“And this—” He gestured toward the woman. “—is Celene, my better half, my earthbound goddess, mi amor.” She looked ten years his senior.
I squeezed the chains in my hands and the ice shattered. She seemed sad to see her dazzling bracelets disappear.
“Why was I brought here?” I asked quickly so my voice had less time to crack. The air was so dry. The tang of bile coated the back of my throat.
“Ah, yes.” Mephos shot a dangerous glance at Rasmus. “We recently received news of the Seventh Gate and your astonishing feat.”
“Well done,” Celene purred as she swayed to Mephos’s side and draped a graceful, creamy arm around his strong, young shoulders.
“We had hoped to issue you an invitation to visit us in our winter home.” His copper gaze rested on me a moment. “We have something special to show you.”
“There’s this thing called a phone.”
“Yes. It seems our associate didn’t quite understand our instructions.” His heated stare settled on Rasmus again. And, as if the laws of nature were just a casual suggestion, the crumbling man shattered into a thousand pieces and vanished. I gaped at the empty spot where he had just stood.
Mephos draped a hand over his heart and restored his mask of mildness.
“I hope you can forgive us for the intrusion. We only meant to consult with you about a small matter.”
No one seemed concerned that the number of people occupying the veranda had just shrunk from four to three.
“Rasmus’s exits are as abrupt as his entrances. You’ll get used to them.” Mephos waved a hand as if to erase my shock. I swallowed loudly.
“How could I possibly help you?”
Mephos appraised me for another long moment.
“You seem to have a way with the Gates.”
Panic pushed to the front of my mind.
“Ours is in need of a little fine-tuning.”
My slow blink blotted out his hyper-focused gaze for a moment, but the strange tableau remained fixed. I was on another part of the planet, cut off from Grayford and all that was familiar, standing before a man whose proximity made my hindbrain wail with warning, and he was telling me there was another Hell Gate?
It was time to see myself out.
“Ms. Blythe. May I call you Melisande?” Mephos took a step back as if I were a grenade with a missing pin. Or maybe he was blocking the exit. “I know this is all a bit much. This is not how we wanted to make your acquaintance. Please”—he gestured to a table with food and a pitcher of clear, fruit-choked liquid—“join us for breakfast. We would love to hear all about your part of the world.”
The last thing I wanted was to move closer to that man, but I needed to sit. Celene’s bare feet skipped across the sparkling tiles and pulled a chair out for me. She settled in the chair next to it, tucked back in the dappled shadow of a shapely, stunted shore tree that grew through a hole in the middle of the veranda. I didn’t recognize the species. I couldn’t determine the types of brightly colored flowers dripping from every pot either. I couldn’t identify the bird song. Even the hot nudges of arid breeze were unfamiliar. How could we be sitting next to an ocean and there be no moisture in the air? Everything was so foreign. A tremor of shock trilled through me as reality settled in.
“Here.” Mephos grasped the pitcher and poured the fruit-laden liquid into a delicate flute. “Try this.”
“Or would you prefer a café con leche?” Celene inquired. She placed her hand lightly over mine. I slid my hand away.
“Oh, no, dear. She needs to calm her nerves. This will work well.” He held the glass out to me.
I took the glass. Celene gestured toward an oval tray of shaved ham garnished with grapes and cheese. My empty stomach rumbled, but I didn’t reach for a single morsel. I’d read somewhere that one should never partake of food or drink while in fairyland. I made a guess that the rule held true for cold cuts in crazy town too.
“So, Melisande…” Mephos took a seat and lifted a tiny espresso cup to his lips. He took a conservative sip and placed it back on its saucer. “We know you closed the Seventh Gate, but we do not yet know why?”
“There’s another active Hell Gate?” The words spilled from my lips. I knew it wasn’t an answer to his question, but I couldn’t contain the query any longer. Everything Rasmus had rambled about in my living room was true. Just the thought of that unbearable void, that aching chasm filled with all the unraveling knowledge of the universe, loosened my muscles. A light wave of cataplexy stole through me, and my head drooped. I counted to five, and it was gone.
