Page 17 of The Shadowed Oracle (The Bonded Worlds #1)
Chapter Eleven
Tall tree branches hooked over the top of the roof, encapsulating the entirety of the house in darkness.
For miles in each direction, thick brush dominated the landscape, and the only connection to the main road was a thin dirt path protected by a six-foot-tall, spiked iron gate with a C , for his surname, Crassus, welded on both sides.
The exterior of the house was clean and bare.
No patio furniture, potted plants, or anything indicating someone lived there.
Only a rough old doormat was placed in front of the black iron front door, which itself was the most unwelcoming part of the house—no windows or decorations, just a heavy rectangular piece of metal with a small sliding port for a peephole.
“Didn’t get many visitors,” Dean said, cranking the key to let Ingrid inside. His demeanor had changed as he gave her the abbreviated tour. Back to his charmingly arrogant self, acting like there wasn’t a giant divide between the two of them in the form of a loaded weapon.
At that point, the gun was merely a symbol, a crutch for Ingrid, and she held it limply as she followed her host around.
The living room and bedrooms were similar to the front yard. Minimal, naked except for the essential couch, a bed, a side table here and there. But above all else, Ingrid noticed the glaring holes of nothingness where framed photos and personal belongings would usually reside.
It was like someone had hollowed it out intentionally.
Dean showed her where she’d be sleeping, where the fresh water from the well out back was accessed, then led her to the very back where another heavily fortified door occupied the end of a dark hallway.
Ingrid suddenly tensed up in the enclosed space. She was glad now that she still had her gun at the ready. With an intense glare, she silently pushed Dean to keep moving, get to the part where the hard evidence of what he was telling her could be seen plainly, fleshed out.
“You don’t need to remind me,” Dean said with a nervous laugh. He opened the complex locking mechanisms one after the other and descended the staircase that lay behind. “I read you.”
After reaching the bottom step, he flipped an industrial power switch, setting off a domino effect of overhead lights powered by an external generator.
The clicks were followed by sudden fluorescent brightness, illuminating rows of decades-old file cabinets, gun racks, shelves of rusty antiques, novelties, books with strange symbols on the covers, bizarro knick-knacks that looked to be stolen from a foreign museum, and thirty-year-old hard drives, radios, and engines.
Shuffling to the corner with his hands up, Dean urged Ingrid with a nod to come closer. “Karis stored all kinds of things here,” he said. “Take a look.”
She zeroed in on a few of the odd relics, but quickly got distracted by some other eye-catching oddity, gazing around aimlessly. The sheer size of the place begged to be explored, and she did so with her hands tucked awkwardly at her sides.
It was a fortress, she thought, that was the only word that came to mind.
It wasn’t a bunker. It wasn’t some doomsday shelter.
It was a war-ready fortress. Further in, Ingrid counted at least three hatches leading somewhere deeper underground, and a quick peek at the ceiling revealed more metal fortifications.
“I’d be impressed,” she said, her chin pointed up at a ninety-degree angle. “If I wasn’t just, you know, teleported through an elevator earlier today.”
She doubted things from this other world were deterred by metal walls.
Dean swiveled his head, bottom lip curling in. “Yeah, they do that sometimes. But they can’t do it here .” He tapped his finger against the metallic wall. “All this iron is from that other world. Totally monster-proof.”
Ingrid took a closer look, unable to discern any difference in the material.
She started to ask Dean about it, but noticed he was already moving on to one of the larger filing cabinets.
He braced himself against it with a wide stance, putting his entire weight behind the push.
Grunting, rearranging himself, then practically screaming in effort to uncover yet another door behind it.
“Hah! Got it!” Dean looked up at her, dusting off his hands and shirt.
Ingrid wasn’t impressed. “After you,” she said flatly.
With slumped posture, Dean scuffled to the door and began the two-step procedure to unlock it. Physical keys first, then a code entered into the electronic number pad. He opened the door and she inched through the threshold.
The room beyond was perplexingly large considering the architecture of the house.
The staircase to the subterranean level had been steep, but the ceiling of this secret room had to have measured much longer.
It was vaulted, made of stone, but uneven, like someone chipped away at it from underground until they reached the forest grass above.
