Dearest Mother of Mine (Overworld Chronicles) (36 page)

He growled, probably at the term "little" but still licked my nose with his black tongue. His sulfurous breath didn't smell too awful to me, though I had to wonder if that had something to do with my infernal nature. I made a second trip to the kitchen, this time procuring coffee and some snacks, and went back to the war room where Elyssa and I pored over documents. We discovered all sorts of interesting things, keeping conversation limited and typing or writing notes to each other instead of saying anything important in case rat spies hid in the walls.

We discovered more transport jobs to the warehouse Darkwater had been planning to keep my mom in, and dozens of transports out to Kobol Prison. How many people were they locking up?

We can't let this stand
, Elyssa wrote on an arctablet, making another notation about a transportation route to the prison.
We have to find out who they're keeping there and save them.

Yes, but first Mom,
I wrote back.

She smiled. "I know, I know."

Adam's program had downloaded a lot of other information from the Darkwater node, including other business dealings the organization had. They ran all sorts of dirty little rackets, including quite a number in the mortal world. They had gambling clubs, strip clubs, and a variety of other rackets involving organized crime. Shelton had been right about them being the equivalent of the Overworld mafia. We found personnel files. It seemed the vast majority of Darkwater employees were also with the brotherhood, aside from clerical workers. Nearly every Arcane had notations which indicated whether they'd be a good prospect for brotherhood membership or not.

On the other hand, they still employed a large number of Arcanes who apparently knew nothing about the true nature of the business. They tended to be less skilled battle mages and were sent to do simple security jobs for clients.

It was on one of the personnel dossiers I finally found the information I'd been looking for. "Eureka!" I shouted.

Elyssa shot me a dirty look. "If you startle me like that one more time tonight—"

"Look," I said, not wanting her to finish that thought. I pointed to the image of an able-bodied young man assigned to bodyguard duty. I saw the initials "BRB" on his sheet, indicating he was in the Black Robe Brotherhood. There was a brief description beneath his picture.

Assigned to Conroy residence until further notice. Note new address.

There was a long list of addresses beneath. The second from the top matched the old address we'd tracked the Conroy limo to. That meant the first one had to be where they lived now.

"How are we going to do this?" Elyssa asked.

"Just me and you," I said. "We'll tell the others, maybe have Shelton standing by at the arch in case."

"How are we going to get inside?"

"Remember my idea for leap-frogging the portal across the yard and into the house?"

She nodded. "I just hope opening the portal doesn't trigger an alarm."

"Why would it?" I shrugged. "I don't see another choice."

Elyssa checked the time. "It's two in the morning."

"Best time to act," I said.

"What makes you say that?"

I took out my phone and scrolled to the address on my map. "Something I read in a thriller about an ex-military cop who wanders aimlessly around the country beating the crap out of bad guys."

"So, I guess it must be right then," she said, grinning. "You're such a dork sometimes."

I gave her a smirk. "Sometimes? Baby, I make dork cool." I slid the phone across to her. "Looks like they've moved to Buckhead. We can probably portal into the Grotto and drive from there. I'll send Shelton a picture and have him open another portal then we'll try my leapfrog plan."

"Sounds good," she said, taking my hand and squeezing it. "Do you think Ivy will help?"

"Of course she will. It's her mom, too."

"She can be…unpredictable."

I kissed Elyssa's hand and stood up. "Yeah, but this is a no-brainer. Plus, I think she'll be happy Mom is free."

"I sure hope she sees it that way, instead of thinking of us as kidnappers."

I went upstairs and knocked on Shelton's room. Bella answered the door.

"Is something the matter?" she asked.

I told her our plan.

"Well, I suppose it's too important to wait until morning," she said. "I'll help you. Harry will only be cranky if I wake him up."

"What the hell is going on now?" Shelton said, appearing at the door. He raised an eyebrow. "Oh, you. I guess you need our help."

"How did you ever guess?" I asked.

He mumbled something rude, and went back inside the room.

"We'll be out in a jiffy," Bella said.

They joined us a few minutes later.

