Belladonna

  “I suppose you want the whole story,” Michael said after Lynnea delivered the food—thick stew, slices of fresh bread generously buttered, a white cheese, and some round black objects in their own small bowl.

  “Be careful biting into the olives,” Sebastian said, pointing at the small bowl. “They have pits. Eat while it’s hot. Then I’ll listen.”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. He dug into the meal, but he studied the street and the people while he ate. Strange place. There was a mean edge that reminded him of the streets around the docks in Kendall, and certainly enough taverns…

  A beautiful woman strolled toward the table, gave him an assessing look, then smiled in blatant invitation. Michael felt the heat of a blush as he looked down at his meal and pretended not to see the invitation.

  …and there were brazen streetwalkers.

  “What do you think of the carnal carnival?” Sebastian asked, sounding amused.

  That was the perfect way to describe the Den of Iniquity, Michael thought. “It’s interesting.”

  “You’ve never seen a succubus before?”

  “A what?”

  “The female who made you blush.” There was something about Sebastian’s smile that was sharp and just a little mean.

  “Is that what you call streetwalkers here?” Michael asked, looking up to meet Sebastian’s eyes.

  “No, that’s what we call female sex demons.”

  Michael’s jaw dropped. He’d heard of such females from a few sailors who had docked at Kendall, but he’d figured the men were just telling tales.

  Sebastian’s smile got a little sharper. “A male sex demon is called an incubus.” He raised his koffee cup in a mocking salute.

  “Lady’s mercy,” Michael whispered.

  “More koffee?” Lynnea asked, coming up to the table. She looked at Michael and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

  “He’s just wondering why a sensible woman would want an incubus for a husband,” Sebastian said.

  “That’s because he’s not female,” Lynnea replied as she refilled their cups. “If he was, he’d know why a sensible woman would want you for a husband.”

  Michael took his time stirring a lump of sugar into the koffee, trying to decide if prudence or curiosity would win the battle of whether or not he kept his questions to himself.

  Prudence had no chance of winning.

  “Those men,” he said. “They’re going into a brothel?”

  Sebastian nodded.

  “Do they know the woman…the female…is a…”

  “That’s why they come to the Den.”

  Teaser set a bottle of whiskey and two glasses on the table. “Philo figured it was time for this.”

  “Philo was right,” Sebastian said, his eyes never leaving Michael’s face. “Teaser is an incubus. As far as the women who cross over to visit are concerned, he’s one of the Den’s assets.”

  Michael glanced up at Teaser. “Are you a Justice Maker, too?”

  Teaser laughed. “Having one wizard in the Den who can call the lightning and sizzle people is enough. I’ll stick to making women very happy and leave the other part to Sebastian.”

  Well, Michael thought when Teaser strolled away, that told him what sort of “deadly magics” Sebastian could wield.

  Sebastian poured whiskey into both glasses, then set the bottle aside and rested his forearms on the table. “Now. Tell me your story, Michael the Magician, and make it a good one. Your life depends on it.”

  I’ve no doubt of that.

  Michael took a sip of whiskey to give himself time to think. Where to begin? And how much would Sebastian believe when none of the things that had happened recently seemed believable?

  So he started with meeting Captain Kenneday and hearing about the lost fishing boats. He told Sebastian about the letter that had come from his aunt that contained the riddle she had heard in a dream. The hand holding the whiskey glass trembled as he talked about that haunted piece of the sea, and his voice broke when he got to the part about his aunt being injured in a fire and his learning that Caitlin Marie had disappeared. But his voice held steel and fear when he recounted seeing the monster, and of his battle of wills with that evil in order to choose the darkness that would claim him.

  Throughout the telling, Sebastian never moved. Just watched him with unnerving intensity.

  “So that’s how I ended up with the Merry Makers, and they decided to let you decide,” Michael said. He tossed back the glass of whiskey and poured himself another to fight the chill that was back in his bones.

  Sebastian picked up his glass of whiskey and sat back. “You don’t know the incubi and succubi, but you’re familiar with the Merry Makers?”

  Michael nodded. “Ran into them once before, in the early days of my wandering. They liked my music, so they let me go.”

  “Are there any other demons in your landscapes?”

  “In my country, you mean?”

  Sebastian tipped his head, as if considering. “A person’s landscapes can hold many places, so I have a feeling we aren’t talking about the same things. But we’ll go with your way of looking at the world—for now.”

  Michael frowned. “What country is this?”

  “This landscape is the Den of Iniquity.”

  He huffed in frustration. “But it has to connect to something!”

  “It has borders with the Merry Makers’ landscape, as well as the waterhorses’ and the bull demons’. There are stationary bridges to several daylight landscapes.”

  Michael braced his head in his hands. “One of us has a brain fever.”

  “No, one of us has spent his life in the part of Ephemera that was shattered the most during the battle between the Guides of the Heart and the Eater of the World. And the other has probably moved through landscapes all his life without realizing it.”

  He stared at the table. At some point the dishes had been cleared away, but he couldn’t remember who had done it or when. His mind went blank, and in that moment of restful emptiness the things he’d seen recently, the things he’d said, and the things he’d been told drifted through that emptiness and came together to form a new pattern.

