The Interloper Bk. 01

CHAPTER ONE

"Hello?" I waved at the black scaly serpent in front of me thinking that it was one hell of a costume. Couldn't even see the seams. "Um... I'm looking for two boys. One's wearing a yellow cape and—"

It chittered, scales vibrating.

Had to hand it to whoever was in the suit, they were really playing up the part. I scratched at my dark brown rat's nest of a bun. I needed to get back home and shower. Maybe have a shot—I glanced at the serpent again—definitely have a shot.

My eyes moved from black scales to gold floors that looked slippery and shiny. They reflected the white crown molding of the ceiling, which was not nearly as tall as the convention center. I'd probably just slipped into a V.I.P. room in one of the hotels attached to the building, right? There had to be one... though I hadn't seen any hotel that close.

I didn't say the alternative. Didn't dare even think it. This was the San Diego Convention Center, and I was still at Comic Con. Brandon and his little friend James were going to hop out and yell, "Gotcha!" any second now.

Any. Second.

Seconds faded into minutes, and still no fourteen year-old boys jumped out to laugh at me. The Big Mac I'd had for breakfast was burning its way up my esophagus, laced heavily with fear.

The scaled serpent chittered again, tail swiping across the floor to my outstretched legs. I yanked them toward me and wrapped my arms around myself, resting my forehead on my bent knees.

I went back in my memory, trying to pinpoint the exact moment I lost my mind. I woke up at four, brushed my teeth, and got dressed. Woke Brandon up. Made coffee. Begrudged the fact that I agreed to drive the boys to a convention when I should have been studying for my midterms. Put the coffee down, cracked open one of the books still scattered on the dining room table, and studied. Brandon came out of his room later in a yellow cape, black mask, green tights, and red leotard with a giant R across his left breast pocket.

"Who are you supposed to be again?" I recognized the colors, but forgot what character they belonged to.

He frowned. "Robin from Teen Titans."

I grimaced. Oh, it was that one. I was his nanny, but sometimes I felt more like his prisoner. I was also his family's go-to gal for last minute changes. Which was how I ended up driving Brandon to a comic book convention at the asscrack of dawn—Mr. and Mrs. Lerou had been called to a last minute award ceremony in London. A nice bribe from the couple ensured I drove the boys and picked them up, so here I was.

A quick stop at James' house to pick up Robin's sidekick, Beast Boy, and then we headed into San Diego proper. The city was jam-packed and sweltering even at seven in the morning, so I stopped at McDonalds to wait out some of the commuters heading into work.

An hour or so later the traffic became bearable and we moved turtle-slow to the venue. One outrageously expensive parking spot later and we were in line with the rest of the superheroes and fantasy characters. The crush of people was horrible, and the performers and giant inflatable Teen Titan characters weren't helping my mood. I looked out of place in neon pink Disney capri sweats and a white tank top, but the dark circles under my eyes declared I didn't give a fuck.

"Do you need me to stay here with you guys?" I asked the boys.

James wiped a green painted arm across his runny nose. "Nah, we're good."

I eyed the pair dubiously. Brandon was just starting to grow and was a proud five foot eight, still a few inches shorter than my five foot eleven, and James looked like a Hobbit at five three. They were easy targets with their wide eyes, naive bearing, and limited edition Nikes.

I shook my head and squinted at the blazing sun. "I'll stay."

"Then why'd you ask?" James whined.

"Because I like hearing myself talk," I snapped, feeling less than generous. I picked him up and drove him without so much as a "Thank you, Tilly." Hell if I was going to be nice to the kid.

A half hour later we were twenty feet from our original spot and no closer to the entrance. My mind was swinging between, Leave them, they'll be fine and You can't leave; you're the nanny and liable for anything that happens to them!

I blew out a hot breath, crossed my arms, and tapped my foot.

Couple more feet and we came to a gypsy-man wannabe sitting in what looked like a very illegal spot. He gestured to the knickknacks laying on a tie-dyed scarf in front of him. "See something you like? Special price, buy two get one free," he said in a thick accent that I bet came from an old Dracula movie.

I rolled my eyes at the ploy and turned back to the sun.

"Cool!" Brandon said beside me. "Is that an arrowhead?"