I’d seen seven in my dreams. Seven yawning mistakes in the fabric of the world. From my perspective, the gate had been a consuming vacuum that spun through a kaleidoscope of colors my mind could see but my eyes could not. I guessed the perspective from the other side looked much different. Something lived there that could not be seen from our world. Some approximation of life. It yearned for our realm. Its corrupting thoughts soaked into the planet like a poisonous portent from seven locations on the globe. And I’d closed one of them.
An echo of that endless, pulsing darkness stirred to life in the farthest reaches of my mind.
“Hmm. It must be my accent.” Mephos shared a giggle with Celene. “Yes, the Cauldron of Cathar is one of the oldest of the Gates. In fact, it is believed to be the second aperture to permeate this world.”
“The Second Gate?” I breathed.
“Correcto.” Mephos’s tongue rolled the Rs.
“Why hasn’t it been closed?”
“Why would we want to do that?”
“Armageddon, apocalypse, rapture.” I offered the first things that popped into my head.
“Rapture? Armageddon? Melisande, you are a Christian? We may have more in common than we realize.”
I opened my mouth to answer, but was it a question or a statement? I’d seen too many things to deny my faith, but was Christianity really what Christians thought it was? Or was it just a thin layer of something much bigger and older than we could comprehend?
“The Hell Gate I encountered was a dangerous, volatile thing. Given time, its evil would have consumed the eastern seaboard of the United States.” My thoughts slicked over the mind-bending creatures who’d emerged from the spatial disruption. I still couldn’t make sense of their bodies as a whole. But their teeth and claws, their horned brows still haunted me.
“I don’t doubt it. But the Cauldron of Cathar has been stable for fifteen thousand years.”
“Then, why do you need me?”
A flame of ire flickered behind his warm, brown eyes, then snuffed out in an instant.
“Need is perhaps the wrong word.” He plucked a grape and passed it to his tongue. His lips rolled as he chewed. His tanned face was the picture of youth, but the set of his eyes suggested a different carbon date.
“Like is a better term. We would like your opinion on a new development.”
The idea of being near another Hell Gate struck fear in parts of me I didn’t even know I had.
“And then I can go home?”
“And then you can go home.”
“The normal way?”
“A first-class ticket on the airline of your choosing.”
I looked from Mephos to Celene, two casual, young Catalonians enjoying the last of their summer next to the lapis-blue rim of the Mediterranean. What was to say they were anything but that?
“Fine.” If cooperation would get me out of there faster, then that’s what they’d get.
I took a hesitant sip of the sparkling juice and looked out at a day I was not supposed to see yet. It was beautiful and bright. A sluggish wave pushed at the rugged little beach below. It pulled and splashed and did its part to be picture perfect. Why did it feel like every rock and leaf and flutter of wing was cooperating too? I think the Costa Brava knew something I didn’t.
Chapter Four
A Warpath
Grayford
The sun rose red with rage. It pai
nted a warpath across the wide river. I stood among the fleeing shadows filled with the same elemental fury.
“Would that I could join you,” Pratt murmured from behind me. The dawning day was already stealing his strength.
“My friend, you have done enough. It would be splendid to have your company, but this is a journey I must take alone.”
I turned and offered him my hand. A tingling crossed my palm as he took it. We’d shaken over many things: greetings, barters, contracts, and countless partings. This separation would be different. I was leaving everything I knew and heading into a world that had changed in more ways than I had observed from my sheltered piece of limbo. The thought exhilarated me, and at the same time it set a tremor of uncertainty through my limbs.
This is life, I reminded myself. Every experience was a gamble, a delightful or disastrous roll of the dice. I wanted to have those experiences with Melisande. The ache of her absence plagued my heart.
I hefted the small leather pack I’d found at the back of Melisande’s closet and stepped off the porch of our apartment building. It held a change of clothes, toiletries, and the money Pratt had liberated from several “buried” accounts.