  “This vanishing from one place and appearing in another,” he said slowly, as if feeling his way. “You don’t see anything strange about it, do you?”

  “In this part of Ephemera, you gamble with your life every time you cross a bridge,” Sebastian replied. “So, no, I don’t see anything strange about your crossing over from one place to another. At least now we know where the Eater of the World was last seen, and that’s more than we knew before.” He pushed his chair back. “Come on. You look ready to fold.”

  Michael nodded. “I could do with a bit of a wash and some sleep.”

  “You can use our room at the bordello, since Lynnea and I will be staying at the cottage. I’ll come fetch you in the morning and take you to Sanctuary.”

  “Sanctuary?”

  “The next step in your journey to answer the riddle.”

  Michael stood up, but didn’t follow Sebastian when the other man started to walk away from the courtyard. “Sebastian Justicemaker?”

  Sebastian stopped and turned to face him.

  “Do you know the answer to the riddle?” Michael asked.

  “I should,” Sebastian replied. “I’m the one who sent it out through the twilight of waking dreams.”

  His heart started beating harder, faster. “Then you know how to find Belladonna.”

  “I know how to find her. But whether or not you can find her…” Sebastian shrugged. “That’s what you’re going to find out.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Michael looked at the creatures waiting in the street, then pulled Sebastian back inside the bordello and firmly closed the door. The pushed-in faces and tufted ears made the things look like mangy but somewhat loveable critters—if a person overlooked the razor teeth, the powerful arms and upper bodies, and the curved talons that could gut a man with on
e swipe. And that was just the front half. The back half looked like a draft horse version of a bicycle, complete with saddlelike seat, but lacking wheels. Of course, since the things were floating above the ground, the lack of wheels wouldn’t trouble them. But it was that last detail that was a little too much for him.

  “That’s the transportation you arranged?” he asked.

  “Demon cycles,” Sebastian replied too agreeably.

  “You expect me to straddle one of those things and put the family jewels within reach of its teeth and claws?”

  Sebastian’s lips twitched as he glanced down at Michael’s groin. “Is that what you’re packing under your belt?”

  “You know what I mean. Don’t you?” He wasn’t going to make assumptions about what these people did or didn’t know. Not after having breakfast with Teaser and hearing the incubus’s ideas of how the world worked.

  “If they were interested in any organs, it would be your heart and liver, not your penis,” Sebastian said, opening the door. “Come on. You’ve got a ways to go today.”

  “Well, isn’t that just grand,” Michael muttered as he followed Sebastian.

  When he swung a leg over the demon cycle, he wished Lynnea and Sebastian had found him some broken-in hand-me-down clothes rather than these new ones that felt a little too stiff to be comfortable. Or maybe it was his feelings that were a little too stiff. He could count on one hand the times when he’d had a truly new garment in the past dozen years, and here they were giving him a whole new set of clothes. And he hadn’t done any luck-bringing on his own behalf to bring it about!

  Then he scolded himself for being ungrateful. He was a stranger from another land who had dropped in among them with a story of a lost sister and a battle with a terrible monster. Instead of running him out of town, they had given him clothes and a place to stay, had loaned him a travel pack and filled it with basic supplies, and were cleaning up his gear from its dunking in the bog so that it would be ready for him when he got back from this bit of the journey.

  If he got back from this bit of the journey.

  None of them said it, but it was there, unspoken, under everything they did say.

  He might have enjoyed the new experience of riding a demon cycle if he really believed Sebastian and Teaser’s assurance that the creatures didn’t harm the people they’d agreed to transport.

  He didn’t consider “they usually don’t eat their passengers” to be sufficient assurance. “Demon cycles are safer to ride than waterhorses” wasn’t much comfort either since the whole reason the horse-shaped demons gave humans a ride was to drown their victims.

  But if he survived this and found his way home again, he’d have a story that would buy him a meal and a bed in any inn he chose to stay at, and an always-full glass in any pub he walked into.

  When they reached an odd spot in the dirt lane, Sebastian told the demon cycles to stop, then looked at Michael. “Which way do you want to go?”

  Michael studied the land ahead as best he could in the available moonlight. The dirt lane ran straight ahead, but the odd spot was nothing more than a bump of road that formed a half loop, reconnecting to the straight lane. At the midpoint of the half loop were two boulders set far enough apart to allow a wagon to pass between them.

  “What’s the difference?” Michael asked.

  Sebastian pointed to the straight lane. “If we go on that way for another mile or so, we’ll reach the border that connects the Den to the waterhorses’ landscape.” He pointed to the half loop. “That’s a stationary bridge that leads to Aurora, which is where we have to go in order to reach Sanctuary.”

  Michael stared at Sebastian. “I’m in a part of the world that’s nowhere close to home. I know that. I can feel that. But you’re saying that a mile down the road I can pass between a couple of stones and end up within walking distance of a village I’ve stopped at once each season for the past ten years?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  He’d met some crazy people in his travels, but he’d swear by the Light that Sebastian wasn’t one of them. Which meant he could be back in Elandar, no more than a long day’s walk from Dunberry. Not that he’d go to Dunberry. Not anymore. But…

  “If I make that choice, I won’t find Caitlin Marie, will I?” Michael asked.

