Shelton strode across the control room, and I followed, the global map towering to our right. He cleared his throat, and Tuttle shrieked, jumped back, and threw out his hands in a defensive gesture. The holographic image of the other man gave us a startled look and disappeared in a blink. Tuttle peered at us. Dropped his arms to his sides and coughed nervously.
"Can I help you?" he asked, his face scrunched in almost comical confusion, the absurd worker-bee coloring of his cloak only adding to the comedy.
"Tuttle, my associate and I are with Darkwater." Shelton said. "We need a connection to Queens Gate. Ms. Conroy said—"
"Oh yes, of course!" Tuttle said. "One moment, please." He hurried to the large gray sphere and ran his finger across its surface. As he did, a trail of stars on the map brightened perceptibly. He stopped as a star in the southern part of Great Britain lit and made a flicking motion with his finger. The star dimmed and brightened in time with the star in Atlanta. Tuttle turned to us. "Queens Gate will confirm in a moment. Are there any others in your party?"
Shelton shook his head. "Nah. Do the folks at Queens Gate know to accommodate us when we need to return?"
"I'll be sure to notify them," Tuttle said.
"Do you have to wait for confirmation from the other side before opening a connection?" I asked.
The worker-bee Arcane shook his head. "No, not at all. If there's already an open connection the nodule blinks red to indicate it's busy. If I wanted, I could place my palm atop the modulus and raise it to open the connection."
I walked up to the big gray orb—the modulus, I guessed—and looked at it. "You establish a connection by running your finger across it until the proper star—nodule—lights up, then flick it to establish a connection?"
"Exactly. The operator at the other end will initiate the final sequence by raising his modulus." Tuttle shrugged. "It prevents accidents, you know—in case someone at the other end just exited the gate, we wouldn't want to start it back up while they're still inside the traversion zone."
"That's the area inside the big circle?" I said.
"Yes." He nodded approvingly. "You're familiar with traversion arches, then?"
More than I want to be, buddy. The terrifying journey from a broken arch in Thunder Rock across what appeared to be several alternate realities and ending up in the dead city of El Dorado came to mind. "A little. I think it's interesting."
The modulus blazed to life, and a thin beam of light sparked and pulsed from Atlanta to Queens Gate. Tuttle glanced up. "Better get ready to travel."
"Thanks, pal," Shelton said, and we trotted outside and across the black-and-yellow-striped caution circle to step inside the traversion zone. The space in the middle of the Obsidian Arch flickered white, black, and gray, blinking faster and faster in time with the thrum of energy that seemed to vibrate the very air itself. A clap of thunder rolled across the chamber. The area inside the arch shimmered to clarity, revealing a similar chamber on the other side. I'd been through the Grotto arch before, though it'd been on official Templar business for Bogota, Colombia, but the experience never failed to amaze me.
"This is so cool!" I said as we stepped through the opening. The scenery ahead blurred, warping like the inside of a fishbowl, and popped back to normal within an instant.
As we left the arch behind, the air next to me cracked like glass on the verge of shattering.
Shelton's eyes went wide. "Run!"
Because I couldn't remember a time when someone screaming that word meant anything but horrific death if I paused to ask questions or scratch my head like a dimwit, I snatched Shelton under one arm without so much as blinking. I sprinted for the edge of the silver circle. A cracking noise grated my ears. I felt a blast of freezing air hit my back an instant before an invisible force washed against my body like the outgoing ocean tide, pulling me backward. I strained, but my feet slipped little-by-little on the smooth surface. The edge of the circle was only inches away. I strained with everything I had, but it wasn't enough. I glanced over my shoulder and felt my eyes widen in horror. Multiple fractures lined the space around the arch. One shattered, leaving a gaping hole to a gray void. I knew without asking exactly what it was.
The Gloom.
Shelton shouted something, but I couldn't hear him over the roar of wind…and something else. A voice. I turned my ear toward it. It spoke in low rumbling tones. The meaning of its words hovered at the tip of my brain, but I couldn't understand them. Something primal within urged me to seek out that voice. To answer its call. I slowed my struggle. Shelton yelled something incoherent, wriggling, but unable to move his arms since I'd pinned them to his sides when I grabbed him.
The voice called again. I turned toward the void. My feet skidded across the floor, squeaking as the rubber soles resisted.
Something stung my arm. I looked and saw Shelton biting my arm. He said, "What the hell are you doing?"
I looked from Shelton to the void, and my brain freaked. "What the hell am I doing?" I shouted.
