Technomancer (21 page)

“What’s wrong?” whispered Holly.

“The anomaly opened in two different spots. Each of the doorways was effectively one-way. That’s probably why when I looked through, I couldn’t see the other side.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“I was in a hotel room. The hotel room can send things through to us here, but the starting point where the cultists are coming from is in some third location.”

Holly stared at me with big, scared eyes. “Just get me out of here,” she said.

I imagined McKesson at the far end, keeping his gun trained on the spot where I’d vanished. I wondered how long he would wait for me or something else to come through. I doubted he’d step out to look for me. That wasn’t his style. He’d watch the shimmer until it vanished, then shrug and go have a drink. I doubted he would even tell anyone how I’d disappeared.

“You came to find me, didn’t you?” Holly asked.

I nodded and put my arm around her. She hugged me in return. We were in an unknown dungeon—possibly in another version of our universe. A dead man lay at my feet, and he doubtlessly had friends somewhere nearby. We were in their stronghold, with no clear path of escape.

In short, we were screwed.

We searched the dungeon and eventually found two exits. One was a normal door, but the second was hidden and looked like part of the wall. I listened carefully at the normal door. I heard nothing on the far side other than the sighing of wind and possibly street sounds. The door was quiet and felt cool to the touch. The air that seeped beneath it smelled of the outdoors.

I moved to the hidden door. I could hear the sounds of voices from beyond it—possibly having an argument. I slipped on my sunglasses and put my fingers on the handle.

“Are you crazy?” hissed Holly, tugging at my arm.

“We have to find the other rip,” I said. “We have to jump back through it before it closes.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but there are crazies behind that door.”

“I’ve got a gun.”

“What if they don’t care?” she asked. “Look, let’s just try the other door first.”

I hesitated. She could be right, but I was afraid the pathway to the hotel room might close soon. Then we would be left with finding a new way home. Maybe we were on our Earth, maybe we weren’t.

I decided it was worth giving Holly’s choice a chance. I stepped up to the first door and the sunglasses worked like a charm. Metal squeaked as if the door hadn’t been used much, but it swung open. Leaves blew in over my feet, giving me the immediate impression of a normal Earth environment. Beyond the door, we found concrete steps that led upward and a night sky beyond. I closed the door behind me, knowing it would lock itself again in a few minutes when the metal hardened again. I’d been gentle with it.

I moved up the stairway with Holly close behind. I paused at the top, looking around. What I saw filled me with relief: trees and a cinder-block fence. There was the stucco wall of a large building behind me. The sky was lit with the pale radiance of earthly streetlights. I now felt certain we were on our home world—or were we? McKesson had indicated there were many worlds, and some looked a lot more like home than others.

We were inside some kind of compound or large yard, so we followed the walls to the left, looking for an exit. I passed windows that were closed, but showed very normal-looking blinds behind the glass. Everything was the right size and shape. We reached a walkway of concrete and came out to the front of what was now clearly a large house—and then I knew the truth.

I recognized that front yard. I knew the dry fountain, the large circular drive and the powered iron gates out front.
I was in Henderson, Nevada, on the grounds of the mini-mansion McKesson and I had investigated few nights earlier. Things rapidly clicked into place. Holly had mentioned crazy people who liked to cut up meat. It appeared that they hadn’t all vanished into the unknown. I’d run into them again. The cellar Holly and I had escaped had to be close to the wine cellar where McKesson and I had fought the Gray Men. Perhaps the hidden door even led to the wine cellar.

Ironically, I was disoriented. I’d been so certain I was in some other place. The last time I’d gone through a rip there had been extra moons and a dozen other differences. I’d been left expecting strange vehicles and cities built of cubes…

I wasn’t out of danger, but I could walk home, or hail a cab, or call McKesson, or—suddenly, I realized I’d been an idiot. I took out the cell phone I’d been using for a flashlight. The batteries were low, but I had two bars of service. I shook my head. The next time I stepped out to an unknown place, I would check my cell first to know instantly if I was still home or in Neverland.

“Great,” said Holly in my ear. “Now, let’s get the hell out of here before someone comes looking for me. They are going to find the body of their friend down in that cellar and see that I’m missing.”

I took her to the street. We got there without incident. I walked her downhill to a corner that looked perfectly normal. Insects buzzed and a bat flew overhead, snatching them from the air.

“Let’s go get something to eat and a place to stay,” she said, holding onto my arm. “I want to get as far from here as I can.”

I had to admit she was making excellent suggestions. But I wasn’t done here yet. “Let’s walk to the nearest public place.”

I took her to a quickie-mart at the bottom of the hill. The guy behind the counter smiled with bad teeth.

“Disappear,” I told her. “I’ll call you later. I have to go back and get something.”

“You’re going back up
there
?” she asked, her tone indicating she thought I was crazy.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m finally close to these guys, and I want information.”

Holly searched my eyes. She must have seen I wasn’t going to change my mind. She gave me a sudden, hard kiss on the lips. I smiled.

“Thanks for coming to get me,” she said. “If you live, I’ll owe you a big one.”

I paused for a moment, wondering what “a big one” might be.

