Chimera Part 1/?
Title: Chimera
Author: nymphaea1
Rating: R (eventually- this I'd call PG)
Pairing: Adam/Kris, others
Warnings: I don't think this section requires warning, but the violence in the next section will be sexualized enough that it may be triggering for some people.
Author's Notes: Elves. Also, enough crack to kill a whale. Fair warning--this is a WiP. I don't post WiPs without the intention of finishing them, but as finals are approaching I cannot promise regular postings either.
Summary: In 1683 the first boat carrying fey landed in Virginia. Receiving ill welcome from the young American colonies, most of the passengers and the ones who followed after chose to go west, eventually establishing the new kingdom of Western Faerie in the Pacific Northwest. Distrust of Faerie persisted in the east and traveled outwards as the United States and its ally, the Kingdom of Texas, spread west into the lands bordering those claimed by the fey.
Two years ago Kris Allen, lost to himself after a bitter three-year war, answered a newspaper ad and headed west to the chaotic borderland known as South California. He'd hoped, in a land with no loyalties, he could find respite from his own divided nature. What he found was something else.
The slanting late-afternoon light hit the rooftops in deep golds and oranges, signaling the fast approaching sunset. Up above the Rim, the light would last for hours yet, but in the Canyon daytime was a fleeting thing. Down on the ground, the perpetual twilight that eddied in the deeper canyons between the buildings was already shading into real night, and that could mean nothing good.
Not that anything about this entire fiasco had gone down right from the minute he’d started down this road, Kris thought. Lil had tried to persuade him they’d find another way, but they both knew that was useless. When the Triad’s men asked for something, you gave it to them, or else found a compelling reason to get out of South California. Permanently.
He walked along behind Mike and the fey they’d hired as their guide, keeping his eyes on the deeper shadows as they traveled. The twisting paths couldn’t be called roads, despite the constant press of traffic. Unlike the semi-ordered lines of downtown LA, the buildings here just sprung up like mushrooms of wood and glass, seemingly on no grander plan than the will of their creators. New construction heaped haphazardly on old, with everything built on angles that were subtly wrong. Stairways spiraled up out of the middle of the walkways into nowhere, and doors opened onto brick walls. The whole thing gave off a pervading sense of creeping insanity, or at least a means of looking at the world that had nothing to do with more fragile human sensibilities. Kris had had a headache from their first hour here, and now it was a pounding agony just behind his eyes.
He heard Mike’s slightly unhinged wail of laughter and dragged his eyes off the architecture long enough to see he’d fallen dangerously behind. He jogged ahead, heart thumping hard in his chest. Being down here alone was a bad idea even at noon, even in the semi-sanitized tourist areas. Getting separated from his group now, this deep into the Canyon with night falling, was tantamount to suicide.
He shouldered his way past Mike until he could walk easily beside their guide.
“It’s getting late,” he said. He could hear the spiraling tension in his voice and clamped down on it. There were too many things down here that could sense human fear, and worse, feed on it.
The thing beside him stopped in its rolling gate and turned its head towards him. Or at least what Kris thought of as its head. It was kind of hard to tell in a creature who as far as he could tell was made out of glued together stones and random street trash.
“Yes,” it said. Its voice was surprisingly high and almost pleasant.
“Perhaps we should find shelter.” He gritted his teeth, hating to admit so much vulnerability, but knowing it must be said. “Something with shields against the current.”
It paused, hopefully to think this over.
Mike crowded up behind him. “Hey, man, we have more money if-“
Kris stomped backwards on Mike’s foot, hard. Everyone knew the second rule of dealing with the fey was you kept precisely to your bargain. Any attempt to renegotiate could be taken by the fey as a renege of their deal and it would feel quite within its rights to abandon them here-and that was just best case scenario.
Once upon a time Mike would have remembered that. But that was before a certain field in northern Texas and definitely before the drugs and indulgences in less savory magic had raised the wall between the present Mike and the one who’d been before the war even further.
The first rule of bargaining with the fey was not to do it at all, but that was a rule neither of them had ever mastered.
Mike fell back, confusion all over his face. Kris put a hand on his shoulder and tried on what he hoped was a patient smile. It felt wrong on his face, but Mike must have seen something reassuring. He nodded and straightened, something like his old sense of purpose strengthening his face.
The fey had watched all this in perfect silence. It bent backwards as if to assess the dying light above and then downwards until it nearly touched the ground. It hissed sharply and drew up again.
