by Deanna Chase
It certainly had that. I patted his shoulder. I guess it was better than two legs or a bicycle. Marginally.
I loaded it up with my stuff and with great puffs of smoke and coughing fits, I was able to crank the engine enough to turn it over. We chugged slowly off to the courthouse and my favorite record keeper’s office.
Chapter 33
I could tell that Frank was thrilled to pieces to see me. I could tell in the way he slid the deadbolt and pulled down the shades.
“Frank, I need a favor!” I said, banging on the door.
“No one is home!” he shouted back.
“That’s a lie and you know it, Frank. Open up! The sooner you unlock this door and let me in, the sooner I’m gone.”
There was silence.
“You know I’m not going anywhere, Frank. I will stand out here until you lock up for the day and then I will follow you home and pound on your bedroom window all night.”
I heard his feet shuffling on the other side and the locks get thrown. He flung open the door without even looking at me.
“Thanks, Frank.”
“Get what you need and get out.”
“I need to see your files on recent vampire attacks, Frank.”
He pointed over at a messy filing cabinet, papers so stuffed into the overwhelmed drawers that it didn’t even close. He turned his back to me and pretended like there was something really important he needed to type.
I started pulling everything I could find for vampire misbehavior in the past couple months. By the time I was done, my arms were full with a two-foot stack.
“Frank, you’re an angel. I’ll bring these back.”
That made him pay attention to me, “Those files are official government property! You are not removing them from---”
“You’re absolutely correct, Frank. I’m not removing them. I’m taking them offsite for reproduction. You can thank me for freeing up some storage space for you. You’re welcome.”
“I’m not joking!”
“You’re a barrel of laughs, Frank!” I said as I backed out the door before he could stop me.
Killian had kept the car running. On our way over, I made an executive decision to practice a bit more caution with the guy and I wasn’t going to let him do anything dumb, like steal files from Frank, until he was back in fighting form.
He put the car into reverse and we made our getaway as I flipped through the manila folders. Gotta say this about Frank, he was a disgusting mess, but he was a filing genius. Everything I could have hoped for was right there.
“See anything interesting?” asked Killian.
“After sundown, I’d like to spend some time mapping out the locations of these attacks.”
“That is the easiest slip-up in the book. Surely a master vampire would be smart enough to avoid patterns.”
“He might be, but his army of hungry blood suckers are probably going to go for a meal wherever it’s available. If we see some sort of a circle form, we can pretty safely guess his headquarters is smack dab in the middle of it.”
“Sounds like we have an entertaining evening to look forward to.”
“I gave you CPR. You owe me.”
He raised his eyebrows amorously, “We could recreate the moment.”
I knew he had to be feeling better.
“Too bad, bucko. You shouldn’t have slept through it.”
“Promise not to sleep through it if you try again.”
“Killian, what would your mother say?”
“That she’s so proud her little boy has grown up to be such a virile young man.”
“How about we go and find out what my mother has to say?”
“Now you are just being cruel.”
Chapter 34
The day was still young and while I really enjoyed the new car scent of our current ride, I needed to get back over to Earth to grab my purse. And probably let Father Killarney know that we weren’t dead.
I parked our derelict rental a few blocks away from a phone booth.
I didn’t like to open up unregulated portals when I didn’t have to, but the legal channels weren’t worth the risk. Dad and I had pinpointed a couple of safe jump spots. This particular phone booth dumped us a ways away from the church, but nothing a good healthy hike couldn’t fix.
So we jumped and we walked all the way down the Sunset Strip, past the size zero models and hipster doucheboys. The door to the church was locked and I can’t say that I blamed Father Killarney.
“Guess we need to try going round back,” I said to Killian.
I could see Father Killarney through the windows of the rectory and knocked softly on the paned glass. I was trying not to startle him, but he jumped defensively.
He eyed me suspiciously and walked over to the door, opening it, but leaving the chain in place.
“It’s just me, Father.”
He was brandishing a candlestick in his hand, “How do I know you’re not a ghoul or a doppelganger?”
“I’m entirely too bright for a ghoul and too cute for a doppelganger,” I replied, dryly.
He lowered his candlestick and gave a low, relieved chuckle. He closed the door and I could hear him sliding the chain. When the door opened, he came over and gave me a great big bear hug.
“Gave me a fright, Maggie-girl.”
“You and me both, Father.”
“Glad to see you’re mended, Killian,” he said, giving my partner a hearty handshake.
“Fit as a fiddle,” Killian grinned, and then winced having moved just a little too fast for someone who had been almost beaten to death 24-hours before. Wuss.
“We can’t stay long, Father,” I said. “Just here to pick up my car and my things. We got some bad news on the Other Side.”
“What’s that?” he asked, hesitation filling his voice. Yah, I’d probably be scared to ask, too.
“The vampires have the jade lion again and I don’t think the cavalry is coming.”
