She sighed.
She didn’t disagree with him.
Not exactly.
She also didn’t see it as all that realistic, not for her, not given what she did, and who and what she was, and the kind of crap anyone unfortunate enough to date her would be forced to deal with on a regular basis.
“How many Lightbringers do you know who have successful dating lives, Dev?” she asked finally.
He gave her an odd look, even as he pulled off his first boxing glove, tilting his head to stare at her as he stuck it under his arm.
“You’re the only Lightbringer I know, ‘Lex,” he said. “You’re the only Lightbringer anyone knows… at least in this dimension.”
Making a smooth, expressive, wave-like motion with one arm, she smiled, even as she executed a short bow.
“Exactly,” she said.
2
A Bad Feeling
Devin offered her a ride back to her car, which she’d left at the Sunset club.
After thinking about it a few seconds, she told him no.
He was right. It was her night off.
He had his pack out patrolling tonight.
She should at least try to act like she wasn’t working.
For the same reason, she decided to hit the gym’s sauna.
Maybe she wasn’t about to jump on Devin’s non-Lightbringer dating advice, but she could take the point that she probably needed to relax more.
Heartily in favor of that plan, Devin bid her adieu, and headed out.
She was grateful for him, honestly… him and Jules… even if they didn’t always get the complications of her life.
Because they were both half-human supernaturals, and because they’d all known one another since grade school, Jules and Devin had a tendency to think they had the same kind of issues Alexis did––whether it came to dating, or hell, even just making friends.
It really was different for her, though.
Whatever the complications that came with their non-human blood, they didn’t take orders from non-dimensional beings who didn’t give a crap whether Alexis ever went on another date again before she died.
Hell, she had her doubts they cared whether she lived or died.
As long as she did her job, they seemed pretty indifferent to her.
Moreover, they’d made it clear Alexis herself was infinitely replaceable.
Jules and Devin owned their own lives.
They had actual freedoms, even if they had to hide what they were.
Devin might work for her, but he and his pack could walk away any time they wanted. They worked for her because she paid them well, and gave them good benefits, and because a lot of his pack members struggled to fit in with human society.
They weren’t bound to her through some ancient calling tied to the fabric of the multi-dimensional universe, though.
They could quit. They could tell her to piss off.
They weren’t supernaturally bred to perform a single task, or trained in that task more or less from birth… or bound by blood with keeping an entire dimension from collapse, or from letting it be overrun with dark forces.
The fact that she couldn’t even get them to understand––her two best friends from as far back as she could remember––made it feel even more impossible that she might find a “normie,” as Jules jokingly called them, who could come close to understanding her life.
So the dating thing felt like a pipe dream, at least right now.
But a sauna was okay.
A sauna sounded great.
A night where she wasn’t stalking around the city with swords, hunting down beings who broke the portal laws was just fine and dandy with her, too.
After Jules and Devin both nagged the crap out of her, she’d agreed to chill tonight.
Sparring, sure.
Checking in with Jules at the club, sure.
But for the rest of it, she had a quiet evening planned.
Sitting in the sauna for a half-hour or so. Chinese take-out, or maybe Thai.
A martial arts movie marathon back home.
Hell, maybe she’d call her masseuse, pass out drooling on the massage table.
Walking over to the wood-paneled door leading to the fully-automated steam room, she set the controls for high steam and high heat, then walked back to the main locker area.
Grabbing one of the gym’s clean, white, and very fluffy terrycloth robes, she laid it down on the pristine wooden bench. She stripped off all of her sparring gear, tossing it in her bag, wrinkling her nose a bit at the smell. Wearing only flip-flops, she padded into the shower area and rinsed off, using just enough soap, shampoo, and cold water to get off the layer of sweat and grime from sparring and lifting weights with Dex.
She’d need a real shower after the sauna.
She’d need another one after the massage.
Not bothering with a towel, she shouldered on the clean robe and tied it around her waist.
She considered leaving her headset and phone on the bench by her bag, then decided she probably needed them with her, just in case.
It’s not like she was ever really “off-work,” whatever she pretended.
After checking the temperature showing on the panel outside the door, she placed her phone carefully on the ledge outside the sauna door window.
Then she opened the door carefully and entered the redwood-paneled room.
She sighed, sitting on the wide bench, then laid down on that same bench, propping up her knees and throwing a terry-cloth-covered arm over her face.
The sauna, like everything in the gym, was all state of the art.
Since she’d set the controls for high steam, it even dripped cold water down on the heated rocks, releasing new clouds every few seconds.
Within five minutes, she was covered in sweat.
Even so, if she’d had a pillow, she could have fallen asleep.
Maybe that’s why she didn’t notice the phone going off at first.
Then a muffled alarm tone penetrated her fogged brain.
