Waite on the Blind Angel by John Campbell

Author:John Campbell [Campbell, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: www.thecreativenow.com
Published: 2020-08-02T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Tripping Another Trap

We trekked across relatively open terrain for maybe thirty minutes before we came to an inactive portal, and Gargrom said, “Here be the gate to Dallas we be wanting.”

I could see the familiar quality of light that meant this was a portal to Earth. “Gargrom, why is there a portal directly to my planet on Yngvi? That doesn’t follow what I’ve been told about doorways to sentient worlds. I thought they were all in Purgatory.”

Floki spoke up, “Gargrom, can I tell him?”

Gargrom chuckled, “Aye, me friend,” then turned to me. “Floki be a student of portals. For good or ill, he is always exploring new routes. He probably knows more about the nature of portals than any other dwarf alive.”

Floki deflated at the indirect reference to he and Gargrom’s earlier adventure, but as Gargrom finished with a compliment, he perked back up, beaming at the pair of humans and said, “Ye might be finding this hard to believe, but portals are not random.”

I snorted. “Yeah, scattered all over one place, none in another, then breaking the one rule I thought I knew about them. Random is the word I would have chosen.”

Floki nodded eagerly. “Ye have to go back to their creators to understand them.”

Molly said, “The who and the why of these doorways are something I’ve been wondering about for a long time. Harmon has tried, but his explanations don’t hold much water.”

I shrugged. “And I’m only repeating what I’ve been told, but let’s hold this conversation long enough for me to do a quick reconnoiter, then pick it up again in Dallas.”

Gargrom and Floki both glanced at Molly, and Floki shut his mouth on what he’d been about to say. Gargrom opened the way with a single word in dwarvish and a deft flick of his wrist. I gave Molly a reassuring smile, and stepped through…

…Into a raging maelstrom of swirling, boiling sand that stole the breath from my lungs and beat me down to my knees.

The wind howled, sounding so much like the Hell of lost souls I’d unwillingly visited only months before, that at first I wondered if somehow I had ended up there again. I knew one thing: unless a nuclear bomb had fallen recently, this was not Dallas, Texas. Eyes tight shut, I drew my shirt over my nose so I could breathe, then hunted for the light of an active portal that should have been directly behind me. Twice I searched, but almost impossibly, that immovable gateway between worlds was gone.

Considering Satan’s ability to hide his aura, I figured I must have sprung another of his damnable traps. Satan had to have masked the exit the same way he’d cloaked the entrance to this blighted world. I bent all my will to finding that hidden gate but could see only empty scatterings of luminosity. Except for one place just over the horizon to my right. There, I could sense dark magic. Quiescent, drawn into itself, but alive damn it.

Even as

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