Chapter Thirty-Two
There was a storm brewing over the land. In the distance, clouds gathered dark and low atop the ocean. They roiled and rolled, drawing closer, moving in. Trouble was coming. So much more than any of the Kings knew.
William Balthazar Solan stood on the roof corner of one of the tallest buildings in the city and cast his gaze out toward the sea. Countless stories below, traffic trudged and mulled, people tread back and forth in their daily rhythms, and time kept them all strictly in line. It ruthlessly doled out their schedules, and gave silent orders that everyone heard and no one could defy.
William smiled a wry smile that no one saw and pulled a very special pocket watch from the inner pocket of his three-piece suit. He glanced down at it when something on the street below caught his eye. His vision adjusted, and he frowned.
Then he blinked – and suddenly, he was stepping onto the sidewalk to get a closer look.
A man was getting into the back of a limousine. The man… was Arach, the Dragon King. Very much alive and breathing.
The man who was supposed to be dead, supposed to have been destroyed by the Entity, was dressed in jeans and a leather jacket that probably cost as much as William’s suit, and he was climbing casually into the back of a Bentley limousine. He gave a cautious glance over his shoulder at the crowd on the street, then ducked his head and disappeared in the black interior.
William gave his next move but a second’s thought. And then he smiled and vanished.
When Arach looked up from his phone, he froze. The car had already begun to pull out into the busy taxi-laden traffic, and he and William were the only two sitting in the back of the car. It took a moment for Arach to adjust to the sudden and unexpected intrusion, but he did so. He put his phone in his inner jacket pocket and leaned back against the car’s leather upholstery.
“I was wondering when you were going to confront me.”
“I was too,” said the Time King. William folded his fingers over his knee and cocked his head to one side. “I must say I’m a little surprised you’re showing your face in public so soon.”
“It’s been seven months.”
“The Kings are immortal. Seven months is seven seconds. As far as they are concerned, you just died.”
The former Dragon King smiled. “As far as they are concerned, maybe. But what about you, Cronos? You were never convinced, were you?”
William watched him for a moment. Cronos. it was a name he hadn’t heard in a very long… time.
“By process of elimination alone, it would have been ridiculous for me to believe you were anything but the Traitor,” William told the Traitor. “But no.” He sighed. He’d known all along. It was a part of who he was. “You’re right, of course. I was never convinced. But I never expected to see you walking in broad daylight through Seattle.”
“I’m antsy,” the former Dragon King chuckled. “The old hag left me with an injury that needs stretching out from time to time. And hiding has never come naturally to me.”
“I’m not certain you realize your choices,” said William coolly as he, too, leaned back. “Hide or kill the Kings, Queens, and the Entity.”
The former Dragon King watched William a good while before he finally took a breath and said, “Yes, I suppose that sums it up rather succinctly.”
William smiled. “So you plan to kill them.”
Now the Traitor smiled too. “That sums it up quite nicely as well.” And then his smile faded, slipping away as he leaned forward, and his green gaze focused on William’s. “You know whether I will succeed or fail, don’t you Cronos?”
William said nothing. A stillness moved over him. His own green gaze began to glow.
Arach’s grin was back. “And you won’t tell me. Even though you’ve basically been exiled by your compatriots, you steadfastly remain loyal.” He shook his head. “No bother. But you and I could do far better, old man.” He sat back in his chair again.
Now it was William’s turn to lean forward. As he did, the rays of the sun caught his gaze, casting it into a whole new light to reveal the intricate, impossible clock-like workings within. “What makes you think I won’t do better?”
And with that, he vanished. Leaving behind a quiet but disconcerted Traitor in a luxury car headed south. Thunder rolled overhead, and clouds at last covered the sun.
*****
Rodney pulled his phone from his pocket so fast, he almost pulled a muscle in his shoulder. “What have you got?” he asked impatiently.
“There’s no way to breach the Nightmare Realm’s borders,” said the voice on the other end. “No one can do it. That’s the point, I think.”
The man on the other end of the line was another mage, one in the coven that had formerly been led by the late and great Lalura Chantelle. Since her death, others had come forward and tried to fill her shoes, but of course that was impossible. Still, the mages – the wizards and witches and warlocks – who’d been under her tutelage were Rodney’s best shot at finding and getting to Adelaide.
“Were you able to determine what the Nightmare King wants with her?”
“That’s… what I was about to tell you,” said Joshua, the mage. “If the spell was done right, and we did it twice to make sure, then, well…” he laughed low and nervous. “You aren’t going to believe this, but –”
“He wants her as his queen.” Rodney filled in. Adelaide wasn’t the only one with a bit of psychic ability.
In his own coven, Rodney had once been apprenticed to a seer. He’d come from a broken home, but with them, he’d been happy. He’d felt as if he belonged. His coven was his family.
But then the seer had turned on the coven, betraying them to a rogue group of warlocks living in Las Vegas who worked for an equally rogue group of vampires that apparently stretched across the globe. The betrayal hurt them all, but it had stung him the most.
One day, he’d met up with her. He was a seer, after all. He’d known where she was going to be. When he’d questioned her about her betrayal, when he’d gotten her alone and asked her why she’d done it, she’d told him that day after day, week after week, all she saw was the evil of the world. See it enough, and it gets to you. And it got to her.
She’d reminded him that every human had within them the means for both good and evil. She’d seen every human choose evil time and again. And she’d realized that it was natural. Kill or be killed. The laws of nature are brutal. It was why people had that evil in them to begin with.
“All you need is a trigger,” she’d told him. “And boom.” That evil took over.
After that… Rodney had shied away from his seer abilities. He was nervous. It might not have made much sense, but there it was.
Until he met Adelaide. She was a seer, pure and true, the strongest he’d ever come across. She was stronger even than his former teacher had been. And she was a good soul. She not only saw hellish scenes and tried to prevent them from happening, she’d been through hell herself. And she had yet to betray or turn on anyone. Just the opposite. She only wanted to help the world even more.
Rodney began to think maybe his gifts were not the damning talents he’d feared they were. Maybe his teacher had “gone bad” because she was bad. Maybe she’d given in to the evil or maybe she was selfish to begin with. He couldn’t know. He only knew what he saw in Adelaide – and felt in himself.
He’d first come across Adelaide at a bookstore. He watched her have a vision. He recognized the sudden frozen form, the far off look. He’d seen it enough to know. A few minutes later, she ran out of the bookstore and flagged down a police officer in the parking lot. She warned him of something. Later, he would learn that the power had gone out in the street lights several blocks away. If the cops hadn’t arrived on the scene when they had, there would have been an accident. A bad one.
Rodney kept an eye on her, from afar. He offered to work for her as soon as she won the lottery and he knew she would be looking for help. When she began confiding in him and they worked together to make positive changes, he’d once more felt like he’d found a place in the world where he belonged. He again had a family.
And now some randy fuck had stolen that family away and taken it to a realm he couldn’t reach. And she was meant to be that bastard’s queen. Rodney’s gaze narrowed. In his vision, the man had been as beautiful as men come. Dark hair, cruel mouth, green eyes like emeralds.
It was silent on the line, and Rodney realized Joshua had asked him something, and he hadn’t heard what. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “What did you say?”
“I said, how did you know? Did you have a vision?” Joshua asked.
Rodney nodded, though Joshua couldn’t see him. “Yeah. I did. And I promise you Josh, if that mother fucker doesn’t deserve her and treat her like the queen she is, I’m going to hang him with his own intestines.”
He would, too. He may be a seer working for a person with a good soul. He may have started a new life going down a brighter path. But he was still human. And every human had within them the means for both good and evil. All he needed was a trigger.
And boom.