Pandora's Box: Book 3 of the Crystal Raven Series

Ember lay sprawled across two of her dogs, staring through Jean-Claude as she brooded. She was studiously ignoring him. Not easy with a ghost with a habit of pinching. She was already in enough trouble as it was, and now everyone was teasing her about her imaginary friend. Crystal and Gwen said that she should know better than to keep his company, and even if she had found Alvaro and the Brotherhood money, it didn’t prove anything. And April still wanted her to see a councillor. So she refused to talk to him no matter how much he wiggled his moustache at her.

“You silly girl,” Jean-Claude huffed. “Finding Alvaro was important, no?”

Ember rolled over with a huff, looking at an upside-down Jean-Claude with a frown. “No. He’s a stuffy old vampyre who said I am too old for imaginary friends. And he thinks I’m having delusions because of my puppies. I heard him tell April.”

“And speaking of those to sasquatches,” Jean-Claude insisted. “Is it not good that April has money to feed them? It looks like this one has already eaten a refrigerator or two.”

“They’re not sasquatches!” Ember screamed, and she began to cry. She couldn’t help it; her eyes kept on leaking.

“Hush, ma petite,” Jean-Claude soothed, hipping one of the dogs aside. “No-one can take your puppies from you now. They’ve bonded to you.”

Ember sobbed something that might have been okay or might have been a sneeze. The diminutive Frenchman shrugged. No matter how hard he tried to hug her, his arms kept on sliding through her body. Not being able to touch anything on this plane was increasingly more frustrating.

“Would you stop doing that!” Ember demanded. “It’s creepy. And why am I the only one who can see you?”

“Superior intelligence and taste, no?” Jean-Claude teased, and sensing she was serious, sighed. “Maybe it is a latent talent you always had, a sensitivity to the psychic world. Or maybe it has to do with these two hounds. They can see me, and you can see everything that they see, no?”

“No,” Ember whispered. She closed her eyes and tried. At first, all she saw was darkness. And then a black and white image flashed into her mind as Strawberry opened one eye. And she knew it was Strawberry because she could sense the hound’s curiosity.

“Awesome,” Ember breathed, “it’s like having a superpower or something.”

“Or something,” Jean-Claude nodded.

She suddenly frowned. “If all I can do is see you, it’s not very special.”

“Au contraire, ma petite,” Jean-Claude assured her. “Without seeing me, you could not go on this vital mission and bring Crystal and the Brotherhood this important information.”

“Where are we going?” Ember asked, and suddenly knew she was about to get into so much trouble April would lock her up in a convent until she was eight hundred.

“Upyr.”

Alone. She had never even been down in the sewers since that night the vampyres had kidnapped her, and she did not know if she could bring herself to do it. Well, maybe. She would not really be alone – Jean-Claude and her hounds would be with her, one to guide her and the other three for protection. Besides, the few Brotherhood patrols who had visited the vampyre city had found few or no vampyres. And those few had been smaller Eaters of the Dead who had fled before the patrol’s shadows. Nothing at all to worry about. Nothing.

Now that they were leaving, Ember was anxious to be at it. She huffed and stamped at Jean-Claude when he insisted she go down to the equipment locker to get kitted up. Why did she need this junk anyway? She had her hounds and her boots, and some really wicked training from Aiko. With the spelunking gear, crossbow, extra flashlight and crucifix, she could barely stand upright. How was she supposed to fight now? She did take the extra canteen without complaint – sewer water was too grody – but absolutely drew the line at an extra backpack of food. What did she look like, a mule? One more thing and she would not make it up the stairs, let alone down into Upyr.

Outside, Ember paused. She looked up at the stars, perhaps for the last time, and setting her face followed Jean-Claude down into the subway. The transit police were not going to like her puppies, but there was very little traffic in the neighbourhood substation these days. At mid-afternoon it was almost empty. Not a cop or nosy neighbour in sight. Perfect. Within minutes Jean-Claude led her through a maintenance tunnel and into the sewers. He chose their path carefully, keeping in mind the girl and her dogs, and often sticking his head through solid rock to see what was on the other side.

“And the silly old man keeps claiming he is not a ghost,” Ember complained to Huckleberry.

“It is nothing you could not do if you visited my own plane,” Jean-Claude sighed. “You girls are hard on a man, no?”

“No!” Ember laughed, and Huckleberry barked in response.

“In the next life, I will pray for boys only,” Jean-Claude proclaimed. “Such would be paradise.”

Ember stuck her tongue out at him.

