Renegade (The Cross-Worlds Coven Series Book 5)

by Phil Stern

  With a sour expression, Jenla heaved a ratty piece of plywood aside. A wooden trap door was revealed within the pavement, secured with a rusty, antique padlock.

  Clearly relieved, the future-sorceress grinned at her Coven-mate. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Opening the lock with a magical pulse, she heaved the rotted doorway up with a dull rasp.

  If anything, the air rushing up from below smelled even worse than the refuse-strewn alley. Unable to stand it any longer, Tiffany cast a spell filtering out all the nasty scents. “After you, please,” she graciously offered, indicating Jenla should go first.

  “Oh, I forgot how ladylike you used to be.” Promptly swinging her legs through the opening, Jenla dropped out of sight. “Coming, ma’am?” she called out from below.

  “I’ll ma’am you,” Tiffany muttered, bleakly eyeing the opening. Opting for a more controlled descent, she magically lowered herself through the square hole in the cement.

  Swinging the trap door shut behind them, Jenla cast a minor spell filling the area with light. The two sorceresses found themselves in a dank, empty space lined with rough-cut stones and old-fashioned quasi-cement. The uneven floor was dirty and damp, while a narrow doorway at one end had been bricked over. A few wooden beams still stretched across the ceiling, remnants of the grand house this had once been.

  “A old basement it is,” Jenla breathed. “I wonder how many places like this are in London?”

  “Plenty, I’m sure.” Though certainly mysterious, the place lacked any magical signature whatsoever. “Which makes me wonder if we’re in the right one.”

  “Well, let’s see.” Pulling the time stone from her magical travel bag, Jenla held it up. Almost instantly, it began glowing. “Oh, this is the place, all right.”

  Fascinated, the older enchantress leaned in to study the stone. “What’s it reacting to?”

  “Something called the Inner Boundary.”

  “The Inner Boundary,” Tiffany repeated. “Never heard of it.”

  “Or Fourth Dimension, as it’s sometimes called,” Jenla loftily added. “Anyway, it’s the key to time travel.”

  “Explain.”

  “Well, this is how we’re getting back to 1898.” For some reason she bent down and ran a hand along the floor. “The time stone opens the Inner Boundary, which in turn conveys us through time.”

  “All right.” Folding her arms, Tiffany shrugged. “Are there hummingbirds there? Who guides us through the Fourth Dimension?”

  “No, it’s not like that.” With an irritable sigh, Jenla straightened up. “There are no paths or hummingbirds or weird flowing landscape. We’re just transported, instantly, to another time.”

  “Really?”

  “Well think about it. It’s time travel, right? So obviously there’s no delay.”

  “I see.” Tiffany thought a moment. “Actually, the normal Boundary seems to compress time somehow. It’s certainly perceived differently there.”

  “But the normal Boundary is spacial.” Clearly, Jenla thought she was being slow. “This is temporal. It’s completely different.”

  “Fine, professor.” Tiffany coolly raised an eyebrow. “So how do you specify 1898? Is there a dial on that stone I don’t see?”

  “You use this.” Still holding the time stone with one hand, Jenla now pulled a device out of her magical travel bag. “It calibrates the stone.”

  The gizmo looked similar to an Earth-standard cell phone. Leaning in for a closer look, it had a simple readout one could apparently adjust up or down. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she laughed, noting that “July 10, 1898” had already been pre-programmed on the digital display. “That’s how it’s controlled?”

  “It interfaces with the natural energy of the Fourth Dimension, then precisely regulates the output of the time stone.” Jenla shrugged. “What can I say? One of our sisters became a scientist on Vail, and she put this all together in her spare time.”

  “Wow.” The enchantress gingerly took the controller from her companion. “Smart girl.”

  “Actually, she’s another one of your personal extractions. You remember Bree, from Earth?”

  “Of course I do.” Handing the device back, Tiffany realized Bree must be another future member of Jenla’s quasi-renegade movement. “Okay, so that’s the when. But what about the where?”

  “Oh, we’ll wind up right here. Time travel doesn’t spatially shift, and is only possible at very rare points. That’s why we had to find this portal.”

