by Linda Welch
Hurrying to keep up with the men’s long strides allowed no more than brief peeks in the open doorways which lined the passageway. The rooms were small salons furnished with silk-covered divans, fragile chairs and low tables.
We reached a door at the far end. Gareth knocked, opened, and stood aside to allow us to precede him.
Round and windowless, the room was the size of the waiting room in Clarion Station. The walls, curving up to a high vaulted ceiling, were a pale burnished brown in a pattern which made them look like rippling silk. We stood on russet carpet like crushed velvet. Thick braided gold silk rope looped around the wall between heavy, glowing, golden sconces. A massive chandelier of sparkling golden glass hung from the center of the ceiling.
I examined the wall nearest me. Not silk, frosting - whatever covered the wall looked like frosting. With the rope looping the circumference, the walls looked like the sides of a cake decorated by someone with a taste for opulence.
A large throne-like chair of carved wood with a gold plush seat sat on a raised platform across from us. In front of that, five men and two women, their backs to us, sat at a half-circular wooden table. Gareth crossed the room to the table to stand behind the eighth, vacant chair, and motioned us forward with a cupped hand.
Royal led the way across the room and around the table, until we stood facing the High Lord’s Council.
From the gray and silver in their metallic hair, the fine lines on their faces, I thought they were older Gelpha, like Gareth. They didn’t introduce themselves, just stared at us with lazy eyes.
Royal began to speak and the eight regarded him with relaxed, expressionless faces. I resisted the impulse to beat a tattoo on the carpet with my toe. I didn’t want to stare at the councilors, or let my gaze drift around the room. I felt awkward, out of place, superfluous.
Royal fell silent. A man with coal-black hair drizzled with gray and silver cleared his throat and settled his clasped hands on what looked suspiciously like the beginnings of a pot belly. He lifted his head to regard us with eyes like pools of mercury. “A nasty business.”
The man was handsome, but a pot belly? Every demon I’d seen till now had a lean, sculpted body. I couldn’t tear my gaze from that small, insignificant indication that demons are not physically perfect. Did they get slack with age, like us?
“Tiff.”
I snapped back to the moment. “Huh?”
“Are you positive you saw a Dark Cousin?” asked a female councilor, an exquisite, aging face, long fading-salmon hair and the body of a young woman clad in a diaphanous gown which left her copper-tone shoulders bare. Her pink-beige eyes glowed beneath arched brows.
I uneasily shifted one shoulder. “I saw him briefly through his victims’ eyes, too briefly to put a name to him. But from his speed and strength, he must be a Cousin.”
“He could be Gelpha.”
I scrunched up my eyes. Did she not listen to what Royal just said? “Then why did Dark Cousins tell us to stay away from him?”
“We know who he is, Darja,” Royal said.
“You do not know,” from the other woman. Her long white and gray hair, done up in a chignon, looked slightly brittle; her eyes flat smoky disks.
“The question is,” Gareth said, “why do you bring this to us?”
Royal took one pace forward. “Every Gelpha in the human realm should watch for him. If we can pinpoint his location, perhaps enough of us can take him down.”
“Pah!” from the pot-bellied demon. “Let the Dark Cousins see to their own. Or perhaps the humans will find and overwhelm him.”
“But he’s slaughtering people!” I exclaimed.
A demon wearing a white toga, his bronze and silver hair in two long braids, looked along his nose at me. “What happens in the human sphere is not our concern.”
“Baloney! Why do you have enforcers there if that’s so?”
“To monitor Gelpha activity, not that of Dark Cousins,” Gareth said.
I began to boil. “Listen, you ass-stupid - ”
Royal’s hand, squeezing my upper arm, made me reluctantly swallow my words. I twitched free from his grasp.
“History tells us we can defeat the Dark Cousins,” he said loudly.
If I were a dog, my ears would have perked.
“On our own ground, when we massed against them. Not in a world swarming with humans,” from the white-haired woman. She made a careless gesture. “We will not risk our people.”
