by Linda Welch
Ushered out by a smiling Mercedes, Royal, Chris and Maggie exited the jet and walked into LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal. From there they trekked to the central terminal. I lost track of the ramps and corridors we passed through as I clung to Maggie’s aura, but we entered the airport proper in no time at all.
They went through the airport as if on greased heels. Airport personnel stood at every corner, every door, to direct them. I know money talks but I never heard it jingle so loudly.
Chris thanked everyone, but Royal strode on as if he didn’t see them. I hated what my misfortune had done to him. I wanted the Royal I knew, not this stern, obsessed, inflexible man.
As always, a host of people waited for disembarking passengers.
“Ah, there we are.” Chris waved one hand like royalty.
A man in brown leather jacket and pants held a large sign declaring “PLOWMAN,” in capital letters.
Chris made a beeline for the chauffeur. “Our driver.”
Royal abruptly stopped walking. “Our? Chris, you are not coming with us.”
Slightly ahead, Chris also stopped, turned and arched a narrow eyebrow. “I think I am, dear boy.”
“No. I already bear the weight of guilt for bringing Maggie to satisfy my own desires, I will not—”
“Excuse me?” Maggie said with mock indignation. “You might want to rephrase that.”
Royal’s eyebrows came together in a heavy scowl. “I mean my desire to talk to Tiff.”
Maggie looked away and spoke beneath her breath. “Oh, relax, will you.”
“He’s not himself,” I said, and quickly added, “No, don’t answer me!” Loonies who talk to themselves are not allowed in airports.
Maggie took a cell phone from her jacket pocket and looked at it as she spoke. “Hey, Tiff, how you doing?” She fiddled with her ear beneath her hair, as if adjusting a Bluetooth earpiece.
“Clever. Wish I’d thought of it.”
“Yeah,” she said brightly. “I wish I’d thought of it earlier.”
The people buzzing about were strangers to one another and Maggie was another young person talking on her cell. No one took time out to pause and listen to her conversation.
I could talk to Maggie in relative privacy while Royal and Chris argued. “Maggie,” I said urgently, “you can get a flight out of here. Go home. You shouldn’t have come.”
She gave me a smug look. “Yeah, as if that’s gonna happen.”
Stupid girl. “Why didn’t you listen to me when I told you about Dagka Shan? Don’t you understand you’re risking your life?”
She gave me her shoulder, half turning to Chris and Royal. “With two supermen to protect me?”
Oblivious of what she’d walked into, Maggie didn’t know what she was talking about. “They can’t. When it comes to Shan, nobody can.” I ran the back of my wrist over my brow. “Last time we went against him, he killed three men and broke Royal’s spine.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but Royal and Chris came toward us at a fast clip. Chris’ normally urbane tone bore an edge. “You’ll need all the support you can get.”
Royal spotted Maggie’s phone. He stormed at her furiously. “Who did you call?”
She gave him a look. “Nobody. I’m talking to Tiff.”
“You cannot talk to Tiff on—” he began, and stopped. “I see,” he said stiffly.
“Royal and I are going to have a talk once we’re somewhere private,” I promised Maggie. “He isn’t usually an ass. He’s a relaxed, fun person to be with.”
She slowly lifted her eyebrows.
“Honest. He is. And he has a wicked sense of humor.”
The eyebrows stayed up under her teal bangs.
“You’ll see,” I grumbled, “when this is done and everything is back to normal.”
“Maggie, we are leaving,” Royal said.
I tried again. “Please, Maggie. Go home.”
She ignored me, but from her expression I’d planted a seed of uncertainty.
Royal and Chris must have reached an agreement, for Chris came with us when we followed the driver through the terminal to the exit and outside to a long, low black car. Royal and Maggie slid in back, Chris rode shotgun with the driver rather than share the wide back seat. I released Maggie’s aura and watched Royal. Sitting between him and Maggie, we were so close. I badly wanted to nestle into his side.
Royal gave the driver directions and away we went.
