by Richard Hein
Kate shivered, arms hugging herself as we followed behind. Bent and twisted lampposts lit our way along the gloomy path, flickering lights set by no fire sent our shadows dancing away. A sign post rested beside, the markings on it alien and illegible. I stared at the street, watching the way my shoes stepped down over and over on stone I hadn’t expected to see again. The buildings. The stars.
The accusing faces I was about to meet again.
Why had I bothered to come in? I could have just unshackled myself of the burden at the threshold between one universe and the next. Francis might have been a pompous ape, but he would see her through to the right people. I didn’t need to take her the rest of the way, in spite of Kate’s protests. She might think she needed me along, but I doubted I was a necessary cog in the machine, whatever her brother’s journal claimed. Why was she so adamant I be the one to hold her hand on this
My steps slowed. There was a great little bar down on 4th and Virginia that I was neglecting. Hadn’t I done what I said I would do? Deliver her to the professionals?
“It’s a little creepy, isn’t it?” Kate said. Her eyes scanned the buildings beside us. “A whole empty baby universe right next door.”
“The OFC uses it as its headquarters now,” Francis said. “It’s the most secure location we’ve had, all things considered. Unassailable unless invited in. Had you opened the door without being bound, you’d have walked out into Seattle once more. There’s quite a number of us here, so it’s hardly empty.”
“What color is the sun here?” Kate asked. “Are there any moons? I haven’t seen any plants or trees, so how are we breathing?”
“I appreciate your inquisitiveness, but we are here for a purpose, not a field trip,” Francis said. “Please keep focused.”
Just a quick pop in to see The Boss, and then I’m done. Somewhere in the back of my head, a voice whispered that I was inventing reasons to stay. Or maybe I’d just been inventing reasons to stay away in the first place. What about Kate’s peculiarities? Didn’t I want to know about them? With a silent snarl I battered the thoughts away, but new doubts mingled with the words left by Francis, worming into me with each step. The Samuel Cocktail. Two parts neurosis, one part bitter past, served with seething anger.
The roadway twisted around a series of melted buildings, and the full courtyard expanse of Sanctuary rolled out before us. Kate slowed, her steps shuffling into a near stumble as her breath caught, the full glory washing over us. Even my own heart sped up as the reality of what I thought I’d remembered slammed into me once more, a powerful mix of otherworldly magic and nostalgia that wrenched at my chest.
Smooth, towering shards of crystal jutted from behind the buildings, dwarfing the structures. Their perfect angles rose a hundred feet or more into the air in haphazard directions. The buildings ringed the circular courtyard, and the crystal surrounded and cradled the little town, austere and pristine and ethereal. Catching the glow of the stars above, the tall shards sparkled and glowed from within.
More chunks of blue and violet gemstones hung in the air distant above us, a ring ten-thousand pieces strong, most larger than a building. Tiny, jagged crystals orbited some of the larger ones, bobbing and dancing from island to island. A symphony of mathematical motion and beauty.
“It looks nothing like London,” I said. “It’s more like someone saw a period TV show that was based on a painting by a drunk who heard a passing description once.”
“I’ve never seen anything so magnificent,” Kate said, her voice thick. She scrubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I can hear them. Reminds me of a theremin.”
My smile was wistful. “It always sounded like spooky music from classic science fiction shows to me. Going back to plain old drab Earth after this is just such a let down. Who wants grass and trees when you can have singing crystals?”
“There’s beauty everywhere, Samuel. I’m partial to glacial mountain lakes myself. This… this is giving it a run for its money though.”
Francis crossed the courtyard, oblivious to the sights and wonders above us. An empty fountain rose from the center of the plaza, as bent and warped as everything else. Entirely out of place was a large steel building at the edge of the plaza, obviously modern. Ahead, almost as tall as the behemoths of crystal, a clock tower with a face in an unreadable language sprouted from the largest building. For the first time we saw other people, dozens of figures walking from covered building to building, ignoring us. I recognized many of them, by face if not name. Only a few newbies in the crowd, but the OFC didn’t have booths at your local college career day trying to score fresh bodies.
