by Phil Stern
Then there were the men. At first blush she heard at least a dozen male voices, spread all about. Large dogs barked and growled, along with the nervous tramp of horses a bit farther off. Beyond all that was the soft murmur of a vaguely industrial-age society, punctuated by the smack of iron on stone and complete lack of any motors.
Processing all this information in a split-second, Sarina realized she was treading water within a well-guarded inter-dimensional gateway in the middle of a pre-tech city. Instinctively activating a magical shield, she slipped farther down in the water.
Yet even as she minimized her exposure, more swimmers rocketed to the surface of the lake all around her. Lacking all situational awareness, the three strangers vigorously thrashed about, crying out for help. None had any obvious magical signatures, though Sarina kept her own power handy, just in case.
Oddly enough, the surrounding guards didn’t immediately react. Only now did Sarina notice that most had their backs to the lake itself, staring outward at the surrounding countryside. Three mounted Gatling guns were also oriented away from the water, almost as if preparing to repel some kind of land-based assault. Keeping a low profile on the darkened surface, the sorceress waited to see what happened next.
After some moments, two men laconically waved the newcomers over to one shore. “Come on, over here!” the first one yelled. “I sure ain’t coming in after you. Hurry up, hands where I can see them.”
“Damn danders,” the other muttered, rifle casually laid over a shoulder. “Never ends, don’t it now?”
Coughing and gasping, the three newcomers slowly floundered towards the indicated section of shoreline. Smoothly falling in behind them, Sarina now saw that the lake guards were dressed in heavy blue uniforms, with coats buttoned down the middle. They also had round metal hats, along with truncheons hanging from their belts. Having been raised on Earth, she instantly recognized them as English bobbies from a bygone era.
Keeping her defenses raised, the sorceress watched the two policemen roughly haul the struggling refugees up through a just-opened hatch in the net. Bedraggled and exhausted, they had no possessions other than their simple clothes. Distastefully shoving them down on the grassy bank beyond, the nearest bobby turned back to her. “Quick, now!” he barked out. “Or else we shut you in there for good!”
Seemingly as bewildered and helpless as the previous three, Sarina stumbled up through the muck and weeds. Sticking her head up into the net opening, she allowed each officer to grab an elbow and yank her fully through.
Even before her boots hit the ground, however, the enchantress had smoothly grabbed a truncheon from the nearest belt. Before they even knew what had hit them, both men were on the ground, unconscious. Running straight off into the nearest woods, she passed right by four more bobbies ambling towards the lake.
“Hey, stop!” one bellowed, hesitantly pulling out a pistol. A dozen steps later one actually did let off a round, the bullet harmlessly thudding into a tree.
But Sarina simply kept going, cutting off the main path up and over a small rise. The woods turned into grass again, which eventually led down to the edge of the park. Jogging up to a sidewalk, she took a moment to evaluate her surroundings.
It did, indeed, seem like some painting from the Victorian era. The street was cobblestoned, yet uneven and dirty. Brownstones lined the opposite side, each with narrow stairways and iron railings. At this late hour only a few stray carriages rumbled by nearby. Several candles flickered in upstairs windows, though everyone generally seemed asleep.
Best of all, there didn’t seem to be any pedestrians about. Briefly stepping back behind a large shade tree, she magically changed into a simple Victorian working woman’s outfit. The bright glow of earth fire was unfortunate, yet the bobbies’ pursuit was slow and disorganized. If she could just put some distance between herself and the park...
Right on cue, the sorceress heard the bay of hounds from behind, along with lusty shouts and the distinct cocking of a pistol. “Come on lads!” someone yelled out in an authoritative baritone. “The damn dander can’t have gotten far!”
Gliding across the street, Sarina put her head down and began walking alongside the upper-class homes. Two blocks later she turned left, heading deeper into this new and threatening world.
*****
Despite the cabby’s vehement protests, Jenla insisted on traveling into London’s seediest district. An odd collection of run-down Victorians, empty lots, and grimy post-war construction, it all reeked of poverty and desperation. Only somewhat mollified by the exorbitant tip Tiffany pressed into his hand, the taxi driver quickly sped off.