The car pulled up in a quiet, older part of the city forty-five minutes later. Muted music and voices issued from a small Italian restaurant and a man came from a corner store and walked away from us along the street. A few cars snugged in at the curb as though jostling with the trash cans for parking space. The store and restaurant were the only public establishments on a street of old brick buildings.
Silent, everyone exited the car and it drove away.
Chris gestured at a lane on our right, one of those unnamed passages commonly between rows of buildings for foot traffic or to provide access for deliveries or pickups. “This is it?”
“According to Felipe,” Royal replied.
We started along the lane. The rear walls of apartment buildings soared five floors on one side, six on the other, each with a fire escape zigzagging up. It was just wide enough to allow garbage trucks to drive along and take care of the dumpsters and trash cans. The walls looked black and sooty and muffled noise from the city. Voices floated from open windows.
Royal stopped halfway along at the entrance to a dark, narrow alley. Maggie kept walking.
“Maggie, we have arrived,” Royal said in a low voice.
Maggie, with me attached, went to stand with him and Chris. “Down there?”
I looked down an alley fading to black maybe thirty feet along. I saw no farther and the darkness looked sooty, unnatural.
“We’re going in there?” Maggie hugged her jacket tight to herself.
“I’ll take a look.” Royal strode toward the darkness.
“Tiff, what have you got me into?” Maggie whispered.
“You got yourself into it. You can always return to the plane. I’m sure Chris can call the driver and he’ll take you back to the airport.”
She drew herself up. “No. I’m coming with you.”
Drat.
“I’m prepared.” She felt in her backpack and took out a tiny digital recorder. “And just in case.” Next, out came a notepad and pen. “I keep them on me, they come in handy when I’m investigating.”
“Investigating? Huh! You mean snooping on your clients so you can feed them a bunch of lies.”
She gave me a filthy look.
“You’re an investigator?” Chris asked.
Maggie made a face. “Kind of.”
I laughed in her ear.
Chapter Sixteen
The alley freaked me out. It was too long. We should be at the rear of a building or in another street by now. We seemed to walk forever. And the deep shadow at the end looked solid, as if someone splashed a giant scoop of black ink on a wall.
But the nearer we got, it looked less of a shadow and more like thick, black vapor.
Maggie stopped moving. “I’m not going in there.”
Royal said, “Nothing will hurt you, Maggie.”
She drew in a quivering breath. “I think it will.” She backpedalled. “I can’t. I shouldn’t be here.”
In a short burst of demon speed, Royal caught up to her. She didn’t notice, her gaze glued to the dark splotch in the alley.
“Maggie,” Royal said, but she kept pacing backward.
“Maggie!” He took her arm above the elbow. “It’s a geas, a compulsion.”
“It seems great lengths are taken to keep Downside a secret,” Chris said. “This is a safeguard to stop people entering. I feel it but it’s not threatening. It must be targeted at the average man on the street.”
I understood what he meant. “It’s a kind of spell, makes you deeply averse to going where you shou
ldn’t.”
“You agree I shouldn’t?” she said, clutching at the one word to penetrate the uncanny hold this place had on her.
Darn. But wait a minute, I didn’t want her near Shan and she would not be if she obeyed the geas. I shut my mouth.
Royal drew Maggie back until they neared the mouth of the alley. “You can wait for us.”
“We can’t leave her in the middle of Manhattan,” Chris said.
“What was that?” Maggie trembled all over. “I was terrified but I don’t know of what.”
“Royal told you, a geas, a compulsion, it made you dread going farther.”
“I didn’t hear him, or it didn’t register.”
“You don’t have to come.” Chris produced his cell phone. “The driver hasn’t got far. Shall I call him?”
“But I want to.” Her gaze went from Royal to Chris.
“Maybe you do now but it will hit you again if you try to go in there,” I said.
“Either you return to the airport, or you forge through it,” Royal said.
“Dammit.” Her brow creased. “I want to try again.”
