Demon Demon Burning Bright, Whisperings book four (7 page)

Curious, I crossed to the door in the
corner. It opened to a large, empty, dusty windowless room with a
rickety wood staircase on the north wall. Investigating seemed
pointless; it was just a regular room with access to the second
floor.

With no reason to linger and before I could
deliberate too much, I strode to the other door and pushed it
open.

Gareth told me Bel-Athaer was closed to me.
It was open now, perhaps it always had been.

Holding the door open, I looked along a
wide, straight corridor which dwindled in the distance until lost
in shadow. Yet the corridor was not dim, light seemed to emanate
from the smooth, creamy tiles on walls, floor and ceiling.

I felt the grain of the wood as my hand
tightened on the edge of the door. I wasn’t prepared. I had my
Ruger in the holster beneath my armpit, my cell phone, nothing
more.

I should at least go home and tell my
roommates. But announcing I was going to march into Bel-Athaer
would worry them and they couldn’t help me if I got in trouble, and
it wasn’t as if I could tell anyone else I meant to venture into
another dimension.

And what if Bel-Athaer would not open to me
again later today, or tomorrow, or ever? Would I have missed my
only opportunity?

I looked over my shoulder at the street
door, then returned to make sure it would open. The knob turned
easily. I peeped out at the now empty street. Ducking my head back
in, I let go and the door shut of its own accord, yet it was not a
self-closing door.

Slightly
freaky.

Gathering courage, I opened the other door
again and started down the corridor. The glowing tiles confused me,
creating a kind of optical illusion so distance lost all meaning.
Straight as an arrow, the corridor could well go on forever.

I walked fast for fifteen minutes. My sight
began to blur, a defense against the glowing sameness of the
passageway which by now bore through my eyeballs into my
retinas.

Thankfully, I reduced my speed or I would
have run headfirst into the wall which blocked the corridor. I
stopped, blinking. Not a wall; I faced a door covered in the same
creamy tiles. With no doorknob or recess in which to slip my
fingers, I put my palms to it and pushed hard.

The door swung open and I strode through.
The angry honk of a big, steel-gray pickup made me jump back.
Disoriented, I gasped in a breath of air tainted with gas and
diesel.

My confused periphery vision spied a
sidewalk, but it curved in to the wall on either side of the tall
brown brick building I just left. I’d stepped right into a street.
I backed up farther till I felt rough brick through the down of my
winter coat.

It could be a business district. Buildings
of white, red, gray, cream and brown brick, three, four and five
floors high, lined a divided avenue straight as a ruler. I imagined
the structures were stores, restaurants and business offices. One
with a long red canopy could be a theater. A tiered rack of
magazines sat outside the big plate glass window of the store on my
left. To get a better view and not risk being run down, I walked to
my right and hopped up on the sidewalk.

Wispy clouds dotted a pale-blue sky. In the
distance, mountains towered over the city. Traffic whipped along in
both directions. Men, women and families towing small kids strolled
along the sidewalks on both sides of the street, some pausing to
check out window displays. A crowd at the crosswalk opposite me
waited for the light to change.

I threw my hands up. “Ha ha.”

I bet someone, somewhere, laughed their ass
off at me. This sure as hell was not Bel-Athaer. Bel-Athaer was a
place of rolling green hills, forests and clean air.

Damn.
I spun, and barreled into
something solid.

I staggered back to keep my balance and
looked down at a short, annoyed man who climbed to his feet and
glared at me. He bent to pick up his soft, wide-brimmed felt hat
and slapped it on his thigh to beat out dust from the sidewalk.
Settling it back on his shining amber hair, he continued to glare
from glinting sulfur-yellow eyes.

Reality hit me. Fear rooted my feet to the
ground. Gasping, a sick feeling in my stomach, I met his eyes
across the space separating us.

His face lost a little of its glow. His
features smoothed and became expressionless. He spoke slowly, tone
flat with no inflection as if he forced the words out reluctantly.
“Forgive me, Lady. How may I assist you?”

What the fuck?

