Nick closed his eyes and exhaled. He hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath, but had to admit that a band of stress had formed tight around his chest since he’d materialized in his high-rise office an hour and a half earlier. Getting out of the building had been tough enough; then there was the ride home. He was an important man, and the world wanted a piece of him. Fortunately, his driver was well acquainted with his schedule and had rushed him home without a word.
Nick surrounds himself with good people. At least there’s that, he thought thankfully as he waved his new “bodyguard,” Andros closer. “Let’s find that study, then find the Challenger,” he said.
“No problem,” said Minnaea. “I’ve already memorized every room in the house.” She smiled widely and leaned forward conspiratorially. Despite her height, Nick noticed that both he and Andros were still a few inches taller. He probably shouldn’t have been so grateful for that, but he was. Men were petty.
“Monroe thinks I’m your new assistant,” she told them. “You might have to wait on the return of your abilities, but thankfully,” she said as she winked at her husband, “we don’t.”
“Then perhaps you should stop referring to me as your majesty,” said Nick.
Andros grinned a broad smile. “Nah, it makes things more interesting. Did you see the look on Monroe’s face?”
Nicholas let that go. Clearly Minnaea had used her Nightmare charm power to convince the mansion’s staff that she belonged. He ran his hand over his face and took a deep breath, thanking his lucky stars once more for his Preceptors. “Lead the way.”
Minnaea turned and strode down the hall, and Andros and Nick followed closely after. The mansion sprawled, which was especially impressive given he could see at least two more levels above them from the foot of the winding marble staircase. For half a second, Nicholas Wargrave felt overwhelmed. But he schooled himself and focused. If he could handle a re-materialization as a general in the Roman army during a time of war, then he could handle this.
Right?
“Here we are.”
They entered the study and Nick gave his surroundings a quick perusal. Then his cold gaze settled on a polished oak table. “There. Andros, get a map. Minnaea, give me the crystal.” It was time to find out where his competition was hiding.
Andros produced a map in short order. It wasn’t difficult; the study was well stocked with maps and books from what seemed like every era. In actuality, it was a library, not a study, and a vast one, at that. “Am I supposed to have read all of these?” he asked under his breath as Andros laid the map out on the table and the three of them smoothed it flat.
“Not even a little bit,” said Andros. “You’re too busy. But you did have one hell of an education, so it’s a good thing you know your history.” Andros looked up and met his gaze from across the table. “Wargrave is a dangerously intelligent man.”
“Okay, here we go,” said Minnaea. “Your majesty, you know the routine.” She nodded at him, and Nick pulled the crystal out of his suit coat pocket. He lifted it over the map, picking dead center United States as a starting place, then released the stone to hold it aloft by its chain. The crystal dangled on the end of its gold chain as Nick attempted to hold it still. It continued to pulse red in its telling manner, but other than that, there was no change.
And then, like the magic that it was, something happened. The chain snapped taut, and the crystal froze. Nick straightened a little as the tension around the table thickened. The crystal lifted to his left, stretching the chain as it reached out. Nick followed its lead like the pull on a dog’s leash. The crystal pulled hard over the map, until Nick was directly over Washington State and the tautness of the chain finally lessened. At last, it angled downward once more, and the Nightmare King felt adrenaline enter his veins as the crystal hit the map – on Seattle.
“He’s here.” His accent was thick. Because Nicholas Wargrave, his home, and his company were in Seattle too.
“This has never happened before,” said Minnaea. Never before had the Challenger been born in the same location as the king. There had always been traveling involved.
Nicholas looked up. “A lot of things have never happened before.”
The crystal suddenly shifted, just a little. A tiny slide along the map, no more than a few millimeters. Everyone froze as the red pulse changed as well, transitioning from red into orange, and then into amber. The pulse spaced out, and an extra beat was added, mimicking the pulsing of a heart.
“Holy shit,” Andros whispered. His wife glanced at him, no doubt irritated by his swearing. She’d been against swearing since Nicholas became Hesperos two-thousand years ago, no doubt because what current society regarded as swearing was actually the Anglo-Saxon terminology deemed “lower class” by the Romans when the Romans took them as slaves.
But Andros was either unaware of the reprimanding look, or couldn’t have cared, because he looked up and said, “It’s her.”
Nicholas was way ahead of him. He stared down at the pulsing yellow light, gold and steady and beautiful, and he knew exactly what the crystal was telling him. A lot of things were indeed different this time around. The Challenger was in the king’s court, practically in his back yard.
And so was the queen.
Chapter Five
The sun was just coming up on the horizon when Addie sat back in her oversized airplane seat and tried to relax. She had to admit that first class wasn’t bad for a spur-of-the-moment plane ticket, and given this was all Rodney could get at the last minute, she was doubly grateful. But she usually hated flying first class, despite her wealth. The reason? She simply always felt sorry for everyone flying coach.
It was almost as if the airlines went out of their way to make coach flyers uncomfortable. It seemed to Adelaide that in the past, coach was given just enough, and first class flyers were given extras. But now, coach flyers were instead denied just enough, and first-class flyers were treated with bare minimum decency – making them feel special, when in reality, they were doing no better than the coach of yester-year. And both had miles to go before they were treated with the customer service of someone, for instance, in a high-end restaurant. Or any restaurant at all, for that matter.