In the sewer, they were soon slogging through a foot of water, the dogs splashing along and throwing up dirty waves even Jean-Claude was complaining about. Soon Ember smelled like the bilge of a hundred-year-old ship, her hair hanging down in dripping rivulets. At one time, it might have mattered to her, although she had never been a girl interested in make-up beyond the white cake and black mascara all Goths wore. And her clothes had always been practical, black jeans and Doc Martins. A dress or skirt would not have cut it in this environment, and she could not understand why girls like her cousin Morgana liked to wear those fishnet stockings. They always made her feel self-conscious, and a little like her legs had been swallowed by a snake.

Soon the sewer gave way to a dry riverbed. The white dust on the bottom rose in clouds with every step, creating a cake of mud on her wet hair and clothes. A hundred feet along its passage, she began to look more the ghost than Jean-Claude. He still looked like a prissy nerd who had only now risen from a long stretch at the library, and she told him so in no uncertain terms. A moment later, when he led her into a passage that was a solid wall of cobwebs, she glared daggers at his back, convinced he was doing it to get back at her for the nerd comment.

“This is new,” Jean-Claude explained. “These webs are not spun by spiders but by Eaters of the Dead. Notice how much thicker they are, and they feel rougher than cobwebs.”

“They also taste like poop,” Ember spat.

“Then I would suggest you not eat them, silly little girl,” Jean-Claude teased.

He refused to hear her response. Nice little girls did not talk like that.

When they reached the marches of Upyr, the changes became more evident. While never really inhabited, some effort had always been made to keep them from collapsing. Now, every third passage or chamber was completely caved in, and everywhere brick and rock had fallen from the walls and roofs. If either Eaters of the Dead or Nosferatu still lingered here, only the bones of those rodents would be found. Now spiders and rats skittered in the shadows, as wary of the collapsing tunnels as they two human interlopers. Upyr was empty.

“There are more ghosts here than in my room,” Ember whispered.

“If nothing else,” Jean-Claude replied, “the widespread damage from the quake drove everyone out. We need to be careful.”

Ember nodded. Tight spaces had never bothered her, nor did being underground. This great big empty was something else. At one time, almost eighty thousand vampyres had lived here. Crystal and the quake had killed most, many estimates running as high as a third – but there still should be thousands of beings down here. And no-one had ever really taken a census of the Eater of the Dead, not even the other vampyres. These could easily run into the tens of thousands, burrowing and tunnelling miles beneath even the vampyre city. Something or someone should be here.

Jean-Claude had his suspicions about Upyr. Not really anything he could voice, only vague notions about the composition of its populace that had struck him as odd. While the war with the Church in the Thirteen Hundreds had left the Sanguinarians

severely depleted, the two generations since the war should have corrected that imbalance. At least to some extent. Even the orphans taken in by the Brotherhood had been primarily from the two lower castes of the upper clans, and even these had been – well, damaged. He wished he could talk all this over with April, but sadly that was not possible.

“We need to go deeper,” Jean-Claude explained. “We may have to double back several times, ma petite. It will be a lot of walking.”

“Whatever,” Ember muttered, thinking that if he led her through any more cobwebs, she would kick him back into the afterlife. They still tasted like ass.

Deeper into the city, the damage was not as widespread. Here and there, cracks fissured the rock walls, bricks fallen from the façade littered her trail, and water pooled in sluggish puddles where the aqueduct had been breached. Household goods lay abandoned in the corridors where some attempt had been made to save precious mementos or had tumbled off of shelves and from cupboards during the quake. Nowhere were there any bodies, and this struck Ember as creepy. And still, the ghosts haunted the shadows.

The hounds were having a field day. There were so many unknown scents down here that one or two were always running ahead or lagging behind. Ember was constantly pausing to call them back from a wander before taking a turn down a new corridor, reminding them to stay close. It was a struggle. Puppies would be puppies. The further they travelled down into the deserted city, the closer Huckleberry stuck to her side, and soon he was adding his voice to hers – the pack leader calling his pack to heel. And almost the two brutes listened.

Soon they came to a corridor that was so choked with rubble that all four were crawling on their bellies.

“Jean-Claude,” she complained. “Some of us can’t walk through solid rock.”

“It’s the only way through, ma petite,” he encouraged. “We’re almost there.”

Emerging at the other end of this obstacle course, bruised, scraped and with her jeans ripped, Ember found herself facing a long narrow flight of stairs. It was dark and winding and seemed to go on forever. All three hounds stood at the top of the flight, whining as Ember slowly disappeared. Dogs and stairs did not always mix. She stopped, calling encouragement. They could do it, her hounds were smart and brave and loyal. They were her best friends in the world and would not leave her to face the scary darkness alone. Finally, Huckleberry ventured down and seeing him rewarded for his efforts, the other two tumbled down after him.

