Gathering Storm

by Danann, Victoria

  Ram, his hair still wet from a shower, leaped up on top of the conference table, put three fingers in his mouth and let loose an ear-splitting whistle. The room went instantly quiet.

  “Who is takin’ responsibility for findin’ my friend?” No one answered. “Everyone who is no’ takin’ responsibility, be quiet and do no’ say another fuckin’ thin’ unless you’re bein’ asked.” He turned to Glen. “Where are we?”

  Clearly frustrated, Glen ran his free hand over the bed head he was rocking. “I can’t tell.”

  While Ram was looking at Glen, someone at the back of the room yelled, “Angels rule!”

  Ram’s head jerked in that direction. “Exceedin’ly immature for creatures claimin’ to be superior. There’s no room for politics and games here. This woman…” He pointed at Litha. “…is missin’ her husband. ‘Tis scary for her. Do you no’ get that?

  “We’re grateful if you’re here to help. If you’re no’ here to help, get out so the rest of us can get down to business.”

  Elora was standing toward the back of the room, feeling a little numb. Her mind was on alert and trying to mount a defense against thoughts she didn’t want to think. What if we don’t get him back?

  Seeing movement out of the corner of her eye, she brought her head around to see Baka quietly slipping in with five vampire close behind. He nodded as he spotted Elora and started drifting her way.

  When he reached her side, she leaned over and whispered, “Good to see you. Thanks for coming.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Like there was a question. What’s going on here?”

  “Ram is trying to sort things out and get the search started.”

  Baka’s head jerked toward her. “No one’s looking?”

  Elora shook her head and Baka could read the worry on her face. “Not yet.”

  “Christ.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth.

  When no one met Ram’s challenge by leaving, he turned on Deliverance and didn’t try to hide the fact that he would have loved to turn the demon into a pillar of salt. On the spot. With no fanfare beforehand and no marker afterward. The only thing that kept him from plotting the murder was the fact that they probably couldn’t find Storm without the one who lost him.

  “I do no’ know anythin’ about the geography of passes. Can you take the route you used to get here, divide it into sections and assign these different…” He looked around the room as the thought flitted through his mind that dozens of academic types employed by The Order would have a field day if turned loose on that gathering of creatures heretofore thought mythological. “…factions an area to cover?”

  “It won’t be exact, but we can do something kind of like that.”

  Ram marshaled every bit of the example of control Storm had set for him so that he could pin Deliverance with a level look and calmly say, “Then will you do that please? Wherever he is, I’m certain he’s wishin’ he was here instead. So, I’m thinkin’ sooner is better than later.” He glanced at Litha and back to the demon. “Do you understand me?”

  Ram noticed Javier behind Elora. He’d been inching closer and was now leaning in to smell her hair with a dreamy look on his face when Ram stopped him with a pointed finger.

  “Step away from my wife now, motherfucker!”

  Following Ram’s finger, Elora turned around and bared her teeth. She was utterly without patience for adolescent shenanigans. “I suggest you do as my husband says quickly unless you want to end up with another ruined blouse.”

  Javier looked down at his chest as if he was remembering a flagpole protruding from his front and took a step back. Baka gave him a dirty look. Javier shrugged in response as if to say, “You cannot blame an immortal vampire at the height of his sexual urges for trying.”

  Ram turned back to Deliverance muttering something that began with, “Great Paddy…”

  The incubus nodded his agreement with the plan and started around the room letting the searchers get a fix on Storm by his shirt. He then began giving assignments and calling them out to Glen so he could write it on the board.

  Ram’s voice carried over the room. “Be sure to check in with Mr. Catch or myself every so often. When you find Sir Storm,” Ram was careful to say ‘when’ rather than ’if’ for Litha’s benefit. “…report here right away. One of us will be here.”

  In a short time there were four left. Rammel, Glen, Litha, and her father. Baka had left when the vampire were given their search parameters after extracting a promise that someone would call him immediately when there was word. Elora had gone upstairs to take over looking after Helm and Rosie.