On her last word, the Councilors jerked like puppets on strings, arms slashing out, hands flapping. One man rising to his feet buckled at the knees. I took a startled step to my left and saw Royal clap one hand to his forehead with a surprised, pained expression.
Something affected the Councilors in a bad way and Royal suffered in a lesser manner. I felt fine.
“Royal!” I curved my hands around his biceps. “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
He dropped his hands. Sweat slicked his forehead. The Councilors went limp and fell in their chairs.
“Remember when I first brought you here and told you we cannot just beam into the High House?”
I nodded.
“Somebody just did.”
The Councilors pulled themselves together. They sat stiffly in their chairs, smoothing their attire, brushing at their hair. The salmon-haired demon wiped her brow with the back of her wrist.
Gareth stood and cleared his throat. “He is not Gelpha, nor human; we feel their presence. This leaves one alternative.”
“The pact has held for centuries, why break it now?” from the pot bellied demon.
Not Gelpha or human. “A Dark Cousin? You mean a Dark Cousin is here?”
“It can be nothing else.”
“Oh.” The word came out in a puff of air. My fingernails dug in Royal’s arm. “It’s him. He saw us, in Nebraska, or Vegas, I don’t know where. He knows what you are. He followed us.”
“Take her home,” Gareth said.
They rose, turned in a swirl of robes and made for the door. Royal pried my fingers off his arm, took my hand in his and started after them.
“So, you take me home. What then?” I asked suspiciously.
“Then I return.”
We were at the door. I dug my feet in, although that just slowed us a fraction. My feet jittered over the carpet, trying for traction. “I’m not going anywhere. If you’re here, so am I.”
He eyed me with annoyance. “Not happening, Tiff.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You don’t have our strength and speed. You are little more than helpless.”
Helpless, huh? I swallowed annoyance and denial. My ego was not important now.
We dashed away, my feet tripping over themselves. After zipping along corridors and through rooms of varying dimensions, all a blur to me, we stepped inside a big square chamber. Demons crammed the place, jam-packed together, all facing outward. Sardines in a can had nothing on these people. I don’t know how they drew breath. This place also lacked windows, the walls and floor drab gray like wet concrete and no adornments, with modern strip-lighting in the high ceiling.
“Where are we?”
“Lawrence is below, in what you call a panic room which can be opened only from inside.”
“And these guys?”
“An additional line of defense.”
They were prepared to defend their young High Lord with their bodies. Admirable. How many in the States would do that for the President?
Gareth came through the door behind us. “It is done. The High House has been evacuated.”
That was fast, but demons are fast. I cocked my thumb at the door. “So what’s the plan?”
“This is the plan.”
I gawped. “What? Tuck Lawrence away and to hell with everyone else?”
Gareth looked down at me - yeah, he’s that tall - and nodded.
Flabbergasted, I glared. “That’s it? One Dark Cousin on the loose, you run away and hide?”
“The
Cousins today are pale remnants of what they once were.” He gave me a frosty look. “This one is an Ancient. He kills with a swipe of his hand.”
Cousins of today? Did he mean Gia Sabato? Gia, a pale remnant? I thought nothing could be more powerful than her, until I saw the killer’s speed through his victim’s eyes and the damage he did them.
First Royal and the councilors, now Gareth, speaking freely of Dark Cousins as I listened! Good grief.
“He’s older than Jacob and Gia?” I asked.
“In terms of age, Teo-Papek is young, and she is a child compared to those who inhabited Nagka,” Gareth spat.
But Dark Cousins were not invincible. Phillip Vance’s squad killed several of them. If humans could do that, surely powerful Gelpha could overcome this monster. I splayed my hands on my hips. “A gang of puny human men killed a few Dark Cousins. Back there,” I cocked my thumb over my shoulder, “Royal said you defeated the Dark Cousins once. Surely a bunch of you can take down one guy. Why are you so afraid?”
“I will not ask our people to risk their lives.”
I never took Gelpha as stupid, but apparently they were. “If you don’t, what’s to stop him leaving here and waltzing through Bel-Athaer, tearing your people apart?”
