by Rob Cornell
Eventually, my eyes adjusted to the brightness. I blinked a few times and looked around me.
I stood in a forest clearing. Sure enough, the heat from above came from the sun. Knee high grass stretched in an uneven circle to the surrounding trees—tall redwoods that could have been hundreds of years old. I’d never actually seen redwoods in life, just in pictures and films. All of it smelled wonderful and natural.
Rachel stood about the same distance from me as she’d been while we sat in our cars. She had her head tilted back, bathing her face in the sunlight with a wide smile. The ground was spongy from a recent rain, and suddenly Rachel’s hiking boots made perfect sense. She took a long, deep breath, then exhaled with a satisfied haaaa. “Isn’t this so much nicer than January in Michigan?”
No doubt, it was. I had already started sweating under my heavy coat. “It helps if you actually dress for the weather,” I said.
“I work from here most of the time, so I don’t like to drag a coat around.”
“Makes sense, I guess.” I pulled off my coat and draped it over one arm. “Speaking of which. Where is here?”
She turned her face away from the sun and, still smiling, squinted at me. “I could tell you that. But then I’d have to disintegrate you.”
I humphed. “One of those baubles of yours can disintegrate someone?”
She rolled some beads on one of the necklaces between her fingers. “I’ve got all sorts of skills, Mr. Light.”
“It’s Sebastian. If you’re luring me into a trap, I’d prefer we were on a first name basis.”
Her smile positively beamed. I couldn’t figure out how such an expressive woman could put on such a bland face when it came down to serious business.
“Of course, Sebastian.”
I took another moment to survey the beautiful surroundings. I assumed the shed at the lumber yard was a much, much larger version of the door to the Switch, which provided a portal between planes, like crawling through the holes in a block of Swiss cheese. I’d never seen one of such massive scale. It was like the freight elevator of interdimensional travel.
“So where are Odi and my mother? Hiking in the woods?”
She pointed toward a narrow break in the trees. “We need to follow that path. I hope those boots of yours are comfy, because we have about a thirty minute walk.”
“Why would you have this elaborate travel system and have it plop you down so far away from your actual destination?”
“The GMF travel in style, but we aren’t stupid. Precautions. We have many.”
I gestured ahead. “Lead the way.”
The heat had a nasty humid streak. Even in the shade of the trees, I felt wet and sticky. I was half-tempted to leave my coat hanging from a tree and pick it up on the way back out—assuming I would make it back out. I was tired of lugging the thing, but I wasn’t going to put it on, no matter how much easier it would have been to carry. I muscled through. It was the only winter coat I owned.
According to my watch, the thirty-minute hike took forty minutes. I didn’t complain. I was too busy looking in awe at the structure before us.
The collection of buildings looked like a natural extension of the surrounding forest. The architecture wrapped around the trees while some branches speared through the structures as if part of the construction. The octagonal buildings sat on various levels, and most of them looked to be connected by wide pillars or tube-shaped walkways. A lot of glass walls further allowed the tiered structures to blend with their surroundings instead of obscuring the beauty.
I couldn’t possibly guess their collective square footage, but the…what? Tree house? The whole thing went up pretty high and encompassed at least a hundred of the massive redwoods.
This looked like one sweet place to work.
“I can see your tonsils,” Rachel said.
I clapped my mouth shut and managed to pull my gaze away from this architectural masterpiece. Rachel’s smile looked vibrant in the sun streaming through the natural canopy of the trees. Her lips glistened. A sheen of sweat made her complexion glow. And when I realized where my thoughts were headed, I reigned them in fast.
I was starting to think I had a thing for women of power. First the head of a black witch coven, now a lead officer of the GMF. Of course, the two women couldn’t otherwise have been more different.
“What is that look for?” Rachel asked.
I shook off my random contemplation of my love life and brought myself back to the present. “What look? There’s no look.”
She lifted an eyebrow and did not appear the least bit convinced.
“This place,” I said, waving at the forest complex. “What a place.”
Behold my rhetorical mastery! I could talk good.
Rachel turned to face the complex. I noticed a bead of sweat roll down the length of her neck. “We’re very proud of what we’ve built here. We had a team of druids on hand the entire time to make sure our symbiotic relationship with the forest put none of it in danger. Now, through a mix of magic and engineering, our jewel of the Ministry actually helps the forest thrive.”
“The jewel of the Ministry. Is that its official title?”
She shook her head. “We call it Greenhome. It’s much nicer than the stone castle that used to hold the Ministry Seat.”
My brain zapped. “Wait a second. This is…the Seat?”
“It is.”
“Whoa.” I looked up at the complex with a new pair of eyes. Knowing that this place was basically the headquarters to the entire Ministry everywhere… I almost caught a bug in my mouth from hanging my mouth so wide.
Then a thought struck me. “My Mom and Odi? They’re here?”
Rachel inclined her head.
It shocked the hell out of me that they would let a vampire into the Ministry Seat. I got a little nudge of panic. “There’s a lot of windows in this place.”
She laughed. “Your vampire is quite safe. This place isn’t all in the sky.” She nodded toward the ground.