  Litha turned to the demon, feeling exhausted, but determined to ignore it.

  “Give me an assignment and tell me what to do.”

  Ram sat down next to her and spoke quietly. “Litha, we have…” He looked at Glen. “How many are out searchin’ right now?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “Would it no’ be better to take care of Rosie?” He lowered his voice so that it was soft and comforting. “I hear she’s growin’ up pretty fast.”

  She looked into Ram’s face. She wondered if her husband really knew how lucky he was to have so many people who loved him. Tears welled in her eyes and overflowed without warning. Rammel immediately moved closer to offer a shoulder, which she took, gratefully.

  “He didn’t want to miss anything,” she said. “I could hardly get him to go to sleep. He wanted to just sit by her bed at night and watch her.”

  Ram felt his own breath catch in his throat and curled his fists tight when the overwhelming emotion threatened to overtake him as well. He blinked rapidly. He wouldn’t allow himself to entertain the possibility that Storm wouldn’t be back. That outcome was just too impossible to imagine. Through all the years of close, close calls, he’d accepted that each of them would probably end up like Lan. Not like this. Not this!

  When Litha began to quiet and pulled back, he said, “Come upstairs. Have some dinner with us. My wife is beside herself with worry about you.”

  Litha narrowed her eyes. “Nice try. She’s worried about Storm.”

  He cocked his head to the side a little. “She loves you, too, Litha. Do you no’ know that?”

  She nodded. “I do. I’m just cranky. I’m too anxious to have dinner and wait. I need to do something. I’ll go out for a while. If I don’t find him, I’ll come get Rosie and take her home to sleep in her own bed.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  When Litha and Deliverance left to pursue their separate hunts, Ram heaved a weary sigh. After a short pause he looked at Glen.

  “Let’s take twelve hour shifts. I’ll be back at nine. I can sleep on that couch over there.”

  “You sure about that, old man? You might get a crick in your neck.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  At eight thirty, Elora had just put Rosie’s little white nightgown on her. She was too beautiful for words, with Litha’s stunning emerald-green eyes set into a feminine version of Storm’s face. It was the latter that loosened Elora’s tear ducts, not that it ever took much to harvest tears from Elora. Rosie, who seemed to have a wide streak of empathy, immediately started to cry along.

  Elora swiped at her face. “No. No. Precious baby. Auntie just loves that you look so much like your daddy.”

  “Daddy.”

  “Yes. He’ll be home soon. And then we’re going to have a big party with balloons.”

  “Balloons,” Rosie repeated and confirmed.

  Elora hoped to all the gods that she was telling the truth.

  CHAPTER 9

  Storm had been whizzing along toward his daily lunch briefing with Glen, thinking about how cute Rosie was with Litha’s monks and how much they fussed over her like she was the second coming. Without warning he was stopped dead still. The haze that surrounded him continued to swirl in shades of gray and rose constantly mixing, separating, and reforming like a living abstract of colored smoke. He yelled for Deliverance, but knew
the volume of his raised voice had been swallowed by the white noise the currents made. His voice even sounded far away to his own ears.

  He told himself not to panic. If there was anything that had been drilled into Black Swan knights since they were little more than babies, it was that panic is never useful. He willed himself to calm and, within seconds, was decided on the only course of action that was both logical and reasonable. That was to do nothing.

  If he stayed exactly where he was, Deliverance would come back for him. So he set about trying to stay where he was, but the strength of the current in the pass made it impossible, like standing in ocean water up to your chest. The sand changing form underneath your feet and the motion of the waves would move you around whether you agreed to it or not.

  After a while, the exertion from just trying to stay upright was taking its toll on Storm’s muscles. It seemed to him that he’d been at it for hours, struggling to stay where he could be found. He knew his body was succumbing. His mind was trying to organize a Plan B, but he was exhausted.