A low murmur rose from the crowd behind us.
“All are at risk while he is at large,” Royal said. He stared determinedly at Gareth. “Long ago we slew Dark Cousins. We were warned to always be on our guard. Yet when they threaten us again, we cower in this room?”
A silence of seconds while Gareth appeared to consider, then reluctantly, “What do you suggest?”
“Eight teams, two on each floor and two the cellars. They split and go in opposite directions. When we trap him between us, all teams converge and engage him.”
“Taking men from here would weaken the High Lord’s protection.”
“Look at them, Gareth.” Royal flicked one hand at the room. “Packed in as they are, they cannot battle this monster. They are a wall around Lawrence, nothing more. Call back some who evacuated, to replace our finest warriors.”
If I knew Royal, if the damn Council denied him, he’d track that Cousin down alone. And I would do my best to stop him. If I could not, I’d go with him.
Gareth turned from us. He stood with hands curled into fists while everything around us seemed to stop and wait expectantly; the Gelpha, time itself. I held my breath.
His hands relaxed. “I will consult the High Lord and his Council.”
He made his way through the crowd, which was difficult, with a lot of shuffling and people treading on others, until I couldn’t see him anymore.
I thought my fingernails would draw blood from my palms before he returned; it seemed to take an age. The demons faced the door, faced Royal and me, a frieze of multicolored hair, glittering eyes in pale metallic skin, clothing of glowing colors. My breath came shallowly through my pursed lips.
At long last Gareth walked from out the crowd, stopped in front of us and bowed his head. “Very well.”
Yes! I wanted to punch air. “Great! Let’s go get this motherfucker!”
Royal’s brow creased. “The only place you are going is home. You have no natural defenses. He could kill you in the blink of an eye.”
I patted my Ruger where it nested in the harness below my left armpit. “I have this. If you leave me behind, I’ll find you, and him.”
“I don’t think so. You are going home, over my shoulder if necessary.”
He wouldn’t! “If you do that, I will never speak to you again.”
“That would pain me, but I can live with it rather than see you hurt, or dead.”
And it would pain me to let him face the Dark Cousin without me at his back. To wait and wonder if I would see him again. To picture those mutilated bodies in my mind’s eyes, and his face on each and every one. I would never forgive myself if he were hurt. I’d blame myself for not being there.
I knew feeling as I did was illogical. What difference could I, a pitifully weak human, make in a fight with a supremely powerful Dark Cousin? But I could not spend the rest of my life thinking, if only or what if. I had to be there.
His heat surged over me. “I can’t risk losing you, Tiff.” His hand clamped on my upper arm and hustled me to the door.
“I am staying,” I said firmly, “because I will die in little pieces waiting for you to come back to me.”
We stopped suddenly. Royal kind of twirled me and pulled me in, his arms like steel. I managed to see his face, and eyes with something like triumph in them.
I tipped my head so it cleared his shoulder. “What is that look supposed to mean?”
He just smiled.
I just broke Tiff’s Relationship Rule Number One: never tell a guy what he means to you.
I stepped in and grasped the front of his jacket with both hands, brought my face to his and spoke softly. “Don’t do this to me, Royal. I have to be in on this. We’re a team, remember? If our positions were reversed, you wouldn’t let me go in alone.”
He sighed. His body loosened. “We will search every orifice of this place. When we move, stay with me. When we enter a room, remain at the door.”
“Maybe.”
His brought his hands up to cover mine and looked in my eyes, his own narrowed in concern.
Gareth reminded us we had a job to do. “Are you prepared?”
Royal nodded, yet his gaze never left mine, as if reluctant to do so.
“And you, Miss Banks?”
I gave myself a mental shake to escape the spell of Royal’s eyes and stepped back from him.
“As good as I’ll get.” I thought of what we would face and a parade of mutilated people waltzed through my mind. Royal was right, I was ill-equipped for this. “Unless you have an armory.”
