by Joshua King
“Tell me anything else you can think of about the church,” Ty said. “Did it look familiar to you at all? Remember, Solan City is just a mirror of New York. The buildings are the same. Is there anything you noticed about where Ashe is that you've seen back in New York?”
I tried to think of something specific about the space that would give me some clue as to which church it might be. Seeing only the inside made it harder to pinpoint.
“I'm not exactly one to frequent churches,” I said.
“But you've seen them,” Ty said. “You've noticed them when going around the city.”
I nodded.
“I have,” I said. “When I was in high school, my history teacher brought us on what he called a field trip, and what we all knew was just an excuse to walk around the city and ramble because he didn't feel like being in the classroom that day. Not that we minded. It was way better than sitting at desks and listening to him ramble. We still had to listen to him ramble, but at least we were outdoors and could look at things other than the backs of people's heads. While we were walking, he started pointing out all the churches. He told us a long time ago if a place wanted to be considered a town, it had to have three things. A jail, a tavern, and a church.”
“Is that actually true?” Ty asked.
“I don't know. It sounded like he made it up. But it's pretty telling if it is. The one that really stuck with me was the church. If that really was the case, and a place had to have a church in order to be considered a real town, that was a pretty major function. It made me feel like each of the churches was anchoring the area around it and starting its own tiny town. I really started to notice them after that. They stood out to me for how they seemed to exist both as a part of the world around them, and away from it at the same time.”
“Just like the Underworld,” Ty said.
I nodded. “Where Ashe is isn't a fluke. The Dragon didn't just take her there because it was convenient.”
“What do you mean?” Ty asked.
“There are a lot of churches and temples throughout Solan City, just like in New York, right?”
“Yes. Like I said, the buildings are the same,” he said.
“But, and correct me if I'm wrong, there probably isn't exactly a thriving religious community? At least not the same types of religion?”
“There are some,” Ty said. “But not many. The different species all tend to have their own lore and histories.”
I nodded.
“So, what are the buildings used for?” I asked.
“Most have been converted into different things. Some are hotels or clubs. Some are stores. There are even a few that were turned into houses. A lot of them are just abandoned.”
“That's what we're looking for,” I said.
“Why do you say that?” he asked.
“There was a crest on the altar.”
“A dragon with a moon in its claws,” Ty said.
“How did you know?”
“I told you, I've had dealings with the Dragon before. That's their symbol.”
“And it was carved into the altar,” I repeated. “The Dragon is a secretive organization, right? They literally travel by shadow.”
“Right.”
“Then they wouldn't want anyone to know where they're doing their work. If they're going to have something so blatant as their crest carved into the middle of the floor, they must feel confident people won't be able to stumble across it. They’ll want a building that isn’t frequently used.”
“A church.”
“That everyone thinks is abandoned,” I add. “No one will think twice about a church building that isn't used. But it has to be one big enough to conceal the areas they actually use. They'd want it to look abandoned inside, too. Just in case someone decided to make a visit, they'd want it to seem like it wasn't being used. There has to be enough space for them to have one section be empty, and another big enough for their purposes. Wherever it is, she's being guarded by mages and only has until sunrise to be rescued.”
“Mages?” Ty asked.
“That's what Malakan told me. He said she was being guarded by just a few mages who don't think anyone will find them, and who believe they are too strong to be defeated.”
Ty thought for a few seconds, then made a sharp turn.
“I think I might know where she is.”
28
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“You said there are mages guarding Ashe.”
“Right.”
“Even the Dragon isn't so arrogant to just have a group of mages in the middle of the city. Especially a group of mages willing to imprison a vampire. Things might not be as violent and volatile as they were years ago, but people haven't forgotten. The tensions between the vampires and the warlocks are intense. There are still places in the city where people have been dragged out of their homes and killed in the middle of the street just because they were suspected of being warlock sympathizers. It's brutal and unpredictable. Most people won't even consider touching Aurora or Darien because of their power, so they'll mutter rumors about Malakan, and not do anything. Everybody else, though, is fair game.”
“The Dragon didn't seem afraid of anything when they had me in that room,” I told him. “They said that they exist in spite of the vampire rule.”
Ty shook his head.
“They can say that all they want. It doesn't change reality, and that is that anytime there's a gathering of warlocks in the city, even for a short time, it draws attention and causes waves of violence. That's exactly what they wouldn't want if they were trying to keep their organization, and the place where they meet, protected. Just like the shadows themselves, the Dragon is always there, but often go unnoticed. People encounter the Dragon and lesser members of Lunaris all the time and never know. Of everyone who went into The Foundry last night, you are likely the only one who even noticed that door, much less considered going through it. The people on the other side the second time we went in got in there through another entrance from the main dance floor. What Aurora is trying to figure out about you, what makes you so different, is what drew you there. You were supposed to find the door, and you were supposed to be transported into the meeting room by the Dragon. It was all intentional.”
