Chapter Twenty
“Get moving, you bum,” someone muttered as Meg stirred awake.
She held her head. It was pounding as she pushed the newspaper off her body. Someone had covered her with it. As her eyes came into focus, she stared up. It was night, but she could barely see the stars. There was too much smog and too much light. The stars were so bright outside the cottage. Where was she? Only a few nights before, she and Cian had lain out in the grass, watching the stars and talking. Cian had told her his people’s stories for the constellations, and they’d made love on an old quilt beneath the nighttime sky. She couldn’t even see the stars now.
“Cian,” Meg said, suddenly sitting straight up. It did nothing for her headache. “Beck.” His name came out as a whisper.
“Miss, is there something we can help you with?” The question came from a middle-aged woman who stood at the end of an alley beside a well-dressed man. They stared down the short street where Meg had been lying against a huge metal dumpster. The smell was making her sick.
“Where am I?” Meg asked.
“How much have you had to drink, Miss?” the man asked. The woman elbowed him and sent him a dirty look. He sighed and answered Meg. “You’re in Fort Worth, Texas. You’re not far from Sundance Square. Did you get lost?”
Oh, boy, had she gotten lost. The trouble was she needed to get lost again.
“Did you see a big guy walk by? You couldn’t miss him. He’s really tall.” Meg struggled to her feet. She stretched her stiff limbs and wondered how long she’d been out.
“I haven’t seen anyone really tall,” the woman replied, shaking her head. “Do you need a homeless shelter? There’s a very nice one on Cypress Street.”
“I don’t need a homeless shelter,” Meg said between clenched teeth. “I need a Planeswalker demon.”
The man took the woman by the hand and forced her away. Meg sighed. She would have to watch her mouth on this plane. She walked out of the alley. It was half a block to the beginnings of Sundance. It seemed like she was moving through a dream. It was all familiar, but no longer hers.
Or was it? She looked at herself in the window of a restaurant. She was wearing brown pants, a white shirt and a black vest. She had on boots. It was what she had put on to go see the Miller’s wife. She wasn’t crazy. She had really gone to another plane and married two beautiful men. They needed her. Tears welled in her eyes.
What would happen to them? What happened when the bond was formed and then shut off? And the demon had said there was a hag after them. How was she going to get home?
Meg was pulled from her panic as she was jostled by a passerby. The sidewalks were crowded. Meg found herself pulled along with the throng. It was a mix of teens going to the movies, adults out on dates, families seeing the sights, and singles looking for the clubs and bars that dotted the square. They all had one thing in common. Not a one of them would believe she was the queen of another plane with two husbands who’d just come into their legendary powers and were now at risk because a fucking demon had carted her off the plane, again.
Meg walked for what felt like an hour in a daze. She had nothing. She had no way to get home. She didn’t even have a coat, and while she’d been gone, it had gotten cold on the Earth plane.
She walked until the crowds were gone. She walked through the quiet streets of downtown in abject misery. She would have to accept the fact that there was no way to get home. She couldn’t find the door to the Faery plane. Even if she could, how would she open it?
A great wave of sadness rolled over her as she finally had to face the fact that Beck and Cian were gone. They were separated from her by that door as surely as death could ever force them apart.
Would they think she’d run? Meg couldn’t stand that. She loved them.
Meg stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and leaned against the brick of the building. The tears would be held off no longer, and she sobbed into her hands. How could she be here, so far from them? She still felt them. They were in her heart. How could the distance be so great? The demon had been right. She was a nothing on this plane. She had been someone on the Faery plane, and not because she had been queen. It wasn’t that Beck and Cian had loved her, either. Their love hadn’t made her into the woman she had become. Her love had.
Loving them had made her a better person. Love had made her heart into a huge thing with the capacity to forgive even herself.
She would hold on to it. She would hold on to the love she had for them. If there was any way to get back to them, she would find it. There were vampires on this plane. She would find them. The vampires would help her, if they didn’t eat her first.
Meg felt better now that she had a plan. It was an insane plan, but it was a plan. She felt the satchel on her hip and sighed in relief. The vampire computer was still in it. Its shape and weight were a joy to her. She wouldn’t be able to connect to the vampire version of the internet, but there were thousands of DLs on every subject imaginable that she could read. Dante had shown her some anthropological articles from a scientist who had spent years on the Earth plane studying the vampires here before his contract with the demon had come up and he’d been dragged to hell.