A muffled noise from Gareth. “Follow me,” he said.
“Where?”
His brows almost met in a frown. “To the armory.”
They did have an armory? Well I’ll be damned. . . .
***
The armory turned out to be more a museum. I could have explored it all day. I suppose, given their close association with my world, it’s not surprising so many objects I saw in Bel-Athaer are similar to their counterparts on Earth, and what I found in the armory was no exception. I could imagine some spears in the hands of Roman foot soldiers.
I tried to move smoothly, but I clanked. The breast and back plate came as a set, but made for a larger, wider person, so the edges hit as I walked and the buckles joining the two pieces kept snagging on my sweater. I rotated my shoulders to ease the weight on them.
I hugged my armor as we descended a flight of deep steps between smooth, deep-sea-green walls, trying to muffle the noise with my arms. My shoulder holster didn’t fit over the armor, so I carried it bunched in my left hand, the Ruger in my right.
“You guys don’t believe in elevators?” I muttered.
Royal, on the step below, turned his head to give me an old-fashioned look. They don’t need elevators. Why would anyone who could move like the wind want to wait for an elevator? Duh, Tiff.
The High House is a world encased in walls, containing much of what you find in a small city. It provides for every need and convenience apart from crops and meat animals, which I presume come from elsewhere in Bel-Athaer. We prowled the cellars where most of what is necessary to sustain the House operates. I saw carcasses hung in a small meat-processing plant, and a modern mill to churn out flour. I saw a garage complete with mechanics bays and a wide ramp climbing to garage doors. Like most basements back home, the cellars were slightly above ground level and many rooms had narrow windows near the ceiling through which pale light penetrated.
When we came to a wide, empty, cavern-like room with vaulted ceilings, my feet wanted to turn in the other direction. I hesitated, looking into the shadowed depths. It’s not the same place. Yet my heart thudded painfully. Memories ran riot as I surreptitiously looked for glittering crystal, an old
blood stain on the floor.
Did this place rouse Royal’s memories of the duel with his brother Kien in a cavern below Morté Tescién? How often did he dwell on the events of that evening, when Kien abducted and tortured me, when he killed his brother to save my life?
His arm slipped around my shoulders in a comforting embrace, his strength supported and guided me across to the door at the far end.
“You’re cold.” He released me so he could shrug off his jacket and hold it out. “Put this on.”
He didn’t fool me. He knew the cool air didn’t make me shiver - the heavy jacket was another layer of protection. I didn’t argue. I slid into the jacket, then stretched my arms to make sure the size and weight would not hamper my flexibility.
The House was unnaturally silent. The demons made no noise at all as they walked, not a footfall, not a heavy breath. We passed through the vast building. I did not obediently remained at the doors as the Gelpha silently drifted through this room and that chamber, but I stayed close to Royal.
I lost track of time. Motion became monotonous.
Chapter Sixteen
“Watch yourself here,” Royal said in a low voice. “It is the oldest part of the House and some areas are unstable.”
It looked that way. I saw how far renovation had progressed when we walked past stacks of cut timber, other building materials and tools, leaving the smooth floors and glowing walls behind. Cable looped along the ceiling, dangling a light bulb every ten feet or so. The floor was worn and slightly pitted, the walls plain brick to which old plaster adhered in patches. More plaster filled a big brown dumpster.
After looking into two large, empty rooms, we arrived at the next and cautiously eased inside. It reminded me of the early-twentieth-century factories crumbling away on Wall Avenue. Like the wide passage leading here, it felt damp. Bricks had come away from the walls and shattered over the filthy floor. Verdigris coated a metal staircase which went up to a square hole in the wooden ceiling. Dust lay thick over everything. Chains of heavy metal links looped down from girders knobbed with rivets. Amid the chaos of huge, rusting boilers, a massive furnace, flues, pipes, wooden crates and metal tables, a conveyor belt of wooden slats separated the room. Crates and large barrels filled the small spaces between equipment. To the left of the door, two rectangular windows near the ceiling let in a little natural light.