Canyon told Predator to open the door again and Timber guided the dispatcher out, still kissing her. He twirled her slowly down the hallway, then broke the kiss. He picked up her hands and kissed them while she melted.
“Same place tomorrow,” he told her. “Text me when you go on your break.”
She smiled at him, gave him a kiss on the cheek, then walked away. Timber watched her go, then he scanned the hallway until he found the same camera Mac had flipped off. He gave it a thumbs up, then went back to the tunnel door and put his eye up to the retina scanner. It opened and he went in.
Canyon laughed, shook his head, and returned to his work.
4—Abigail
Abigail White opened her eyes, waking up and coming instantly alert. She was lying in her sleeping nook, which was a bed hung four feet below the ceiling in the attic of Kurzwell Townhouse, Abigail’s home in Serenity. Her bed hung suspended because it was the safest way for her to sleep, offering her the most protection from being found by the demon in her slumber.
Abigail fished a remote control out from under her pillow and pressed a button, which lowered the whole bed to the floor. She pushed to her feet, feeling cranky and sore, her mind swirling with thoughts of everyone she hated. The list was long, and she muttered viciously about it as she made her way past a display wall of magical whirligigs and curios, toward the tiny stairwell that led down to the third floor. Crimson-colored haze slid across the floor all around her, like smoke on water. Abigail paid it no mind.
Carefully, she picked her way down the creaky stairwell, opened the door at the bottom, and entered an immaculate bedroom with an antique dresser and a neatly made bed. Here, there was no haze on the floor except the tendrils that followed her out of the stairwell. She hurried across the room to another door—which led past a walk-in closet into a bathroom, where she undressed, kicking off her slippers, then removing her sleeping gown and the satin wrap around her hair. She cleaned herself slowly, meticulously, brushing her ancient teeth, washing her face and body, then setting her hair in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She applied various oils, herbs and lotions, quietly muttering to herself. Her life was complicated, and she had to keep up the patter to herself, or risk losing the thread.
“Sage is in treatment. Paisley is with Mina and Rissa. Benld is running the inn. I’m due out there at 5. Markham better remember what I told him about the passageway.”
Abigail finished her morning ritual, then walked into the large closet, stopping just inside the door at her ring rack for her wedding rings, putting three on the ring finger of one hand, and three on the ring finger of the other. She moved in further, past clothes and shoes lining both walls. She pulled on a tan satin slip, then stepped deeper into the closet to check her notes to herself, left on a corkboard on the wall.
‘Cleancaskimmediately,’was the only note there, and it was a strange note, because she’d cleaned her cask last night before bed, just as she always did, but she didn’t pay it any mind. This had happened before and there’d always been a good reason.
Abigail headed even deeper into the closet and picked out a vintage powder-blue skirt suit with three-quarter sleeves and giant fur cuffs. She dressed methodically, adding pantyhose and vintage, lace oxford shoes. She dropped her laundry down the chute, then made her way deeper, passing several intact fox pelts designed as stoles. They hung on hangers, faces clipped to tails.
A recliner sat near the back wall, nestled between two walls full of clothing. Abigail sat in it and put her feet up, thinking she would just rest for a moment or two, while some silently busy part of her mind knew she was sitting for another reason. Next to the chair, on the wall, was a glittering square of metal—she reached over and pressed her palm to it, like she’d done thousands of times before. A chime sounded, then a small, half-sized door swung open. Crimson haze leaked out, sliding along the floor, collecting at the base of the recliner.
BAM.
Something hit Abigail on the top of the head with enough force to rock her head to the side. She cried out and held her head with her hands as she was filled with power and knowing.
She quieted and dropped her hands to her lap, taking deep breaths. Her chest burned with her mark, but she ignored it. She reached into the darkness of the opening behind the small door and retrieved something. It was hercask, her most valuable accessory, a fox pelt she wore each day. She fashioned it just-so around her shoulders, then got up out of the chair. Coffee could wait. The day was a significant one and she had important business to attend to as soon as possible. She walked out of the closet, across the room, and right back up the attic steps
At the top of the steps, she stopped to catch her breath, then she headed for her custom-made rolltop desk, her shoes kicking up whirls and eddies of crimson smoke—which was known as power without form and called ‘vvyst’. It tended to collect around her and stick to her, which she didn’t mind becausevvystwas so very useful… and since most people couldn’t even see it. Magic was nothing more thanvvyst, sent to do one's bidding in creative ways. It was only when someone couldn't see thevvystthat they called it magic.
Vvystcould be harvested from the Meadow or the Pravus because both siphoned it from The Haven.
At the desk, Abigail knocked twice on the top of it, and the rolltop rolled up. There sat a thick book with a canvas cover, and on the cover was stamped an image of a blackfheargacha,a ritualistic object of power worn on a fingertip.
Abigail opened the book and paged through it until she found what she wanted—an essay about three-quarters of the way through the book titled,The Taking.Today’s date was given, and below it:
The Taking is a multi-world incident concerning worlds Ula, Orion, and Dilmet. On Ula,ahuman child will be taken bythe demon to use as a bargaining chip for the life of avodvod’smate. The child will be recovered, unharmed. The mate will be killed in the child’s stead, but will be given another chance at life, causing all doors to be open for a time—
Abigail froze, her eyes stuck on the last word she read, as something inside her rose up and told her to be still. It was her fox, alerting her to danger coming fast—the demon ripping his way between dimensions.
Khain,she thought, willing herself to control her fear of him.He’s in the Ula—close.She didn’t move. She didn’t even breathe. She listened and she opened her senses wide.
From somewhere outside, a child screamed. Abigail’s sense of self-preservation fractured. She turned and ran for the steps, with only one thought on her mind—Paisley.
The scream abruptly cut off. The sense of danger receded as the demon withdrew back into his own hell world.
Behind her, something lit up brightly, confirming Abigail’s worst fear. She stopped at the top of the steps and turned around to look. Along one wall were three pieces of fabric hung like flags. The last one in the row was glowing, indicating it had activated.
Paisley’s veil being activated meant only one thing.She’d been taken to the Pravus.
Abigail clutched her chest and made her way down the steps as fast as she could.It wasn’t supposed to be Paisley!At the bottom, she rushed through the bedroom into a wide hallway, then down the hall to an elevator. She got in and mashed the button marked 1, muttering ‘fast, go fast.’Vvystflowed down her finger, onto the button and into the panel, creating crimson smoke and white sparks. The elevator abruptly dropped, and she was thrown into the back wall,vvystautomatically surrounding her in a puff like an airbag, protecting her. The elevator stopped with a lurch, and the dooropened. Abigail hurried out into the front hall and through the oversized front doors, past white columns and down the front steps. She didn’t stop until she made it to her golf cart parked near a shed.
The late October air was frigid, and the trees in her yard were bare, but there was no snow on the ground. She never thought about a coat, fear heating her from the inside out.
She climbed into the golf cart, then zoomed down the path to the lower road, where several of her progeny lived. In under a minute, she pulled up at her granddaughter Mina’s house, which was where four-year-old Paisley stayed during the three days each month that her mother, Sage, another of Abigail’s granddaughters, was ‘in treatment’, meaning Abigail had her locked up tight.
