Chill bumps shrouded Zofia Trickenbod. She wanted to Transvect the hell out of here. But where to?
Zofia peered down into a deep chasm of copper, ocher and bronze cliffs from a dizzying height. At the very bottom of a V-shaped valley, brownish-green mud bubbled thickly like soup, and smelled like rotten eggs. At least now she knew what that smell was. Jagged tips of rocky spires and stone needles jutted up from the fumarole. She couldn’t be more lost if she’d stepped through a Portal. Well, maybe she had, she just couldn’t remember how she’d gotten here, wherever the hell here was. A crisp, cerulean-blue sky canopied this canyon of wind-carved rock while the huge scarlet disk of Antares, their sun, rode the sky like an exalted stoplight from First World.
Okay, wait just a troll minute! When did she arrive back on her own world, Euphoria? And why was she standing on this rock ledge with no way down pulling in sulfur fumes?
As if this place couldn’t get more exotic, just across from her standing majestically on a high precipice, was a black unicorn. His long mane, beard and tasseled tail billowed in the breeze like ebony flags. A deadly pointed and spiraled horn sprouted from his forehead.
Wait a minute. Unicorns are usually white. Aren’t they?
At least that’s what the Immortal Paradeep had always told her.
The unicorn pawed the earth nervously, sending a spray of loose rock down the bronze and tangerine cliff side. A mist rose and undulated slowly on the rocks in front of him as he tossed his head. Black eyes roved crazily at the phenomenon. He whinnied as though sensing the force wavering beside him. The smoky mist darkened and coalesced into something solid. A tall, thin man with sallow skin and a sharply chiseled face finally appeared. He looked like a vulture in need of a ripe corpse. Long, greasy ebony hair was pulled back off his expansive brow, falling in uneven lengths over narrow shoulders.
“Zofia!” his voice issued across the chasm like a cracking whip smacking the air. Dagger-like brows slashed across his forehead. Coupled with an odd-looking, pencil-thin mustache, it gave him a formidable, somewhat mesmerizing look. But the eyes were his most prominent feature. Even though Zofia was not that close, she knew from past experience that the right eye was a glacially cool-blue, while the other was as black as a raven’s back. But both held a rapacious look in them as one brow plunged lower than the other, pinioning her. His deeply lined, age-spotted face betrayed his age. He was old, but not as old as many other wizards. She figured he could be around five hundred and fifty Euphoria years old, but no more than five hundred seventy-five, even though he was a third generation wizard. Unless she’d been drinking Merry Widow, she was pretty sure it was Vesselvod Blood standing right before her. In any case, she really didn’t want to be here now. But when she tried to use her Powers of Transvection to fly away, nothing happened. Dragon spit.
This wasn’t good. First the black unicorn, then Blood, and now her Powers had failed her. Could it get any worse? Of course Blood was the wizard who’d murdered her parents, and then came after her in search of the Stone of Irdisi when she was ten. Zofia had become the Stone’s Keeper after Blood had killed her mother, but she had not become the official Keeper until her seventeenth birthday. By that time, Blood’s Powers had been revoked by the Heathweian Council of Wizards and Immortals and sent into Hamparzum’s for the rest of his life. So, how could the ex-Dark Lord of Scyldings be out of Hamparzum’s and standing here?
Okay, Zofia take it easy, she told herself, the memory is first to go when you hit the forty mark. Blood had escaped Hamparzum’s Place of Darkness about five or so years ago. He had come looking for the Stone of Irdisi, which would give him unlimited powers.
“I’ve been looking for you,” Blood hissed maliciously.
“Me? Why?” she choked the words as though she’d swallowed dust from the parched earth.
“You know why,” he said, his sardonic smile in place, his chest filling with a deep breath. “The Stone!” His one blue eye seemed to glimmer maliciously in the strange orangy sunlight. He held a long, black scepter and wore the black robes of his clan, the Karballa Wizards of Scyldings from the northern most part of the Province. But Blood’s entire family was pretty cruel. Aside from torturing Ugwumps, he used their body parts in potions and incantations—Yuck!—which was against the Code of Ethics big time. She could think of no one more ruthless and more murderous—unless you counted the Frisian Warriors who ate their victims, or the monstrous Helsingas, who ate their victims.