  “Probably not.”

  And I’ll never find Belladonna. An unshakable certainty rang through him. If he didn’t make this journey, he would never find the woman who haunted his dreams.

  “We’ll go on to Sanctuary.”

  Sebastian nodded. “Best clear your mind of everything but the thought that you need to cross over to Aurora.”

  “Teaser said these stationary bridges only go to specific places, so you can be certain of where you end up when you cross one of them.”

  “Nothing is that certain in Ephemera,” Sebastian replied. He tapped the demon cycle on its shoulder. “We’re crossing over to Aurora.”

  “Do we need to hum a particular tune?” Michael asked.

  The demon cycles jerked to a stop, and they and Sebastian looked at him with the same quizzical expression.

  “I had to hum a note when passing between the Sentinel Stones in order to get from the Merry Makers’ bog to the Den,” Michael mumbled, feeling his face heat as Sebastian continued to stare at him. “So I just wondered.”

  “That spot between the Merry Makers’ landscapes and the Den is a border, not a boundary,” Sebastian said.

  Michael’s only response was a lift of his shoulders to indicate the explanation lacked any useful information.

  “A boundary requires a bridge,” Sebastian continued blandly. “A border is a place where two landscapes connect without need of a bridge. They’re usually marked with stones just to make it easier to find the spot.”

  “So what was the humming all about?”

  Sebastian shrugged. “They might have had a reason for you to do it, but it had nothing to do with reaching the Den.”

  “That ripe—” Michael caught himself and considered the wisdom of roundly cursing one demon in the presence of another, larger demon. That he was riding. Not to mention that the man escorting him was at least part demon. “As you say, there was probably a reason.”

  “Indeed.”

  He could hear the laughter in Sebastian’s voice. Fine. Grand. Let the ripe bastard laugh at him. Wouldn’t be the first time someone had laughed at him.

  “Aurora,” Sebastian said to the demon cycles.

  Aurora, Michael chanted silently. Aurora. We need to reach—

  Sebastian and the demon cycle passed between the stones and vanished right before his eyes.

  “Lady of Light!”

  Even though he’d done this twice now himself, seeing someone else disappear was more frightening somehow. If he’d had time, he would have jumped off the demon cycle, but they were passing between the stones before his brain could tell his body what to do.

  Then…

  “Arrgh!”

  Michael ducked his head and closed his eyes against the sudden daylight. When he could see again, he looked around—and swallowed hard.

  They weren’t in the same place anymore. Close enough by the feel of the land that, if he’d been walking a circuit back home, he might have considered the distance between the two places as a reasonable bit of travel. But nothing was reasonable in this part of the world, and it finally started to sink into his heart and brain that he was a lot farther from home than could be measured by something as simple as distance.

  “Does that still lead to the Den?” Michael asked, tipping his head to indicate the straight lane.

  Sebastian shook his head. “Follow the lane from this side and it will take you to the road that goes to the neighboring village, which can be reached without using a bridge. When the Landscaper initially altered the landscapes a few weeks ago, there was a border between Aurora and the Den. A bit unusual since one is a daylight landscape and the other is dark. But it turned out a b
order was a little too easy to cross, so a bridge was put in to keep the mothers in Aurora from worrying overmuch that their sons—or, worse, their daughters—would be slipping over to the Den.”

  “But some still do.”

  “Some do.”

  “If that’s a stationary bridge, why can’t all of them go the Den?”

  Sebastian smiled. “Even with a stationary bridge, you have to resonate with the landscape in order to cross over.”

  He heard the message. “You’re saying I resonate with the Den.”

  Sebastian tipped his head in acknowledgment. “Like I told you last night, no one comes to the Den by mistake. Shall we go?”

  Michael didn’t see the signal Sebastian gave the demon cycles, but as they neared a tidy cottage, the creatures swung to one side, keeping to the edge of the cleared property before heading into the woods. The cycles followed a footpath, the kind of shortcut that was made by friends and neighbors in order to reach each other’s houses instead of taking the long way around. At a fork, they followed the part that curved to the right. When the path ended, Sebastian hesitated, then swung away from the house and grounds that must have been the usual destination in order to reach another path that ran through another patch of woods.

  The demon cycles finally stopped on the edge of a clearing with a pair of stones Michael was starting to recognize as a bridge.

  “Whose house was that?” he asked.

  Sebastian dismounted and walked toward the stones, leaving Michael little choice but to follow.

  “My aunt’s,” Sebastian replied. “My cousin Lee has a cottage nearby.”

  Probably reached from the left-hand fork in the path. “And your cottage is the one near the bridge between Aurora and the Den.” When Sebastian nodded, Michael felt a pang in his heart. Family living in the same village, their homes connected by well-used paths in the woods. Distant enough for privacy, close enough for comfort. And not together out of need or duty, but because they enjoyed each other’s company. What would it be like to live that way instead of following a pattern of rootless wandering?