Vampires were serious about science.
She stood. It was getting really late. She had to deal with the fact that she didn’t have a home anymore. She needed to find a place to stay. Where had the lady said the homeless shelter was?
Turning back to the sidewalk, a neon sign caught Meg’s eye. Her mouth dropped open as she realized that her salvation might not lie with a bunch of vamps.
She stood before a small store. The neon sign proudly proclaimed its name.
Dellacourt Electronics
If it’s broke, we’ll fix it
And it looked like someone was still home. There was a light on in back of the store, and someone was moving around.
Meg banged on the door with all her might. She pounded and pounded, not caring that she sounded completely insane.
“Dante!” she yelled with a mad sort of glee. “Open the door, Dante!”
After a long moment, she saw a very familiar face peek out the window. His eyes were narrow with suspicion.
“We’re closed, crazy lady,” Dante said. He pointed to the little sign in the window that had been turned to “closed.” He obviously thought she was insane, but he was still Dante. His eyes had moved straight to her chest, and he was boldly checking her out.
“I’m here for sex, Dante,” Meg said plainly.
Dante opened the door immediately.
“Really?” he asked. He was slightly thinner than his vampire counterpart and was dressed like a nerd, but he was Dante all the same.
“No, idiot,” Meg said with a tearful smile as she pushed her way in. She couldn’t help it. She threw her arms around him. “But I am so glad to see you.”
He hesitated only a second before letting his hands find her waist. “I’m glad to see you, too. How do we know each other? If I owe you money, I’m really sorry. I don’t have any. Did my sister send you?”
“No, Susan didn’t send me,” Meg said. “You don’t owe me money, and get your hand off my ass, Dante. I’m a married lady. And you’re going to help me get home.”
Dante stepped back. “You want me to call you a cab?”
“If only it were that easy. I need a hell of a lot more from you, but I know you’re up to the task. It’s fate, Dante. Do you believe in fate?”
“Not for a minute,” he said with a shrug. “Although, if it gets me something, I’ll believe in fate, sweetheart. I can believe in anything you like.”
Meg grinned as she reached into her satchel and pulled out the unassuming computer Vampire Dante had given her. “How about vampires?”
Human Dante made a couple of vomiting sounds. “Oh god, no. Not one of those. Please go away, Twihard. Do you know how many comments I’ve gotten since Twilight came out? I know I look a little like him, but seriously, not even for tits like yours will I put in plastic fangs and act like I can sparkle.”
Meg snorted and rolled her eyes. “First, you do not look like him. Not even close. Second, I told you, I’m married. Third, please sparkle for me. I think it would be funny. Now, shut up and listen. I think you’ll find this very interesting.” She handed the computer to him.
Dante took the tablet. “This is an iPad. I think it’s nice that you have one. Can I go to bed now?”
Meg saw her mistake. “Let me turn it on.” She flipped a switch and the menu came up. The menu in this case was a holographic female. As she’d been programmed by Dante, she was gorgeous and wore very little clothing.
“How may I help you, Dante love?” She also had a very sexy voice.
“Holy shit,” Human Dante swore. “Where the hell did you get this?”
Meg smiled. Now she had him.
* * * *
Dante Dellacourt shoved a hand through his red-gold hair. It was long, hanging past his earlobes. Normally it didn’t bother him, but he was pretty sure it made him look grungy in front of the pretty woman sitting in his store. Not that perfectly combed hair would have helped. He smoothed his hands over his slightly wrinkled Lex Luthor for President T-shirt. Why couldn’t he have done some laundry? And why did it matter? The chick hadn’t come to try to date him.
He’d been listening to the craziest story he’d ever heard for the last hour and a half. The redhead was hot, but completely insane.
She thought vampires were real. She also believed in faeries and demons and hags, though Dante was getting that this wasn’t the kind of hag who dressed up nice to hang around gay bars. She was sure she’d been to another plane of existence. According to her, there were many planes, some easily accessible, some not. She was bonkers.
Except he’d been playing around with the computer she’d given him. It was far more advanced than anything he’d ever seen before. No one in the industry was even talking about a system that could do the things this one could. It was a supercomputer. It held so much information that Dante couldn’t even think of a name for the storage capacity. It blew past terabytes. It had a connection to an internet but claimed there was no connectivity here. Dante had played around and gotten the system to acknowledge his wireless connection. The superhot hostess had been unimpressed. She’d asked him why he’d connected her to such a primitive system and promptly downloaded the whole of the global internet. The whole fucking thing.