Francis pulled up short, one calloused finger whipping out to point at a stone bench I’d spent quite a bit of time chowing down on sack lunches upon. You couldn’t call out for a pizza, so everything came in from the little door.
“I’ll check with Chancellor Christina and see how she wants to handle this,” Francis said. “Please make yourself comfortable for the time being.”
“Have any Highlights?” I asked, dropping down onto the stone bench with a sigh. Kate glanced around, apprehensive, but lowered herself beside me. She nodded once at Francis.
Francis met my eyes with naked disdain. I gave him a quick nod as well and snapped my jaw shut. Provoking the one person that was marginally working with us at the moment was a bad idea. His earlier words were still needling their way beneath my skin, though.
Seneschal Francis spun away and entered the main hall of Sanctuary, leaving me alone with Kate in the courtyard. None of the others paid us any mind, though no one came closer than thirty feet to us as they scampered about their tasks. I saw one older woman step from a building that looked like the love-child of Jack the Ripper’s London and Lovecraft’s more pleasant dreams, get halfway to us, catch sight of my face and actually walk backward until she vanished from sight.
It’s great to be loved.
“So, different universe,” Kate said, swinging her feet beneath the bench. The words were light and airy, but the way her fingers were white as they strangled her purse said otherwise. “You know how to show a girl a good time. I don’t know what to think.” She paused, a grin widening on her face. “No. I do. I want to explore. How could you not want to crawl over every bit of this? It’s beautiful.”
“You’ve got to be a librarian or something,” I said, tapping a finger on my cheek. “No one is that inquisitive.”
Her smile dimmed. “Please stop prying.”
“Well, for us normal folk, it takes a bit of getting used to.” The small parade of people going about their business had thinned. What had once been a strange amusement park attraction was now a ghost town, with only Kate and I enjoying the exhibit. I craned my neck around to try and see anyone, but like the rest of this universe, we were utterly alone. An icy gnawing began in my gut. “I dumped my stomach the first time I came through.”
“Is this all there is? Are there more places like this?”
“Some, yeah,” I said, nodding. “Semi-permanent realities that are attached to ours. Most Entities can sustain them, though your tiny ones get closet-sized ones. Not every dark alley or graveyard is going to have one, if that’s what you’re thinking. Most of what the OFC fights comes in from fully realized universes, not these little pocket dimensions that get built. Thankfully, jaunting across realities isn’t something we…” I took a breath and blew it out. Stupid. “Something they usually do.”
“They come to ours,” Kate said, voice as brittle as a fresh frozen lake. She rocked back, head watching the parade of tumbling crystal dancing above, held aloft by physics that violated our own or magic we didn’t yet know.
“If we let them,” I said. I pressed my eyes closed. It hurt to breathe. “We knock. They answer sometimes.”
“Sounds like you’ve encountered that before.”
I swallowed, fixed her with my best Honcho fake-smile, and nodded. “It’s what I used to do here, after all.”
Kate watch
ed me for a few moments, eyes swirling with reflected light. Could she read the lies in my face? The blood and death? I held that damned smile until my jaw ached and she turned away.
The doors to the main hall yawned open, casting incandescent light across the courtyard and burning the shadows away from us. I held up a hand with a groan as the glare punched at my soberness. A figure strode out of the glow, shadow amid light, and stopped a dozen paces before us. I blinked, trying to clear the after-images swirling across my vision, and smiled when I saw who it was.
“Christina would like to see Kate,” the dark-skinned figure said in a quiet voice. He didn’t quite meet my eyes. “Alone.”
My smile died.
Chapter 5
“Intern Daniel,” I shouted, forcing my worry away for the moment as I leapt from the bench. I threw up a hand for a high five. Daniel grimaced and straightened his already perfect tie. His eyes flicked down to the granite plaza for a heartbeat before meeting mine.
“Please, no,” he said, almost plaintively. He tucked his thumbs into his belt. “I’ve finally gotten everyone to stop calling me that.”
