“Where did you get this?” Dante asked.
The girl named Meg rolled her eyes. “I told you. Your vampire counterpart gave it to me.”
Dante remembered that part. There was a Vampire plane. He was a royal there. He worked for Dellacorp, and it was huge corporation. His vampire counterpart obviously had it better than he did. He ran this shitty two-bit store and was going nowhere fast. The other Dante sounded like a guy who got an enormous amount of tail.
“As far as I can tell, this thing is nuclear powered,” Dante said in amazement. “How can that be possible? And I think it took my blood a couple of minutes ago. It thinks I’m not edible. What’s up with that?”
“Dante, well, the other Dante, he goes to a lot of different planes.” Meg sipped the coffee he’d made and continued. “The computer is set to test potential food sources. I’m afraid it’s decided you’re toxic.” She looked at the screen. “Too much pollution, and wow, apparently you have a lot of sugar in your system.”
Dante unselfconsciously ate the second half of the Twinkie he’d been downing. It didn’t bother him that vampires wouldn’t consider him proper food. In his mind, it was a plus.
“The vamps here would probably love you, though,” Meg said with a bright smile. “According to what I’ve read, they’re not as picky here.”
“Good to know,” Dante said, chugging a Dr Pepper. “So, let’s say I buy this whole crazy story of yours.” He looked around again for the hidden cameras. If he had any friends, he’d think they were punking him. “What exactly is it you want me to do?”
She chewed on her lower lip nervously. “I need you to help me get back.”
“And how am I supposed to do that, sweetheart?” Dante asked. “I’m not exactly a Planeswalker demon.” That was what she’d called them. “How am I supposed to find this door?”
Her hazel eyes filled with tears. She really believed the story. “I don’t know. I just know that you’re here, and you’re going to help me. I believe it. It wasn’t random coincidence that I found myself here. It was fate.”
Dante wasn’t so sure about that, but there was no denying that technology. He wanted it. If he had to do some internet searches to placate the girl, he would do it. Besides, she really was hot. Maybe when she realized there was nowhere else to go, she would turn to him. He could comfort her. It was a nice prospect. His brain started working overtime.
“Okay, so no one knows where these doors are, right?”
Her pretty hair shook around her shoulders. “No, most of them are well-defined. People move easily through them. The door to this plane is hard to find, and I think there’s more than one. I don’t know why. Some people have gotten through. That’s why we have vampires on this plane. And, according to the computer, werewolves and shapeshifters and the Loch Ness monster. She comes from a waterworld. It’s very sad.”
“Nice,” Dante said. She was taking loony to a whole different place. “So we have to suspect that this door is here in the city. Is it open all the time?”
“More than likely not,” Meg explained. “The other doors aren’t always open. I read that some people can open them at will, but others have to wait. The door from my village’s plane to the Vampire plane opens three times a day. I think we can assume the door here is something like that. It’s somewhere in the city. I don’t think I was out very long.”
“So there’s a door to a different plane right here in Fort Worth,” Dante mused. “It can’t be in an office building. Someone would probably notice something like that. I bet weird stuff happens around it. It’s a long shot, but this baby is pretty cool.” He pushed the button that brought up the menu. “I need to run a search.”
“Of course, master,” the computer said with an inviting smile. “Which pornographic material should I seek out today?”
Dante grinned. “Really? You can do that?” He felt Meg’s stare. “Nothing like that. I want you to run a search on all strange happenings in the city of Fort Worth, Texas. Use the human internet, the primitive, sucky one. Check things like police reports and news articles and even blogs. I need a list of locations around the city where strange things happen.”
The hostess bowed her head and winked out of existence to start her search.
“There,” Dante said to Meg. She was looking at a photograph he kept on his desk. “We’ll have someplace to start soon.”
Meg’s face had gone soft as she looked at the picture of four men in tuxedoes. They were all smiling, with their arms around each others’ shoulders. Dante knew the photograph well. He’d taken it himself. “The twins are my cousins. They’re from Ireland.”
Meg nodded and almost reverently touched the picture. “Their hair is short. It looks good, though. Why are they wearing tuxedoes? And who are the other men? Do they have other brothers here?”
Dante was used to women drooling over his very attractive cousins. No one paid him a bit of attention when Beck and Ci were around. It gave him great pleasure to tell her where the picture had been taken. “Nope. Just a sister. Those men are Beck and Cian’s husbands. I took that picture at their commitment ceremony.”
Meg’s eyes widened, and she dragged him forward by the neck of his T-shirt. Her teeth were clenched and she shook him lightly. “You have to get me out of here. This isn’t my home. I don’t like it here. Everything is wrong here.”
“Jeez,” Dante said, holding his hands up in submission. “I’m working on it, babe. Why don’t you go upstairs? I have an apartment up there. You can take the bed. I’m going to stay up and play with this a little more. I don’t sleep much at night, anyway.”
Meg nodded. She looked exhausted. Crazy or not, she’d obviously had an emotional day. “Thank you, Dante. I really appreciate this. I know it will work. It has to.”
Meg started up the stairs. He wasn’t so sure it would work, but he was starting to believe her story. He knew one thing, though, as he stared at the magnificent machine in front of him. His life had just changed forever.
The forest was filled with her laughter.
“You can run, Cian,” the hag’s voice said. It seemed to echo through the trees. “But you can’t hide.”
She was wrong, Cian realized as he struggled along the river. He could hide. The trees themselves would aid him. He just had to get deep enough into the forest. It was hard because he carried his brother’s weight as well as his own. Only the traps he’d been able to set as he ran had saved him from suffering Beck’s fate so far.
In the distance, he could hear the hag’s frustration at another wall of green she couldn’t get around.
They should have known, Cian cursed himself. They should never have left Megan alone. One of them should have been with her at all times. Now she was gone. The thought made Cian’s heart hurt. If what the hag had told them was true, Meg was lost to them.
Trying to find Meg was what had led them to Liadan. When he and Beck had discovered their wife missing, they panicked. She wouldn’t have left them, so they knew something had happened. Finding Niall’s body had been a terrifying moment, but they knew she wasn’t dead. They would have felt her death deep in their souls. One thing was certain, though. She was very far away.
It had been rumored in the village that Liadan used to know a little something of witchcraft. Cian and Beck had been desperate enough to ask if she knew of any way to seek out their wife. Cian had been wary of the woman, but he was so desperate to find Meg that he’d allowed himself and Beck to walk into a trap.
She’d been smart to strike at Beck first. The arrow had slammed into his body the instant they walked into the forest where Liadan had promised to attempt a locator spell. That wasn’t the spell she had used.