"Risky," Shelton said, after I described Lornicus's request and our alternate plan. "But Ivy sounds like a better choice than giving that heartless thing a baby."

"Why, Harry, you do care," Bella said, pinching his cheek.

He growled. "And I ain't happy about those damned rats you mentioned either. I guess a felycan has her uses after all."

"Why don't you go give her that back-handed compliment to her face?" I said with an amused grin.

"Just keeping my wits in true form," he said. "If I don't act like an ass, people are gonna know something's wrong."

As we walked down to the arch, Bella asked me a question. "Why are you taking the portal to the Grotto instead of going straight to the front of the house?"

"Uh, we don't know what it looks like," I said.

"Not even with street view?"

"Street view?" I face-palmed. How had Bella, the least technologically proficient person I knew come up with that when the rest of us hadn't?

"I amaze even myself sometimes," she said smugly.

I zoomed into street view in the maps app on my arcphone, and saw a blurry image. I had to go back a couple of houses for a crisp picture. I concentrated on the image, and opened the portal just in front of the sidewalk. Black iron gates guarded the driveway beyond. Elyssa and I stepped through.

"Leave it open. We'll take some pictures and try again."

The houses on the street were massive, each one boasting a stout fence, privacy hedge, and a driveway stretching across a long property. Thanks to the landscaping, I couldn't see into the Conroy's yard very well. Thick hedges and trees blocked the line of sight. We jogged to the neighbor's house, and encountered a similar problem.

"Maybe if you open the portal as far into the property as possible, we'll be able to see more from there," Elyssa said.

Unlike the other yards, I couldn't even see the Conroys' house from the road. "I guess it's our only choice."

Unwilling to risk even a step onto the driveway, I took a picture through the gate, using the zoom on the camera. We went back to the portal, and reopened it. A sawgrass bush blocked the view ahead. I poked my head through the portal and looked to the left where the driveway curved beneath a curtain of branches from a willow tree.

"These people are paranoid," I said, taking another picture so we could get closer to the branches, hoping they weren't booby-trapped to electrocute intruders.

Elyssa procured a long wooden rod and tied a small digital camera to the end while I opened the portal closer to the willow tree. She set the timer on the camera, and pushed it through the willow branches. She pulled it back, and we looked at the picture.

Something out of a nightmare grinned back at us, razor sharp teeth gleaming in the flash of the camera. It stood about four feet tall with a huge head full of bristling hair, and a mouth big enough to swallow Cutsauce whole.

"Holy shi—" I closed the portal. "What the hell is that thing?"

"Looks like a troll," Shelton said with a low whistle. "Haven't seen one of those in a long time."

"So they don't just exist on the internet," I said.

"Old man Conroy doesn't play around," he said. "Trolls don't just work for anyone."

I groaned. "We need to find another way in."

"Through those trees where the driveway curves?" Elyssa said.

I shrugged. "Might as well try."

I opened the portal well away from the willow tree and poked the camera into the dense stand of saplings. Something jerked hard on the pole. I tugged on it. The next yank nearly dragged me through the omniarch. I gave it one more hard tug, and fell over backward as the pole came loose. The camera was gone, only the well-chewed end of the pole left.

"I don't think this idea is working," Elyssa said.

I pounded the floor. Flung the pole against the back wall. "That old bastard won't stop me." I paced the floor for a minute, mind running through scenarios before I decided I needed to see the outside of the house again. Elyssa and I stepped through the portal onto the sidewalk in front of the house. We walked up and down the road, peering through fences, but the landscaping in the Conroy yard blocked vision from street level. I looked for a tree to climb. Though the yards boasted custom landscapes, everything from a desert theme with an adobe-styled Spanish house, to yards filled with fruit trees or hedges, none had a really tall tree in position to overlook the Conroy residence.

"Can I knock out a troll with a Lancer?" I asked Elyssa.

"Maybe with a hundred darts," she said. "They're built like tanks."

"Are they all so short?"

She shook her head. "I think that one is young. Then again, I haven't seen many trolls, either. The last one I saw was in the Cho'kai."

