A Prison of Worlds (The Chained Worlds Chronicles Book 1) (26 page)

“Oh,
come on, surely you aren't mad about your couriers Vivian.”  I offered,
changing my approach, seeing her still glaring.  “You know Vincent chose young,
expendable... and annoying people, to see what would happen.  I am sure they'll
reform in few days anyway.”  If they didn't it would still be an excellent
measure of the wards effectiveness.

“I
realize Vincent doesn't take this situation seriously, but he was not involved
the last time our paths intersected with Jin's!  While it served the council's
purpose to make this appear trivial, we do take it seriously.  Seriously enough
that having our messengers vanish at your home very much concerned us.” She
seemed to be calming down, I could almost see the aloof mask closing around her
again.

“Hmm,
I suppose I should have considered the ramifications of vaporizing the local
vampires, but I didn't think the new protections would be so effective.  I also
admit I was a tad bit annoyed when you tried to poison me during our meeting.” 
I had assumed they would contact Jeremy with the information.  Did I neglect to
leave his number with them?  “Why didn't you call?”

She
was finally calm, or effectively hiding her distress.  It was fairly impressive
considering she was still smoking.  No rash though, unlike Vincent's underling,
she was made of sterner stuff.  “I was unaware of any such thing.  How do you
know? You seem in good health.”

“I
am a bit of an amateur alchemist.  I recognize things such as silver and
arsenic, even when it is in my food.”

Her
face was expressionless as she digested this information and I could see that
the anger was finally leaving her.  “I was not involved in that.  I think it
was unlikely that Vincent was either.  As the master of the city, he would
avoid such potential scandals like the plague.  I can only assume it was
Sebastian, but I can't imagine why.”

“Sebastian
and I have previously met.  I will have to invite him over for tea sometime to
show my appreciation.”  This garnered a hint of a smile from my undead guest.  “Let
us put such things behind us, so why didn't you call?”

“Your
number is unlisted,” she stated.  “And not working when we finally dug up the
number”.  Did I forget to turn the vid function back on after inscribed the ward
on the holo terminal?  I frowned, that must also mean I forgot to leave them
Jeremy's backup number.  It may be just as well, I really didn't like the idea
of the undead hanging around my friends.

“Well
then, I apologize for the inconvenience. Does this mean that you have some of
the locations?”

“Yes. 
The summoners are still bringing creatures through.  We have been keeping the
little monsters under control in our areas, but you may have read about them
from other parts of the city.”  I grunted noncommittally, I haven't looked at
the news in days.  If I had I might have remembered to check the vid function. 
 “They are never there when we send people to the disturbance and once we put
people on watch they do not go to that node’s location again. We are starting
to gather an interesting menagerie but no magicians.”  She activated a tiny
holo display on her wrist. I was impressed by her control, I could barely
detect flicker in the image.

“If
you are ready I will beam the information on the nexus locations to your
implant,” she looked at me expectantly.

“I
don't have an implant.  It’s against my religion,” I offered her piously.  It
came across as a bit stilted, but it was the best reason Jeremy and I had come
up with.  I had wanted to use an allergy as an excuse, but I was assured that
no one suffered from them anymore.  As Vivian stared blankly at me for a moment
I could see that she wasn't buying it either.  Doubtless she knew as well as I
did that any supernatural or magical race with even a slight amount of
regeneration couldn't use implants due to the technology being expelled from
the body.  I could almost see the gears inside her pretty head turning as she
tried to figure out what I was.

“Of
course, what religion is that?”

“New
Amish, very devout,” I said solemnly.  I think her mouth twitched, but she hid
any further reaction exceedingly well.

“I
see.  Well, we have similar problems, these are a bit antiquated but I am sure
your home system can read it.”  Vivian took out a tiny cube from her pocket and
tapped it to her wrist holo emitter before handing it to me.

“So,
these critters your gathering, anything interesting,” I asked, curious what
Jin's apprentices had brought through in order to test the dimensional weak
points.

“Random
garbage.  Gremlins, minor demons, shadows and even a few mortals from other
worlds.” She recited the list with a faint hint of disdain.  “The humans we
give the choice to go to the authorities or enter our service.”

“Demons? 
I could use demon blood if you could spare any...” I asked hopefully.  There
were a lot of ingredients I was missing, most of them I was planning to find
substitutes for, but as I was finding out, the specified materials had the
strongest effects.

“Good
luck with that, they evaporate after you kill them,” Vivian gave a ladylike
snort.  I hadn't known you could do that.

“Yes,
that's because you’re not actually killing them, just sending them back to
their own plane.  There's a trick to harvesting their parts,” I helpfully
informed her.  I was rewarded by the look of disdain again.  Well, I had to ask.
 Why waste good extra planar materials like that?

I
was about to go back inside when her words clicked.  Vampires are not known for
their kindness.  Okay, the ones I had the most experience with are not much
more than bloodthirsty beasts, but even this strange offshoot hadn't come
across as brimming with good will.  Why were they offering strange mortals a
place in their society?  As I thought this over I was reminded of Jeremy's
comment the other day regarding this world's healthcare.  There was an entire
generation that was almost as unkillable as a shifter and effectively
immortal.  Even today's younger humans who no longer had access to
nanotechnology had methods that could keep them young and vigorous
indefinitely.  Fatal accidents weren't nearly as fatal when you could be
resuscitated about a day after your death, as long as your brain was intact.

“You
know I never noticed the lack of quality among the younger vampires until just
now.  It must be difficult to entice humans to come over to the undead side,
when they can get all the benefits and still see the sun.”

Vivian
looked off to the side, a scowl on her face.  It was undoubtedly a sore point
when the new generation was likely the insane, social misfits and rebels.  Like
the residents of the Blight, which was just now getting a makeover if I could
believe our friendly neighborhood elf.