“The currents bring ill tidings.”
“Great,” Kris said. “That sounds just about perfect.”
“We must go,” it said. “Quickly.”
~*~*~*~*~
Their guide led them at a hard pace through spiraling twists between the buildings that made their former progress look straightforward. Despite the breakneck speed, it was nearly an hour before they reached their final destination. By that point it was full dark on the ground, with just the faintest light wreathing the upper heights of the tallest buildings.
The place the fey led them to was just about the strangest Kris had seen in seven years of dealing with Faerie. There in the center of a broad space between taller buildings stood a neat white house in the midst of a carefully tended lawn. No tilted walls, no oddly placed windows or ominous doors. Even in the dark, Kris could make out all these features in the nightmare shapes of the structures around it. This one was absolutely, perfectly normal. It was the kind of thing you could see back home in Conway. There was even a split rail fence draped in the fragrant canes of climbing roses, and by the front porch there was a bright patch of daisies nodding in a non-existent wind.
It was really kind of terrifying.
True, final night was only moments away and Kris could feel the rising wildness in the currents even through the heavy weight of cold iron he’d draped close to his skin that morning in preparation for their descent. Their guide stepped under the rose trellis at the border of the property and Kris had no choice but to follow. The iron charms went ice, ice cold as he stepped through, but that stopped the second he reached the lawn.
Once inside, the darkness receded instantly. It wasn’t precisely day, but there was a comforting light that suffused everything. The scent of the roses was very strong.
“Sanctuary,” their guide said. Kris didn’t think he was imagining the relief in its voice. “It is for humans and their companions only.”
Kris looked around the bright yard. He’d heard of these places, just never expected to find one here. The roses really should have given it away. It took powerful magic to establish one of these, and even the Sidhe would have trouble dislodging one once deeply rooted.
“Come,” their guide said. “The garden doesn’t like it when visitors linger.”
Kris followed Mike inside, telling himself he was just imagining things when the daisy heads rotated to track their movement. The inside looked like a dive bar, complete with half-broken neon signs that buzzed depressingly on and off. The noise from the people crammed inside threatened to deafen him almost immediately, and he was grateful when Mike found a small table tucked away at a slight distance from the rest of the crowd.
A bored waitress with green skin and bright blue hair appeared almost immediately. Kris just pointed to the first thing on the menu and collapsed into his chair.
The weight of the currents on your mind wasn’t something you could ever notice directly, except when it was suddenly gone, as of now. You’d feel something dragging at the edges of your perception, only to have it disappear when you tried to figure out what it was. But then an hour later you’d collapse, exhausted, and couldn’t figure out why. And that was just in Los Angeles, where at most you’d get hit by a stray wisp off the main line. You could get used to those-after two years of living in LA Kris hardly noticed them. But the Canyon was something else again.
The Canyon lay directly in the path of the strongest source of wild magic to be found outside of true Faerie itself-the Brix-Higgins Current. The Current started out fifty miles to the north of LA at the present border of Western Faerie and poured down along the California coast and south into Mexico, where it eventually met the Gulf of California. Rumor had it that it continued on along the sea floor, and that sailors hundreds of miles to the south had spotted wild faerie parties dancing to its light beneath the waves of the Pacific.
That much uncontrolled power was something to be avoided even farther north, where the Current was supposed to be more placid. Down here closer to LA it tended to interact somewhat . . . oddly with the local plate tectonics. The Canyon itself was proof enough of that. Once upon a time the land around here hadn’t differed at all from the rest of the hills around LA. But then in 1832 a small tremor had sent off echoes in the Current that rebounded back on the earth itself, building into the most serious earthquake on record. The earth had ripped open in a long jagged stretch about thirty miles south of what was then the much smaller town of Los Angeles, forming a 10 mile canyon that was half a mile deep and at least twice as wide. That was the Canyon.
“Kris,” Mike said. Kris blinked and dragged himself more upright in his chair. Their guide had disappeared, but for the moment he couldn’t much care.
“What are we going to do? About the àillidh uisge I mean.” Mike sounded worried.
The àillidh uisge or, more crudely, the Shining Water. The entire reason they’d ever come to this place.
“I don’t think Mr. Seacrest is going to wait for it much longer,” Mike said when Kris didn’t answer.
Kris dragged his hand up his face and through his hair. “No, I don’t suppose he will.”
