The League of Doorways (A Book of Vampires, Werewolves & Black Magic) (The Doorways Trilogy - Book Two) (18 page)

Chapter Thirty-Five

All of them drew a deep breath, even Bom, as they stepped through the metal doorway. They stood in what could only be described as a giant underground aircraft hangar, which stretched into the distance for as far as the eye could see. Down the centre of it ran a wide runway, which was lit up along its outer edges with two rows of flashing orange lights. Parked in long lines along each side of the runway were hundreds of planes. They were like no planes Zach had ever seen before.  Even Neanna and William, who had flown before in Earth, were amazed by what stood before them.

“These are Der Cribbot’s Peregrine Fighters,” Tamrus said, staring at Faraday. “And you loved them.”

Zach looked again at the aircraft, and although they were made from shiny black and blue metal, they looked like gigantic peregrine falcons. They were beautifully sleek in their design, wings folded back against their bodies, and cockpits similar in shape to that of a bird of prey. Even the nose cones were rounded like a huge beak. As Zach stood and studied the glorious machines, he noticed that they didn’t stand on wheels like other planes, but on gleaming metal talons.

“These will get you safely across the Outer-Rim,” Tamrus said.

“Not more flying!” William howled.

“Aw, c’mon,” Zach said, a sense of relief that they finally had a way across the Outer-Rim to the volcano where they would find the box. “We are so close now
, William. Just one more time, and I promise you will never have to fly again.”

William looked at him through his bulbous lenses, his eyes bright. “Can’t I wait here for you?”

Moving across the hangar towards his friend, Zach smiled and said, “Our journey is almost over, William. We have come so far together and we are within touching distance now of finding the box which will save my sister and your world.” Then placing his hand over William’s chest so he could feel the key beneath his shirt, he looked into his friend’s burning eyes and added, “You have the key that opens the box. Your grandpa’s key. He would have wanted you to open it.”

“You’re right,” William said, thinking of the journey he had made with his friend; how far they had come together with his grandpa’s key.

“You’ll come then?” Zach asked.

“Yes,” William said.

Then from the corner of his eye, Zach saw a bright light. He turned and saw the headlights of the tiger-bikes first as they came bounding out of the darkness beneath the Peregrine Fighters. The machines roared as the dead peacekeepers turned the throttle on their bikes. They flicked their long orange-and-black-striped tails to and fro as they were brought to a shuddering halt by their riders.

Sensing that they had somehow walked straight into a trap, William and Neanna drew their catapults and took aim. Faraday tore the skin from his arms, and they whizzed and glinted in the light from the bikes. With his crossbows clenched in his fists, Zach watched the look of sheer horror fall over Bom’s face as he wheeled around and headed back towards the hangar door which was now shut.

Two of Tamrus’s guards pushed him back with their staffs. Zach could see the fear in his eyes and felt sorry for the reluctant hero. He watched Bom glance anxiously at the tiger-bikes, which leapt from beneath the giant birds, the sound of the dead peacekeepers’ respirators, making that rasping – dying sound. Zach looked back and could see that he and his friends were now totally surrounded.

Then, out of the shadows stepped Anna. At first, Zach thought he was hallucinating,
or the bright lights from the tiger-bikes’ headlamps were playing tricks on him.

“Anna?” Zach breathed, taking a step forward. “Is that
really
you?”

Anna looked back at him, a faint smile on her face. Zach could see that she looked tired. Her clothes were filthy and bedraggled. He wanted to go to her and hold her tight. He took another step towards her, his mind scrambling – trying to figure out what she was doing in Endra, hiding behind the metal talons of a mechanical bird in a giant underground hangar.

Anna held up her hands as if to warn him off, and it was then Zach noticed the thick, heavy-looking chains binding her wrists together. He could see that the flesh beneath them was cut open and looked raw. Her wrists dripped blood onto the shiny floor of the hangar. Zach stopped as if teetering on the edge of a cliff. From the darkness stumbled another person he recognised. It was the police officer from the hospital in Earth. What’s going on? Zach wanted to ask, but he was still too shocked to form any words.

