by Sawyer Black
“Henry, I want you.”
“Okay.”
“Close the door.”
He rose and walked across the room, afraid to turn around and see her laughing at him. The nervous energy still burned in his brain, but his feet felt heavy. He closed and latched the door, locking Aela in with the monster. He switched off the light before turning around.
And still Aela glowed as she had under Solitude. Faint. Right at the edge of vision. He walked to her and sat back on the bed. He loosened the laces at her waist, clumsy with only one hand. She lifted her hands overhead and let him do it on his own. He worked the leather free from her skin and slid her pants down, one side at a time.
He stood and leaned over the foot of the bed, pulling her pants free with the sound of silk. He climbed over the footboard, and she spread her legs so he could plant his knees inside of hers.
When she grabbed his horns and pushed his head down, he let her.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The neighborhood was silent. The golf course dark. Only the spritzing rhythm of the lawn sprinklers’ breath. And distant traffic.
They stood in a clump of trees next to the concrete path that wound through every hole. A big roundabout at the rear of the clubhouse lit with landscape spotlights. Electric golf carts charging in a neat line.
Henry spread his senses. He couldn’t figure out how he was doing anything, but if he asked hard enough, his mind usually offered the answer on instinct. He felt the souls crying for help. Voices raised in prayer and desperation. The shuttered homes in the mayor’s exclusive community were full of muttering dreams, but his estate seemed empty of will. Like it didn’t even exist, even though Henry was looking right at its shadow.
The place was covered in police tape. The front entrance was charred, with boards over the front windows and where the door had been.
Charlie Mara leaned forward, staring into the dark with narrowed eyes. “There is a glamour on this place.”
The mansion was lit like the clubhouse. All the windows dark, but with spot and path lights aimed to highlight every detail. The sprinkler sprang back at the bottom of the iron fence surrounding the yard, and the sheet of water from its nozzle splattered off the air like a sheet of glass. Henry squinted into the spray, and water trickled down from a point above the ground. A straight line of moisture puddling on the lawn.
“What, like what you did under the Viazo?” Henry pointed at the water running down the windowpane of reality. “Because it looks like there’s a wall there.”
“No, it’s more like an enchantment hidden by a glamour. The entire mansion is shrouded in energy. Grounded in another plane. We’re seeing an illusion that’s supposed to mask whatever spell is just under the glamour’s surface.”
“Are they trying to disguise the mansion as something else?”
“By making it look like it always does?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said, his voice gaining volume with his frustration.
Boothe dropped a hand on Henry’s shoulder and whispered, “Calm down, Henry. Charlie can’t answer, because the glamour is so thin. Like a soap bubble on top of another bubble. It is the underneath that has him worried, because he can’t see it. Whatever it is, it’s focused outward instead of in on itself.”
“Well, then, let’s toss Frank at it and see what happens.”
“Hey!” Frank hissed in an offended stage whisper. “That’s not funny.”
Boothe looked up, his eyes tracing an arc over the mansion roof. “It feels like a portal. A very large gateway placed over the property. As if somebody were expecting an intruder, only they didn’t know from what side of the building they might approach.”
Charlie nodded. “I think you got it.”
Henry pointed at the sprinkler. “But what about that shit? If the water can’t make it through, what’s to say we won’t just splash against it and run down the side.”
“I think it’s just bad work,” Charlie said. “Such a large glamour probably isn’t easy to maintain.”
“I agree,” Boothe said. “There could be any number of things making it more difficult, as well. Spacial dilation. Time transposition. Maintaining transmission frequencies.”
Henry watched Charlie nod at Boothe in knowing agreement. Two guys talking shop. His mouth twisted with bitterness. “Woulda been nice to have a mentor willing to teach me some shit so that I could follow along with whatever the fuck you’re talking about. All I got was sleep and water.”
Boothe turned to face Henry, hands behind his back and black suit gathering reflections from the path’s low light. “You know, there is an actual science to magic.”