Standing on the darkened street corner, abandoned buildings all about, both witches carefully extended their magical sensitivity into the surrounding area. But all they found were homeless people huddled up inside in ones and twos, along with a surprising number of stray cats and dogs. The only potential threat was a pair of teenage boys skulking about with one block over, though Jenla easily diverted them in the opposite direction with a deft mental nudge.
It was impressive spell craft, all the more so in that the boys were utterly unaware of the manipulation. Giving the other sorceress a measured look, Tiffany nodded. “Nice work.”
“Thanks,” Jenla off-handedly replied, studying first the address in her hand then staring at several buildings. “You’d think they could put a few street numbers out here, wouldn’t you?”
Illuminated in a dim shaft of moonlight, Tiffany studied her companion’s slim, athletic form. Though now an adult, the general physical similarity brought Tiffany back to last year, during Jenla’s rescue from her father’s fortified estate in Tethra. As a nine-year old, she’d bravely utilized Tiffany’s shared magical power, leaping from a high balcony down to ground level. Once there, she’d witnessed this supernatural stranger violently disable several guards. Without missing a beat, they’d both mounted up and bounded over the house fence, fleeing down to a nearby beach.
It was a lot to take in at once. Yet Jenla had handled everything perfectly, instantly adjusting to impossibly shifting circumstances. Before escaping the dimension entirely, she’d even witnessed Caylee killing one of the pursuing men with a blast of earth fire to the chest.
Noticing Tiffany’s sudden interest, Jenla cast her companion a sidelong glance. “What is it?”
“Nothing.” Glancing away, the older sorceress idly studied a pair of chipped stone lions guarding a stairway leading up to nothing. At one time this had obviously been an upper-class neighborhood. “I’m just remembering the last time you and I went running around in the dark.”
Two cats suddenly began to yowl close by, one scampering off with a sharp hiss. First looking in that direction, Jenla then turned back to her Coven-mate. “Oh. You mean Tethra.”
“I do.”
“Yeah, that was some night.” Smiling almost shyly, some of her constant tension momentarily drained away. “I didn’t know what to think.”
“You were great, though.”
“I was scared out of my mind.” Sighing, Jenla turned to study the other side of the street. “But when I felt your magic, it just all seemed so right.”
“I know.” Wandering a few steps closer, Tiffany gently took the paper from her hand. “That’s how it should be.”
“‘How it should be,’” she softly repeated. “In my time, in the future, that’s not the way people really think about anymore.”
“That’s too bad.” Comparing the listed address to the nearby buildings, Tiffany nodded at the far corner. “I think we’re a few blocks off.”
“Fine.” Gingerly taking the paper back, Jenla met her eye. “By the way, thank you for my extraction. It was pretty risky, and took a lot of skill to pull off.”
“No problem.” Pausing, Tiffany listened to a police siren in the distance. “Have you ever thanked Caylee, by the way? She almost certainly saved your life on the beach.”
“Thank her?” Jerking away, wariness flooded back
into Jenla’s features. “Why, I guess that I never really had the chance.”
“Oh?” Stepping to one side, Tiffany’s boot crunched down on broken glass from a shattered street light. “And why is that?”
“You forget that in this time line I’m only ten years old now,” she slowly breathed. “Unlike you and Kayla, Caylee never came to see me again. The last time I saw her in fully human form was the night of my extraction, when she and Kayla took me to Haven for the first time.”
Hesitating, the senior sorceress chose her next words carefully. “Look, you know how busy it is that first year. Eleanor has her running around Vail most of the time, and...”
“Oh, she’s busy all right.” Touching her own earth stone, Jenla did another sweep of the area. “At this very moment, Caylee’s selling us all out to the demons.”
In the darkness, Tiffany idly listened to a slow drip from some broken pipe rhythmically smack down on pavement. “I thought we agreed to have an open mind about all that.”
