The Hour of Dust and Ashes (21 page)

I pulled the small card I kept in the leather case behind my badge and handed it over. After a detailed read, he lowered his weapon, called the stand-down order, and handed me back the card.

The relief that washed over me was so great it left me dizzy for a second. I re-clipped my badge and headed for the center of attention.

“What do you think?” Rex pulled down the edge of one of Will’s old black T-shirts. “The shirt’s a little tight. Probably from all that pasta I’ve been making. Found these black cargo pants. And how do you like the leather jacket? Bought it off eBay a few weeks ago. Says badass, doesn’t it?”

Rex was one of only a few people who could make my mind go temporarily blank in utter astonishment. I literally didn’t know what to say or how to even respond to that. Finally I shook the cobwebs from my brain and grabbed his arm, propelling him down the terminal. “What the hell were you thinking, Rex? And I don’t remember telling you to bring Brim! If anything happens to him, Emma will be devastated.”

“
She’s
the one who told me to bring him! Besides, we’ll need him. Trust me.”

“I have a cell phone. A little warning next time might
be good. You know, so you don’t get him
shot
on sight.”

We approached the gate agent, who remained unaffected by the sight of a hellhound stalking toward her. “Ready to go, Detectives?” She eyed Brimstone with one quirked eyebrow, but other than that she didn’t seem impressed. I liked her. I scanned her name tag. Officer Finley Holbrook.

I turned to Rex. “You sure you remember how to get there?”

He tapped his temple. “It’s all up here.”

Gee. That was comforting.

“And besides,” he said with a shrug, his interested gaze caught on the gate agent, “I’m caught up to speed on history and geography in Charbydon, thanks to Em’s Off-world Studies class.”

“Ear protection,” Holbrook said, ignoring Rex’s un-abashed ogling and handing us each a pair of disposable earplugs in plastic. “Walk into the sphere. Don’t stop. You’ll come out on the other side in the terminal at Telmath. Your boss called in for your permits …” She pulled out a stamp and pressed an ITF notary seal onto three permits and then handed them to us. “The Inter-Dimensional Bounty Hunter Act allows you to retain your weapons. You have seventy-two hours to retrieve your fugitive before you must reapply at the Telmath ITF station.” I took the permit, shoved it into my pocket, and then opened the plastic bag.

We stuck the earplugs in as Officer Holbrook opened the gate and said, “Have a safe trip.”

I drew in a deep breath, gave Hank a glance, and
then the four of us walked past the agent and up the three steps to the platform. I was just about to step on when I noticed Hank had stopped and was staring over his shoulder, frowning.

At the far end of the terminal, a group of sirens had come through the Elysian gate. One of them was trying to rush past the gate agent, pointing at us … No, I realized, pointing at Hank.

Hank’s profile went tight. The muscles in his jaw flexed once. Then he slowly pulled the hood over his head, turned, and walked into the sphere.

I had no idea what the siren was shouting because of the earplugs, but there was no time to waste and the last thing we needed was to get embroiled in something we couldn’t get out of. We had to cut Bryn off before she made it to the City of Two Houses. I followed the others into the sphere.

Keep walking,
I told myself as I stepped inside the large ball of light.
Just keep walking and you’ll make it to the other side.

Every hair on my body lifted. Even with the eaplugs, I could
feel
the sound, the frequency inside the sphere pulsating into my bones and chattering my teeth. I’d once heard an audible recording of Jupiter and this droning beat was very similar, though amplified to an enormous degree.

Keep walking.

Six steps and I was out of the sphere and onto the copper alloy platform in the terminal in Telmath, feeling just a twinge of disorientation and nausea.

Shaking it off, I went down the steps, through the gateway, and tossed the plugs into a trash can nearby. The terminal was smaller, only one gate that went between Earth and Charbydon. It was darker here, the sphere casting a blue glow onto everything.

After we presented our permits and got some strange and appreciative looks at our hellhound, we left the terminal, pushing through the tall wooden doors outfitted with dark metal. I braced for the impact, my Charbydon genes already responding to the familiar power here.

If I’d thought the darkness covering Atlanta gave me energizing vibes, this place was off the charts. But my human and Elysian genes counterbalanced and allowed me to handle the jacked-up, live-wire sensation without bouncing off the walls.