Bewildered and intimidated by my
surroundings, my head whipped back and forth from the man to the
street. I was in Bel-Athaer, but a Bel-Athaer I had never seen or
imagined. People on the sidewalk, driving the autos, waiting at a
bus stop -
oh my god is that a taxi
? - were demons.

I tried to speak and croaked an
unintelligible sound.

He came closer. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch
that.”

Would telling him why I was here get me in
trouble? “I’m . . . ah . . . looking for the High Lord’s House,” I
said hesitantly, ready to bolt.

He pointed his index finger at the far side
of the street. “The next bus will take you there.”

“Thank you,” I managed to say. He nodded and
walked down the street until he disappeared among other
pedestrians.

Take a bus to the High House?

I should have known better than come here.
Acting on impulse rarely turns out well for me. But I was here now,
slap bang in the middle of a Gelpha city with transportation to the
High House at hand. I could go back through the brown building’s
door and head for home. Or I could take a bus to the High
House.

Why did demons have vehicles, anyway? Why
not zip to their destination? Maybe demon speed was not used
habitually. Perhaps it would result in mass confusion, accidents,
injuries when demons slammed into one another.

I walked to the crosswalk and to the other
side of the road, marveling when autos stopped for me. I couldn’t
adjust to the fact that a demon city seemed little different from
one back home.

Gelpha at the bus stop watched me coming,
but I detected no hostility in their eyes. Curiosity, perhaps?
Adults looked away when I joined them, although children peered at
me curiously.

People were being well-mannered, even the
guy I knocked over. He didn’t used the term “lady” as in
What
the hell do you think you’re doing, lady?
but as a polite form
of address. Once he got past his ire at being knocked on his tush,
he didn’t seem astonished to see me. They must be used to
humans.

Were human beings here commonplace, regular
people, or like me see demons as they actually are? Did they have
demon friends or loved-ones? Did any live here? Demons live in my
world; they have friends, families, businesses and I thought nobody
was any the wiser, but maybe some are.

How many human beings knew about Bel-Athaer
and kept the secret?

How bizarre, to see a small host of demons
patiently waiting at a bus stop. They wore a strange miscellany of
attire. One man’s long, carrot-colored hair stuck in all directions
from beneath a brown porkpie hat. His black suit was too tight, the
sleeves and pants too short. He nonchalantly leaned on a
silver-topped walking cane. A woman with smoldering saffron hair in
an intricate braid and loop design wore a short crinoline skirt in
glowing autumn colors and a black waistcoat, and nothing on her
feet. The child who held her hand wore pink velvet PJs. Others wore
attire I see in Clarion: T-shirts, jeans, modern suits, dresses,
skirts, etcetera.

Their clothing was a lighter weight than
mine. The temperature was milder here. Heat built beneath my down
coat.

I arrived at the back of the queue. A small
boy said, “Mumma, why doesn’t - ?”

She bent over, her long, waving cinnamon and
steel hair washing over her cheek. “Hush, Simmy, we’ll talk about
it later.”

I tried to pretend I stood at a bus stop in
downtown Clarion, although I rarely use a bus. I felt conspicuous
and nervous down to my toes. With a show of nonchalance, I watched
traffic cruise past as if standing with a crowd of demons at a bus
stop was nothing out of the ordinary. Cars, trucks, minivans were
similar to those back home, with small differences. They rose
higher off the ground, the wheels were a fraction out of proportion
to their size; they had fat buttons on the doors instead of handles
and no license plates. They sure didn’t sport emblems or insignia
which read Ford, Dodge, or Toyota. I did spot odd symbols in
metallic colors on the hoods. The buildings across the road bore
something similar above the doors or stenciled on the windows.
Gelpha writing?

Funny, it looked familiar. I could swear I
saw it before.

A smallish blue bus chugged to a stop, the
doors concertinaed open, but nobody got off or on. I craned to look
over the people in front of me.

They parted like the Red Sea. One by one,
they turned to me.

My eyes edged right to left. I didn’t know
what to do. Then a demon with glittering brown hair done up in a
topknot turned remarkable peridot eyes to me, smiled, and gestured
at the bus.