I turned to the kid, about to tell him that he could get an arrowhead from an actual store and not some fishy dude sitting on a sidewalk, but a glint of silver caught my eye. Laying on the far left of the scarf was a dreamcatcher necklace thing. Seemingly randomly placed among a collection of oddities from arrowheads to Magic: The Gathering cards and old-timey candy. There was only one; silver with a web of multi-colored balls that shone in the sunlight like tiny universes. I reached for it before I could stop my hand. The boys had done the same thing and we each held a different trinket in our grasps.

"That one's, uh, special," the gypsy rumbled to me. "You pay extra."

I snapped my eyes up to him and glared. "Looks like I'm not gettin—"

"Come on, Tilly!" Brandon chirped, ruining the haggling battle I'd been seconds away from. "My dad can always give you the money back. Just get it if you want it."

Whelp, so much for that. "Nah, I'm good."

Brandon rolled his eyes, snatching up the dreamcatcher I laid back down, and shoving it at me. "Fine," I gave in. Brandon knew me too well as it was. "How much?"

The vendor gave me the number and I blanched, tossing the dream catcher like it burned. "You're kidding me?" I whipped my head to Brandon and James, flapping my hands. "Put that down. We're not buying—"

Brandon handed a wad of cash to the man and pocketed his arrowhead. He turned his head and caught up with the line that hadn't waited for us to make our purchases.

I gaped after the boy. Damn.

The gypsy held out the dreamcatcher necklace to me, gesturing for me to take it. "Thank you for your patronage." Suddenly he had a California accent. Amazing how that happened.

"Yeah, whatever," I muttered sourly as I dragged my feet to Brandon and James's sides.

Another uneventful hour and we were finally in the air-conditioned convention center. I closed my eyes and melted as the industrial fans blew arctic winds at me. "Magic."

"Okay, you can go now, Tilly," James announced.

I snapped my eyes to the boys. "Before I go, there are a few things you need to—Where's Brandon?"

I stared at the spot Brandon should have been, then turned back to James. He raised a shoulder. "Dunno. Bathroom?"

I rolled my eyes and pointed at him. "You. Stay. Don't move."

He stuck out a tongue. "You're not my mom."

I mimicked him. "Don't want to be either. I'm too young to have a kid."

"Aren't you thirty?"

I gasped and dramatically placed a hand to my chest. "Twenty-two. Just, stay here." I turned on my heel, searching for a restroom sign or a yellow cape. "Thirty? I look thirty?"

I spotted the cape first, billowy material making an escape through the black curtain of an old-timey photo booth. Stalking over to the machine, I pulled back the curtain, ready to lecture the hell out of him, but Brandon wasn't sitting taking goofy pictures of himself. I frowned.

I stepped fully into the machine as if the confined space could hide a gawky teenager. The curtain fell closed behind me, leaving the booth nearly pitch black. I turned, bumping my knee on the seat protruding from the wall and knocking my elbow into the glass screen embedded in the other wall. I reached for the curtain, trying not to think about how massive the convention center was or how finicky James' hearing was. "Stay here" might as well have been "Please run around like an idiot." But at the moment my fingers touched the velvet of the curtain, the floor shifted and the dreamcatcher necklace I'd pocketed started to... ring. A high-pitched chiming sound that was as grating as it was surreal because nothing sounded like that. Not the phone I hastily pulled out only to drop immediately because some dickwad touched my thigh.

"Let go, pervert!" I jumped and swatted around me. But there was nothing there I could see. Only feel. Pressure that pushed against me without visible presence. And the feeling pressed in on me, digging deeper and deeper.

I opened my mouth to call out for help, but no sound came out. It was like there was a vacuum in the booth and the air had been sucked out. The not-really-hands started to vibrate as the ringing sound increased to a deafening white noise. I fought like a deranged person, scratching and tugging at the air.

Full-body shivering, I took a step forward—or was it back? Suddenly, I wasn't sure. Not just about that, but anything. I turned my neck and caught a partial glimpse of my reflection in the monitor's glass. But it looked weird, like there were a million versions of things—almost like alternate versions of myself on different planets, in different forms, doing different activities—pulling the exact same move, at that exact same second, without the need for layered mirrors.

