Forest Moon Rising (54 page)

Her parents probably put a stop to that just to keep her close.

“The documents are amazingly straightforward, without hidden provisions or sleeper clauses. Not one vague word subject to misinterpretation in them,” Doreen pronounced. “I’d say it’s safe to sign, if you want to adopt the child.” She touched her own belly possessively.

“Gollum, if
we
do this, we’ll start our life together with four children. They’ve been seriously abused. They’ll need counseling, special schooling, and all the unconditional love we can pour into them. Do you truly want that? Can you do that?” I would. Gladly. Oh, yes, I wanted them all with every molecule in my being.

“Yes, Tess. That is what I want.” Gollum rested his hand over mine and fixed his gaze on me, glasses halfway down his nose so I could see his eyes clearly and know his sincerity. “And I look forward to adding a couple of our own children to the family. I want all our children to be close to Cedar and Oak too. I don’t mind if Pat and Julia wander in and out at odd hours. I want our lives overflowing with children, with family, and laughter and love.”

I took a deep breath and shot a silent query to Scrap.

“We’ll baby-sit during your honeymoon, if you’ll watch the boys during ours,” Doreen offered. “Both Cedar and Oak are coming home with us tonight.”

“Okay. We’ll do it.”

The entire table loosed a collective sigh of relief.

I grabbed the pen from Lucia and affixed my name (ink only, I didn’t need blood to bind me to this) in a dozen places, then passed each paper to Gollum so that he could add his name and signature and become part of the legal process. Then Donovan witnessed each page. So did Pat.

“Now there is one chore left,” I sighed.

I ignored Scrap. He’d go along with me. Because it was the only way I could find the happily ever after Holly promised in her love ballad.

“I
CAN’T BELIEVE YOU TALKED ME into this,” Donovan whispered as he surveyed the vast emptiness of the chat room.

“I can’t believe you finally convinced me the Kajiri demons need a home world,” I replied, barely breathing. As often as Scrap had dragged me through here, I never quite got used to the lack of sensory input. All white, no direction, no dimension, no sound other than my heartbeat and our quiet words that seemed to bounce and magnify.

The lump of beryllium in my pocket weighed three times as much here as it did back home.

“That’s just it, I didn’t convince you. The kids did. You see in them the need for an occasional time out, away from the pressures of humanity.”

“I hope the kids are safe while we’re here.” I chewed my lower lip, wondering how Gollum and Doreen were managing with six children in my tiny condo.

“Don’t worry. Gollum and Doreen are sensible and smart. They’ll be okay, even if you and I don’t make it back alive.”

And if we didn’t make it back? I couldn’t, wouldn’t believe such a thing was possible.

But I’d made contingency plans and updated my will at the last moment.

“Will you guys shut up!” Scrap ground out.

Another thing I never got used to, Scrap bigger than me, and solid, with a deep voice. A new array of warts adorned his wing joints. I spotted a special one on his pug nose and another on the tip of his tail—highly prized locations for Imps.

I’d worked him hard these last few weeks.

“There’s a Cthulu demon on guard today,” Scrap added. “You really don’t want to get on his bad side.”

“Don’t the demon guards always work in pairs?” I asked.

“Cthulus don’t need a partner. They’re mean enough on their own.”

We tiptoed past the sort-of-squid shape with more head and arms than the ocean-bound critters I’d seen on TV. It kept its eyes closed, supposedly sleeping on duty.

I didn’t trust it. It probably had six or more layers of eyelids and could look asleep while still having four more steps to go to blot out the flat light.

He, or his kind, had let me pass before. I bowed politely to it. “We’re going to the Powers That Be. That’s allowed,” I said.

An extra eyelid winked at me.
Allowed. Not recommended.

“You know, of course, that very few people who get called before the Powers That Be survive the encounter,” Donovan reminded.

“You did.”

“Barely.”

“I did, once before. But then I sought them out, they didn’t drag me in to face justice.”

“They don’t like their privacy disturbed.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Ever think they might get lonely trapped in their courtroom for aeons at a time?”

“Impossible.”

I shrugged.

Scrap planted himself in front of the ornate door with the huge brass knocker. “You can still back out, babe. I’ll cover your ass.”

I centered myself to find my courage. “I have to do this.” Then I lifted the ring above the lion’s head and let it fall.

The brass bonged loudly, bouncing back for a second clang and then a third. The noise echoed through the vast white space, reverberating down all the hidden corridors and through all the closed doors to other dimensions.

“No privacy when you call on the Powers That Be,” Donovan quipped.

The door swung inward slowly, silently, revealing a dim room, lit by unseen fixtures with a reddish hue. Spooky. Alarming to the uninitiated.

Stage dressing.

I gathered my determination, firmed my chin, and marched forward until I stood before the long judicial bench that looked like a solid ten-foot mahogany wall.

Scrap cowered beside the door. Today, he was only my escort, not willing to be a part of these proceedings.

“Anybody home?” I called up to the seven empty seats.

“Not so loud!” Donovan admonished. “They might hear you.”

“That’s the idea. I think they’re more afraid of us than we of them.”

“Not very likely.”

I raised my eyebrows at him in a parody of his sardonic cocking of one brow.

“Who dares approach these hallowed halls?” a deep voice boomed from above us.

“If you don’t know then you aren’t very observant or don’t have a good memory.”

