Long Hot Summoning (23 page)

Just because he was wrong about that last point, did that automatically make him wrong about the rest?

Claire glanced across the cabana at Lance; currently making entries in a PDA he’d pulled from a belt pouch. She wanted to believe he’d spent way, way too much time in the sun, but the fact was that here
he
was.

Dean obviously hadn’t believed Lance’s story, or he wouldn’t have sent him on his little elevator ride. As Dean gave pretty much everyone he met the benefit of the doubt, he had to have doubted Lance more than Meryat and Dr. Rebik.

Conclusion; Dean and Austin were in no danger. Lance was merely a Bystander who’d applied a Saturday Afternoon Movie explanation to his first contact with the metaphysical.

And
he’d spent way, way too much time in the sun.

Since they knew they were being hunted, she couldn’t come up with a reason for the mummy and Dr. Rebik to stay at the guest house for more than one night. As soon as they were safely away, Dean would be up to retrieve Indiana Lance from his sand-castle of delusion.

Although the thought of seeing Dean made her heart beat faster, and she missed Austin with an almost physical ache, she had to get back to the mall. She’d left an eighteen-month-old cat guarding an Immortal King, her little sister was out scouting the darkside, and, if not stopped, the post-segue owners would not be exaggerating when they advertised the “sale to end all sales.” If this was the Otherside, then she could lift the stack of extra towels and find a pen and piece of paper tucked beneath them. Holding that image in her mind, she lifted the towels. Three tiny bones, a catnip square, and what looked like the spleen of a small animal. Either Austin had found something to hunt on their last visit, or he was casting auguries again. Either way, she didn’t want to know.

Claire let the towels drop and turned to Lance who was stowing his PDA in its pouch. “I don’t suppose you have a pen and some paper? I need to leave a note.”

“Better!” He crossed the cabana in two long strides, holding out a small black book and a pencil. “When you’re on a dig at Karnak, you need a writing implement you can fix with a knife!”

“Do you have a knife?”

“I have a pencil sharpener.”

“Okay.”

She’d entered by water; she’d have to exit by water. Unfortunately, that meant a sudden and total immersion with no thoughts of vicious not-a-squids waiting for her below the surface.

“Where are you going?” Kicking out a fine spray of sand, Lance hurried to catch up.

“To the headlands.”

“Great idea! The high ground will give us a chance to see where Meryat’s hiding. She’s sneaky, but there’s got to be a palace around here somewhere.” Claire sighed. He was consistently delusional at least.

Eventually-after embalming, ancient Egyptian magic, and the tracking of the risen undead had been thoroughly explained-the soft sand gave way to pebbles and then to the ridge that jutted out into the water. She winced as a sharp rock dug into the bottoms of her feet.

“I bet you wish you had shoes on!”

Actually, she was trying very hard not to wish he’d fall and break his neck.

The rock smoothed out on the top of the ridge and she was able to move quickly out to the end. They were twenty, maybe twenty-five feet above the water.

“Long walk back,” Lance observed, one hand shading his eyes as he gazed toward the distant cabana.

“Not necessarily.”

“The sun hasn’t moved!”

“It never does.”

“I don’t see Meryat’s palace.”

“As Diana would say, ‘Quel surprise. Not.’”

“Who’s Diana?”

“My sister.” Who needed her. In the mall. Not standing here trying to see past reflections to what might be lurking below the surface. Fortunately, she didn’t need to convince herself that there was nothing there, only that it didn’t matter. She wasn’t jumping into water; she was using the change, the line between air and water like a door. “Go back to the cabana and wait for Dean.”

“I think I should keep searching for Meryat.”

“Whatever.” This Bystander, at least, was not her responsibility. Stepping back half a dozen paces, she ran for the edge of the rock and jumped, folding her knees tightly against her chest, arms holding them in place in order to cross the line as
simultaneously
as possible.

Just before she hit the water, she heard:

“Cannonball!”

“Lance!” Dean moved a little farther away from the propped-open door of the elevator and yelled again. “LANCE!”

“Maybe Meryat ate him.”

“Not funny, Austin.”

“Not joking.”

“He’s not answering and I don’t see . . . Austin!”

“I know, I know.” Austin stepped off the path and began digging a new hole.