“Sure. Wide fucking open!” Jenla laughed. “Oh, and as for thanking Caylee? Perhaps I’ll do that. Right after complimenting her hunting skills on Visny. She ambushed two girls there, you know. Coven-mates. You spoke at their memorial service.”
Almost like a pistol shot, an upstairs window slammed closed. By this point, even the homeless people were beginning to take notice of them. “If this mission is successful, that won’t ever happen.”
“Oh, it happened, all right.” Not backing away, Jenla’s eyes burned a soft green. “She gave me a nasty burn as well. And it wasn’t the first time.”
Turning about, she stalked off in the direction Tiffany had previously indicated. Taking a deep breath, she soon followed.
*****
Banging the bedroom door wide open, Max wearily dragged himself over to Rhapsony’s luxurious four-post bed. Collapsing on top of the frilly, flower-adorned comforter, the now-former sex slave stared up at the cream while ceiling. His breathing finally returning to normal, Max’s eyes slowly settled into a contented shade of pure silver.
Never before had the demon gone through such a traumatic death and ascension into a new host. One moment he’d (she’d?) been on the deck of Wendily’s yacht, advancing to do battle with a witch. The next conscious thought had been waking up on a beach, sharp sand blowing all about, dully staring at his own dead body sprawled beside him. In between, like nightmares from another world, were vague sensations of vast pain and drowning.
But there were other images as well. First and foremost, an almost endless store of noxious memories from his lifetime of humiliation at Wendily’s hands. The incessant public displays were bad enough, but even worse was helplessly watching the world go on without him. For years he’d watched other people follow their passions, living out their dreams, while he was stuck in hell. The fear of pain and even death never left, not even for a moment, finally pushing him into a desperate act of defiance.
Oh, but it had worked! Releasing Caylee had unleashed untold havoc on the yacht. Max had even assisted in her attack on Lady Rhapsony, willfully retrieving the magical rocks the witch then used to...
To...to shred and kill his own self? What had he done? Laying there in the sumptuous bed, nearly overwhelmed by conflicting emotions, the freshly merged being carefully reviewed his new existence.
After first awakening on the beach as Max, he’d merely hid against Rhapsony’s cold, lifeless corpse. Crying like a child, he’d run helpless hands through her glorious red hair, now hopelessly tangled with sand and muck.
Sometime later something touched his foot. Jerking up, face covered with dried blood, Max was confronted by a disheveled man. With long beard and tattered clothes, he was one of the many homeless people that skulked along the shoreline all day long. “You all right, mister?” Peering closer, the bum seemed almost disappointed. “I thought maybe you were both dead.”
Yet the innocuous inquiry served only to stroke the demon’s natural, predatory instincts. “Would that have pleased you, old man?” Gingerly sitting up, he smiled. “Made it easier to steal our possessions, perhaps?”
“What? No, I was only...” Scrambling back in alarm, the man stared into Max’s gaze. “Your eyes, mister! They almost look...”
“Silver,” Max breathed. “Yes, indeed.”
From seemingly out of nowhere, the demon’s familiar struck from behind. Having shrunk down to a more conventional size, it’s tail easily wrapped about the man’s neck. For the next minute Max laconically watched the stranger die, the snake’s rippling, muscled body throbbing with pleasure.
The demon then spent a pleasant half-hour absorbing the old man’s internal life force. Afterwards, partially dressed in his victim’s dirty pants and shoes, Max once more studied Rhapsony’s body. Leaning down, he plucked the snake’s ring from her lifeless finger, sticking it on his own pinkie. A tight fit, but for now it would have to do.
During this time the snake had slowly consumed the dead beach walker. Quite pleased, the reptile shrank back down onto the ring’s stone setting, eyes contentedly glazed over. A moment later it was merely a small, inert amulet once more.
