Llyran and the Sons of Dawn had stood atop Helios Tower and claimed that I’d be host to Solomon’s spirit, that with Solomon’s knowledge and my power, they’d raise the First One. But it had never been Solomon in the spirit jar next to Llyran.
Solomon had gone quietly into my
No wonder we hadn’t been able to detect another presence in her. She had the Father of Crafting inside of her—and with his knowledge, he could do just about anything.
And his last act was going to be killing the Abaddon Father.
Christ. It was like saying someone was after the Queen Mother in England. And no one would care that Bryn was possessed. This was a suicide mission after all.
“Bryn has a passport,” I said numbly, “so she won’t have a problem going through the gate, but I know she doesn’t keep it in her purse. She’ll have to go back to the League or her apartment to get it.”
Then again, Solomon might have ty
“We need a team to go to her apartment,” I said to the chief. “See who’s in Underground right now and have them go over. I’m going to the League.” I turned to Rex. “Can you take Emma back home?”
“Sure.”
I tossed him the keys and he took off.
“The gate is on alert,” the chief said. “No one, no matter who they are, will pass until we give them the green light.”
“Thanks, Chief.”
I didn’t know where Bryn was headed, to be honest. Didn’t know if I should go to the gate and assume she’d try to go through or if she’d head back to the League for her ID. Hell, she could already be in Char-bydon by now.
“Charlie,” Hank said. “What do you want to do?”
I bit my lip hard. I had to be faster, had to cut her off. “Never mind about the League. We’re going to Charbydon.”
“What?” he and the chief echoed.
I turned to them. “Running around here, trying to find her is waste of time. It could put her farther and farther away from us. I guarantee you Solomon knows a way to get into Charbydon without using the gate. If we go now, we can head her off, be there before she gets there. Let her walk right into us.”
“Sounds good,” Hank said at length. “Let’s load up and get to the terminal.”
We raced to the weapons depot for additional ammo and weapons. Hank grabbed a thigh harness and strapped it to his leg. The familiar clicks and sounds of weapons checks and loading up filled the room.
“Solomon has had all this time inside of Bryn,” Hank said, slipping a spare Nitro-gun into the holster at his thigh. “Why wait until now?”
“Maybe he was still hoping for war and waiting to see if Bryn could find out what we did with Ahkneri.” I stilled, my eyes going wide. “I told Bryn about the sylphs. I told her I found a way to see inside of her and help her.“
Hank straightened. “And he realized it was now or never. If he wanted revenge, he’d have to do it now before you saw the truth.”
“Right,” I said, grabbing two thigh harnesses for the two extra Nitro-guns I was taking. “Otherwise, he had time to wait, to see how things unfolded. I bet you Tennin convinced him to wait it out after they lost Ahkneri. And Solomon had other ideas. He started issuing the suicide orders, Tennin went ballistic …”
I walked to the wall, grabbed a black cloak, and tossed it to him. “If we’re going into Charbydon, you’ll need this. The less attention we attract, the better.”
“How the hell do we find her once we get there?” Hank asked, tossing me some extra nitro clips. “Aaron has been to Charbydon …”
“No. He’s too involved personally. And he hasn’t recovered from dying.”I flipped open my cell and dialed. “Rex. Change of plans. You ready to take a trip back home?”
As Hank and I hurried from the depot, I spoke to Emma after Rex, and told her to pack a bag and her party dress because she’d be staying at the League until we got back. For once, my kid didn’t argue with me. Actually, if she had a choice, she’d have chosen the League herself. She loved it there. Her only words were, “Find Aunt Bryn and bring her back.” And to be careful, and that she loved me.
I called the League next and spoke to Aaron. There were only a handful of people I’d entrust with my child and he was one of them. I told him as little as possible about Bryn and asked him to put Emma under his protection. I had no doubts he’d agree.
Then we were in Hank’s car speeding toward Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
I was about to see hell for the first time.
14
It took ten minutes to get to the terminal near Harts-field-Jackson. Ever since the darkness, the airport had become dead space. No planes in or out due to fears of the darkness clogging engines and causing a crash. It had been a logistical nightmare of epic proportions, one of the worst casualties of the darkness—billions in revenue gone, planes rerouted, terminals around the country—the South especially—taking the overload of redirected travel; even smaller airports were being used. People lost their jobs, their livelihoods—though, thankfully with the help of the government, union, and airlines, many were able to temporarily relocate to other terminals.
For two months one of the world’s busiest airports had been closed and there was nothing anyone could do about it except deal with it until the darkness was gone.
The place had taken on a dark visual silence. The only traffic led to and from the new off-world terminal, which—lit up as it was—looked like a beacon in a sea of dark buildings and shapes.
We drove around to the employee deck. After flashing his badge, Hank parked in an area reserved for security and law enforcement. One more checkpoint, and then we were striding down the long service tunnel. We came out into the long rectangular terminal at the midway point between the gates.
The gates had been built at each end of the terminal and offered continuous passage to and from Elysia and Charbydon. Departures and arrivals had been allotted special time periods throughout the day and night—half the day for those leaving, half the day for those incoming, and the same for the nighttime hours.
We veered right and headed down the terminal with its clean white tiled floor, glass walls, exposed steel beams, terminal seating, ticket counters, luggage checkpoints. In many ways, it was like any other travel terminal with clerks, gate patrol officers, stores, cafes … But that’s where the similarities ended. Once you got a look at the glowing spheres at each end of the terminal it was an entirely different story.
Several uniformed ITF officers were standing by the Charbydon gateway, which had been closed off, much to the chagrin of the irate departing travelers loitering in the waiting areas of the terminal.
I flashed my badge at the gate agent behind the desk, knowing she was no typical agent; I was well aware she had three loaded weapons beneath her desk and was highly trained to protect the gate and oversee travel. As she read my credentials and then Hank’s, my gaze lifted a notch to the copper alloy platform behind her. And, of course, hovering just a hair above the platform, the Charbydon gate—a large, glowing sphere colored with shifting shades of blue.
A low drone emanated from the sphere, a contained frequency which I knew to be the “music” of Charbydon—its individual signature, an electromagnetic frequency that not only manifested in sound but in light as well. The Elysian gate, on the other hand, was a pinkish-orange ball with a slightly different drone.
Above the entranceway to the Charbydon gate was a quote by Pythagoras:
