Linda Welch - A conspiracy of Demons (4 page)

And, yeah, there are other Tiff Banks and Royal Mortensens in the States.

I told Provo PD the truth. I did meet Lynn at the workshop and we did talk on the phone. However, I omitted to say I helped her with an investigation in California
five
years ago. I stayed with her for a few days. If the d
etectives found out, I woul
d deal with it then.

I once made quite a thing about d
emons lying by omission, but I had
done my share in the past few years, sinc
e I became involved with demons in fact. Sometimes it i
s easier to
keep my mouth shut, that way I a
m not lying, I’m just not saying something.

Royal stroked my hair. “They may have already alerted local law enforcement. What is the first thing the examiner does with a homicide?”

Deflated, my voice sank
. “Get fingerprints.”

“And run it through the national databases. Lynn worked for the police, her fingerprints are on
file
, as are yours and mine.”

I closed my eyes and thumped my forehead on his shoulder. “He
ll. Why didn’t I think of that?
How much time do you think we have?”

“Depends on
when
Provo
contact
s
local law enforcement
, t
heir manpower and availability.
”

“In other words, you have no idea.” I looked past him
, through the window
at the busy street, seeing Lynn’s face in my mind’s eye. “Maybe we can beat them to it.”

“
We can try. When you said quick as we can, y
ou mean quick-quick?”

“Yeah, that quick.”
I wrinkled my nose
. I do
not agree to
the
torment of a
demon dash unless there is a damn good reason,
yet now I
asked
for it.

“It will be hard on you.”

“Always is, but I have these
.” I shook a small tube of anti—
nausea pills. I always
carried them
, just in case.
“
How soon can we
be
there
?”

“Forty-five minutes, if we hurry.”

“
You okay with this
?”

He nodded.
We left the office and descended the steps to the street, then headed
for Montague Square.

With more than half the stores vacant, Montague Square
verged on
seedy.
Shoppers
had
little reason to venture here i
f not for the Valley Market, Coffee You and Me
,
and Graham’s Hardware
.

Most stores are on the north side of the square with a few creeping east and west, but as you enter Montague Square, the east and west boundaries begin with the sidewalls of shotgun
-
style building
s.
Many old buildings downtown are shotgun-style and on a quiet day they exude an Old-West atmosphere. Royal’s apartment was originally shotgun and Bailey and Cognac which occupies the
first
floor is still.
They are
between forty and fifty feet
long,
fifteen and twenty wide
, with one room
leading to the next, and the idea is if
you stand
at the front door with a shotgun and all the connecting doors
are open
you c
an
shoot all the way through the building and out of the backdoor.

The
Gate and
Way which
lead to Bel-Athaer are
inside the
empty
shotgun-style
building
on the east side
.
It has been empty for as long as I have lived here.

The entr
ance
is a plain, worn wood door
which lets into a small, square, concrete-lined room. Inside, a regular door leads to the building’s
abandoned
innards, but another apparently norm
al door is actually the Gate. I a
m
fairly
sure the street door o
pens only to a select few - i
magine what would happen i
f Joe off the street
found
the entrance to another
world
?
At one time I automatically thought the Gate and Way were barred to me, but they were open if only I had tried to access them.
Yep, I am one of the privileged few, though I wish I were not.

I have been whisked along the
Way in Royal’s arms, walked it
and ridden along it on a Harley Shovelhead. This time, I tucked my face in Royal’s
neck,
clung to
his shoulders
and kept my eyes closed
as we moved in a blur.

Royal slowed to a normal walking pace
and a corridor of pale, glowing tiles came into focus
.
What appeared to be a
tiled wall faced us. Royal let me down, put
his
palms to the wall and pushed
it open, and w
e stepped
through
to
another plane of existence.
Bel-Athaer, home of the Gelpha, Royal’s people, whom I
sometimes still called demons.

I am Gelpha
,
but I
struggle with
the fact they are
my people. My interaction
s
with them
thus far
involved deceit, betrayal and threats to my life.

We stood with a brown
brick wall against our backs. A
wide avenue hemmed by brick buildings of
various
sizes and colors meandered away from us down a hill.
The
avenue
led straight through town until it dwindled to a narrow
ribbon
in the distance and wound to the foothills of a mountain range
.

I thought I had stepped into an American city the first time I came here, unti
l I noticed the vehicles were
different
in small ways
and the people either bustling along or strolling w
ere demons.
Now, standing here with Royal,
I
remembered crossing this avenue and taking
a bus to the High House as if navigating an alternate sphere
did
not
blow my mind.

I followed Royal
to the sidewalk
and stood with him. M
y muscles
wanted to clench
.
T
he people
thought I was a Seer
when I last came here
. They
were deferential
. But Royal and I revealed the Seers for the de
spicable bastards they
truly
a
re. If these people mistook me for a
genuine
Seer, how would they react?

He squeezed my hand. “Do not worry. We will not be here long.”

I grimaced. “That obvious, huh?”

“I feel your tension as if it
is
mine
.”