Five hundred pounds of dog and one little girl did not mix well. Ember tumbled, stumbled and fell onto her bum, riding it express down almost three hundred stairs. Sore and battered, she listened to the click of toenails on stone as her hound avalanche came racing down to her rescue. Strawberry reached her first, and her black tongue added insult to injury, drowning Ember in dog spit.

“Most of us use our feet on stairs,” Jean-Claude teased. “Only silly girls use their cheeks.”

“Stow it!” Ember snapped. “Or I’ll kill you a second time, you silly old ghost.”

He concentrated hard on wiping her tears. She was more angry and embarrassed than hurt. Ember swatted his hand away and wiped a sleeve across her face, leaving a muddy smear. He bent, attempting to plant a kiss on the top of her head. She reached up to push him away, neither meeting anything physical.

“Are you hurt, ma petite?” He asked gently.

“Only my bum,” Ember sniffed. “And you’re not kissing that better.”

She found her feet, taking time to reassure each of her hounds that she was all right before limping off after Jean-Claude. It was a straight, if somewhat narrow tunnel running for almost a quarter of a mile. Ember was still limping, her hip stiff and sore. She had slowed down, which suited Jean-Claude if not the three hounds. They were deep underground now, the passages and tunnels rough and hand-dug. Often moisture dripped from the ceiling or rolling down stalagmites, perfuming the air with mould. Without any reinforcements, these tunnels had a habit of collapsing, and often without any rhyme or reason.

Suddenly the tunnel spilled into a huge chamber that stretched on beyond the range of her flashlight in either direction. The roof disappeared into the shadows. Ember stood in the center of the chamber, flashing her light in all directions. She began to play with its beam, swirling it in patterns into the darkness above until that grew boring. Only then did she start to take a closer look around, trying to get an idea of its dimensions.

“What is this?” She asked, and then shouted before he could respond. “Oh, look!”

Ahead her beam of light flashed off of something blue. Ember was off like a shot, trailing an objecting Jean-Claude and his warnings. He caught up to her as she was bending down over a small blue creature. It was the ugliest thing Jean-Claude had ever seen. It was the cutest thing Ember had ever seen. About fourteen inches in length, scaled, with a large bulbous nose and small almond-shaped black eyes. Its warty chin had a beard of half a dozen whiskers, and one wing was torn beyond recognition. Hopefully, it would die before this girl fell in love with it, but Jean-Claude could not count on miracles every day.

“Oh, you poor little guy,” Ember cried. “You’re hurt.”

She took off her hoodie and wrapped him in it like a baby.

“What kind of monkey is this?” She asked Jean-Claude.

“A rare New York Sewer blue-back,” Jean-Claude replied sarcastically. “Also known as the common imp.”

“Oh,” Ember squealed. “He’s such a little man. Do you think April will let me keep him?”

“I don’t know how she cannot,” Jean-Claude replied, secretly thanking God he was not from this plane. When that woman saw this, she would want to make him a ghost. Little girls were so much harder on a man than boys. At least they would have squished the demon, not fallen in love with it.

He turned, leading his charge and her menagerie back up the passage. The blue imp was a doll in her arms. Jean-Claude looked on with a worried frown. Even with his ears safely in another dimension, he was going to hear from April in no uncertain terms. He winced in anticipation.

“Jean-Claude?” Ember asked. “Can we rest for a while? Blueberry is tired, and so am I.”

Jean-Claude frowned and studied the girl. Maybe all this was a little too much for a girl her age. She was what, fourteen? She had already been up all night and the day before rescuing Alvaro and had not slept much the following day. Sometimes he forgot how much time moved differently on this plane.

“Just up that passage, there is a small chamber,” Jean-Claude relented, “we can rest there for an hour or two.”

The chamber was a small room that might have been used as a storage area or a guard post. At some point in the past month or two, it had been stripped to the dust on the floor. Jean-Claude settled the girl and her hounds in one corner, and sat down beside her, where she leaned against him for all the substance he held.

“What do you think Blueberry eats?” Ember asked sleepily.

“Meat,” Jean-Claude offered, “especially rats. Try a little of that pepperoni stick.”

“Jean-Claude?”

“Oui, ma petite,” Jean-Claude replied.

“I wish you were my father,” Ember yawned.

“And I wished you were mine, ma petite,” Jean-Claude soothed.

“I’m glad you chose to haunt me. But can you try not to get me in so much trouble? April might send me away or something.”