Bella Flores Urban Fantasy Collection

by R D Martin

  Bella interrupted Cat’s tirade as she squeezed him tighter. He was right about one thing, though, cleaning up after this would not be easy. It was a shame, Bella thought as she stood up, there was no way to scrub what she’d seen from her mind as well.

  Letting William comb through the dirty water, Bella summoned a ball of light and started picking her way through the tunnel, avoiding as much of the floating trash as possible as she headed toward the exit and, more importantly, a shower.

  14

  Bella had barely finished zipping up the back of her evening gown when the sigil embedded in the back of her hand began to itch. At first the itch was hardly noticeable, something small and taken care of. Soon however, the itching intensified to where it felt as though the mark was trying to burrow its way through her. Grasping her wrist, gritting her teeth hard against the pain, she watched the sigil blaze with a light of its own as though to remind her of the promise she’d made the Sea Hag. As the pain subsided, she found herself on her knees gasping for breath. If this was a gentle reminder, she thought as she took deep breaths to calm herself, she didn’t want to know what the Hag could do when she was mad.

  Pulling herself together, she made her way to the living room where William was waiting, dressed in a fitted tuxedo that demanded respect. Pain in her hand forgotten, a wolfish grin spread across her face. Staring at William, she couldn’t quite push down the butterflies invading her stomach. He looked so much better now than when they’d first returned to her apartment.

  To call her arrival home after their adventure at the aqueduct an embarrassing experience would understate it by orders of magnitude. With nothing to clean themselves with in William’s car, they trudged through her apartment lobby dripping wet, covered in ash, and leaving a trail of stinking water behind them. At almost any other time of the year, they could have made it through the building undetected, but the building super along with some resident volunteers were preparing the building for the annual Halloween party being held in two days.

  Sometime before she moved into the building, the managers decided it was less disturbing for residents if the building held a party in the lobby where children could have fun, play games, and collect candy in one place rather than roaming the halls going door-to-door. Most of the residents thought it a good idea and made it a tradition. They decorated the lobby for most holidays, but Halloween was by far the largest one celebrated.

  As the trio trudged through the lobby, she felt the eyes of more than a dozen residents staring at her. Most were polite enough to say nothing beyond shaking their heads, though a couple whispered to each other behind their hands. She kept her head low, ignoring the stares as best she could, though there was no stopping the flush creeping up her neck and face as her neighbors judged her.

  Mumbling her apologies for the mess, she tapped the elevator button like a madwoman, willing it to come faster. As the bell dinged overhead, her relief at the car’s arrival was almost palpable. As the doors slid open, she rushed in, almost bowling over Ms. Rigby in her haste. The old woman was so gob smacked at the sight of them she forgot to step off the elevator before the doors slid shut. A mistake the woman appeared to regret when the stench of people who smelled as if they’d just crawled through a mile of sewage assaulted her nose.

  “Young lady,” she started. The older woman always acted as if it was her duty to impress proper appearance upon the younger generations. “I don’t know how your parents raised you, but in proper society—”

  Cat’s wide yawn interrupted her. Bella’s shirt was so dirty at this point the feline was almost invisible against it.

  “I’m so sorry, Ms. Rigby. I know I must look a mess,” she said, trying to forestall more of the old woman’s comments. A verbal lashing from the woman was the absolute last thing she wanted to deal with right now. “We were trying to recover a broken section of a mystical blade, but we ran into Myias Flies in the sewer. And I don’t have to tell you how disgusting that can be, do I?”

  “I, well, yes?” Ms. Rigby replied, looking confused.

  “And the spell work. It was exhausting. I mean, I haven’t had to control that much ethereal fire in quite some time, let me tell you. William here, he just stuck to short bursts of flame, but not me, no.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t…”

  “And the stench, ugh. It will be in my hair for days. The ash will wash out, but I’m going to have to throw these clothes away. It’s a shame too. I loved these jeans. It’s so hard to find proper fitting pants, isn’t it?”

  The elevator dinged and its doors slid open.

  “Well, this is us, Ms. Rigby,” Bella said, stepping out of the elevator with William following in her wake. “I hope you’ll be coming to the Halloween party. It looks as if they are going a little more traditional this year. I think I saw an apple bobbing barrel down there.”

  Turning, Bella smiled and waved at the elderly woman as the elevator doors slid shut, blocking out the sight of Ms. Rigby standing with her mouth agape and an expression of utter confusion plastered on her face.

  Refreshed, and above all clean from their ordeal, Bella and William spent a good portion of the afternoon discussing their next step. As much as she hated admitting it, pacing back and forth with the blade shard sitting on her coffee table wrapped in old newspaper would not do any good, and the thought of handling the map again wasn’t any more appealing.

  Unlike last time, when she’d activated the map, this time she knew what she was doing and prepared for it. Erecting a barrier between herself and the map, she bored a small hole to let her energy flow through, something she’d never considered before her impromptu lesson with Cat, and tested slamming it shut a few times to make sure she could do it. Once satisfied, she ran her hand across the surface of the map and, just as before, felt the prick of an invisible needle in her palm.

