Dearest Mother of Mine (Overworld Chronicles) Read online

  The Obsidian Arch is shut down. The Darkwater people will be stuck at the La Casona way station for as long as I can manage.

  "We did it!" I said.

  "Thank god," Shelton said, taking a step toward the room exit. An invisible force seemed to push him back. The air around us warped and bent like a bubble.

  Disconnect, I thought to the portal we'd just come through. The image of the control room at La Casona flickered away, but a shimmering portal remained. Jagged bolts of energy flashed between the gateway behind us and the mansion's omniarch.

  "Close the other portal," Shelton said. "They're reacting off each other!"

  "I'm trying!" I willed the portal we'd just used closed again. Energy arced, popping and crackling off an invisible barrier around us. I tried to deactivate the mansion omniarch. The image between the columns flickered to a silvery sheen. With a loud pop, the two portals suddenly shut down. The bubble of energy around us warped into an oblong shape and snapped back into a sphere. The world flickered.

  We stood in utter darkness even my supernatural sight couldn't penetrate. Freezing cold stabbed into my lungs. I heard someone suck in a harsh breath.

  I realized, with horror, this was the same way I'd ended up in El Dorado the first time.

  Flicker.

  We stood in a large square tiled with giant slabs of stone. A monolithic pyramid stood in the background. I had no trouble recognizing the place. It was the city of death, El Dorado. I didn't want to be here. Anywhere but here.

  Flicker.

  We stood on a rocky plain of shining obsidian. Twin moons hovered on opposite sides of the horizon, one dark and shadowy, the other brilliant white. Two feminine figures stood a hundred feet distant, the thick hair on their heads writhing like snakes. They stood with legs spread shoulder width, hands reaching for the sky. Their heads tilted back, mouths gaping inhumanly wide. An eerie chorus reverberated in my skull. I clamped hands to my ears, but the song filled me up, vibrating my body like a tuning fork. Pressure built from the inside. The song wouldn't stop. It wouldn't stop! My teeth clamped together.

  Quiet!

  "Look at the stone," Adam said in a halting voice, his hands also pressed tight to his ears. A grimace contorted his face.

  Two thick columns of rock spaced a hundred or more feet apart grew from the stony terrain, twisting into glittering vortexes. As they grew, a vein of white laced through the obsidian.

  They're growing an Alabaster Arch!

  These might be the people who made the Grand Nexus. Who made the Obsidian Arches.

  Flicker.

  We stood in a control room, though it looked double the size of the others I'd seen before. The agonizing song vanished from my head, the pressure abating from my skull. I slumped and heard sighs of relief from the others. A monstrous Alabaster Arch, rivaling the size of the Obsidian Arches, stood before us, a dim white glow emanating from the white veins. Hordes of cherubs stood frozen around us. The nearest one twitched. Its featureless black head jerked toward us, arms jutting out.

  "Dah nah!" it screeched.

  The room burst to life as every cherub responded, wobbling toward us on infantile legs.

  "Holy mother of baked ham!" Shelton shouted. "Get us out of here!"

  Why was this happening to us?

  I just want to go home!

  Flicker.

  We stood in a carpeted room. A leather couch sat in front of a television. A man biting into a slice of pizza screamed. Pizza still in hand, he flipped backward over the couch and scuttled on his butt toward the kitchen. Déjà vu smacked me in the face. I recognized this place.

  It's home.

  My childhood home.

  The furniture had changed, but not the layout. Why were we here? I looked around in confusion before an idea clicked into place. I'd wanted to go home, and the bubble had taken us here. Now all I had to do was turn this infernal portal off!

  Disconnect! Turn off! Deactivate! Stop!

  The bubble winked out. A woman in a T-shirt and loose-fitting pajama bottoms patterned with pink cats screamed and dropped a glass of water. The glass shattered on the tile floor even as the gibbering man with pizza scooted through the spilled water.

  "We're free!" I said. "Let's get out of here."

  The new homeowners ran shrieking down the hall, slamming a door shut. I was admittedly curious to snoop around my former digs, but now wasn't the time.