  “I see.” Sneezing, Tiffany looked about the basement. Completely shut in underground, with no windows, everything was beginning to seem quite stuffy. “So let’s get going.”

  “Fine.” Leaning down, she placed the time stone on the floor. “Come here and stand next to it.”

  Taking a few steps forward, Tiffany faced the other sorceress. Now giving off a soft yellow haze, the stone lay between their feet. Double-checking the date on the controller, Jenla looked directly up into her eyes. “Ready?”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Actually, maybe we should change first?” Jenla nodded down at their boots and jeans. “We aren’t exactly up to Victorian code.”

  “Let’s scope things out once we’re there.” Tiffany smiled. “Anyway, those old-fashioned frumps might need a good shock.”

  “What?” Surprised, the younger sorceress giggled. “Well, maybe they do.”

  “Oh, so little miss tough girl does have a sense of humor? I was beginning to wonder.”

  Jenla rolled her eyes. “You haven’t changed much, you know that?”

  “You mean, I won’t change,” Tiffany corrected. “Not only that, but I won’t ever get old. That’s already been decided.”

  Jenla hit a button on the controller, then quickly stuffed the slim device into her back pocket. “Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” she smirked. “Ma’am!”

  Before she could think of a suitable reply, the tall brunette felt a slight tickle as an odd magical energy gently washed over everything.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE AFTERNOON FOLLOWING her arrival in Donlon, Sarina carefully broomed the floor of a working-class tavern. Expertly sweeping the accumulated dust out the front door, she deftly grabbed two empty mugs on her way back behind the bar.

  Upon first entering the dimension and escaping the park late last night, she’d moved continuously throughout the city. Changing clothes and overall appearances several times, the experienced sorceress had gotten a pretty good feel of the situation. Late industrial age, on the verge of catapulting into very early mid-tech. Highly stratified class-structure, of course, with all kinds of minor injustices and seething resentments. Crowded streets, poverty, crime, unfair bosses, intolerant landlords...all in all, a clandestine operative’s dream.

  A talented enchantress should be able to stay undercover almost indefinitely, the local populace none the wiser. Everyone except for Caylee, that is, who’d apparently been ripping the place up ever since she’d gotten here.

  Sarina’s employment as a barmaid was now only several hours old, having commenced with her hiring that very morning. In the short time since she’d overheard a dozen tavern conversations clearly relating to her wayward Coven-mate.

  “Killed ten bobbies, she did!” one man claimed, conspiratorially leaning across the table. “Up by the old warehouses. Called down fire from the sky, so they say!”

  “Blew up a yacht! Right in front of everybody. Fancy that!” another belched. “That ain’t right.”

  “Wants them danders to riot and bother all the proper folk, she does,” asserted a third patron. “Horrible, she is.”

  “I heard she did in Lord Jarton,” announced a fat man by the bar. “My brother’s on the force, he is. Found the old boy, dead as you like, up on some rooftop!”

  “Rooftop?” queried one of the other barmaids. “What, is she a bird? How’d she get up there?”

  “She’s a witch, that’s how!” Sitting back, the first man proudly held up t
he morning newspaper. “Look! Fly’s about on a broomstick and everything. Just makes herself young and pretty, she does, but the old girl’s actually quite the crone.”

  The front page was indeed adorned with a penciled sketch of an attractive young blonde woman, hair dramatically flowing about, on a broomstick. Hovering a few dozen feet off the ground between two larger buildings, she was laughing as bullets harmlessly bounced off her body. A ring of brave police officers continued firing up at this supernatural opponent, even as one of their number was fatally stricken by a spell from the witch’s wand. The caption claimed this to be an artist’s recreation of the first general engagement with the “Donlon Devil,” based upon the cumulative descriptions of all the “surviving” officers present.

  Actually, the technique was quite effective, as the witch bore more than a passing resemblance to Caylee herself. They’d even placed a glowing green rock at her waist, though it was far larger and more ominous looking than an actual earth stone.