Rolling up to sitting, she saw the phone’s screen flashing the breach alarm through the glass window. She knew that alarm.
Damn it. One of her trip wires by the Los Angeles portal had gone off.
Now annoyingly wide awake, she walked briskly to the door, opening it and catching her phone midair when it fell. Without missing a beat, she stuck it in her pocket, wiped her sweaty hand on the terrycloth robe, then pulled it out and swiped the screen, finding her earpiece on the window ledge and fitting it in her ear.
Realizing the sauna was expelling steam in a huge cloud, she used the control panel to turn it off then wiped the sweat off her face with the arm of the robe.
Her eyes remained locked on the phone screen.
She studied the line of sensors that had gone off.
Six. All in a straight line from the portal.
All of them leading away from the portal.
“Damn it,” she muttered. “Why tonight? Why do you assholes have to play these stupid games with me tonight?”
Without thinking, she hit Devin’s number.
She was still staring at the sensor map when he picked up.
She didn’t bother with a greeting.
“Hey… are you still here? At the gym?”
She practically felt his whiplash.
“Are you on your date already?” she said, before he could answer.
“I was heading there now,” he said. “Well. Home first. To change. Then I was going to go pick her up––”
“I got a breach, Dev. Near the Old Zoo. Something came through the portal.”
There was a silence.
“Can you contact Vic? Or do you want me to try?” she said. “I figured if they were in wolf form, it made sense for you to do it––”
“Of course. I’m calling for him now.”
“I was going to head up to the portal, too––”
“No.” His voice sharpened. “’Lex, it’s probabl
y nothing. Let Vic and the boys handle it. You seriously need a night off.”
“Not when I have an unauthorized portal breach, I don’t.”
“It’s probably just one of those fucking Travelers,” he grumbled. “You know what they’re like. They show up here because they’re bored, screw a bunch of women… or men… or both… then take off again. They think they don’t need to register their jumps.”
Thinking about that, she realized he was probably right.
So why was she so uneasy?
“Did you do the sauna thing?” Devin said, patient.
“Yeah. Just got out.”
“So you were in there… what? Five minutes?”
“Long enough,” she said stubbornly.
“So take a shower. Get dressed. Go home. I’ll text you as soon as my people pick up a scent, ‘Lexi. If it’s anything you need to worry about, you can suit up and go out there, chop some heads. Okay? Otherwise, I swore to the damned wolf spirits that I wouldn’t let you work tonight. I mean, seriously… when’s the last time you took a night off? A year ago?”
She didn’t answer that.
Biting her lip, she struggled against the impulse to argue with him.
She did want a night off.
She also wanted to know what the hell just breached her portal.
“Shower, ‘Lex,” he growled. “Clothes. Home. I’ll text you.”
“Okay,” she said reluctantly.
She hesitated, fighting the impulse to argue with him again, but he hung up before she could.
She knew he was right.
This is what she hired him and his pack to do.
They really were the best trackers she had, and they could do this part without her.
Even so, that uneasy feeling only worsened.
3
An Uninvited Guest
She leaned her hands on the metal railing, still fighting that dense feeling of misgiving.
Something felt off.
Something felt deeply off.
Unfortunately, she still didn’t feel any closer to putting a finger on what it was. She couldn’t even decide if it was about her, or something larger, more universal in nature.
Whatever the source, it was definitely getting worse.
As the night wore on, her more playful, lighthearted mood with Devin in the gym had faded, leaving her solidly in work mode. For her, that meant a totally different way of approaching the world––along with everyone and everything in it.
She fought to focus on where she was, looking down from her perch on a black-painted catwalk.
She hadn’t done as Devin suggested.
She hadn’t gone home.
She’d come back to the club instead.
Her eyes scanned over the faces and clothes of the night’s clientele, as well as those on her staff working the floor that night; she picked out a few of the more interesting auras she noted on the crowded floor, but didn’t see anything of concern, not in terms of that nagging sense of uneasiness she still felt.
Nothing dangerous had come into the club itself.
She’d been looking, with far closer attention than usual.
She didn’t even note any of the more mundane, human types of danger––as in, the organized crime types, those with abusive predilections, thieves, traffickers, drug dealers, stalkers, rapists, gang members, etc., etc.
If not for the breach, and that nagging uneasiness, it would have been a quiet night.
She was confident nothing could slip past her here.
This was her domain.
Which still struck her as funny at times, truthfully.
After all, from the outside, it was nothing more than a high-end sex and fetish club.
The designs and décor of the main floor reflected that, but had also been designed with a number of her specific needs in mind. For example, the flooring, a marbled black tile on blood red, made living auras more visible somehow.
She also had ways to lock the club down.
