She’d taken off her jacket and wrapped Hastings in it, in case the pain killers he was on made him feel cold. He’d promptly fallen asleep. Andros had graciously taken the dog and his jacket-blanket from her and was holding the puppy himself. Addie was grateful. Hastings may have been a puppy, but he was a Pit bull puppy, and even puppies got heavy after a while.
The leather soles of their shoes made hollow sounds on the stone beneath their footsteps. Each beat was a reminder of the overwhelming weirdness around her. At her side walked Nicholas. Behind them walked Minnaea and Andros, who were apparently also Nightmares, but different from the others in that they only existed when the king was reborn. Which, also apparently, had just happened.
They rounded a corner and came to a set of massive double doors. The doors were black wood, reinforced with thick bands of wrought iron. “Who exactly are these meant to keep out?” she asked. Curiosity was getting the better of her.
“Fae,” replied Andros.
“More specifically, goblins,” corrected Minnaea.
The confusion Addie felt must have been clear on her face, because Nicholas chuckled softly. “I’m sure you’ve seen Henson’s Labyrinth, and most likely you have a very limited idea of what a goblin is,” he said.
“I take offense to that,” Adelaide said haughtily. The Labyrinth happened to be one of her favorite movies ever.
“Frankly, so do I,” said Minnaea. “What’s not to love about the Labyrinth? I mean, Bowie in tights?”
“And the sheer hugableness of Ludo?” added Adelaide with a smile. She was warming up to Minnaea.
“Exactly,” said Minnaea. “Labyrinth is second only to The Princess Bride.”
“Okay, now I know I like you,” Addie said aloud. She hadn’t meant to, but she was glad she did when Minnaea laughed and they fist bumped.
Nick chuckled. “Okay, my bad,” his gorgeous voice self-chastised. “There’s certainly no beating that little Worm.”
“Oh my gosh, the Worm,” said Minnaea, nodding. “Come in and meet the missus!”
The air around them seemed to lighten as they laughed, and Addie suddenly felt a lot less uncomfortable around these people who were more or less complete strangers.
“In reality, goblins are a species of fae,” Nicholas explained, still smiling. “Iron is caustic to fae, and these are magically reinforced as well.” He gestured to the doors. “Once long ago, the Nightmares and the goblins fell into a dispute of sorts, and we weren’t about to take any chances. But the issue was resolved when Damon Chroi took the Goblin King throne.”
Addie blew out a sigh and closed her eyes, touching her forehead. She felt a little dizzy. He’d just dropped another boat load of bizarre information in her lap.
“I know,” said Minnaea. “It’s a lot to take in.” She stepped forward and placed her hand gently on Adelaide’s back before nodding at Nicholas, who in turn looked at the doors. He spoke a weird, primordial kind of word that echoed down the hall and reverberated off the walls.
The massive blackened doors gave a shudder. Addie wanted to step back, but Minnaea’s hand prevented it. Luckily, the doors creaked slowly inward rather than outward, and she relaxed a little.
The space beyond was entirely dark. It wasn’t a normal dark, the kind that makes its appearance when you finally turn out the lights at midnight. It was thick and impenetrable, and Addie got the impression that if she’d wanted to, she could touch it – and it wouldn’t give.
“This is where we part ways,” said Andros with a nod to his king. “I’ll take Hastings to the kitchens and see that he’s fed and watered.”
“Thank you,” said Adelaide, meaning it.
Nicholas smiled at him and Minnaea, then looked down at Addie. “Take my hand,” he said, once more offering it to her. When she only looked down at it questioningly, he went on. “The quarters beyond belong to the king alone. No one can enter but the ruler of the realm. I suspect you’d be allowed….” He broke off, as if he’d just begun to say something he shouldn’t, then he smiled again. “If you take my hand, you can pass as well.”
There was something about that explanation that sounded fishy to Addie, but at this point, she’d long lost control of her life, and was happy to have any option that didn’t include being locked up in prison. She placed her hand in his.