  Sarina spent all day at the tavern, gathering vast amounts of intelligence both about the dimension in general and Caylee’s situation in particular. Thankfully, no one was under the impression the witch had been captured or killed. Indeed, all the speculation centered on where she might strike next, and at who’s bidding.

  On this last point, opinion was almost evenly split. Many considered Caylee to be some type of avenging angle fighting for the lower classes. Others claimed she was just an evil witch engaged in wanton mayhem. By early evening a fistfight actually broke out after someone openly invited the witch to “take care” of his factory foreman. Unfortunately for Caylee’s anonymous supplicant, the foreman’s brother happened to be sitting at the bar.

  Taking this as her cue to leave, Sarina headed for the back. One of the combatants was knocked to the floor right in front of her, even as several more drunks joined the fray. Lightly stepping over the prostrate man, the undercover enchantress quickly slipped through the creaky door into the kitchen.

  Unperturbed by the growing fracas in the next room, Sarina casually tossed the bar rag into the sink before hanging up her apron. Frowning down at her hopelessly stained old dress, she merely shrugged. The garment had been conjured that morning in an alleyway, and had no value whatsoever. Still, she liked to be neat...

  “Now, where do you think you’re off to, girly-girl?”

  Pivoting about, the sorceress was unsurprised to see the tavern owner casually blocking the back door. After hiring her just that morning, the fat man had leered continuously in Sarina’s direction. Breathing heavily, he now carefully placed his own finished glass on a wooden counter top.

  “You know my girls have duties to me, don’t ya?” Lumbering closer, he grinned at her with gapped, stained teeth. “So just come upstairs now...”

  Stepping to one side, Sarina punched him in the stomach. Even as he groaned and stumbled, she neatly tripped him down to the floor. Crashing head first into a garbage can, the barman wound up on hands and knees.

  “You bitch!” he grumbled, rising on wobbly legs once more. “I’ll have to...”

  Offhandedly grabbing the nearby broomstick, Sarina swept his feet out from underneath him with a two-handed swing. Once more the tavern owner hit the floor hard, the wind completely knocked out of him.

  “Witches indeed,” she sighed, letting the broomstick fall on top of her would-be suitor. Slipping out the back into the alley and then sauntering up to the main street, she carefully avoided the whistle-blowing bobbies charging down to break up the near-riot in the tavern.

  *****

  As Jenla had promised, the transition was almost instantaneous. Like a wave rolling up a beach, the time stone’s aura swept out over the abandoned basement, covering everything in a yellowish haze. Emitting a single, powerful pulse, the magic then smoothly flowed back down again. Mildly disoriented, Tiffany stumbled up against a wooden rack to her right.

  The odd thing was that the rack hadn’t been there moments before. Nor had all the other shelves, heavily stacked tables, or the spare chairs stacked in a corner. Jenla’s magical light sphere was also gone, replaced by dusty natural sunshine seeping through the now un-bricked entranceway at the end.

  Fascinated, Tiffany looked all about. It was the exact same basement, yet much cleaner and fully stocked with plates, pots, pans, cutlery, and other kitchen supplies. The floor stones were freshly swept, while the dull bricks of present day now shone with a healthy reddish hue.

  And rather than some dank alleyway overhead, they were obviously underneath an actual home. Pleasant baking aromas and a slight smell of burnt toast drifted down the stairway from a kitchen up above. Faint voices were also heard, along with soft footsteps directly overhead. Glancing up, Tiffany noted the trap door through which they’d first entered the chamber was carefully hidden beneath a canvas covering.

  Bending down, Jenla scooped up the time stone, carefully tucking it into her magical travel bag. “So much for a quiet entrance,” she whispered, nodding ruefully at the still-rattling plates on the case Tiffany had knocked into.

  Sure enough, a shadow now partially blocked the sunlight at the top of the stairs. “Someone there?” an older female voice querulously called down. “Henry? You know you ain’t supposed to play in the pantry!”

  “Probably them cats, Mildred,” someone from farther away opined. “Come on, now. Them tarts is a burning!”

