Dangerous Designs Read online

CHAPTER SEVEN

  Storey spun around. Her jaw dropped. "Where'd you come from?" she demanded, her eyes locked on the costume-clad man now before her. "You weren't here a second ago."

  Her voice rose to a loud gasp and her eyes widened as the wall behind him came into focus. She gulped and spun in a circle. The sky had disappeared. Leaves no longer crunched under her feet and the fresh woodsy scent no longer drifted her way. Her stomach wiggled, then wiggled some more as she gulped for air. Where was she? And how had she gotten here?

  They'd been standing beside the creek then...a shudder snapped from her toes to her head with realization. Swallowing hard, she shifted closer to Eric.

  The wizened old man with a huge beard and tufts of hair decorating his bald head glared at her. His gaze switched to Eric. "What have you done? Do you know how many rules you've broken?" His voice rose to a high pitched squeak at the end. His hands, fisted on his hips, all but disappeared into the folds of his midnight robes.

  Storey studied the angry character in front of her. The angle of his chin, that aristocratic nose tilt, that demanding voice - yeah, he was used to giving orders. And expecting them to be carried out. He was a little out of her experience. She couldn't help asking, "Who are you?"

  A piercing blue gaze landed on her and narrowed. "I'm Paxton. And you're Storey Dalton." The gaze shifted to Eric. "Explain."

  Eric opened his mouth. No words came out.

  "Now." The bright blue gaze hardened to steel. When Eric didn't immediately jump in with an explanation, he added, "You're done. You know that, don't you?"

  "I had to," Eric protested. "You don't understand."

  "No. I don't." Paxton spread his arms wide. "I can't until you explain."

  Eric glanced over at Storey. "Let me have the sketchbook, please."

  She gazed at him for a long moment, not fully understanding yet knowing it was important. She handed it over. Her stomach knotted as Eric flipped through the pages, searching for what he wanted. He went too far and had to go back a few pages, letting out a small hiss as he did so.

  "Here." He twisted the book and placed it under Paxton's nose.

  Paxton's eyes widened. Glancing from Storey to Eric then back again at the picture, he asked, "How?"

  "Show him," Eric said to her.

  Reaching into her pocket, Storey pulled out her pencil or stylus, as Eric called it, and held it up.

  The color leached from Paxton's face and he took a small step back. "No. Oh, no."

  "Oh, yes."

  "What?" Storey was beyond confused and she had no explanation for the coldness in her belly. Ice had spread out to her limbs. Wrapping her arms around her belly, she wished she knew what the hell was going on. "Look, I don't understand. What's wrong with that picture? It's just a sketch. It's not real or anything."

  "Did you draw this picture?" At Storey's nod, Paxton continued, "With...that?" He pointed to the pencil.

  Again she nodded. He closed his eyes and started chanting in some weird language. The same one Eric had used earlier.

  "Do you guys belong to the same religious group as my mom by any chance? They chant, too."

  "You mock us?" shrieked Paxton, stiffening in outrage. "Do you realize what you have done?"

  "Obviously not," she snapped. "As no one will tell me what the hell is going on."

  Eric's eyes widened. He stared at her wordlessly.

  She spun around to Eric, catching his wince before he covered it up. "Now what?"

  "We don't swear here. It's considered rude," Eric's hushed voice whispered behind her.

  She spun around. "Rude? I'm now supposed to worry about my manners? What the hell are you talking about? Over where?"

  He spluttered. "Please show some respect. Don't swear."

  "All right, geeze." His look didn't improve. "Oh, for crying out loud. Geeze is not a swear word." She glowered at him. What was his problem, anyway? And since when had he become such a prude?

  Paxton cheeks sucked in like he had lemon slices stuffed inside.

  "Whatever." She held out her hand. "I'll take my sketchbook now, thanks." Hand outstretched, she snapped her fingers when Eric didn't pass it over. "I don't know what game you're playing, and I don't care. I want no part of it. So, I'm going home."

  "No, you're not." Paxton drew up to his full height. Storey's gaze widened as he stretched above her. How tall was he?

  "You'll stay in our world until we get to the bottom of this."

  "Your world," she spluttered. "What are you talking about?"

  "You are..." Eric paused...took a deep breath...then rushed to get the rest of the sentence out. "You are in another dimension."

  "Oh, for the love of God." Storey threw up her hands at the stony looks shooting her way. "Look, I've had enough. You zip me to another dimension, whatever that means, without asking my permission, tell me I can't go home, give no explanation as to what is going on and then expect me to be calm about it!"

