by Lola Gabriel
“Hey,” Penny called, hurrying to keep up before she was dragged along. “What’s your name?”
The girl glanced over her shoulder and smiled, but she didn’t slow her gait. “You can call me Violet.”
Such an innocent name for a con artist, Penny sighed to herself. As they moved deeper into the park, though, she couldn’t deny that she was filled with a foreign sense of exhilaration. What’s the worst that can happen?
6
“This is ridiculous,” Paul sighed. “We don’t have the manpower to cover all the portals around the clock.”
“Well, hire more people then!” Reef snapped. “I don’t care what it takes. I want them manned. All of them.” Paul muttered something under his breath that Reef wasn’t supposed to hear, but he did, anyway. “Yes,” he hissed. “It is my money, and if I say, ‘man every damned portal in the south-eastern hemisphere,’ then do it!”
Paul paled and nodded, lowering his head in shame. “Yes, Mr. Parker. It’s just…”
“What?”
“If we knew what we were looking for, it might make it easier for us to monitor,” he suggested meekly.
“And if I wanted to disclose that information, I would,” Reef retorted. The dragon could only imagine what would happen if the immortals learned that someone had been bringing mortals inside the Hollows. If it doesn’t give them ideas, it will cause some kind of uprising.
Reef could think of a thousand things that could go wrong if the others learned about it, even his trusted Authority team. How could he count on them when he couldn’t even count on his brother?
“Yes, Mr. Parker,” Paul muttered. The head of security shuffled off, leaving Reef to glare after him.
It wasn’t even that he was angry with Paul, really. The entire situation was bothering him more than he wanted to admit. He hated that Wilder had brought him the information that Reef should have been privy to before anyone else. He loathed that he was no closer to finding the tour guide or the portal involved. He despised that he had no understanding of how it was possible for the mortals to enter the Hollows.
Reef spent his days and nights glued to the security cameras, hoping to catch whoever it was smuggling the people in from the Sunside, but he’d had no luck.
“You’re going to drive yourself crazy without a more solid plan than this,” Elsa warned him. “You know as well as I do that this just isn’t feasible long-term. Unless we get really lucky…”
“Thanks,” Reef snapped back. “I’m well aware, and unless you’ve got a better idea of how to approach this, I can do without the unsolicited advice.”
“I’ve put feelers out on the Sunside, near the portals. I’m hoping that there will at least be rumors about the Hollows circulating among the mortals.”
“Gods help us if they are,” Reef groaned, though he knew that was as good a plan as any. Certainly better than monitoring the portals with every member of the Authority 24/7.
“It gives us a place to start,” Elsa reminded him, and he nodded in agreement. “Go home and rest, Mr. Parker. You’re not doing anyone any good sitting by the security cams all day and night. If anything happens, we know where to find you. They can’t move faster than you, right? The second we see them, you’ll be alerted.”
It was Reef’s impulse to refuse, but he knew that the techy was right—and he was exhausted.
“I’ll sleep for a couple hours,” he conceded begrudgingly. “But at the first sign of trouble—”
“I’ll personally knock on your door, Mr. Parker,” Elsa assured him. “Go rest.” She shot him a small smile and turned her attention back toward the screens. Reef cast one final look at the portals, but he found his eyes were burning, and it was hard to focus.
At this rate, I’d overlook them if they were coming in. Elsa’s right—I need rest. He moved away from the Authority offices and headed back up into the palace, wishing that Keppler was still around. His brother, unfortunately, had already returned to his life on the Sunside.
Reef encountered Owen leaving his own suite as he made his way into the residential hallway.
“I heard you’re letting anyone in here these days,” Owen commented dryly, and Reef bristled. He knew his brother was talking about the mortal problem.
“Wilder told you?” Reef grunted.
Owen shrugged. “You have to know by now that there are no secrets in the palace. If he hadn’t told me, someone else would have. We like to pretend we’re a hush-hush society, but let’s face it, this place is just a mortal high school, rife with gossip.”
“I’m learning,” Reef grunted. Owen studied his face closely.
“I’m guessing by the look on your face that you’re no closer to figuring out who’s responsible?”
“I have no idea where to start. It’s a wild goose chase.”
“Maybe you should be speaking to someone in the labs,” Owen suggested. Reef eyed him curiously.
“Why?”
“It seems to me that this isn’t being done through a faulty portal. In thousands of years, we’ve had mortals try to get through them, and never has one survived. Odds are they have all been tried at one time or another, purposely or otherwise.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“One of two things. Either the mortals being brought in are hybrids—which seems unlikely, because we know what they look like—or somehow, they have been given a potion which makes them impervious to the fatal effects of the portals.”
Reef stared at him in shock. “Is that even possible?”
Owen chuckled. “I have no idea. I’m not a scientist. That’s why I’m suggesting you go speak to one. If it’s possible, they might be able to help you… and you might learn if someone else has been asking for the same information.”
A spark of excitement rushed through Reef, and he realized his brother had a very interesting point. Without a word, he spun around to rush down the corridor.
