A young man bumped into him. The human mumbled an apology and adjusted the heavy pack on his shoulder before continuing on his way. At this time of day, this area was frequented mostly by students attending the local university.
Preoccupied with their own lives, no students even glanced at him. Lucas always marveled at the number of Cryptids that secretly walked among the humans. The humanoid ones, anyway. He supposed a Basilisk might not go unnoticed. Although with students, you never knew.
Today, he didn’t even bother hiding his tribal spots. Those on his temples and wrists were exposed. In typical human fashion, the students wrote them off as odd tattoos. No way he was a species from another realm, walking among them.
Their general state of obliviousness created the perfect hiding place for Lucas. The human realm was considered a virgin culture—they had no idea that the others, or their inhabitants, existed. The Cryptid council worked hard to ensure the secret wasn’t exposed, and Lucas took care to follow the rules.
So when Lucas hunted, he did so in other, nonvirgin, ones.
At the moment, though, he needed to take advantage of the prevalence of students. Because wherever there were young humans, there was sure to be food.
Minutes later, he emerged from a small takeout place with three foot-long wraps stuffed with meat and vegetables. It was a sunny and warm fall day, so he found himself a bench in a nearby green space—another advantage to the campus—and concentrated on refueling.
A human girl sat nearby with her nose in a textbook. He caught her sneaking a glance at him with raised brows as he shoveled in the last few bites. He may pass as human in appearance, but he certainly didn’t eat like one. Although there may be some that could polish off three of those monsters in a sitting.
He’d need every bit of those calories for tonight. It had taken a significant hunk of his cash to purchase, though. If Sadie had only bothered to go for groceries...
But she hadn’t, so he’d had to use his hard-earned—or rather, stolen—currency to stock up for the mission tonight. He threw the wrappers in the recycling bin, adjusted his pack over his shoulder, and let his feet carry him to Tartak’s gate.
The portals between realms were well guarded. Most permanent gates were overseen by powerful energy manipulators called Watchers. But the demand far outstripped their ability to police, so they enabled and permitted limited operation of transient gates. Most Cryptids—another name for species that traveled the realms—used them to move fluidly back and forth.
The gateway servicing downtown Winnipeg wasn’t far from the university and operated out of an innocuous appearing garage. The students’ activity in the nearby rental housing ensured that Cryptids could come and go with relative impunity, so long as they looked human, anyway.
After checking for anyone who might be watching, Lucas entered through the back gate off the alley. The house, and the garage, looked like any other on the street.Nothing to see here, folks.Just a gateway to a whole other realm.
Tartak, a humanoid Cryptid, currently sat at his desk in the garage. Lucas wasn’t sure if the Cryptid ever slept—he was always present. Maybe there was more than one of him? The gatekeeper appeared as a slightly potbellied human male with a large bald spot on the back of his head. He didn’t stand any taller than Lucas. But in Lucas’s presence, the man had once used his telekinetic power to pin a belligerent realm traveler against the garage wall.
Lucas always treated Tartak with the respect he deserved.
The man’s eyes lit up when he spotted the Morph. Nodding a greeting, he asked, “Is tonight the night?”
“If the stars align.” As always, Lucas was cautious about details. Tartak wasn’t above selling information if it would generate currency. The gatekeeper operated on two levels—the above-board one sanctioned by the Watchers and the local Sabre enforcers, and the not-so-legal arrangements with people like Lucas.
Most paid for their transit with currency. Lucas usually negotiated with Tartak for a percentage of his take. Risky, as if things went awry, being stranded on the wrong side of a gate would be the least of his worries. But Lucas was very good at what he did.
“You owe me for two,” Tartak reminded him.
“I’m good for it.” He hadn’t let the gatekeeper down yet. If he ever did, Tartak would sick his goons on Lucas. They were big. And nasty. And barely blended into human society.
Lucas pulled a cloak out of his pack and tucked his jacket into it. Different realms, different looks—he had more than one way to blend in. Cloaks covered up many sins.
Tartak opened the desk drawer and extracted a crystal before walking to a wooden arch framed on the garage wall. He waved the crystal in a circular motion, and the arch began to glow. Then the space it framed fluoresced so brightly that it was hard to look at.
Lucas reached beneath his cloak to fold his fingers around the shard hanging from a thong around his neck. Unlike Tartak’s, this one was just a regular piece of crystal. The gatekeeper had a specific crystal for each realm that the gate was programmed to access. Lucas’s shard would merely permit him to pass through.
Tartak stepped back from the glowing gate. “It’s all yours. Good hunting.”
Clutching his crystal, Lucas stepped through. Every one of his short hairs stood on end and electric tingles pulsed through him. A flash of uncertainty followed—similar to those first few moments when he let go of his natural form to assume that of another’s—before he stepped onto cold stone.
This end of the gate was anchored to a doorway facing a back alley. Two hulking forms stood in the shadows—bouncers for the Trog controlling the gate from this end. The controller herself was likely ensconced in her office, one door down.
Darkness loomed. The realms each operated on their own time. This one was several hours different from the humans’. It was already night here. And cold—this place might bake during the day, but it was always chilly once the sun set.
He pulled up the hood of his cloak and tucked the sunglasses into his pack before heading onto the main drag.
He’d been planning this heist for a long time, and it promised to be lucrative. It had been hatched as a result of a grapevine tip he’d intercepted about two of Udo’s guards landing in the local infirmary. To check it out, Lucas adopted the form of a nurse and spent as long as possible working around the two Trogs. By day’s end, he’d rooted through their personal effects and come up with not only a set of keys, but also a plan.
He’d never gone after something this big. Until now, he’d contented himself with stealing not from wholesalers, but from frontline dealers across this realm. He specialized in crystals or crystal dust, but he’d also nabbed other things over the years. Whatever he could sell fast on the black market was his goal.