  Eric reached out a reassuring hand. She stumbled back out of range. "No." She pointed at Paxton and said, "Hell, no."

  This time, Eric grabbed her shoulder and gave her a good shake. Glaring down at her, he said, "Stop. I know you don't understand. Just, please, show some respect. I will explain." He glanced over at the steaming Paxton. "I promise."

  Storey stepped back, glaring up at him. "You'd better. And for your information, I swear when I'm pissed off, so don't piss me off. That includes shaking me."

  He closed his eyes briefly, dropped his hand and stepped away. "You'd make a saint crazy," he muttered.

  Paxton spluttered in outrage. "Which you aren't," he roared. "You should be able to control this...this female."

  "Control," she gasped in shock. For some reason the whole mess slid from bad into ludicrous. "'I must be having a bad dream. Eric? Control me? I don't think so." She started to giggle.

  "Oh, thank you very much. Look how she treats me?" He scowled at Paxton. "Why did you have to go and say that?"

  "That's enough from both of you. This is no laughing matter. We have a crisis on our hands and need to find a solution." He glanced down at the sketchbook now in his hands. "Fast. Come wait in my office while I call an emergency council meeting."

  Storey was still giggling as they took several more steps, then she stopped. This wasn't just a room. This was some kind of laboratory. Stunned, she could only stare at the pristine white counters, walls, ceilings, even the huge monitors were white with a black trim. "Eric?"

  "You're in my world now. It's very similar to yours." He hooked his arm through hers. "Don't panic. Everything is fine. I walked you across a veil that exists between the two worlds."

  "Veil? At the entrance to the mine?" Easy for him to say. Getting her head wrapped around the concept, not so easy. Still, there was no arguing that she walked on tiles and under some kind of weird fluorescent lights instead of grass and sky. "You're not from my world?"

  "Nope." As she stopped in front of a large series of monitors, Eric added by way of an explanation. "It's Paxton's communications center. He controls the crossings."

  "There's more than one?" She slid him a sideways look. "Does my side know about your side?"

  He pursed his lips and shook his head. "We don't think so, but it's possible. There are several crossings; we keep most of them shut down. We travel to your side when we have specific research to complete. To the best of our knowledge, there aren't any crossings from your side to ours - at least regulated ones."

  "So, I'm the first to visit?" For some reason that concept tickled her. She'd always wanted to get away from her life. Now she was in the most bizarre situation imaginable and didn't know what to think. Contrary was her name. She should be scared, but it was as if the jumping into the mine had prepared her for this eventuality. Well, not quite this reality.

  "Come this way." Eric tugged her arm, leading her toward a closed door. She followed, trying to take in everything. So similar and yet...different.

  Eric looked normal
enough. Paxton didn't. He was a little on the odd side. Then again, what if a monk, Goth or a Muslim person came here? Eric's people would consider him representative of her world, too. "This isn't fair. You know how to do all this and we don't."

  "Fair?" Paxton ran up behind them. "Look what happens when you do know a little bit." He brushed past and through the door ahead of them.

  "Really." She exhaled heavily. "Let's not forget who left a stylus in my world in the first place. I wouldn't have found it if you'd stayed where you belong." She wasn't going to take the blame for this – whatever this was. They shouldn't have sneaked over to her side. Having perpetrated one wrong, they shouldn't have compounded it by leaving the stylus behind.

  "I know."

  "Come, come. Don't dawdle. We don't have time. Everyone is almost here." Paxton hurried ahead of them, tossing an urgent look back their way.

  Storey didn't get it. "How did everyone manage to get here in the time it took me to walk the length of the floor?"

  "Things are a bit different here." He grinned down at her. "You'll see."

  "That's what I'm afraid of," she muttered. "Some info would be helpful. Does everyone look like you and Paxton, for a start? I don't want to walk into that room and find talking alligators or some such thing."

  He laughed. "No, we all look like you. Although, we call ourselves Torans. And Paxton is a little more unique than the rest of us."

  "Is that what you call it?"

  Eric stopped at the doorway, twisting to look down on her. "You're stalling. You can do this. Heck, I even went to school and attended classes with you. How bad can this be?"

  Glaring at him, she stormed through the doorway and came to a sudden halt on the other side. "No one ever smiles in your world, do they?"

  The normal looking room was full. Crowding around a large oval table in the middle of the room, were dozens of people and even more stood in the back. Everyone stared, frowning at her. Too bad. Her dreams of a magical world spiriting her away went up in smoke. They all looked depressingly normal.

  "They aren't that bad." Eric stepped forward. Staring ahead, his back straight, he addressed the room formally. "Greetings, council. May I present Storey Dalton. She's from the other side of the veil."

