Modern Sorcery: A Jonathan Shade Novel (17 page)

“Whatever.
 
If you feel him trying to control you, though, I want you to get away even if you think you can remain in the driver’s seat.
 
We can’t take the chance that you’re wrong.
 
I don’t want you killing me for him.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

“You wouldn’t.
 
He might.”

Kelly shook her head.
 
She obviously thought I was crazy to think anyone could take her over, but she had to understand where I was coming from.
 
The sorcerer had been able to control at least three Sekutar, and we knew from Naomi that there were at least four others still alive.

“We good?” I asked.

Kelly and Esther nodded.

We went back into Kelly’s apartment.
 
Naomi smiled and moved toward us.
 
She threw her arms around me and planted a kiss on my lips.
 
“My ears were ringing.”

“I’ll bet,” Kelly said.
 
“If you’d heard what I said, your ears would be bleeding.”

“I don’t care what you said.”

“You should care,” I said.
 
“I need you to be honest with me.”

“About?”

“You slipping away without being seen or heard.”

Naomi sighed and closed her eyes.
 
She turned away from me.
 
“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know if you can be honest, or you don’t know what happened?”

She took a deep breath and stared at the floor.
 
When she spoke, her voice was practically a whisper.
 
“I remember going to sleep,” she said.
 
“Next thing I knew, I was at Winchell’s accepting change from the cashier.”

“Ravenwood.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with tears welling up in her eyes.
 
“I couldn’t say anything.
 
Kelly would have killed me.”

“That’s not true.
 
As long as you’re really you, no one will hurt you.”

“If you say so.”

“I do.”
 
I hugged her then tried to lighten the mood a bit.
 
“Did you save me a doughnut?”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The clock on Kelly’s wall read 10:00.
 
We’d polished off the doughnuts, and the empty box sat open on the kitchen table.
 
Esther’s typewriter sat next to the box, and Esther herself occupied a chair across from me.
 
She glared at Naomi.
 
It was wasted effort because Naomi couldn’t see her, but Esther didn’t seem to mind.
 
Kelly had gone downstairs to teach her morning classes.
 
I wondered how the students would feel if they knew about the twelve bodies stacked in the back room.

“I want to see where Ravenwood broke free,” I said.

Naomi shook her head.
 
“I can’t take you there.
 
It’s a secret DGI installation.”

“We just went through this.
 
Open and honest.
 
Remember?”

“But—”

I waved her off.
 
“We’re going.
 
Don’t argue with me.”

“I’m not arguing but I can’t tell you everything.
 
I wish I could, but there are lines I can’t cross.”

“So move the lines.
 
Otherwise, I can’t help you.”

She sighed.
 
“All right.
 
I’ll take you.”

“Good.
 
Esther is coming with us.”

“I can’t show everyone a secret location.”

“She’s dead,” I said.
 
“Who is she going to tell?”

“Kelly.”

“Hell, I can tell Kelly.”

Naomi laughed.
 
“I forgot.
 
You two don’t keep many secrets between you.”

“And she still puts up with me.
 
Hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“Fine.
 
The ghost can come.”

“What if I don’t want to go?” Esther asked.

I grabbed the typewriter from the table.
 
“You’re always asking to go, Esther.”

She followed me to the coat closet.
 
“Did I ask this time?”

“I may need your help.”

“You could ask.”

“All right.
 
Esther, will you please accompany us on a fun field trip?”

“I’d rather stay here and pretend I can fix my nails.”

I pulled a backpack from the top shelf of the closet and stuffed the typewriter into the pack.
 
Then I slung it over my shoulder.
 
“Pretend in the car,” I said.

The morning wind blew strong through the Tech Center.
 
Naomi had me park a block away from the building that housed the DGI offices.

“Follow me,” she said.

She climbed out of the Firebird and volunteered to carry the backpack.
 
I nodded, so she slipped it on her back and led me into a Starbucks.

“She wants a cup of joe?” Esther asked.

I followed her into the coffeehouse.
 
Naomi waved to a few of the baristas and moved toward the back by the restrooms, but instead of going into the ladies’ room, she entered their back room.
 
The place was filled with boxes of supplies—cases of cups and lids, big bottles of syrups and such.
 
It also held a small, cluttered desk and a file cabinet.
 
Naomi pulled one of the file cabinet drawers open, reached behind it, and flipped a switch.
 
The file cabinet slowly swung out to reveal a small door behind it.
 
After she waved her hands to remove the wards, she motioned for me to follow.

It was a tight squeeze, but we ducked through into a dim corridor.

“Pull the door closed,” Naomi said.

I pulled the handle, and the file cabinet swung back against the wall, covering the doorway.
 
Naomi waved her hands to replace the wards then led us down the corridor to an elevator.

“I really shouldn’t be showing this to you,” she said.
 
“If anyone at DGI finds out about this, I’m toast.”

“So I shouldn’t add this to my Facebook status?”

The elevator took us down a long, long way.
 
I was about to ask if we were heading to the ninth circle of Hades when we finally came to a halt and the doors swished open to a darkened tunnel.
 
Light from the elevator spilled out and seemed to be devoured by the dark.

We stepped into the tunnel.
 
The floor felt like smooth rock, no doubt carved by magic.
 
The walls were rocky, and in a few places, the stone, sharp enough to cut, jutted out, so whoever carved it didn’t seem to care about the walls.
 
Then again, maybe they were left uneven intentionally.
 