Father Killarney nodded his head and sighed, “When he brought me your car, Xiaoming told me that you were under attack. He also told me he dumped you out in the middle of nowhere and I’ll have you know I took him to task for it.”
I patted his arm, “We probably would have been in much worse shape if he hadn’t been there to come to the rescue - even if it was a very cranky rescue.”
Father Killarney chuckled.
I saw my purse sitting on the table and went over to pick it up, “Thank you for taking care of us.”
“Now, now,” he said, “I’m afraid I am in your debt for saving my church. You name what I can do to help you next.”
I looked over at Killian and he motioned for me to take the lead. I jingled my keys in my hand, “Well, we think there may be a second lion… here on Earth...”
Father Killarney nodded his head, “Go on.”
“We need to track it down, but don’t know anything, really, about these artifacts other than what an angry old man in Chinatown told me. Any chance you have a library filled with books on ancient lost objects or know a scholar of legendary antiquities?” I said half joking.
Father Killarney rubbed the stubble of his beard thoughtfully, “Let me make a call. I know someone who might be able to help.”
Chapter 35
The Getty Museum & Library is a white monolith of modern architecture perched over one of the worst freeways in LA. Accessible only by an electric tram, Killian and I sat in our silent little car, looking out at the view as we rose up the hillside.
The museum is absolutely gorgeous. You feel like you’ve died and gone to Buck Rogers heaven. It is several white, utopian-esque buildings made up of hundreds of square, marble slabs flown in straight from Italy. You stroll between tended gardens and sparkling fountains as you make your way from one art gallery to the next.
It’s all a front.
The place was built on one of the most active magical sites in Los Angeles. The carefully laid floor plan with its perfectly spaced perpendicular
lines and postmodern style is to keep the energy flowing like water in a drainage ditch instead of flash flooding all over the city. The Powers That Be threw a couple of random paintings on the wall to keep the normies from getting suspicious and called it good enough.
But the real magic happens behind the scenes and that’s where we were headed.
We made our way over to the library. It is built in a spiral shape from the top of its domed roof to a circular clay sculpture embedded in the floor of the atrium. Rumor has it that on the summer equinox, the light shines through the skylights to illuminate the bottom of the sculpture.
We were greeted by a curator/wizard who could have been Frank’s long lost twin, give or take an eyeball and some general hygiene improvements.
“Bart?” I asked with my hand out to shake his.
He totally left me hanging.
“Father Killarney said I should show you around,” he grunted back at me.
“We’re really grateful---”
Bart cut me off, “This library is not for public use. Some of these books are irreplaceable treasures. I was told there would only be one of you.”
I looked at Killian, “Father Killarney sure has a knack for surrounding himself with charismatic, helpful fellows, doesn’t he…”
Killian gave me a little salute as he left, “I will meet you outside.”
Bart watched him go, as if to make sure Killian didn’t double back to steal some knowledge while no one was looking.
He let out an ox-like huff when Killian was finally gone and waved for me to follow him.
We wound our way up the circular flights until we finally reached an indistinguishable row of bookshelves. From their perfectly matched spines and cloth covers, I could tell this was going to be about as entertaining as browsing law books for laughs.
“I have to leave at 5 o’clock,” Bart grumbled. “Don’t plan on staying any longer than that because I’m leaving. Five-oh-oh, I lock the front door.”
“Thanks, Bart. You’re a peach,” I replied, dryly.
I grabbed the first book entitled China: A Complete History through Time and started flipping pages.
Many, many, MANY hours and bookshelves later, I found something.
It was in a little, fictional book with a faded cloth cover. The book jacket was probably lost last century, but there it was – mention of a jade and diamond lion and the possibility of inter-dimensional travel.
So the two lions - one was to be rightfully stored on Earth, one on the “Other Earth”, which I knew to mean the Other Side. There was a little black and white etching of the lions, along with some squiggly notations on size and identifying marks.
I looked at the diamond lion and read the caption, “Last known protector, Father Juniper Serra.”
I thought back to the day that my dad disappeared. We had traveled out to Mission San Gabriel, which is this historic adobe compound built by Father Serra, the Spanish missionary largely responsible for settling California right around the same time the east coast was putting together its Bill of Rights.
My dad and I hadn’t found our skips that day. There were rumors these ogres were posing as taco cart vendors and pushing street meat that even the undead wouldn’t touch. But they were gone by the time we got there, so we decided to kick back a little and walk around the gardens.
Dad had excused himself to take a leak, but when he came back, he was carrying a bag from the gift shop. He said that it was just a little present for Mom. The bag had been torn and this thing that looked like a rounded shard of quartz had been sticking out of the bottom. I had teased my dad that Mom didn’t need to start collecting crystals. He had laughed, but I remember him putting his hand over the hole so that no one else would see.
I looked back at the etching of the diamond lion.
What if he had been carrying the statue? What if he had found it and was trying to get it somewhere safe, not knowing that the lions couldn’t travel between worlds? What if the lion had been sitting in the mission’s museum collections and no one had ever noticed?
