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 that 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.
And that, of all times, was when her psychic vision chose to strike.
She was no longer in the darkness. Instead, she was in a lunch line in a high school cafeteria. The smell of old bleach was reminiscent of dirty socks, everything was white and chrome, and a white board declared that green enchiladas were the meal of the day.
There were half a dozen students in front of her. Half a dozen behind. But directly next to her was the girl from her previous vision - the shooter in the hall filled with victims.
Adelaide had no idea what to do. She knew she couldn’t reach out to the girl, could not communicate in any way. This was a vision, not a dream, not a travel through time and space - just a vision. All she could do was spectate.
“Don’t you dare look up.”
Addie turned around. One of the other students was talking to the girl. The shooter - Addie saw a name written in sharpie across the girl’s backpack, which she had slung over one shoulder - was Rachel. Rachel was looking at the floor. Steadfastly, pointedly, yet her features remained slack, as if she was trying desperately to remain nonchalant. As if she was trying, and failing, to make it appear that she chose to look at the floor.
“Don’t you dare look up at me, puta.”
Addie looked back at the speaker. There were three young women huddled together. The speaker was smirking, and there was hatred in her eyes. Addie recognized the appearance of it because it gave a hard color to everything it touched. Her companions were watching, but also smiling. One out-right grinned. The other smiled nervously. One was clearly more into the bullying going on than the other. But far be it from her to speak up. This was high school. All was fair in love, war, and high school.
“She won’t dare look at us, watch,” the instigator said to her friends, but loud enough for Rachel to hear. “We can say anything. Fucking gringa.”
Addie felt a pang in her chest. She was well familiar with these derogatory terms. She’d heard and been subjected to every slur, racial and otherwise, under the sun. She was a racial mutt. She had kinky hair. She was anti-social and nervous, she was sensitive and shy, and she was half-way intelligent. The combination was bully bait.
One would think that possessing a genetic makeup that was a part of several races would earn that person an “in” with each race. But it did just the opposite. Each rejected you for being a part of the other. And you ended up not fitting in anywhere.
Now she knew where the previous feeling of familiarity had come from. Hell, she’d known all along. She just hadn’t wanted to admit it, because she hadn’t wanted to remember.
Addie reached out, instinct driving her to place her hand on Rachel’s shoulder. But at the same time, she felt the pull and tug of a vision that was coming to an end.
Just before the world around her melted into a fog, Addie saw something she should not have been able to see. For the second time in a vision involving her, Rachel turned to look at the hand Addie placed on her shoulder. Contact. It wasn’t possible.
Then Rachel looked up - and stared directly at Adelaide.
And the color shifted to a complete whiteout, before the light around Addie faded into darkness.