  The four of us ran out the front door. I motioned them down the street, and we made our way to a strip mall near a laundry mat where my father had first taught me to feed as an incubus. We stood outside, panting. I wondered if the look of horror on Shelton's face mirrored my own.

  "How did we get out of the bubble?" Adam asked.

  I caught my panicked breath, gathering my thoughts. "Somehow, it took us to places we thought of, though I'm not sure how we actually got there."

  "Who the hell were those god-awful singing women?" Ryland asked.

  "They were growing an arch," Shelton said. "Singing the thing from the freaking rock."

  "Where were we?" Adam asked.

  "No idea," I said. "When we ended up in that black void, I realized what was happening to us was the same thing that happened to me when I ended up in El Dorado the first time."

  "And then we showed up in El Dorado," Adam said. "I recognized it immediately."

  I nodded. "Same here. I just wanted to be anywhere but there."

  "And it took us to freak land." Shelton rubbed his jaw. "Those people didn't look like Seraphim," he said. "What if they're really the ones responsible for creating all the arches?"

  "They looked like sirens," Adam said, his tone a mix of wonder and terror. "Did you see their hair? It looked alive."

  "Nothing good comes from a woman with living hair," Ryland said, picking up a loose stone and tossing it into the woods on the side of the parking lot.

  "I was wondering if they were the ones who made the Grand Nexus," I said. "Next thing I knew, we appeared next to that huge Alabaster Arch."

  "You think that was the Grand Nexus?" Shelton said.

  I nodded. "It seems the likeliest explanation. But we've never seen it before, so how did the portal know to take us there?"

  "Maybe because there's only one Grand Nexus, so you don't need a specific image in your mind?" Adam said in an unsure tone.

  Shelton's face looked grim. "Well, we know why Daelissa hasn't fixed the arch. The control room is chock-full of cherubs. I ain't stepping foot in there again, that's for damned sure."

  "It was ground zero for the Desecration," Adam said.

  The control room at the Grand Nexus had been terrifying, but it didn't trouble me nearly as much as knowing the Seraphim might not be the worst thing in the universe we had to worry about.

  Chapter 22

  Elyssa

  Elyssa watched the live feed from the ASE she'd positioned outside the Darkwater HQ from the mansion strategy room. At least thirty black-robed figures plunged through the liquid glass on the front of the Darkwater corporate building, their bodies phasing through the rippling material in lieu of a door. Elyssa felt her heartbeat quicken as a bald man led the group to a levitating transport, his every motion filled with violence and anger.

  "That's Kassus," Stacey said, pointing to the man's holographic image as projected by Elyssa's arctablet. Elyssa repressed a shudder. Kassus was probably ordering his minions to trap Justin like a rabbit. She wouldn't let that happen. She called to warn him.

  "Thanks, babe," he said, and hung up.

  She shook her head at his cavalier tone, but knew with the combined skills of the other men in his party, they should be able to get away easily.

  Bella set a timer on her arcphone. "They should be back in the mansion in twenty minutes. Let's get make sure we're ready to go when they arrive."

  As the time ticked by, Elyssa loaded her compact satchel with supplies, checked, and rechecked her gear, and tried her best not to worry. Even so, her mind calculated the t
ime it should take Justin and the others to run out of the La Casona way station, cross the road to the safe house, and come back through the portal. Christian Salazar would order the Obsidian Arch shut down at the way station, and trap the Darkwater people in Bogota for several hours.

  Even at a non-supernatural pace, it shouldn't take Justin and the others more than ten minutes to return through the portal. But what if the perimeter had somehow been closed?

  Don't worry so much! Her stomach tightened anyway.

  Elyssa huffed, and looked over her gear again.

  "It's time," Bella said, the petite dhampyr somehow giving off a commanding aura in the black nightingale armor Elyssa had provided her.

  Stacey wore her own set of nightingale armor, the flexible material clinging to her curvy frame and accentuating the movement of her hips as she prowled about the room, obviously as restless as Elyssa. "About bloody time," she said, her British accent thick with tension.

  The three women went down to the arch room. The arch appeared inactive, but the men weren't there. She exchanged glances with Bella and Stacey.