“Just because this place looks like the world’s biggest litter box doesn’t mean I should yadda yadda.” After checking depth, he stepped forward, positioned himself, and glared up at Dean. “Do you
mind?”

“Sorry.” Ears red, Dean headed for the cabana. “I’ll be after checking if Lance is inside.”

“Yeah, you be after doing that, then.”

There were a suspicious number of footprints around the cabana’s flap. A large bootprint-Dean dropped to one knee and measured it against his hand-probably belonging to Lance, and a small bare print that appeared to have come up from the water.

“Hey, Claire’s been here.”

“Claire?” Heel, toes, instep; still anonymous to him. “How can you tell?”

“I’m a cat.” Flopping down, Austin rolled over on his back, sunlight gleaming on the white fur of his stomach as he rubbed his shoulders into the compacted sand.

“And I’m generally a lot closer to the ground than you are.” Hard to argue with. Leaping to his feet, Dean grabbed for the canvas.

“Claire!”

“She’s not here, hormone-boy. Look there, the same footprints heading out.

She’s been and gone.”

“How long ago?”

“About thirty-one minutes. She was walking quickly, carrying a ham sandwich, and humming
The 1812 Overture.”

“You can tell all that from her footprints?”

“No, you idiot, I can’t. But I’d be just as likely to know the last two as the first.” Shaking his head, the cat slid through the break in the canvas.

Because he couldn’t think of anything better to do, Dean followed. “Still no Lance.” But there
was
a note on the beer cooler.
“Just passing through. Still working
on the mall. I agree with your assessment of Lance. Austin, you’re eating the geriatric
cat food and that’s final. Love you both. Claire.”
He folded his hand around the paper.

“Are you going to do something sappy, like hold the note up to your heart?”

“No.” Not now he wasn’t. “Do you think she took Lance with her?” Wrapping his tail around his toes, Austin looked thoughtful. “They definitely headed off together, and she said she trusted your assessment of him.”

“Well, after hearing Lance’s story, it wouldn’t be hard for Claire to figure out that I sent him up here to get him safely out of the way.”

“So maybe she took him with her because this place is no longer safe.” Dean’s brows drew in and he studied the cat. “Facetious comment?”

“Experienced guess.‘

Fair enough. “And if this place is no longer safe . . .”

“. . . we should go.” Austin finished, jumping down and running for the cabana’s flap.

Dean caught up to him halfway back to the elevator. “Did you know there was a back way into this beach?”

“Sure.”

“You lying to me?”

“You’ll never know.”

“It’s like a fucking maze down here. What do they need all these tunnels for?”

“Nothing. It’s what
we
expected to find.” Specifically, it was what she’d expected to find, unable to shake the feeling that they couldn’t just go straight to the anchor-way too easy. About to suggest they stop wandering and start coming up with some sort of a plan, she snapped her mouth closed as Kris raised a silencing hand.

Voices.

Angry voices.

Not very far away but bouncing off the rock.

Head cocked, ears fanned out away from her skull, Kris slowly turned in place. Barely resisting the urge to make beeping sounds, Diana waited. After a long moment, Kris pointed to the left. “That way.”

“I guess Chekhov was right.”

“What does
Star Trek
have to do with this?”

“Not
that
Chekhov. The Russian writer-we studied him last year in English.”

“You studied a Russian in English?”

“Yeah. Go figure. He said that you never hang elf ears on the wall in act one, unless you’re going to use them in act three.”

“You’re not making any fucking sense. You know, that, right?” The tunnels to the left slanted away on a slight downward angle-just enough to be noticeable. Heading down toward evil ... it was annoyingly clinched and beginning to make Diana just a little nervous. She’d cop to the maze but not the slope, she just didn’t do symbolism that blatant. Which meant something that did was in control of this part of the Otherside.

The voices grew louder, and Kris pointed to an inverted, triangular-shaped fissure in the rock.

And this is why I get the big bucks,
Diana reminded herself, kicking the toe of one sneaker into the bottom of the crack and heaving herself up into the passage. It took her a moment to figure out how to tuck herself inside, but she finally started inching sideways toward the distant argument. Rocks jutting out from the sides of the fissure scraped across her stomach, laying out what she was sure would be a fascinating pattern of bruises, and there were one or two places where she was positive she lost chunks of her ass.
Memo to self: lay off the ice cream and thank God
I don’t have much in the way of breasts.

