The Hour of Dust and Ashes (20 page)

Malek Murr. My thoughts churned. Malek Murr. He’d been the jinn High Chief who’d come to our world during biblical times to escape the oppressive rule of the nobles. His tribe and a few others had left Charbydon to make a new home in our world. And while Malek had several sons, there was only one that mattered here.

The answer struck me like a thunderbolt, slammed into my chest, and stole my breath. I stepped back. Blood drained from my face as all the pieces slid neatly into place.

“Solomon.”

The others started screaming about revenge, about justice, but it all melted into the background. The biblical King Solomon. The Father of Crafting. The son of Malek Murr and the human woman Bath-sheba. A hybrid, like Sian. He had started the Sons of Dawn cult, had learned about the First Ones and that the nobles once ruled in Elysia. His cult had planned to gather the proof they needed to share with the
nobles—and once the nobles found out where they truly belonged, they’d start a war with Elysia to take back what was once theirs, and leave Charbydon to the jinn.

And that’s all the jinn and Solomon ever wanted: to regain their world.

But Solomon’s father and the other jinn tribes had been called back to Charbydon, the nobles afraid that Malek Murr was planning to raise an army on Earth.

“Who was king?” I asked, looking around at the faces staring back at me. “Who was the Abaddon king when Malek Murr and the tribes were called back to Charbydon?”

No one answered. They didn’t have to. The Abaddon Father had to have been one of the kings back then. He’d given the order to bring back Malek Murr and have him executed. No wonder Solomon had created the spirit jars. No wonder he had devised a way to continue on after his death so that one day his cult could exact revenge and do what his father could not, free the jinn from noble rule—and, for Solomon personally, exact revenge for the man who had murdered his father.

Llyran and the Sons of Dawn had stood atop Helios Tower and claimed that I’d be host to Solomon’s spirit, that with Solomon’s knowledge and my power, they’d raise the First One. But it had never been Solomon in the spirit jar next to Llyran.

Solomon had gone quietly into my
ash
-addicted sister to run the show from the background.

No wonder we hadn’t been able to detect another presence in her. She had the Father of Crafting inside of her—and with his knowledge, he could do just about anything.

And his last act was going to be killing the Abaddon Father.

Christ. It was like saying someone was after the Queen Mother in England. And no one would care that Bryn was possessed. This was a suicide mission after all.

“Bryn has a passport,” I said numbly, “so she won’t have a problem going through the gate, but I know she doesn’t keep it in her purse. She’ll have to go back to the League or her apartment to get it.”

Then again, Solomon might have the ability to cross planes without using legal means of transportation …

“We need a team to go to her apartment,” I said to the chief. “See who’s in Underground right now and have them go over. I’m going to the League.” I turned to Rex. “Can you take Emma back home?”

“Sure.”

I tossed him the keys and he took off.

“The gate is on alert,” the chief said. “No one, no matter who they are, will pass until we give them the green light.”

“Thanks, Chief.”

I didn’t know where Bryn was headed, to be honest. Didn’t know if I should go to the gate and assume she’d try to go through or if she’d head back to the
League for her ID. Hell, she could already be in Char-bydon by now.

“Charlie,” Hank said. “What do you want to do?”

I bit my lip hard. I had to be faster, had to cut her off. “Never mind about the League. We’re going to Charbydon.”

“What?” he and the chief echoed.

I turned to them. “Running around here, trying to find her is waste of time. It could put her farther and farther away from us. I guarantee you Solomon knows a way to get into Charbydon without using the gate. If we go now, we can head her off, be there before she gets there. Let her walk right into us.”

“Sounds good,” Hank said at length. “Let’s load up and get to the terminal.”

We raced to the weapons depot for additional ammo and weapons. Hank grabbed a thigh harness and strapped it to his leg. The familiar clicks and sounds of weapons checks and loading up filled the room.

“Solomon has had all this time inside of Bryn,” Hank said, slipping a spare Nitro-gun into the holster at his thigh. “Why wait until now?”

“Maybe he was still hoping for war and waiting to see if Bryn could find out what we did with Ahkneri.” I stilled, my eyes going wide. “I told Bryn about the sylphs. I told her I found a way to see inside of her and help her.“

Hank straightened. “And he realized it was now or never. If he wanted revenge, he’d have to do it now before you saw the truth.”

“Right,” I said, grabbing two thigh harnesses for the two extra Nitro-guns I was taking. “Otherwise, he had time to wait, to see how things unfolded. I bet you Tennin convinced him to wait it out after they lost Ahkneri. And Solomon had other ideas. He started issuing the suicide orders, Tennin went ballistic …”

I walked to the wall, grabbed a black cloak, and tossed it to him. “If we’re going into Charbydon, you’ll need this. The less attention we attract, the better.”

“How the hell do we find her once we get there?” Hank asked, tossing me some extra nitro clips. “Aaron has been to Charbydon …”

“No. He’s too involved personally. And he hasn’t recovered from dying.” I flipped open my cell and dialed. “Rex. Change of plans. You ready to take a trip back home?”

As Hank and I hurried from the depot, I spoke to Emma after Rex, and told her to pack a bag and her party dress because she’d be staying at the League until we got back. For once, my kid didn’t argue with me. Actually, if she had a choice, she’d have chosen the League herself. She loved it there. Her only words were, “Find Aunt Bryn and bring her back.” And to be careful, and that she loved me.

I called the League next and spoke to Aaron. There were only a handful of people I’d entrust with
my child and he was one of them. I told him as little as possible about Bryn and asked him to put Emma under his protection. I had no doubts he’d agree.

Then we were in Hank’s car speeding toward Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.