“If it defeats you, Chris will call his car.”
“We’ll help you.” Chris took her hand. “Come, my sweet,” he crooned as only Chris can croon.
Her eyes slid to his face.
“Yes, that’s it. Look at me.” He smiled into her wide green eyes. “Listen to me, darling, and I’ll tell you a story.”
Royal took her other hand and they led her forward. Chris’ tone became musical as if he sang a lullaby. “Once upon a time there lived a gallant, handsome knight, but he did not ride a prancing white steed. No, this manly and chivalrous hero rode a Harley Davidson motorcycle and . . . .”
Oh good grief.
Maggie moved stiffly, woodenly, as if her body lacked joints but she kept going, watching Chris’ face, listening to his preposterous tale.
And suddenly we walked in darkness. Not a glimmer lifted the leaden air. I saw nothing, including Maggie who I clung to.
Claustrophobia overwhelmed me and Chris’ fairy tale no longer distracted Maggie. She shrieked; so did I.
Her voice created an echo. “Tiff? Are you there? Royal? Chris? Oh, God. Someone?”
“We’re with you,” Chris said. “You can feel my hand, can you not?”
“We can’t see where we’re going!”
Alarm threatened to unhinge me. Unrelieved darkness has always petrified me. Although I felt nothing, I experienced the sense of space pressing on me. Understanding I imagined the pressure didn’t help.
“We are fine,” Royal said much too calmly. “Felipe told me we cannot get lost. Whatever direction we walk in, we will arrive at our destination.”
His words and tone should have steadied me but neither worked. Terrified of accidentally letting go of Maggie and getting lost in this black nothingness, my fingers knotted. I dare not relax my hold.
“Look, a light,” Chris said.
A tiny orange spot broke the black pall. It blossomed into a comforting glow as we hurried onward. Did time work differently here, for we reached it faster than I deemed possible. One moment it waited in the distance, the next we stood beneath it. Panting, Maggie fixed her gaze on a lightbulb in a metal bracket which illuminated a small patch of brick and a wood lintel.
We stood before a door made of old, dark, weathered wood perhaps ten feet high and five wide, surrounded by a thick frame. The brick also looked old: pocked, crumbling and stained.
Maggie trembled perceptibly. I hoped she didn’t chicken out for purely personal reasons; I didn’t want to go back through the darkness to Manhattan.
“What now?” Chris breathed.
A groan of wood on wood and the door ground open. Not outward or inward; it slid left into the frame. We backed up, Maggie on her toes, poised to run. Surely she and the men shared my apprehension and braced themselves for what lay beyond.
Another door, or gate, made of thick iron bars set vertically a hands-width apart. And beyond, a large room, or hall, with brown brick walls and brick floor. Long florescent strip lighting on the walls and ceiling fritzed and made spitting noises. A man stood behind a counter in a kind of compartment in the facing wall, the top half protected by glass. And four men in uniform waited between him and the iron door.
They looked as if they wore railway worker’s uniforms from the early 1900s. Navy jackets with round necks, small collars and a pocket each side on the chest, a row of shiny buttons on the front and one on each pocket. Navy trousers, polished black shoes; round navy caps with brims. And each held a saber.
Swords?
Royal took hold of a bar in the door and pushed but it didn’t budge.
One of the men came nearer. His gaze went from Royal to Chris. “You may enter, but not the girl. She is human and has no place here.”
“You are mistaken,” Royal growled. His hand clenched on the bar and he tried to shake it. His muscles bunched with power, yet the door did not even tremble.
“He’s not,” Maggie said. “I am human. But why can’t I go through?”
What was going on here?
Chris beamed at the man. “Come, my dear fellow,” he began.
Royal reached inside his jacket and pulled his gun.
Appalled, I again forgot he didn’t hear me. “Royal, what is wrong with you?”
Maggie didn’t close her eyes as she repeated my words.
“Be silent, Maggie,” he said in a low, gravel tone.
“But I’m repeating—”
“I do not care which of you is speaking. Hold your tongues.”
