Beyond The Door (8 page)

This tunnel wound around and up. Joe felt a
dull pain spreading from his back to his left side. His gun in his
right hand he reached around with his left and touched his side. It
came away wet with blood.
Damn...asshole got me with a
knife
. He felt it soaking his black shirt. A door appeared at
the other end and he recognized Nona standing in the center of
it.

"Come
on
!" she said.

Nona? He cleared the opening out after Rhonda
and then looked back to see Nona wave her hand over it. The
door...vanished into the side of the house.

They were in the garden, on the far north side
of the house, near the parking for employees. Nick appeared next to
him and put a hand on his arm.

"I'm fine."

"I'm afraid not—I can smell the blood,
detective," Nick slipped an arm under Joe's. "You're loosing a lot
of it."

"Joe?" Rhonda came up to him and moved behind
him. "Shit!"

"No time," Nona said and started motioning them
away from where the door had been. "I've summoned a fog that'll
keep us hidden if we stay quiet. Nick, can you carry Joe out of
here?"

"Wait a minute," Azrael said as he stood in
front of Nona. "Why the fuck are
you
here? Weren't you the
one that put him here? How do we know you're not steering us into a
Society trap?"

"Because I'm not. You'll just have to trust me.
Just like I have to trust
you
—and I don't
like
you."
Nona thrust her ample chest up into his face. "How do I know you're
not here to make sure we fail so that Zoë stays in the Abysmal
plane forever?"

"Because that would be stupid."

Nona pointed away from herself toward the
growing fog. "Move!"

Joe laughed as he tried to keep up with Nick.
He stumbled through the hedge maze in the back of the garden.
Someone better know where they're going. Or
we're—

"Sorry Joe. Suck it up—gonna have to carry
you." Nick stopped and lifted Joe over his shoulder.

The detective wanted to protest the treatment,
but unfortunately, he was losing consciousness as he heard gunfire
in the distance.

Oh God let us make it out of here
in one piece.

Alice

SHE
was glad they chose the building in
Between to reassemble the pages. It was a neutral area, created by
the now deceased Phantasm, Sophia. Unfortunately it was also where
Maureen had taken Revenants to kill them, including
Jason/Mephistopheles, but it was also where she'd opened Darren and
mangled the
Grimoire
.

"It's also where Zoë disappeared, isn't
it?"

She looked over at Darren. "I was thinking out
loud again, wasn't I?"

He smiled. "No...I was being intrusive. I'm
anxious. I want to be out of here and I hate not being able to open
my own damn eyes and see."

"Rhonda thought it best if you were
anesthetized. You were in so much pain when Maureen—"

But he reached out and put a hand on her arm.
His was warm. He was always warm. And it was a welcome sensation in
her world where the five senses were a thing of her past. "I know.
Trust me. I remember that." He squeezed her arm and then sat back,
his gaze traveling to the two story book partially buried in the
shore's sand. "Will she be able to do it?"

"We don't know, Darren. If she has the pages
she needs, then yes."

His intense gray gaze fell on her. "Alice...if
this doesn't work. If...for some reason I don't survive
it—"

"Nonsense. You'll survive. You're strong. And
you have all of us—"

"But if I don't, will you promise me that if
you're able, you'll keep looking for her? That you'll find her?" He
took her hand this time and gave her his warmth again. "And you'll
let her know that I love her?"

Alice felt her own heart touched at his
sincerity. As a Familiar, she was herself, but also a part of him.
She knew when he was keeping secrets, and she knew when he was
honest. In his heart there was nothing but love for Zoë. This boy
would give up his own life for her.

She just hoped that girl realized
it.

She returned the squeeze and leaned to him to
move a stray strand of his hair from his face. "I will promise you,
Darren that I will do everything within my power to make sure we
find her."

Rhonda

THIS
is it
. And it
was. A return to the very spell she'd used in Rodriguez' little
torture chamber so many months ago. The day she'd altered that damn
book, and the man she loved, forever.
And here I am, asked to do
it again, to once again save his life.

They were back in the same room she and Nona
had found him in before, when Zoë had run off with Azrael to look
for Dags and Jason. The other Revenants were nearby—guarding what
they believed was the key to restoring the Abysmal plane. Daniel
had come to her before she started and confirmed what she'd already
suspected—the borders were closed down.

No one knew why. There was a subtle panic
setting in amid the different Abysmal creatures still on the
physical planes, now cut off from their homes with no explanation.
Was it because the Phantasm was gone? Was it because there was a
void?

Was it because of Zoë?

When Daniel and Azrael returned from the
Abysmal plane, Daniel became ill. Though his body could tolerate
the Outer Planes because of the First Born in side of him, the
excursion took a heavy toll and he ended up in the Society's care
for several days. Even before Nona talked her into allowing them to
look after Dags.

Stop it...you need to
concentrate.

Dags was asleep on the slab and not tied down
by straps or chains. That wouldn't be necessary. She'd unfastened
his pajamas and laid them open to expose his chest. The book glowed
softly through his skin, as if it were just beneath the surface,
though she knew it was just an illusion. She'd already started the
spell in her mind and shut out the world to call forth the book the
same way she'd set it inside. 

