Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series

April was frowning when she came into the second-floor apartment. Trouble was brewing with the morning coffee. Her frown was a sign of trouble that they had all learned to anticipate and dread. It was 6 AM, and she was overdue at the diner, something that was happening too regularly lately. She had begun her morning ritual bed check on her little angels and had not found Ember or her hounds downstairs. Even Alex was not in her room, but April knew she was currently in the living room sprawled over Angel and snoring. Ember and the hounds were hard to miss, and if they were anywhere in the brownstone, she would have heard them long before now.

Aiko and Alvaro were also there when she came back up. “Have any of you sleeping beauties seen Ember and her walking garbage disposals?”

“Not since last night,” Alvaro replied. “Why don’t you wake the girls and ask them?”

April frowned. She really did not want to wake either one. When they were sleeping, it was the only time she knew they were safe and staying out of trouble. Given Ember’s misadventures lately, she didn’t see that she had any choice.

Gwen and Crystal did not like being woken up any more than the djinn did when it was her turn. When she and the Wandering Jew joined the others in the living room, they realized that none of them had seen the girl since she had retired in a huff at 10 PM the evening before. True, Alex, Gwen and Crystal had been teasing her about her shaggy goats and her ‘silly old ghost,’ but if she had run away, it really wasn’t their fault. Gees, they were only teasing.

“If that girl has run away,” April pronounced, “I will ground her until her ovaries fossilize!”

“Mom!” Gwen wailed.

“Just saying, girlfriend,” April replied through a smile.

“Oh, woman!” Gwen moaned, “you’re so impossible!”

As she stomped away from her mother to fetch some orange juice, Gwen came up with a note. “I found a note of sorts.”

“What does it say?” April sighed exasperatedly.

“Gurlz,

Gone vamp JC

Invest – oh and this parts all scratched out.

Back Swoon.”

“Upyr,” Alvaro and Cantara chorused.

“We’ll go fetch her back,” Alvaro sighed, pushing Aiko off his lap. “You three up to a little spelunking?”

“I want to come,” Alex decided, lifting her head off of Angel’s lap with a yawn.

“We move faster when it’s just us four,” Alvaro began and took an elbow in the ribs from Aiko.

“I’m fast,” Alex decided. “And I can walk through solid walls.”

“Gwen,” April decided before anyone else could insist on going. “You and Crystal better stay here in case she returns.”

“Good,” Crystal announced, “because I still have two or three hours of pillow time coming to me.”

The five specialists left the building with April, parting company with her at the first subway entrance. They were moving rapidly. As soon as they dropped below street level, they began running as only a specialist could. Five blurs through the subway platform, unseen and unnoticed, they did not slow down until they had climbed below the sewers. Here, where the first signs of damage from the quake appeared, the terrain itself forced them to slowed them down. Rubble and cracks and pools of water littered their path, and some of the tunnels they were familiar with were no longer passable.

“It doesn’t look like we can take our usual way down,” Angel commented. “I wish Jean-Claude were here. No-one knew these tunnels as well as he did.”

“Stay here,” Alex instructed and disappeared through a solid wall of rock.

“Which one do you think is a bigger pain?” Angel asked no-one specifically. “Crystal, Ember, Alex or Aiko?”

“A-.” Alvaro coughed as Aiko caught him below the belt. “I was going to say Alex.”

“Then I will instruct her to hit you when she gets back,” Aiko replied primly. “One must remind you brutes of your manners.”

Alex was gone for about seven minutes and returned covered in enough dust to make her grey. After taking a few comments and some ribbing from her companions, she sniffed, “call me ghost girl all you like, I at least know where to go from here.”

“What would these revered ancestors do without us?” Aiko asked innocently.

“Spend several hours yelling open sesame at a deaf wall,” Alex suggested as the two walked away.

Rolling his eyes, Alvaro shrugged and followed. It was definitely time to retire to that sandy beach. He wondered how Aiko would look in a string bikini? Dangerous, he decided. And where would she hide her knives?

Alex led them into a side tunnel, where those who could not walk through solid rock found a tight fit getting past a collapsed section of wall. Even with her ring on Alex was so small, she slipped past rock and debris as if she were walking through them, and Aiko turned into a mist any time an obstacle annoyed her. Somehow this mission was not the same, Alvaro thought. Where was the camaraderie that grows from shared trials and struggles? That’s what happens when you invite youngsters to pooh-pooh all over your time-proven traditions. No respect there, and not only for their wise elders who might not be as young and spry as they once were, he thought as he scraped a belly he could not suck in far enough on a protruding rock.

