Tales Of The Abysmal Plane (Zoë Martinique Short Stories) (The Zoë Martinique Investigation Series)

by Phaedra Weldon

  Joe looked around them. Not much to use for distraction. Unless...he waved back at Azrael. "Are they behind us?"

  Azrael shook his head.

  "What are you thinking?" Rhonda was looking at him.

  "I'm thinking we need a distraction to get them away from that door. As it is now, it's right in line with their weapons, and we not only need to get the door open, all of us, including Jason and his baggage, need time to go through the door. First order is getting rid of the two guys waiting—and there might be more behind them."

  She pursed her lips. He always thought she was cute, and he admired the way she pulled her shoulder-length hair up into high pigtails. She lifted the iPad into the air to her right, and it promptly disappeared. He knew she'd tucked it into her Veil, a null area around her that orbited her in a geosynchronous fashion. Kind of like a Clark Belt. "You really need to show me how to do that some day."

  "Maybe," then she reached back up, plucked a small box from the air, and set it on the floor. "Care for a little transmigration operation?"

  "You think we got time?"

  "You think we have a choice?"

  He shrugged. Rhonda opened the box and pulled out several different rectangles of marble. She held a few up, picked one, and put the others away. After replacing the box in the Veil, she looked at him. "You remember your part?"

  Joe made a face. "I remember a lot of things."

  "What are you two doing?" Jason asked. He knelt down beside the two of them with Dags quiet on his shoulder. Joe reached back behind him to touch Dags' neck. Still alive. If you call that living.

  "We're going to create a barrier," Rhonda said. "It should hold long enough for us to go through the door at the end of the corridor."

  "How—"

  And then Rhonda pulled a black crayon from her back pocket. She drew a circle outside of a pentagram and then started filling in with symbols Joe didn't even recognize.

  "Oh," Jason said and backed up. "Magic. You go first."

  Once she had the circle finished on the tiled floor, she drew an identical one on the block of marble. When she was finished, she put her hand in the center of the floor circle.

  "You know this reminds me of an anime I watched—" Joe said.

  "Can it. This is reality." She handed him the block of marble and stuck the crayon behind her ear. "Aim it right, Joe."

  He nodded before he slipped his gun into the back of his pants. Setting the block up on his side, he turned it so it was parallel to the right-turn wall. Once he had it flush, Joe used the mirror to eyeball where he wanted to send it. It wasn't going to take more than a nudge, but the marble was heavy to exert without physical force. He narrowed his eyes as he concentrated on the block—calculated the stopping point—and pushed the block down the corridor along the wall.

  From the vantage point of the two soldiers waiting for them, they would see an upright block of marble slide from the left and into the center of their hallway. A sharp pain cracked between his eyes and Joe winced. Brain Freeze is easier to deal with than this. He felt the trickle of blood on his lower lip that always followed that kind of magic and wiped it away with his sleeve. He motioned with his left hand at Rhonda as he watched the block in the mirror. "Ready when you are."

  Rhonda closed her eyes and said a few phrases under her breath. The circle burst into a brilliant blue/white Witch Flame, and the floor hummed. Joe tucked the mirror back into his shirt pocket and grabbed his gun as he heard someone shout and boot heels on the tile. The marble abruptly expanded and filled the corridor with smoke and the smell of scorched steel.

  "Go go go," Joe called out. He knew the opening was blocked by the marble—but that wasn't going to last forever. Enemy gunfire echoed from the other side in an attempt to shoot through it.

  Rhonda was up and down the corridor to the door. She punched a code in and opened it as Jason arrived. After he went through the door Azrael followed. She waited beside it as Joe ran ran toward her, keeping an eye behind them. Rhonda went through the door just as the office door on the opposite wall opened.

  A man in black fatigues came out and jammed something into Joe's back. With a curse—Joe twisted around, but lost his balance. Luckily, he landed on top of his assailant and managed to press his gun barrel into the man's face. "Asswipe."