The simple task of returning to Rhapsony’s grand estate near the center of Donlon had proven quite an ordeal. Fully unleashed, Max’s inner rage towards his former mistress surged out in vile waves. The controlling fiend quite enjoyed the emotional outburst, juxtaposing as it did quite nicely with his own sentiments towards Wendily’s immortal soul. Lurching about the city streets, trying to remember where he lived, the demon inadvertently burned a dozen pedestrians.
Finally reaching home, he’d fatally maimed both a guard and footman before everyone realized who he was. Several maids had also fled, screaming, into the back of the house. Speaking of maids...
Sitting up in the grand lady’s bed, testosterone veritably rushed throughout Max’s body. He’d nearly forgotten what it was like to be a man! Violently ringing a sedate beside bell, he nearly flung it at the poor butler who finally entered the room.
“Yes, my lord?” the man quavered. “How can I serve you?”
“Get me the new maid,” Max tiredly instructed. “The young one. Send her in immediately.”
Blinking furiously, the butler hesitated. “Does something need cleaning, my lord?”
“It most certain does, Gorman.” Grinning, the manor’s new lord raised an eyebrow. “Bring her in at once.”
Laying back down as the old fool fled the room, Max let out a long breath. Oh, maids and other such distractions would do for now, but he already had his sights set on much grander quarry.
Eyes once more drifting closed, he thought back to the yacht, pressed together against Caylee in the small passageway. How young and beautiful she was! And powerful! All in all, perhaps the most alluring female he’d ever known.
One way or the other, Max was certain their paths would cross again.
*****
As it turned out they weren’t searching for a specific building, but an alley next to it. Moments after finding the right address Tiffany and Jenla had strolled down the narrow space between dilapidated homes, staring at a nondescript wall blocking the end. Consisting of old bricks pasted over with smears of concrete to hold it together, the top was covered in weeds and broken bottles. Trash, old boxes, and other refuse was strewn all about.
“So run this by me again.” Once more magically surveying their surroundings, Tiffany found the area utterly lacking in inter-dimensional events, temporal or otherwise. “How are we getting to Donlon?”
“Donlon’s present and Earth’s past are directly connected,” Jenla idly explained while inspecting the house to her right. “So we’re going back to Victorian London, 1898 to be specific. But we shouldn’t be there too long. All we have to do is access the passageway into Donlon, and away we go.”
“And that passageway, as you say, will put us in Donlon before Caylee manages to screw everything up so badly?”
“That’s the plan.” Now Jenla started k
icking some of the junk about. “Otherwise there wouldn’t be much point in all this, now would there?”
“Indeed.” Arms folded, Tiffany pointedly stepped back as a old can skidded over her boot. “But why can’t we just access this passageway into Donlon now? Surely it still exists in our present?”
“Actually it doesn’t. The passageway was in a building that was bombed into oblivion during World War II. The connection between Earth and Donlon was severed.”
“And how do we know all this?”
“Intelligence.” Glancing over at her, Jenla shrugged. “Captured records, prisoner interrogations, that sort of thing. Over time we put it all together.”
“Fine.” Tiffany’s nose wrinkled as her companion hauled a bulging trash can to one side, partially tipping it over in the process. “So what are you looking for now?”
“A time chamber. To get us back to 1898.”
“And you think this time chamber is in a trash can, I take it?”
“Look, it should be here!” Frustrated, Jenla’s hands came down on her hips as she visually surveyed the small area. “Not here, in the alley, but...well, you know!” Another kick to the garbage can resulted in a loud boom.
By this point morning was fast approaching, with a sour, grey light adding greater definition to their surroundings. Curious cats were staring down at them from the crumbling brick wall, while a dog began barking several blocks over. Someone dropped a bottle back up on the connecting street, drunkenly cursing at the sky.
“Look, we have to get moving.” Touching her earth stone, Tiffany sent a gentle green pulse in all directions. Almost instantly a largish, empty space was indicated underneath their feet. “There’s something down below us.”
“Define something.”
“A big hole? Old basement? I don’t know.” Trying not to inhale too deeply, Tiffany gingerly pointed to a spot between them. “There’s an entrance here.”