Waving the black scepter high above his head, he said, “Are you ready?”
“Ready for what?” Zofia asked, but didn’t really want to know.
“Varro numa pythis!” his voice echoed off rock walls as though he had a bullhorn. He must have been showing off. No one used old incantations like that any more.
Zofia felt an electric tingle all around her—which always accompanied grand wizardry workings—and all at once the cliffs trembled. Brown, cinnamon, ocher and rust melted and fused together like wax under intense heat. Suddenly, she was standing on a flat stone surface. Well, at least she was down off the cliff.
“Are you ready to play?” Blood asked. “Oh—yes . . . we need the pieces.” He waved his scepter once again. “Et te invoco Salibatum!” he incanted.
An octet of angry Bloods now stood in a line in front of her, staring at her with that same wicked, imperious smile. Blood had multiplied his image several times.
Zofia shivered uncontrollably.
In the same moment, a leathery, wrinkled-faced woman with wild white-as-gossamer hair, and gray-blue eyes appeared to her left.
“Aunt Tillie?” Her full name was Ottillie Anubis. She was actually Zofia’s great aunt on her mother’s side.
On her right side, as though he had just Evasserated, a tall, handsome man with collar-length, blue-black hair and savage sapphire eyes appeared.
Eyes going wide in surprise, she uttered, “Dorian?” on a bewildered breath.
Dorian Grandier was her husband. He was dressed in royal blue robes of the Brhynoth Wizards with a golden seal of the Knights of the Witenagemont over his heart. A black wand in his hand, Dorian stared down Blood. His six foot stature gave him a few inches over Blood. Broad of shoulder, steely eyes, and a bump in what would have been a straight nose, where it had been broken in a fight. This combination made him look all the meaner.
Wait another troll minute here. Was she hallucinating? Dorian had been dead for five First World years. What on Euphoria was going on?
“Are you ready, Zofia?” The repeated question echoed in her ears.
She looked over at the line of Bloods. “Now what, you ugly bastard?” Zofia growled. Hadn’t he done plenty already?
At the same exact time, each and every Blood drew back their scepter and thrust them forward—“Destructus malefica!”—from their tips flew red bolts of fire, so hot she could feel its searing heat. It slammed into Dorian, turning him instantly into ashes that fell in a pile at Zofia’s feet.
“Mistress Zofia!”
The peevish voice jolted Zofia out of the abyss she was falling through, but not before she landed hard. Ow.
She sat bolt upright and gulped in air. The gray of predawn met her eyes. It was nearly dawn on First World. That much she knew. That, and she was in her own bed. Thank goddess.
“What? Who’s sick?” She expected to see her sixteen-year-old daughter, Blanche, or her eleven-year-old son, Elton, or her Aunt Tillie, standing over her. But as Zofia’s vision cleared, she saw no one was in the room with her. Whose voice had pulled her out of deep slumber?
Peering beyond the pencil posts of her bed, Zofia spied the highboy where a large brown fur-ball lay on top. Turquoise eyes scrutinized her. It was Argyll, one of her two guardian cats. Argyll sent Zofia a disgruntled look, but then her eyes fell shut and her head sank back down. So, it wasn’t either of her cats calling to her.
“Someone’s at the front door ringing the bell, and it’s giving me a h-h-headache,” the detached, slightly willowy male voice moaned.
“All right, Biddle. Really!” Zofia grumbled as she threw off the covers and swung her long legs over the edge of the bed. She had to shake the cobwebs from her head before straightening to her full, barefooted height of five-seven. Had she dreamt? She couldn’t recall.
Cutting her gaze to the clock on her nightstand, she saw it was a quarter past five in the morning. No wonder she couldn’t get her eyes open all the way. Who would be ringing her doorbell at this hour? Damn Ugwump salesman probably, she thought grumpily. If they couldn’t snag you via the phone, they came to your door. Well, she’ll take care of him. One little zap to his ass would make him take off. Or better yet, maybe a good scare would keep him from coming back, and she wouldn’t have to open the door at all.
