Portal: A light fae urban fantasy novel (Arcane Realms Book 1) by N.M. Howell
Author:N.M. Howell [Howell, N.M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dungeon Media Corp.
Published: 2017-08-28T16:00:00+00:00
17
They walked a hallway to a set of stairs leading to a sub-basement carved from solid bedrock down a longer hall. Behind a warded door, a room of pumps stood, their mechanic roar muted. Muted until Trini opened a door in the floor. Descending rusty rungs, they emerged into utter darkness. Trini gestured one of those pulsing orange orbs into her hand.
They stood in a corridor so jammed with pipes they had to move down it sideways. Damp dripped, and their footsteps echoed wetly and weirdly. It seemed they were now far away from the campus. Where the hell was Trini taking her?
A narrow passage snaked from the pipe corridor, looking like a natural fissure in the bones of Manhattan. Trini shoved through a rusted gate. They now walked along more pipes, but these seemed much older. This hallway was nearly silent. Above, the rough ceiling was only a few inches over Trini’s head.
“Iron pipes,” Trini pointed a thumb at the black tubes covered with rust and verdigris. “Keeps scrying eyes away.”
“Where are we going?”
“Here.” Trini stopped. “Watch your step.”
A black doorway led through an arch of broken brick and crumbling mortar. Beyond, the floor fell away more than a story. Trini waved to a rickety bridge that crossed the ten-foot chasm. It was made of mossy wood, with no rails. It groaned beneath their feet.
Voices and light came from the end of a short arched hallway. Trini led the way. Wooden pillars stood six feet apart, a forest holding up the ceiling. The walls were dotted with black circles and the jutting end of cut pipes. A faded stencil on one of the lintels read: Pumping Apparatus Level Four. Rotted hulks of old machinery huddled against a few walls. At the end of the low room, a group of men sat at a makeshift table of sawhorses and rough, filthy planks. Dark Fae globes of orange lay on the boards, or floated in the air.
A form moved quickly from the pillar shadows.
Derek?
“Is it done, Trini? Did they see you—Raina?” Derek took a step back as he saw her.
“Raina.” Trini slapped her head. “Rainara is your cover name? Who thought of that stupid name?”
Derek cleared his throat.
“What the hell are you doing down here?” Raina asked.
Derek’s eyes shifted between her and Trini.
“You know who she is?” He asked.
Trini tossed her hair, hands on her hips. “Apparently not Rainara. Obviously not human.”
He nodded. “Come on.”
Raina followed to the men at the table. None of them spoke. All of them studied her with intense eyes. Many were human men, their hulking physiques giving them away. She spotted two human females as well. The rest were Dark Fae, men and women both. She didn’t recognize any of them.
“We are the Egalitarian Confraternity,” Derek said by way of introduction. “The modern version, anyway.”
Raina took in the people in the ancient, crumbling room. “Seriously?”
In her career with Human-Fae relations, she knew well the history. While humans had encountered the Fae, both Light and Dark, for millennia, the formal introductions had taken place only two hundred years ago or so.
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