“And you think that a shotgun will protect you against magical creatures?” Khulan tried not to sneer, but it still came out harsh and abrasive.

  That was mostly the goddess talking.

  Ogden surprised her by grinning like the fabled Cheshire cat of English legend.

  “Three-inch magnum loads,” he said, like she would be able to penetrate his nerdiness. “Number two shot with a little of everything mixed in.”

  “Everything?” she asked perhaps still a little ruder than the situation warranted.

  “Silver drop shot,” he explained. “Cold iron. Marble. Glass. Wood. Mistletoe. Hell, I’ve even got tiny beads of Jell-O made with holy water. If it has magical allergies, I’ve tried to cover it. And the even-numbered rounds on the pistol will go through a Class II armored limousine at close enough range.”

  “Why?” she asked, finally more confused than insulted.

  “Stewey expects Bigfoot to come for his stamp collection,” Dan explained.

  Must be an inside joke, because it went right over Khulan’s head, even as Stewey practically preened.

  Still, the two humans believed that they were prepared for what they would find on Faucher’s demiplane. They probably weren’t, but would be counting on her to assist.

  Khulan wanted to know the man’s secrets, too. Especially if he had chosen the same path as the goddess, having finally worn out the flesh.

  She studied the spindle of thread in her hands. Heavy cotton. Rugged stuff you might make a jacket out of, rather than something light and pretty. It conveyed a brutal, no-nonsense approach that reminded her of the man who had handed it to her.

  Dan was the one with the light, delicate touch. The Air, if you wanted to also go back to those silly Hellenes and their elementalism approach.

  Stewey was most definitely Earth in that reference.

  That would make her Water, flowing around barriers such as death, rather than beating her heads relentlessly against it down the centuries.

  Water, bringer of life in the form of the rains that fell and gave life to the great Yenisei River, flowing north into the icelands. Cold and quiet and deadly.

  Yes, she felt the cold waters and snows of her homeland.

  Did that make Faucher Fire?

  Or Koschei?

  “I’m ready,” she said simply, nodding to the two men once she had gotten her head wrapped around the stupidity of this undertaking. “Should I open the portal, or will one of you?”

  “I’ll do it,” Dan said. “My assumption is that your friend left more traps behind, like the four names on the front door. We need to slide by them, rather than just bashing them down. At least most of the time.”

  Khulan agreed. It was a sound strategy, if Kai Faucher had indeed left this all as a trap for her or one of the others.

  But she was still more powerful.

  And had brought along a capable pair of friends.

  She took a breath and pulled as much magic out of the walls and mansion as she could and watched Dan open the portal into darkness.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  Dan concentrated on the portal. This wasn’t like the meditation maze, where the power pulled your down under the water like a siren drowning sailors. Faucher had left that thing in place and let it do most of the work, so that someone entering would have already forced it open by the time they arrived at the center.

  Here, the door was hidden behind an illusion that probably had been slightly misaligned by the flow of magic the broken stepping disk had released, or he might never had found it. With the wall gone, the Grimsbys wouldn’t have noticed anything awry, but he’d been able to identify it.

  The portal itself felt heavy, like a solid slab of granite. But the magic was also almost perfectly balanced, like that granite had been resting on the exquisite pins and could be pushed in without a lot of work.

  Dan wasn’t sure if that was so Faucher could get in quickly, or it was a trap designed to lure sailors to their doom. At least they would have the thread if the door closed behind them, and the maze started playing tricks.

  Hopefully, they wouldn’t find a minotaur inside who snuck up and cut it with his axe.

  Anything was possible when you went and carved out your own demiplane from the essence of raw chaos. You could fill it with whatever spirits you could summon and convince to populate the place.

  Dan had heard lurid tales of some of the more interesting ideas that powerful Conjurers had come up with over the centuries. The sorts of things you got when emotionally-stunted nerds with power went off the rails.