Eight days ago Mr. Seacrest’s assistant had called the main office at the mission asking to set up a meeting so he could come by to congratulate them on their charitable work. Of course they’d been delighted to meet him. Everyone was eternally delighted to meet Mr. Seacrest. He was the Triad’s boy and, in chaotic South California, their word was the closest thing to actual law that they had.
He’d arrived in a shiny Lexus bearing Lady Abdul’s shield. That told them they were to pretend this meeting was purely for pleasure’s sake. It was when he came under Lord Cowell’s arms that you knew you were in trouble.
He’d strolled into the main office in his shiny expensive suit and carefully maintained tan. There had been something to the sharpness of his smile that had Kris wondering if he was still entirely human. The Brix-Higgins ran only a bare ten miles east of downtown LA, and Kris had heard that living in that close proximity could change people after a decade or two. He’d seen enough evidence of that with the people Danny tended to down at the mission.
Seacrest had poured out no end of praise for “their little operation”. Kris supposed some of it was even genuine. Every person they helped off the street was one less runaway teenager or broken Faerie addict to scare away the tourists and their money. Seacrest had offered them the moon-new appliances for the kitchen, a new wing with enough space for twenty additional cots. More staff. Everything that they eternally needed and never had enough of.
In return for all of this bounty, the Triad just wanted one small insignificant tithe. A vial of the distilled wild magic known as Shining Water.
Danny had agreed, smiling fatuously the whole time. Kris didn’t blame him. The message was clear-they’d been left alone too long, and now they must prove their allegiance or go. It didn’t matter that to be found carrying àillidh uisge was one of the few capital crimes in LA. Or that the Triad could have oceans of it at their disposal with the crook of a finger.
Danny and Lil had fought with Kris for hours, but in the end they’d given in to what they’d all known from the beginning. The only place you could get what they were after was the only place more lawless than LA itself-and of the three of them, Kris was the only one who had any hope of descending down into the Canyon and returning in one piece. So Kris had called Mike, the only person of his acquaintance who was literally insane enough to know someone down here-and now here Kris sat, time running out, no convenient bottles of magic in sight, with darkness settled in outside and no way out.
“We’ll figure something out. Our guide promised he’d get us to a dealer,” Kris said.
Mike nodded, though he looked pretty unconvinced.
Their waitress returned with their food and two glowing, purple fizzy drinks. Kris remembered enough from his days at the Academy to know nothing served within the confines of a Sanctuary spell could harm those who passed under the rose bower-but he left the incandescent beverages to Mike.
His food looked and tasted like chicken strips and sweet potato fries. He figured it was best for everyone concerned if he pretended that’s what it was.
Kris was half-way though his food when he realized Mike had stopped eating and was scanning the room. There was a remembered professional sharpness on his face that left a hollow ache in Kris’s chest. It had been a while since he’d seen Mike so connected to anything.
“Do you think someone in here might be a dealer?” Mike asked.
Kris sat up sharply and looked around. The room looked packed full-there were at least a few dozen people in here and a mixed crowd it was, too. At the very least someone in this crowd should be able to point them in the right direction.
“Could be,” Kris said.
Mike nodded slowly. “I’ll ask around.” He gave Kris a pat on the shoulder and stood. “You might as well hold down the table. I remember how much you hate crowds.”
It was true, he did. He’d been used to the comfortable spaces back home. Not even the years spent in the close barracks of the Division or in claustrophobic LA had been enough to cure him of it. Once upon a time it had been Mike’s element though-still was in his own way.
He watched Mike for a few minutes-the open smile, the easy way he threw gold down on the bar and ordered another round for his new “friends”.
In his two years out here, he didn’t think he’d ever felt so intensely, wretchedly alone. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, wishing he didn’t feel so perfectly useless.
“Hello, Kristopher. I have been waiting for you.”
The voice was low, feminine, not one he recognized. His eyes slammed open and he went for the steel blade he kept strapped to his thigh.
The bar was gone. Instead, he found himself sitting in a wild garden that stretched away into the horizon in all directions.
There was a girl sitting before him with masses of red curls and a dress made of spring leaves. Her skin was nearly the same color as the dress.
“What-how did you bring me here?”
Her face crinkled into a pout. “You walked under my bower, silly.”
The roses in her hair were the same from those which had guarded the entrance.
“The Sanctuary,” he said, relaxing just a little.