“You’re welcome!” Owen called after him, and Reef waved sheepishly without turning. Sleep could wait. This might be the break he was looking for.
Yari Craver stared at Reef like he’d grown another head.
“Th-that’s among the most bizarre question you’ve ever asked me,” the vampire geneticist choked. “You want me to find a way to bring mortals through the portals?”
“No!” Reef snapped. “Pay attention. I want you to tell me if there is a way it could ever happen without the mortal being a hybrid.”
Yari shook his head vehemently. “No. It’s not just the lack of oxygen. There is a virus in the air which instantly clings to human white blood cells and attacks them all from the second they struggle to breathe. They would be killed twice over.”
“What about this virus?” Reef insisted. “Has it been studied?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Never?” Reef demanded, finding that strange, but Yari seemed to find his inquiry just as strange.
“Why would we study it? It’s our protection against the mortals. There’s no reason to study it. What’s that mortal saying? ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’?”
Reef could tell that if the tour guide had found help through a scientist, it hadn’t been Yari. The man seemed ready to pass out at the implication that mortals could cross over.
“Never mind.” Reef knew he’d have to try another scientist, even though he knew Yari was the best in the Hollows. Unless the tour guide didn’t use a doctor in the Hollows. His head was swimming, and he ran his hand through his unkempt mop of blond hair, feeling the burn of his eyes.
“Wait, Mr. Parker!” Yari sounded nervous, and Reef stared at him blankly.
“What?”
“I— As far as I know, the virus has never been studied. The lack of oxygen could be overcome with simple masks, of course, but the disease… Well, that’s another matter. I’ve never heard of any mortal disease with nearly the same effects on the Sunside, so I can fairly safely say that no one has looked into it.”
“
Okay, Yari, thank you.”
“But,” the vampire continued, “I could do some research on the matter. I’m sure one of us may have become curious at some point and tried to investigate what it is. We have a small network of scientists, and we communicate.”
Reef’s face brightened. “Would you have access to that kind of information?”
“Well, maybe…” There wasn’t a lot of certainty in Yari’s voice, but it was the best Reef could hope for at the moment.
“Look into it.”
Yari nodded slowly. “Yes, sir.”
“And Yari? Not a word about this to anyone, all right?”
He bobbed his pale head again. “Of course I won’t say a word,” he promised.
Again, Reef was left without any option but to go home and rest, as he had intended earlier. Wearily, he stumbled into his room, falling face down on the fur-trimmed bedding, and he permitted himself to fall into the sleep he so desperately needed.
I’ll sleep for two hours, he promised himself, but he was already in a dream state when his eyes closed. In his subconscious, Reef stood outside a gateway, an army of Authority officers behind him.
“Attack the second you see them,” Reef told them, his blue eyes flashing with confidence. “They’ll be here any minute.”
As the words left his lips, the portal opened, and six figures appeared, though he couldn’t make out any of their faces. They smelled like mortals, and everything about them told Reef they didn’t belong in the Hollows, yet his instinct forced him to scream out, “No! Wait! Don’t touch them!”
But it was too late, and the Authority closed in on the unsuspecting mortals, enveloping their terrified, but oddly non-descript forms, in a mass of death.
“No!” Reef howled. “No! Don’t!” He didn’t understand why he wanted to protect the mortals—they needed to be killed so they could not tell others of what they’d seen. It was the only way.
As his officers fell back, Reef’s eyes dropped to the massacre, a sense of loss overwhelming him as he stared at their faces, no longer enshrouded in nothingness. In a sea of red, he noted their features: four men and two women, all whom were strangers to him. Except for one: the redhead.
Reef dropped to his knees and buried his face in the woman’s chest, sobbing. There was no heartbeat, and his began to slow as if he, too, were dying.
“I’m sorry!” he wailed. “I’m so sorry!”
There was nothing he could do now. She was dead, and he was going to die, too.
A siren blared in Reef’s ear, and he whipped his head around. His dream had ended, the siren only his cell phone in his pocket, rousing him from sleep. Bleary-eyed, Reef reached into his pocket and retrieved it, staring at the screen curiously.
It was Elsa.
“What do you have?” he demanded. “Tell me it’s good news.”
“It’s news,” Elsa replied grimly. “But it’s not good. There are six mortals in the Hollows right now, southwest part of the Trenches, near that old Cash for Gold store.”
Reef sat up, awake and alert. “Do you have a team on them?”
“Not yet. I called you first.”
“Is there anyone with them?”
“Not that I can see, but a tactical unit will have better eyes. I’ll dispatch one now.”
“No!” Reef cried out before he could stop himself. The remnants of the dream came flooding back to him unreasonably, and he knew he couldn’t send a team on the mortals—at least, not until he knew what was happening.
“No?” Elsa echoed. “You don’t want me to dispatch a team?”
“No. I’ll go myself. Send me the coordinates.”
“But… Mr. Parker…”
“Just do it. Not a word to anyone about this, Elsa.” He disconnected the call, his pulse racing as he leaped to his feet. He was surprised to find he was trembling, but he couldn’t tell if it was a result of the news or an aftermath of the dream. His phone chimed with the location, and Reef hurried out of the suite, the cell clutched in his hand.