“Tess, careful. You need to be respectful.”

“No, I don’t. I have something they want very badly. And they are going to have to bargain hard for it.” I fingered the cool ball of beryllium in my pocket.

I heard a group gasp above my head.

The judicial bench sank back to normal size, about level with my shoulder. All seven of the Powers That Be arranged themselves behind, including a larger version of the Cthulu on guard in the chat room. This guy looked as big as the glacier on top of Mt. Rainier, the first place I’d spotted him.

Maybe he was a god and not a demon. What’s the difference if he’s from a different dimension preying on innocents in mine?

“Why have you come?” asked a heavily cloaked figure from deep within its cowl.

I just made out burning embers where the eyes should be.

“The last time I was here, you made me sign in blood that I would give up my firstborn child to you in return for the safety of my father and end the ownership dispute over the piece of neutral ground where his home now sits.” The home that had once been mine.

“Yes,” intoned another voice. This one almost feminine.

A piece of parchment fluttered out of the air to land on the desk. I recognized my signature in rusty brown dried blood.

Beside me, Donovan shuddered. He tried to slink behind me. He’d signed one of those documents too, promising never to reveal his origins. He hadn’t told me he’d fallen from being a gargoyle. I figured that out on my own.

“You signed in blood. You cannot reverse the agreement,” a third voice said. This one was high and reedy. Impossible to discern gender or species.

“I don’t want to reverse it. I still need protection for my father from rogue demons who will seek to use the neutral energies of that land to open a new portal that bypasses the chat room. I want to exchange the price of that protection.”

“Impossible,” a group denial.

“You have nothing we want more than your firstborn,” that was the first deep voice.

“Oh?” I held up the crystal ball. The milky swirls deep inside the mineral matrix caught the red hues of the lights, swished them around and turned them into sparkling faery dust.

The scintillating pinpricks of light shifted and formed the image of a gateway arch framed in bright flowers.

“What is that?” asked the feminine voice. She pushed back her hood and leaned over the bench for a better look. Her head remained in shadow. Impossible to tell her true form, but I thought she might have been a faery originally.

“A portal,” I replied.

“We have many portals available to us,” said the reedy voice.

I caught a whiff of fish from his breath. Did he eat fish, or did he have fins?

“Not like this one. The crystal ball opens a doorway that doesn’t exist anywhere else.”

“Impossible.”

“Ever wonder what happened to all the energy that drained out of Faery until I returned the kidnapped dancers where they belonged and sealed that portal?” I stared longingly into the crystal ball a moment longer, then reluctantly made to return it to my pocket; taking it off the bargaining table. Or at least threatening to.

“Wait, please,” the former faery pleaded. She reached a long-fingered, elegant hand out for the treasure.

I kept the ball firmly in my own hand.

“A new dimension?” asked the androgynous voice.

“Yes,” I replied. “A new dimension that only the possessor of this crystal ball can gain access to. A new dimension ready to be shaped by a single mind.”

Donovan shifted from foot to foot. I touched his arm, trying to convey the need for a solid, confident front. We had to let these pettifogging bureaucrats know that we could walk away from this deal without changing a thing.

“The crystal ball belongs to us,” the deep voice announced.

The squid reached a long tentacle across the bench, ready to pluck the thing from my hand.

I closed my fingers around it and pocketed it for real this time. They’d only get it by stealing it. Wouldn’t put that past them.

“Not yet it doesn’t.” I turned on my heel and headed toward the door, dragging Donovan with me.

“What do you want for the ball?” the faery asked.

“I want the dimension opened to the Kajiri as a home world. A place where they can retreat when the demands of their half-breed status grow too heavy. A place where they can be either human or demon, they can succumb to their instincts and not hurt innocents.”

“We agree,” a new voice interjected. This one sounded old and wavery, like the oldest person in the Universe weighed in.

I fingered the ball in my pocket, thinking.

“What else?” asked the old one. He (she?) sounded almost human in tonal quality.

“If I entrust this ball into your keeping, I want to exchange possession of it for my firstborn child.”

Donovan gasped at my audacity. “It’s true?” he whispered.

“Of course it’s true.”

“How could you make such a bargain?”

“I had nothing to lose. At the time I knew I’d never marry you and Gollum had gone back to his wife. I didn’t think I’d have the opportunity to bear a child, except by artificial insemination and I’m a bit too Catholic to do that.”

“Oh.” He sounded deflated. “I never had a prayer of winning you, did I?”

“Nope.”

He heaved a sigh of resignation. Then he turned back to the Powers That Be, squared his shoulders and approached the bench with pride and dignity. This was the man I’d longed for him to grow into. But he didn’t value
me
enough for him to become honorable for me. He remained a manipulative, lying cheat.

Or was that a teenager in an adult body?

“Your honors, I have worked long and hard to find a home world for Kajiri, half human, half demon, belonging in neither world. I respectfully request the duty of administering this new dimension.”

“Granted,” the faery agreed hastily, before the others had a chance to argue for the sake of arguing.

“Possession of the ball must come to us first,” fish breath demanded.

“How will I access this new dimension if you possess the ball?” Donovan asked. Back to Mr. Manipulation.

Seven heads bent in hooded consultation.

“We will send a representative there who will open a new portal and give you the key. That key may be revoked and the portal closed at any time for any reason,” deep voice pronounced. “We keep the ball.”