The Walls of Jericho

Preparations

When the hydraulic lift stops, we’re inside a massive garage that loaded tractor-trailers could have driven inside three abreast and still had plenty of space between them. Channing kills the Ducati’s engine, then sets the kickstand and swings his leg over.

“I thought you said we were going shopping. I feel like I should have told someone where I was going before I came here so they can recover my body when I disappear.” I peer around the dimly lit room, shivering in the cold damp and curling my lip in disgust at the two inches of green mold growing into the corners, up along the graffitied walls and onto the ceiling. “What is this place? It looks like a bunker.”

He doesn’t answer until he removes his helmet and finger combs the leather brown waves of his hair. “That’s what it was. A defunct fallout shelter. Remnant of the Cold War. We use it as a staging area and for storage.”

“Storage? Of what? Dead bodies?” I ask, pulling my head out my helmet. “It feels like a meat locker in here.”

Channing flashes me a megawatt grin. “Stuff,” he replies vaguely, tipping his head towards a door shaped block in one wall that has no handle. “Come on.”

I leave my helmet beside his on the motorcycle’s seat and trail behind him. He feels blindly along the upper lip of the doorframe above both our heads, and as soon as his fingers brush over the sensor there, my techno-abilities light up like the Las Vegas strip. There are some seriously complex electronics functioning on the other side of this door. This isn’t Avernus, and since he didn’t say I couldn’t, I let my senses wander.

He wasn’t kidding when he said it was an old bomb shelter. The wiring I’m feeling runs parallel to the ventilation system through twenty-four inch thick solid concrete walls. The entire structure spans an area equivalent to a small strip mall, only mostly underground. As I build my cognitive map of the place, I find bathrooms and bunk rooms to comfortably house at least fifty people. There’s both water and air filtration systems, plus climate control in a centralized control room but most of the wiring and sensors are dysfunctional now—lost to the inexorable creep of nearly a century of rust and mold.

But the most astounding thing is a communications center— like the kind you’d see in a war film. The electronics there aren’t damaged. In fact, they’re highly functioning, and about a second after Channing squares his finger over the sensor, they roar to life with a single word identification.

Alpha.

Wolves don’t appear to be especially creative.

I startle as the door unseals with a soft pop then a hiss like when you open a bottled soda or beer. Abruptly, I return to my senses to find Channing watching me closely through narrowed eyes.

“Done snooping? If you’d asked, I’d have given you a tour.”

“I wasn’t snooping.” The words come out too fast and I’m certain they’ll give me away.

He fixes me with a disapproving frown. “We’re mated, Jericho. I can feel when you’re lying the same way you can feel it about me. Besides, your eyes glow weakly and get a little glassy and distant when your magic engages.” He gestures with one hand, urging me through the door first.

“Fine. I was snooping. But you only asked me not to snoop at Avernus. Now we’re seven miles away.”

“You and the semantics,” he drawls, leading the way across this empty room and opening one of three doors on the other side. “It’s fine. The system here is self-contained.”

“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing with this place—.” My words trail off as I look inside. “Whoa.”

The next room is outfitted like a high-end fashion boutique, with men’s clothing displayed on racks and shelves to one side, and women’s on the other. The temperature is comfortable here and the walls reflect a pale soothing peach shade instead of goopy slick mold. The floor is covered with a thin but noise-dampening carpet in a simple geometric pattern that coordinates with the wall color, and from somewhere, the faint sound of elevator music is piped in.

“Rebecca, we’re here,” Channing calls, then looks down at me again. “And I did tell you what this place is for—staging and storage.”

“Staging and storage is incredibly vague. If you don’t want me snooping, then why don’t you answer my stupid questions?”

“Good morning, Alpha.” The female voice that answers is smooth as silk and oozes an elitist combination of hauteur and disdain. “I hoped for better when you told me you had a project for me.”

Rebecca is a tall svelte woman with a platinum blonde pixie cut that perfectly frames her narrow angular face. It sets off a pair of piercing icy blue eyes and a Clara Bow set of lips rouged an unappealing plum color that clashes with her clothes. She’s dressed to the nines in pointy-toed stilettos and a wrinkle-less linen pantsuit and looks like she should be kicking her feet up on the CEO’s desk of some Fortune 500 company. Not here, keeping shop in some abandoned fallout shelter straight out of Dr. Strangelove.

“Jericho, this is Rebecca Faolan. She’ll be taking care of your wardrobe and helping you transition to the role you’ll have to play,” Channing introduces. “Rebecca, this is Jericho.”