  Blood on the map, the golden light flared again, and she and William were now staring at a new spot, higher up the map than the first and more to the right. Leaning in closer to get a better view, the image zoomed in until they were looking down on an enormous home. A little research uncovered not only the address of the home, but who owned it. Learning that bit of information caused her to moan and almost slide out of her seat. The house belonged to Chryso Milo, president of the Milo Insurance Agency and their employer.

  “Tell me again, how are we getting in?” Bella asked, handing William a necklace and turning her back to him. Lifting her long hair to the side, she waited for him to put the thin chain around her neck. As the cool metal touched her skin, her breath caught and pleasant shivers raced through her, causing the butterflies in her stomach to flutter even harder. The heady musk of his sandalwood cologne mixed with a few other spices she couldn’t identify made her want to bury her face in his chest and just breathe deep for a while.

  “I told you, this morning was the annual shareholders’ meeting. Every year, after the meeting ends, he invites the biggest investors to his home for a celebration. We’ll mix in with the crowd and pretend to mingle. While we do, we look for the next shard. We find it, make our excuses, and get out. Easy.”

  Feeling the latch of the necklace close, she dropped her hair and turned around. It was William’s turn to grin as she swirled in the dress. It had been an impulse purchase sitting unworn in the back of her closet for years. Tonight was the first time she’d wear it in public, and though it hugged her curves from top to bottom and showed more skin than she was comfortable with, the grin on his face made her almost forget that. If only the butterflies in her stomach would go away too.

  “That still doesn’t tell me how we’re getting in. I mean, he’s going to have security all over the place, and someone at the front door too. No one’s just going to let us walk in no matter how we’re dressed. They will ask for our invitations, or at least check if our names are on their list.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, holding out his hands and still eyeing her up and down. “I told you. I made a few calls and ma
de sure our name is on the list. They will let us walk right in the front door. Trust me.” He smiled and, though she knew it only ever happened in commercials, she could almost see light glinting off his pearly white teeth.

  “But there’s bound to be someone there who will recognize us. Maybe someone we work with.”

  “Do you really think anyone we work with will be at that party?” His eyebrow rose at the rhetorical question.

  “I’m just not sure. We could get caught. We could get fired.” As the thought struck her for the first time, she blurted out, “We could go to jail.” The very idea made her skin clammy and her heart race.

  “Look. I promise, nothing will happen. We aren’t going to get caught and we definitely aren’t going to get fired or go to jail.”

  “But how do you know?”

  With a sigh, he rummaged in his pocket.

  “Do you know what this is?” he asked, pulling out a slender cylinder about four inches long. The entire thing, save for one end, was etched with runes and polished to a shine so bright she could see both of their reflections in it. It was an Edoeki rod, a powerful and illegal device. Her father owned one, though it was long broken before he acquired it. An Edoeki rod was a bridge between places. Feeding energy into the unpolished end opened a path for someone to step from wherever they were to a specific fixed point. No spell, ward, or shield could block the Edoeki. For that reason alone it was sometimes called the Thief’s Friend or the Here and There Device.

  “Where did you get it?” Bella asked, now more worried than ever. There was a good reason the Imperium outlawed the artifacts. If the witch powering them wasn’t strong enough, instead of stepping across the bridge from one place to another, she risked being caught in the middle, neither here nor there. Unable to leave, she’d have to face the powerful, nameless beings living between planes that were neither demon nor god, but something more horrible than either.

  “I borrowed it.”

  “Who did you borrow it from?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said, waving his hand at the questions. “Look, it’s just a last resort. We’re not going to need it, but if we do, then we have it. Like I said, our names are on the list. Promise.” His electric smile returned with the voltage ramped up all the way.

  “I still don’t know,” she said.

  “If you have any better ideas, I’m more than open to listening.”

  She shook her head. Try as she might, there wasn’t any other way she could think of to get them into the house. This was, she admitted, both their best and their only chance to find the blade shard.

  “So, ready to go?”

  “If anything goes wrong…”

  “Nothing will go wrong.”

  “But if it does…”

  “It won’t.”

  “Still, if it does, I… I just wanted to say, well.” Her butterflies grew into something enormous as she tried to choke out the words.

  “Tell me later,” he said, looking at his watch. “If we don’t leave, we will miss our chance.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.” She grabbed her clutch, and the duo made their way out of the apartment. Pulling the door closed behind her, she couldn’t help seeing Cat shake his head at the two of them and snicker before jumping down from the counter.

  15

  Getting into the party was as easy as William promised. After pulling up to the front entrance of the mansion in a car so outrageously expensive she wasn’t sure how he could afford to even rent it for the evening, the two of them glided up marble steps, past fluted columns and ancient sculptures that should rightly be in a museum instead of littering a front lawn, and walked straight in without even glancing at the men holding open huge doors. Almost the entire walk, her stomach did back flips as Bella imagined they would be caught at any second. Images of graves dug on the side of lonely desert roads kept flitting through her head.