“What does that have to do with where the church is?”
“They would want to establish their main meeting place somewhere the mages could easily access. It would have to be somewhere near the outskirts of the city, but in an area where unusual amounts of people coming and going wouldn’t draw unwanted attention.”
“They’re warlocks,” I said. “Why don't they just snap themselves to wherever they want to go?”
“Snap themselves?” Ty asked.
I nodded and snapped my fingers.
“Snap themselves. Show up wherever they want to go in an instant?”
“It doesn't work that way,” Ty said. “Some have the ability to move instantly short distances, but that's more of a fighting tactic than a traveling one. The mages taught the Dragon to use magic to travel through the shadows, but they still have to travel. They still have to get to the location. There's a church near the edge of the city that has been abandoned for more than a century. The last time it was used was for its original purpose. Eventually, the congregation died out or moved on. The building has been exactly the way they left it ever since, including the lock on the front door.”
“They locked it?”
Ty nodded.
“Chained it, in fact. The last person of the congregation to leave, the pastor, according to the story, was devastated when he closed the doors for the last time. He loved the church and the people who had gone there, and it upset him deeply to have to walk away from it. Obviously, being familiar with Solan City, he knew people would likely come along and want to get inside and wreak havoc or try to turn it into something else. He didn't want that to happen, so he put heavy chains around the front door and locked it with an enchanted lock. It's
supposed to keep anyone out who doesn't have the right to be there.”
“Does it?” I asked.
Ty made another turn and I felt the car bump. I looked up and realized we'd left the main part of the city and were now in the outskirts. A large, white stone building rose up ahead of us and Ty turned into an overgrown parking lot. He stopped the car near a small porch that was gradually being reclaimed by vines and grass.
“Let's find out,” he said.
We got out of the car and ran directly for the crumbling front steps. At the top of the steps there were two huge wooden doors, with crosses embossed in the center of each. Just like Ty had said, a heavy chain was looped between the handles of the doors to hold them together. In the center hung a huge lock. I reached forward and took the lock into my hands.
“It's not old,” I said.
“What do you mean?” Ty asked.
“The lock. It isn’t old. You said the congregation who used this church abandoned it many years ago, but this lock couldn't have been put on that long ago. It looks old, but I think the rust and dents were put there on purpose.”
“Why would you say that?”
“When I got hurt and had to wrap my head around the fact that I was not going to have a football career, I did a lot of jobs. Some of them I'm not terribly proud of. One I actually didn't mind was being a locksmith. It didn't last terribly long, but something I did learn while I was working for the company was the difference between the types of locks. You'd be surprised at just how many there actually are, and the little details that set them apart from each other.”
“As fascinating as that all sounds, you’re going to want to get to the point soon,” Ty said.
“Sorry,” I said. “The point is, I learned how to tell the difference between locks made a hundred years ago versus locks made a few decades ago versus locks made just recently. It's not always as obvious as people would think it is. This lock looks really old, and somebody went to some serious effort to bang the hell out of it and make it look like it's been on these chains nonstop for years, but it hasn't been. It's probably been made within the last few years.”
Ty was staring at me like he couldn't figure out how to process what I had just said.
He took the lock from my hand and tugged hard on the chain. It didn't move.
“So, what does it mean? The lock isn't actually as old as it looks. Why would someone go to all of that trouble?”
“To make it look like no one uses the building. If the parking lot looks like a jungle and the lock on the door is old and rusted, anybody walking up to this building is just going to assume it's an abandoned church. It keeps whatever's inside safe. We need to get in there and figure out what that is.”
Ty examined the lock and chains again. He pulled on them, trying to break them.
“What did your locksmith experience teach you about enchanted locks?” he asked.
“Absolutely nothing,” I said. “What have you got?”
He shook his head.
“I don't know. It doesn't look any different than any other lock, and I haven't seen anything that tells me it's protected by magic. I think by now it would have responded to us in some way.”
“It doesn't matter. We're wasting time. We need to get inside the building now.”
The doors were obviously solid, heavy wood. We weren't going to be able to kick them down. We had to find a different way to get into the building. I ran around the side , scanning the stone walls to try to find any breach that might let me in. There weren't even any windows within reach that weren't sealed over.
“What about the stained glass?” Ty asked, on the same train of thought as I was.
I stepped back from the building and looked up, shaking my head.
“In the vision, it looked like the windows were close to the ground because they were floor to ceiling, but they're not. They're at least two floors up.”
“Could this be the wrong church? I really thought this was it, but if it doesn't fit with what you saw, and if what I've heard about the magic protecting it is wrong…”
I made an angry sound. If Ashe was inside that building, I was too close to just give up. If we were wrong, and this wasn't the church, we were back at the beginning, and the chances of us finding her were cut to almost nothing. Either way, she was clinging to life, and every minute we couldn't get to her was another minute closer to the sun coming up and her dying. The moon was providing just enough light for us to see the doors and lock and the sealed windows, but it was shadowy and dark around the corners of the building. It made it harder to see anything that might get us in.