  Storey couldn't help stiffening at the multitude of curious and judgmental looks zeroing in on her.

  "So I understand," answered a rotund looking man at the head of the table. So round and short, he took almost two chairs yet barely could rest his arms on the table. And his face...she shuddered. Beady eyes stared out from between the fat rolls with a power that defied description. "And apparently you are responsible for bringing her here?"

  Eric's voice deepened. "That's right, father. I felt it best."

  Father? Storey glanced between the two men, but didn't recognize the family resemblance. One height challenged and the other height gifted. The change in Eric's voice, however, yeah, there was that whole parent relationship mess between them.

  "And just how to do you think breaking our rules, rules which have held for centuries, I might add, as now being for the 'best?'"

  Eric opened his mouth to explain, when Paxton stepped in. "We don't have time to sort out his punishment right now. We have something much bigger to deal with."

  "Punishment? You're going to punish him for bringing me here?" Storey couldn't contain her outrage. Whether she wanted to be here or not, she knew Eric believed he'd done the right thing. "In that case, you can send me home. I'm not going to help if he's in trouble over this." It was all she could do to refrain from swearing. If they pissed her off more, then all bets were off.

  "Shh. It's alright. I won't be punished."

  His father grunted. "We'll make that decision without any input from you. Breaking our laws is considered a very serious offense. It's not like in your world, young lady."

  "It's hardly admirable that you sit there with your pompous ways and criticize my world when you've been sneaking in and out, taking what you want, for centuries. That's called stealing in my world. We'll have this discussion after my people's scientists come over here for several hundred years and steal what they want from you," she snapped in outrage. She strode several steps forward and stood with her hands on her hips, anger vibrating up her back. How dare they?

  "Uh, oh," murmured Eric. He stepped up beside her as if bracing for a mortal blow.

  The temperature in the room dropped.

  Paxton rose and came running over to stand in front of her. "That's enough. She doesn't understand our ways. In this case, I believe Eric was right to do what he did."

  A murmur rustled throughout the room. To have made such a stand had to be big. Storey didn't care how big. She hadn't been a conformist in her world, she wasn't about to start now.

  The breath wooshed out of Eric and his shoulders relaxed.

  "Eric, take her over to the seats so we can get started."

  Storey noticed the two empty chairs only when Eric motioned toward them. Paxton waited until they'd sat down before addressing the swelling crowd. "Now. This problem is one for both our worlds. Several weeks ago a research team, Denby's team, I believe, crossed over. They were there for less than an hour when Sarcov, the head scientist, became sick. We think at this point he might have been allergic to some of the plants he was studying."

  Eric shifted. Storey shot him a questioning look. He never took his gaze off Paxton.

  "...in the panic to treat him and get him home, his stylus was lost."

  The murmur in the room swelled. Paxton held up his hand. "I know. I know. We weren't made aware of this until Sarcov woke up in the hospital and asked for his stylus." He looked around the room. "We sent a team back immediately. And they were almost upon it when they saw a young girl stoop to pick it up. They followed her, hoping to recover the stylus, only they lost her in the school." He nodded toward Storey. "This is the girl. Now," he stopped to pin the seated members with a cutting glare. "what's important to understand is that she picked it up with her bare hands and had no problem in doing so."

  Over the growing murmur of excited voices, Paxton glanced over at Storey. "I'll explain in a minute."

  "Storey didn't know what she'd found. As an artist, she was happy with her find, except she became driven to draw on every surface from her textbooks, homework, even her own arms."

  Storey pulled her sleeves down over her wrists. Her fingers clenched in her lap. She hadn't thought he'd noticed. She'd tried to wash it off, but no go.

  Eric interjected. "Sorry, Storey. I didn't say anything to you because I didn't want to make you uncomfortable." He turned back to address the elders. "She was listening to the stylus. It's been trying to come back home."

  His father shook his head. "That's not possible. She's not capable of hearing the stylus."

  Paxton shook his head. "It shouldn't be possible. However, as we've never lost anything over there, we don't know what's possible and what's not. Especially with something soulbound."

  Eric's father face narrowed, sharpened. "Doesn't that defy the term?"

  Another seated elder spoke. "If the stylus was soulbound, how did she manage to pick it up?"

  "We're not sure of anything in this case. It's possible," Paxton suggested, "that due to Sarcov's illness, the bond between him and the stylus weakened. It's also possible that crossing the veil changed something that contributed to the bond weakening."

  Murmurs rose through the crowd.