  He fired.

  "Joe!"

  He came out of the office, shut that door, dove through the escape doorway, and then slammed the escape door closed behind them. He put his hand to the control panel and shorted it before he followed behind the others.

  This tunnel wound around and up. Joe felt a dull pain spreading from his back to his left side. His gun in his right hand, he reached around with his left and touched his side. It came away wet with blood. Damn...asshole got me with a knife. He felt it soaking his black shirt. A door appeared at the other end, and he recognized Nona standing in the center of it.

  "Come on!" she said.

  Nona? He cleared the opening out after Rhonda and then looked back to see Nona wave her hand over it. The door...vanished into the side of the house.

  They were in the garden, on the far north side of the house, near the employee parking. Nick appeared next to him and put a hand on his arm.

  "I'm fine."

  "I'm afraid not—I can smell the blood, detective," Nick slipped an arm under Joe's. "You're losing a lot of it."

  "Joe?" Rhonda came up to him and moved behind him. "Shit!"

  "No time," Nona said and started motioning them away from where the door had been. "I've summoned a fog that'll keep us hidden—if we stay quiet. Nick, can you carry Joe out of here?"

  "Wait a minute," Azrael said, as he stood in front of Nona. "Why the fuck are you here? Weren't you the one who put him in this place? How do we know you're not steering us into a Society trap?"

  "Because I'm not. You'll just have to trust me. Just like I have to trust you—and I don't like you." Nona thrust her ample chest up into his face. "How do I know you're not here to make sure we fail so that Zoë stays in the Abysmal Plane forever?"

  "Because that would be stupid."

  Nona pointed away from herself toward the growing fog. "Move!"

  Joe laughed as he tried to keep up with Nick. He stumbled through the hedge maze in the back of the garden. Someone better know where they're going. Or we're—

  "Sorry Joe. Suck it up—gonna have to carry you." Nick stopped and lifted Joe over his shoulder.

  The detective wanted to protest the treatment, but unfortunately, he was losing consciousness as he heard gunfire in the distance.

  Oh God, let us make it out of here in one piece.

  Alice

  SHE was glad they chose the building in Between to reassemble the pages. It was a neutral area, created by the now deceased Phantasm, Sophia. Unfortunately, it was also where Maureen had taken Revenants to kill them, including Jason/Mephistopheles, and also where she'd opened Darren and mangled the Grimoire.

  "It's also where Zoë disappeared, isn't it?"

  She looked over at Darren. "I was thinking out loud again, wasn't I?"

  He smiled. "No...I was being intrusive. I'm anxious. I want to be out of here, and I hate not being able to open my own damn eyes and see."

  "Rhonda thought it best if you were anesthetized. You were in so much pain when Maureen—"

  But he reached out and put a hand on her arm. His was warm. He was always warm. And it was a welcome sensation in her world where the five senses were a thing of her past. "I know. Trust me. I remember that." He squeezed her arm and then sat back, his gaze traveling to the two-story book partially buried in the shore's sand. "Will she be able to do it?"

  "We don't know, Darren. If she has the pages she needs, then yes."

  His intense gray gaze fell on her. "Alice...if this doesn't work. If...for some reason I don't survive it—"

  "Nonsense. You'll survive. You're strong. And you have all of us—"

  "But if I don't, will you promise me that if you're able, you
'll keep looking for her? That you'll find her?" He took her hand this time and gave her his warmth again. "And you'll let her know that I love her?"

  Alice felt her own heart touched at his sincerity. As a Familiar, she was herself, but also a part of him. She knew when he was keeping secrets, and she knew when he was honest. In his heart, there was nothing but love for Zoë. This boy would give up his own life for her.

  She just hoped that girl realized it.

  She returned the squeeze and leaned to him to move a stray strand of hair from his face. "I promise you, Darren, that I will do everything within my power to make sure we find her."