The voice from the other side spoke again, faster, more urgent. I spun away from it and back toward the outer ring. Once past that line, we would be safe. But it was further away now, maybe twenty feet. I leaned forward against the tremendous roar of wind and strained with everything I had to move my foot forward. Lifting my foot, I soon found, was futile. The moment I picked it up off the floor, the gale-force wind jerked back, and I was barely able to get it back down again.
"My friggin wand!" Shelton yelled.
I adjusted my hold to free his arms. The extra wind drag was all it took. The air current jerked my feet out from under me. My chin cracked against the floor. I dropped Shelton, and we slid toward the gaping portal of doom.
Shelton rolled onto his back and struggled to extract his wand from his inside jacket pocket. But at the rate we were sliding, I didn't see what he could do to stop us in time. Panic throttled me. Casting my gaze around for something, anything to grab hold of, I spotted the arch to our left. In my peripheral vision, I saw a worker-bee Arcane desperately flicking his wand at us with no effect.
The arch remained too far away for me to grab, and besides, it was too thick to wrap my arms around. The floor of polished obsidian was too slick to find a handhold. I briefly gave thought to manifesting my demon form and clawing into the floor. But that would take time, and I had no control once fully spawned. For all I knew, I'd kill Shelton and, if I escaped, kill anyone else who got in my way.
If only I had a rope!
The answer hit me like a cinder block. Thinking back to my lessons, I quickly settled on the arch as my best solution. I blinked my eyes. My vision flickered to incubus mode, revealing a glowing maelstrom of aether swirling around me as the Gloom rift sucked it in.
I sucked in a breath and drew in magic. Concentrating on the arch, I shouted, "Shoryuken!" Glowing strands of power jetted from my fingertips, wrapping around the base of the arch like spider webs. Twisting my fingers into a fist, I caught the strands, flung out my other hand, and grabbed the collar of Shelton's leather duster. We jerked to a stop barely a foot away from the rift. Shelton fumbled his wand and shouted a word.
A large blob of energy coalesced at the end of his wand, undulating like water in zero gravity. He flicked the rod, and the mass floated lazily toward the rift, seeming to ignore the incredible suction. It splatted against one edge, creeping over the glasslike cracks in the air, clogging the portal. With a high-pitched whistle, the last hole closed. The inexorable drag vanished. Shelton pumped a fist in the air and whooped.
I heard another cracking noise. My eyes flicked toward the noise in time to see another of the fractures straining the fabric of reality. Without another thought, I released the glowing strands from my fist, scooped Shelton under my arm, and blurred out of the ring, nearly plowing into a group of spectators who were snapping photos and taking videos of the event with their arcphones.
I set Shelton down and bent over, panting like dying dog while the tremendous hum of the Obsidian Arch wound down. As it powered off, the fractures mended, sealing themselves until nothing remained but clear air.
"Are you okay?" said a utility Arcane.
I nodded even as my knees buckled.
"Holy bulls in a blender," Shelton said, straightening and wiping at his forehead. "Good thinking, kid."
"Good thinking?" said an older man in a long gray robe, his accent that of a proper British gentleman. "I'd say that was exceptional." He tilted his head and regarded me. "Which academy did you graduate from, young man?"
Technically, I hadn't even graduated from high school, much less an arcane academy. I hadn't even been back to school for months after Maximus's attempts to draft high school students into the vampire corps had turned several into the zombie-like vamplings and incited a bloodbath that had claimed the principal, football coach, and other unsavory characters. "I haven't graduated," I said, wincing.
"Ah, of course, you're coming to the university for orientation or a prep course, aren't you?"
"I'm here for the assessment," I said.
Shelton's upper lip curled in distaste as he took in the man. "He's a bloomer."
The man's eyes narrowed. "Surely, you're joking."
My friend made a non-committal gesture. "Nope. The kid hasn't had any formal training, but he's pretty good, isn't he?"
At this, the man's attitude changed completely. "I believe you'll find there's no place for his kind at the university."
Shelton's lips curled into a feral grin. "Yeah? Well, tough, buddy. 'Cause he's already in."
"Perhaps you don't recognize me," the man said, raising his nose to lofty heights. He directed a severe gaze down its length at Shelton. "I am Andrew Buckley, Dean of Admissions, and I am the judge of who we admit and who we don't."
"Oh, so that's why lycans and other supernaturals can attend the university?" Shelton said. He snapped his fingers. "Oh, yeah, that's right. The Overworld Conclave found the exclusion of others in violation of the Covenant."