Traffic roared along both lanes. A man and woman who held the hands of two small children chattered outside a store on our left.
A young woman with long
opaline hair flowing over her shoulders like a silk stole
tapped
along the sidewalk
toward us
on four-inch heels
.
Her dark-blue and cream s
triped jacket and matching mini
skirt hugged a figure I envied.
She eyed Royal
and
a sm
all smile lifted
generous lips as glimmering eyes assessed
him. Her gaze swept over me. Her smile did not falter, but pearly l
ashes dipped over her eyes before
she looked away. She went on by.

Royal threw up his free hand and a huge, gleaming black sedan with chrome trim edged from the traffic flow and stopped
beside
us.

“Come on. This will take us to the next Gate,” he said.

I threw him a look. “How did you manage this? I
know
you didn’t make a phone call.”

He chuckled. “It’s a taxi. I hailed it.”

Oh.

He opened the pa
ssenger door and stood aside. I
crawl
ed in and
shifted along the seat so he could join me. He pulled the door
shut
and the car peeled away.
I checked my
wrist
watch:
nine minutes
.

I
could get used to Gelpha autos with
the
ir
comfortable
leather seats, smooth
ride
and ample room for tall people
. The bus I took to the High House
amplified every imperfection in the road
, but this felt as if
the wheels skimmed above the
surface.

A
smoked—
glass panel separated us from the driver
, effectively obscuring him or her.
Royal leane
d over his knees to speak
into a
square
box fastened to the
back of the
driver
’s
seat. “West Juno
.”

He relaxed back.

“What was that? An address?”

He dipped his chin. “We are going to another Gate. With luck, it will take us to
Sa
n Jose
.
We will have to hoof it from there.”

I grinne
d at the idea of Royal hoofing
anywhere. The way he moves is so graceful. “
So there are two Gates
?”

“Ambrose is what you call a
capital
city. I
t developed here because there are
eight
Gate
s
.”

“Eight? How many in
all
of Bel-Athaer?”

“I do not know
for sure.” He rubbed his nape beneath his hair. “They access points all over Earth, so there could be hundreds.”

We drove past stores and office buildings
,
which bore
signs in Gelpha script in
materials ranging
from neon to wood. Cars, pickups and buses surrounded us. Gelpha crowded the sidewalks and waited at crosswalks. It looked so normal if I pretended the people did not have gleaming, satiny hair and glimmering eyes.

So we were heading
for another Way. The Ways between our w
orlds were a mystery. They seemed
to have wills of their own, as if they were entities, not passageways. The Gates, or entrances, never moved, but the Way
s
could
switch to
other
Gates
. The Way from Clarion to Bel-Athaer led to an area near the High House the first few times I used it, but
had switched
to this city, Ambrose
, w
hen I came here
to find Royal
.

“Not knowing when a Way is going to
shift
dir
ection must cause heartburn for those who use
them.”

Royal drew his gaze from the street. “It can be awkward, yes. But not everyone
uses them. Only Lords and
Ladies, and those to whom they give permission.”

“
So that’
s why Earth
does
n’t teem
with Gelpha
sightseers
.
”

“Indeed.”

We took a side street off the avenue and drove between tall, pale-gray buildings with rows of tiny windows on
their three
floor
s
. A narrow alley separated each from the next, and steep stone staircases led from the sidewalk up to the
roof with small landings at each floor
.
Another left turn, and the cab pulled to the curb outside a small, one-story gray building which squatted between taller companions.
Gateways here we
re as nondescript as in my world.

Fourteen
minutes.

We climbed from the cab. R
oyal went to the driver’s side
to pay
the fare
.
Funny, I’d never seen him with Gelpha money, but he must carry it in his wallet
.

He
came back to me. “Ready?”

“
Yeah, like I’m ready to stand in front of stampeding elephants.”

That brought a smile. I punched his shoulder. “Let’s go.”

He pushed open a gray door
and we entered another passageway, this one lined floor, ceiling and walls in pale-green, shimmering tiles. Looking at the passage stretchi
ng ahead, I got the familiar feeling of being
in
side a house of mirrors
. Not that it looked like a house of mirrors, but produced the same
sort
of disorientation.

Royal clasped
m
e to him and we moved too fast
to see the tiles.

We came out
in the
San Jose
suburb
of
Mountain View
.
Not that I’d have known where we were if not for the sign outside the
Mountain View
’s Premium Used Cars
lot.
As the door
shut
behind us, I looked across a narrow street at
the
car lot and a
n ancient
café
with a blue neon sign which blinked haphazardly
.

Twenty
-three
minutes.

Acid burned my throat
. More than
five
minutes at demon speed
is
barely tolerable and these longer runs
took
their toll
.

Royal’s warm hand on my upper arm turned me toward him. “
We can take a car from here, if you would rather.”

“How long to drive?”

“A
fraction
over an hour
.”

I exhaled
a puff of air
. “Too long. Let’s do it your way.”

His hands cupped my cheek.
“This will be hard on you, Tiff.”

He once demoned me from Clarion to Salt Lake City. Once. The drive usually takes
a little
over an
hour. We did it in
sixteen
minutes. As if moving too fast to see the surrounding
s
and in which direction we sped was
no
t bad enough, we had to stop a few times when obstacles got in our way,
such as
an interstate roaring with traffic. Stop, s
tart, blur, stop, start, blur.
I had to sit on a bench for half an hour, trying my damndest to keep my breakfast where it bel
onged
.