  Rhonda

  THIS is it. And it was. A return to the very spell she'd used in Rodriguez' little torture chamber so many months ago. The day she'd altered that damn book, and the man she loved, forever. And here I am, asked to do it again, to once again save his life.

  They were back in the same room she and Nona had found him in before, when Zoë had run off with Azrael to look for Dags and Jason. The other Revenants were nearby—guarding what they believed was the key to restoring the Abysmal Plane. Daniel had come to her before she started and confirmed what she'd already suspected—the borders were closed down.

  No one knew why. There was a subtle panic setting in amid the different Abysmal creatures still on the Physical Planes, now cut off from their homes with no explanation. Was it because the Phantasm was gone? Was it because there was a void?

  Was it because of Zoë?

  When Daniel and Azrael returned from the Abysmal Plane, Daniel became ill. Though his body could tolerate the Outer Planes because of the First Born inside him, the excursion took a heavy toll, and he ended up in the Society's care for several days. Even before Nona talked her into allowing them to look after Dags.

  Stop it...you need to concentrate.

  Dags was asleep on the slab and not tied down by straps or chains. That wouldn't be necessary. She'd unfastened his pajamas and laid them open to expose his chest. The book glowed softly through his skin, as if it were just beneath the surface, though she knew it was just an illusion. She'd already started the spell in her mind and shut out the world to call forth the book the same way she'd set it inside.

  Nona was the only other one in the room with her—the only one she'd allow.

  The light on Dags' chest sparkled as it rose up through his skin, a plain book—

  No...it was different now. Different than it'd been when she'd held it in the Physical Plane. The cover had changed. It was still worn and aged, but instead of a blank surface, it now had burned into its center the symbols tattooed on Dags' palms. They glowed with both a soft red light and a blue-white light.

  "The Familiars' marks," Nona said in the shadows caused by the book as it floated above Dags, and then opened to reveal its pages.

  Rhonda reached into her Veil and retrieved the pages found by the others. There were twenty in all. But were there enough to bring Dags back to her? To her, they were all blank, empty pieces of parchment.

  Once she'd removed them from the plastic bag, the bag returned to the Veil, and she stacked the pages neatly on top of the open book. She repeated her request to see the words written three times—and she said them in Sanskrit—in hopes that would speak to the book.

  At first, nothing happened. The pages lay in a stack atop the glowing book—

  Until the top page's surface blurred, and words in the tiniest script she'd ever seen appeared as if written by an unseen hand. She waited until the page was finished and pulled it to the side. The page sparkled and melted down into the book, then vanished.

  The next page did the same thing, only when it finished, she felt the tug that it wanted to be on the other side of the spine. She moved it to the left, and it followed the same procedure as the first one.

  Each page took time—nearly twenty minutes each—as the invisible hand rewrote the magic contained inside the Grimoire.

  When the last page melted down into the book, all the pages fanned to the right, and then to the left, as if those same hands were flipping through to find something specific.

  And then the book opened to a different page, near the dead center. Intuition told her the book was waiting on a page to slip inside this spot—and it was an important page. She just couldn't tell what.

  Then the page facing her lifted as if something had embossed itself into the grain of the paper. It formed a face that looked a lot like Dags! Once it was finished, it was a parchment paper-mache version of him, looking up at her. "There is still a page to be returned."

  The voice was his, but it also echoed. The lips didn't move, but she heard the voice in her mind. She cleared her throat so she could speak to it. "Those are all I have."

  "I am missing one more, granddaughter of Helios. Without it—I cannot protect the Guardian."

  She ignored the title the book gave her—but it had her curious. "You...protect the Guardian. Who...are you?"

  The face didn't answer right away. Instead the pages flipped to the right, and to the left. They stopped on a page where the handwriting moved, as if it were constantly changing. When she looked closely at it, she realized there was only one word.

  Zoë.

  Anger and irritation flared in her chest. "What is this?"

  "This is the Guardian's heart. This is not what you seek—" and it sounded surprised.