Nona was the only other one in the room with
her—the only one she'd allow.

The light on Dags' chest sparkled as it rose up
through his skin, a plain book—

No...it was
different
now. Different
than it'd been when she'd held it in the Physical Plane. The cover
had changed. It was still worn and aged, but instead of a blank
surface it now had burned into its center the symbols tattooed on
Dags' palms. They glowed with an soft red light, and a blue white
light light.

"The Familiars' marks," Nona said in the
shadows caused by the book as it floated above him, and then opened
to reveal its pages.

Rhonda reached up into her Veil and retrieved
the pages found by the others. There were twenty in all. But were
there enough to bring Dags back to her? To her they were all blank,
empty pieces of parchment.

Once she'd removed them from the plastic bag,
the bag returned to the Veil and she stacked the pages neatly on
top of the open book. She repeated her request to see the words
written three times—and she said them in Sanskrit—in hopes that
would speak to the book.

At first nothing happened. The pages lay in a
stack atop the glowing book—

Until the top page's surface blurred and words
in the tiniest script she'd ever seen appeared as if written by an
unseen hand. She waited until the page was finished and pulled it
to the side. The page sparkled and melted down into the book and
then vanished.

The next page did the same thing, only when it
finished she felt the tug that it wanted to be on the other side of
the spine. She moved it to the left and it followed the same path
as the first one.

Each page took time—nearly twenty minutes each
as the invisible hand re-wrote the magic contained inside the
Grimoire
.

When the last page melted down into the book,
all the pages fanned to the right, and then to the left, as if
those same hands were flipping through to find something
specific.

And then the book opened to a different page,
near the dead center. Intuition told her the book was waiting on a
page to slip inside of this spot—and it was an important page. She
just couldn't tell what.

Then the page facing her lifted as if something
were embossed itself into the grain of the paper. It formed a face
that looked a lot like Dags! Once it was finished, it was a
parchment paper maché version of him, looking up at her. "There is
still a page to be returned."

The voice was his, but it also echoed. The lips
didn't move, but she heard the voice in her mind. She cleared her
throat so she could speak to it. "Those are all I have."

"I am missing one more, granddaughter of
Helios. Without it—I cannot protect the Guardian."

She ignored the title the book gave her—it had
her curious. "You...protect the Guardian. Who...are
you?"

The face didn't answer right away. Instead the
pages flipped to the right, and to the left. They stopped on a page
where the handwriting moved, as if it were constantly changing.
When she looked closely at it, she realized there was only one
word.

Zoë.

Anger and irritation flared in her chest. "What
is this?"

"This is the Guardian's heart. This is not what
you seek—" and it sounded surprised.

She resisted the urge to rip out that page and
toss it aside. But she wasn't sure what would happen if she did. It
could in fact be the page that kept Dags' actual heart pumping.
He'd become so much a part of the book. It held his soul along its
spine.

"No, it is not," she finally said as the pages
flipped again. "But I do not have the page. Is it the final
page?"

The image reappeared and then recessed back
into the sparkling parchment. The book closed and without her
bidding, as if making the choice on its own—or retreating from the
anger that radiated off of her from inside—it sunk back down into
his chest.

Nona caught her as the spell ended and the
physical world came rushing back to her. Rhonda caught her breath
and realized she'd been sweating. "Rhonda?"

"I'm okay...did it work?"

"I don't know. You've been at it for over four
hours."

Four hours?!

After wiping her face with a rag Nona gave her,
she moved back to the slab where Dags lay. His color was a hundred
percent better. Did his face have expression again? She wanted it
to.

The door opened and the other Revenants filed
in, but they stayed back behind Nona.

Azrael came up to the slab. "Book-boy
back?"

Rhonda turned to answer the symbiont, but
another voice beat her to it. "I see tall, dark and milky-eyed is
still kicking."

It was a voice she hadn't heard in months. She
looked back down at Dags—his eyes were open and he was smiling up
at her. He reached up and put a finger to her cheek and she
realized she'd started crying. Rhonda grabbed his hand and kissed
it. He was warm, and he was smiling...at her!

"Thank you," he said as he returned the squeeze
on his hand. "I owe you, Rhonda. And I'm gonna be in debt for the
rest of my life."

Nona joined them and put a hand on his lower
leg. "We're just happy to see you like your old self
again."

Dags pushed himself up on his elbows and looked
around at the faces looking at him. Rhonda wanted to take him away
with her and protect him. Never let them get their hands on him
again. 

His expression shifted from delight to what
looked like pain. 

"Dags," Azrael stepped forward. "What is
it?" 

"I can't…" he put his hand to his chest and
started panting. "I can't get to it. I can't even feel
it." 

"Get to what?" Nona said. "What's wrong. Are
you okay? We need to get you to Joe so you can heal his
gunshot." 

"But I don't—" he turned a stricken fact to
Nona. "I don't know if I can." He reached out and grabbed her hand
as she moved next to him. "Nona…I can't touch the book…I can't
access the
Grimoire
!" 

To Be Continued in 

GEIST: A Zoë Martinique Investigation, Book
5