“No, I didn’t know. Do tell.”
“I tried to discuss the vibratory transmutation of invisibility, but your eyes glazed over.”
“That was at my fucking funeral. They were burying my daughter, and I was kinda preoccupied.”
“You were impatient.”
Henry snarled. “You wanted to keep me dumb.”
“So, you admit you started out that way?”
Henry raised a clawed finger to point at Boothe’s smug smile. Frank stepped between them, peering through the glamour. “Hey, can anybody on the other side of that thing see us?”
Charlie shrugged. “Maybe, if they knew where to look.”
Henry dropped his hand and looked down. His emotions were swirling. Colliding. A logjam at the crest of a waterfall. Plunging over the edge, only to be replaced by another. The heat of Aela’s hand on his back, and his heartbeat slowed. He drew a deep breath, and looked back into Boothe’s face. The angel gave him a sheepish shrug, and Henry grunted to keep his laughter at bay.
“You people are too fucking loud.” Stone’s voice startled Henry into a crouch a second before the detective stepped into their group, melting into existence as if he were one with the shadows, traveling like a demon. The rippling darkness behind him resolved into the body of Stone’s buddy, Howser. Both wore black clothes and matching gear. Same for their body armor, and the grease on their faces.
They each held a rifle pointed at the ground in front of their feet.
Henry seemed to be the only one surprised by his sudden appearance. Maria and Nadia gave Stone and Howser a fleeting look, then went back to chatting in breathy whispers with their heads nearly touching. Frank and Charlie kept staring at the glamour. Boothe kept his eyes on Henry, and Aela stepped around with her arms crossed. Henry’s back felt cold without her behind him.
Stone shook his head. “We could have dropped a grenade right in the middle of your bickering, and only the flash would have told you we were here.”
Boothe turned to Stone, his hands sliding into his pockets. “I felt you coming before you finished the Lord’s Prayer in the parking lot of the fire station. Smelled you before you even entered the trees.”
Henry realized he could smell them, too. Metal and oil. Excitement and fear. The energy of their souls pressing against the meat vehicles around him. The two men’s thoughts bursting across the surface of their minds. He looked at Stone. “You’re thinking about Samantha. About the day you proposed to her in Lake County, California over a bottle of Merlot. Sweating because it had cost you a hundred and seventeen dollars. She was beautiful with the sun shining through her hair as the dry wind pulled it away from her face.”
Stone’s mouth dropped open, and he lowered his weapon further, the tip pointing at his toes. Henry turned to Howser. “And you’re wondering if your Brianna could see you, if she would be proud of you. You always thought she was when she was alive, but without her around to ask, you can’t be sure. A small blonde in a rocking chair. Kicking her feet and watching the ducks in the river.”
Howser stood like a rock, his expression bored. Like a man who hadn’t heard a word Henry had said. Another thought flitted across his mind.
Henry nodded. “I expect you’re right. If Hell doesn’t claim you when you die, you can ask her then.”
Howser tipped his head, and Henry tore his
eyes from the man’s gaze. His internal suffering tasted too good, and Henry felt dirty for sitting in his thoughts for so long.
“So, what do we do now?” Henry asked.
Stone swallowed and glanced at the mansion. "There’s been zero activity from that place for hours. No shadows across the windows. No calls in or out. No cars. It’s like … I don’t know.”
Howser released his rifle, letting it hang from a sling around his neck. “It’s like a static video feed. Or a picture of the place hanging over it. Like the way we used to hide from air surveillance with netting in the desert.”
Charlie nodded, crossing his arms over his chest. “I think your guess is actually right. I think there is a glamour cast over the property. Like a dome of smoke, and the mansion is projected onto the inside surface to hide what else might be there.”
“What else might be there?” Stone asked.
“I think it’s a portal,” Boothe said. “A nodal transport portal that will most likely take us into an ambush.”
“To where?”
“The place that makes the most sense? Nowhere.”
Stone shook his head in confusion.
