It Happened One Doomsday (18 page)

Dru took off her glasses, breathed on the lenses and wiped them off on her shirt, then tried again.

Squinting hard, she could barely make out a strange rock formation rising up over the ridge. A stone archway.

But not a natural, lumpy, wind-scoured arch.

This archway had machinelike precision. A perfectly smooth, sculpted shape. Something made by human hands.

She couldn't be sure at this distance, but it looked easily big enough to drive a truck through. And it happened to be in the middle of the desert, on private land, far from anyone's eyes.

Hidden from everyone . . . except the sorcerers who lived in this mansion.

“
That's
not a coincidence,” she muttered. As soon as they were done here, she decided, they needed to check that out.

“Found more of those rat signs,” Greyson called, crossing the garage. When he reached the far wall, a door-sized section swung open with a raucous metal screech, trailing loose cobwebs. Beyond, a rough-hewn rock staircase descended into darkness.

Rane strode toward the opening, transforming into metal with a faint scraping noise. “Behind me,” she ordered.

Greyson stood his ground, body tensing, ready to fight. “I didn't even touch it.”

“You're tainted by the demon,” Dru said, hurrying over. “Just your presence may have triggered something. Let me have a look, make sure there aren't any warding spells.” She dug her rounded rectangle of ulexite out of her purse. It confirmed her fear.

With the crystal pressed to the skin between her eyebrows, it was easy to see the magical warding spell beyond the secret door. Unlike the ward at the front door, this one hadn't been triggered until the door was opened, so it was still very much intact. And dangerous.

A curtain of frozen energy hummed just inside, giving off an electric mosquitolike whine. Flickers of sinister blue magic crackled and branched across its surface. As each strike faded, a jagged new one flashed out closer to her. She had the uncanny feeling it was tracking her movements as she inspected the doorway.

She was extremely careful not to touch anything. “This one's at full strength, and it's nasty. But it's only on the inside of the doorway, not the outside. Looks like it might let us in, but never let us back out.”

“Like a Roach Motel. For people,” Rane said, sounding grudgingly impressed. She transformed back to human form with a faint metal hiss. “If there's anything truly freaky evil in this whole place, it's got to be down there. So we go in, right?”

Dru studied the pulses of energy crawling around the inside of the doorway. Without knowing the original spell, it could take days to figure out how to disarm it.

“That was a rhetorical question, by the way,” Rane said. “Of
course
we're going in.”

“Just hang on,” Dru murmured, looking hard. As she slowly paced back and forth in front of the doorway, the magical lightning tracked her movements, lashing out from every edge.

Except the bottom right corner.

Dru kept pacing back and forth to be sure, but it seemed as if that corner was a dead spot in the spell. Possibly the sorcerer who set this up had left it there deliberately, as a means of escape if necessary. Or possibly it had just been a casual mistake while weaving the spell, a slip of the wrist that left a tiny opening she could exploit.

“I have an idea.” Dru lowered the ulexite crystal and braced herself for a wave of vertigo as her eyes adjusted back to ordinary sight. Thankfully, it passed quickly. Without the crystal, the ward was invisible, but just as deadly. “Greyson, what happens if you put the wrong fuse in a car's fuse box?”

He shrugged. “Depends. If the fuse is too low, it could blow right away. If it's too high, you might burn out something important before the fuse finally goes. Why?”

“Because I have a fuse on me.” She knelt down and dug through her purse until she found a cotton-candy-colored crystal two inches across. “Pink halite shorts out patterns of negative energy. If we're lucky, this could short-circuit the warding spell, take it off-line, at least for a little while.”

“Halite,” Greyson said. “Isn't that rock salt?”

“Yes, indeedy. It'll dissolve harmful spells
and
de-ice your sidewalk.” She hesitated, then held out her hand. “I could probably use your help with this.”

“I thought you said it was dangerous, combining our magic.”

“It is.” She jutted her chin at the dark doorway and its now-invisible spell. “But that ward is even more dangerous.”

With a slow nod, Greyson gently took her hand. At that instant, as if a switch had been flipped on, a newfound strength surged through her. As much as she feared the intensity of their magical connection, she thrilled at the way the halite crystal began to glow in her other hand with a soft, rosy light.