Then the elevator doors closed, and the darkness ate the light.
 
We stood in pitch blackness.

“Somebody forget to pay the electric bill?” I asked.

Naomi uttered a spell, and two sconces on the wall flared to life.
 
They didn’t give off a lot of light, so I couldn’t tell how far the tunnel went in either direction.
 
Naomi led us off to the left.
 
As we walked, the flames leaped from sconce to sconce along the wall to keep our current path illuminated.

We walked for what seemed like a mile but was probably less than a block.
 
It felt longer because we could see only a few feet in front of us, and when I looked behind us, the darkness seemed to be chasing us.
 
If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say we were directly beneath the DGI offices.

The tunnel curved and a dim red glow shimmered on the rocky ceiling, walls, and floor ahead.
 
As we rounded the bend, I saw a huge gate that glowed red and orange behind a multitude of magical wards that seemed to pulse darkness into the red.
 
I’d never seen so many wards in one place.
 
There were hundreds of them—small, dark disks that held back the light.

“What the hell is this?” I asked.

“You don’t need to know.”

I approached the gate for a closer look.

Naomi grabbed my arm and tried to pull me away.
 
“Don’t get too close to it.”

Suddenly it hit me.
 
Dragon Gate Industries.
 
It wasn’t just a name pulled out of a hat.
 
“This is an actual dragon gate?”

Fire danced behind the wards and seemed to be trying to burn through them.
 
The closer I got, the stronger the flames threw themselves at the wards.

“Get back.”

I stepped back and the flames softened.

“What’s in there?” I asked.

Naomi shook her head.
 
“I hope we never find out.”

“Is this where Ravenwood broke out?”

“No, there’s a lab down the hall here.”

I nodded to Esther.
 
“Want to take a look behind the wards?”

“Not a chance,” Esther said.

Naomi grabbed my wrist.
 
“If you’re telling Esther to check out the gate, you really don’t want to do that.
 
It could destroy her.”

“She’s already dead.”

“I’m standing right here,” Esther said, giving me an indignant glare.

“Doesn’t matter,” Naomi said.
 
“Can we please get away from this?
 
I don’t like standing so close to it.”

“All right,” I said and followed her down the hall.
 
I took a few glances back at it.
 
The darkness no longer seemed to be closing in on us.

Esther pursed her lips at me.
 
“Trying to make me go away?”

“I didn’t know it could be dangerous for you, Esther.”

Naomi led us down the hall, and as the flames jumped ahead to a series of sconces, I saw pieces of a shattered door lying on the ground with one piece of oak beam, a two-by-four embedded at an angle in the stone wall at about eye level.

“This must be the place,” I said.

“Wow,” Naomi said.
 
“You really are a detective.”

“Nothing gets past me,” I said.

“Except you keep trusting her,” Esther said, jutting her chin toward Naomi.

I didn’t acknowledge Esther’s jab.

Instead, I approached the piece of wood stabbing into the wall.
 
I felt around the splintered edges of the beam.
 
The energy required to actually embed the wood into the cavern wall would have been immense.
 
“Unreal,” I said.

“In here,” Naomi said.

I walked across what remained of the door and entered the room.
 
As we stepped inside, the room lit up.
 
The place looked like it had been a victim of a shock-and-awe attack on a Baghdad neighborhood.
 
The room stank of sulfur.
 
Chunks of stone leaned against the cracked, blackened wall.
 
Cullet littered the floor.
 
At least, I thought most of it was broken glass until I looked closer and saw that it was shattered crystal.

“Alyshian and friends?” I asked, squatting to sift through pieces of the crystals.

“Destroyed,” Naomi said, hands on hips.
 
“Just like I told you.”

Esther shrugged.
 
“So the old bird didn’t lie about everything.”

“Can they be reassembled?”

Naomi laughed.
 
“Look at them.
 
They’re in a million pieces.”

“All the king’s wizards,” I said and let the pieces fall back to the scarred floor.
 
The pieces glittered with light when they hit the ground then went dormant.
 
I looked around the room and saw what looked like a beat-up wet bar, but the shelves behind it were empty.
 
I couldn’t see what else was behind the bar, but I figured I’d check it out before we left.

“Nobody at DGI even knows the crystals were destroyed,” Naomi said.
 
“They can’t find out.”

Esther waved her arms at me.
 
“Jonathan, we need to get out of here.”

“Hold on, Esther.”
 
I faced Naomi.
 
“You said you told Al that Ravenwood was loose.
 
Wouldn’t that suggest to him that the crystals were destroyed?”

Esther moved in front of me again.
 
“We need to go!”

“Quiet, Esther.
 
We’re busy.
 
Naomi?”

“No,” Naomi said.
 
“They think the Alyshian is still intact and that they can use it to imprison Ravenwood.”

“Fine,” Esther said.
 
“Ignore me.”
 
She stood in the center of the floor, looked away from us, and started tapping her foot.

“Why would they think that?”

“Because I told them my father hid it.”

“And how do they think Ravenwood freed himself?”

“They don’t know.
 
They think that maybe the magic is weakening and he managed to squeeze out.
 
I let them run with that one.”

I frowned.

“I don’t think they believe you,” I said, standing up.
 
I nodded past her to the open doorway.

Naomi turned.

Al Davidson, Frank Cantrell, and a woman I’d never seen stood blocking our exit.

“An astute observation, Mr. Shade,” said the woman I didn’t know.

“I tried to warn you,” Esther said.