Rex, Hank, and Brim were ahead of me, coming to a rest at a railing that looked out over the city below. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that the terminal was built into the side of a jagged rock wall that shot up to dizzying heights.

I approached the railing, surprised at the vastness of the city. Homes made from mud and brick and stone. All gray, all linear and grid-like with small, straight lanes and wide main roads separating areas. The buildings clung to the floor, the walls, the ledges, and even atop the massive rocks that jutted up from the cavern floor. Telmath was spread out over several acres.

To my right and far into the distance was a gaping,
oval-shaped opening at ground level leading to the outside world, and the wilds of Charbydon lay beyond.

By my estimation, we had to be four stories up on the ledge, yet the cavern’s ceiling rose another ten stories at least. Raw typanum ran in thick, jagged veins through the rock ceiling and down through the walls and outcroppings, casting a strange violet glow over everything.

“Telmath,” Rex breathed, grabbing the railing. “Much bigger than I remember, but the landscape is the same …”

My gaze travelled over some beautifully crafted gray stone buildings, walls, squares, bridges over a black river below—so many bridges, spanning the sides of the cavern, linking one massive rock to the next, and the entire thing lit by the veins of typanum above us. It was breathtaking.

Moving in and out of the terminal were beings I was quite familiar with—ghouls, goblins, darkling fae, a few humans, nobles, jinn …

So far Hank was the only Elysian to be found. The two worlds rarely mixed. Seeing a blond-headed, angel-like being walking around in what basically amounted to hell would’ve been downright astonishing and not the kind of exposure we needed. The deep hood of the cloak hid him well, and he was smart enough to put a secure lock on his aura. But despite this, I was pretty sure some here could
feel
that his presence was … different.

Two roads led from the terminal, one winding down toward the city below and the other wrapping around the terminal and going up the rock in a zigzag fashion. The air was humid and warm, much like the deep southern states, but heavy with the scents of tar, damp rock, and muddy water. Sweat was already forming at the small of my back.

“Well,” Rex said in a clipped voice, “there’s our destination.”

I followed his gaze upward and far across the cavern to a gargantuan spear of a rock that jutted at a slight angle from the floor below. It rose several stories into the air. The top of the rock was flat and several acres in size from the look of it. Palaces with thick columns and straight sides and balconies populated the space and clung to the very edges of the rock.

The small city was lit by open fires in massive stone basins and by the glow of violet typanum in the cavern ceiling above. The entire plateau seemed to shine. A winding road had been cut into the rock, appearing and then disappearing on the other side or hidden within the clumping of dwellings, like tiny villages clinging and cut into the massive gray stone. Bridges spanned where the road couldn’t be supported.

“The City of Two Houses.” Hank’s voice broke the awestruck reaction I was having. I cleared my throat, narrowed my gaze, and looked at the city from an invader’s perspective instead of a tourist’s.

The Abaddon Father was within those thick
walls. Now we just had to get to him before Bryn/ Solomon did.

Rex snorted. “It’s like some dark-ass version of Mount Olympus, isn’t it?”

A reluctant sigh blew through my lips as I noted the steep, winding stairs that wound up the rock toward the city. “And I’m
so
not a fan of heights.” Hank grunted in agreement. Not surprising after we’d taken a tumble together off the ledge of a forty-six-story penthouse …

“Looks like that road of steps is the only way in,” I said.

“Unless you’re escorted by one of the nobles,” Rex said. “And we all know who we’re thinking of, don’t we?”

My hands flexed on the warm railing as I weighed our options. The only person we knew who lived in that city was Carreg. A royal. A Lord Lieutenant from the House of Astarot. Two and a half months ago, I’d met him in the back of Mynogan’s limousine. He’d given me aid when I needed it most, helped take my daughter to safety while I faced Mynogan, but he’d been very clear—his assistance hadn’t been out of kindness or honor or anything of the sort. He helped me because it suited his own agenda, whatever that was.

Question was, would aiding me now suit the Char-bydon noble?

Hank shifted. I glanced up to see him gazing down at me, his face lost in the dark shadow of the hood.
“Carreg is our only way in,” he said, echoing my thoughts.