She clapped her hands together and smiled at him like he was a clever child who’d just performed a favorite trick.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. It was only the truth. There was a conservatory back in Arkansas his mother had liked to go to. Kris used to take her there, once a year. They’d spend and afternoon walking between rooms filled with flowers. There was one room in particular-a misty rainforest filled with orchids and fragrant spice bushes. This place was like that-only more.
“Thank you-for protecting my friend and me, I mean. I don’t know what we would have done without this place.”
She nodded gravely. “Your friend will see no harm. I give you my word on that.”
His breath caught in his chest. “But not me, I take it.”
She shook her head. “You are needed for something else.”
She reached out, touched his arm, and the landscape shifted around them.
At first he thought it was just another part of the garden, not really any different from where they started out. Then he turned-and fell back with a cry.
Before him, interrupting the lush growth of the garden, was a melting patch of rot. It wasn’t the usual disease he’d seen back on his uncle’s farm, but a growing black mass of reeking oily ooze that was slowly dissolving the plants around it.
“What is that?”
“Someone is using magic that should never have been invented. It is tainting the currents.” The Sanctuary came up beside him. There were tears welling up out of her shining green eyes. “I can heal the garden, but I can’t help him.”
“Help who? I’m sorry-I just don’t understand what you want.”
She took both his hands in hers and pressed their foreheads together. He got a sense of someone else in the garden beside them. Black hair, a flash of pale skin-a rush of laughter so uninhibited and warm you could almost feel it pouring over you like water.
“They are hurting him. He is fighting them so hard, but he can’t last much longer. Not against this. No one can last against this.”
“And you want me to fight that?” He wrenched his hand away to gesture at the black writhing pool that grew even as they watched.
“It is what they are doing to him. It is what he will live in, every day, if you do not get there in time.”
He pushed away from her, denial sharp. “I don’t know who you think I am-I’m not special. I wouldn’t know where to begin fighting that.”
“They have not guarded against other humans. And you are the only one in my garden who might help.”
He looked at the dying foliage, trying not to imagine what that rot would feel like creeping over his skin.
“He is getting weaker,” she said. “Please.”
The tears ran down her face even faster.
“This person-he’s important to you?”
She nodded.
“And you’ll protect Mike?”
“Always.”
He closed his eyes. Opened them, knowing he could never live with himself if he left anyone to that nightmare. “All right.”
She smiled at him, a mother’s smile. A rose from her hair tumbled into her open hand and she tucked it into the front pocket of his jacket.
“So long as the rose blooms, it will help protect you. Follow the guide I will send to you. He will show you the way.”
She bent forward and placed a cool kiss on his brow before he could protest again. He blinked his eyes and she was gone, the pressing noise and bustle of the bar returned.
There was a sharp tug on his jacket sleeve. He looked down to find a muskrat staring at him. Or at least what a muskrat would be if it had midnight blue fur and were the height of a moderate sized dog.
“Help,” it said. The words fit oddly in its mouth as if it were unaccustomed to human speech. “Come. Help.”
There were moments in life where you made choices. In that moment, hands shaking and heart still hammering in his throat, Kris chose to stand up.
Mike stopped him on the way to the door.
“There’s someone out there who needs me,” Kris said.
“Outside? Now? Kris, that’s suicide.”
“I can’t explain. I just-I have to.” He could feel it now, a physical compulsion lying on his skin like a bruise.
Mike’s face twisted up. “I can’t. I can’t go out there. Not out there.”
Kris gripped his shoulder. “No one’s asking you to. Besides, someone needs to find what we came down here for, remember?”
He nodded, shoulders strengthening. “I’ll get it. I won’t let you down, Kris.”
Looking at him, it was as if the last three years hadn’t happened and he was still Sgt. Sarver, the most reliable man in the Fey Division.
Kris felt his throat tighten and had to struggle to speak around it. “I know you won’t, Mike.”
The muskrat tugged at him and he felt himself pulled away, the Sanctuary’s urgency thrumming inside him.
The light breeze in the garden had risen to a storm wind and the daisies tossed wildly about. The black wall at the edge of the lawn held a malevolence that was more than just the simple absence of light.
Kris stopped before the bower that marked the gateway outside. No matter how much he willed it, his feet simply would not move him out into that blackness. Inside was warmth, sanity. Out there-something worse than simple danger if what he’d seen in the Sanctuary’s garden was any indication.
He took one breath, two, and then lurched forward through the gate and into the lurking dark.