Nick’s fingers curled over hers warm and tight. It was a grip that could easily have crushed her; she could sense the strength in it. Yet, he was gentle. Restrained.
“I just need a few supplies,” said Nicholas, speaking to the two Nightmares he called his Preceptors. He glanced down at his suit. “And I think a change of clothes.”
“Not quite used to the three-piece cage?” asked Minnaea with a grin. Adelaide’s mind worked. Because he was someone else before, she recalled. They’d told her he was a man named Hesperos.
Nick shook his head, just once. “Not even a little bit.”
Minnaea laughed and looked at Addie. “His previous form was all about jeans and leather. His single mode of transportation was a motorcycle.”
“We’ll meet you in the courtyard,” said Andros, who despite carrying Hastings managed to gently take Minnaea by the elbow to lead her back down the hall.
Nick nodded at them as they left, then turned to the darkness beyond the massive double doors.
“It’s going to suffocate me, isn’t it?” Addie asked softly. She just had this feeling that if she tried to venture beyond the threshold, the darkness would strangle the life right out of her.
“If you were anyone but who you are, that’s exactly what it would do,” Nick told her easily. Then once again, he seemed to realize he was saying something he shouldn’t. And it did make her wonder what he meant by that.
But he just glanced down at her and said, “I have a feeling it will welcome you with open arms.”
Chapter Sixteen
Nero paced back and forth in the master suite of his new home. Apparently he did quite well for himself. But this level of comfort was new, this level of detail in his Challenger life was unexpected. He had a feeling he knew why there was so much different this time around. He had a feeling he knew what it was all about. It was Adelaide.
The Nightmare Queen.
He’d never beheld such an astonishing soul. He hadn’t had time to delve as deeply as the Nightmare in him wanted, but what little he’d scraped from the surface of her being was wondrous. She was filled to the brim with experience, with lessons learned, and with a kind empathy that was the rare aftermath of those lessons. Most became bitter, closed off, intolerant and impatient. But not Adelaide. She was just the opposite.
She was well and truly a good person. That was a rare enough.
But what she did, she did despite the pain she’d experienced in her own life, and she did it not because she believed she would be rewarded for her efforts after death. She was not at all religious; he’d been able to glean that much. She did it because it was the right thing to do in this life – because people and animals needed help. Period.
The combination of kind empathy and of unrewarded selflessness resulted in a steadfast moral compass that Nero had scarcely encountered in his existence. She was stunning.
And right now, she was off somewhere with the king, and no doubt the smarmy bastard was making headway with her. Hesperos – rather Nicholas - had always been very, very good in that department.
“Well, I suppose he is your sovereign for a reason.”
Nero spun. He was supposed to be alone in the room, and he’d heard no one approach. A weapon formed in the thin air around him, spinning and sharp and edged with powdered rubies that reflected the night lights like solid blood. It shot across the room and would have struck the intruder - but the intruder flicked his wrist, and the blade angled wide to strike the wall beside him instead. It embedded inches deep and stuck, and Nero faced the newcomer with a flashing narrowed gaze.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked. His accented words slipped through the ai
r and into the shadows, laced with the magic of a rising Nightmare.
“I’m someone who can help you, Nero Crowley. We have something in common.”
Nero studied the man who’d somehow, impossibly, made it into his office on the thirty-seventh floor of a business high-rise, slipping past security in the middle of the night. Obviously he wasn’t human. Failing all that, the dagger the stranger had magically flung into the wall would have been ample proof.
But Nero could tell just by the way the man felt. He felt like a hole in space, like a vacuous emptiness that sucked good into it and spat it out as something rotten and insipid. Outwardly, the stranger appeared a completely normal brown-haired man in a three-piece cage and expensive watch. But Nightmares were very, very good at seeing past all of that.
“I highly doubt it,” said Nero with finality.
The stranger chuckled. “Honestly Challenger, your bitterness is seeping through your pores. You’re so filled with envy and frustration, it’s changing you. And you damn well know it.”
