Jane Godman - Otherworld Protector

Stella commenced a crab-like gait—dragging the huge suitcase, backpack and laptop bag—across the square to the house. As she did, her movements triggered a series of blindingly bright, fluorescent floodlights. It was surreal. If she looked up, would she see a hovering UFO? Or would she be surrounded by armed guards, dressed in black uniforms emblazoned with the gold Moncoya Enterprises M , and made to lie facedown on the ground while they searched her luggage for signs that she was a spy for a rival company?

Reminding herself that a fertile imagination was a necessity, not a liability, in her line of work, Stella continued up to the now clearly visible front door. This was a huge, green-painted structure, set within a vast facade of faded terra-cotta stone. The floodlights cast an eerie gloom that made the house appear to be suspended in space.

Stella didn’t quite know what she had expected. Relocation to Senor Moncoya’s Barcelona residencia will be a requirement of the post. That was what the email had said. Since she’d have agreed to anything— Relocation to the moon? Where do I sign? —for a job with Moncoya, she hadn’t really thought this bit through. Story of your life, she told herself as she pressed the bell next to the front door. No wonder that peripheral protector of yours has to work overtime.

The door was opened, not—as a tiny part of her had hoped—by Ezra Moncoya himself, but by a grungy-looking youth with dreadlocks and a beard that was plaited.

“You must be Stella,” he said, throwing the door wide as he grabbed her suitcase and laptop bag. “We’ve been expecting you.”

As she stepped across the doorstep into the vast white-and-chrome foyer, Stella knew her first impression had been wrong. She was in the most right place she had ever been.

* * *

Cal watched as Stella stepped over the doorstep of La Casa Oscura and the door closed behind her. As if the house itself was swallowing her up. He chided himself for the overimaginative foolishness of such thoughts. He had always known that this time would come—had known it since a time long before Stella’s birth. This precise moment was the reason he had taken the assignment, even though watching over mortals was beneath him in so many ways. Nevertheless, he had to take a moment to wonder at the staggering recklessness of his charge. Unlike Cal, Stella had no idea of who she was, of either her lineage or her destiny. So surely a little bit of caution would not have gone amiss in the circumstances.

He smiled reminiscently. She had always been the same. Even from the earliest age, the little girl with the spiky blue-black hair and wide green eyes had been a trouble magnet, hurling herself from one dangerous situation to the next with a bring-it-on fist pump and a grin. Her behavior had been so far outside Cal’s expectations that, on Stella’s sixth birthday, he had sought an audience to request advice on the matter.

“Never doubt the gravity of what lies ahead. For her or for you.” The Dominion, one of the leading angels of the fourth choir, had worn the traditional long gown, hitched with a golden belt. As a symbol of the seriousness in which he held his task of regulating the duties of lower angels, he had carried a golden staff in his right hand and the seal of his office in his left. Although Cal was easily equal in rank and power to the Dominion, by that time he had been fighting on the side of the angels for so long he always felt slightly overawed by such overt symbols of celestial authority. “When you joined us, you were handed the most demanding of tasks. Now, through this girl, yours is the responsibility for ensuring that peace is restored so that the border between the living realm and Otherworld remains intact.”

“I understand and have gladly accepted the burden you placed upon me. It is just—” Cal had thought back to the escapade that had prompted him to request this meeting. It hadn’t been that bad, he had reasoned. No one had been injured. The truck driver should have known better than to leave his vehicle unlocked with the keys in the ignition. And who’d have thought the skinny little girl Stella had been back then would have been able to get the hand brake off anyway? “I had not anticipated that a major part of my role would be to keep her alive until the prophecy can be fulfilled.”

“You must do whatever it takes,” the Dominion had assured him with a dignity that befitted his position.

So he had. What he hadn’t known then was how much he would enjoy it. Even now, nineteen years after the “do whatever it takes” conversation with the Dominion, Cal still found Stella’s cheeky grin irresistible. He’d broken a few rules along the way. They both had. There had been occasions when he’d had no choice but to materialize to help her out. It wasn’t exactly forbidden, it was just not recommended. Distance was the key to a successful relationship between protector and charge. The difference for them was that, unlike other mortals, Stella was conscious of Cal’s presence even when he didn’t appear before her in human form. That caused him some anxiety. She should not have been aware of him, of course. That wasn’t normal. But Stella was not an ordinary charge. And he had just watched his far-from-average charge walk into the situation he had dreaded since the day she was born.

The time had come. The prophecy was about to be realized at last. While the coming change in their relationship saddened him, Cal’s fighting spirit was roused by the prospect of action. This moment signaled the transformation they had all been waiting for. Casting a glance heavenward at the unusual formation streaking the sky with its three golden tails, he moved through the thick terra-cotta wall and followed his charge into La Casa Oscura. Or—as it was known throughout Otherworld—Moncoya’s lair.

* * *

“This place is amazing.” Stella placed her backpack down and turned in a circle to get the full effect. The faded beauty of the neoclassical facade she had glimpsed outside was in complete contrast to the stark modernity of the interior. The entire lower floor of La Casa Oscura was one vast, open-plan room and the whole of the rear wall was glass, affording a soaring, dramatic view across the nighttime city. At opposite right angles to this, another full wall was taken up with rows of computers and games consoles, each of which was linked to its own enormous plasma screen. Circular seating islands had been created at random intervals, breaking up the white-tiled floor space. In one corner, there was a sensory area with bubble tubes, soft lighting and—Stella noted as she completed her twirl—two men asleep on large beanbags. A shelf lined with hundreds of glass jars, filled with every kind of sweet, cookie and candy imaginable, sat alongside a soft drinks machine. It was a grown-up playroom.

The man who had opened the door to Stella nodded his agreement and gestured to the drinks machine.

“Get you something? I’m Diego, by the way.”

Stella accepted a bottle of chilled water gratefully. “Do you live here?”

Diego snorted. “Only the privileged few get to actually stay here in la casa . The rest of us drop by when there is a big project to work on or a deadline to be met.” He nodded in the direction of the sleeping men. “Thirty-six hours straight. We’ve been trying to iron out a kink in a new games title. Just about cracked it. Some people can’t take the pace. So you’re the crowd fund girl Moncoya’s been raving about.”

Stella felt a blush tinge her cheeks. Moncoya and raving were not words she ever thought to hear put together and then applied to her. It was the stuff of every gamer’s fantasy. “Is he here?” She tried not to sound too eager.