“I'm
glad you’re there to give our world's newest guests a place to stay.” 
Doubtless, the good ones would be groomed to become the next generation of
vampires.  That would be assuming that the guests didn't find out about their
alternatives.  Not quite evil, but not so nice.  It was what I was beginning to
get used to from this brand of undead.

I
heard footsteps off to the side and saw Mei, Conrad and Estella coming around
the corner.  Glancing back at Vivian, I was just in time to see her body billow
into mist before being carried off on the wind.  What a drama queen.

“Hey
guys,” I nodded to the small company.  They each responded with their own
acknowledgment.  “Come on in.  Remind me to have the ground keepers fix my door
in the morning.” I muttered the last grumpily as I passed my damaged entrance. 
I shrugged internally and made a quick detour to add “Fix door” to Jeremy’s
list.  After another pause, I wrote “Replace house.  Use 3
^rd
account.”

“Are
they the ones that repaired the house you destroyed?” asked Estella merrily.

“That
damage was totally repairable until your Faramond brought the entire thing
down.  Is it back up already?  Jeremy must have called it in.”  I admit I had
been preoccupied the last few days.  I hadn't noticed the house across the street
had been put back; even when it was in plain sight while I was talking to
Vivian.  I really need to pay more attention.  I crossed the last item off on
the list.  The construction company I kept on retainer was pretty good.  Or
maybe they dropped an entire prefab house on the lot.  I didn't really care, I
didn’t keep anything cool in that house.

“Faramond
the vigilante?” Conrad asked, looking rather disturbed. I recalled the city was
about to vote on whether to outlaw vigilantism.  Then again maybe they already
had, I never really paid attention to politics.  I could only assume Estella
hadn’t had much to say about herself to him.

“So
Conrad what brings you here?” I asked slapping his back.  Shifters hate people
invading their space, though the most civilized ones hide it well.  I figured I
would do my part to distract the resident supercop.  Sure enough, he shrugged
under his bulky armor uncomfortably and gave me his full attention.  Mei spared
me an amused look as she sat down with the others.

“The
city voted.  The special forces division is official.  We've been planning this
for a long time so we should be organized by the end of the week.”

“Congratulations,”
I said heartily.  Should I bring food out or would that be inappropriate?  A
turkey dinner or a cake?

“Thank
you.  You actually had a large part in the decision.  The last encounter the
police had with the zombies and vampires just drove home how ill prepared the
civil forces are to handle these threats.”  I could tell the bubbly Estella's
attention was drifting.  Mine was too.  What did this have to do with me?

“Glad
to help, civic duty, all that stuff,” I offered distractedly.  I really needed
to get Jeremy to enter the new coordinates we had.  My living room holo hadn't
blown up lately so maybe we could finally use it for more than watching old
movies.

“...so
that is why the city would like to hire you,” Conrad finished.  Blinking I
forced my memory back a few minutes.  Had Conrad just offered me a job?

“Gee,
thanks but I am pretty busy lately I am not sure I have time...”

“Give
it some thought before you decide.  As a consultant, you wouldn't be spending
all your time working with us.  It would be mostly looking over the crimes
scenes involving the more esoteric events.”

“So
you wouldn't call me on werewolf muggings?” I asked, with some relief.

“No.
 Standard crime we can deal with.  We would call you in for the cases involving
magic.  We lack any expertise on the subject.  There are no experts available
that we know of, except the few ‘magic men’ that know a few tricks and voodoo
women out in the boondocks.”

I
must look positively reliable compared to the natural mystics that were in the public
view.  “Well, I don't know.  I have a lot of things on my plate at the
moment...”

“I
know it’s a real burden, but who else are the police going to have identify the
spell books and magic contraband?” Mei chimed in with a sweet smile on her
face.

I
froze with my mouth open in the middle of a protest.  “I guess it is my civic
duty to help wherever I can.”  Nodding gravely, I continued.  “Perhaps we could
set up some secure storage facilities for the more dangerous artifacts and
tomes.  Some of them can be dangerous unsupervised.”  Like my basement.

“I
think that can be arranged,” Conrad pondered.  “I'll verify that we can do that
and get back to you.”

“Meanwhile,
since we are all here, let’s talk a bit about how our search for Jin is going. 
I assume you already know Estella's concern.”

“Mei
mentioned she's here from another dimension because of a vision from a priest
of some sort.”  

“Some
sort of cataclysm,” the cheerful álfar contributed.

“Yes...”
Conrad responded, somewhat halfheartedly.  Obviously he wasn’t as cheered to
hear the distinction.

“I
can't speak for her priests, heck I can't get a good prediction more than a few
minutes into the future, but a professional can get a decent idea when
something big is on the horizon,” I tried to assure him.  He didn't seem to be
that comforted by that either.

“Great,
and you think it is Jin?”

“Jin
and the two magic users Derek uncovered do seem to be connected, Conrad.  If
they aren't what Estella is worried about then we don't have the slightest clue
what it is,” Mei firmly stated from her seat.

“It
is possible there's an unrelated disaster looming in the future, but let's go
with this assumption until we find some evidence otherwise,” I urged.  I wanted
to keep him focused.  It seemed pointless to worry about the sky falling until
we knew more.

I
heard a little jingle as the wristband on Conrad’s arm buzzed and flashed.  He
activated it and a beam of light shown directly into his eyes.  Hmm, a private
band holo terminal.  I frowned to myself.  He really shouldn’t use that in the
house.  A minor power surge from my workroom below us and he could be blinded. 
Of course, he was a shifter and immune to anything non-mystical in nature. 
Okay, he was safe.  The next question was whether the battery cell in those
things powerful enough to damage my stuff if it blew up?