Nero’s gaze didn’t alter and it didn’t waver. But the stranger was striking a cord. That, Nero could feel for sure.
“You never answered my question,” he said. “Who,” he repeated slowly and with punctuating beats, “the - fuck - are - you?”
“Name’s not important,” the stranger said, walking toward him. As he drew nearer, the air grew thicker. Nero’s Nightmare rose inside him and prepared to fight. “What is important is that I come with an offer that,” he stopped and touched his chin, “how’s it go? Oh - an offer you can’t refuse.”
Nero didn’t laugh. He simply didn’t find it amusing. In fact, the stranger’s presence was grating. “You have nothing I want. You can’t even answer a simple question,” he smirked, shaking his head, his smile hard. “And there’s nothing I require anyway.”
“But I think there is,” said the stranger softly, all attempts at saber rattling clearly ineffective with him. “You’re up against a new foe, Challenger. He’s different this time, and you know it.” He continued to come toward him. Nero held his ground, standing calmly where he’d turned beside the windows.
“And now there’s the girl - the queen - to consider as well.” the stranger went on. “To say nothing of the fact that this is your last time around.” He stopped and cocked his head to one side. A light from beyond the windows caught his eyes, and something unnatural and unnerving flashed there. “This is your last chance. And that terrifies you.”
Nero studied the intruder very carefully. He was good at that. The room was quiet. Neither of them spoke for some time. And then Nero lifted his chin, and his own gaze flashed. “The truth is, you are the one who’s terrified,” he said calmly. And this time, he stepped forward.
The stranger’s head moved, just a little. But Nero caught the difference in his eyes. “It’s the only reason you would risk engaging me. Here, in the middle of the night, and on my turf,” he continued, taking another casual step toward him. “I am the one who can feel your fear.” He continued to study him, this time allowing the Nightmare inside to sniff it all out like a wolf at the door. “You’re weak, aren’t you? Something isn’t going your way, you’re tired of trying, tired of losing, and you’re feeling desperate. Am I getting close?”
The stranger swallowed. Nero caught the movement in the man’s throat. And he knew he had him.
“So why don’t you come clean and tell me who you are and what the hell you want?”
The stranger seemed to consider Nero as carefully as Nero was considering him. After a protracted moment of silence, the stranger put his hands in his pockets and sighed. “Very well. Normally I simply possess the body I need to get the job done, but you’re right about the weakness. So I’m going to be level with you, Nero.” He spoke as if they were friends, talking about the weather or the latest sports news. “The woman I love is unconscious in the Land of the Dead. She has been since her bastard brother-in-law put her there. I need the power of a queen - yes, one of the Thirteen Queens - to bring her back to life. You want a queen,” he went on. “I want a queen. We want the same thing, if for different purposes.”
Now the stranger took the final step between them and effectively closed the distance. He and Nero stood head to head, toe to toe.
“I think you’re the man who can help me and I’m the man who can help you. No harm will come to Adelaide Lane. Join with me and I can assure that you win her over. We can both get what we want.”
Chapter Seventeen
Oh, he’d had his doubts. But everything was different this time, and that meant that even though he was stronger, the king was stronger too. And then there was the fact that he knew this was it; there would be no more chances.
What did he have to lose? He didn’t technically exist anyway. This was the closest to life he’d ever experienced. True, he could be giving what little of it he had away by making this deal, but it was going to go away when the Nightmare King inevitably beat him again.
So now here he was, a little more than half of the two spirits that made up the being masquerading as Nero Ares Crowley.
And the other half was busy casting a spell.
Nero hadn’t expected this agreement to feel like it did. He’d known full well what he was up against. He knew, almost at once, that the stranger who’d come to pay him a visit was none other than the Entity who’d been terrorizing the Thirteen supernatural factions. The Entity had made it into his office, he radiated an aura of nastiness, and he simply refused to answer Nero’s questions. That was all tell enough.