Well, of course this place would have a subterranean level. What super-secret headquarters didn’t?
I felt sparks going off in my skull. A giddy lightness rose through me. I didn’t forget all the things I had yet to deal with—bringing Sly back, figuring out what Rachel Strand wanted with me and Mom, worrying about what the Maidens of Shadow were going to do with my soul. But I did get a slight reprieve. Not any old sorcerer got to visit the Ministry Seat. I had stepped into a whole new level of the paranormal world. This was greater than visiting royalty. This was the greatest honor anyone in existence could have.
It would really suck if I’d only come here to die.
“So,” I said, “now that you have me here, are you going to kill me?”
She put her fists on her hips and shook her head. “Do you have any idea the magical energy required to travel here? If I wanted you dead, I would have left you behind.”
She dropped her hands to her sides and crunched through the underbrush to me. I swear I could feel her body heat from ten feet away, let alone the mere two she put between us.
“It’s quite the opposite,” she said. “I need you alive and well, Sebastian Light. Because I need your help.”
Chapter Forty-Five
“My help?”
I looked around me as if my surroundings would melt into the muddled visions of a dream. But the thick smell of pine and earth was too real. The humidity and the sweat under my arms and across my back, making my shirt stick to me—all too vivid for a dream.
Maybe I’d been drugged and was hallucinating. Or hit with some kind of spell.
“Your thoughts must be racing,” Rachel said. “Questions upon questions. We can discuss it all inside where it’s much cooler.” She smirked. “In both senses of the word.”
“Um.” I cleared my throat. “Before we do, can you at least answer one now?”
“Certainly.”
“Is this real?”
She laughed. I liked the sound of
it, throaty and honest. “It’s all real. But, of course, if it weren’t, would you really expect me to tell you the truth?”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Touché.”
She led the way to a dome-shaped building wrapped around the base of one of the trees. Soft soil was the only path out of the brush on the approach to the front door. Through the dome’s glass walls I could see the base of the redwood in the structure’s center. The floor looked like it was made of polished wood, as did all the window frames. Two glass hallways, one on each side, led to other flanking structures.
I could see a pair of robed men just inside the nearly invisible glass doors. They both wore hoods that hung low, just above their eyes. One had a thick, chestnut beard. The other had the barest wisp of gray hanging from his chin.
The glass doors automatically slid open as we approached, and slid closed behind us once we were inside. The change in temperature sent a shiver through me. My sweat started evaporate almost instantly.
The men bowed slightly, but otherwise said nothing as we passed.
Rachel led me through a series of corridors, some glass, some made of the same slick wood as the floor in the domed entry. Everything smelled like wood and earth, even the glass corridors. Eventually, we came to a set of stone steps that stopped at a pair of closed wooden doors with brass handles.
Rachel shrugged one shoulder. “The lower levels are more like the old castle. Maybe someday I can give you the tour in the upper levels.”
Did she sound flirty? Or was that my imagination? Either way, I was all about her taking me on a tour. “Sounds great.”
Her closed smile looked a little mischievous. Didn’t it?
No. I decided I was reading into things. No way a Ministry officer so high in the ranks would flirt with little ol’ me.
As promised, the lower level beyond the wooden doors looked like an old castle. Stone walls. Stone floor. Stone statues carved out at regular intervals down the main hall. Some were proud goblins from a bygone era when goblins had aspired to more than the low-level grifters they were today. Others resembled old-school wizards brandishing wands or staffs.
You didn’t see too many wizards anymore. Their style of magic took a great deal of brains to manage. Kids these days found that kind of cerebral business too much work to bother with. Better to just enchant some shit, or read incantations of out a musty old book if they absolutely had to.
Between the statues, stone pedestals carried white magical flame to illuminate the way. The air smelled like moss and mortar and carried a frigid dampness that made me glad I’d kept my coat.
We went through a couple more sets of doors and another set of stairs before we came to the end of a hall with a rather modern steel door and a keypad beside it. It looked strange in the wavering light of the magic flames.
“What is with these lower levels?” I asked. “The few rooms we passed didn’t look occupied with much more than dust, webs, and old wooden furniture.”
Rachel punched a series of buttons on the keypad. “Everyone prefers the upstairs for obvious reasons. This part was built more out of nostalgia than anything. A few members of the committee responsible for the organization and construction of Greenhome thought some residents would prefer more familiar surroundings.”
“They meant all the old people.”
She hit one last button on the keypad and something clunked behind the metal door. A second later the doors hissed open into wall pockets on either side.
“Elders, yes,” Rachel said. “Of course, they were dead wrong. The Elders took up shop in some of the highest tiers.” She waved me through the door. “Let's have a friendly reunion.”
Chapter Forty-Six
We stepped out of medieval times and back to the modern era. A steel-walled corridor stretched out from the entry to a T at the end. Closed metal doors painted off-white lined the way at uneven intervals. I felt an electric hum buzz through the floor under my soles. I sensed some massive energy source deeper below us that had the flavor of magic, but also something more…artificial.
