Read The League of Doorways (A Book of Vampires, Werewolves & Black Magic) (The Doorways Trilogy - Book Two) for Free Online Page B

laughing as he told them about the incredible flying machines he had seen soaring through the skies, the machines with wheels that ran on tracks and through tunnels cut deep into the mountainsides. He spoke excitedly about the cities made of glass buildings, and how they nearly touched the sky. Cribbot enthused about the animals he had seen beyond his doorway. He spoke of giant cats called tigers with fur painted orange and black, of mighty beasts called gorillas, and tiny, gentle flying animals called butterflies. But he couldn’t find anyone to share his enthusiasm. He could find no one who would believe him. Cribbot had fallen in love with the world he had discovered on the other side of his doorway. But he didn’t love the humans as much as everything they had created and the animals they shared their world with. He began to resent them – become jealous of them perhaps,” Faraday explained.
    “Jealous?” Zach asked. “Why?”
    “Cribbot told those who would listen that the humans didn’t appreciate what they had,” Faraday continued. “They were killing the world they had and the creatures they shared it with. He would shout from the street corners about how there were only three-thousand of those beautiful orange and black cats left on the other side of the doorway. With an ever-increasing anger, he would rant that the humans had destroyed the tiger’s natural habitat, poached them, driven them almost to extinction. He spoke of the mighty creatures called gorillas and how their numbers were even less. But it seemed just like the humans, the people of Clockwork City didn’t care – in fact, they cared even less because they didn’t believe him. Cribbot believed that if only he could bring one of these creatures back – if he could bring back some of the technology that the humans took so much for granted – if he could only show it to the people of Clockwork City, then perhaps they would care – perhaps then, they would believe him.
    “So , by cunning or by magic, Der Cribbot brought some of those machines which the humans had made back through his doorway and into Endra. It wasn’t just machines he brought back with him – he brought some of those creatures back, too. But something went wrong – terribly wrong,” Faraday said.
    “What?” William asked, his eyes now blazing behind his bulbous lenses.
    “The doorways have the power to change you,” Faraday said.
    Remembering how the doorways had changed his friends William and Neanna and the polar bear he had killed on his first night in Endra, Zachary nodded and said, “We know all about how the doorways can change you.”
    “The creatures Cribbot snuck back through the doorway somehow became entangled with the machinery he was smuggling back into Endra,” Faraday said, and again his voice was emotionless, just like his dead, black eyes. “At first Cribbot marvelled at what had happened. His aspiration to soar through the sky like a bird was no longer just a dream. To travel at incredible speeds, to ride on creatures that ran on tracks and cut their way through tunnels was now a reality, and he was overjoyed. He took these creatures and travelled across Clockwork City and the furthest reaches of the outer-rim with his circus of mechanical animals. Just like Cribbot had, the people marvelled at these animals and paid good money to witness them. But word soon spread beyond the reaches of the outer-rim.”
    “The rumours,” Neanna whispered. “So they were all true.” She looked at Zachary. Not in a cocky or smug way that she had been right all along – but in a way one might look on realising that the bogeyman does really exist, that there are really monsters in the closet. All the stories had been true.
    “So what happened?” Zachary asked, looking away from Neanna and back at Doctor Faraday.  
    He explained how the technology and creatures, which had been taken from beyond the doorway started to advance the people of Clockwork City