  He peered into the darkness beyond a hole in the universe and sniffed.

  Old, wet stone. The kind that had a seep because it was underground and not quite sealed against water. Or humidity was too great, and you got indoor dew.

  There was a musky smell underneath it all that Dan couldn’t identify, except that it probably marked the guardian.

  He turned to Khulan and studied her closely. She was wound as tight as a Swiss watch, but probably was about as reliable, too, from the calmness she exuded.

  He could work with that.

  “How grown-up was Faucher?” he asked. “We dealing with an old scholar or a punk spellblaster?”

  “Meaning?” she looked up at him with eyes he swore glowed blue for a moment before returning to jade.

  “I’m thinking Minotaur,” Dan said. “Labyrinth and all that. Old scholar. If he was still a punk kid with power, should we be prepared for a succubus or a chain maiden?”

  From the way her teeth clenched and her jaw muscles stood out, Dan presumed that Faucher wasn’t the scholarly type. The sour note on her face spoke volumes.

  “Anything that moves, Dan,” she said simply. “Nothing in there is going to be friendly, until one of us banishes it and summons our own version. Our own binding.”

  “Gotcha,” he said. “Stewey, you heard the lady.”

  “Did,” the man said. “You remember to duck if something steps out. Not feeling all that chivalristic today.”

  Dan nodded.

  Kill them all and MAKE God sort them out, since that was Her job, as Stewey liked to frame it when he was feeling exceptionally rude.

  Just because, Dan led with the knife, feeling it pierce the boundary between worlds with the slightest pop. He followed it in and entered a stereotypical cut-stone room right out of a movie.

  Rather than bricks, the interior was comprised of dressed stones in dark gray about a foot on a side and mortared in place. When he glanced back, he saw he was a few inches from the room outside and the air in here was warmer. Almost enough to take off his shell, but he figured he’d rather sweat right now.

  The knife glowed, ever so slightly, but the room itself had a soft ambiance. As he took a second step, more of the room came into focus, and he saw oil lamps hanging from wrought iron sconces on the side walls.

  So, an illusion on top of everything else?

  Dan paused and summoned as much magic as he could to him. It was much easier here, telling him that this place was outside the plane he knew and closer to…someplace.

  The magic had a taste like you got when you touched your tongue to a nine volt battery, electricy and sharp.

  Not quite tainted, but closer to the font of whatever chaos it drew from. Or maybe magic on earth had been filtered by the land itself and neutralized?

  He cast a Knowing and pushed it all directions like a sonar ping, listening for whatever echoes returned.

  The demiplane was less than a mile on a side, maybe all on one level more or less, but he couldn’t tell more than that. Merely how far out that the barriers of chaos had grown strong enough to consume his signal. Nothing was close, and the room had a single door on the far wall, oak boards banded with cold iron and etched with silver runes.

  Designed to keep something on the other side.

  Dan turned back and Khulan had a waviness to her appearance, as though he was underwater in a pool looking up at her. He gestured for her to join him, unsure if sound would cross the barrier any clearer than light would.

  She had the spool of thread in one hand and unrolled it as she walked.

  The barrier fought her for just a second, but then failed and she was suddenly clear, standing next to him.

  “You okay?” Dan asked.

  “Yes,” she replied, shaking her head to test it. “We will need to map this space later, to see if we can enter from another direction.”

  “You can do that?” Dan heard his voice go up.

  “Dream thieves,” she replied obscurely. “That’s how they work.”

  Whatever that meant. Sounded like something he’d need to learn about, if he and Stewey were going to survive in the big leagues.

  Seattle hadn’t felt like bush leagues before now, but maybe it was.

  Stewey was checking the thread from the outside, but he seemed convinced, so he entered a moment later, bulling his way through the barrier like a man in a Tuff Mudder run on the home stretch.

  “Nifty,” he said with a bright grin, turning all directions to look, including back above the doorway, just in case something was lurking there.