He didn’t know why he was so certain the dream had been a warning to exercise caution, that maybe he wasn’t meant to kill the mortals after all. But as he spread his wings to spring upward into the cool Hollows night, his desire to cover the distance overcoming him like a fever, Reef suspected that it had everything to do with the redhaired beauty he had seen.
The problem was, he had no idea who she was. He only knew that he wanted to protect her.
7
It’s all smoke and mirrors, Penny told herself, but she couldn’t help being awed by what she was seeing in the place Violet had called “The Hollows.” The temperature was much cooler on account that the sky, wherever it was, had disappeared, even though they seemed to be outside. There was a dank, musky scent around them, and the horizon seemed encased in caverns, grey walls of mountain stone.
Penny likened it to the inside of a cave, and she wondered if that wasn’t exactly where they were. Not that she had ever been inside a cave. Shamefully, she realized that stalking in the shadows of this supposed “other world” was probably the most exciting thing she’d ever done in her life. It was a pathetically humbling realization.
Penny admitted her skepticism had diminished greatly from the time that Violet had led her to a small, church-like structure in the middle of Louis Armstrong Park, one she was sure had not been there before. Penny had wondered if it had been erected for her benefit, but it seemed ancient somehow, like it had been there for centuries.
Could I have simply overlooked this after passing through this park a million times in my youth? Penny found that very difficult to accept.
Inside the chapel, there were a dozen people milling about, the excitement in the air palpable.
“When are we leaving?” one of the four men there asked. “We’ve been waiting for hours!”
“I just wanted to ensure our tour was filled,” Violet replied sweetly. “But we still have to convince Penny here that it’s worth her while. If she doesn’t agree to go with us, I’m afraid we’ll have to cancel the tour.”
As if Violet had said some combination of magic words, a jumble of chatter filled Penny’s ears, the words making no sense as she gaped in disgust at the girl.
Yeah, no pressure, Penny thought, rolling her eyes. Before she could storm out of the building, she was encircled.
“You have no idea how your life will change when you go to the Hollows,” an elderly woman insisted. “What happens down there… it will take your breath away.”
“There’s another world there, one that’s been around thousands of years longer than humanity,” a younger girl decried, her eyes wide with conviction. “It’s spectacular.”
“What is it?” Penny asked bluntly. So far, all she was hearing was a bunch of cult-like chanting, and she didn’t have any interest in hearing more delusional babbling. She feared that someone would be handing her a glass of Kool-Aid any minute, and she had no intention of drinking it.
All the voices stopped speaking at once, and all eyes turned to Violet in shock.
“You didn’t tell her?”
“She’s a cynic,” Violet sighed. “I don’t think she’ll believe me.”
Oh, dear. They really are putting on a show for my benefit, aren’t they? Penny thought. I may as well sit back and enjoy it. I don’t want to insult them, after all. She had a feeling she was going to embark on whatever weird adventure Violet was pushing simply because they were trying so damned hard.
“Think of a paranormal tour,” one of the other men suggested. “But on crack.” Penny snickered, mostly because the man was in his late sixties.
“Sounds spooky,” she giggled, but there wasn’t a smile in the bunch.
“It’s terrifying,” the young girl murmured. “Because it’s not staged. It’s real.”
“So we’re going to a haunted house,” Penny concluded. She could see her assessment was not well received.
“You’re going to another world,” Violet explained quiet
ly. “One which would typically kill a mortal, but I have arranged a way for a select few to get through the portals.”
“The portals.” Penny sighed. She had to give them points for creativity. Someone is watching all their Dr. Who reruns. “And why can’t you go without me?” she asked sarcastically. “There has to be exactly—” She counted the group silently. “—eleven people in the group or the time machine won’t work?”
“There needs to be a perfect balance of energy for the portal to work. If the auras are misaligned…” Violet didn’t finish her thought aloud, but someone else did.
“We’ll all die. It’s happened before at the beginning.”
“People have died on this excursion?” Penny demanded, her face paling to a near opaque. She quickly reminded herself that it was a gimmick and caught herself.
“It was at the beginning, before I had perfected the process,” Violet insisted. “It was only one incident, and the people involved knew the risks.”
More theatrics. No one died. Penny confessed to herself that it made the prospect of going somewhat more interesting. Not that she had any interest in dying, but it was not any different than going skydiving, for example. The fact that there were risks involved made it that much more appealing somehow. Didn’t it?
You’ve never been skydiving, Penny reminded herself, shaking her head. And these guys are putting on a production for you. Nothing is going to happen to you because your chakra is out of whack.
She reasoned that it was all the more reason for her to go through with the tour… or not. Confusion plagued her, and Penny wondered if that was Violet’s intention all along.
“How do you know so much about this ‘Hollows’ place?” Penny couldn’t resist asking, even though she knew she was going to go, anyway. “If humans die when they travel through, wouldn’t you have died trying to find it?”
The silence was heavy this time, and inexplicably, goosebumps slithered through Penny’s body. Violet smiled at her, slightly bemused.