What the hell is—

The floor dropped out. I was free-falling for a split second with millions of versions of myself until we all hit the same cool slab, ass first. It felt like dominos that had been knocked down in a pattern as old as the universe, but instead of staying down they merged, folding in with the dominos in front of them in a loop of one continually collapsing piece.

As quickly as it started it stopped, leaving me with a stomach-in-throat feeling that was usually reserved for those roller coasters at amusement parks with horrifying names like Death Master and Soul Snatcher. I swallowed hard, forcing my stomach back to its original place. Closing my eyes, I waited until my stomach and all other organs calmed and settled back into place. A few moments later, I blinked my eyes open and gawked at the giant serpent, upright in front of me.

I scraped my forehead against my knees as I replayed every second of the memory and found nothing that made me think I was still at Comic Con. Which meant I was—the words felt sticky and foreign in my mind—somewhere else.

The chittering from the serpent only confirmed it.

I groaned, "Alice in Wonderland sci-fi bullshit."

***

A few minutes later a horde of creatures strode down the hallway toward the serpent and me. It was then I realized that the thing had probably been guarding me to make sure I didn't run away.

So, I'm not at the convention center anymore. The thought didn't freak me out as much as it should have. I treated the experience like the trip I took to China.

Single, black girl walking around the Summer Palace in Beijing hadn't exactly been the usual thing for the natives. People took pictures of me, and at one point a photographer even followed me around and made me pose with random Chinese people. Instead of getting freaked out and offended or leaving and going back to my hotel, I'd run with it. Sometimes the only thing in life you could do was run with the strange.

I stretched out my legs again, arched my back, and slowly climbed to my feet. Joints popping, neck stiff, I regarded the group of creatures coming to a slow halt in front of me. The leader, a person with strong feminine features whose hair was longer than mine by a good foot and swayed in yellow waves to their ass, looked the most human. Which was relative to the green dragon lady on their right, the satyr to their left, and the merry band of misfits, fairytale creatures, and Greek mythology myths come true behind them.

The blond spoke with the smooth notes of someone cultured and used to the finer things in life. And that's when I realized the person was probably a dude, his voice deep and practically infused with testosterone. If I understood his language, I was sure it would have been very James Bond-esque.

I shrugged helplessly. "I can't understand you. Sorry."

He frowned, full peach lips turning down. The look didn't diminish his beauty an inch. High cheekbones, big cornflower blue eyes, lithe ice-skater figure. Tight fitted black slacks and an open navy button-down showed off a wicked set of pecs with a series of symbols written in paragraph form roughly the size of my palm. The only things that solidified his inhumanness were the fangs poking out from his upper lip and the slight point to his pale ears. Elf or vampire? Maybe a hybrid?

He spoke slowly, clearly, with vocal chords I was pretty sure I didn't possess. I heard every sound, tongue wrapping around letters that I'd never heard a human language use. It seemed to come up from his diaphragm, deep, but flatten out and smooth over his tongue.

The creatures behind him began to talk, voices as hushed as their language allowed. The serpent in front of me twisted its head completely around and joined in. I shivered from head to toe, finding it more and more difficult to go with the flow.

I thought back to China. Different language, different culture. But if I was able to get here, they had to at least have one human right? Preferably someone who spoke English—er, American English.

"My name is Tilly," I said carefully, drawing their attention again. "I'm human. American. Does anyone speak English?" I made sure I was much higher at the end, indicating that it was a question.

Blondie issued something at the green dragon lady next to him. She broke away from the group and went back down the hallway. I grimaced as her clawed toenails and heels scraped the floor. Knobby bones raced up her legs and back, shifting subtly with her long strides.

I looked back to the Blond and his group, finding the vampire-elf much closer to me than before. I flinched hard when his long-fingered hand brushed me, and I hastily crossed my arms over my chest in a giant X. "No touching."

One corner of his mouth lifted in a smile exposing the full extent of his fangs, much wider and longer than human canines in a mouth with about eight less teeth to accomplish the feat. I'm going with the flow, I reminded myself as he gestured to the hallway he'd come from and said what I assumed was, "After you."

