Promise: Caulborn #2 (28 page)

I took a slow breath and glanced at the bomb nestled against the corner of the toolshed about thirty feet away. Gears had placed it so that I had a clean line of sight to it from our current vantage point, behind the corner of one of the Victorian buildings. The gremlin was snuggled down comfortably in his backpack on my back. I looked at Herb. “Ready?” The pudgy necromancer nodded at me. I sent a tendril of fire at the bomb, and the toolshed exploded in a ball of flame. If we hadn’t crammed some sort of putty that Gears had whipped up into our ears, we would’ve been deafened. A wall of heat ripped past us, and I conjured up a quick shield to protect us from debris.

Less than a minute passed before the brick building’s heavy metal doors opened and a crew of Keepers came hauling ass toward the shed. There must’ve been fifteen or twenty of them, some clad in firefighter outfits, others carrying stretchers. Herb and I dragged our unconscious pals out under the armpits and began hauling them toward the door of the brick building. “Man down!” I called. “Man down!” Two pairs of the medic Keepers hurried over to Herb and me. I was counting on the general commotion to distract them from Herb’s ill-fitting suit. I let out a sigh of relief as they took our charges and began putting them onto stretchers without giving us a second glance. We ran alongside them back through the doors.

“What happened?” One of them asked.

“Not sure,” I replied, feeling Gearstripper wriggle out of my backpack. A second later, the heavy doors began to close behind us. “The power station just exploded.”

“Hey, what’s—” The medic next to me gave a yelp and collapsed. A green blur shot past him, scrambled up the unconscious body of the man on the stretcher and struck the other medic with a sparking baton. The other pair of medics began to yell for help but I hit both of them behind the ear with a blast of telekinesis. They collapsed to the ground in a heap.

“The door locked, Gears?” I asked.

He nodded. “It won’t open from the outside.” He cocked his head to the side. “Or from the inside either, I suppose. I figured you could just do your Open Sesame Seed trick to take care of that.”

“Good plan. Where’d you get that?” I asked, nodding to the shock baton.

“Built it while you guys were messing around with them,” Gears said, gesturing absently to the unconscious guards. “I was bored.”

The inside of the Keeper facility was much more lackluster than I’d expected. Bare concrete walls and exposed metal beams in the ceiling stretched as far as we could see. Gray metal doors ran down the hall on our left, and like the building in Boston, none of the doors was marked.

I consulted my newfound Urisk compass-sense. “Megan’s below us,” I said. “About two hundred feet down.” I was impressed at this newfound power. The precision it gave was outstanding. It was too bad that it couldn’t tell me what was between me and what I was searching for. I Opened a door on the left and found a stairwell. This was too cool. I’d never get lost again.

The stairs were that metal mesh that you see on portable Ferris wheels. And there were a lot of them. It took us nearly ten minutes to clang our way to the bottom. When we finally left the stairwell, we were in another hallway identical to the one we’d started out in.

“Hold on,” Herb wheezed as he put his hands on his knees and bent down. “I need a minute.”

As the necromancer struggled to catch his breath, Gears popped his head out of the backpack and leaned over my shoulder. “Um, Vinnie? Where does your magic directional thinger say Megan is right now?”

I checked. “Below us.” My eyes widened. “About two hundred feet down.”

“Yeah, I was afraid you were going to say that,” Gears replied as he pointed to my left. “Look.” The four Keepers we’d subdued and the unconscious guards were lying in a pile on the side of the hall.

“How?” Herb panted. “All those stairs… How is that possible?”

I thought back to my time at the Athenaeum. “The Loremaster told me that the Keepers are offshoots of the Chroniclers. Chroniclers can manipulate time
and
space. My guess is they did something to route us back here.”

“You are correct, Mr. Corinthos,” came a voice. I looked around but didn’t see anyone.

“Laras,” I called back. “Show yourself. All I want is my partner returned, unharmed.”

“That is not possible, godling,” Lara’s voice replied. His voice was coming from everywhere. Where the hell was he? Maybe there were speakers hidden in the walls? “You see,” Laras continued, “every bargain a Keeper makes is binding and permanent, and many of them tie together. You came to us with a problem, and we discussed payment. That payment, which you delivered, was something necessary to fulfill another of our obligations. We cannot return your partner to you, as we cannot return the item you used for payment to us.”