  "The portal is closed. Shouldn't the boys be back?" Elyssa asked.

  "Justin did say they might stay there if they needed to keep the Darkwater people occupied longer," Bella said.

  "Yes, but the portal would still be open, right?" Elyssa asked.

  "Maybe they came back through, and used it to go somewhere else," Bella replied.

  Elyssa called Justin. Her call went straight to voicemail.

  "I'm sure they're doing their job," Stacey said. "Probably leading Kassus and his blokes on a merry chase. Let's not dawdle and waste their effort."

  Despite the dread clinging to her heart, Elyssa knew the felycan was right. She nodded to Bella. "Let's do this."

  Bella flicked on her arcphone and accessed the image of an office. She'd posed as a potential client for Darkwater and toured the offices, taking pictures as she went. They'd determined this particular office as the best point of insertion. The dhampyr concentrated on the image for a long moment. Nothing happened.

  "Strange," Bella said. "The omniarch isn't activating." She studied the structure for a moment. "Do you hear that hum? It seems to be coming from the center of the arch."

  Stacey walked the perimeter of the silver circle banding the base of the arch. "I hear a faint buzz."

  "Me too," Elyssa said.

  The portal abruptly flickered on. A man with a slice of pizza clenched in his hand screamed and flipped over the back of a couch. The image winked out before Elyssa could process anything else. The three women looked at each other, confusion wrinkling their foreheads.

  "What in the bloody hell was that?" Stacey asked.

  "Did I imagine that?" Bella asked.

  Elyssa shook her head. "Maybe the office picture isn't working like we thought it would."

  "I know it works," Bella said. "I opened a portal there the evening after I made the pictures to be sure it worked."

  "Are you jonesing for pizza?" Elyssa asked.

  Bella raised an eyebrow. "No, I'm not. Let me try again." She concentrated on the image again.

  The inside of the omniarch flickered, and an office with a large oak desk appeared. Bookcases lined the wall behind it, awards, plaques, and even an occasional book populating it.

  "I told you it works," she said, shrugging. "I just hope Harry didn't decide to use the portal for a pizza break after they escaped. Especially without calling me."

  "Bloody men," Stacey said with a languid smile. "They don't communicate very well."

  "No, they don't," Elyssa said, checking her phone again to see if Justin had returned her call and she'd somehow missed it. He hadn't.

  Meghan appeared at the bottom of the stairs cellar, breathing heavily. "Sorry I'm late. I was held up at the clinic."

  "Thank goodness," Bella said. "I was worried you might not show up."

  "So, you just want me to hang around in case the portal closes?" Meghan said.

  "If you see anyone besides us coming to the portal, close it," Bella said. "And use the image of this office I gave you to reopen it on our signal, should it be necessary."

  "If we need to evac from anywhere else, we'll send you a new picture," Elyssa said.

  "Got it," Meghan said, pulling up a chair someone had brought down earlier, and made herself comfortable with a thick romance novel and a glass of wine. "Be careful."

  "We will," Elyssa said with a faint smile.

  Bella stepped through the portal and into the office. She motioned the others to follow. This particular office had no windows facing the interior of the hallway, making it the perfect place to open a portal since nobody in the hallway could see it. The only downside was its location on the top floor of the four-story building. The lower offices, filled with cubicles had presented too much of an opportunity for discovery.

  Stacey opened the office door, and peered up and down its length. She gestured with her hand to signal the all-clear, and vanished down the hall. Elyssa removed two tiny spy-bots from her satchel, and sent them floating down the other corridors to monitor in case someone came.

  "These floors are lightly warded," Bella said. "But things will change when we go downstairs."

  Elyssa nodded. "It's time."

  The two women went down the hallway after Stacey. The felycan had just finished removing a small vent grate about one square foot in diameter from the wall. The vent was far too small for a human to fit through. Stacey touched a symbol on the nightingale armor at her waist. The material retraced to a thin belt, revealing Stacey's naked form. She flexed her body, drew in a deep breath, and her body twisted, claws springing from her fingers, and fur rippling up her fair skin. Her face lengthened into a muzzle lined with sharp teeth while a tail grew from her backside. Within seconds, a black panther stood where Stacey had, its body shrinking even smaller until a small black cat remained. The thin belt of nightingale armor shrank to accommodate the new size.

