room. Charlotte had told him he might be most comfortable up there, so he directed Max to the stairs. They took position in the rear corner, with the troll perched on a nearby table while the Borzoi rested beneath it.
Students wandered in over the next ten minutes with drowsy expressions. Each chose their seating with some form of shared understanding of location that Rath wasn’t privy to. The activity started off with tiny scatterings of one and two. Over time, more people entered to connect the separate groups until almost every seat was filled. Eventually, a man in an oversized hoodie took a seat at Rath’s table.
“Hello, little dude,” he greeted cheerfully, laid his head on the table, and started snoring a few seconds later.
Professor Charlotte Stanley swept into the room with a dramatic swirl of her blue skirt. She typed something into the computer at the front. Her cardigan matched the skirt with a white blouse and silver necklace under the sweater. The lights dimmed, and an image appeared on the screen portraying a painting of a magical battle. Her soft voice issued from the speakers mounted on the walls.
“This work commemorates the first of two seemingly final battles against Rhazdon and, at the time, her followers.”
She zoomed in on a part of the image. “Here you can see members of the royal family commanding the armies opposing the rebels.” Rath heard a distinct click and watched as the image blurred, then focused on a different position. “And here you can see Rhazdon’s disciples. What’s notable about them?”
A short silence threatened to become a long one before a small woman with dark hair in the front row raised her hand. Charlotte nodded at her. The student seemed to ask rather than to state her suggestion. “There are multiple different beings in that group.”
The professor smiled at her. “Exactly, Theresa. Thank you.” She turned to face the rest of the room. “Rhazdon shared a simple message—that power belonged in everyone’s hands, not only in those who ruled by the good fortune of high birth. It resonated with many and crossed most of the traditional lines that foment unrest—species, gender, and all the other ways we tend to label ourselves.”
She raised her arms toward her audience. “You’ve read about this already. You tell me. Who was in the right?”
A spirited discussion ensued among the students, moderated by well-timed comments from the professor. It wove through the many issues involved in the situation—power, class, race, gender, and more. The opinions seemed fragmented, each advocating for the particular piece of the puzzle that most resonated with them.
Just like how it probably was back then, Rath thought. People seeing that which was closest to them and not necessarily the whole picture. Perfect pawns for those with broader vision.
Eventually, the student next to him, who had woken up and paid an impressive amount of attention during the class, turned to him and spoke loudly enough for the room to
hear. “Hey, little dude, what do you think? Was the royal family wrong to hang onto power the way they did?”
The troll shrugged as the class turned their collective gaze on him for the first time. Many were surprised by their unexpected guest. Charlotte smiled and stalked up the aisle to stand beside him. She held her clip microphone out on its cord so he could speak into it.
“Don’t really know. Wasn’t there. But with great power comes great responsibility. Maybe everyone forgot that.”
There were murmurs of assent and some smirks mingled with applause for the reference. Charlotte smiled at him, and his relaxed companion held a hand out for a high five. The class moved quickly on to further discussion of the history around Rhazdon’s group. Rath had other things to ponder.
What responsibility does the Remembrance think it has? To who? Against who? Everyone?
He was more a live-in-the-moment kind of troll than a far-thinking one, but the potential answers to those questions left him feeling decidedly uncomfortable.
After class ended, he and Max bounded out of the room and ran to the teahouse where they’d promised to meet Professor Stanley. They slid through the door as others departed, as usual, and had a table of their own by the time she arrived. She went to the counter first and finally joined them, bearing cups for each of her guests. Rath grew to his three-foot size in order to drink it. When the first bubble of tapioca burst in his mouth, he realized why Charlotte liked it so much and gave her a happy grin. “Is good.”
She nodded and took a long sip of her own before she set a bowl of water down for Max. “It is. So, did you enjoy the class today?”
He shrugged. “Many people. Many ideas. Hard to come together.”
Charlotte leaned back and sighed. “You can say that again, my friend. And if it’s challenging in the classroom—where at least we all have the shared mission of learning—how much harder is it out in the world? Very, I would say.” He nodded in agreement and she leaned forward again. “Are you aware of the motives behind the attack on the prison? There have been whispers that those responsible are new followers of Rhazdon.”
