The Strange Case of Guaritori Diolco
A preview of my latest urban fantasy novel (first book in the World Unbalanced series)
For those of you who may have missed my earlier note, my latest novel in now live and currently has a special introductory price. (Paid subscribers get a free ebook copy. If you haven’t gotten yours yet, visit this page to indicate your format preferences.) If you’d like to buy a copy, you can purchase one here.
Since the book is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited, I can’t serialize the whole thing hon Substack, but I can offer you a preview. Here, for your reading pleasure, is the first chapter. Enjoy!
Down the Rabbit Hole
I must have been in an auto accident because the last thing I could remember was driving north on the 405 Freeway, heading for the San Fernando Valley. But what I thought I remembered after that—a ripping sound so loud it shook my car, the afternoon sky turning from cloudy blue to black—must have been a hallucination. Whatever it was, I passed out immediately afterward.
When I woke up and opened my eyes, my vision was blurry at first, but I saw enough institutional white to figure I was in a hospital. Hovering over me was a black woman dressed in white, so presumably a nurse or doctor. I saw a gleam near her throat, but not from a stethoscope. A piece of jewelry, perhaps, or maybe a cross. Could this be a religious hospital?
The woman looked away from me for a moment, and I thought she said something like, “Ms. M, he’s awake.” Her voice was loud, as if she was trying to make herself heard by someone in another room. She had an accent—British, maybe.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out, and my throat felt as dry as a desert.
The woman put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Don’t strain yourself trying to talk,” she said. “It’s been . . . a long time since you’ve used your throat. Let me get you some water.”
She left my field of vision. I tried to turn my head a little, but my neck refused to cooperate. Just how long had I been laid up?
I kept blinking in a futile attempt to get my eyes to focus. But even without being able to see clearly, I could tell that neither my parents nor my fiancée was here. Nor was anyone else. If I’d been in a serious accident, I would have expected someone to be with me. Maybe not all three of them, but certainly at least one of them and maybe a friend or two, depending on how long I’d been unconscious and what time of day it was. What time was it? I couldn’t see any windows in the room. There was no sign of a clock, either, and I couldn’t feel a watch on my wrist.
“You’re awake,” said a different female voice. This one had a slight accent that I couldn’t place.
I tried talking again and managed to sound like a frog croaking. By that time, the black woman was bustling back into the room with a glass of water.
“Don’t try yet. Sip some water and wait a little.”
“We may not have that much time,” said the other woman. “Urania’s latest reading—”
“Could mean many things. But his body has been through a lot. Getting him on his feet is going to take a little time.”
The water tasted good to me, and I had to force myself not to gulp it.
“What happened to me?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.
I thought the black woman smiled, but I wasn’t sure. “Let me ask a couple of questions first, just to get a sense of how you’re doing. Do you remember what your name is?”
The accident must have involved serious head trauma to warrant a question like that.
“Guaritori Diolco,” I replied. The most I could manage was a whisper, but she nodded, so she must have understood.
“My friends call me Garth, though.”
Her smile broadened. “They have a hard time pronouncing Guaritori, I bet. I’ve had a similar problem. My name’s Malaika. Malaika Smith.”
“That’s a pretty name,” I said, my voice sounding even hoarser. Malaika gave me a few more sips of water.
“How much do you remember?” asked the other woman, who was still outside my field of vision. Her voice sounded less friendly than Malaika’s, more clinical.
I told her what I could remember about the time before the accident. She listened silently and didn’t say anything after I finished. Surely, what I’d just said didn’t take that much time to digest.
I heard some rustling, and suddenly someone was raising a little bottle to my lips. “Drink this,” said the clinical voice.
“Is that—” began Malaika.
“Drink this,” repeated the clinical voice, somewhat more loudly.
“What . . . is it?” I whispered. The fact that the two women didn’t seem to agree with each other on a course of treatment was troubling.
“It could be too much of a shock to his system,” said Malaika. “At least, let me prepare him first.”
Prepare me for what? The medicine the other woman was trying to pour down my aching throat? Why would it be a shock to my system?
I had far more questions than I had the strength to ask, and neither of the women seemed conscious of my growing distress.
“All right, prepare him,” said the more detached woman as if she were granting the hugest favor imaginable. “Do something to keep him calm while you’re at it. But be quick about it.”
The little bottle disappeared, and all I could see was Malaika, still blurry, leaning over me.
“Close your eyes,” she said calmly, as if the argument I’d just heard hadn’t really happened.
Keeping my eyes open had been an effort, so closing them wasn’t that hard. But I almost reopened them when I felt Malaika drawing on my forehead.
“What—” I began.
“Try to rest,” she said. “I’m just using a relaxation technique that will help you recover.”
Unless I’d hallucinated that earlier conversation, that wasn’t what she was doing at all. Bits and pieces of thought floated through my mind, like the idea of informed consent for medical procedures. But they floated like leaves in a gentle autumn wind. I tried to hold on to them, but whatever worry caused me to do that faded as the leaves drifted away.