“You used that item to try and kill me and a friend of mine,” I said.

“All the more reason we are disinclined to return it.”

“You can keep the goddamned Rosario,” I shouted. “Think of it as a Christmas present for all I care. Just release Megan.”

“We are obligated to fulfill our bargains, Mr. Corinthos. No refunds.”

“Wait,” Herb said, his eyes widening. “This is your fault? Megan got kidnapped because of you?” His face was suddenly hard, and he spoke through his teeth. “When we get her back, Vincent, you and I are going to have a very long talk.”

Laras’s voice came back over the speakers, his tone softened to one of condescending sympathy. “I admire your devotion to your companion, Mr. Corinthos. However, we are at an impasse here. I will allow you and your friends to leave this facility unmolested. The door you came in through is just ahead of you.”

“Not without Megan,” Herb yelled at the ceiling.

Laras’s sigh was overly dramatic. “I can see there will be no diplomatic solution here. Very well. You are free to wander this corridor forever, if you wish. All doors will eventually lead you back to where you started. Each one is a portal that we control, you see. I can have you walk through one door, across the length of the Gobi desert, and twist space so you exit from the same door you started through. It’s your decision.”

“Gears, search those guys for any tech,” I said, pointing to the downed guards.

“Oh, please, Mr. Corinthos,” Laras laughed. “You think we carry a key fob or an ID badge that tells the portals where to open? Really. That’s cute.” Gearstripper scampered out of the bag and over to the men. His claws tore through the fabric of the men’s coveralls with a soft
swuff
sound.

Gears picked up and discarded items from the men. “Chewing gum, imitation Swiss Army knife, a ton of lint…” He looked at me and shrugged. “Nothing here, Vinnie.” With that, he took a handful of zip ties from one of his inside coverall pockets and bound the men’s wrists and ankles.

Herb sat down on the floor. “We were going to go on a Duck Tour,” he said, his voice faint. “She’d seen the trucks but never had a chance to go. I bought tickets for this weekend. It was going to be a surprise.” He turned a haggard face toward me. “We’ve got to get her back, Vincent. Please, you have to help me get her back.”

I glanced at the doors along the wall. “Hang in there, Herb, we’re not out of this yet.” I placed my hands on the door and closed my eyes. Extradimensional energies rippled beneath my fingertips. Whatever made up these doors wasn’t much different from the portals Forculus had conjured. A bead of sweat ran down my cheek as I focused. Forculus said I had the domain of doors, and that doors would obey my wishes. Time to put that to the test.

The door’s energies crackled beneath my touch. It wanted to lead to another endless stairwell. Megan, I thought. Open to Megan.

I heard Laras’s voice, muted this time, as though he’d turned his head away from the mic. “Julie, run electrical current through the doors.” I almost had the portal picked. Even through closed eyes, I could see blue light spark to my left, but the jolt of current never came. I glanced over to see Gearstripper grinning happily at a shredded junction box. The little gremlin looked so innocent next to the box with three ragged claw marks running through it.

I ground my teeth and pictured Megan firmly in my mind. Open to her, I commanded the portal.
Now.
In response, the doorway flickered and twisted, the image on its other side resolving into a different room. “Go through,” I called to my companions. “And hurry!” Unlike Forculus’s portals, this one was fighting back. It took all the control I had to keep it from redirecting us back to the endless stairwell. No you don’t, I thought. You’re leading to Megan and that’s all there is to it. Gears and Herb hustled through. I followed and collapsed on a cold concrete floor.

We’d come out in a round room about a hundred feet in diameter and thirty feet high. A twelve-foot metal dome stood in the center of the room, its mirror-like surface reflecting us like a funhouse mirror. My compass-sense said Megan was just inside that dome. “Gears, look around and disable any security systems you see.”

“On it, Vinnie,” he said, dashing off to the far side of the room.

“Mr. Corinthos, your persistence is both admirable and infuriating.” I turned to see Laras and Judo Julie materialize in the chamber just a few feet away.

“Mom used to say that persistence paid off,” I said, readying a fireball. “Nice duds by the way,” I said, gesturing to their matching black jumpsuits. “Paranormal worm silk pajamas?”

“Stop bantering with them, Vincent,” Herb hissed at me. “Get them to give Megan back.”

I’d come to like Herb Wallenby, but he didn’t understand Caulborn tactics. As much as I enjoyed bandying words about with the bad guys à la
Spider-Man, I was trying to buy Gearstripper time.