Go further away from the only chunk of floor I knew with creatures from another, uh, place or stay and sit? I remember having a similar dilemma on my way to the nanny interview for Brandon's parents. I was stuck in East Central waiting for a bus that ran on its own special schedule when a man my father's age pulled up and whistled at me. He flirted, and I announced my age. The look of dread that crossed his face made me feel better.

"That's my daughter's age," he whispered. And as he turned back around, ready to drive off, I impulsively asked him to drive me as close to my destination as possible. He reluctantly agreed, telling me I was stupid for getting in a car with a stranger, especially one who hit on me. He fussed and parented me the entire twenty-minute drive and then made me promise to never hitchhike again when he dropped me off. I'd promised with fingers crossed behind my back.

I could wait, see if another human fell through the portal and hopefully spoke English or I could take my chances with the monsters. I decided on the latter because... Well, the unknown was kind of exciting. And hell, I was a sucker for a good story.

I walked past the blond vampire-elf and he fell into step beside me. The rubber sole of my boots squeaked on the shiny, marble-ish floor with the hoard behind me louder than fireworks on the 4th of July.

CHAPTER TWO

If I had any lingering hope that I was at the Convention Center still, it was squashed instantly. Marble floors gave way to patterned brickwork, and the high ceiling shrunk down to elegant archways with geometric craftwork inlaid in the stone. Sunlight streamed in on all sides as the walls faded away, replaced by a fragrant garden with vegetation as unique as its curators.

Oh my freaking god. I stopped, heart racing, and walked to one of the thick columns of the archway.

My jaw dropped. That's a minotaur pruning a flower. The flower's on fire. Is that—I think—Yes, he is putting out the flames with air from his nostrils.

The sky was a pink, blue, purple haze, like the colors in a permanent sunset. A bright blue sun, sapphire-colored, hung in the sky. My eyes scanned the fluffy white clouds, the only thing Earth-like on the planet. The giant beige, emerald, and burgundy dragon flying over and settling onto one of the whipped-cream clouds ruined the effect.

Earth had its wonders, but this place seemed to be made of nothing but 'em.

A gentle hand settled on my hip and I turned to Blondie. He looked at me patiently as if he knew I was awestruck. "Is this Earth?"

Not even sure why I asked the question; he didn't understand me and I didn't understand him. Plus, San Diego was jungle-hot, whereas this place was balmy, laying-on-the-beach weather. The temperature was different, the environment had changed, and the inhabitants looked like movie monster extras.

Blondie said nothing. He nudged me with his hand and I pulled away from the column, continuing our walk. Patterned brick faded again, seamlessly giving way to the marble I recognized. We were back in the hallway—well, not the exact one if the blown up noir-esque photos had anything to say about it.

I looked behind me, maneuvering my eyes through tails, claws, feet, and not feet. Reflected on the divide of brick and marble was a shimmering barrier that looked like scattered pixie dust. I turned back around when my foot slipped.

Monsters and magic. Seemed about right. I couldn't go to a world with E.T. style aliens, I went to one with magic and elves. At Comic-Con no less. "Oh, the irony," I moaned as I reached up and scratched my hair again. It itched bad and I wondered about asking Blondie for a room with a shower because why not.

I turned my thoughts away from my lack of hygiene to the photos lining the hallway. They were all black and white spanning what looked like multiple landscapes including country, city, and space. A few seemed to be taken from a high place, the buildings smudged slightly like the photographer had been inflight. There were no humans in the photos.

Blondie navigated us down a hallway away from the photos and the marble gave way to light, bamboo-esque floors, worn and bumpy. This time I was looking for the shimmery demarcation line, and noticed it extended up the walls and to the ceiling, completely allowing the room to transform.

It was like the building was made of Lego blocks masquerading as hallways. Bamboo floors with swooping sheet-like ceilings that held short, silver electric chandeliers every ten feet. Sliding paper doors on my left opened onto a valley with a giant waterfall in the distance and red tents surrounding it.

I desperately wanted to stop, soak in yet another sight. You just didn't see things like this on Earth, or if you did they were perfectly captured in National Geographic. The hallway went on longer than the marble one and my legs started to ache.

How long have I been walking? I wondered, sloughing beside Blondie. I felt heavier, like I was carrying all my weight plus ten extra pounds. I knew I was crashing, coming down from the adrenaline of falling through time and space and walking with a group of mythical creatures.