  The kitty looked up at Elyssa and Bella, one of its green eyes winking before it slid through the vent. Bella closed the grate behind the feline, and they moved down the hall to a thick diamond fiber door which led to the staircase. It was locked from the other side, though a rune reader on the wall allowed anyone with the proper access to pass.

  "I hope it isn't locked from both sides," Elyssa said.

  Bella examined the rune reader. "These look complicated, but you don't need much technical know-how to break them if you're good with deciphering runes."

  "Are you good with runes?" Elyssa asked.

  "Not particularly. I mean, I can do it, but I'll need a piece of paper and some time."

  "Good thing Adam gave me a decryptor for my arcphone then," Elyssa said, chuckling despite the tension.

  Bella sighed. "That's good, because rune decryption gives me a headache."

  A faint clang sounded in the stairwell. A minute later, the door handle clicked, and the door swung inward. Stacey grinned at them, her body once again covered by the nightingale armor.

  "It's a bloody maze in there," she said, retrieving the grate from the floor, and pressing it back into place.

  The trio padded down the stairs, the nightingale armor muffling the sounds of their feet as they descended to the bottom floor of the three-story building. The Darkwater Arcsys datacenter likely lay in the basement, close to the large ley lines necessary to power it. At the first floor, the stairwell ended at a door and a blank wall.

  Bella scanned the area with her wand. She muttered something in Spanish and tucked the wand away. "No hidden entrance to the basement. The Darkwater consultant told me there's a levitator down to the datacenter."

  Stacey raised an eyebrow. "I hate it when they make things difficult. Did he show you where the lift is?"

  She shook her head. "He said it he couldn't show it to anyone for security reasons."

  Elyssa removed a small clamshell case from her satchel. "Stand back," she said, opening the stairwell door a crack
and peering through it. The door opened into a clerical office. Cubicles provided ample cover for her and the others to slip through unnoticed, but they had to know where the entrance to the basement was first.

  She opened the case. Red roaches scattered from within, their tiny forms racing across the floor in all directions. She closed the door and opened an app on her arcphone. As the roaches scattered, they mapped the surroundings, relaying it to the app.

  "Disgusting but effective," Stacey murmured as she crouched next to Elyssa and watched the map appear.

  Someone in the office beyond shrieked.

  "Holy crap!" a man cried in panic followed by the sound of more screams and shouts of alarm.

  Elyssa opened another app on her phone and directed the screen at her armor. A web of lights danced up and down the surface, and the black armor turned white, loosening until it resembled Arcane robes complete with a patch that read, "Magic Mike's Pest Control". She aimed the phone at the other two women, adjusting their armor to match hers.

  "You Templars are sneaky people," Stacey said, regarding the loose-fitting robes. "I like sneaky people."

  Elyssa checked the mapping app on her arcphone and saw the roach army had discovered two levitator shafts. One was located in a lobby just behind the front security desk. The other was tucked into the back corner of the first floor. "That's our destination," she said, pointing to the second lift.

  "Brilliant," Bella replied. "Let's go."

  Elyssa opened the door without attempting to be quiet. The traumatized eyes of the clerical people met hers. She walked up to a woman who'd climbed atop her desk, hair frazzled, and eyes wide with horror. "We're eradicating a roach infestation. You didn't happen to see any on this floor did you?"

  "Hundreds of them!" a man said. "Please tell me they're not the flying ones." He shuddered. "They're the most terrifying thing in the world."

  Elyssa felt certain the man had never ventured far from home if flying roaches topped his list of horrors. "Don't worry, we'll take care of them," she replied, making a show of aiming her arcphone at the floor, as if scanning for bug prints.

  They walked down a hall, passing supply closets and other rooms with cubicles. Elyssa pretended to scan as they went. A man in black robes walked around the corner, his eyes narrowing at the sight of them. "Who the hell are you?" he asked, reaching for a staff at his side.