Rachel must have picked up my thoughts from my look. “What you feel is the Greenhome core. It’s essentially a nuclear generator contained and augmented by magical energy. It would take a million years for us to deplete it.”
I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand.
“And before you ask, it’s perfectly stable. The magic keeps it perpetually between dimensions. If anything goes awry, the core gets ejected into the other dimension.”
“I hope there aren’t any residents over there.”
“There are,” she deadpanned. “But they are not the kinds of things whose deaths we would mourn.”
I’d had a short run-in with a hellhound. If the things she was talking about were anything like that beast, then, hell yeah, nuke ‘em all.
She touched my back for an instant, sending electric ripples through me. “Let’s go.” Then she went ahead.
I tried not to admire the view as much as my devious libido so desperately wanted. My gaze did linger a moment on the curve of her calves, somehow made more attractive by her hiking boots. I know. Maybe I’d gone too long without sex. Hiking boots as fetish? I was sure I could find something like that on the internet. Not that I planned on looking it up. I doubted they’d look as good on anyone else.
We went all the way down the corridor to the T and made a right. More non-descript doors, many of them with keypads or card swipes beside them. We passed a glassed-in room, vacant at the moment. A scarlet circle with a pentacle inside was painted on the floor. A shelf of old books stood against the far wall. An empty wire cage bedded with straw sat on the floor in the corner.
I couldn’t help thinking back to our fight against Goulet and his well-dressed yes-men (or yes-vamps, really). The Maidens had drawn a similar circle and had slaughtered a pig in a cage not unlike the one in the corner.
“Sebastian?”
I had stopped walking without realizing. Rachel looked back at me and studied my face. Then her gaze went to the room with the pentacle. She frowned. “It isn’t our preferred form of magic. But even dark witches can help keep the world safe.”
I knew firsthand that was true.
I also knew they could do exactly the opposite. Especially if they had a piece of a sorcerer’s soul to help them along.
“Are you okay?” Rachel asked. “You look pale. Does this bother you so much?”
I shook my head and waved. “Nah. I’m good.”
She tilted her head toward the direction we’d been headed. “Come on. Just around the corner here.”
For a second I had the crazy idea she was leading me to a gas chamber or a pack of rabid werewolves. But that didn’t make any sense. Not at this point. But if not a trip to my doom, then what, besides maybe Odi and Mom, would I find just around the corner here? Why had Rachel Strand taken me all this way? She had said she needed my help. Yet they had a massive complex populated by some of the greatest minds in the magical world—even some black witches, apparently. What the hell could I possibly have to offer?
True to her word, Rachel stopped in front of a door only a dozen or so steps around the corner. The door looked like all the others. I had no idea what to expect on the other side. Some kind of cold laboratory wouldn’t have surprised me. Mom strapped down to a cold steel operating table flashed across my mind’s eye. I wondered how long one person could live with such paranoia before succumbing to madness? Some days, insanity seemed right around the corner for me.
Rachel tapped in another code into the keypad beside the door. The door clicked, and Rachel led the way inside.
Chapter Forty-Seven
No laboratory, no operating tables, nothing like that. Instead we walked into what looked like a massive hotel suite. The common room could have held our little Corktown house inside it. High vaulted ceiling held by beams made of the same kind of wood as the halls upstairs.
Either side of the room had its own curving staircase that led to a l
oft area, and off the sides of the lofts, ornate doors carved with woodland creatures and trees and ribboned designs. I assumed those led to separate bedrooms. But who knew? Maybe there was a sauna or a hot tub up there. Or both.
The warm smell of freshly baked bread filled the place and soothed my jangled nerves for the first time in…forever. I could practically taste a crusty bite from the scent alone.
The center of the room was sectioned off by a set of curved sofas on either side like parentheses. A couple more arm chairs huddled close by. An oval coffee table sat at the center, again made from the same wood as everything else.
I found Mom sitting in one of the armchairs. She had a book in her lap, but she had her gaze up as I entered.
“Wow,” I said. “No wonder you ditched me.”
Mom smiled. “It wasn’t a planned thing, Sebastian.”
I shrugged. I still felt a little, I don’t know…excluded, I guess.
Mom shut her book, stood, and came over to me. We hugged. When we pulled apart, I looked around. The walls were adorned with oil paintings depicting various kinds of fae, mostly fairies, satyr, and beautiful, ghostly women in robes of white that shimmered so vividly, I could squint a little and believe the light was real.
“Where’s Odi?” I asked.
“He’s sleeping upstairs,” Mom said. “They even provided him a coffin.”
I pivoted to face Rachel, who stood just inside the now closed door. She held her hands clasped behind her back, and all that expressive smiling she’d shown on our way here had vanished. She once again wore her impassive, impervious expression. Her business face.
Which meant we were probably about to get down to business.
“Please, have a seat,” she said formally.
Mom took me by the elbow, and we walked over to one of the sofas and sat together.
Rachel joined us, but stayed on her feet.
That bread aroma continued to hang in the air. I turned to Mom. “Is there a bakery in here or something?”