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26

Now, Locksmiths can’t just open up a portal to anywhere they want to go. No matter how much it may seem like it sometimes.

Fact is, there are two major ways a Locksmith can travel by portal.

The easiest and most certain is to use a permanent portal as an anchor. That gives us a big advantage over most people who want to use a portal. Most people have to be on one side of a permanent portal, and open it directly to the other side.

Locksmiths, though, can open a portal from anywhere, more or less, linking it temporarily with any permanent portal they know.

The second way, which is more than a little bit trickier, is to fashion a portal that’s temporary on both ends. In other words, without the benefit of a permanent portal as anchor.

Takes more skill and effort to work that way, but a temporary portal could, in theory, lead from anywhere to anywhere.

In practice, though, it leads from wherever the Locksmith is standing to someplace the Locksmith is capable of going.

It’s that last part that’s the real trick.

Ultimately, what it means, is that as a Locksmith, I could open a temporary portal to anywhere I could see, or that I knew well enough to have a good sense of the place.

Going to my parents’ house? Where I grew up? That would be a piece of cake. Especially if I used doorways on both ends.

Natural transition points are easier to work with than just ripping out a portal in mid-air.

Anyway, going to my current apartment? Same thing. Easy-peasy.

Going to Riverfront Park by the basketball courts? Pretty safe jump. Having been there once for a decent period of time, odds were pretty good that I could get there.

Of course, I hadn’t been there since I’d been trained, which meant that my sense of Riverfront Park might not have been as good as I wanted it to be.

The training, after all, had taught me to feel the flow of time, and refined my sense of space in ways I couldn’t have dreamed of, before.

I likely wouldn’t chance opening a portal to Riverfront Park, without the opportunity to visit again first.

Making a mistake with a temporary portal could lead to … unexpected destinations. Worlds that are very much like the intended target…

But wrong. Sometimes in very dangerous ways.

So there was no way Vasco or I could have portaled the four of us (including Brikatika and Magellan, of course) directly to Brikatika’s mate. Even if Brikatika were somehow able to describe where she was.

Instead, we had to come close, and do our best.

So as soon as my magnificent, uneaten burger was packed safely in its to-go box and stored in Vasco’s seemingly endless duffel bag, I used the red doorway to open a portal to someplace close to the river, and that I was certain I could get us to.

The Ross Island Portal.

Thus, once more I opened the way back to that ugly, dirty sliver of rock in the Willamette River, known by the wrong name: Toe Island.

I was, however, paranoid enough to check the portal first, to make sure no one had managed to trap it.

The portal was clean.

I stepped through…

Bad idea.

Turned out that the portal might not have been trapped, but the rocky surface on the other side of that portal was.

I found myself stuck, knee deep in the rocks of Toe Island. Worse, I couldn’t feel any energies right now. Any of them. Not the flow of time or space, or even any of the magic that I knew was around me.

I couldn’t feel the energies of the open portal in the rock behind me.

I couldn’t feel the energies of the trap.

I couldn’t feel the energies flowing through my own body, which I would normally have tapped for a spell/skill to try to free myself.

I couldn’t even feel the presence of the earth spirits that were usually hanging around the portal.

All I could feel was a sense of cold numbness, spreading from my feet on up as I sank into the rocks. Exhausting cold. Every muscle touched by it started cramping until it went numb.

Nothing I could reach to pull myself out.

A pair of jet skis rocketed past, going north. I tried to call out to them, but I couldn’t open my mouth to speak.

My frantic waving was ignored, of course.

Everyone knew nobody actually went to Toe Island. Work into that the magics of the trap, and I could die here in front of all of Portland, and every single person would be likely to turn away as I did.

I tried to close off the portal, but I couldn’t even do that.

The cold had spread up into my thighs now, but that was where I stopped sinking. Which was a small blessing, at least.

Very small, as it turned out.

I could see the flicking tail of an alligator approaching.

There weren’t supposed to be alligators in the Willamette, of course. Especially not alligators that had to measure six feet across, and I couldn’t even guess how long.

That is to say, an alligator big enough to eat me in a single swallow.

I was the point man. If this side was trapped, I was supposed to slam closed the portal to save the others. Give Vasco a chance to evade the trap and come through at his nearest known location. Maybe even get here in time to save my life.

Little chance of that.

I couldn’t close the portal. I couldn’t send a warning. And that gator was seconds away from opening those jaws.

I did the only thing I could think of.

I ripped off my good, wet silk shirt, buttons flying, and threw it back through the portal before Vasco and the others could come through.

I turned back to meet my fate.

“Come on,” I taunted, psyching myself up. I had adrenaline flowing now. At least, from the waist up. I might not have had Locksmith skills to rely on, but the training had included plenty of physical work.

Those jaws snapped open wide. Hot breath overpowered the merely warm breeze. Breath that stank of raw meat and blood.