Malaika drew a circle on my forehead, then drew eight lines extending out from it in all directions—a sun symbol.
She whispered words, but I couldn’t understand them. As she continued, a gentle warmth spread from my forehead until it had seeped into my whole body. I wanted to lose myself in the glow of the sun, to forget my earlier misgivings.
“Is he ready?” asked the clinical voice. Its impatience didn’t bother me. I felt as detached as the voice sounded.
“As ready as I can make him on such short notice. It would be better—”
“We have no time for better. Get out of my way.”
Once again, the small bottle appeared before me, this time pressed to my lips.
“Drink.”
I opened my mouth, and a liquid that smelled a little like spring flowers dripped down my throat.
The warmth of the sun kept me calm as jolts of energy flashed through me like lightning. But the sun’s effect began to thin as the liquid reached my stomach. The next jolt was intense enough that I screamed. Or maybe I didn’t. The sensation was so overpowering that the wall between reality and hallucination shattered. I felt as if whatever I had drunk was destroying and then recreating every cell in my body, one by one.
My eyes flew open, my vision now fully focused. The turmoil within should have caused me to scream again, but Malaika put her hand over the drawing on my forehead and whispered to me again in a language I didn’t recognize.
I felt as if I were bathed in sunlight and caressed by gentle breezes. What was I so worried about? I couldn’t even remember. Sure, I felt a little weird, but that was probably whatever I’d just drunk doing its work. There was nothing to fear here.
I didn’t feel like moving yet, but my vision remained crystal clear, allowing me to take in my surroundings. I watched as if what I was seeing was part of an interesting television program rather than my own life.
Malaika had a concerned look on her face. She appeared to be in her mid-forties, with a touch of gray in her long, dark, curly hair and a little wrinkling around her eyes. But she was not, as I had first believed, a doctor or nurse. Rather than wearing a white uniform, she was draped in a white robe that looked more like ritual garb than professional attire.
The silver glint I had noticed before turned out not to be a cross. Instead, it was a crescent moon. I’d seen something similar before, but I couldn’t remember where.
I managed to move my head enough to see the other woman. She had midnight-black hair, olive skin, and sky-blue eyes that had a golden glint in them, perhaps the reflection of a light source I couldn’t see. Despite all the weird sensations I was feeling and my general detachment from them, those eyes caught mine. They reminded me of a deep lake with shadowy depths hidden beneath its sunlit surface.
Her face was as beautiful as an ancient Greek sculpture of Aphrodite—but her expression was just as cold as the stone from which such a statue would have been sculpted. No, not completely cold. More like deliberately expressionless. It was hard to tell what she was thinking.
Like Malaika, she also wore a robe, but instead of being plain white, hers was the color of a dawn sky on the right side, gradually shifting to the darker shade of the sky just after sunset on the left. The right side featured an image of the sun sewn in golden thread. On the left was the image of a crescent moon sewn in silver thread and surrounded by small stars in an elaborate pattern. Such a garment would have to have been custom-made, probably handmade, but even so, I couldn’t figure out how the designer had gotten the gold and silver threads to shine as if they were metallic.
I’d thought I was in a hospital. Now it began to seem as if I were somewhere backstage at a magician’s club or maybe even a circus. The walls still looked white to me, but they seemed almost translucent, as if I could see through them if I tried hard enough.
What had the woman in the day-to-night robe made me drink? And what was it doing to me? I should have been panicking, but the reassuring warmth of the sun told me not to worry. The gentle wind whispered the same message to me.
“Are you all right?” asked Malaika. The other, whom I took to be Ms. M, just kept staring.
The way she asked the question made me a little nervous. The glow of the sun and whispering of the wind receded a little, became less real.
“What’s . . . what’s happening to me?”
“I just gave you something that will help you recover faster,” said Ms. M. “You’ve been in a coma for a long time.”
Despite how weird I still felt, I found I was able to sit up. “A coma? How did I get into a coma?”
“We don’t know for sure, Garth,” said Malaika.
“Do you think you’re ready to travel yet?” asked Ms. M.
That seemed like a strange question, but then the whole experience was getting stranger by the second.
“I . . . I feel pretty good now. Better, anyway. But . . . what’s the rush?”
“This location isn’t going to be safe for much longer.”
Was I on drugs? Was she? None of this made any sense.
“Get up,” said Ms. M.
“Is that—” began Malaika.
“We have less time than I thought,” said Ms. M, her expression betraying a little shakiness. Given her earlier reserve, the slight hint of her emotions was the most frightening thing that had happened so far.
Why had I been thinking about the sun and wind? We were indoors. I couldn’t see any sun or feel any wind.