Every square inch of the public floor and most of the private areas were surveilled, with the digital files being stored indefinitely in the cloud.
She even had a means of gassing everyone in the building––a building she happened to own and had modified extensively––although she’d obviously never used it. The club was equipped with DNA- and retina-coded weapons caches, panic rooms for guests, shielding in the event of a bombing or other attack, numerous hidden exits and entrances on every floor.
It was her fortress.
It was also her cover.
Pursing a red-lipsticked mouth, Alexis watched couples dance on the part of the floor closest to the bar and the low stage, undulating in time to dark, rhythmic beats.
She didn’t know what she was looking for exactly.
She could feel it getting closer, though.
Her phone let out a melodious, wind-chime sound.
She held it up, staring at the text written there in black on gold.
Confirmed, per your request to check the open gate, Ms. Poole, it read. Traveler came through. Only one, from what we can tell. Maybe forty minutes ago. From the energetic trail they left, the individual seems to be heading your way. We last caught their scent on Sunset, just west of Crescent Heights.
Alexis frowned.
Vic, Devin’s second, was a good tracker.
She had no reason to doubt his assessment.
Now she was wishing she’d ignored Devin and checked the gate herself.
Traveler. Damn.
Devin called it, but she had a feeling her werewolf pal had been wrong about this one slipping through to spend a few nights clubbing and getting laid.
She wondered who it would be. She wondered if she would know them.
Travelers tended to be an odd race.
She’d only really met a handful of them over her time as keeping of the gate, despite the fact that she’d been doing this work for almost ten years.
All of the Travelers she’d met were… odd.
As a race, they were more than a little mysterious.
Kind of like Lightbringers.
And like with Lightbringers, Alexis wasn’t entirely sure what they were––if they were humans with some kind of supernatural power related to portals, if they were demigods, if they were half-bloods, like vampires or werewolves… or if they were a totally different race entirely, one that only looked human.
Again, kind of like Lightbringers.
For all she knew, they were little balls of light that could transform into anything they wished, and only really looked human on Earth.
All she actually knew about Travelers was what they could do.
Unlike every other being in the known worlds, Travelers could pass through interdimensional portals without paying any kind of price.
Meaning, they didn’t have to exchange energy on the pass-through.
They didn’t have to exchange places and/or dimensions with a being of equal mass, historical importance, or raw power.
They didn’t even have to utilize complex rituals to counteract the usual side effects experienced by every other race of being who portal-hopped.
Travelers could simply… walk through.
No loss of memory.
No body or soul swaps with other beings.
No loss of lifespan.
No strange portal sicknesses.
No rituals requiring blood, limbs, digits, bone marrow, and/or some far more unpredictable surrendering of karmic merit.
No destroying someone else’s life by walking through the interdimensional doors.
For the same reason, Travelers were the only beings allowed to pass freely through without any sort of regulation.
It was requested that they register their jumps, but it wasn’t required.
Everyone else needed explicit permission.
Usually special, explicit permission.
Permission few could grant.
Unless they were a god, of course.
Gods more or less made their own rules.
Every now and again, Alexis got asked to look out for this god or that god, who had gone rogue, or who might be up to no good. Whenever she got such a request, she did it out of professional courtesy, out of politeness, sometimes out of fear of the havoc they might wreak if left to their own devices.
But for the most part, Alexis left god business alone.
Gods generally weren’t her problem.
As Lightbringer for this dimension, her job was to deal with everything else that tried to walk illegally through interdimensional walls.
She had to stop everything else from screwing up the balance between worlds, and/or throwing the historical timelines out of whack.
Sighing, she leaned her hands on the metal railing.
So much for her night off.
Now she would have to stay here, wait for the Traveler to find her. If nothing else, the coincidence of them showing up, and now coming to her, right when she’d been having bad tingly feelings, was too much for her to swallow. No, she would wait for the Traveler.
Maybe they would have an explanation.
Still, even with that dread in her gut, she couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
Devin and Jules would be pissed about her giving up her night off.
Now that it was off the table, she could think of dozens of ways to spend it.
Soak in a bath, or possibly her jacuzzi. Finish the romance book she started something like six months before. Try out the mud masque her friend and employee, Niobe, gave her for her birthday two weeks earlier. Drink a few glasses of wine.
She still wanted that Asian take-out… Thai or Chinese… or maybe both.
She still wanted to eventually put on an old movie, pass out on the couch in her pajamas and fuzzy slippers, wrapped in at least three blankets.
She’d been on patrol every night since Halloween.
But now she was stuck, at least until this Traveler dick deigned to show up.
Lightbringer: An Enemies to Lovers Urban Fantasy with Demons, Portals, Witches, Renegade Gods, & Other Assorted Beasties (Light & Shadow Book 1) Page 2