“Give me your cell,” she demanded, holding out her hand.

I shrugged and handed it over. She could call a cab if she had to.

We parted ways and I went back to the big house at the end of the darkest street in the neighborhood. I watched the yard with my gun in my hand until I was sure no one was around. Then I walked up to the front door and opened it. The lock gave way without a problem.

I smiled to myself, thinking of Holly’s kiss and how I was beginning to like locks. They gave the opposition a false sense of security. As far as I was concerned, the entire world should lock up and go for a long trip. It would make my life easier.

The cut-up meats were mostly gone now from the kitchen. There were, however, some fresh bloodstains at the cellar door. I heard voices from below. They weren’t arguing or singing, now. They were chanting—speaking words in
unison. I headed down the steps, trying to remember which ones creaked the loudest.

Quand il jette en dansant son bruit vif et moqueur,

Ce monde rayonnant de métal et de pierre

The words sounded like French to me. I didn’t understand all of it, but I must have taken a French class at some point, because I picked out something about dancing, stone, and metal. I crept down three steps more. I could feel the sweat sprout from my body.

There they were: I could see them kneeling in a circle around a shimmer in the air. The rip was almost gone. Could they have created it by themselves? Was that even possible? Were these cultists—of all the cultists in the vast world—the only ones truly capable of functioning witchcraft?

I reached the sixth step down, and I bent slowly to slip my hand under the wooden plank I stood upon. At first, I couldn’t find what I was looking for. I squatted and reached deeper. My fingers touched the bottle. McKesson had always been very thorough, but this was one detail he’d missed. I’d not bothered to explain it to Holly, but I’d come back for the Gray Man’s dead finger. I wanted hard evidence. If I took this finger to the right people, I knew they would have to take notice. Or, at the very least, it could give me a bargaining chip with McKesson.

Et pour la déranger du rocher de cristal

Où, calme et solitaire, elle s’était assise.

Something about loneliness and rock crystals. On my haunches with the bottle in my hand, I was better able to see the cultists. There were eight of them, both men and
women. They weren’t wearing any special robes or anything like that. They had on normal clothing, but they were all sitting around the shimmering rip in the air with their heads bowed. One man had a leather-bound book in his lap and seemed to be leading the prayer, or chant, or spell—whatever it was. None of them had weapons in their hands.

Then I noticed the blood in their midst. There was a lot of it, and it all pooled up underneath the rip they had encircled. The cellar was gently sloped to that point, where as I recalled there had been a drain before. Now the drain was covered, preventing the blood from escaping. It certainly did look as if they had summoned the rip that shivered and twisted.

It was right about then that I dropped the finger. I don’t have a reason why it happened. I just tipped the bottle a little too far and it fell right out and thumped down the steps one at a time to roll out onto the floor of the cellar.

I wouldn’t have thought a finger could make all that much noise, but this one did. To me, it sounded like a stone dropped into a quiet well—over and over again as it struck each step.

I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or the cultists.

I trained my gun on the group. Their looks of surprise changed to glares. I walked down the steps with as much swagger as I could muster. Thinking fast, I came up with a lie and ran with it. It wasn’t great, but it was all I had.

“All right,” I said. “That’s about enough chanting, people. Do you know this house is bank-owned? You are all trespassing and my partner is walking the rest of the uniforms in here right now.”

The cultists, getting over their initial shock, stopped looking at me when their leader spoke up. At that point, every one of their eyes fixed upon him.

The leader looked at the woman seated to his left. “Abigail?” he said questioningly. He was a lanky fellow with sandy-blond hair that hung from his head in a long, thin mop. His nose was long and his eyes were large and dark. All ten of his fingers were weighed down by thick rings.

“He lies,” Abigail said. “There’s no one else near.”

As I watched him, he closed the old leather-bound book, which had a gold-printed title. I took the opportunity to read the title:
Flowers of Evil
, it read, in both English and French.

“Yet, here he is,” he said, “and therefore you have failed to warn us. It was your responsibility to prevent intrusions.”

Abigail was a thin woman who sat next to the leader. She looked like a housewife who gardened all Saturday and played bunco on Tuesday nights. She had curly black hair, blood-red nails, and a worried expression. Maybe in this group, failure resulted in a loss of blood.

While most of them stared at Abigail, I walked down to the bottom of the steps and scooped up the gray finger. It felt hard and leathery in my hand. I shoved it into a pocket and straightened, vaguely disgusted. I told myself to man up and have a nightmare about dead body parts later. Now was not the time to be squeamish.

“He could not have gotten through,” Abigail said to the leader. “Not unless he has power, or he stepped through a portal close by.”

The lead cultist lifted his gaze to me again. “Do you have power?” he asked me seriously.

I stared at them. They didn’t seem to be afraid of my gun. This worried me. The last time I’d confronted someone with this same weapon and gotten a disinterested response, I’d been tossed out of the sanatorium by Dr. Meng.

“Are you part of the Community?” I asked, deciding to name-drop and behave as calmly as they did.

The question got a strong reaction out of them. “
No
,” came the powerful response from several throats. They stared at me with eyes that glittered, reflecting the glimmering rip in space they encircled.