To my surprise, I got out of bed easily enough. I was wearing pajamas rather than a hospital gown, but that didn’t surprise me. There wasn’t even a trace of hospital equipment in the room. That and the strange garb of the two women with me convinced me I couldn’t be in a hospital.
But if I wasn’t in a hospital, where was I?
For a second, I still saw white walls, but then they faded away like the hallucination they must have been. I was in what looked like a bedroom in someone’s home. Aside from the bed, there were a couple of overstuffed chairs and a five-drawer dresser with a mirror mounted on top of it. Next to the dresser was a floor lamp that bathed the room in a soft glow. Though old, perhaps antique, those pieces didn’t match each other. They made the place seem like a hastily assembled store display rather than a room in someone’s home.
The walls were covered with floral-print wallpaper that looked faded and had a couple of stains on it. If this were someone’s home, surely the wallpaper would have been redone by now.
“Where am I?” I asked. I should have questioned the women more before now.
“Your clothes are in the closet over there,” said Ms. M, as if I hadn’t just asked a question. She pointed to a door next to the dresser. “Get dressed as quickly as you can.”
My heart was beating too fast. I was maybe seconds away from the mother of all anxiety attacks. But freaking out now wasn’t going to do me any good at all. Anyway, I did need to get dressed.
Both women stayed where they were. Evidently, I was supposed to get dressed in front of them or in the closet. Fortunately, it was a walk-in. Unfortunately, pulling the chain on the ceiling light did nothing. Feeling a little uncomfortable, especially since I now knew they weren’t medical personnel, I pulled the door closed and got dressed awkwardly in the dark.
I had seen the clothes before I closed the door. They were indeed mine. I recognized them. But as I got into them, I noticed that they didn’t seem to fit. The shirt, in particular, was too tight. Had someone washed it and inadvertently shrunk it?
I emerged from the closet wearing a light-blue polo shirt, jeans, and sneakers that might work well enough for running if I needed to. Neither of the women really looked threatening, though Ms. M was certainly not friendly.
But the way they were dressed and the fact that they evaded or ignored my questions was suspicious. I couldn’t deny that. And they had clearly drugged me in an effort to keep me docile.
I glanced at the mirror to see how sickly I looked.
But I didn’t look sickly at all. My brown hair was neatly cut and combed, though I supposed someone could have done that while I was unconscious. But my brown eyes, whose vision had been so blurry just a minute ago, looked as bright as always. And I was still tan, my brown skin noticeable even under Malaika’s golden drawing of the sun. I wouldn’t still have been tan if I’d really been indoors—and in a coma—for a long time.
My arms looked more muscular than they had been before. Someone might have worked my muscles to keep them from atrophying while I was in a coma, but I had a hard time believing my muscle mass would actually have increased in such a situation. Looking more closely, I saw how tightly my shirt fit and realized that it hadn’t shrunk. My chest had gotten bigger.
But if I hadn’t been in a coma for a long time, what had happened? I wouldn’t have expected to see so much muscle development in a short time, even without anything to interfere with my workout schedule.
“If you’re done admiring yourself, we need to be going,” said Ms. M.
I turned to face them. “I’m not going anywhere until you answer some questions!”
I heard a loud crash somewhere nearby. Downstairs, maybe. I had no idea what the layout of this place was.
“They’re here,” said Ms. M to Malaika. To me, she added, “The questions can wait . . . assuming you want to live.”
“Who’s here?” I asked, not knowing what to believe.
Ms. M reached out as if to grab my arm. I backed away from her with a speed that seemed to surprise her and certainly surprised me. No long-term coma patient could possibly have gotten out of bed and moved like that.
I heard what sounded like running footsteps on stairs, confirmation that we were in a multistory building. Someone was coming, but who?
Ms. M glared at me but didn’t try to pursue me across the room. Instead, she turned toward what must have been the door out of the room and raised her hands.
Was I hallucinating again? A silver light flashed across the door and stayed there, shimmering like moonlight on water.
Ms. M turned back to us. “That will buy us a few seconds. Are you going to come with us peacefully, or must we take you by force?”
“I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what’s going on—and until whatever hallucinogen you gave me wears off.”
The running footsteps had already reached the hallway outside.
Malaika frowned, her eyes fixed on the silvery glow over the door, but she said nothing.
Ms. M. threw up her hands. “I suppose some people have to learn by experience.”
Someone thudded against the door, which creaked loudly from the impact. The silver glow seemed to grip it more tightly, like a layer of paint.
Malaika’s eyes widened. “You don’t intend to let them have him, do you?”
“Of course not,” said Ms. M, waving her right hand dismissively. “But perhaps it’s best if he sees what he’s up against. He’ll never believe us otherwise.”
Ms. M waved her hands again, and the silver layer on the door disappeared. A second later, the door shattered, and I had to shield my eyes from flying splinters.
Downloaded to my kindle.
Yes… strange. I like your suspenseful buildup!