I was about to see hell for the first time.

It took ten minutes to get to the terminal near Harts-field-Jackson. Ever since the darkness, the airport had become dead space. No planes in or out due to fears of the darkness clogging engines and causing a crash. It had been a logistical nightmare of epic proportions, one of the worst casualties of the darkness—billions in revenue gone, planes rerouted, terminals around the country—the South especially—taking the overload of redirected travel; even smaller airports were being used. People lost their jobs, their livelihoods—though, thankfully with the help of the government, union, and airlines, many were able to temporarily relocate to other terminals.

For two months one of the world’s busiest airports had been closed and there was nothing anyone could do about it except deal with it until the darkness was
gone.
Deal with it
being an extremely casual term, but in the end that’s just what it came down to. The FAA, the government, the airlines, workers, the unions, everyone had to find a way to cope until the darkness was gone.

The place had taken on a dark visual silence. The only traffic led to and from the new off-world terminal, which—lit up as it was—looked like a beacon in a sea of dark buildings and shapes.

We drove around to the employee deck. After flashing his badge, Hank parked in an area reserved for security and law enforcement. One more checkpoint, and then we were striding down the long service tunnel. We came out into the long rectangular terminal at the midway point between the gates.

The gates had been built at each end of the terminal and offered continuous passage to and from Elysia and Charbydon. Departures and arrivals had been allotted special time periods throughout the day and night—half the day for those leaving, half the day for those incoming, and the same for the nighttime hours.

We veered right and headed down the terminal with its clean white tiled floor, glass walls, exposed steel beams, terminal seating, ticket counters, luggage checkpoints. In many ways, it was like any other travel terminal with clerks, gate patrol officers, stores, cafes … But that’s where the similarities ended. Once you got a look at the glowing spheres at each end of the terminal it was an entirely different story.

Several uniformed ITF officers were standing by the Charbydon gateway, which had been closed off, much to the chagrin of the irate departing travelers loitering in the waiting areas of the terminal.

I flashed my badge at the gate agent behind the desk, knowing she was no typical agent; I was well aware she had three loaded weapons beneath her desk and was highly trained to protect the gate and oversee travel. As she read my credentials and then Hank’s, my gaze lifted a notch to the copper alloy platform behind her. And, of course, hovering just a hair above the platform, the Charbydon gate—a large, glowing sphere colored with shifting shades of blue.

A low drone emanated from the sphere, a contained frequency which I knew to be the “music” of Charbydon—its individual signature, an electromagnetic frequency that not only manifested in sound but in light as well. The Elysian gate, on the other hand, was a pinkish-orange ball with a slightly different drone.

Above the entranceway to the Charbydon gate was a quote by Pythagoras:

There is geometry in the humming of the strings … there is music in the spacing of the spheres.

Titus Mott’s passion had been the mathematics of music, the harmony of geometry, of the universe and its electromagnetic vibrations. He was inspired by Pythagoras and Kepler’s “music of the spheres.” His experimentation in sound and light waves and electromagnetic fields had led him to the discovery of the other worlds almost fourteen years earlier and
then the subsequent building of the gates in Atlanta first and then in other cities around the country and world.

Like Earth, Elysia and Charbydon possessed unique electromagnetic vibrations that, once identified and then manipulated, could be
heard
and
seen
as color. And once enhanced by Mott’s patented “harmonic resonance generator,” a rift from our dimension to theirs appeared. A doorway.

So went the simple explanation anyway.

The biblical stories of trumpets signaling the arrival of “angels,” for instance, came from the Adonai’s sound wave instrument that allowed them to jump between Elysia and Earth. Some off-worlders had long ago created their own means of travel between worlds and they meddled in our civilizations long before we knew they existed. There were, apparently, more ways than one to open a portal. But after their existence became common knowledge, and laws, policies, and peace treaties were put into place, off-worlders adhered to travel laws just like everyone else. And if an illegal immigrant was caught here without the proper paperwork or visa, well, there were laws for that, too.

And that’s why I was heading to Telmath without wasting time searching for Bryn in Atlanta. If Solomon, the Father of Crafting, was truly inside of her, he’d know how to get into Charbydon without needing to use the terminal.

I paced the tile floor in front of the gate, waiting for Rex, letting my thoughts and worries run wild.
My blood pressure was high, causing me to chew on the inside of my cheek. Mentally, I wasn’t prepared to go into Charbydon. I wasn’t like a lot of other humans who found adventure in inter-dimensional travel. I liked my city. I stayed put. Yet I was about to go into a fucking rift in space/time—whatever the hell
that
meant.

The sudden gasps and shouting and the fact that every single officer in the terminal had drawn his weapon kind of clued me in to the fact that
someone
had arrived.

I turned slowly, pretty sure I’d know who’d be standing there.

Rex.

In the center of the terminal with a battle-axe strapped to his back and Brimstone standing beside him. Now, that surprised me.

Christ, he was going to get shot—

“Stand down!” I yelled, running toward them. “Stand down!” I went immediately to the officer closest, the one with the best line of sight. “Stand down. They’re with me.”

The officer didn’t lower his gun or take his eyes off Brim. “Hellhounds … or whatever the
fuck
that thing is … are license to kill.”

“Not this one.”
And not anymore.
Once this was over, I was going to see what could be done about that license-to-kill policy. “That
thing
has a name. And he’s under special permit 6673 of the ITF Weapons Research Allowance.” I leaned in closer, my voice
dropping into a tight threat. “Lower your goddamn weapon or I’ll do it for you.”

The barrel of his gun dropped a half inch off target. “Permit.” He swallowed, his eyes flicking from me to Brim.