“You’re a Ghogal, Biddle,” she snarled. “You should’ve at least seen who it was before bothering me.”
“I don’t do doors,” the detached voice retorted haughtily. No wonder she hadn’t seen anyone there. It had been Biddle, her Ghogal, and he was very much invisible.
Grabbing the silky powder-blue robe at the end of the bed, Zofia pulled it on hastily as she charged into the hallway. The peal of the door chimes was irritating, but still Biddle was her servant—a returned invisible spirit—and was capable of carrying out many physical tasks for their chosen masters. Nearly every wizarding family had one on Euphoria, and Biddle had been in her family for generations, so naturally he had come with her when she had made her exodus from Euphoria to First World. Many of the Ugwump inventions here either stumped or frightened him—including the dishwasher—but the doorbell aggravated him.
Earth had been the Immortal’s and wizard’s first home hundreds of years ago, and so they had renamed it ‘First World’. They’d named the mortals ‘Ugwumps’ from a term coined by Immortal Eleazar, and she’d forgotten what it actually meant, but it was not a complement by any stretch.
Zofia swiped a wild veil of wavy sienna hair out of her face—Probably looked like someone had taken an egg beater to my hair, she thought—and levitated, then Transvected out of her bedroom and down the hall toward the staircase. Two large tawny fury bodies darted out from beneath her dangling feet and surged ahead of her. Perth and Argyll waited at the entry, meowing impatiently before she could land barefooted on the cool slate floor.
As Zofia approached the door, she felt a chill plunge down her spine. The memory of her dream crashed through her mind like a poltergeist in a glass shop. Why did she have this dream again after five long years of it abating? Was it a warning that Blood was near? Was it a precursor of things to come? She had to wonder now if Aazel’s prediction last night wasn’t true. He’d said, “Dorian is back.” That was all. The demon was rarely, if ever, wrong.
Heavy pounding on the door made her jump out of her thoughts.
“Just a moment,” she said, and peered through the small wedge of glass. She saw the shadow of a tall, square-shouldered man standing there. But with his back toward her she couldn’t identify him. He wasn’t wearing a suit, so she knew he wasn’t a stupid salesman. She was sure it wasn’t Richard Keys, who was much taller, and more robust. The man had shoulder-length black hair. Whoever he was, from this angle, the guy looked interesting.
“Who’s there?” she asked.
The man turned to face the door. He shook the wild mane out of his dark, brooding sapphire eyes and Zofia was staring into a handsome face. She pulled in a gasp as instant recognition hit her hard like a troll’s fist to the noggin. He looked almost as he had the day he’d left her to go on assignment, five First World years ago; his hair was longish, and even the sideburns needed trimming. Even in this light she could see the slight bump on the bridge of his nose where it had been broken in a fight in his youth.
“Zofia? It’s me, Dorian,” he said in a distinctive Ogenthow accent with a mellow, almost crooning voice. “Let me in, darling.”
A multitude of emotions zipped through Zofia as her heart gave a sudden lurch. She twisted the locks and yanked the heavy oak door open. Their eyes met for the first time in five years. Zofia couldn’t believe he was standing there alive and well. Even so, she held off pulling him into a tight embrace. Mostly because all the warning bells were clanging in her head.
“Zofia . . .” His gaze took in every inch of her like a man who’d not set eyes on a woman in a thousand Euphoria years. “How wonderful you look in that—” his hands gestured toward her. “You look like one of those women in a lingerie add on Ugwump TV.”
Zofia realized she’d been holding her breath since she’d opened the door, and now exhaled with her words. “I thought you were dead. I thought Blood had killed you.” She crossed her arms and glared at him, waiting for an explanation.
“Well, yes he did—”
“I saw it all in my dream the night you disappeared. That’s why I fled with the children.”