Adelaide ran a hand through her hair and pinched the bridge of her nose as these thoughts fed her guilt. All you had to do was walk down the aisle and look at their faces. It was there, written plainly: misery. They were scrunched, sweaty, hungry, exhausted, and they’d been put through the ringer by TSA agents with chips on their shoulders and little to no sense of humor. Half of them were worried their luggage wouldn’t make it, and the other half were worried they were going to crash. Actually, most were worried about both.
“You okay?”
Addie blinked and dropped her hand. The woman sitting beside her had just leaned in a little and asked her a question. She had a soft, beautiful voice, slightly accented. But Addie couldn’t place it.
She looked up into the woman’s eyes, and her breath nearly caught in her throat. Her eyes were lavender, extremely rare and just as stunning. They weren’t contacts either; you could always tell when they were contacts. Her coloring went beyond fair into alabaster, and Addie would be damned if the woman had a single pore. Her flawless features would put her in her late twenties to mid-thirties and were framed with long, perfect waves of layered dark brown hair. But there was something about her hair that made Addie think that had been altered in color. She was young, so Adelaide wondered what the woman’s original hair color was; it wouldn’t be gray.
The woman smiled kindly, revealing equally flawless teeth. Addie took it all in like she always took in everything, detail by tiny detail. She was a sensitive soul, detail oriented; she couldn’t help it. And almost instantly, the woman beside her was making her feel both comforted and insecure. It was the dichotomy that natural envy made any woman feel when presented with a beautiful, but kind woman.
“Yes, I’m fine,” Addie said, smiling in retur
n. “I’m just, you know,” she shrugged. “I’m not all that fond of flying. Always afraid things will go awry mid-flight.” It might not have been the whole reason she was agitated, but it was the truth nonetheless. She was as afraid of crashing as the next schmuck who was stuck up there with no control over the giant tin can with wings.
“It’s perfectly understandable,” the woman said. Addie could hear the sincerity in her voice. The woman gave their surroundings a sympathetically overwhelmed perusal. “We place our lives in someone else’s hands up here.” She shrugged and sighed as she sat back a little. “And if something goes wrong? There’s no pulling a plane over and popping the hood, you know? So you have every right to be nervous.”
“Okay, that really didn’t help at all,” said Addie with a small, nervous laugh. Things went wrong with cars all the time. What was so different about a plane?
She bit her lip.
The other woman chuckled. “Well, it does help to remember this one thing.” She leaned forward again, and gently placed her hand over Addie’s on the seat rest. “You’re absolutely right. You have zero control up here. So? That means it literally does no good to worry about it. And then there’s also the fact that the man or woman flying the plane wants to survive the trip as much as you do.” She patted Addie’s hand and removed her own. “There’s a human being up there in the cockpit.” She gestured to the front of the plane with a sideways nod. “And he doesn’t want us to crash either.” She winked and grinned.
Addie thought about that. She honestly did. And it honestly helped.
“I’m Evangeline, by the way,” the woman said, offering her hand for a shake. “But most people call me Eva.”
Addie took it. “I’m Adelaide, but everyone calls me Add –”
She was mid-nick-name when the strange and foreign sensation engulfed her. It froze her mid-breath, stopped her heartbeat, and stole the air from her lungs. She saw stars swimming and swirling and exploding. A falling sensation followed, brief but horrifying.
And then she was finishing her sentence, her hand still extended mid-shake. “ – ie,” she said, her voice trailing off. She was standing in an alley. In the distance, sirens wailed. She heard the soft snicker of a boy laughing. Tennis shoes on rubble. Traffic horns.
It was cold. It was early morning twilight. The ground beneath her boots was wet.
“What… the… hell?” she asked softly as she turned in place, searching for any sign as to what had just transpired. Is this it another vision? That was the first thing to go through her mind. Could she be having a powerful premonition? One unlike anything she had ever experienced?
But even as she thought this, she knew good and well that wasn’t the case. She wasn’t imagining the feel of the moist air on her skin, the smell of the nearby garbage bins, and the sounds of the city all around her. Not psychically, not this time.
“This can’t be real.” Her voice was shaking, and her body felt strange. She wasn’t just cold; her skin tingled and prickled a little, as if her nerves were being impeded. There was also a dull roar in her ears, a rush of blood as if she’d just run a marathon. The sensation and sound slowly faded as she stood there in the alley, utterly baffled and completely uncertain of what to do next.
She couldn’t help but think of the student in her high school hallway premonition – the shooter. She’d met her gaze in the vision. It was another impossibility that had occurred with regards to her psychic abilities.
Maybe, just maybe, it had been a precursor. Maybe it was a warning that something bigger was about to happen. Something like this right here. Will I start vanishing at random now like Kevin McKidd in Journeyman?
A terribly familiar sound cut through her thoughts and confusion, bringing her spinning around. It was the yelp of an animal crying out in sudden pain. Adelaide was running before she fully realized she was doing so. The ground felt foreign beneath her shoes, as if her body had not yet fully realized its weight, and she was partially numb. But she was fast. Despite all that had happened to that body, it was thankfully still quick on its feet.