“Where did you get this?” Dante asked.
The girl named Meg rolled her eyes. “I told you. Your vampire counterpart gave it to me.”
Dante remembered that part. There was a Vampire plane. He was a royal there. He worked for Dellacorp, and it was huge corporation. His vampire counterpart obviously had it better than he did. He ran this shitty two-bit store and was going nowhere fast. The other Dante sounded like a guy who got an enormous amount of tail.
“As far as I can tell, this thing is nuclear powered,” Dante said in amazement. “How can that be possible? And I think it took my blood a couple of minutes ago. It thinks I’m not edible. What’s up with that?”
“Dante, well, the other Dante, he goes to a lot of different planes.” Meg sipped the coffee he’d made and continued. “The computer is set to test potential food sources. I’m afraid it’s decided you’re toxic.” She looked at the screen. “Too much pollution, and wow, apparently you have a lot of sugar in your system.”
Dante unselfconsciously ate the second half of the Twinkie he’d been downing. It didn’t bother him that vampires wouldn’t consider him proper food. In his mind, it was a plus.
“The vamps here would probably love you, though,” Meg said with a bright smile. “According to what I’ve read, they’re not as picky here.”
“Good to know,” Dante said, chugging a Dr Pepper. “So, let’s say I buy this whole crazy story of yours.” He looked around again for the hidden cameras. If he had any friends, he’d think they were punking him. “What exactly is it you want me to do?”
She chewed on her lower lip nervously. “I need you to help me get back.”
“And how am I supposed to do that, sweetheart?” Dante asked. “I’m not exactly a Planeswalker demon.” That was what she’d called them. “How am I supposed to find this door?”
Her hazel eyes filled with tears. She really believed the story. “I don’t know. I just know that you’re here, and you’re going to help me. I believe it. It wasn’t random coincidence that I found myself here. It was fate.”
Dante wasn’t so sure about that, but there was no denying that technology. He wanted it. If he had to do some internet searches to placate the girl, he would do it. Besides, she really was hot. Maybe when she realized there was nowhere else to go, she would turn to him. He could comfort her. It was a nice prospect. His brain started working overtime.
“Okay, so no one knows where these doors are, right?”
Her pretty hair shook around her shoulders. “No, most of them are well-defined. People move easily through them. The door to this plane is hard to find, and I think there’s more than one. I don’t know why. Some people have gotten through. That’s why we have vampires on this plane. And, according to the computer, werewolves and shapeshifters and the Loch Ness monster. She comes from a waterworld. It’s very sad.”
“Nice,” Dante said. She was taking loony to a whole different place. “So we have to suspect that this door is here in the city. Is it open all the time?”
“More than likely not,” Meg explained. “The other doors aren’t always open. I read that some people can open them at will, but others have to wait. The door from my village’s plane to the Vampire plane opens three times a day. I think we can assume the door here is something like that. It’s somewhere in the city. I don’t think I was out very long.”
“So there’s a door to a different plane right here in Fort Worth,” Dante mused. “It can’t be in an office building. Someone would probably notice something like that. I bet weird stuff happens around it. It’s a long shot, but this baby is pretty cool.” He pushed the button that brought up the menu. “I need to run a search.”
“Of course, master,” the computer said with an inviting smile. “Which pornographic material should I seek out today?”
Dante grinned. “Really? You can do that?” He felt Meg’s stare. “Nothing like that. I want you to run a search on all strange happenings in the city of Fort Worth, Texas. Use the human internet, the primitive, sucky one. Check things like police reports and news articles and even blogs. I need a list of locations around the city where strange things happen.”
The hostess bowed her head and winked out of existence to start her search.
“There,” Dante said to Meg. She was looking at a photograph he kept on his desk. “We’ll have someplace to start soon.”
Meg’s face had gone soft as she looked at the picture of four men in tuxedoes. They were all smiling, with their arms around each others’ shoulders. Dante knew the photograph well. He’d taken it himself. “The twins are my cousins. They’re from Ireland.”
Meg nodded and almost reverently touched the picture. “Their hair is short. It looks good, though. Why are they wearing tuxedoes? And who are the other men? Do they have other brothers here?”