Carefully, she slid the crystal along the floor, into the weak corner of the spell. She felt a tiny jolt up her arm, and an insectlike whine buzzed through her ears for a moment before it faded away.

“Huh,” Dru said, letting go of Greyson. “I think it's—”

A shattering noise blasted out of the doorway on a gust of hot wind. Flaming embers twined and curled in the empty doorway, like burning moths, leaving red-hot trails in their wake. A stench of hot soot filled the air.

Dru checked with the ulexite crystal again. The shimmering curtain of energy was gone. But the original spell remained inscribed across the width of the threshold, like neon graffiti. It pulsed erratic bursts of energy into the pink halite.

“The ward is down for now. It'll come back, but as long as we leave that halite in place, we'll be safe.” Dru lowered the ulexite and blinked. A cobweb-choked torch hung from a rusted bracket at the top of the stairs. She stepped carefully through the doorway and pulled down the torch. “Anybody got a light?”

They traded glances.

Abruptly, Rane grabbed the metal basket at the tip of the torch and struck her flint ring against it. Sparks brightened in the darkness, and the torch lit with a satisfying flicker of flame, casting a warm glow on the hewn rock steps.

She grinned, holding up her ring finger. “Sparky rock.”

“Oh. Handy.” Brandishing the torch, Dru moved toward the dark stairwell.

“Wait.” Greyson put a firm hand on her arm. “Let me.”

“Both of you, hold up.” Rane tightened her fist around her titanium ring and transformed. “If anything's going to hit us,” she said, “I want it to hit me first.”

Before Dru could argue, Rane headed down, surprisingly quiet on her metal feet.

They descended the steep, narrow steps into stale air thick with the cold scents of foul chemicals and long-dead fires.

The transition from bright, open rooms and desert sun to the darkness of tight, cobweb-shrouded stone raised a deep animal fear in Dru, a desire to turn around and flee this sinister place, with its cold, shoulder-cramping walls and dangling webs.

A voice inside her told her to get away while she still could, before whatever waited in the blackness below rushed up out of the shadows.

With every step deeper, the torch flame reflected off Rane's silvery skin, multiplying a hundred times off the moving curves of her muscled arms, her flowing hair. She took each step with intent, like a soldier marching to war. She never looked back.

The certainty in Rane's lead gave Dru confidence. Rane had done things like this before. She lived to fight the forces of evil.

But now that she thought about it, Dru realized she had always heard Rane's experiences related from the safety of the shop's front counter, and her stories always ended in triumph.

The sorcerers who never returned didn't live to tell their stories.

She repressed a shiver.

After a seemingly endless descent, the passage opened onto a ledge. Above them, the rock soared away in a rough-hewn ceiling.

Dru raised the torch high. They'd entered a dome-shaped chamber, itself easily the size of the mansion above. From the ledge where they stood, near the top, narrow stone steps curved down to the floor, perhaps three stories below.

The torchlight fell softly on the floor far beneath them. It was crowded with benches, scientific apparatus, storage tanks, and a hundred unidentifiable things, all long abandoned. A sorcerer's workshop like none she had ever imagined. Whatever research had taken place here in the deep darkness, it had been executed on a massive level. A veritable factory of magic.

Greyson grunted. “Guess the estate auctioneers missed something.”

It was too difficult to see much from this height, with only one torch to light the way. She handed it to Greyson and brought out the ulexite crystal again.

Through its watery effect, she saw the subtle background glow of a thousand arcane objects. Mostly books and spell components, it looked like, stacked on shelves that clustered into islands between workbenches and wide, shallow pits whose purpose eluded her.

The distant center of the chamber was completely clear and empty, except for four trenches arranged like the points of a compass. They still glowed with the remains of a long-ago spell. A spell powerful enough to leave its mark years, perhaps decades, later.

Rane peered out into the darkness past the ledge. “This place looks dead to me. You see anything, D?”

“It's not dead,” Greyson said, his voice low and urgent. “We're being watched. I can feel it.”