“He’s simply trying to give the gremlin time to disable our security, Mr. Wallenby.” Crap, was I that transparent? “A fruitless effort,” Laras continued. “The technology here is far too advanced for even one of Von Hassen’s creations.” A section of the floor to the right of the dome turned to liquid metal. It shimmered and flowed upward, forming into a set of three tables. The metal on the tables’ surfaces pulled back, revealing small pieces of equipment including handguns, flashlights, cameras, and other miscellaneous bits of tech. The pack of wet-wipes caught my attention. Those were the contents of Megan’s extradimensional shoebox. The Keepers must’ve emptied it before doing whatever it was they’d done to her.

Laras pursed his lips. “Impressive.”

I smiled. “You don’t know the half of it, Laras.” The dome began to shimmer and became partially translucent. Herb ran over to it, calling Megan’s name.

“Oh, you’d be surprised by what I know, Mr. Corinthos.” It hit me then that no one was trying to stop Herb. Julie and Laras seemed to be enjoying this exchange.

“Herb, get away from the dome!” I shouted.

“I think I see her, Vincent!”

I telekinetically latched onto Herb and hauled him over to me. He bounced twice before coming to a stop. I checked my faith reserves. Hoo boy. Barely twenty percent.

“What’s your game, Laras?” I demanded.

His grin was infuriating. “No game, Mr. Corinthos. We ensured multiple layers of security were in place to keep our end of the bargain. You are essentially violating your own agreement with us, thus, you will see for yourself just how thorough we are.” His expression abruptly became somber. “I do hope you understand that I harbor no ill will toward you, Mr. Corinthos. I will miss our conversations when you are dead.”

Gearstripper came rushing over to me. “Um, Vinnie, whatever’s going on with that dome, I’m not doing it.” The dome had turned fully transparent now and was unwinding itself; layers of translucent metal silently corkscrewed away from the dome and vanished into the floor. Megan, dressed in a white hospital gown, lay on a steel bed. Four thin metal posts capped with spheres stood at the corners of the bed, a thin line of electricity dancing between them. Herb rushed forward, but I caught him by the back of the shirt and held on. He managed to drag me a few feet before he stopped.

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

I pointed. A creature the size of an SUV was climbing out of a hatch in the ground just in front of Megan’s bed. It had the burly forepaws of a bear, a back end like a panther, and a rich mane framing a lion’s head.

“What is that?” Herb whispered.

Keeping the panic out of my voice took superhuman effort. The thing looked exactly like it had in Megan’s book. “I believe,” I said, my voice cracking ever so slightly, “that is the Glawackus.”

Chapter 13

The amulets we found appear to have powers based in fear. One bestows the ability to manifest horrors, while the other grants the wearer mastery over what people in the area are afraid of. They’ve been dubbed Fear and Courage. At first, we believed Fear could only create illusions, but recent tests have shown it can create physical manifestations of spiders, serpents, and other nightmare creatures. Courage is different; if the wearer is afraid of heights, Courage negates the fear and bestows upon the bearer the ability to fly. We’re going to conduct further tests on both of these to determine their origin and creator, but for now, they’re safely stowed in the Shaker Springhouse.

—Journal entry from Jack Santo, dated 1938

The Glawackus shook itself as it stood before us. Its lion-like head was framed in a fiery red mane, and its eyes were glowing embers against the golden-brown fur of its body. The great claws on its bear-like forepaws clicked, as if it were drumming its fingers while considering what to do with us. I shuddered at the intelligence I saw in those hellish eyes.

“Vincent,” Herb whispered, his eyes flaring orange. “There are dead all around this thing. It’s like it has an army of spirits just waiting for it to give a command.”

“Lovely.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Laras sounded like an art critic describing a Rembrandt. “Truly a one-of-a-kind creation. Did you know it was fashioned by a family of inbred psychics dubbed Melonheads by the locals? They grew tired of being persecuted for being different and crafted the Glawackus by using an artifact they were poorly equipped to comprehend. The Glawackus ravaged several towns in Connecticut before beginning a lumbering trek north into Massachusetts. As it did, a Caulborn agent named Santo came to me and asked for aid in capturing the beast. We provided two pocket dimensions for him: one for the Glawackus; the other to imprison the Melonheads.