  That’s when he was clipped by a passerby. It wasn’t done with malice. It wasn’t even intentional. Entities who travel the passes don’t expect to encounter a stationary object – like a humanoid at full stop - any more than an autobahn driver expects a single car to be at a standstill in the fast lane.

  The impact wasn’t enough to do damage, not even a bruise, but it was enough to cause Storm to take a step to regain his balance so that he didn’t go down. Unfortunately that single, fateful step took him out of the pass and into another dimension. Storm didn’t need a life signature placeholder to keep from having his own life extinguished on contact with a dimension where a counterpart might live. His demon blood negated his susceptibility. He could have a conversation with another version of himself if the opportunity presented. But if he had needed a placeholder, it would have been there for him.

  The Storm who was native to that dimension had mistreated a former one night stand outside the men’s room of a club a couple of nights before. She had been so incensed by his humiliating rejection and malicious cruelty that she had taken out a tiny pistol with mother of pearl on the handle and shot him in the face at point blank range. She’d had the presence of mind to take his wallet before she slipped out the alley exit. That was how that dimension’s version of Storm ended up a John Doe in the morgue, with no one who was close enough to him to realize he’d gone missing. Somewhere he had a mother who cared whether he lived or died, but he hadn’t seen her or talked to her in years.

  The newly arrived pilgrim, Storm, knew exactly where he was. When he’d been recruited by Sol Nemamiah, the first training facility he landed in was right on the edge of Golden Gate Park. He’d spent time in San Francisco and knew China Town when he saw it. He wasn’t actually in China Town at the moment, but if he crossed the street, he would be.

  Storm didn’t know he was in a different dimension, but he knew something had gone wrong and he knew his nerve endings were pricking painfully. He stood in the street for a few minutes grimacing, waiting for the pain to subside, which it did after a few minutes, when his body adjusted to a different vibration. The human in him didn’t appreciate dimension slipping.

  When he’d left home it was ten in the morning. The street he was standing on wasn’t completely deserted, but it was clear it was after hours.

  He took out his phone and dialed Litha. No service.

  Shop fronts were closed. Most eateries were closed. Scanning up and down the block it seemed he had two options. A walk-up donut shop that looked like they could use a mop, or a bar with part of the neon winking on a sign that read, HALCYON. The donut shop had customers, hard as that was to believe, and he didn’t want to wait in line to ask to borrow a phone. So the bar it was. An establishment called Halcyon couldn’t be all bad. Right? And the warmth would feel good. He’d left home in jeans and a black long sleeved tee thinking he was going straight from his kitchen at the vineyard to Glen’s office. The temperature was forty-something where he stood, but with wind chill, it felt colder.

  He let the red door swing closed behind him and looked around. It was nothing special, just the kind of place you might go to hide out in the dark and lose yourself in one kind of amber liquid or another. Place had an old Wurlitzer playing mellow, bluesy music. No revving. Just the right mood music for a melancholy drink alone.

  Nobody was sitting at the bar, but the guy behind it was just finishing a wipe down. He threw the damp towel over his shoulder as his eyes darted around the room. He was a big fella, about the same size as Storm. Maybe thirty years before he’d had the same flat stomach.

  He tracked Storm’s approach, giving him the once over and watching until he reached the bar and stopped.

  “Help you?”

  “Ah, yeah. My phone’s not getting a signal and I’ve got to make a call. Do you have one I can use?” The bartender studied him for a few beats, then reached into his pocket and withdrew a phone. “Don’t walk off with it.”

  Storm nodded, continuing to look the man in the eye so that he’d be reassured he wasn’t making a mistake by giving trust to a stranger. Storm was self-aware enough to know that he was tall and dark with an intense look that could easily be interpreted as menacing. “Very kind of you. I’ll be just at the other end of the bar.”