But then there was the dagger trick. Only someone of equal power to Nero’s could have diverted the dagger attack. Nero’s dagger was on par with Hesperos’s - rather, Nicholas’s - Sleeper. Like twin weapons molded in the fires of Hephaestus’s forge, they were of the same metal, same magic, and same power.
He’d realized he had two choices at that point. He could fight off the Entity - the being that no king so far had been capable of defeating… or he could hear him out.
So when he’d done exactly that and let the man speak, he’d really begun thinking. He was standing in front of the creature all of the Kings knew to be the most evil in the realms, and yet the man was coming to him for help. He was trying to reason with him. He was even… being honest.
Nero wasn’t a fool. It could have been a trap. So he’d reasoned that even if it was, and all the Entity wanted was to use his body, this was perhaps Nero’s only chance at surviving here on the Earth just a little bit longer. Maybe a few more days. A couple of precious hours. Before he would cease to exist for good.
Even if he were in the background, locked away inside his own mind as a madman took the controls, he would still see and hear and feel. He would be. People seriously didn’t realize how precious being really was. In its minutest form, it was so much better than the nothingness of death.
And in the end, he’d made the deal.
But he hadn’t expected what actually happened. The Entity bonded with him, sinking into his form like a blast of cool air - and Nero maintained control of his body. It might have had something to do with a Nightmare’s ability to pull someone’s soul into himself. Nero was uncertain. He only knew that once inside him, the Entity nestled safe and snug, and there was no pain, no nasty surprise. Instead, the Entity simply whispered into his soul and told him what they would do.
Nero hadn’t expected to remain in charge. He had expected deviousness, duplicity, and some kind of stab in the back. He had not expected that the Entity’s deal would be a good one.
The spell he cast next possessed the power of two magical minds. It slipped into the shadows in the room like strands of darkness with wills of their own. They slid away, off to hunt their prey, to find the beacon that would draw them like a moth to a flame.
“Bring her to me,” he commanded that darkness. It felt natural. It was as if the Entity were an echo to his desires - and his to the Entity’s. For a lack of a better description, Nero would say t
hat it felt like the Entity was filling out the empty spaces of his being. They were in tandem, complimenting one another like an electric guitar and an amplifier.
He smiled as the darkness seemed to bow and scrape, nodding at his demands. “And be gentle,” he added, and his beautiful English voice found new heights of perfect intonation. “She’s precious cargo.”
****
The thickness of the black beyond the threshold of Nicholas’s private quarters felt like more than a barrier. It felt like a warning.
These were the king’s private quarters, after all. What business did she have following him into them? What kind of girl did it make her that she would just blindly do exactly that? She felt like hesitating, and then, as Nicholas pulled her right into the all-encompassing dark, she actually did hesitate. But it wasn’t her doing.
There was a pull on her, something yanking her back from Nicholas’s grip. His hand tightened around hers, and she felt him spin in the darkness, sliding his arm around her waist with uncanny precision and speed. But the darkness was moving; she was sure of it. It slithered over and around her, wrapping her up as if they were snakes coiling around her.
Adelaide had once learned that almost nothing ever really touches you. More specifically, the nucleus of each of your atoms never fully touches the nucleus of any other atom, because electron clouds - the clouds around the electrons in your atoms - had “distance” in them, cushioning the would-be touch.
Sometimes those clouds could overlap to some degree, and things like heat played a part in that. But if you wanted to, if it was really important, you could imagine the clouds as a space between yourself and the thing making contact.
She remembered using this information to console a rape victim once, explaining to the girl that in a way, no matter how much he had wanted to or believed he’d succeeded, the man had never really touched her. Science had kept him at bay….
That was the first time Addie had ever had a gun drawn on her. A lot had changed since then.
But the science and the physics had not. That space, though nearly impossible to measure, was still there. And the darkness seemed to know it. It was acting against Nicholas, slipping into that astronomically diminutive space between her waist and his hand before it rapidly expanded, shoving his grip loose.