Finally, they won their way through to a relatively clear, if not dry passage. One look at the gloop on her boots and Cantara knew what this passage once carried. Why could she not visit a vampyre city without coming away covered in shit? And this time, she was willing to knock on the front door all polite and everything. Somehow it had to be the fault of the three snickering men or one of their smirking pixies. Some days there were too many targets for her knife.

“It gets easier a little way up,” Alex consoled, “but I did not go much further than this.”

“We’ll figure it out when we get into the city,” Angel encouraged. “We can start quartering the passages looking for signs others have come this way.”

Cantara splashed past them, taking the lead. This was still her squad, and when it came to creeping through vampyre cities, she still had the most experience. Upyr had not fared well during the earthquake. If anyone was home, they might resent her last visit, when she literally brought down the roof, and they would be hungry and desperate enough to attack even a large group like this. Moving into the city proper ahead of her companions, the djinn stopped to turn in a circle and stare. Not one surface in her field of vision lay unbroken, piles of bricks and plaster, and in places, boulders and scree from shattered walls lay everywhere. Could anyone or anything have survived this?

“We better find the girl soon,” Cantara warned. “I don’t trust the stability of these caverns.”

Somewhere nearby, a boulder dropped onto another with a loud bang. With a start, they cringed and then kept on going, unable to keep their eyes off the rock bed overhead. After months the tunnels should have settled, and still, the air rang with the slide of sand and the bang and clank of rock and stone. Water ran in a steady fall somewhere to the left, and dozens of drips added their ploinks to the cavern’s music. This was no longer the comfortable home of eighty thousand creatures. It was the ruins left behind by an underground battle that had seen thousands die, and only the bodies were missing to mark that horror.

Beyond the outskirts of Upyr, the damage was spotty – here was a stretch of untouched homes, there a tunnel completely blocked off by rocks and debris. They covered ground as quickly as the broken terrain would allow, quartering back and forth, searching for signs of Ember and her hounds. It seemed hopeless, and only the thick layers of rock dust offered any chance of finding her tracks. After all, even Hellhounds did not leave a trail on solid rock, urban legends to the contrary.

In the end, it was a well-chewed flashlight and its one missing battery that set them on the right track. There was no mistaking the oversized teeth marks that had pierced its metal case. Ember was down here without an extra flashlight. God alone knew what other pieces of equipment her canine goats had eaten, and if their appetite took enough, she might not be able to find her way back to the surface. Every one of them had seen her hounds swallow some item or other no other living creature would attempt to eat – a garbage can lid, all but two of Alex’s shoes, a car wheel, rubber and metal, and the microwave. And if they got hungry enough, no one here doubted they would eat the girl herself.

Once they found the trail following the girl was easier than they had anticipated. Somehow she had always found the easiest passage, always large and clear enough four her and her hounds to fit through and always tending downward. It was as if someone were guiding her along. Someone like the ghost of Jean-Claude, whose existence was becoming harder and harder to deny. There were fewer points where she had backtracked than the specialists had taken reaching this point. Alvaro raised a questioning eyebrow at Cantara, who shrugged. What could she say? Stranger things had happened.

Within an hour, they found Ember. She was sleeping in a mound of hounds, nestled against the wall in a position that had to be uncomfortable. Rousing, she looked at them, blinking through a yawn.

“It’s about time you guys got here,” Ember complained. “Jean-Claude said you would be here an hour ago.”

Alex’s flashlight picked up something blue creeping towards the girl’s neck. With a cry, Cantara drew her knives. “Hold still, sweetie!”

As the blade flashed towards her head, Ember drew the imp protectively into her arms. “Hey! Watch it! You almost hit my monkey.”

“Uhm,” Alex looked at Aiko and Cantara. “Monkeys don’t live in sewers.”

“This kind does,” Ember shot back. “Jean-Claude says it’s a New York Sewer Blueback. Besides, he’s cute.”

Alvaro rolled his eyes. What would April say when she saw Ember’s ‘monkey’? And would she let her keep it? “We’ll sort it out later. We should be heading back to the surface.”

“Okay,” Ember said as she found her feet, “I just got to show you something first.”

“April’s worried, sweetheart,” Angel soothed.