  His hands were itching to dial Litha’s number. He told himself he wasn’t scared, just anxious. He had made a habit of manually dialing every so often instead of relying on speed dial for this very reason – in case he ever needed to call her number from memory. He held his breath when the number rang once, but the little bit of hope didn’t last long. The ring was cut short by an annoying set of discordant electronic tones and a recorded voice saying that was not a working number.

  His heart was hammering in his chest, but he tried to tell himself not to jump to conclusions. No sense borrowing trouble. Maybe he’d misdialed. He touched the numbers on the screen again. Slower. Double checking each digit. One ring followed by a recorded voice that was the last thing in the universe he wanted to hear.

  He figured he didn’t have to be a genius to come to the conclusion that Deliverance had abandoned him to another gods forsaken dimension. And he was alone. He could hear his heart beating in his ears then realized that was because he’d forgotten to breathe. He looked around and met the curious eyes of the bartender who’d been glancing in his direction now and then.

  Storm made his way back to the other end of the bar and handed the phone over. The bartender took it out of his hand and looked Storm over. Again.

  “Not good news, huh?”

  Storm shook his head and looked around to see if anyone was watching. “I need to ask you something. You’re going to think it’s real strange, but maybe you can think of it as a dare or a practical joke or something like that?”

  The bartender put both hands flat on the bar and leaned in looking thoughtful. “Sure. It’s been slow tonight. I could use a good joke.”

  Storm took his wallet out of his pocket, pulled out a hundred dollar bill, and put it down on the bar face up. “Does that look like real money or play money to you?”

  Looking from the bill up to Storm’s face, the man eyes narrowed. “If that’s a joke, I’ve got to admit I’ve heard better.”

  Storm blinked. “Play money?”

  “It would be a pretty good copy except that, so far as I know, hundred dollar bills come with Thomas Jefferson’s face on the front. That’s why they’re called Tom J’s? You know?”

  “Tom J’s.”

  “Listen, friend, you seem a little lost.”

  Storm barked out a laugh that was so sudden and out of place, the bartender recoiled a little reflexively.

  “Lost. Yeah. Understatement of the… millennium.”

  “You want a drink?”

  Storm shook his head and smiled. thinking he might have landed in hell. Is that the way Elora felt? So completely alone? Everything familiar, but not? He chuckled again at his own
misfortune. “No money.”

  The bartender looked Storm over. Again. “Excuse me for saying so, but I wouldn’t take you for down and out.”

  “No?”

  “No. Take your clothes, for instance. Threads are top shelf. Close shave. Nice cologne. Healthy. Clean. Clear eyes. What am I missing?”

  Storm shook his head again, knocked two knuckles on the wood bar and said, “Thank you for letting me use your phone.”

  He started to turn away when the bartender stopped him.

  “Hold on.” The man set a shot glass down and started pouring Jack. “On the house.”

  Storm was the sort of person who was way too generous to turn down generosity when it was pointed at him. He knew that a gracious acceptance is a kind of return gift. So he didn’t hesitate to pick up the glass, throw his head back, and let the contents drain down his throat. He savored the after burn.

  If ever I needed a drink…

  When he set the glass down, the bartender grabbed up the bottle and made a question of motioning toward the empty glass with it. In answer, Storm looked in the guy’s eyes and silently slid the glass closer to the bottle.

  “So. I’m guessing you don’t have any real money in that wallet.” Storm said nothing. “I’m also guessing there’s a story that goes along with that.”

  Storm scrubbed a hand down his face and offered a “fuck me” smile. “You have no idea.”

  “Just so happens I collect stories.” He poured again. “You don’t have any money. And you don’t have any place to go, do you?”

  Storm gave his host an appraising look.

  “Who wants to know?”

  Bartender took the towel off his shoulder, wiped his hands, and stuck a palm out.

  “Name’s Hal. Hal Cyon.”

  Storm’s mind flew through a catalog of things to say, rejecting each one as fast as it came to mind. He finally decided on keeping his features as even as if Hal’s name was unremarkable. He clasped the hand offered to him.