  Still, Mildred didn’t immediately leave. The two temporal intruders said nothing, merely listening. Muttering to herself, the kitchen woman finally shuffled off.

  “Let’s wait a bit,” Jenla sighed. “Maybe in a few hours...”

  “No, Mildred will be back.” Tiffany ran a finger along the rim of a nearby pot, noting it’s lumpy texture and low-grade construction. “And I’d rather not have a confrontation down here. Let’s just make a run for it and face the music now.”

  “Invisibility spells?”

  “No. Casting them would cause a bright green flash at the top of the stairway. They’d think it’s a fire or something.”

  “Or maybe witchcraft?” Jenla helpfully suggested.

  “Indeed.” Shaking out her long dark hair, Tiffany took a final look around. “So rather than bringing the whole house down on our heads, let’s just walk and talk.”

  “Wow. This should be interesting.” Jenla grandly indicating Tiffany should precede her upstairs. “After you, my lady.”

  As it turned out, the kitchen was almost empty when they emerged. The only person present was a junior cook stirring a pot, who turned and stared silently as they crept up from the pantry. Giving the young girl a friendly wave, Tiffany quickly led her companion across the floor and out the back door.

  Nearly tumbling down the steps, the two modernly-dressed young women strode down a brick path towards the street. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, showing the rear gardens to their best advantage. To either side butterflies drifted about over banks of pretty flowers, which in turn were separated by smaller paths and carefully pruned hedges. A little farther off, tall iron fences covered in ivy marked the property boundary.

  Ahead of them a lower fence bordered the street itself. Smoothly unlatching the gate, the two sorceresses pretended not to hear the first calls of indignation back from the house itself as they passed out onto the cobblestoned sidewalk. Keeping their heads down, they then turned and powerfully strode off, soon putting some pleasant distance between themselves and the house over the time chamber.

  What a difference a century makes, Tiffany thought. On one corner she saw a home that was vaguely recognizable from their twenty-first century nocturnal stroll. Only then it had broken windows, a collapsed porch, peeling paint, and a yard littered with trash. Now, in it’s new, well-tended glory, it was obviously the residence of a well-to-do London family.

  Indeed, the prosperous turn-of-the-century neighborhood bore little resemblance to the urban blight of modern times. In 1898 everything was smart and orderly, from the grand homes themselves to
the precisely squared off yards. Instead of streets dotted with abandoned cars, neat carriages driven by uniformed servants clattered down the avenues. Many of the ladies were followed by maids at a respectful distance, while all the children had attentive nannies at their sides. Politely greeting friends and neighbors as they grandly strolled about, everyone was attired in the latest Victorian suits and dresses.

  This last item was of particular note, as the two time travelers stuck out like sore thumbs. Biting her lip, Tiffany realized Jenla had been right to suggest more era-appropriate attire. Several women clicked their tongues, along with grave shakes of the head, at the sight of their boots and jeans. By the standards of the day, even their modest blouses seemed unduly form-fitting.

  “They probably think we’re street walkers,” Jenla remarked.

  “Actually, I don’t even think even prostitutes would dress like this out in the open.” Sighing, Tiffany looked around for a place to change. “I’m open to suggestions here.”

  “For starters, we might try avoiding the cops.” Laconically nodding at the next corner, Jenla almost stumbled on a raised cobblestone. “For some odd reason, they don’t seem to think we belong here.”

  Two men, dressed as classic bobbies, were staring hard as the two witches approached. They both now purposefully began walking towards Tiffany and Jenla, motioning for them to stay put.

  Splitting up, the two sorceresses headed in different directions. Even as the bobbies began lustily blowing on whistles, Tiffany cut through another yard, ducked in and out of a carriage house, and doubled back in the other direction on the next street over. Having paused to change in an empty stall, she was now in a pretty cream-colored dress that almost swept the ground. Ornate bracelets adorned her wrists, which she hoped matched the earth stone hanging about her neck.

  Easily orienting on Jenla’s earth stone, Tiffany soon strode into a delightful candy store several blocks away. Having also changed into Victorian attire, her Coven-mate was peering at the various candies behind the counter glass.