“I know,” Dorian said as he glanced over his shoulder. Worry lines etched on his forehead as he turned back to her and said, “I’ve not much time. Could you just invite me in? I’ll explain everything—”
“I mourned for one hundred days, as required by the Code of Ethics. The children—” her voice broke with emotional overload. She averted her gaze suddenly, embarrassed to show her emotions in front of Dorian. “We couldn’t find your body so as to sever the head, and then burn the body so that a demon couldn’t take it over,” she strove on as-a-matter-of-factly, trying to regain control over those wild emotions.
“That would’ve been a mistake,” he said low.
“And now here you are!” Marshalling her emotions she said in a low, dangerous voice, “How dare you make us all go through that and now, here you are at my door after five years of nothing!”
“I’m guessing you’re upset—”
“Upset? Me?” she said, voice going up an octave. “If I were upset, you wouldn’t still be standing there.”
“But, darling, you didn’t stay in Ogenthow long after that night. And I wasn’t myself, believe me—after what Blood did to me—not only did I forget being attacked, but once I remembered what had happened, you’d already left Euphoria. I learned you’d come here to First World in order to escape Blood. I then followed you to this low-brow burg called Gladstone ill.”
“It’s not ill, it’s Illinois,” she corrected.
“What? Oh—whatever,” he said, swiping the air dismissively with his hand. “Just let me in and I’ll explain everything.” Again he looked over his shoulder. “I don’t have much time, darling. Please?”
“Why? Is someone following you?”
“No. Not exactly. But the sun’s about up. Just let me in before I turn to dust.”
His words gave her pause. The dream. Blood had turned Dorian to dust in the dream. How odd he would use such a turn of phrase.
Finally giving him a dubious look she said, “You’d better have a good explanation for not being able to find us sooner than this.”
“I do. I promise. Really.”
Gazing down at her cats she said, “What d’you think, girls? Should we let the lout in?”
A pair of slightly crossed aqua eyes gazed up at her. They both meowed, but Zofia heard, “It would make things interesting, wouldn’t it, sister?” Perth said.
“Aye, it would, sister.” Argyll replied. “In a delicious way.”
Only Zofia could hear the two speak, which was a blessing from the Immortals.
She looked up at Dorian and said, “Well, it’s unanimous.”
She stepped aside. But Dorian paused at the threshold without entering.
“Well? Didn’t you just beg me to come in?”
“Just indulge me for a second and ask me in,” he said, his voice going tight with agitation. Maybe a tinge of fear to it, too.
“What?”
“I can’t enter your house unless you tell me to do so.” His voice had phased back to its normal coolish note.
She did an eye roll. “Okay, Dorian Grandier, come in.”
He rushed into the house, slammed the door behind himself, sprinted over to the windows, threw the thick curtains closed, then backed away from them.
Zofia frowned at his strange behavior. “What’re you afraid of?”
He turned, panting slightly. The white tips of his incisors peeked just below his upper lip. She studied his deep-set eyes, almost straight nose, and the strong jaw line. He looked blanched, as if he’d been living in a cave for years. Smudges beneath the eyes—which Zofia had not seen before this—made him look a little spooky. He seemed frightened. She could not remember a time when Dorian had ever been frightened of anything. After all, he was a Knight of the Witenagemont who went after wizards who walked on the dark side, ogres with illegal stashes, demons, dangerous imps, illegal shape-shifters, vampires and Weres who stepped one toe out of the Oblast into the Province. All of them were run out of the Province, put into rehab, or incarcerated in Hamparzum’s. She was horrified and saddened at the same time by his appearance.
Suddenly, both cats hissed vehemently. Backs arched, fur straight out, they both darted into the next room.
“Dorian!” she said, backing away a few steps. The hairs on the nape of her neck prickled. She now wished she’d brought the Stone of Irdisi-loaded scepter with her for more protection. But, she hadn’t seen it in weeks and couldn’t remember what she’d done with the thing. “Dorian, explain yourself, before I put you through the wall.”
Bringing his hands up in a defensive move he quickly said, “I—uh—” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been turned into a vampire.”
Copyright 2008 by Lorelei Bell
