Chapter Eighteen
Helena rested her head on the seat behind her and closed her eyes. She was all too painfully aware of the man sitting next to her. The sheer size of him was enough to make any woman take note in a primeval old-brain kind of way. But the green of his eyes, the way his hair fell in shoulder-length waves, the broad sculpture of his chest combined with the narrow waist and strong legs…. She smiled to herself as she sat there with those closed eyes and mentally kicked her own ass. Stupid, Helena. He’s too good to be true and you know it.
This couldn’t end well. It never did for wardens. And she’d heard tales of the Slate cousins. They were trouble makers. The older cousin in particular was a playboy. She wondered if the same could be said of Will….
“So I gotta ask you all again, and I need the whole truth or I might just telekinetically eject every one of you from my car,” she said, eyes still shut. She heard Liam turn a little in the driver’s seat in front of her, and knew he was adjusting the rearview mirror to get a look at her. She figured that meant she had their attention.
Not that she would really kick them out of the car while it was moving. She used her abilities in defense alone. And in fact, she was having a very hard time thinking of these three as potential enemies. Especially Will.
She could feel him next to her. Larger than life. Watching her.
She cleared her throat nervously and got down to business. It was easier with her eyes shut. “What the hell were you doing in my car, what do you want from me, and why were we all just attacked in the middle of nowhere?” How had the enemy even known where she was?
Just asking the questions in her head felt like it drained her a little. She’d used a lot of power tonight, and while teleporting had never caused her undo trouble – stopping time sure as hell did. It was hard. It was actually impossible. And for some bizarre reason, fate had given her the improbable ability to do the impossible for a certain amount of time.
The scene they’d left behind was probably moving again by now; she never managed to isolate an area from time for long. Time was an absolute force, strong and unstoppable. She could re-route it around something, like suspending a bubble of ice in a raging river. But eventually the bubble would melt or pop; the river was too strong. And what was inside the bubble would rejoin the water to be pulled inexorably along with the flow once more.
Even creating that bubble was such an affront to time, it took a terrible toll on Helena. Every time she used that power, she paid in some physical manner. Sometimes she was dizzy, shaky, or weak. Sometimes her vision would blur or go altogether. She’d had the worst migraine of her life after rerouting time one day. Once, she’d simply become seriously hungry. That was a lucky day.
Other times, every joint in her body began to ache as if she were an eighty-year-old with advanced osteoporosis. She had a good supply of strong prescription pain killers for those instances. And then there was her least favorite consequence of all, and lately the most common one… the Night Terrors.
A lot of people had what they called night terrors. Waking nightmares that were so dogging, they followed the dreamer into waking life and continued to scare the life out of them for full drawn-out minutes of screaming consciousness. Those sucked. But what Helena experienced were Night Terrors. Capital N. Capital T. Because what she pulled from her dreams and into her waking world… became real.
And then she would have to kill it. And that was never an easy feat. She had one hell of an imagination on her.
That was unfortunately the price she was going to pay this time around. It had been that way a lot lately. More and more frequently, it was the Night Terrors that got her afterwards. She could always tell when they were looming because she would begin to feel drowsy, as if she’d been given a sleeping pill. But she couldn’t give into that pull. There was only one way out of this, which was something she’d learned the hard way.
Helena rested against the seat and told herself, This too shall pass. Alcohol worked differently on her than most people. Instead of making her sleepy, it woke her up. The reverse was true for caffeine. Coffee worked like Nyquil on her.
So, she would have a beer or two and go shopping online. Because just about nothing excited her more than the thought of something good coming for her in the mail. It was a horrible habit, and one that saw her return to debt over and over again. But it kept her awake, which kept her alive.
She would play some video games and watch a thrilling movie. She would do everything she could think of to keep herself awake until the effects of her time bubble passed. And if all else failed and she fell asleep, then she would damn well deal with it before it slaughtered any innocents. Again.
This too shall pass.
“I’m waiting,” she hinted at the silence.
Beside her, Will cleared his throat. It was cute. Adorable, really. She was beginning to realize that although he was the taller of the cousins, he was the temperate one between them, the one who wanted to be reasonable. He was the gentleman. He had a grace about him that normally only accompanied the refinement of vast amounts of time. Yet he was young. Another anomaly was that he displayed empathy, yet there was a hint of something darker behind his eyes. Almost as if he also possessed the ability for greater cruelty between the two cousins. Or perhaps he had simply experienced it.
He was most certainly an enigma.
And there was a part of Helena that liked that. A small smile curled the corner of her lips.
“It’s like Will said,” Liam spoke from the driver’s seat. “We’re here to help you.”
“Protect you,” said Will. He said it like he meant it.
In the front seat, Darryl the zombie sighed. “The short of it is luv, a very big baddy-bad is coming for you and none of us want him to succeed, because if he does, we all stand to lose something.”
Helena opened her eyes, sat up in the seat and met Darryl’s blue-eyed gaze over the back of the front seat. He was smiling a charming, well-practiced smile.
“You have something to gain by helping me, don’t you?” she asked flatly.
He studied her in silence for a moment, and she recognized the look of someone who was impressed. But he cocked his head slightly to the side. “Good instincts. But I’m curious. Why would you assume so?”
“Because I know you,” she told him. She recognized the power coming from him and she’d heard enough about Darryl Maelstrom. She knew he never did anything, least of all help someone, without very good, very selfish reason. “It’s not much of an assumption, believe me. You were killed for a reason,” she added with a small smile. “And brought back for the same.”
Liam chuckled behind the wheel. “She’s got you pegged.”