“This is a dangerous way to travel,” Pratt warned again.
“Mortals do it all the time.”
A car turned the corner from Court Street onto North Street and slowed to a stop.
“That would be my ride.”
Pratt’s visage was almost indiscernible amid the overgrown gardenia bushes at the front of the building. The old Industrialist mansion turned apartment building was one of the younger landmarks in Olde Towne and easy to find.
“I am sorry we could not procure for you a more comfortable means of crossing the Atlantic. My associate’s clientele is not usually burdened with flesh.”
“The cargo plane will do the job.”
“I fear the other passengers may not be—”
“Pratt,” I interrupted. “I’ll meet your man at Heathrow and get quickly off the grid. Everything will be fine.”
The driver looked up from his paperwork and waved.
“I’ve left messages at Melisande’s studio and with Ben Martin at the office. Gabe will feed Shadow.” I spared my friend a last glance. “The city is yours, Sir. Tend her well.”
“I will.”
Pratt vanished, and I took the first step on my journey.
Chapter Five
Um, I’m an Episcopalian
Melisande
A brief nap helped with the time change, but I didn’t have my CPAP machine. Without my oxygenated forced-air treatment, things would go south quickly. Maybe this whole experience would be over soon and I could get back to Gr…Grayford and my own bed. Even a momentary thought in the direction of him pierced me with pain. The last image I had of him was his crumpled form tossed against the wall and slumped to the floor. Was he unconscious or was he…? With our tether cut, I couldn’t know for sure. Something told me he was still alive, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. He was gone from my mind, and the absence wracked my insides as though I were withdrawing from a substance. Is that what detox feels like? Our unusual connection had allowed us to become addicted to each other. We both knew it. That depth of contact wasn’t in the natural plan for humans. We should have been more careful with our strange gift.
I stretched my aching muscles and tried not to think of him. Outside of the Joining, what I felt for Gr…him was more than I’d ever felt for anyone before. When we were together, it was like going home to a part of myself I’d never visited before. When we were apart, I’d caught myself counting the minutes until I saw him again. Every precious piece of my thoughts, my body, my soul, I’d laid at his feet like a desperate bower bird intent on one thing—catching his eye. The deep blue circles that ringed the pale seas of his eyes came into view, and the image struck like a scorpion injecting me with loss. I curled around the pain. It was all I had.
****
I must have fallen asleep again. The parched air stirred the curtains of the room they’d put me in. It was a gentle touch, but clumsy against my skin like a new lover. I had to say, given it or the constant invading humidity of home, I’d take a Mediterranean breeze any day.
I opened my eyes to Celene’s curved form. She leaned against the wide, glassless window, framed by the periwinkle blue flowers spilling over the sill. Shadows stretched across the room, bathing her in late-day mystery. When she saw I was awake, she leaned forward. Her fingers hooked over the lip of the window frame as if holding herself back. I found the exaggerated interest in me annoying.
“You know, you’ve come to us at a very auspicious time.”
“No, I don’t know that, and I didn’t come here of my own accord.” I stretched my legs, then pushed to a sitting position. My head swam. Lack of oxygen. I couldn’t sleep again without my CPAP or the hypoxic brain injury would crack my brain open and turn it into a beacon for ghosts.
“Mis disculpas, Melisande. Mephos has spoken to Rasmus about that. You must allow us to make it up to you.” She stepped away from the window and her nails dragged against the wooden sill. “There is a festival tonight.” She stopped herself and chuckled. “There are many festivals, but tonight is perhaps the biggest and most important of the year.” Celene walked to the edge of the daybed I’d slept on and took a seat next to me. Her fingers slipped beneath the sheets as if they were seeking out the heat signature I’d left behind. “It is the Assumption of Mary.” She watched me for a reaction.
“Um, I’m an Episcopalian. We’re good with the Mother of God, but She’s treated more like a saint in my neck of the woods.”