  While the outside of the mansion was impressive with clinging ivy, manicured hedges, and Romanesque statuary, the inside was so overwhelmingly opulent as to make the outside seem like it was a rundown shack in the middle of a swamp. Walking into the mansion felt like walking into an old European castle. The ceiling high overhead was painted with reliefs in brilliant reds and greens in depictions of ancient battles and giant celebrations, while cool blues seemed to be the central color of ocean and ship motifs.

  The designers, apparently not satisfied with painting the ceiling with enough splashes of color to make the Sistine Chapel seem drab, had littered more gold around the mansion than kept in any depository in the world. Gold filigree with lacelike flourishes and scroll work ran along the edges of the ceiling as if to frame the colors above, while gold brocade shimmered on every surface imaginable. Chairs, tables, and even immensely long runners attached to the marble floor glittered with the metallic sheen.

  Following the crowd of guests down a short corridor and through another opening, Bella and William found themselves at the top of a grand staircase leading down to what she could only describe as an enormous ballroom. The landing where they stood split off to the left and right, while directly in front of them was a small brilliantly green tree from which—and at this point she couldn’t help rolling her eyes—small golden apples hung with light from chandeliers glinting off their surface.

  Forced to choose a direction or wind up being pushed over the balcony, the two swept down the left staircase and merged with the growing crowd below. Every man was dressed the same in pressed black and white tuxedos, making most of them look like emperor penguins. On the other hand, the women wore a wild blend of colors and designer fashions with enough diamond and rare gems to bankrupt some small nations. Bella openly stared at one woman wearing a pair of earrings so encrusted with pink diamonds it surprised her they didn’t tear straight out of the woman’s lobes and fall to the floor. The woman must have noticed because she stood a little straighter, preening under the attention.

  With a nod from William, the two split up in different directions, though where they would find the blade shard among all this opulence, she had no idea.

  Moving through the crowd with the ease of an ocean cutter on smooth seas, Bella wandered aimlessly, listening to bits of conversation.

  “So we just had to let her go. Imagine my embarrassment. Spilling wine on…” Droned an emaciated woman with a hair pouf so high it made her appear six inches taller than her companions.

  “Well, after all the negotiating, the bastard just backed out of the deal entirely. Of course we’re going to sue, but as luck would have it, we actually found another buyer willing to pay even more. I tell you, gentlemen, that was…” said a man to his companions as he waved a drink animatedly in the air, its contents sloshing over the side unheeded.

  It quickly became apparent that, far from being friends with each other, most of the people attending the party only knew the others by reputation or business function. After hearing one man introduce himself to a group as the president of a chain of medical supply stores, she felt the knot in the pit of her stomach loosen a bit.

  Distracted by the surrounding conversation, she stepped back to avoid a passing server and bumped into someone. Whirling around, she found herself face to face with a young woman in a sparkling emerald dress. Bella froze for a moment, staring at the woman, ready to apologize. Though she didn’t know her, the aura this stranger exuded seemed to shout she was used to being obeyed and given her way. It was the same sense of entitlement Bella put up with from women at the office, and it caused her to frown.

  There was a pause as the woman appeared to size her up. Then before Bella could say a word, the woman’s demeanor shifted from entitled to sickly sweet.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” the woman said in a thick southern drawl. “I should’ve been watching where I was going, but movin’ through all these people, well, it’s like tryin’ to walk through a beach without getting sand in your shoes.” The woman gave a smile that would have make sharks nervous. “I’m Cynthia. Cynthia Ormsby
. My husband’s Jack Ormsby, President of Alabama Energy Solutions.”

  She said this as though it meant something, so Bella smiled and nodded as if she recognized the name. When asked about herself, she replied with the cover story she and William had agreed on before arriving.

  “Oh,” said Cynthia, a note of glee in her voice. “New money.” Taking her by the arm, she leaned in to whisper, “Just between us, most of the old gals here don’t want to even talk to ya unless your family’s got money so old it could crumble to dust. Makes coming to these parties a nightmare, but Jack says we have to rub elbows with the upper crust if we’re going to expand out here. Speaking of, here’s our host.”

  Almost as one, voices cut off and people turned to look at the man standing at the top of the grand stairway. Solidly built with long blond hair, wide shoulders and an olive complexion that shouted time spent on the water, Chryso Milo looked like a Greek statue come to life. Surveying the room like a king looking over his adoring subjects, he waited until the last of the noise died down before speaking.

  “Welcome,” he said, raising outstretched hands. “Welcome to my home. We’ve worked hard to ensure a profitable year and now it is time to enjoy the fruits of our labor.”

  As the last words left his lips, doors artfully built into the wall and hidden from view opened, disgorging lines of men and women in strange and exotic costumes bearing platters heavily laden with different fruit and jugs of wine into the room. The servers were met by a thunderous round of applause by the guests.

  Basking in the glory of his investors, Chryso flowed down the stairs, where he immediately began shaking hands and speaking with his guests as if they were old friends. While Bella had never met him in person, he had a larger-than-life reputation and seemed to be living up to it. His wide smile and easy laugh immediately put everyone he talked to at ease. As he passed through the crowd, a barracuda among a sea of silverfish, both men and women pressed forward to shake hands with their host.