The police officer looked worse than his sister did. His pale blue denim shirt was covered black over the right shoulder, stained with a ring of blood. His white moustache hung low over his top lip, as if in desperate need of being cut. His iron-white hair jutted out like he had the worst case of bedhead in the world, and his face looked tired with the nets of wrinkles around his eyes, which cut long
, deep groves down the sides of his face.

But even though he looked so ragged and ill, Zach saw the bright glint in his clear blue eyes
, which he remembered the police officer having.

“How you doing, kid?” Tanner mumbled as he saw Zach.

“Better than you, I guess,” Zach said back. Then looking at Anna, he added, “What are you doing here? I thought you were back…”

“
At the cottage?” Fandel suddenly said, stepping from the shadows. “No, your sister has been in Endra for a little while now – but her visit will be brief.”

“Just let her go,” Zach said, turning his crossbow on Fandel.

“You wouldn’t kill your uncle, would you?” Fandel teased.

“Why not?
You tried to kill me,” Zach reminded him.

Taking a step closer to Zach, Fandel looked him up and down and sneering, he said, “Yuck, you look all grown up all of a sudden. You could be mistaken for a
real
man.”

“He’s more of a man than you,” Faraday cut in.

Then turning to look at Faraday, he smiled and said, “Ah, the mechanical man. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“From who?”
Neanna asked, stepping up beside Faraday as if to offer him protection somehow.

Tamrus stepped forward, and with a look of sorrow on his face, he looked at Faraday and said, “I’m sorry for getting you involved in all of this
, my dear friend.”

On hearing this, Fandel began to cackle wildly and skipped over to be next to Tamrus. He threw his arm around the Boulder man’s shoulder and said, “Isn’t that sweet, Faraday? Tamrus is
so
sorry for getting you involved in all of this!”

“What’s going on, Tamrus?” Zach
asked, his heart beginning to race.

“Oh
, you haven’t told them, Tamrus? How very remiss of you. Have I let our little secret slip out?” Fandel mocked.

“What secret?” William barked.

“Our little secret!” Fandel continued to gloat, his arm around Tamrus’s shoulder. “Didn’t Tamrus tell you about our deal?”

“What deal?” Neanna breathed, her eyes flitting between the two of them.

Fandel turned to face Tamrus and said, “You lying lump of rock! Fancy not telling them that in exchange for bringing them here to me, I’m going…”

“Why?” Faraday asked, turning his black eyes on Tamrus. “I thought you said we were friends.”

“What choice did I have?” Tamrus began to explain. “Throat was going to kill us all.” 

“And he still will!” Zach cried.

Pretending to be hurt, Fandel said, “What do you mean? What are you trying to say? That Throat is not to be trusted?”

Ignoring him, Zach continued to stare at Tamrus and Faraday.

Then for the first time since coming across the mechanical man in the desert, Zach was sure he could see some kind of emotion on his face and hear it in his voice.  He looked and sounded hurt. Zach couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like to be betrayed by a friend.

“After everything you said we’ve been through. How could you, Tamrus?” Faraday asked.

“I’m sorry,” Tamrus said, his narrow eyes blinking closed so as not to look upon the man he had betrayed. 

A heavy silence fell over them until Bom suddenly grunted, “I told you they couldn’t be trusted. I told you we should have never come here.”

Then as if someone had just stepped in something foul and walked it across the hangar, a vile smell wafted under their noses. The Delf stepped from the shadows just behind Anna and Tanner and said, “So who do you trust, Zachary Black? It’s not only the rock-thing who has betrayed you – there has been someone else amongst your friends who has made sure that you and the key have been brought to the canyon.”