"How did you deal with it?"

Elyssa chuckled. "I ran."

If something made my ninja girlfriend run, I knew it had to be bad. I'd seen her climb the back of a tragon—half tyrannosaurus rex, half dragon—and knock it unconscious with Lancer darts.

I stopped in front of the tall black iron fence guarding the neighbor's yard. The tips ended in sharp-looking points. I could see this house from the road thanks to the wide green lawn with little in the way of bushes. The fence bordering it and the Conroys’ was just as tall, and thick cedar trees ran interference with sight from ground level. I took a couple of steps back, ran, and jumped, narrowly clearing the top.

Elyssa followed suit, adding a neat flip at the apex of her leap, hitting the ground in a roll, and stopping in a three-point stance like something out of a movie.

"Showoff," I said.

She stuck out her tongue.

We ran, following the fence until we reached the house, and cut across the lawn. I heard growling, and a Doberman appeared from the dark, racing toward us. I grinned at it, let loose a little of my inner demon, and growled. The Doberman whined, turning tail so fast its hind legs spun out on the grass.

"Meanie," Elyssa said.

We climbed up a gutter downspout, reaching a lower part of the roof, and made our way to the highest peak. From there, I saw more of the Conroys' yard. The driveway snaked beneath multiple willows with dense stands of other trees all along it. The landscaping was a mish-mash of vegetation, only making sense in the context of hiding guardian terrors.

I wondered what would happen should a hapless door-to-door salesman somehow slip inside the gate, hoping to sell a few vacuum cleaners. Would the trolls kill anyone, or simply knock them out and toss them on the street? With that kind of firepower at their disposal, why did the Conroys even need Black Robe Brotherhood thugs to stand guard?

Then again, they couldn't exactly take trolls out shopping with them. It stood to reason they needed humans—or reasonable facsimiles thereof—to guard them in the normal world. Since my night vision couldn't take in all the details I needed from this distance, we used a pair of Templar binoculars to scout the best place to open a portal.

Light shined from within a window on the third floor. I went prone on my belly and used my camera to take a picture. I sent a picture of our current location to Shelton. He opened the portal, and we stepped through back to the mansion cellar. I reopened the portal using the picture I'd just taken. Through the window I saw a long carpeted hallway devoid of decorations or furniture.

"Doesn't look like anyone uses that floor," Shelton said. "You sure they live there?"

"Why else would they have trolls in the front yard?" I asked. "This must be the place." I took a picture of the hallway, closed the portal, and reopened it inside the house. Taking a deep breath, I stepped through.

Nothing exploded or tried to bite my head off.

I blew out a sigh of relief.

We're in
.

Chapter 33

Elyssa stepped through after me. We stood in silence, listening for signs of life on the floor. Sconces with a candlestick design offered dim light to see by. Most of the doors hung open to bare rooms. Even the bathroom lacked towels or toilet paper. Considering the size of their household, it wasn't too surprising they'd not furnished every room unless there were a lot more Conroys than I knew about. Only the last room on the left had furniture—a single wooden rocking chair, and a small round table with an unlit candle on it. Moonlight filtered through the round window. I shuddered.

Creepy.

For some reason, the scene reminded me of a horror movie I'd seen years ago. Thankfully there wasn't an old woman or a corpse in the chair, or I probably would have run screaming.

We crept down the hall to a set of hardwood stairs leading down. Our nightingale armor muffled our footsteps, though I winced at each step, wary of the creak of wood which might give us away. I hoped they hadn't warded the place yet, though with guards wandering the house, it seemed motion detection might be overkill unless they had a way of separating intruders from the people who belonged here.

As an added bonus, we didn't have blueprints, or any idea about the layout of the house. For all we knew, human sentries might wait around any given corner. The stairs led to yet another carpeted hallway lined with doors. This one showed a little more panache, boasting a table with candles, and a painting or two hanging in ornate frames.

Elyssa held up a closed fist, motioning me to stop. She turned and mouthed, "Ivy's bedroom is probably on this floor. More secure."