  She resisted the urge to rip out that page and toss it aside. But she wasn't sure what would happen if she did. It could, in fact, be the page that kept Dags' actual heart pumping. He'd become so much a part of the book. It held his soul along its spine.

  "No, it is not," she finally said as the pages flipped again. "But I do not have the page. Is it the final page?"

  The image reappeared and then recessed back into the sparkling parchment. The book closed and, without her bidding, as if making the choice on its own—or retreating from the anger that radiated off of her from inside—it sunk back down into his chest.

  Nona caught her as the spell ended and the physical world came rushing back. She was drenched from head to toe. "Rhonda?"

  "I'm okay...did it work?"

  "I don't know. You've been at it for over four hours."

  Four hours?!

  After wiping her face with a rag Nona gave her, she moved back to the slab where Dags lay. His color was 100 percent better. Did his face have expression again? She wanted it to.

  The door opened, and the other Revenants filed in, but they stayed back behind Nona.

  Azrael came up to the slab. "Book Boy back?"

  Rhonda turned to answer the Symbiont, but another voice beat her to it. "I see tall, dark, and milky-eyed is still kicking."

  It was a voice she hadn't heard in months. She looked back down at Dags—his eyes were open, and he was smiling up at her. He reached up and put a finger to her cheek. She started crying. Rhonda grabbed his hand and kissed it. He was warm, and he was smiling...at her!

  "Thank you," he said as he returned the squeeze on his hand. "I owe you, Rhonda. And I'm gonna be in debt for the rest of my life."

  Nona joined them and put a hand on his lower leg. "We're just happy to see you like your old self again."

  Dags pushed himself up on his elbows and looked around at the faces looking at him. Rhonda wanted to take him away with her and protect him. Never let them get their hands on him again.

  His expression shifted from delight to what looked like pain.

  "Dags," Azrael stepped forward. "What is it?"

  "I can't…" he put his hand to his chest and started panting. "I can't get to it. I can't even feel it."

  "Get to what?" Nona said. "What's wrong? Are you okay? We need to get you to Joe so you can heal his gunshot."

  "But I don't—" he turned a stricken face to Nona. "I don't know if I can." He reached out and grabbed her hand as she moved next to him. "Nona…I can't touch the book…I can't access the Grimoire!"

  To be continued in

  GEIST: A Zoë Martinique I
nvestigation, Book 5

  Walking Shadows

  This short story takes place two weeks after the events in GEIST. So this is major spoiler for anyone reading, if you have not read GEIST.

  Go read GEIST.

  Go on—shoo. And don't come back here till you've got it all memorized.

  :)

  Mine and Daniel's little trip got postponed.

  Why?

  Rhonda.

  Bitch.

  I could think of a million different names I wanted to call her. I had also been daydreaming over the million different ways I could rend her flesh from her bones. She'd kept the hell away from me—and with good reason. I damn near killed her the last time I saw her. I wanted to choke her—I wanted—

  I wanted…

  I wanted her to give him back to me. Darren. But that wasn't going to happen. I knew it'd be a cold day in hell before she did it voluntarily. That…and Mom and everybody else was making sure I stayed the fuck away from her.

  They just didn't want me to go all Evil Willow on her ass and get "bored."

  Daniel was trying his best to get my mind off of my heartbreak. And he was succeeding, until Rhonda convinced the Society's board she needed him on her next mission. Why Daniel? WTF? There was any number of police academy trained…firearm experienced…detectives…Revenants….

  Well maybe not. He was the best-trained Revenant around. But she had to have him now? Right before he was going to take me away from all this shit?

  Bitch did that on purpose.

  I thought it was nice they let Mom give me the bad news. Figured I wouldn't kill her.

  And they were right.

  What I did do was pack my bags and head back to the shop.

  It'd been two weeks since my return to physical life. Yeah, I'd been brought back two months before that, then spent a month recuperating from being food and oxygen deprived in the Abysmal Plane. Don't try this at home kids. It only worked for me because I'm speschull.