She didn’t expect Kris to climb in after her but couldn’t do much about it since she’d reached a spot without enough room to turn her head.

Stretch out left arm, stretch out left leg, anchor both, and shimmy sideways.

And then she ran out of fissure.

Dipping her left shoulder, Diana forced herself close enough to the outside edge to get a look around.

They were in a crack about twenty feet up the wall of a huge circular chamber.

The generic nasty from the throne room was standing just off center.

In the center, in the exact center, was a hole. Not a metaphysical hole, an actual round hole. Like a well.

Before she could follow that new information through to any kind of a logical conclusion, a piece of shadow fell screaming from the ceiling. Shuddering, she had to admit it had reason to scream. Reasons. Reasons that started with the baby doll pajamas, worked through the lopsided braids, and finished at the residue of melted marshmallow, chocolate, and graham cracker crumbs.

No Name Nasty didn’t seem to have much sympathy for it.

“I don’t care how many boxes of cookies you have to sell! You’re pathetic.

You were sent to assassinate the Immortal King . . .” Diana felt Kris’ gasp by her right ear and managed to wrap a hand around the other girl’s arm. Now was not the time.

“. . . and you failed!”

There. It failed. Good news.

“YOU HAVE BOTH FAILED.”

Diana stiffened. “Oh, Hell.”

“I thought you weren’t supposed to swear,” Kris muttered.

“I wasn’t.”

TEN

Backing out of the fissure scraped and bruised a number of interesting new places, but given what she now knew, Diana found the pain a whole lot easier to ignore.
There’s was nothing like finding yourself right back at a potential apocalypse
to put a bruised boob in perspective.

“FEE, FI, FOE, FEEPER . . .”

That didn’t sound good. She poked Kris, trying to get her to move a little faster. Kris flashed her a one-finger answer.

“Feeper? What’s a feeper?” The guy from the throne room, now positively identified as a Shadowlord, had become a lot harder to hear.

“IF I COULD FINISH!”

“Sorry.”

“NOT YET, YOU AREN’T. BUT YOU WILL BE.”

With any luck, the punishing of the unnamed Shadowlord would distract . . .

“AS I WAS SAYING; FEE, FI, FOE, FEEPER, I SMELL THE BLOOD OF

A NEARBY KEEPER!”

... or not.

Kris dropped down into the corridor.

“We have a Keeper in chains . . .” the Shadowlord began.

“NO, YOU DON’T.”

“Yes, we . . .”

“NO.”

“But . . .”

“YOU’RE AN IDIOT.”

Diana stumbled as she landed, cracked her knee against the stone floor, and told herself to ignore it. “Come on.” Grabbing Kris’ hand, she dragged the mall elf into a run. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Haven’t I been saying that?”

“Yeah, but now I’m saying it.” First, up the slope. Then, when the floor leveled out, she’d follow the signature of her scattered stuff back to the throne room.

After that, a fast run through the construction site and into the access corridor.

Granted, the last time she’d covered that particular bit of the escape route, she was being dragged by a giant bug, but she was fairly sure she remembered the pattern of water seepage on the ceiling.

As they turned the first corner, Kris leaned in close and said, in an urgent whisper. “Who was that talking?”

“I told you.”

“You said; oh, hell.”

“Close.” A short pause at the second corner to make sure the way was clear. “I said, oh, Hell.”

“And the diff?”

“Capital letter.”

“So that was really... ?”

“Yeah.” At the third corner, the floor leveled out. Diana reached out, feeling for possibilities out of place. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t hard to pick up the signature of Keeper-designed weapons over the general hum of evil.

“But Hell’s a place. Places don’t talk.”

“It’s not so much a place as it’s a metaphor.”

“Whatever. Just so’s you know, I don’t believe in Hell.”

“Just so
you
know, that doesn’t matter.

“It isn’t real!”

Diana sighed. “Six months ago, you were freezing your ass off, trying to survive on the streets during a Canadian winter. Now, you’re an elf, living in an evolving shopping mall, having been made the Captain of the Guard for an allegorical king. All things considered, I think you should be a little more open-minded about the parameters of reality.”