Zach whirled around, and covering his nose with the back of his hand, he gagged at the sight of the witch standing before him. “What are you talking about? None of my friends would betray me.”

“Are you so sure about that,
peacekeeper
?” The Delf cooed, a flurry of maggots falling from her mouth and onto the ground where they wriggled away across the hard, metal floor.

“Yes,” Zach said over the sound of his racing heart.

“Let’s ask them, shall we?” the Delf belched. “After all, we have quite a gathering.”

Zach glanced around the hangar hidden beneath the ground. He looked at the dead peacekeepers,
who had their crossbows trained on him. He knew in his heart that he was finally trapped. But what he feared more than anything, was dying with the knowledge that one of his friends had betrayed him. He couldn’t believe that as they had fought their way across Endra, one of them had secretly been engineering his capture and death. Not wanting to believe such a thing, and knowing that he was beat, he finally lowered his crossbows and looked into the eyes of his friends gathered around him.

“Please tell me it isn’t so,” he whispered. “Please tell me that there isn’t a traitor amongst the people I have come to look upon as a family.”

Anna looked at her brother, and he seemed to have grown up since she had last seen him. Fandel had been right. Her brother did seem older somehow – he had turned into man. It almost crushed Anna to see the hurt and the bewilderment in her brother’s eyes. She wanted to go to him, tell Zach that she was his family, even if one of his friends had betrayed him. She would be his family no matter what happened.

“I came this far to save my sister’s life,” Zach said, and he couldn’t look at her. Part of him felt like a failure now. “We came this far to save
your
Queen, didn’t we?” And as he spoke, Zach desperately fought back the tears which were standing in his eyes. “We have come so close to reaching the volcano and the box. These flying machines would have gotten us safely across the Outer-Rim. We nearly won.”

His friends stood silently and stared back at him. Not one of them said a word. And it was as he searched each of their faces for the truth, he noticed one of them was missing. One of them had
blinked
away, had deserted him.

Feeling as if his heart had been ripped from his chest, Zach whispered, “Where is Neanna?”

To be continued….

‘
The Queen of Doorways’

The final installment in the Doorways Trilogy

Coming soon!

‘The Queen of
Doorways’

The final installment in the Doorways Trilogy

Coming soon!

Also available by Tim O’Rourke

‘
Vampire Shift’ (Kiera Hudson Series One Book 1)

‘Vampire Wake’ (Kiera Hudson Series One Book 2)

‘Vampire Hunt’ (Kiera Hudson Series One Book 3)

‘Vampire Breed’ Kiera Hudson Series One Book 4)

‘Wolf House’ (Kiera Hudson Series One Book 4.5)

‘Vampire Hollows’ (Kiera Hudson Series One Book 5)

‘Dead Flesh’ (Kiera Hudson Series Two Book 1)

‘Dead Night’ (Kiera Hudson Series Two Book 1.5)

‘Dead Angels’ (Kiera Hudson Series Two book 2)

‘Black
Hill Farm’ (Book One)

‘Black Hill Farm: Andy’s Diary’ (Book Two)

‘Doorways’ (Book One)

‘Cowgirls & Vampires’ (Book One)

About the Author

Working away in the dead of night, Tim has written many short stories, plays and novels. His most recent book 'Dead Angels' (Book Two in Kiera Hudson Series Two) is now available. Tim is also the author of the paranormal romance series entitled 'Black Hill Farm' and ‘Doorways’ – A book of Vampires, Werewolves & Black Magic.

Tim's interests other than writing, include watching South Park, Vampire Diaries, True Blood and listening to
Pitbull, LMFAO, Jennifer Lopez, David Guetta, Bruno Mars, Rihanna and Adele. Tim is never happier than when reading The Twilight Series, Vampire Diaries and writing his own Vampire series “Vampire Shift.”

Don't be shy; feel free to contact Tim at
[email protected]
- Tim would love to hear from you.
Website:
www.Ravenwoodgreys.com