The item he wanted had to be here somewhere—and just as he was thinking that, he murmured a triumphant "Aha!" as he turned over a sheet of stationery with a few lines of his own neat handwriting.
Once, years ago, he had obtained the contact information for a fixer of sorts, a person who worked with shifters to help them with their unique problems. At that time, Gio would not have needed their services himself. He was aware of shifters, but wasn't one. However, he had held on to the details in case a friend needed this sort of help.
And now, the person who needs help is me,he thought.
He didn't know if this fixer could do anything about his unique set of problems, but if there was even a chance, he had to take it.
Max Molina was the fixer's name, and there was a set of simple instructions for contacting him at his office in Los Angeles.
A crash from elsewhere in the house made Gio look up sharply. That wasdefinitelyno figment of his imagination this time.
He reread the paper twice to make sure he could still find Molina if he lost it, then shoved the paper into his pocket and kicked aside a rug to make a clear space on the well-worn stone tiles of the office floor. He could stonewalk directly from here. The door was a solid wooden one that would take a while to break through.
He may as well go straight to Los Angeles. There was no reason to make any intermediate stops along the way. Either this fixer Molina could help—or he couldn't, but at the very least Gio could find out immediately and stop stringing himself along with false hope.
He reached for the globe and spun it, stopping it with his finger. On the West Coast of the U.S., it would be several hours earlier, probably still the middle of the night.
It was easiest to stonewalk somewhere he had been before, but by now he'd had practice at traveling to unfamiliar locations. It never stopped being terrifying. There was the constant fear of being lost underground, and his ongoing struggle with his shift animal didn't help.
Something thumped heavily against the door from the other side. It didn't sound like a knock, more like something heavy had slammed into it. Gio grimaced. Time to go.
He looked up to make sure the door was holding while he geared himself up for a stonewalk, but what he saw instead was a shimmering on the wall. The maps and tastefully framed artwork began to vanish as a rippling hole in the air spread outward rapidly.
Through the opening, Gio saw an all too familiar sight. It was outdoors somewhere much colder than here; there was snow swirling down. He had already inferred that wherever his pursuers were based, it was either in the far north or high in the mountains, because it usually looked cold.
A circle of individuals in black robes stood chanting. In front of them, the leading Black Robe had his hands out, the sleeves of the robe pushed back to reveal glowing tattoos on his arms. He made a mimed punching motion.
That can't be good.
The door exploded off its hinges in a shower of wooden splinters. Filling the doorway was a massive, crude stone creature with glowing red eyes. Unlike the delicate stonework of the statues outside, this was as lumpy and ill-formed as a badly made dough sculpture. Ugly as it was, it was made of solid rock and moving with slow but inexorable progress.
"You could have knocked," Gio said with lightness he didn't feel. He backed behind the desk. The floor was flagged stone here too. He pushed the chair out of the way.
Glowing Tattoos moved his hand in an overhand throwing motion. Something like a glowing firefly zipped past Gio's ear as he dodged to the side and burned a hole in the wall.
Another cultist stepped up beside Glowing Tattoos, a woman by the way she moved, with an object carried on her shoulder that Gio had never seen before. It looked like a small bazooka.
That's definitely not good.
He threw himself full force into a shift. As he began to sink into the stone, the bazooka-like device went off with a dullthump!and a net burst from it and sailed toward him.
Gio felt part of it hit him, but it was only a faint sensation, because he was already mid-shift and the stone had begun to swallow him.
Then everything was utterly dark, weightless and lightless. There was the usual moment of absolute disorientation. He had to focus with everything in him on his destination, picturing the globe and the relative location of California compared to where he had started out.
He burst out into the air and gasped for breath. Stumbling, he lost his balance and fell down a short incline. He was still partly shifted; his stone legs clattered and then shifted back to human flesh as he landed painfully.
It was night, and he was sprawled in some bushes. His first reaction was puzzlement mixed with annoyance. LA was a big city, and wherever he had come out, this certainly wasn't it. One of the things he hated about stonewalking, although it happened to him less now, was landing in some random location instead of his destination and having to figure out where he had ended up.
He struggled out of the bushes, trying not to tear his new set of clothes too much, since he'd had to flee without having a chance to pack a suitcase. His suit was dusty, and he brushed it off, along with sticks and some stray bits of net that had come through with him. Then he climbed up on a nearby boulder to look around.
City lights met his eyes—a wide expanse of them, sprawling to the horizon. The dark shapes of trees blocked the nearest, but he could now tell that he was on a hill in a park or nature preserve, looking down on the glittering lightshow of a large city. Dawn had not yet begun to brighten the horizon.
Well, perhaps things were looking up. This definitely could be LA. If so, he had a few hours to stonewalk closer, or simply walk, and find Molina's office.
And he would have a little while before the Black Robes found him again. It usually took them some time to get a fix on him. The Italian villa was an exception, since they knew to watch for him there. But at this point they had no idea where in the world he had gone. Eventually they would show up again; they always did. But he at least had some breathing room.
His life, for the better part of a year, had been lived in these small snatches of time, in between attacks.