I tucked in my arms. Fists clenched.

“Come on,” I said again, more to myself than anything else. “Come on, you big ugly beastie.”

The jaws snapped together. Lower jaw in front of my waist and upper jaw somewhere behind my head.

I slammed out my fists against those collapsing jaws with every ounce of strength in my body.

Got my fists inside the teeth. Felt like I was caught in a hot, wriggling meat vise.

My whole body shook with effort.

Little bits inside me popped and cracked and complained.

But I held those jaws apart.

Didn’t have long, though. Its jaws were made to do what it was doing. My limbs weren’t.

I roared. Pain from the strain. My need to live. All these things I poured into keeping those jaws apart.

But those teeth started getting closer.

Suddenly the giant alligator rocketed backwards.

Its jaws clamped shut as it went, raking grooves in my arms.

But missing the rest of me.

I looked up to see…

I started laughing as much from disbelief as anything else.

I looked up to see Magellan. Giant sized, against the rich blue afternoon sky. Easily sixty feet tall at the shoulder. His hind paws were on Ross Island proper. His forepaws were in the Willamette.

And his jaws had clamped down on the tail of the “giant” alligator.

Magellan worried it like a bone, then flung it way north. We were a few miles from where the Willamette met the Columbia, and I was pretty sure that alligator was Washington bound.

I just kept laughing. Overjoyed to be alive. Amazed at the sight I’d just seen.

Then Magellan was normal sized again, and standing on the rocks ahead of me, just outside the trap zone, as though he could sniff it.

“I’m the best, aren’t I?” Magellan barked happily, jumping and trotting back and forth. “I’m the best beagle in the whole wide world! And nobody messes with my friends! I should get so many treats!”

“Yes, you should,” I agreed, laughing. “Soon as I can figure out how to get out of this.”

“You can’t.” Vasco’s voice, coming from behind me. “Give me a se… Ah! There it is.”

The ground spat me out as my sense of the flow of energies, space and time all flooded back into me.

I landed smoother than I expected, given that life was only just flowing back through my legs.

So much pain. Not just where those gator teeth had ripped the flesh of my arms, either. I really had popped little things inside my shoulders and arms and chest.

And every one of those popped ligaments and tendons started screaming at me.

I still managed to catch my shirt, when Vasco threw it back to me. Entirely dry and repaired, of course.

Not that I could put it on yet. Couldn’t stretch my arms that wide yet.

Instead I slung the shirt over my shoulder and dug the jar of Serpent’s Kiss and Bruisebane out of my pocket.

All of my muscles clenching in dismayed anticipation at the thought of the pain that lay between me and healed arms.

“Good move, throwing your shirt back through the portal,” Vasco said to me as he tossed Magellan treats. “Brikatika and I almost came through. Got your warning just in time.”

“Where’d you come through?”

“I know a good spot on Ross Island proper. You should study the land around all the major portals, in case you’re the one doing the rescuing next time.”

“We should go,” Brikatika said in dorach, pacing back and forth. Then he shook himself, a ripple of chagrin running down his fur.

“I’m sorry,” he said to me in English. “I really am glad you’re fine, but—”

“He’s not,” Vasco said, looking at the blood on my arms. “We need to give him a minute to heal up.”

Brikatika whirled on Vasco.

“But I can feel Rakata getting farther away!”

“Good,” Vasco said, putting away his treats against the whining protest of Magellan. “That means you have a strong sense of her, and we should be able to follow the trail.”

“But—”

“We’re not proceeding until Scott’s ready.”

I gritted my teeth and opened the jar.

I’ll leave it at this.

Serpent’s Kiss gets more … unpleasant, the deeper the cuts it’s fixing. And the runnels in my arms were deep.

As for the Bruisebane, its healing properties did extend to the kind of tendon and ligament damage I’d sustained. But that pain was worse than the Serpent’s Kiss.

I was so shaky and soaked through with sweat when I finished healing my arms that I almost didn’t want to put my poor, much abused silk shirt back on.

But I couldn’t run around without a shirt on. That might actually have drawn attention, instead of shunting it away.

Vasco also stuffed a handful of my fries into my mouth, which went a long way toward making me feel human again.

Or at the very least, those spicy curly fries tasted so good they distracted me from the ordeal I’d just endured.

Brikatika didn’t wait for us. Dove straight into the Willamette and started swimming.

Didn’t do him much good though. With the smithcord around his wrist, he couldn’t get far from Vasco.

So Brikatika was forced to wait while Vasco and I prepped for more swimming, then boosted our speed. Vasco boosted Brikatika’s speed as well, since no matter how much faster the dorach might have become, the smithcord would keep him close by.

Then the four of us dove into the waters of the Willamette, got down near the bottom of the river, and began swimming south at tremendous speeds.

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