“Jean-Claude says….”

“You’re in enough trouble as it is,” Alex objected.

“Jean-Claude says…”

“It’s too dangerous around here,” Cantara put her foot down.

“JEAN-CLAUDE SAYS I HAVE TO SHOW YOU SOMETHING!” Ember’s face was red, and she was stomping her foot to punctuate each word.

“I don’t think we are going anywhere until she does,” Alvaro sighed.

Angel shrugged at the Wandering Jew, and Cantara glared at all three. Sometimes men were useless. Happy now, Ember chatted like a magpie, leading the way further along the tunnel. Where and what she wanted to take them to they did not know? Apparently, it was important to the girl. And when they dropped down into the massive, claw-dug tunnel, they all discovered it was important to them as well.

The passage was littered with the dead and dying bodies of Eaters of the Dead. At some point, a mass migration had passed along this tunnel, but what worried the specialists more was whatever had created the tunnel. It was beyond large.

“There’s a hurt animal,” Alex teased, pointing to a mangled Eater of the Dead. “Why didn’t you pick that one, it’s cuter than what you got?”

“Eeeew!” Ember retorted. “That’s a filthy vampyre. Blueberry is a monkey.”

Alex turned to Aiko and smirked. The vampyre was too preoccupied watching Alvaro and the others, studying their reactions. “What does it all mean?”

“Someone has summoned the conclave’s guardian,” Alvaro replied.

“What I can’t understand,” the Wandering Jew complained, “is how did they dig up something this big right under our noses?”

“Very carefully,” Cantara replied sarcastically.

“Do you think the other conclaves have done the same thing?” Angel wondered, and a sudden quiet fell over the group.

They trailed along the tunnel for a quarter of a mile, keeping the three dogs close. Nobody wanted Strawberry eating any more vampyres, and she had already swallowed a half a dozen. At one point where a clear claw print was embedded in the rock, Angel held out his hand in comparison. His oversized mitt looked like a doll’s hand next to the massive score marks. It looked like a moving mountain had shambled on by, and no one could say if it was flesh and blood or something worse.

“Let’s get Ember home before April has a kitten,” Cantara finally sighed.

“It’s not going to help,” Alvaro muttered, looking at the ugly blue mound of warts riding in Ember’s arms. It stuck out an all too human tongue at him.

April came home from the diner to meet them. One look at Ember and she marched her into the bathroom, pulling the muddy clothes from the girl. Filling the tub with soapy, scalding water, she pointed at the tub as she gathered up the soiled clothes for the wash. Only then did April notice Ember’s ‘Blue Monkey.’ Wordlessly, she stalked out of the bathroom and headed straight to the washing machine. What did you use to get demon sweat off of clothes? A little brimstone and lye?

Returning to the living room, April found herself face-to-face with a worried Angel. “We need to talk about Ember.”

April nodded acceptance.

“I take it you have seen Ember’s latest acquisition?” Angel asked sharply.

“Blue Ba-.” Alex began.

April cut her off with a look. “Her blue monkey? Did anyone tell her it’s an imp?”

“Well,” Cantara began and fell quiet beneath April’s withering stare.

“She bonds with demons,” Angel ventured. “And I am not sure she sees them for what they are.”

“Okay,” April sighed. “We will do a reading and see how intertwined her aura is with them before we decide what to do. You can’t just yank a bond like this out by the roots. It could kill her.”

April walked to the bathroom door and stuck her head inside, “for God’s sake, get that blue creature out of the tub.”

“He likes the bubbles,” Ember complained.

April shook her head. It was hard to remember she was still, what, fifteen a week ago? Still a child.

“When you are finished in here, we want to see you and your hounds,” April instructed. “I’ll have Alex bring you some clothes. And clean up this mess.”

April marshalled her troops the moment she closed the door. Alex was off to fetch a change of clothes, and down the block to fetch old mother Koinensberg; Gwen was off to fetch the full crystal set and candles, and Crystal and Cantara took the dogs out to hose them down and then for a walk. The three men, with thoughts of a hot shower and a cold beer on their minds, found themselves dragooned into service moving furniture. Although each and every one of them moaned and complained, they had all grown to love the spunky girl, and realized bonding with three demons could not be anything but bad. And so they took April’s orders with as much good grace as they could muster while being covered in vampyre feces – and at least she had given them time to change into clean clothes.