Part Two: http://nymphaea1.livejournal.com/42540.html#cutid1
Author: nymphaea1
Rating: R (eventually- this I'd call PG)
Pairing: Adam/Kris, others
Warnings: I don't think this section requires warning, but the violence in the next section will be sexualized enough that it may be triggering for some people.
Author's Notes: Elves. Also, enough crack to kill a whale. Fair warning--this is a WiP. I don't post WiPs without the intention of finishing them, but as finals are approaching I cannot promise regular postings either.
Summary: In 1683 the first boat carrying fey landed in Virginia. Receiving ill welcome from the young American colonies, most of the passengers and the ones who followed after chose to go west, eventually establishing the new kingdom of Western Faerie in the Pacific Northwest. Distrust of Faerie persisted in the east and traveled outwards as the United States and its ally, the Kingdom of Texas, spread west into the lands bordering those claimed by the fey.
Two years ago Kris Allen, lost to himself after a bitter three-year war, answered a newspaper ad and headed west to the chaotic borderland known as South California. He'd hoped, in a land with no loyalties, he could find respite from his own divided nature. What he found was something else.
The slanting late-afternoon light hit the rooftops in deep golds and oranges, signaling the fast approaching sunset. Up above the Rim, the light would last for hours yet, but in the Canyon daytime was a fleeting thing. Down on the ground, the perpetual twilight that eddied in the deeper canyons between the buildings was already shading into real night, and that could mean nothing good.
Not that anything about this entire fiasco had gone down right from the minute he’d started down this road, Kris thought. Lil had tried to persuade him they’d find another way, but they both knew that was useless. When the Triad’s men asked for something, you gave it to them, or else found a compelling reason to get out of South California. Permanently.
He walked along behind Mike and the fey they’d hired as their guide, keeping his eyes on the deeper shadows as they traveled. The twisting paths couldn’t be called roads, despite the constant press of traffic. Unlike the semi-ordered lines of downtown LA, the buildings here just sprung up like mushrooms of wood and glass, seemingly on no grander plan than the will of their creators. New construction heaped haphazardly on old, with everything built on angles that were subtly wrong. Stairways spiraled up out of the middle of the walkways into nowhere, and doors opened onto brick walls. The whole thing gave off a pervading sense of creeping insanity, or at least a means of looking at the world that had nothing to do with more fragile human sensibilities. Kris had had a headache from their first hour here, and now it was a pounding agony just behind his eyes.
He heard Mike’s slightly unhinged wail of laughter and dragged his eyes off the architecture long enough to see he’d fallen dangerously behind. He jogged ahead, heart thumping hard in his chest. Being down here alone was a bad idea even at noon, even in the semi-sanitized tourist areas. Getting separated from his group now, this deep into the Canyon with night falling, was tantamount to suicide.
He shouldered his way past Mike until he could walk easily beside their guide.
“It’s getting late,” he said. He could hear the spiraling tension in his voice and clamped down on it. There were too many things down here that could sense human fear, and worse, feed on it.
The thing beside him stopped in its rolling gate and turned its head towards him. Or at least what Kris thought of as its head. It was kind of hard to tell in a creature who as far as he could tell was made out of glued together stones and random street trash.
“Yes,” it said. Its voice was surprisingly high and almost pleasant.
“Perhaps we should find shelter.” He gritted his teeth, hating to admit so much vulnerability, but knowing it must be said. “Something with shields against the current.”
It paused, hopefully to think this over.
Mike crowded up behind him. “Hey, man, we have more money if-“
Kris stomped backwards on Mike’s foot, hard. Everyone knew the second rule of dealing with the fey was you kept precisely to your bargain. Any attempt to renegotiate could be taken by the fey as a renege of their deal and it would feel quite within its rights to abandon them here-and that was just best case scenario.
Once upon a time Mike would have remembered that. But that was before a certain field in northern Texas and definitely before the drugs and indulgences in less savory magic had raised the wall between the present Mike and the one who’d been before the war even further.
The first rule of bargaining with the fey was not to do it at all, but that was a rule neither of them had ever mastered.
Mike fell back, confusion all over his face. Kris put a hand on his shoulder and tried on what he hoped was a patient smile. It felt wrong on his face, but Mike must have seen something reassuring. He nodded and straightened, something like his old sense of purpose strengthening his face.
The fey had watched all this in perfect silence. It bent backwards as if to assess the dying light above and then downwards until it nearly touched the ground. It hissed sharply and drew up again.
