Wolf of the Tesseract

Chapter 18

Next to the goggled Doctor Walther, Jacob Sisyphus stood at the shimmering portal alongside a trio of heavily armed mercenaries. All four wore their Heptobscurantum lapel pins upon their breast. The remainder of The Seven except for Bruce Cannon stood gathered behind to see their wizard off.

Nearby, a number of homeless drifters had been strapped to a bank of vertical braces making a long chain of blood donors. They could keep the gate open as long as reasonably necessary. Catheter tubes connecting the machine to the suppliers were not easy to miss; they snaked across the floor, daisy chained together so that when one donor was drained, the next would begin to flow without a drop in supply.

Cannon descended the stairs with Vivian in tow. Vivian locked eyes with Adams; she glared at him. She had protested this mission only slightly, however, and accepted it under the premise of vindicating her precious herald in the eyes of The Seven. A small contingent of Heptobscurantum mercenaries followed them, pushing a blindfolded man forward; he was bound at the hands and gagged at his mouth.

Doctor Walther looked giddy, pleased that he could finally begin. He took up an additional control module he'd rigged to the machine since the last visit. The control board had been pieced together out of three arcade golfing machines; one roller ball controlled lateral movement of the gate on the plane it was opened to. The other rollers controlled vertical and the forward-backward movements in that space. Walther moved the portal around in three dimensions, giving them a view of a besieged, smoking castle that flew the black flag of Sh'logath.

Greyson smiled at Vivian. "Glad to see you got here as soon as possible. You came here straight from your last mission?"

Vivian positioned the man between her and Greyson. "See to it that Nitthogr's prize is not damaged. He will need this one for leverage," she spat with disdain. "As soon as I vindicate his name, Claire Jones' father will be turned over to Nitthogr. He may prove important to the Herald's plan as leverage." She pushed the blindfolded hostage into Greyson's arms.

Greyson replied calmly. "He will be in the care of The Seven until your return, and maybe we finally learn why the Awakening would require any leverage at all—especially when brute force has been typical until now?"

Vivian scowled at Greyson and then nodded to Sisyphus's crew. They gave her room as she stepped near the gate. "I'll return by own methods," she told them. "I will meet you at the table, either with my master or without."

Sisyphus looked her over. They hadn't met yet. He smiled at her lecherously as an invitation. She didn't pay him any attention.

Walther turned a dial and the portal enlarged. The blood donor closest to the machine groaned slightly and shuddered as the machine demanded more power. "Don't touch the edges," Walther warned. "Unless you don't want those body parts anymore."

Vivian dove through the gate and landed in a somersault. She sprinted off into the shadows as Walther wheeled the gate around into a relatively hidden location.

"Doctor." Sisyphus nodded gave Walther a salute that he'd made famous in his wrestling career. He flashed him a smile to brandish his two vampiric teeth implants, and then he leapt through the portal. His team followed suit.

Behind The Seven, the first vagrant trembled and then gasped, completely drained. The beeping scanner mounted to the rack near his head flat-lined with a squeal.

Greyson pulled the newest prisoner over to the chain of vertical beds that held their prisoners upright and strapped him in; a few empty beds remained open. "I'm afraid that we don't find that leverage is as valuable of a commodity as some of our peers, Doctor Jones." He carelessly jammed the intravenous blood tube into the wrist of Claire's father who cringed at the piercing pain.