Eyes stormy, she pressed her lips together.
“Put your weapon away,” the same man ordered. “Guns won’t work Downside, more often than not they blow apart and do more damage to their bearer than to the target.”
“But I am not in Downside. Yet,” Royal pointed out. He lifted his Glock so it aimed between two bars.
His cold, passionless tone scared me.
He could shoot through the bars. Was he crazy? The men were more or less helpless, their swords no defense against a bullet.
The door inched open, sliding into the wall with the wooden one.
Royal lowered his pistol but didn’t holster it.
The men inside backed away and stood nearer the far wall. One said, “That was not necessary, Sir.”
The man behind the glass moved out of sight and came through a door to the right of the cubicle. Tall, his hair hidden under a top hat, his uniform sported red and gold epaulets and gold buttons. He must be the man in charge. “Stand down, men. I did not open the door.”
Despite Royal and his gun, the men jerked to face the other guy, without exception their faces slack with astonishment. “If you didn’t. . . .” one began, and left anything more unspoken.
Hands clasped behind his back, the man paced toward us and stopped several feet away. “I am the Station Master and this is The Station. Welcome to Downside and Gettaholt City.” I heard capital letters.
Royal stepped inside The Station. Chris followed, towing Maggie through the door. She freed her hand from his and spun as the gate-like iron door began to shut behind her.
The Station Master eyed Royal’s Glock. “You can put your weapon away.”
Royal holstered the gun but kept his hand near where his coat fell open.
The place might be an old-style railway station waiting room, with columns supporting the roof, hard benches surrounding the perimeter and the Station Master’s cubicle. Colored floor bricks in the middle formed a square mosaic. Noise came through an open door on our right, and through it and the arched windows I glimpsed a street, tall buildings and people passing by.
“You are free to go,” the Station Master said.
Go where? We didn’t know where to look for Shan.
“Will we be free to leave again?” Chris asked.
“I don’t see why not,” said the Station Master.
So we tootled across the ro
om, through the door and into Downside.
“What happened back there?” Chris asked as we stepped outside.
Royal said, “From what the guards and Station Master said, I think the Station Master’s refusal to open the second door was overridden.”
“I wonder by whom?”
We stood on the first of four steps leading to a sidewalk of concrete slabs and a narrow cobbled street. Wall to wall, tall buildings rose all around us: weathered brick, carved sandstone, cut stone, plaster. At first glance the architecture was an odd conglomerate of 1940s European and something from the Arabian Nights, many-windowed, dotted with wrought-iron or stone balconies, lacy fretwork on eaves, on doors and below windows. Tall as skyscrapers, they seemed to curve at the top. I knew it for an optical illusion but I instantly felt a touch claustrophobic again. And what I saw of the sky. . . .
“Oh my fricking god,” Maggie breathed out.
Crimson. Not the red of sunset, a garish crimson.
It couldn’t be a sky, any more than the buildings grew at an angle, but despite the absence of sun or clouds it looked like an endlessly reaching sky.
Where were we? When we walked along the alley to Downside I expected to descend steps, or ladders, or go through a manhole to sewers. But as I recall we walked a level path, it didn’t slope at all. If this was a construction, it must be huge. How did it hide in the middle of Manhattan?
Maggie fumbled in her backpack without looking until she found her mini recorder. Eyes still on the sky, she lifted it to her mouth and pressed a button. “Testing, testing.”
She stopped the tape and played it back. I heard a soft whirr, nothing else.
“What the. . . ?” Maggie hit the button again and spoke slowly. “This is a test. I am recording.” She played it back.
Nothing.
“I don’t believe this!” she ground through her teeth. She dropped the recorder in her backpack and slung it over her shoulder by one strap.
Did the same thing happen to Felipe’s recorder?
The street in front of us curved around The Station and continued a winding path to left and right. The sidewalk and street glistened with water. Although I didn’t see any autos, I heard them in the distance, perhaps in the next street.