I held up my hands. “Hey, fair enough, Danny,” I said. “This is Kate.”
Kate rose and held out a hand.
Daniel glanced at it, hesitating for only a moment. “Daniel. Um, as I guess you already know.”
She smiled, and the kid’s cheeks flushed. Well, he was in his early twenties now, but he still seemed so damned young. “Hi Daniel. It’s nice to meet someone else that’s survived Samuel. We should start a support group.”
“Hey, enough socializing. Let’s go see Christina.” I said, shooing them on.
“I’m sorry, Samuel, but just Kate,” Daniel said, shaking his head. “Christina’s orders.”
“Good,” Kate said, fixing me with a look. “Let’s cut through all the red tape. Talking with the manager, or high priestess, or whatever you all have here should get this moving.”
I crossed my arms. “Kate came to me, Danny,” I said. “I’m obligated to see this through.”
“Oh, you’re obligated?” Kate asked in a voice dripping with sweetness. “I thought you were just going to offload me as soon as you got here?” I scowled at her, but I got a saccharine smile in return.
“I’ll be fine,” Kate said. “Safest place in the world, right?”
She strode forward and stood next to Daniel, turning to face me. There was a subtle shift in the air, or whatever passed for it here, but I was suddenly on the outside looking in. It reminded me of getting picked last in gym class. Isn’t this what I wanted? No answer came from the hollow vaults of my mind. Well, that was good at least. Still relatively sane.
“We’re not in the world,” I muttered, but nodded.
“Please, Samuel,” Daniel said. He turned to retreat back through the doors. “You can come inside, though. Maybe wait in here with me? No reason not to say hello to everyone.”
“You don’t really remember my last day here, do you? I heard people mutter about bringing crucifixion back.”
Daniel’s lips pressed into a thin line. “It’s not as bad as that,” he said. “Come on.”
I scratched at the back of my head for a moment, stomach churning. “Yeah. Fine, whatever.”
Daniel smiled and I followed along like a puppy. I hated myself for it, but there was something unsettling about sitting alone outside in the face of that vast emptiness, beautiful or not. Daniel seemed fine with me, and Alissa had been her usual self. Maybe things weren’t going to be as bad as I’d feared. I stuffed my hands into my pockets and tried to walk casually.
I’d forgotten how warm it was inside. I unzipped my jacket and hesitated within the threshold. My chest tightened as a rolling pulse of familiarity hummed through me. The sights… hell, even the smell of that rancid ooze they served for coffee was familiar. Like hearing an old tune and having the memories hit you in the gut to remind you of your past, the specter of my life danced before my eyes.
The space opened wide without supports, something that really shouldn’t have been possible with a building this tall. Brilliant electric lights filled the room with a warm, almost friendly glow. At the back lay a couple of hallways that retreated further into the building. A few office doors decked out in frosted glass that looked like something out of a sixties newspaper filled both sides. Cubicles filled a lot of the main area, soulless gray felt and everything. I shook my head and chuckled.
“This calling must be stamped on my soul,” I said. “I’m just now realizing I’ve been a cubicle worker in two universes.”
Something clawed at my throat. Nostalgia, maybe. Longing. It was like going away on a long vacation, only to realize just how much you missed the house you’d left and its comfortable furniture. A flicker of annoyance stirred in the back of my mind. I hadn’t wanted to leave, so why the hell should I feel happy at being here? No, screw that. I turned to focus on Kate.
“You should put that on your resume,” Kate said. She gave me a wry smile. “That might give you an advantage on your next failed job.”
“Hilarious. Go see The Boss. Down the hall, follow the stairs down two floors. It’s the door marked ‘here there be dragons.’ Danny and I are going to have a chat.”
“Actually, I should escort her down,” Daniel said.
“Nonsense,” I said. “There’s no way you’re going to leave me up here with the wolves. Grab someone else and make them do it.”
Daniel hesitated for a few long moments before nodding. He retreated to one of the cubicles and leaned over the edge in a very Grant-like manner.