Dru lowered the ulexite and shot a questioning look at Greyson.

The torchlight flickered on the chiseled planes of his forehead and jaw, leaving his eyes in shadow. A faint, ruddy glow circled his irises, like the dying rays of sunset reflecting off red clouds. “That trouble I told you about? I can feel it. It's down there.”

22

EVE OF DESTRUCTION

Together, they descended the stone staircase that ringed the outside edge of the underground chamber. Earlier, Dru had felt claustrophobic and trapped. But in this wide-open cave, she felt exposed and vulnerable.

As if a thousand eyes watched her, but she could see no one.

As they reached the bottom of the steps, Dru took the torch back. Its light fell on dusty, bare light bulbs suspended from thick black wires over every workbench. The power lines rose up into the shadows, strung from dangling ropes or wires, and vanished into the darkness. Here and there, brown copper pipes snaked along the ground, making right angles, their seams green with corrosion.

“This place has power and water,” Dru said. “We need to find the controls. If they still work.”

“I'll take care of the mechanicals,” Greyson said. “You handle the magic.”

He turned to go, but Dru caught his arm. “Wait. We can't split up. We only have one torch.”

“Keep it,” Greyson said, his red eyes glowing. “These demon eyes aren't all bad. I can see just fine.” With that, he vanished into the darkness.

“Okay, creepy.” Rane watched after him for a moment, then turned her attention to the workbenches around them. “So. Serious laboratory these guys built down here. Or maybe a bomb shelter.”

Dru held the torch up high, casting a warm flickering light on a workbench full of glass beakers and flasks, then a shelf full of old books and stacks of rolled-up parchment. “Whatever this place is, I hope something down here tells us how to break Greyson's curse.”

She had no idea where to even begin looking. She tried to remember which direction she'd seen the four long trenches that still glowed with the remnants of a vanished spell.

Behind Dru, a metal drawer shrieked open, making her jump. She turned.

Rane, still in metal form, bent over an open drawer, examining the contents. “Rocks,” she said flatly. “Your specialty, not mine. You want to look?” She slammed the drawer and yanked open another. The metal squealed.

“Rane!” Dru barked, hurrying over to her.

“What? I'm not touching anything.”

“There might be someone else down here. They'll hear you!”

“Well, we've also got the only flaming torch in the whole freakin' place. So we're not exactly stealthy.” Rane slammed that drawer and moved on to a workbench stacked with glass jars holding some kind of biological specimens. “Do you want any of those crystals in there?”

“Crystals?” Dru opened up the drawer Rane had just closed, but with considerably more care.

Rich purple amethyst. Iridescent tiger's-eye. Splintered black tourmaline. She gasped. Unwrapping a bundle of black oilcloth, now stiff with age, she found a gorgeous wand of radiant green vivianite like none she'd never seen.

There were easily a dozen major crystals in here, each one more fabulous than the last. Ten times—maybe a hundred times—better than the stuff she could afford to stock in the shop. She crammed a few of the smaller ones into her purse until it threatened to burst its seams.

In the last drawer, she found an ugly mud-colored lump labeled “Coprolite.”

“Yuck.” She turned up her nose.

Rane must have seen the look on her face, because she instantly appeared at Dru's shoulder, shining silver in the torchlight. She jutted her chin at the drawer. “What's that one?”

“We don't want it, trust me.” Dru shut the drawer.

Rane immediately yanked it open again, making the brown lump roll over on its bed of green felt. “Why, what's up with it? Demon stone? Ultimate evil? What?”

“No. Just coprolite,” Dru said, making a face. “It's fossilized dinosaur . . . um . . . poo.”

After a surprised moment of silence, Rane seized the brown lump and held it up in her metal fingers. “Fossilized dinosaur shit? Seriously? That's a thing?”

“We don't have time for this. Forget the rocks. Look for anything that speaks ‘demon spell' to you.”

Rane pulled her head back. “You mean, like,
literally
speaks to me?”

Dru sighed, but it came out as a nervous stutter, as the agitation kept building up inside her. “I saw some kind of magic pits in the floor. I think they were this way. Come on.”