But Henry smiled in realization. “Of course. Wherever that Lincoln Log bullshit fort was past the trees.” His heart pounded in anticipation. “They had generators and shit, so if they have guns, they probably work. If he has anybody to spare from whatever’s going on at Solitude, we might be fucked. But, if all he has at the front door are a bunch of those Ravager assholes?”
“This all sounds like you guys are guessing,” Stone said. “And, I don’t even know what any of that shit meant. Is Samantha in there? You think they would’ve actually come back here?”
Henry nodded. “I wasn’t sure, but now, yes, I do think they came back here. I think, despite the police investigating this place, they feel safest here right now.”
Stone sighed. He pointed at the mansion behind its glamour. “What if we just walk in there?”
Henry shrugged.
Charlie held up his hand. “Unlike the water in the sprinklers, we’ll go right through to wherever the portal takes us. It looks like it’s set on a trigger. After the portal sends us to wherever, the glamour blows away and the mansion returns to normal. Whatever that means.”
Aela growled. Frustration and impatience. “Can we just get on with it, please?”
Stone spread his hands. “Okay, okay. Weego and Hansen are sitting in the wagons as we speak.”
“What the Hell are the wagons?” Henry said.
Howser pulled his rifle up to the ready again. “Prototypes of the TDVs we built for Dark Water.”
“Oh.”
“Tactical Defense Vehicles. Urban armored response transport.”
“Got it.”
“Do you?”
Henry shook his head. “Not really.”
Howser grinned, a chuckle escaping through his teeth. “How about we call ’em in, and you can see for yourself?”
“So, are we just gonna walk through?”
“I wish we had more time to plan this shit.” Stone pointed to Henry’s horns. “But I don’t really know what to plan for.”
“Fuck it,” Henry said. “Call ’em in, and we’ll break on through to the other side.”
Engines rumbled in front of the clubhouse. Howser dropped his hand from a black band around his neck — one of those fancy throat mics.
“I already did,” he said with a smile.
Howser waved for them to follow and spun to jog out of the trees. Henry broke into motion to join him, freezing at the sight of two vehicles growling under the golf course entrance lighting. “Okay, I didn’t see those coming.”
Charlie and Frank both crashed into Henry’s back. He looked at them over his shoulder, and they shared the same look of astonished wonder. That expression that men shared at car shows and breweries.
The wagons were two giant SUV’s. Flat black with wide stances and billowing exhaust. They looked mean, their dark grills like grim smiles. They seemed to pull the light into themselves, and Henry felt their purpose like a mugger’s intentions. The doors opened, and there were no interior lights.
“It’s like what the Devil would drive,” Henry said.
“Damn straight,” said Stone as he walked by.
Henry looked around him with his senses stretched as far as he could reach. Still the sleepers blanketed in their dreams. The firemen off in the distance and their quiet laughter at Stone’s manic secrecy. Silence from the mansion behind him. Henry drew his thoughts back into himself, and turned to survey his friends standing in a semi-circle at the edge of the trees.
Helping him save his wife. His daughter. A miracle of a boy. Henry realized for the first time in his life, he didn’t have a joke. “Fuck it.” He turned back to the TDVs. “Now what?”
Weego shrugged his body armor higher onto his shoulders and rocked his head side to side, stretching his neck. He pulled away from his quiet conversation with Howser and Stone and smiled. It looked to Henry like an expression he only invited to his darkest times. “I say we send the wagons through, and you and your … squad here can come through on our bumpers. We’ll pop the guns and see what’s up.”
Henry had no better answer.
Is this really where I am?
Everybody looking at me?
Without turning to the faces behind him, Henry nodded. Defeat was at war with excitement. Hanging heavy over every head.
He took a deep breath that tasted like diesel exhaust. “Let’s do it.”
The engines revved, and the fat tires dug through the perfect grass of the ninth hole tee. Henry kept pace across the lawn, inhaling smoke from the armored vehicle’s tailpipe. Exhaling with the heat of his rising anger.