“He could stall us in our tracks, though.”

“I think he’ll listen. He might be the only one who will.”

“Well, I say you go for it,” Rex said, turning to rest his back against the railing. “Beats walking and then being turned away at the gate. Might as well save some time and get our answer right here.”

I swallowed and made my decision. “Okay, so how do we get in touch with him?”

Rex shrugged, eyes on the terminal doors. “We can always ask at the Info Desk.”

“State your business.”

We stood at the Info Desk as the receptionist, a lithe darkling fae female, returned from an Employees Only hallway with a dark-haired noble dressed in a robe of deep black lined with gold embroidery. He paused at the corner of the long counter and regarded us imperiously, taking in our strange group and the hellhound standing between me and Rex.

Nobles had meddled in Earth’s affairs in ancient times, their presence inspiring the Sumerian pantheon, along with some early Egyptian and Greek mythologies. They had predominantly olive skin and dark hair, and were tall and very powerful. The one before us certainly fit the mold.

Brim growled. Rex made a soft command and the beast relaxed.

“You are aware training or housing a hellhound is not permitted in Charbydon? They are creatures for the wilds.”

“Under the Bounty Hunter Act, we have the right to search for our suspect while being armed.” An eyebrow shot up and he opened his mouth to argue. I cut him off. “As long as we have a permit for our weapons of choice, you have no grounds to detain him.” I pulled out my permit.

He took it and read. “Humans are training hell-hounds now? I should think the Federation will have something to say about that.”

I leaned forward and snatched my permit back. “We’d like to request an audience with Carreg, Lord Lieutenant of the House of—”

“I know who he is.”

And apparently this particular noble wasn’t a fan. My heart pounded, though, and fear that we wouldn’t even get past the terminal had a firm grip on me. “This is federal business and part of a criminal investigation,” Hank spoke up in a clear, commanding tone. “We must speak with him immediately.”

The noble’s eyes went blacker than they already were, and his lips pursed together, making dark shadows beneath his sharp cheekbones. “A siren in Telmath. How … original.” He paused for a long moment. “Stay here. I will return shortly with an answer.”

We waited. And waited. And waited …

I knew we should’ve walked. We’d be halfway there by now.

I leaned my side against the counter and drummed my fingers on the hard surface. Rex sat on the floor, back propped against the wall. Brim was lying next to him, his head resting on Rex’s thigh. Hank stood, arms crossed over his chest, one shoulder holding up the wall.

Finally the noble returned. I straightened, holding my breath.

“Come with me.”

Rex and Brim scrambled up as Hank pushed off the wall. We followed the noble down the hallway, out an exit, and onto the ledge overlooking Telmath.

“Step into the circle,” the noble said.

I glanced down to see the shape of a large circle had been carved deeply into the smooth gray stone and within it were intricate symbols placed in a circular pattern. I recognized a few Charbydon symbols, but not enough to decipher what they meant. Crafting and symbology weren’t exactly my fortes …

We stepped into the circle as the noble took a spot in the very center, which was free of any design. He closed his eyes, opened his palms, and the symbols around his feet began to glow. He lifted his hands, pulling the light from the symbols higher and higher until it covered us. The ends of my hair lifted. Every fine hair on my body rose as though we were standing in the middle of a flat field in a lightning storm. The light grew so bright, I shielded my eyes, experienced
a second of weightlessness, and then the light dimmed and the hum of power diminished.

The first thing I noticed was the air. It was cooler and cleaner, smelling less of tar and dirt. The sounds of Telmath were but an echo, a dim reminder in this quiet place. I opened my eyes to see we were no longer on the ledge at the terminal but standing in an enormous stone plaza flanked by colossal stone buildings.

The City of Two Houses.

The circle was just inside of the main gate. Twelve feet thick, three stories high, and built from one enormous slab of rock. The noble ushered us out of the circle. The plaza was several blocks in size and four main roads branched off from this centralized area. Regal, official-looking buildings claimed the prime real estate around us, and off the far end of the courtyard was a ramp that led to a building of black marble with a pair of thick pylons framing a tall rectangular opening. Like a temple straight out of ancient Mesopotamia.