“I'm trying, Ashe,” I thought. “I'm trying to get to you.”
“Help me.” It was so faint at first, I didn't know whether I had actually heard the words in my mind, or if I was imagining things. “Find me.”
It was Ashe. I could hear her thoughts. I had connected in with her, and she was reaching out to me from wherever she was. It gave me a boost, filling me with new energy and urgency. She was alive and calling out for me.
“Did you see where they brought you?” I asked. “Is it a church?”
“Yes. On the outskirts of the city. Please hurry.”
“She's in there,” I told Ty. “I know she is. This is the place.”
“How do you know?”
“I can hear her,” I said.
He tilted his head closer to the building, as if straining to listen.
“I don't hear her,” he said.
“No,” I said. “I don't hear her voice. Not like that.”
I realized I hadn't explained this connection to anyone but Ashe. I remembered her telling me it wasn't a normal ability for a vampire, and I wondered how Ty might react. At that point, though, it didn't matter.
“What do you mean you don't hear her voice like that? How can you hear her?”
“I don't hear her with my ears,” I said. I was up against the wall, running my hands across the stones. Maybe one of them would be out of place, or there was a hidden door I would be able to find if only I could feel the edge. “I can hear her thoughts.”
Ty fell silent. Several beats passed while I continued to examine the wall. Finally, I turned around to look at him. He was staring at me with an expression on his face that blended confusion, disbelief, and questions.
“When did you find out you could do that?” he asked.
“Yesterday,” I said. “I thought she was saying something, and it turned out she was thinking it. Neither of us realized she can hear me too. I was just thinking that I was trying to find her, and she called back to me. She saw where they took her. She's here.”
“We can't get inside,” I directed at Ashe.
It felt so strange trying to communicate with her this way. I hadn't yet figured out how to hear her thoughts or talk to her silently on purpose. I'd heard both her and Aurora when they obviously weren't trying to let me hear their thoughts, and as far as I knew, this was the first time one of them had been able to hear me. Just like my strength and speed, I was still developing this ability, and controlling it seemed to still be just beyond my grasp.
I ran toward the back of the building and into what looked like a row of trees separating the parking lot and front of the building from the grounds behind it. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see clearly, and my body hit something solid. I grunted as I fell back onto the ground. The back of my head throbbed as I sat up. Ty rushed over to me and grabbed me by my shoulder to lift me back to my feet.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I ran into something,” I said. “I think it was a tree.”
Ty walked over to the trees and reached into them.
“It's a fence,” he said. “It's overgrown, but it looks stable. It's tall. A couple feet taller than me. Whoever built this didn't want anyone going over it.”
“What's behind it?” I asked as I brushed myself off and walked toward him.
“I can't tell,” Ty said. “But we’re at
a church, so I'm assuming a graveyard.”
“An underworld graveyard behind an abandoned church that's no longer abandoned? Fuck that. We'll figure out something else.”
“Windows.”
The sound of Ashe's voice came into my mind again, and I glanced up. The moonlight made the stained-glass glow. A few feet beneath the huge, elaborate plate of glass I noticed something I hadn't seen before: a small clear glass window.
“How good is your balance?” I asked.
“My balance?” Ty asked.
“Yes.”
“I guess we'll find out.”
I tore the vines and plants away from a section of the fence and grabbed the top. Confirming its stability by shaking it, I tucked my foot into the chain-link and climbed to the top. I crouched down and held onto the fence as Ty climbed up in front of me.
“I need you to trust me,” I said. Ty nodded. “When I tell you to, put your hands out. Catch my foot and give me a boost.”
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Getting inside.”
Using the trees to balance, I walked several feet along the top of the fence. I didn't know if the plan was going to work, but there was no other option. I had to try. Taking a deep breath, I ducked my head so it wouldn't hit the trees, tightened my core, and ran.
“Now!” I shouted.
My foot hit Ty's palms and I felt him force all of his strength up. Keeping the image of Ashe bounding off the trash can in the alley in my mind, I launched myself toward the window. My fingertips grasped the windowsill and I gripped it as hard as I could. I felt myself slip, and I dug down harder. Swinging my legs forward, I planted my feet on the white stone wall and braced myself long enough to smash through the glass. Shards of it showered down over me, and I felt the sharp edges bite into my skin, but I didn't care. I was too focused on pushing myself up the rest of the way and climbing inside.
I couldn't see what was beyond the broken glass, so I tucked my head down and rolled. More of the glass dug into my back as I hit the floor, but I jumped to my feet as soon as I stopped moving. Around me, the building was silent. I could hear my own breath rasping in and out of my lungs.
