“We’ll relocate somewhere better suited for your call,” Monty said and started walking again. “It should be just a little farther.”
“Would be great to know where exactly we’re going.”
“This way,” he said, leading me down the tracks to a figure I could barely make out, hunched over in the darkness. “Let me do the talking.”
“You want to have a conversation with a homeless person?” I asked. “Of course, why would I want to interrupt such an important conversation? Please go chat.”
I motioned with my hand for him to keep going.
“Precisely,” Monty said as we approached the old woman. When we were close, he crouched down and faced the figure. “Hello, Grandmother.”
SEVEN
“Mage,” the old woman said, waving her cane in his direction. “You’ve grown.”
“You’ve grown?” I said under my breath as I kept my distance. “How long have you known her?”
Monty gave me a look that said shut it, so I shut it and kept quiet—until she turned to face me. She smiled when she saw me and waved me closer with her cane. She could have been anyone’s grandmother, actually. I realized Monty used the title to refer to her age, not his actual relation to her. This was an old, bordering on ancient, woman wrapped in too many layers to be comfortable in the heat of the subway.
The wrinkles on her face were pronounced and she had achieved that state where her skin looked more like worn leather than actual skin. Despite all that, her gaze was soft and welcoming. I felt safe around her. Even though the amount of power she radiated was immense, I didn’t feel threatened by it.
Her energy signature was a warm blanket on a cold day, a cup of hot coffee during a winter storm, and I could swear I smelled freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.
“Kali’s Chosen. Come let me look at you. Let me look at you both,” she said, her voice sounding surprisingly young for someone who appeared to be just this side of a thousand. “Step closer. There is nothing to fear here.”
Monty stepped closer, but I hesitated. At this point, I was pretty sure that whoever sat huddled in front of us wasn’t human. It could have been me, or the fact that her eyes were giving off a soft, golden glow.
“Who are you?” I asked as I took a step forward. “What are you?”
“Simon,” Monty hissed under his breath. “A bit of decorum would be appropriate at this moment.”
“Rubbish,” she said. “He has asked the right question. The long explanation would hurt your brain; the short explanation is that I’m a Transporter.”
“You’re like FedEx or UPS?”
She laughed as Monty glared at me.
“What?” I asked. “She said she was a transporter.”
“Not quite like that,” she said. “I transport locations to you, instead of the other way around.”
“What? How can you transport locations? Is that even possible?”
“Transporters are similar to the most advanced teleporters in our reality,” Monty said, entering lecturing mode. “They don’t teleport, exactly; they shift.”
“They shift? Like a mage shift in power level?”
“No, completely different,” Monty continued. “This is a shift along the dimensions of space-time. Rather than teleporting you where you want to go, a Transporter warps time, space, and gravity around you so that the place you wanted to go ends up aligned to your location.”
“That sounds like severe gastrointestinal distress for me.”
“Not in the least,” Monty said. “Aside from your new energy signature helping you, when transported, you are aligned.”
“Aligned to what?” I asked.
“Good question,” the Transporter chimed in, but Monty had entered full lecture mode and couldn’t be stopped. “Once aligned, she will give you the equivalent of a runic kick and send you down the bridge she created.”
“So she’s not teleporting but creating space-time bridges? Wormholes?”
“That’s an oversimplification, but the concept is similar.”
“Isn’t that what mages do with their teleportation circles?”
Monty shook his head.
“No mage in history has been able to teleport using a Transporter’s method,” Monty answered. “This is why we are here.”
“We’re here so you can give a dissertation on the difference between transporting and teleporting?” I asked. “I could’ve called Ziller and had him melt my brain for that, without visiting an abandoned subway.”
“We’re here,” Monty answered with a barely contained sigh, “to procure a shift for each of us.”
“Excuse me? A shift where?”
“Do you know what you ask?” the Transporter said. “I will need to read you.”
“Wait a second,” I said, holding up a hand. “Let’s slow down for a moment. Where are we shifting exactly?”
“We’ll be shifting back.”
“Right, because that makes perfect sense,” I said. “What’s this about reading us?”
“In order to shift us properly, she needs to read our runic signatures,” Monty answered. “The shift we need requires a deeper reading. She needs to be able to locate us wherever we are.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I admitted. “This is like, what, a deep scan?”
“Something like that,” Monty said. “Except your deepest emotions will be exposed and raw. It’s not pleasant.”
“So, let me see if I get this straight,” I said, taking a step back. “You want me to let this old”—I then decided to err on the side of not pissing off some supernatural being of space-time and of staying alive—“this elderly being do a runic scan on me and expose my deepest emotions, just so she can be some kind of runic GPS system in case we have to shift back from some place we haven’t gone? That about right?”
“It’s missing some of the details, but yes, it’s accurate.”
“Oh, is that all?” I asked. “That’s simple…No. Let me be extra clear…Hell no.”
“Simon, you don’t understand,” Monty answered. “I know what Shadow Company wants you for.”
“How? How could you?” I asked, upset. “I’ve been off their radar for years. I can guess what they want, but I haven’t been in direct contact with them for some time.”
“They’re hunting dragons,” Monty said quietly. “I received information about
