Alysia in Wonderland (4 page)

Alysia took the girl outside the school gates to a side street that revealed the poor neighborhood around them. She felt naked knowing that the armor could retract at any time, and she still couldn’t come up with a plan for finding clothes. On a whim, she gave her old powers a try. Jumping as hard as she could, she probed her senses to take flight on the stolen energy of Euphoria. She jumped extremely high and crossed the street, but she didn’t fly and she didn’t feel Euphoria giving her energy.

She ran along the outside wall of an apartment complex until she reached what looked to be the entrance. Numerous cars drove by, honking and laughing, but she ignored them all and slipped inside, using her speed to reduce the attention.

Sticking to the grassy perimeter of the slummy apartments, her mind ran to the girl, whose parents had to be worried sick by now.
How am I going to get her home without being thrown into jail?
she wondered.

She saw a dark building on the corner with no cars outside and assumed that it was an unoccupied area of the apartments. She slid between the parked cars and up the stairs, then tried the lock, which felt bolted. Laying the girl down on the floor, she brought up the sword, then cut through the lock as if it were as soft as overripe fruit.

Alysia collected the fallen handle and the girl, then slipped inside before using a chair to wedge the front door shut. She left the lights off for fear of someone seeing it from below and coming up to investigate. Plus she didn’t know how many other demons were walking around in disguise. The house was furnished and looked lived in, so she hurried to the bed and lay the young girl down.

She whispered, “Someone will come and get you, little one, and you will get home to your parents.” She hated to leave her, but it was too dangerous for a child, and her chances would be better without the company of a demon hunter. From the way the apartment was set up she knew that a woman lived there, and she went through her closet to borrow a set of clothes.

By the time an hour had passed, Alysia was back on the streets, walking as if she had a destination and wasn’t as lost as she actually was. She was dressed in dark pants, boots, and a jacket with a white tank-top beneath it all. Strapped below her jacket with three belts pulled taut was her sword, hidden but close at hand.

Unlike her own time when she had her own powers, Alysia couldn’t sense the demons or the portal she was meant to close. She assumed that it was near the school, since Lenorela’s bridge had brought her there and since those demons had been conducting some form of ritual.

She slipped back onto the school grounds and searched for the gym. If there was any place where she could post up, an abandoned locker room would be it. Gyms weren’t much different from when she was in high school so she easily found the basketball court and a convenient groove behind the collapsed bleachers.

Alysia was tired and needed to rest. She removed the jacket and sat below the boards. She laid back and threw it over her face and was passed out as soon as her eyes closed.

~ * ~ * ~

The sounds of laughter and loud teenage voices woke Alysia, and she got up quickly to throw on the jacket. It was early, and several kids had snuck into the gym and were hanging out near her location. She crept below the bleachers to the other side and slipped out onto the campus proper. The sun was coming up and the students were amassing, ready for the bell to force them into homeroom.

It was becoming too thick for her to hide, especially since she looked out of place. Too old for high school—not to mention her odd clothes—and too old to be a parent or teacher. Clutching a grate, she swung herself up and climbed to the roof of the cafeteria. She found an area near the center where she couldn’t be seen and sat cross-legged to meditate.

It would be an extremely long time till the school day was over, and the prospect of catching demons had to wait until evening. She looked off in the distance to the portable classrooms and wondered why the one from last night was still intact.
Didn’t I see that thing catch on fire?
she thought.
And where are the bodies and the evidence of my fight? Did I dream up the fight and rescuing that girl? Am I dreaming about being back on Earth, now?

No, this is real
, Alysia decided
.
Despite everything she learned before Yalem, this new world seemed to negate all of those lessons.

She wondered if like this school, demons had been at her university, paving the way for Chaos’s army. They had come by way of sea while she and her best friend were in class, and in the blink of an eye she was fighting for her life. Still, she missed those days before the attack. She had so many goals and aspirations. Alysia’s eyes grew tired and heavy, and she felt them close involuntarily.  Before she knew it, she felt herself falling, through the roof, floor, and eventually the world.

She emerged in the room below Lenorela’s library, and was back in the robes she had started in. The witch was pacing the room looking slightly annoyed and when she saw Alysia appear, she reached down to help her up.

“Chaos saw you,” she said quickly. “He saw you and now he’s wondering how it was that you were there.” Alysia gave her a puzzled look and the red woman gestured at her impatiently. “He saw you because I neglected to tell you to stay out of sight—”

“You mean the demons? He saw me through the demons?”

“Yes, CeeCee, you killed his followers, and he got a good look at you—his stolen general. I am such a fool. I didn’t foresee this, and he now knows that you are working for the Erts.” She pointed to Euphoria and rubbed her face. “He also knows that you are in league with me due to the robes that you fought them in.”

“So what does that mean for us, Lenny? Are we out of luck?”

Lenorela sighed, took her hands, and said, “No, not yet, but we need to be extra careful now, CeeCee.”

“There was a girl—”

“A trap,” Lenorela snapped. “That was a future member of his
Bloody Garot
, set up to be a vessel inside of your world. In time, he will use her to complete the bridge and open the first portal into your world.”

Alysia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So, the whole time I was in possession of the portal, and…” She stared at Lenorela in disbelief. “You mean to tell me that I was supposed to kill that little girl in order to stop Chaos from destroying my world? But … she was just a kid!”

Lenorela bowed her head in resignation. “None of this is going to be easy for you, CeeCee, but I have all the confidence in the world that you will figure it out. What were you expecting the portal to be? A big, giant gate of some sort?”

“Either that or an object, Lenny, not some innocent high school kid. She had to be no older than fifteen years old. There’s no way I was going to…” She kept on shaking her head slowly. “Did Chaos do this because he assumes that no Ert would be willing to kill her?”

“He knows that we investigate and make absolute certain before we take the life of anyone not of this world, CeeCee. The ritual you interrupted will delay him for a time until he can corrupt more faculty members. Investigating that young girl would have taken you too long, and I know what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t matter how far back you travel into her world.”

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter?”

“I mean that she will always become a portal less than a day of the demons corrupting her. Go back in time and it may be someone else altogether; this is how he is certain that you won’t have time to stop him. You kill her next time, she will be innocent, and some other young kid becomes the one you were meant to destroy. Am I making sense to you?”

“Yeah, and it sucks. How are we to know who to get if he’s playing games with people’s lives?”

Alysia thought back on one of the nights, when she was kidnapped by demons and made to be part of a strange ritual. They had oiled her limbs and dressed her in purple, and something large was being summoned during the entire process. At the time she didn’t know about this whole portal business, and she shuddered at the prospect of being in the same place that this young girl was.

Lenorela saw her brooding and placed her hands on her hips, clearing her throat to get her attention. “Back on your world, during your time. How was it that you knew when a V’Kosha was near?”

Alysia said, “Euphoria gifted me with the touch. I could feel out the demons and travel to them in a manner of seconds.”

“It makes sense that you were more attuned with the magic in your own world. In time it will happen here, and then you can do wonderful things in whatever world you’re in. But CeeCee, I need you to be a lot quicker next time. Not quick with your sword, but quick with this.” She jabbed her finger at her forehead to indicate her brain.

“Can you send me back? Let me try again,” she asked.

“No, not for a while, I’m afraid. We can open the bridge, but only when it calls us, and right now it isn’t saying a thing.”

~ * ~ * ~

It was early when Alysia set out to walk the streets of Wildemont. She had decided that if she was going to be living there for a long time, staying cooped up inside of Lenorela’s home was not going to be ideal. Better to get out of her box, talk to people, and see how life was for the local demons.
Well, not demons
, she thought.
I need to stop calling them demons since it’s considered derogatory.

The morning air reminded her of the winters she used to spend with her aunt and uncle in Atlanta, Georgia. While it was in the south, it would still see a drop in temperature and sometimes they would get a bit of snow. But it wasn’t the kind of cold she was used to in New York.

The sky was a brilliant golden color with its edges dark from the black clouds that now rolled away to remove the assumed night. Yalem’s skies were still a large mystery to Alysia. The ball of light that she called their sun did not rise and set like the one on Earth. This one faded like a special light bulb, and the darkness that came at night was a series of clouds that collected to shut out all light.

The rocky road brought back memories of her first trek to Lenorela’s house, when she’d kept her bare feet off the main road and walked on the soft dirt and sand. Now that she was in boots she crunched along happily, staring down as she went, curious as to how it was built.

Tiny stones of varying sizes comprised the pathway, but it wasn’t as if they poured the rocks down and leveled them out for walking. Each stone had been lined up with precision in a neat line of rows. She tried to imagine squatting or leaning over to place each one of them down in as neat a line as they were.

There was no way a human being could have done it, and she wondered what manner of machine would be able to place the rocks so neatly. Beyond the ability of someone putting the rocks down in a straight line, she wondered why it was deemed necessary for them to do it this way. What purpose did a perfect grid of closely placed stones serve that a scattering of small rocks wouldn’t?

She looked over at one of the buildings and noticed for the first time the artistry of the walls. Like the road, the outer wall showed the impression of stones that had been notched together with precise detail. One large rock would have a series of smaller ones placed around it to form a block, then some mud or cement had been poured to make it into a perfect square. These blocks, columns, and panels were then used to build each and every one of the buildings. The doors too were disallowed from being mundane, each being a wooden carving of complex patterns or some sort of fine art.

Alysia felt as if she was in a museum, since she wanted to stop and examine everything. Nothing in Wildemont was mundane or plain, and it was all so excellent that she couldn’t just walk by.

As she leaned over to look at the design of an exterior doormat, she heard a noise behind her and she spun with her hand resting gently on Euphoria’s hilt. A demon was on the stone road, watching her curiously, but there was nothing about him that was hostile or intimidating. His garb reminded her of an old monk—back in her world—but instead of beads, he wore a strange serpentine creature draped over his shoulders. He was bald and pale, with a comically long nose. It was shaped like a sausage, which made it obscene, especially since it was red where the rest of his face was white.

“Hello,” Alysia said, and the man smiled, revealing a row of jagged, sharp teeth, reminiscent of a shark.

“Were you looking for me?” he asked in a high voice, and the smell of rotten fish smashed into her nostrils and did a number on her brain. The smell was so foul that she almost stepped back but she fought against it, not wanting to appear rude to the funny little man.

“No. What would make you think that I was looking for you?” she said, glancing about to see if anyone else was around.

The strange man said, “Well, you are in front of Ariel’s house. At the hour when Wildemont knows that Ariel is out fishing. If you aren’t here for Ariel then why are you at his door?”

“Erm… who is Ariel?” Alysia asked, and the man’s face twisted into a mask of rage.

“I AM ARIEL!” he snapped.

Oh wow. An actual person that speaks in the third person. This is hilarious
, Alysia thought. She stifled a smile and spoke. “I was admiring the artwork on your rug, Ariel. It’s quite impressive. Who is the local artist and architect that does this stuff? I would love to meet him.”