Kate’s eyes flicked around. Her hand caught mine, warmer than the room and a lot more pleasant. “Look, Samuel,” she said, eyes glancing anywhere but at me. Her cheeks colored. “I just wanted to say thanks. I know you didn’t want to come back here. It’s got to be hard.”
“It’s nothing,” I said. Daniel returned with another warm body in tow, someone I didn’t recognize. “Well, no. You’re right. Open wounds, dump trucks of salt, blah blah. It’s home, but it’s like coming back only to find your family wants to drag you out back and have you find out what flavor the curb is.” My gaze swept over the faces that were trying not to look at me. “Well, screw them.”
Her hand gave a brief squeeze before falling away. “Well, I do appreciate it. Thank you.” Her smile was infectious. Radiant. I smiled and nodded dumbly.
She nodded and retreated down the hallway with her escort, weaving past my former coworkers. She vanished down the stairs to the lower levels. I let out a little sigh and slumped against the wall, all the tension exploding out of me at once. That had been the first time someone had reached out like that since… I rubbed at my temples and pushed the thought away.
Time ran the same here as it did back home, and it was close to “Pass Out Drunk O’Clock” for me. I felt the snarling need that began in my feet and ended when I found the nearest liquor store. I glanced at the young man, just graduated from being a kid, and tried to gauge how nervous he was about this whole situation. It proved fruitless. Daniel was twitchy by nature to begin with and I had no idea how much Christina and Francis had told him when they’d activated his intern powers to fetch us.
“Man, how have you been?” I asked.
“Oh, really well,” he said, dark face breaking into an eager grin. It made him look three years younger, which meant somewhere in high school. “I got back last month from helping Seneschal Kseniya with some very interesting work regarding The Watchers. I just got done cataloging a trident believed to belong to one of the Tartaruchi. It seems that…” The smile melted from his face, and his shoulders deflated. “I’m sorry, Samuel. You don’t want to hear about all the exciting things I’m out doing when you’re exiled, no?”
“No,” I agreed with mock cheerfulness, “but I’m glad you’re happy.”
“I’d be happier if I got that promotion to Seneschal,” Daniel said, smile evaporating. “Longest intern in the organization. I know. I�
�ve checked, and the archives go back a long way. They keep me down there a lot, so I get to read as much as I want. Hasn’t been much to do of late, so I’ve become the premiere records organizer.”
I watched as Francis appeared out of one of the side offices. He pressed his hands to his lower back and stretched with a wince. His eyes drifted across the room, until he spotted me against the wall with Daniel. I held his gaze without flinching. Francis turned away and approached one of the cubicles, leaning against it in a way that reminded me of Grant. I almost smiled.
Almost.
“I’m sure you’re close, Daniel,” I said, not taking my eyes from Francis. “A bell will ring, and you’ll earn those wings soon enough. I’m surprised they didn’t give you my spot once there was a vacancy.”
That was only partially true. Daniel was a good kid, and dedicated enough, but he lacked the focus and ability that would let him make it out in the field. The problem was that there weren’t any full time desk jobs with the OFC. Every one of the drones in the cubicles surrounding us went out regularly, smacking entities and working exorcisms. Daniel wasn’t a chump, but the truth was I wasn’t sure I’d trust him with my life if we were in a serious scuffle with something from another world.
“There’s rules,” he said. “I’ve got to rack up my hours with a senior, and there hasn’t been a lot of supernatural activity these last few months.”
“They’re holding you back on a technicality? That’s got to burn.”
Daniel shrugged a shoulder and glanced away, looking as uncomfortable as a man who had discovered an octogenarian nude beach opening up next door. I tried to think of something inspirational to say, but hell. I’d been kicked out just this side of being killed for what I’d done. I wasn’t exactly an overflowing fountain of positive role model.
Kseniya blew in through the doors next to us. She could have been a twin to Francis, layers of muscle stapled together with the glue of anger and skill. A half dozen studs glittered in her ears. Long and heavy strides echoed through the main room. She paused, turned and regarded me. I gave her a half-hearted wave.