Had Dad known? Had he known that if he took it into the boundary, it would collapse on him?
I felt a chill run up and down my spine.
I flipped the pages and suddenly found a bookmark.
Written in a hand that I recognized, it said, “Don’t look for me, Maggie-girl.”
I held that bookmark and stared at it in disbelief. It was like my dad had come back from the grave and there he was, right in front of me, knowing that I would eventually end up looking through this book.
He had known.
He knew he would die.
Chapter 36
I replaced the book on the shelf and walked out the library to the courtyard. It was hard to tell if the gray air rolling in from the ocean was fog or smog.
I found Killian by a coffee cart on the patio. He sat at an umbrella covered table by a fountain, its water flowed into a stream that ran flush with the walkway. He handed me a cup of scalding joe. He was drinking tea with what, from the number of swizzle sticks in his cup, was probably more honey than liquid.
I took off the lid to my drink and blew at the top, testing it gingerly before I took the first swig.
“Find anything?” he asked.
“Yah,” I said.
We sat for a few more moments in silence.
“Care to elaborate?” he asked.
I put down the coffee, “I think I know where the diamond lion might be.”
“In an underground lock box bunker that is impossible to get into?” asked Killian.
If only it was that easy.
“I think my dad found the lion at one of the missions.”
Killian put down his drink, “It is at one of the missions? This is wonderful! We should leave immediately!”
“No, Killian,” I replied, slowing him down. “What I’m trying to say is that’s where it was, but my dad already found it. And I think he tried to take it to the Other Side.”
“But Xiaoming said you cannot take it across…” Killian said, suddenly GETTING it. I sort of felt the same way.
“I think he knew that if my uncle found it, our family was dead. I think Dad tried to take the lion across the boundary to save us. But I think he got stuck.”
Killian reached out and took my hand, “I am sorry…”
“The thing is…” I continued, trying to freeze frame the memory of a slippery image in my head, “when you were injured, I had to rip open a portal. It wasn’t neat and tidy. It was sort of like a tear instead of an incision. When we went through, though, I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I thought…”
Killian leaned forward.
“I thought I saw a face. Just for a moment.”
“You think you saw your father…” Killian said, slowly.
“Yah,” I replied. It hung in the air there for a bit, Killian looking at me and me looking at him, but he didn’t make a move to call the little white men in the little white suits, so I laid out my newly evolving theory. “My sister told me that she thought she’d seen him, too, and my mom went all weird on me when I told her about it. I’m starting to think maybe my sister didn’t suddenly come down with ‘the sight’… I’m starting to think she’s actually been seeing him.”
“You think he is trapped there?”
“I think he went into hiding there.”
I pulled out the bookmark. Yes, I lifted it from the library. Bart shouldn’t have left me unattended, “I found this. It was in the book that told me about the statues. I think my dad knew that there would be no place safe here on Earth or the Other Side. I think he knew that my uncle would stop at nothing to control the boundary. I think my dad chose a self-appointed exile inside the border with the diamond lion to save us.”
I could see the wheels of Killian’s mind starting to spin and put the pieces together like my mind had done. He slowly began to nod, which was much better than backing slowly away from me and calling me nutters. Killi
an looked up at me, “Your theory answers many questions.”
I shook my head. I suddenly had a very sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. There was something wrong and all my instincts were screaming at me.
“I think I need to go see my mom,” I said, pushing down an overwhelming feeling of panic. “I think I need to go right now.”
Chapter 37
I resisted laying on my horn as a speeding hearse almost knocked off my side view mirror. Asshole funeral directors.
We left my car on Earth because of that damned official portal and the fact it was probably being watched. My illegal portal wasn’t big enough for a Honda, no matter how compact, but as long as I could get to my car when I needed it without marching all over LA, I was a happy camper. And that was easy enough. I parked it by the phone booth, we climbed through dimensions, and hopped back into our waiting elfin jalopy.
I was crawling out of my skin. I hadn’t filled Killian in on my senseless feeling of dread, almost superstitiously believing that if I didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t come true.
I wished to god that it had just been my overactive imagination.
Unfortunately, I was my mother’s daughter and her gift was one of sight and premonition.
We arrived at my mom’s house and the front door was ajar.
I had my gun in my hand before I even had the car parked.
“Something wrong?”
I nodded at the door. A shadow fell upon Killian’s face. He was shoulder to shoulder with me from the moment my feet hit the walkway. His staff was out and at the ready. We swept up the side of the house and flanked the front door. I pushed it open with a toe. There wasn’t a sound.
Cautiously we entered. All the lights were off and there was no one home. Everything seemed in perfect order. And then I saw the note, a parchment envelope leaning on the fireplace mantel with my name on it. I picked it up and broke the red wax seal.
You are cordially invited to a welcome home party hosted by my dear friend, Master Vaclav. Time and location to be announced. He will be taking good care of your mother until then. An excellent housewarming gift would be a diamond lion statue.
With great affection,
Your Uncle Ulrich.