She rounded a corner when a long, high-pitched whine resounded, and she suddenly found herself coming face to face with the very image from her last premonition.
Three boys, a canine victim, and a cold, metal chain.
Oh holy crap, she thought, her mind a crazed blur. This couldn’t be real. None of it could. She must be dreaming. Because none of it was possible.
Or….
An even more horrible thought crossed her mind. Maybe she had actually drowned during her last premonition. Maybe Rodney hadn’t gotten to her in time. Maybe she should have rid herself of that pool a long, long time ago. And this was all some Jacob’s Ladder series of post-mortem events and she was well on her way to the afterlife.
“What the fuck?” one of the boys suddenly asked. He’d been bending over the animal, but now he was straightening again, a bloody knife in his right hand. His nearest companion straightened as well, and their gazes fell on her. Closest to her was the boy who’d been filming in her vision; she didn’t recognize him, and he had a phone in one hand. He, too, turned to regard her with an expression of suspicion and anger.
Years of self-imposed training took over, and survival instincts kicked in. Fortunately, Adelaide never went anywhere in clothes she couldn’t fight in. She rolled her shoulders back and looked the boy with the knife in the eye. “The police are on their way. I’ve already called them. They’ll be here any second. In fact, you can hear them now.”
Sirens did sound in the distance, and it did seem that they were getting closer. In actuality, however, this right here couldn’t be what they were on their way to deal with. Addie had called the police hours ago. No doubt, after her call they’d done a drive-through with a car or two, and hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary. Most likely, the timing had been off.
Nonetheless, the boys glanced at each other. Because they wouldn’t know any better. As far as they were concerned, she was telling the truth, which she sort of was, and those cops were on their way right now, and if they didn’t leave the area, they would be arrested. Or fined, at the very least.
This must have been what they were thinking, because the boy with the knife slipped it into a sheath he had tied to his belt and nodded at his companions. “Let’s bolt.” The three turned and ran down the alley, leaving behind the small dog, the chain that held it to the pipe in the wall, and Adelaide.
Addie waited until they were long gone before she exhaled. She bent over and grabbed her knees, closing her eyes. The situation was too bizarre for words, too unreal, and a million questions circled like a dust devil in her mind. How had she gotten here? Why? And the timing and the place? What magic – it had to be magic, right? – was at work here?
Her thoughts ran rampant and un-impeded: oh God, I’m so glad they left, I didn’t want to fight them, I really didn’t want to fight them, I feel dizzy with relief, I can’t believe I’m not on the plane but this isn’t a dream I know it isn’t, I’m so confused…. But over them all, like an all-caps booming voice that wouldn’t be silenced, was the knowledge that there was an animal in front of her who needed help.
She straightened, hurrying to the dog’s side. It actually stood up and wagged its tail. It was a Pit bull puppy, not even three months old by the looks of it. “Oh my God, you poor thing,” she said softly as she knelt beside it. “Oh, you’re a good boy, aren’t you? Sweet boy,” she said comfortingly as she gave him a gentle pet on his back and then his belly and took a closer look at his injury. She’d gotten there just in time.
In her vision, things had gone so terribly far. But here, in what she fundamentally knew was reality, she’d managed to stop the boys before they’d done any real and lasting damage. The dog had a deep gash in one ear – but it wasn’t so bad that it couldn’t be sewn up. It would heal. She would make damned sure of it.
“Okay baby, we’re going to get you out of here and to some place safe, okay?” she said.
Then, impulsively, and because she just loved animals that much, she placed a soft kiss on the dog’s head. He licked her face.
She fell in love.
She lifted the animal into her arms, stood, and walked out of the alley.
Chapter Six
Nero scanned the alley with a vivid but hard gaze. She’d been here. He could feel her presence; it lingered like a perfume, sweet and tempting. He had never experienced anything like this before, this need to track something other than his enemy. Everything about this materialization was different. He even felt more solid. More real. It was almost as if he had memories. Or even a past.
That was impossible, of course. He’d been created several times in various different time periods, but each one had been short-lived. The king always won. He was strong, and the Challenger’s defeat was proof of that. But never had Nero been alive long enough to develop what someone would logically refer to as a “past.” He had no childhood. He had no parents, no family. He was two-dimensional, at best.
Except, this time… he wasn’t. There was this presence within him that he’d never before sensed. It was something real and grounding, there in the core of him that had up until now been empty. He almost felt, as unprecedented as it was, that he had a soul.
He raised his head and closed his eyes, reaching out with a Nightmare’s feelers for the woman who’d left this alley only minutes earlier. His thoughts were consumed with two purposes now, instead of the single purpose he was normally born into. And strangely enough, despite the fact that he was known as the Challenger for one single reason, the female was taking precedence this time.
He felt more drawn to her location than he did to the king’s.
*****
Nicholas Wargrave walked through the alley slowly, his shoes sounding like a metronome on the cement, steady, loud, and leading to something. “What the hell?” he whispered softly. He could sense both of them here. That meant his Nightmare powers were returning. It also meant something he didn’t want to think about.