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.
He spun to face the Preceptors. “Don’t tell me they were here at the same time.” He felt his eyes heat up. Another sign of his returning magic.
“No,” said Andros quickly, shaking his head. “Her presence is much more faint than his.”
“Bullshit,” Nick hissed. Andros would probably have no way of “sensing” the queen, and Nicholas damn well knew it. He was the one who would sense her.
And Nero would too.
Andros was simply trying to calm him down.
Nick took a slow, deep breath. “Which way did they go?” he asked as calmly as he could. But Minnaea was already pulling out the map and the crystal. Nick paced as she worked, and tried to slow the racing of his heart. He felt a heat in his blood. That was familiar too, and another sign that his strength was being restored.
He faced away from his companions and closed his eyes. There was a beast growing inside him, one very much unlike those sitting nestled in the cores of every other Nightmare. And it was the real Nightmare King.
“They left the alley. Follow me,” said Minnaea.
Nick turned, glanced at Andros, and the two followed her down the alley. A few turns and exits and they were standing on a busy city street. Vehicles sped by, and the mid-morning sun shone like shards of light on the surrounding high-rises.
“The queen went that way and took a cab to here,” she pointed down the street then lifted the map, her finger on a cross-street several miles away. Once Nick memorized the location, she lowered the map and ducked her head a little. At once, Nick could tell she didn’t want to give him the next bit.
“He followed her, didn’t he?” he asked, though it was phrased as a statement more than a question because he already knew it to be true. Minnaea nodded.
Nicholas felt his eyes go red.
“Your majesty, your powers are returning much more rapidly than before,” said Andros. Strangely enough, he sounded oddly saddened by this information.
Nick glanced at him. The emotions in his voice were echoed in his expression. He was troubled. He was preoccupied.
“You don’t want to go back this time,” Nicholas said. He’d figured it out. It was plain as day on his Preceptor’s faces. Everything was changing. Everything was different. It felt like an ending.
But… it also felt very much like a beginning.
Andros took a deep breath and opened his mouth to reply, but Minnaea beat him to it. “No,” she said softly.
Nicholas looked at her now. She wore the same expression. “We both feel it,” she said plainly. “The need to stay. The need to live.” She shrugged helplessly. “We’ve never experienced it before now.”
Nicholas lowered his gaze and forced the red out of his eyes. He needed to think about something and someone other than himself at the moment. His friends were hurting. They were scared, because when the king had his powers back, they would no longer be needed. Every single time it had occurred in the past, they were returned to the dimension from which they came. It was a dimension of waiting, in which they barely existed as more than spirits. He’d never given it enough thought, frankly.
How must they feel to be born only when he died? Knowing their time here on Earth, in the mortal realm, would be so very finite? He should have realized. They’d done so much together. They’d learned to swim, gotten hitched, danced around a bonfire, hunted in the forests of what is now England, climbed mountains – jumped off them. They’d packed more into their multitude of painfully short lives than most humans even dreamed of doing in theirs.
They relished existence. And this time, they were afraid of losing it.
Because this time was the last.
“Damn,” he swore softly, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was glad he had his eyes closed, because Minnaea was probably giving him one hell of a scornful gaze just then. “Let’s find out where they went, find a hotel nearby, book a few suites, and get something to eat. I know of an excellent restaurant,” he said, finally looking up and smiling. “My treat.”
It was time he stopped being a jackass and started putting others before himself. And he did know of an excellent restaurant; he knew of several. All of the information he needed to be Nicholas Wargrave had been flooding steadily into his head since he’d been “born.” And it just so happened that half the exclusive dining spots in Seattle considered Wargrave a VVIP: A very, very important person.
It was a moment before either of them replied, but finally Minnaea’s face relaxed into a grateful smile, and Andros, though appearing a bit nervous about it, nodded just as gratefully. “That sounds good,” he said.
“Yes, it does,” agreed Minnaea.
“Then I shall make the reservations for you, sir,” came a voice from the end of the alley.
Nicholas turned, and Andros and Minnaea flanked him. It was Monroe standing at the alley’s opening, looking dapper and calm as usual, unfazed by anything he may or may not have heard while standing there, miles away from their house.
Andros and Minnaea were stiff beside Nicholas. He could feel their tension. Looks could be deceiving.
But the butler smiled sheepishly, as if he’d been expecting this and was once again unbothered.
“How the hell did you get here, Monroe?” asked Nick.
“Sir, I have been your butler for twenty years. I know your habits by now, and they have never been conventional. I knew that you would need assistance, so I followed in the second jet, as usual.” He straightened, lifting his chin a little. “I am, after all, a gentleman’s gentleman. What good would I be to you if I did not anticipate your needs?”
As Nick’s head spun around everything they’d talked about in the last few minutes – what had been said that might be too revealing – his mouth spoke for him. “Okay… then please make reservations at Canli’s, Monroe.”
“Very good, sir. Nine o’clock?”
“Perfect.”
Monroe smiled proudly, bowed a little, then turned with a straight back and walked to the curb, where a shining black Rolls Royce Phantom limousine awaited. As he approached the street, the driver exited the car and opened the door for him, waiting just as straight-backed as the butler.
Monroe paused and turned back to his master. “Will you be needing a ride, sir?” he called down the alley.
Nicholas could swear he heard the music of a scene in a movie playing somewhere. He smiled and shook his head. “Why not?” he replied. Then he and his most ancient friends followed him down the alley and climbed very professionally into the limo.