“The currents bring ill tidings.”
“Great,” Kris said. “That sounds just about perfect.”
“We must go,” it said. “Quickly.”
~*~*~*~*~
Their guide led them at a hard pace through spiraling twists between the buildings that made their former progress look straightforward. Despite the breakneck speed, it was nearly an hour before they reached their final destination. By that point it was full dark on the ground, with just the faintest light wreathing the upper heights of the tallest buildings.
The place the fey led them to was just about the strangest Kris had seen in seven years of dealing with Faerie. There in the center of a broad space between taller buildings stood a neat white house in the midst of a carefully tended lawn. No tilted walls, no oddly placed windows or ominous doors. Even in the dark, Kris could make out all these features in the nightmare shapes of the structures around it. This one was absolutely, perfectly normal. It was the kind of thing you could see back home in Conway. There was even a split rail fence draped in the fragrant canes of climbing roses, and by the front porch there was a bright patch of daisies nodding in a non-existent wind.
It was really kind of terrifying.
True, final night was only moments away and Kris could feel the rising wildness in the currents even through the heavy weight of cold iron he’d draped close to his skin that morning in preparation for their descent. Their guide stepped under the rose trellis at the border of the property and Kris had no choice but to follow. The iron charms went ice, ice cold as he stepped through, but that stopped the second he reached the lawn.
Once inside, the darkness receded instantly. It wasn’t precisely day, but there was a comforting light that suffused everything. The scent of the roses was very strong.
“Sanctuary,” their guide said. Kris didn’t think he was imagining the relief in its voice. “It is for humans and their companions only.”
Kris looked around the bright yard. He’d heard of these places, just never expected to find one here. The roses really should have given it away. It took powerful magic to establish one of these, and even the Sidhe would have trouble dislodging one once deeply rooted.
“Come,” their guide said. “The garden doesn’t like it when visitors linger.”
Kris followed Mike inside, telling himself he was just imagining things when the daisy heads rotated to track their movement. The inside looked like a dive bar, complete with half-broken neon signs that buzzed depressingly on and off. The noise from the people crammed inside threatened to deafen him almost immediately, and he was grateful when Mike found a small table tucked away at a slight distance from the rest of the crowd.
A bored waitress with green skin and bright blue hair appeared almost immediately. Kris just pointed to the first thing on the menu and collapsed into his chair.
The weight of the currents on your mind wasn’t something you could ever notice directly, except when it was suddenly gone, as of now. You’d feel something dragging at the edges of your perception, only to have it disappear when you tried to figure out what it was. But then an hour later you’d collapse, exhausted, and couldn’t figure out why. And that was just in Los Angeles, where at most you’d get hit by a stray wisp off the main line. You could get used to those-after two years of living in LA Kris hardly noticed them. But the Canyon was something else again.
The Canyon lay directly in the path of the strongest source of wild magic to be found outside of true Faerie itself-the Brix-Higgins Current. The Current started out fifty miles to the north of LA at the present border of Western Faerie and poured down along the California coast and south into Mexico, where it eventually met the Gulf of California. Rumor had it that it continued on along the sea floor, and that sailors hundreds of miles to the south had spotted wild faerie parties dancing to its light beneath the waves of the Pacific.
That much uncontrolled power was something to be avoided even farther north, where the Current was supposed to be more placid. Down here closer to LA it tended to interact somewhat . . . oddly with the local plate tectonics. The Canyon itself was proof enough of that. Once upon a time the land around here hadn’t differed at all from the rest of the hills around LA. But then in 1832 a small tremor had sent off echoes in the Current that rebounded back on the earth itself, building into the most serious earthquake on record. The earth had ripped open in a long jagged stretch about thirty miles south of what was then the much smaller town of Los Angeles, forming a 10 mile canyon that was half a mile deep and at least twice as wide. That was the Canyon.
“Kris,” Mike said. Kris blinked and dragged himself more upright in his chair. Their guide had disappeared, but for the moment he couldn’t much care.
“What are we going to do? About the àillidh uisge I mean.” Mike sounded worried.
The àillidh uisge or, more crudely, the Shining Water. The entire reason they’d ever come to this place.
“I don’t think Mr. Seacrest is going to wait for it much longer,” Mike said when Kris didn’t answer.
Kris dragged his hand up his face and through his hair. “No, I don’t suppose he will.”