Freshly bathed, her hair dripping water and her eyes dripping curiosity, Ember walked into the living room. She had her ‘monkey’ swaddled in a towel, and even bathed it still stank. Crystal reminded herself to throw the towel out, maybe even burn it. As if the sly creature knew she was thinking about him, and nothing good, Blueberry stuck his tongue out at her – a too human tongue that gave her the willies.

“Sit down on the couch, sweetheart,” April instructed, “and call your puppies and get them to sit with you?”

“Are we in trouble?” Ember gulped.

“No sweetheart,” April soothed, stroking her back.

Ember sat down, calling her hounds and making room on the couch for Huckleberry. Blueberry chattered at him until Ember gave him a tap on the nose. She was the boss, and she did not allow fighting. Her other two puppies were too big for the couch, but both managed to shove one of their large heads onto her lap. Ember was a Goth, not a Wiccan. All the crystals and candles were fascinating and frightening – so many colours and shapes, each charged with power. Crystals and candles were two of the few things her Hellhounds would not swallow, not a second time, not after April had dosed them with something so foul-tasting they had made faces for a week. Each needed to be near her for reassurance as much as she needed their bulk to shelter her own nerves, and while she could not quite relax, she did not have to worry about her children misbehaving.

“We are just going to take a look at your aura, sweetie,” April explained. “Just to make sure none of you were harmed while you were down in Upyr.”

The three Wiccan women and Crystal gathered around the cloth and the crystals. As April chose and rejected various crystals, placing each in a silver setting around the circumference of a small bowl, the other three sorted out the candles and set wards. On the surface of the mercury in the bowl, an image slowly resolved. A large scribble of silver-white light strobed in the centre of the scrying bowl, three black and silver splotches and a fourth of almost pure white radiating off it like spokes from the hub of a wheel. The three Wiccan women gathered at the edge of the bowl, studying the whole.

“What’s this swirl of black floating in her aura?” Gwen asked.

“That,” Mother Koinensberg clucked. “That you won’t see too often. It will be the psychic resonance from the vampyre venom.”

“But I thought we cured her?” Gwen objected.

“We did,” April reassured her daughter. “A very rare success, but some damage never goes away. This white one would be Huckleberry.”

“And those two are the hounds,” Mother Koinensberg confirmed, pointing to two black pools where tendrils of silver flowed in from the main hub. “The bond is reversed – the hounds are bonded to the child. That I have never seen.”

“What’s this one?” Gwen pointed to a vague shadow on a blank section of the mercury.

“Where?”

“Hold on,” Gwen said. Replacing a rose quartz tuning crystal with an amethyst crystal, she refined the focus. She exchanged several others, shuffling them between settings before she was satisfied. “There.”

“Oh, my God!” April breathed, recognizing that aura immediately. “Wandjina! Wandjina, take me to when he is now!”

Wandjina stepped through a wall, no longer grinning. Even a godlet could learn to fear that voice. He shrugged and moved to her side. In a flash, he and April were gone. In a shifting world of mist and light and space, April found him waiting. Jean-Claude. She found herself crying like a schoolgirl. Jean-Claude smiled, a smile she had missed so much over the past months. Somehow he moved to her side, and suddenly she was in his arms, all her pain and loneliness dissolving in a shower of happy tears.

“You are worried about the child, my little witch?” Jean-Claude asked, drying her tears gently with his thumbs.

“She treats demons like family pets,” April frowned. “I would say I am concerned.”

“There are more of us these last three generations, and special talents are appearing, ones none of us have ever seen…. I had begun a study when I had to leave… Come,” Jean-Claude urged, taking her hand. “I will show you something.”

He moved them through the dreamscape in a manner that left her feeling as if they were standing still as their surroundings flashed on by. As she walked on clouds with the ground above her head, moved through oceans that swam with stars, she kept her eyes on Jean-Claude. He alone seemed real, solid in this shifting world.

They stopped. The white of the silver light before her was so bright it hurt her eyes.

“It’s beautiful,” April breathed. “What is it?”

“That is the Christ within the child,” Jean-Claude replied. “The Christ that is within all of us. Look there.”

The hard, black ball of the imp’s soul coward away from the shining soul of the child. Tendrils of silver slowly wended their way into the black, sullying its colour. The girl’s aura, her soul, was definitely cleansing the souls of the three demons.

And suddenly, April was back in the brownstone.

“Mom!” Gwen wailed. “You’re crying!”