Ingrid squinted, trying to make sense of it.
In the centermost point of the ceiling, in the very back, was an archaic symbol painted in black, not unlike the ones she’d seen in the crime scene photographs. And directly underneath it, adorned with those shining viseer stones and even more symbols, was a cage.
A metal prison, large enough for a grizzly bear.
Large enough, Ingrid thought frightfully, for a human.
“Probably should’ve warned you about that,” Dean muttered. “Don’t worry. It’s not for you.”
Ingrid stared uneasily at the homemade jail cell—at the rust that had accrued on the bars, the dying vegetation that had sprouted up between the concrete cracks outside of it. Then with a quick shuffle, she pressed her back against the wall, watching Dean carefully.
He walked to the opposite side of the room, not noticing her unease, and sat at what appeared to be a control panel desk consisting of thirty-year-old boxy computers, multiple keyboards, monitors and plated boards full of mysterious toggles, switches, levers, and wires connecting to the back of the platform of the jail cell.
“My mom didn’t want anything following her back,” Dean said. “That’s what the cage was for. She and Karis figured out how to make a portal to Ealis. They set up a trap in case one of them ever tailed her back here.”
Ingrid had many questions, a feeling she was getting used to, but started with, “Ealis?”
“The other world. They’ve called it many names, but in this millennium, Ealis is most commonly used.”
“Does the portal work? Have you been there?”
“Yes, and yes. But it’s not safe there, hasn’t been for most my lifetime. Especially for people like us. This is the only portal I know of that isn’t under constant surveillance or hexed to keep outsiders away.”
“But the people that live there, in the other world, they come here often?” She shuddered at the thought. Otherworldly beings walking among them.
This time, Dean did notice her discomfort.
“They aren’t all bad. Most of them are far more peaceful than humans.
And a lot of them have human ancestors.” He forced a laugh, trying to further ease the tension.
“Shit, they even speak English. I mean, they speak as many languages as humans do, but when the portals were first discovered, it’s said that we all travelled back and forth and lived together peacefully.
If you consider the mystery of how so many of our languages wound up in the same place, it’s the only logical explanation. ”
“And now?” Ingrid asked. “Are you telling me humans still know about this? Rich people get tired of vacationing here so they go to some… some alien beach?”
Dean smiled but didn’t break concentration. “No, no. The portals have been hidden from humans for a long time. Something happened, way back, that closed us off from Ealis and the Viator, effectively erasing any real accounts.”
“Viator?” Another echo rang in Ingrid’s mind. The Thing’s words, in the elevator. Little Viator. “That’s what they’re called. What we’re called?”
“Yes.”
“And what about the Thing? What are they called?” She was starting to feel repetitive calling it a Thing . There were many names she could’ve used for it, but they all felt understated.
“Wrane,” Dean said. “What attacked you in the elevator was a Wrane.”
“And Wranes, they have abilities?” Ingrid asked. “It knew things about me. Things it shouldn’t have known.”
Casual, almost bored, Dean asked, “You mean the things you see?”
Ingrid tensed, silent.
“We call them Shades,” Dean said. “They’re like spirits.
Ghosts of Viator trying to come back to the world by inhabiting one of the living.
They’re mostly harmless if you know how to fight them.
It’s the mental damage they can cause, the never-ending pursuit, trying to break you down until you… well, you know.”
Dean leaned back in the vintage chair, letting things sink in for her.
Letting her breathe, process, and prepare.
In a heartbeat, he’d solved the most torturous mystery of her life, explained what her father never even attempted to.
She needed time to think. Needed to sit with this barrage of newness.
Knowing what to call herself, knowing what to call her nightmares, it didn’t even begin to scratch the surface.
Different Worlds. New races of humanoids, spirits and creatures. Hearing it was one thing, digesting and understanding the information was another.
“Wrane—bad. Shade—bad. Viator—not all bad. Got it,” Ingrid forced a smile. “Now, why are we called that?”
Like ripping a band-aid off, Dean replied, “It’s taken from an old Latin variant. In modern English, it just means: Immortals.”
“Wait… immortal immortal?”