  Anybody else and Dan would be concerned, but Stewey was the safest person he knew with a gun.

  Never point it at something until you’re ready to kill them with it.

  Stewey smiled like he was reading Dan’s mind, and racked the first of five rounds into the weapon, pausing to slide a round into the magazine tube underneath.

  “First load is shot,” he announced in an offhand voice. “Second penetrates armor.”

  “What kind of armor?” Khulan turned to ask.

  “An armored car door,” Stewey said. “The asshole behind the door wearing a Class III vest. The asshole next to him, also wearing a vest. The armored door on the far side of the vehicle. That help?”

  Magnum slugs. Handloaded by a man convinced he might need to shoot down a helicopter at some point. Or a dragon.

  Or, as Stewey would say: Ain’t no extra credit for neatness.

  The portal was not a physical barrier, so Dan was able to push it closed with his magic, leaving it just enough open that it didn’t cut the thread connecting them to the real world.

  He positioned the other two where he wanted them and approached the second, inner door.

  Khulan was dead center of the room, practically glowing with the amount of power she was holding. She rested the spool in her back pocket and cast a blur that put his to shame. In her left hand, a blade of pure blackness appeared, like a hungry shadow, nearly a yard long.

  Stewey was on the shield side of her, back and over a step where he could shoot without hitting her and would be lined up with the door gap as Dan opened it, knife in hand.

  That thing was a bank vault cast in wood. Five feet wide. Eleven feet tall. Felt like a foot thick, with bands across at three levels, wrought in iron and with silver runes that pulsed as he got close.

  “Whatever is on the other side is not getting past this,” Dan said, studying the power contained here. “If we open it, we might let something out. If we close it behind us, are we trapped here?”

  Khulan cast something that hung on the inside of the door like a neon green spider web.

  “It contains a single name,” she said. “So presumably the Minotaur cannot escape. Perhaps we could also bind the creature with it later, depending.”

  Dan didn’t see any locks on the door, just a brass handle to turn and pull. He grasped the cool metal and turned it just enough to confirm that he could. The room in here was just bright enough to read by, but not much more.

  “Opening the door now,” he said in a clear voice.

  He pulled, but the door didn’t want to move. There was enough magic floating around in here that he grabbed a hunk and focused it into the interior of the door itself to look.

  Just heavy and a tight fit.

  Dan jerked it hard and felt it scrape against the frame as it opened.

  The smell inside was cooler and drier. Muskier, too, like whoever it was occasionally walked up to the other side of the door but wasn’t able to get through. That was good.

  And bad. That meant that he probably was going to run into something at some point.

  If not someone.

  The corridor receded into the distance, broken by more oil lamps, but these had a magical taste that told him they were illusions.

  Good enough to light the way but not needing someone to service them.

  Nothing jumped out at them.

  Dan remembered to breathe.

  He studied the other side of the door. Cold iron handle, the kind worked by a patient blacksmith Enchanter rather than being poured out of a forge. What Stewey could create if he got motivated. Or pissed.

  Proof against a broad variety of fay and eldritch creatures, so Dan assumed that the guardian had been conjured, rather than trained. A spirit given flesh and purpose by someone like Faucher for purposes Dan hoped weren’t prurient.

  He really didn’t want to deal with a demon babe today, in any of the forms a horny old goat might decide to shape.

  “Stepping through,” Dan said. “You stay here, and I’ll see if I can open it.”

  That would leave him alone against whatever denizens were here, but keep the other two safe.

  “I’m coming with you,” Khulan announced. “Stewey can protect the rear.”

  Dan caught Stewey’s blush but didn’t say anything. His partner was back to being flustered by pretty women, which was better than letting his overall grumpiness at the situation rule things.

  Dan nodded and stepped into the corridor beyond. The ceiling felt like fog but was still there if he pushed his senses upward. Just obscured by a malignant mist hanging in the air.

  Khulan joined him a second later and the whole sense of dread he had felt seemed to drift away from him, like a fan pushing smoke. She must be doing something. Or maybe was just that powerful.

  The stone underfoot was rough, polished enough to be smooth but not reflective. Good grip for his shoes, if he needed to maneuver quickly. The walls were the same one-foot blocks inset with mortar.

  Dan reached back and grasped the handle, pulling the door closed. Felt like a bank vault closing as it did.

  He turned to where Khulan was watching the middle distance. Almost sniffing the air.

  Maybe daring whatever was there to come over here and get its ass kicked.

  At least she had that black sword and her blur ready for combat.

  Dan had played enough Dungeons and Dragons as a kid to understand his role here. He was the thief. Khulan was the fighter. Stewey was a ranger or maybe a cleric, considering all the stuff he had to buff with in those pockets.

  Oh, but for a light crossbow right now. And some studded leather armor.

  Hell, why not wish for a tank to drive down these corridors, spewing silver cannon rounds at whatever moved?

  “All good?” he asked, checking that the brick-babe with the nice bottom would protect his back when he turned it.

  “I am prepared,” she said in some weirdly formal way.

  Back to the goddess talking, and not the hot blonde chick.

  Too bad.

  Dan grasped the handle lightly, just in case it would zap him, but nothing happened. He turned it and pushed, jacking his weight into it, expecting that moment of friction against the doorway.

  It slid open and Stewey had the shotgun not quite pointed at his face.

  “Dr. Livingston, I presume?” he asked.

  “Very funny, Stewey,” Dan answered, looking down to see that the thread was still intact.

  “Man’s got to be prepared,” Stewey grinned, following Dan back into the outer corridor and pulling the door shut to keep whoever trapped in the labyrinth.

  Dan took a deep breath and moved to the front of the line again.

  The corridor wasn’t straight, but that was not clear, looking at it. But they weren’t necessarily in a Cartesian world now, so physics could be bent. The corridor scrolled slowly to the right, much like the opening of the medication maze outside had.

  But Dan had already seen the first fork in his mind. Given enough time, he might be able to conjure a tiny eyeball and send it roaming down every pathway until it found the center.

  Or the Minotaur.

  That still sounded better than walking into the beast.

  “I’m going to try something,” Dan said before he took a step deeper into the mudpit of his day.

  “Got you covered,” Stewey called.

  Khulan remained so silent that he had to turn to see her nod.

  Outside the world. Close by to lots and lots of chaos.

  Playing in the big leagues now. And maybe a computer game he remembered.

  He sat and crossed his legs, just because this would take a lot of concentration and he didn’t want to fall over when he did it.

  Dan closed his eyes and thought of the sorts of spells you cast when you wanted to bring a shadow to life. Those were hard unless you had the gift. At most, you got a little mouse of a creature that couldn’t lift more than a pencil.

  Not like that stupid beast that had broken into the office last night.

  He didn’t need a monster here. Just something he could send ahead.

  For grins, he concentrated on a variant of a Japanese demon he’d seen in a manga once. Reached out and grabbed a great big handful of the chaos swirling around outside this maze and squished it together into a lump about as big as a golf ball, chanting quietly under his breath.

  Still took a lot of effort. Drained juice out of him as well as what he’d gathered.

  Dan opened his hands and tossed it into the air, the universe’s ugliest Tinkerbelle.

  It was an eyeball, with a tiny stub of a torso coming out the bottom where two spindly arms hung.

  Jade green iris. He hoped she didn’t catch an association.

  It turned and smiled at him with a mouth that took up the bottom part of the ball.

  Blinked once with its whole body in the weirdest way.

  “Go,” Dan commanded it lightly. “Seek and return.”

  Zip. Gone like the Road Runner cartoon. He kept expecting a tongue to come out.

  Dan took a deep breath and flexed stiff shoulders. He put a hand down to pick up his knife and stood up like an old man.

 

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