Why me?
The gun still hadn’t left the back of his head, even after taking his life.
The TDVs hit the edge of the glamour just before the iron fence. The nose of the lead vehicle disappeared, and the illusion shrouding the mayor’s mansion rippled. Green sparkles of light traced away from the breach like fleeing insects.
The TDV was swallowed. The glamour closed over it like the shrinking iris of a film student transition. The second vehicle hit one lane over, vanishing to the front tire before Henry hit the sizzling power with his horns.
Daddy’s coming.
The gut-wrenching twist of moving through space and time preceded the forest’s wet scent at the edge of the Forgotten.
Broken asphalt under his claws was slick with oil. A darkness different than the night above the golf course. Thick and pressing, like a canopy directly overhead.
The SUVs slid to a stop, each veering to the outside to face away from each other, forming a V. Henry slid to his own stop at the lead vehicle’s left-front fender, and his knees locked. Shock swamped his heart, and he grabbed the darkness around him. Shadows under the vehicles rumbling beside him. The black under his own feet.
He dragged it in like pulling a soaking sail from the ocean, and he spun with it unfurling behind his head. He saw Aela’s wide eyes. The grim set of Boothe’s jaw.
Charlie’s speed had left him, and he stood at Nadia’s side, staring. Maria slowed with her hands spread out, white fire dying in her palms.
Frank met his eyes, horror pulling his chin to his chest.
The strain pulled something loose in Henry’s gut. Lancing pain shot up into his head, spreading to his temples as the energy to gather mountains of darkness burned through him. His shroud settled over them, and he cinched it tight, spreading it to bury them in shadows. His claws scratched through the road as he spun to take in the enemy.
Red fire arced through the air from the front of a block building set into the center of the road. A ball, spinning and roaring, trailing yellow light. It fell from the sky, angling toward the two vehicles. Coming at Henry as he cowered under his cloak of shadow with the rest of his friends gathered around him.
Under the falling boulder of fire, was a writhing mass of Ravag
ers standing in ragged ranks at the base of the building.
The windows on the top floor were lit from inside. Creatures made of fire reflected off the ground floor’s wall of dark windows. Demons and golls took to the air, screaming as weapons were readied. So many, and Henry couldn’t see any space between them.
The ground shook with their pounding feet as they charged. The air ripped with their combined voice. Henry looked over his shoulder, and the golf course was gone. Charlie and Boothe had been right, and he sent them through, anyway.
Why the fuck would anybody listen to me?
Henry knew the darkness wouldn’t protect them, but maybe it would hide them long enough for somebody else to make a decision.
The ball of fire pounded the ground right in the notch of the V. Flames exploded into the steel. A crash that drowned the screaming voices and pounding feet. The TDVs lifted up and rocked from the impact, but there was no shattering glass or crumple of metal. The fire broke apart, like water splashing against a break wall.
The TDVs bounced, the springs in their suspension creaking, and a hatch in the center of each roof popped open. Howser rose out of one and Weego from the other. The thick metal of a mini-gun barrel led each man into the open.
Henry’s jaw dropped further, and in his shock, he lost his grip on the shadows.
Howser and Weego opened fire, and the concussion of their guns drove Henry back into Boothe’s arms.
Ravagers exploded as the bullets tore into their ranks. Driving through the men and women in the front, bullets blowing craters into the concrete wall behind them, spreading the blood in streaks of crimson and black.
Maria shot into the air, shedding her clothes in favor of a robe made from the white fire of her undiluted power. Her scream rose above the thundering guns, and her hands met in front of her, a shaft of energy sweeping out from her fingers and knocking winged creatures into the path of the destruction on the ground.
Boothe leapt up on white wings, and a spear left his hand to stab the side of a demon flying in a slow arc with a black sword overhead. She dropped in a screeching spiral, the mini-guns shredding her wings and tearing chunks of flesh away in an explosion of blood.