  Paxton straightened and raised his right hand, commanding silence from the audience. "We don't have all the answers here. There're much more important issues to focus on. We know that Storey picked up the stylus and used it for her artwork. However, without knowing what she was doing, she drew a doorway and actually managed to go through it, thus entering our world."

  The crowd cried out in shock. "What? She came here? Without us knowing?"

  "Yes, that's correct. Except the monitoring system tracked her movements."

  Storey leaned toward Eric,
her eyes widening in shock. "I have?"

  "Yes. The mine is partially on our side."

  She blinked. Then blinked again. "So, when I went through the floor in my bedroom and ended up in the mine, that was the same as crossing the veil?"

  He studied her face then grinned, that same lopsided smile. Damn, he shouldn't be allowed to do that.

  "Something like that. The stylus actually took you to a formal crossing zone in the mine. You couldn't get out because it wasn't active on our side. It's only because the crossing notified Paxton of your activity that you were found at all."

  Dismay crossed her face. "Are you saying I might have never gotten out?"

  "If we didn't monitor the veil then yes. It's quite likely you'd have died there and no one would have known." He reached across to cover her clenched hands with his. "However, Paxton did find you. He told me and I opened the door on your side of the world to let you out."

  "And the second time I went in?" Storey struggled to understand.

  Eric grimaced. "The stylus took you to a different gate entirely, presumably because the first attempt didn't work. I had to make it look like Bankhead mine when you walked out. That took some doing. I have a decoder that helps me to travel great distances in a second. That's how I moved us from the one mine to the other." He tilted his head, this time a glint of amusement in his eyes. "I also have a soulkey that unlocks almost anything. It has a few other functions that are dangerous to use if you are untrained."

  The stupid mine door. Storey shook her head and laughed. "No way. That's not possible. How could I not notice?"

  He flushed then mumbled, "I did it while you were...distracted."

  She blinked. Memories flooded in. That kiss. That hot, wonderful mind-blowing kiss. "That's why you kissed me?" she hissed. "Oh, my God." Eric's face slipped from the color of a sun-kissed peach color to a fat ripe tomato. Storey glanced around, multiple disapproving frowns deepened as they understood, too. "Oh crap. Sorry everyone. Swearing is common in my world. It's not an insult against humanity over there."

  "It's not over here either; however, it is a sign of disrespect," said another older male, this one just as disapproving as the others at the table.

  "Right." She grimaced. "I'll try to remember that."

  Paxton took control of the conversation again, lowering the noise level in the room instantly. "The real problem is that Storey drew something else." Paxton reached for Storey's sketchbook sitting in front of him on the table. "This."

  He flipped through the book until he found the right page, then held it up to show everyone.

  The crowd erupted into an outcry of shock. Storey grimaced as she looked at it. That hand was beyond creepy. "I don't know if it matters or not, but I don't remember much about drawing that picture."

  Eric's father groaned and smacked his hand down on the table. "That just makes it worse. How could you?"

  "How could I what? Draw? I've always drawn. It's never created portals into another dimension. Neither have things ever appeared in my drawings that I didn't draw there myself. Keep in mind, I wouldn't have done anything if you people hadn't left signs of your invasion."

  "Invasion? Did she just say invasion?"

  "What invasion? What is she talking about?"

  Paxton once again held up his hand to bring the conversation back under control. "We're not pointing fingers here. A series of accidents has brought us to this spot. We have to focus. We are in a crisis, let's deal with that."

  Arguments and shouting broke out across the room. Storey slunk low in her chair. Who could get used to all this fighting?

  "Stop," roared Paxton. "We have to find out what this drawing represents. And if it is what I think it is, we have to find a solution - fast."

  Eric's father shot a disgusted look at Storey. "Surely this might be just a stupid girlish drawing. She can't possible wield the power of the stylus."

  Another elder seated at the table spoke up. "Just what are you thinking the problem is here?"

  "I'm afraid it's Louers."

  Dead silence. Then absolute chaos erupted.

  Louers? Storey wracked her brain. Nope, the name meant nothing to her. Obviously, it did to everyone else as questions flew at Paxton too fast for him to answer.

  "The Louers. Oh my. I thought they'd been wiped out."

  "Are they real?"

  "We got rid of them, didn't we?"

  The questions rose and fell all around her. As she caught the gist of the conversation, the puzzle pieces fell into place. Storey thought she finally understood. "Are you saying this hand belongs to one of those Louers? And that by drawing a doorway, I created a portal they could open too?"

  "Exactly." Paxton nodded like she was some favorite student. She'd love to be, except her next question would drop her right down to a failing grade.

  "So who and what are the Louers?"