Celene crossed herself and kissed her fingers for effect.
“Yes, she is a saint, but one that was taken into heaven in bodily form. We celebrate her assumption into heaven on this day.” She blinked aquamarine eyes at me. “It is a party, Melisande. A big party! You won’t want to miss it.”
I liked the smiling, jubilant version of Celene much better than her intrusively watchful state.
“That sounds nice, but I believe I’m here for business.”
“Maybe you are here for both.” Celene leaned into my shoulder. I had the feeling that she’d been let off her leash and intended to enjoy every minute of it. “And, by the way, all business stops on a feast day like this. So, you might as well…how do you say in America?” She tapped her flawless red lips. “Go with it.”
Celene sprang to her feet and twirled through the gathering shadows, arms out to catch the afternoon light on her milky skin. “Come to my room. There is much to do.”
****
Celene’s room had many things in it, but a phone wasn’t one of them.
“May I make a call?”
“Of course.” She brushed my question off. I hadn’t seen a single telephone or cell in the entire multilevel beach house. The modern Mediterranean structure sprawled across the cliff top in jutting stepped levels. Clean, white walls and sharp angles were softened by the occasional billowing curtain or splash of flowers. Around each corner was a private veranda or sparkling pool. This was the kind of real estate one dreamed about but only viewed from afar.
“But first, let us find you a top that is not so dirty and ripped.” She looked as though she was about to start undressing me, so I quickly pulled my tank top over my head.
Celene’s appraising gaze slid over my ample breasts. I’d found a new demi-cut bra designed for fuller cups with narrow ribcages. It was the prettiest thing I owned.
“Brava, Melisande.” The lascivious graze of her eyes made me blush. She gave me a measuring glance and then disappeared into the labyrinth of clothes she called a closet.
Cooperating, I reminded myself as I stood on the white, extra shag rug, smoothing my leather-paneled skirt nervously. The dressing room was impressively designed with rows upon rows of shoes and purses, scarves, and hats hanging against the walls. An island of cubbies contained bulkier items like sweaters and wraps. Along
the forward wall, where I kept thinking mirrors should be, were glass-fronted drawers filled with undergarments made of silk and lace. Everything was perfectly lit with recessed lighting and ambient wall lamps.
Celene swayed back into view through the racks upon racks of dresses, skirts, and blouses. Her arms overflowed with garments.
“Here we are, mi amiga.” She draped a selection of clothes over the circular ottoman at the center of the dressing space. She seemed almost maniacally happy at the prospect of dressing me. “We will be in Barcelona for the weekend, then we will take a car to the mountains. So, you will need several outfits.”
“Whoa, wait a minute. A whole weekend? Look, I really need to make a phone call.”
“Relax. It is the barest of moments. We will honor the Mother, drink the best sangria, dance beneath the moon, and it will be done. The pleasures of this world are fleeting, Melisande. You must enjoy them while you can.”
Something about the way she said that last part made my skin creep. Ice pricked at my palms. I wanted to circle her neck in icy chains and shake the deranged fashionista until she gave me a phone, but there was a fever in her eyes, a bright and gleaming anticipation, as if she sensed my thoughts.
“We depart in less than an hour, and I’m sure there is a phone in the car.” She seemed to wait almost gleefully to see what I would do next. I clenched my fists as fractals of frost laced across my knuckles.
“What’s in the mountains?” I asked finally. The frosty ectoplasm melted and dripped through my fingers into the shaggy rug where it would eventually evaporate.
“Snow,” she offered sarcastically, then gave me a sideways glance. “The Cauldron. It churns in the heart of the Pyrenees. It is quite a treat. You will love it, mi amiga.”
“I’m sure I will.” This time I gave her the measuring glance. I wasn’t fooled by her or Mephos. There was something seriously wrong with their hospitality. Rasmus’s whispered admonition in the echoing darkness of the cave came back to me.
A Shiver of Shadows Page 4