Dante was used to women drooling over his very attractive cousins. No one paid him a bit of attention when Beck and Ci were around. It gave him great pleasure to tell her where the picture had been taken. “Nope. Just a sister. Those men are Beck and Cian’s husbands. I took that picture at their commitment ceremony.”
Meg’s eyes widened, and she dragged him forward by the neck of his T-shirt. Her teeth were clenched and she shook him lightly. “You have to get me out of here. This isn’t my home. I don’t like it here. Everything is wrong here.”
“Jeez,” Dante said, holding his hands up in submission. “I’m working on it, babe. Why don’t you go upstairs? I have an apartment up there. You can take the bed. I’m going to stay up and play with this a little more. I don’t sleep much at night, anyway.”
Meg nodded. She looked exhausted. Crazy or not, she’d obviously had an emotional day. “Thank you, Dante. I really appreciate this. I know it will work. It has to.”
Meg started up the stairs. He wasn’t so sure it would work, but he was starting to believe her story. He knew one thing, though, as he stared at the magnificent machine in front of him. His life had just changed forever.
* * * *
The forest was filled with her laughter.
“You can run, Cian,” the hag’s voice said. It seemed to echo through the trees. “But you can’t hide.”
She was wrong, Cian realized as he struggled along the river. He could hide. The trees themselves would aid him. He just had to get deep enough into the forest. It was hard because he carried his brother’s weight as well as his own. Only the traps he’d been able to set as he ran had saved him from suffering Beck’s fate so far.
In the distance, he could hear the hag’s frustration at another wall of green she couldn’t get around.
They should have known, Cian cursed himself. They should never have left Megan alone. One of them should have been with her at all times. Now she was gone. The thought made Cian’s heart hurt. If what the hag had told them was true, Meg was lost to them.
Trying to find Meg was what had led them to Liadan. When he and Beck had discovered their wife missing, they panicked. She wouldn’t have left them, so they knew something had happened. Finding Niall’s body had been a terrifying moment, but they knew she wasn’t dead. They would have felt her death deep in their souls. One thing was certain, though. She was very far away.
It had been rumored in the village that Liadan used to know a little something of witchcraft. Cian and Beck had been desperate enough to ask if she knew of any way to seek out their wife. Cian had been wary of the woman, but he was so desperate to find Meg that he’d allowed himself and Beck to walk into a trap.
She’d been smart to strike at Beck first. The arrow had slammed into his body the instant they walked into the forest where Liadan had promised to attempt a locator spell. That wasn’t the spell she had used.
Beck had easily pulled the arrow from his shoulder, but the damage was done. The arrow held a spell to pull the magic out of him. Cian just missed getting hit by the one meant for him. Beck had quickly succumbed to the spell. All of Beck’s strength had been sucked from him. What Liadan hadn’t counted on was that it wouldn’t transfer to her. Beck’s magic had a handy place to go.
It had gone straight into Cian.
Cian’s brain felt like it was going to explode. He wasn’t built to handle both his and Beck’s magic. Every instinct in his body told him to hide and sleep. He needed to find safety and lay down so his body could rest. It was the only way they would survive.
Cian struggled because his brain was processing so much that it was difficult to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. He took a deep breath and pushed on. Liadan wouldn’t stop to give him a break. She would follow him until she caught him.
Rain began to fall, and Cian realized he was doing it. Beck’s magic was his to call upon. Cian willed the storm to become a hurricane. That would slow the hag down. Cian’s shoulder ached from Beck’s weight, but he walked through the gale untouched as the world whipped around him.
He saw a small hunting cabin through the trees and immediately slowed the winds down. It was perfect, but it wouldn’t be if it was in chunks of wood because a storm tore it down. Cian made it into the small structure and gently laid his brother on the dirt floor. His hands were shaking as he did what he needed to do.
Within seconds, the cabin was engulfed in green. Inside, the cabin went pitch black as the world receded under a wall of vines and thorns. It was thick, and the trees themselves had orders to protect this place.
Cian could hear the storm he’d begun rattling the world outside. He fell to his knees and was grateful for the darkness. There was nothing but darkness now, and it would stay that way unless someone could find a way to bring Meg back to them.
As the hopelessness of his situation hit him, Cian lay down beside his brother. His body knew what to do. Beck had gone into a fugue state. He wouldn’t wake unless their bridge returned. Only Meg could save them. Only Meg could give Beck back his strength and Cian back his mind.
“Come back to us,” Cian prayed as sleep overtook him.
Outside the small cabin, the storm roared on.