‘Role I have to play’? What the hell is this? I’ve already been displaced from my job, from my home, from my life and now I’m being displaced from myself? None of this is working for me.

Raking me head to toe with those ice-blue eyes, Rebecca replies like I’m not even here. “When you told me she’d brought down the dragon all by herself, I expected something more impressive.”

Well, I can already see this is going to be great fun. Not. I think it’s time to change this gal’s tune.

“Rebecca—.”

Whatever reprimand Channing intended to deliver is interrupted when Rebecca gives an entirely undignified, high-pitched squeal of pain and leaps to one side. She clutches a spot just under her ribs on one side and stares at me, wild-eyed and a little bit savage.

“Jericho—.”

I silence Channing with a hand, then take a step closer to the still-reeling woman. “That was about five thousand volts of electricity, but so you’re aware, there’s plenty more where that came from—I ran about ten million volts through the dragon. Whatever your job is, Rebecca, I’d recommend you do it. Respectfully. Otherwise, we can go back to more shocks. Your choice. Either way works for me.”

Several long seconds hang between Rebecca and me while she debates her course of action. Then she gives herself a little shake and straightens her clothes. Without taking her piercing blue eyes off me, she tells Channing, “Alpha, I’ve provided a change of clothes for you in the dressing room. Luna, if you’ll come with me, we’ll get started.”

“We’re on the motorcycle,” he replies. “Suit her up accordingly.”

Rebecca’s eyes roll. “Motorcycles are for single men, Alpha.” She gestures at me. “This way.”

I follow her through a door through the women’s side and find myself in a tiny, one person salon. “What exactly is going on here?”

“Makeover,” she replies simply, gesturing for me to take a seat before the mirror. “Your job is to pass as the spoiled little wife of an executive salesman. You’ll need to look the part.”

Slouching with my hands in the front pockets of my hoodie, I watch her in the mirror. She unbuttons her suit jacket, hanging it meticulously on a padded hanger, then exchanges it for a long apron on a hook on the wall.

Every single one of her movements is graceful, deliberate and unhurried. It’s what adds to her air of command. It also makes her seem like a snob.

“I’m confident that I can hunt down a dragon exactly how I am,” I retort. “I think I’m going to pass, but thanks.”

With her piercing blue eyes fixed expressionlessly on my face, she calls, “Alpha.”

Instantly, the hair on the back of my neck stands on end. The smooth purring connection between Channing and me roughens to a snarl. Crap.

In the next instant he stalks around the corner, leaning against one side of the doorframe and blocking my exit. He folds his arms across his broad chest, giving the illusion of ease, but his blue eyes are focused on mine and his chin tips down disapprovingly.

He’d changed into the clothes Rebecca had selected for him, a pair of perfectly pressed slacks and a slick shirt with a white undershirt that made him look tan visible above the open buttons near the collar. He still wore his slightly scuffed rustic leather lace-up boots, but overall, the effect was more gorgeous than ever.

The rest of the world faded away—the elevator music, Rebecca the Snob and her perfect little salon. It was just us, me being defiant and him simmering as he watched me trying to weasel out of this mess.

“Jericho, we talked about this. Sit down. Or Siberia.”

“You’re not my alpha.”

Channing lets out a heavy sigh. “I should’ve spanked you harder.”

That little comment doesn’t make me happy, especially that he voices it in front of Rebecca. To her credit, she’s busily ignoring our conversation and rearranging a make-up tray set up on another narrow counter.

“There’s nothing wrong with the way I look. I don’t get it, Channing. How can I be ‘beautiful’ in the kitchen one minute, and the next minute be here taking lip from Her Royal Rudeness and in need of a makeover?”

“There’s not anything wrong with the way that you look. I’m moving you to Tassler Heights. You have to look like you belong there.”

“Tassler Heights?”

He nods. “That’s what I said.”

Tassler Heights is an enclave of stately homes within Crossroads. Perched on a bluff of sun-bronzed earth with a privileged geography overlooking the ocean, it has its own private beach, meticulously manicured trails of stately pepper trees, hot-pink bougainvillea shrubs and jacarandas blooming in electric purple, all presided over by a smattering of stately palm trees. It’s the exclusive neighborhood of Crossroads’ extremely powerful oligarchs who controlled the city.

“Why!?”

“You want to find a dragon, don’t you?” His brows arch. “That’s where he’ll be.”