Eight days ago Mr. Seacrest’s assistant had called the main office at the mission asking to set up a meeting so he could come by to congratulate them on their charitable work. Of course they’d been delighted to meet him. Everyone was eternally delighted to meet Mr. Seacrest. He was the Triad’s boy and, in chaotic South California, their word was the closest thing to actual law that they had.
He’d arrived in a shiny Lexus bearing Lady Abdul’s shield. That told them they were to pretend this meeting was purely for pleasure’s sake. It was when he came under Lord Cowell’s arms that you knew you were in trouble.
He’d strolled into the main office in his shiny expensive suit and carefully maintained tan. There had been something to the sharpness of his smile that had Kris wondering if he was still entirely human. The Brix-Higgins ran only a bare ten miles east of downtown LA, and Kris had heard that living in that close proximity could change people after a decade or two. He’d seen enough evidence of that with the people Danny tended to down at the mission.
Seacrest had poured out no end of praise for “their little operation”. Kris supposed some of it was even genuine. Every person they helped off the street was one less runaway teenager or broken Faerie addict to scare away the tourists and their money. Seacrest had offered them the moon-new appliances for the kitchen, a new wing with enough space for twenty additional cots. More staff. Everything that they eternally needed and never had enough of.
In return for all of this bounty, the Triad just wanted one small insignificant tithe. A vial of the distilled wild magic known as Shining Water.
Danny had agreed, smiling fatuously the whole time. Kris didn’t blame him. The message was clear-they’d been left alone too long, and now they must prove their allegiance or go. It didn’t matter that to be found carrying àillidh uisge was one of the few capital crimes in LA. Or that the Triad could have oceans of it at their disposal with the crook of a finger.
Danny and Lil had fought with Kris for hours, but in the end they’d given in to what they’d all known from the beginning. The only place you could get what they were after was the only place more lawless than LA itself-and of the three of them, Kris was the only one who had any hope of descending down into the Canyon and returning in one piece. So Kris had called Mike, the only person of his acquaintance who was literally insane enough to know someone down here-and now here Kris sat, time running out, no convenient bottles of magic in sight, with darkness settled in outside and no way out.
“We’ll figure something out. Our guide promised he’d get us to a dealer,” Kris said.
Mike nodded, though he looked pretty unconvinced.
Their waitress returned with their food and two glowing, purple fizzy drinks. Kris remembered enough from his days at the Academy to know nothing served within the confines of a Sanctuary spell could harm those who passed under the rose bower-but he left the incandescent beverages to Mike.
His food looked and tasted like chicken strips and sweet potato fries. He figured it was best for everyone concerned if he pretended that’s what it was.
Kris was half-way though his food when he realized Mike had stopped eating and was scanning the room. There was a remembered professional sharpness on his face that left a hollow ache in Kris’s chest. It had been a while since he’d seen Mike so connected to anything.
“Do you think someone in here might be a dealer?” Mike asked.
Kris sat up sharply and looked around. The room looked packed full-there were at least a few dozen people in here and a mixed crowd it was, too. At the very least someone in this crowd should be able to point them in the right direction.
“Could be,” Kris said.
Mike nodded slowly. “I’ll ask around.” He gave Kris a pat on the shoulder and stood. “You might as well hold down the table. I remember how much you hate crowds.”
It was true, he did. He’d been used to the comfortable spaces back home. Not even the years spent in the close barracks of the Division or in claustrophobic LA had been enough to cure him of it. Once upon a time it had been Mike’s element though-still was in his own way.
He watched Mike for a few minutes-the open smile, the easy way he threw gold down on the bar and ordered another round for his new “friends”.
In his two years out here, he didn’t think he’d ever felt so intensely, wretchedly alone. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, wishing he didn’t feel so perfectly useless.
“Hello, Kristopher. I have been waiting for you.”
The voice was low, feminine, not one he recognized. His eyes slammed open and he went for the steel blade he kept strapped to his thigh.
The bar was gone. Instead, he found himself sitting in a wild garden that stretched away into the horizon in all directions.
There was a girl sitting before him with masses of red curls and a dress made of spring leaves. Her skin was nearly the same color as the dress.
“What-how did you bring me here?”
Her face crinkled into a pout. “You walked under my bower, silly.”
The roses in her hair were the same from those which had guarded the entrance.
“The Sanctuary,” he said, relaxing just a little.
She clapped her hands together and smiled at him like he was a clever child who’d just performed a favorite trick.