I poked my chest with an index finger, a
question in my eyes because I couldn’t force the words out.
Me?
I should get on first?

He nodded. I cleared my throat, gave him a
wavering smile in return, walked to the bus and climbed in.

What in God’s name was going on?

All seats were occupied, so I moved along
the aisle to the back, pretending not to see how passengers looked
me over. Straps hung from the ceiling, so I grabbed one. My need to
hang onto something had little to do with the way the bus lurched
as it drove off. I was in Bel-Athaer, using Gelpha public
transportation, surrounded by demons with hair and eyes of every
imaginable hue.

I had to be insane or hallucinating.

“Lady?”

I lowered my gaze to an elderly Gelpha. Her
shimmering blue eyes smiled into mine as she struggled to get
upright, but the bus took a turn which put her off balance and she
plopped down. Wisps of silvery-blue hair came free of a pretty wood
barrette and dusted her neck.

Come on, Tiff. You can do it. Open your
mouth and let the words out.
“Can I help you?”

“Yes, dear. You can help me up and sit
yourself down here.”

The elderly don’t stand for young people
where I come from. As I opened my mouth to politely reject her
offer, a male voice from behind me said, “No, please, take
mine.”

I glanced back at a tall young demon with
spiked cerise-pink hair and stared for a few seconds. His black
leather pants and jacket adorned with loops of silver chain, the
clunky black elevated boots, the black T-shirt, made me think
punk
. Put rings and studs in his ears, nose and lips, stick
him on a street corner in downtown Salt Lake City and I’d not know
him for a demon, provided he kept his silver-mist eyes down.

I smiled, hitched one shoulder. “Thanks, I’m
fine.”

Okay, this went beyond courtesy and was
creeping me out.

As we rolled along, I reflected that Gelpha
transportation was not as smooth as ours, or maybe the roads were
rougher. I had to keep a tight grip on the strap and the back of a
seat or be tossed from one side of the aisle to the other. The old
lady and young man had distracted me and we were now in another
part of the city. I silently cursed for not watching and
remembering the surroundings as we traveled. Getting back to the
door when I didn’t know how posed a problem.

We were still in what could be a commercial
district. Various buildings sported signs of carved wood, etched
glass, metal, or neon with the peculiar characters. But after
taking several turns, we segued into an area of what looked like
small markets and apartments, then drove past rows of individual
homes. They had front yards with lawns and flowers and architecture
I recognized from back home. The air coming through the bus windows
smelled fresher.

Back home.
A small thrill of dread
worked down my spine, driven by the notion coming here was
monumentally stupid.

This
was the Bel-Athaer I expected to
see when I burst from the corridor.

The bus drove along a rural lane flanked by
vast meadows of long, fading grass, rolling hills, hedgerows, trees
bunched together here and there. No houses; no construction of any
style.

The demons chattered. From the lilting
cadence of their voices, they were excited. Why did they head to
the High House? Did they work there?

Then I caught a few words.

I moved to stand next the seat in front of
me. “Excuse me, what did you say?”

A small, waif-like woman with a pixie face
and huge turquoise eyes pushed her teal hair behind her ear and
smiled up at me. She lifted the paper she held in her hand. Rolled
into a tube, I couldn’t see what was on it except some squiggles
similar to those on their autos and signs. “We are discussing the
High Lord’s grand tour. Eleven days away now. The last grand tour,
in his grandsire’s time, was before my birth. All will see him,
young and old. All may approach and speak with him.” She cocked her
head on one side. “We live in exciting times.”

I smiled, nodded and moved away.

Lawrence would meet his people, which meant
his full power was upon him. Last I knew, he was still secluded in
the High House and only his councilors and personal staff knew he
lived there. That my fellow passengers knew of him indicated he had
been publicly presented to his people.

The bus decelerated, then came to a
shuddering stop. I followed the person in front of me. The seated
passengers politely waited till we exited, then trailed behind us.
The driver tooted his horn and away went the bus.