“Do you like it?” she asked.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. It was only the truth. There was a conservatory back in Arkansas his mother had liked to go to. Kris used to take her there, once a year. They’d spend and afternoon walking between rooms filled with flowers. There was one room in particular-a misty rainforest filled with orchids and fragrant spice bushes. This place was like that-only more.
“Thank you-for protecting my friend and me, I mean. I don’t know what we would have done without this place.”
She nodded gravely. “Your friend will see no harm. I give you my word on that.”
His breath caught in his chest. “But not me, I take it.”
She shook her head. “You are needed for something else.”
She reached out, touched his arm, and the landscape shifted around them.
At first he thought it was just another part of the garden, not really any different from where they started out. Then he turned-and fell back with a cry.
Before him, interrupting the lush growth of the garden, was a melting patch of rot. It wasn’t the usual disease he’d seen back on his uncle’s farm, but a growing black mass of reeking oily ooze that was slowly dissolving the plants around it.
“What is that?”
“Someone is using magic that should never have been invented. It is tainting the currents.” The Sanctuary came up beside him. There were tears welling up out of her shining green eyes. “I can heal the garden, but I can’t help him.”
“Help who? I’m sorry-I just don’t understand what you want.”
She took both his hands in hers and pressed their foreheads together. He got a sense of someone else in the garden beside them. Black hair, a flash of pale skin-a rush of laughter so uninhibited and warm you could almost feel it pouring over you like water.
“They are hurting him. He is fighting them so hard, but he can’t last much longer. Not against this. No one can last against this.”
“And you want me to fight that?” He wrenched his hand away to gesture at the black writhing pool that grew even as they watched.
“It is what they are doing to him. It is what he will live in, every day, if you do not get there in time.”
He pushed away from her, denial sharp. “I don’t know who you think I am-I’m not special. I wouldn’t know where to begin fighting that.”
“They have not guarded against other humans. And you are the only one in my garden who might help.”
He looked at the dying foliage, trying not to imagine what that rot would feel like creeping over his skin.
“He is getting weaker,” she said. “Please.”
The tears ran down her face even faster.
“This person-he’s important to you?”
She nodded.
“And you’ll protect Mike?”
“Always.”
He closed his eyes. Opened them, knowing he could never live with himself if he left anyone to that nightmare. “All right.”
She smiled at him, a mother’s smile. A rose from her hair tumbled into her open hand and she tucked it into the front pocket of his jacket.
“So long as the rose blooms, it will help protect you. Follow the guide I will send to you. He will show you the way.”
She bent forward and placed a cool kiss on his brow before he could protest again. He blinked his eyes and she was gone, the pressing noise and bustle of the bar returned.
There was a sharp tug on his jacket sleeve. He looked down to find a muskrat staring at him. Or at least what a muskrat would be if it had midnight blue fur and were the height of a moderate sized dog.
“Help,” it said. The words fit oddly in its mouth as if it were unaccustomed to human speech. “Come. Help.”
There were moments in life where you made choices. In that moment, hands shaking and heart still hammering in his throat, Kris chose to stand up.
Mike stopped him on the way to the door.
“There’s someone out there who needs me,” Kris said.
“Outside? Now? Kris, that’s suicide.”
“I can’t explain. I just-I have to.” He could feel it now, a physical compulsion lying on his skin like a bruise.
Mike’s face twisted up. “I can’t. I can’t go out there. Not out there.”
Kris gripped his shoulder. “No one’s asking you to. Besides, someone needs to find what we came down here for, remember?”
He nodded, shoulders strengthening. “I’ll get it. I won’t let you down, Kris.”
Looking at him, it was as if the last three years hadn’t happened and he was still Sgt. Sarver, the most reliable man in the Fey Division.
Kris felt his throat tighten and had to struggle to speak around it. “I know you won’t, Mike.”
The muskrat tugged at him and he felt himself pulled away, the Sanctuary’s urgency thrumming inside him.
The light breeze in the garden had risen to a storm wind and the daisies tossed wildly about. The black wall at the edge of the lawn held a malevolence that was more than just the simple absence of light.
Kris stopped before the bower that marked the gateway outside. No matter how much he willed it, his feet simply would not move him out into that blackness. Inside was warmth, sanity. Out there-something worse than simple danger if what he’d seen in the Sanctuary’s garden was any indication.
He took one breath, two, and then lurched forward through the gate and into the lurking dark.
Part Two: http://nymphaea1.livejournal.com/42540.html#cutid1