Darryl shot him a quick look, but then returned his attention to her. “Powerful, astute and beautiful. They weren’t joking when they said you were the whole package.”
Helena’s gaze narrowed. She had just been fed an unwitting piece of information, and she grabbed hold of it with sharpened claws. “They who?” she asked.
“Not really a they so much as an it. A sentinel,” said Liam Slate. Helena glanced up at him, but she couldn’t see his eyes. They were on the road, and the rearview mirror was turned to the back window.
“You mean like Ashrim?” Helena asked.
The boys were quiet a moment. But they did glance at each other. Helena turned to Will. “What?”
“You know Ash?” he asked, clearly surprised.
Helena looked from him to his cousin and then to Darryl. Yes, she knew Ash, but the fact that they knew him was unsettling to her. Because the ancient sentinel had always promised to keep her and her powers a secret.
Sentinels were the protectors of wardens. They had been assigned to watch over them long ago. They could hear the call of a warden in need from across the planet. Ashrim was her sentinel. What were the chances that these guys would know the same sentinel and he wasn’t the sentinel who’d spilled her beans? Ash had always looked after her. Would he really betray her?
Helena checked herself and looked way from Will; he was distracting. When she did, she realized that she was becoming paranoid. It was the second unpleasant thing that always hit her after drowsiness when the Night Terrors were coming. She leaned forward to speak in Liam’s ear.
“Put a little lead in it, handsome. There’s no fuzz on this road.”
Liam Slate went completely still. She knew he was caught off guard, and probably a little turned on by the intimacy of the request; she’d called him “handsome,” and she was so close he could no doubt feel her breath on his neck. But it just came out that way. She couldn’t help it; she was losing her ability to self-moderate. The Night Terrors were coming.
Plus it was true; there weren’t any cops stationed on this road, not ever. She’d teleported to this stretch a hundred times. It was a go-to. There was a pub about fifteen miles from the entry point. Left-hand side, Lucky’s.
The car immediately sped up, and Helena sat back, closing her eyes again.
“You’re not okay, are you?” Will’s voice, now closer, softer. She could tell he had turned toward her, and damn it all if he wasn’t pulling the very same thing on her that she’d just unwittingly pulled on Liam. Helena opened her eyes to find exactly what she feared she would find – Will Slate’s eyes, greener than ever, closer than ever, cutting into her soul. They pinned her to the spot, so gentle and kind – but also not. His lips were slightly curled, sweet but also mean. And his impossibly tall, perfectly strong body now caged her in, protective but… rough, she thought. I bet in bed, he’s just a touch rough….
Helena blinked, absolutely surprised at herself. Oh crap, she thought. Something really was wrong with her. And it wasn’t just the Night Terrors.
“I’m… I’m fine,” she lied, her voice choked. She swallowed because her throat had gone dry. “Using that ability just takes a toll on me. I just need -”
“A drink?” Will filled in for her with a wry smile and an arched brow. He didn’t believe her for a second.
“Mind if I ask exactly what you did back there?” Liam cut in from the front seat. “How the hell you got us out of that mess of monsters?”
“Yes, I’m rather curious about that myself,” added Darryl. He was still turned to face her in his seat, and now he draped both of his arms over the back of it, lacing his fingers together. She had his full and undivided attention. Not something she particularly wanted.
“Okay,” she acquiesced. “But tit for tat. First, what was the name of the sentinel who told you about me?” Helena demanded softly. Her voice was weakening. Dreams were calling. Distinctly unpleasant dreams.
“His name is Fortescu,” said Will. “He’s our sentinel. And he was chosen to come to us with this job because….” He shrugged a little self-consciously and looked down as if searching for the right words.
“Because we’re badasses,” said Liam. She could tell from the sound of his voice that he was trying not to grin. She had a feeling he did that a lot.
“I see,” said Helena. At least it wasn’t Ash she thought. “How do you know Ashrim?”
Will’s brows lifted. “Ashrim is the most famous sentinel in the realms. He’s supposedly saved for special wardens.” He paused, glancing down the length of her discreetly, quickly, before capturing her eyes once more. “Clearly you qualify.”
“He’s also a friend,” added Liam from the driver’s seat. “Has been for years.”
Helena watched the cousins for a moment, looking from one to the other. “Okay,” she said, storing the information away. Ashrim had a lot of friends, it seemed. Or maybe he only had a few – and Will, Liam, and Helena just had something in common.
Finally, she took a deep breath. “What I did back there was stop time, more or less.” She licked her lips and stared out the window. “I can’t do it for long, and it isn’t easy. That’s why the teleport back through the portal was so rough. I was using two abilities at once and….”
“It’s okay,” said Will softly. “We get it.”
Helena glanced at him. It was a mistake. Every time she did, he reached a little further inside her.
“What I do is form a kind of field around whatever I want frozen. Time moves around them like normal, but ignores what I freeze. Like I said, at least for a little while.”
No one said anything. She looked out the window again and wondered what they were thinking. They were wardens… did they think she was a monster? Dangerous? Were they thinking about killing her?
She’d been down that road with wardens before.
Double crap, she thought as she closed her eyes. Paranoid, remember? Then, recognizing the familiar change in the sound of the road beneath her tires, she opened her eyes and leaned forward again. “This is it. Up here on the left. The bar is called Lucky’s.”
Liam nodded, and a few seconds later, they were pulling into the gravel parking lot of a lone road-side tavern with a single flashing sign touting the good fortune of the owner, and several neon signs in the windows advertising types of beer. The establishment was constructed out of sturdy wood logs, and the shutters and frames were painted shamrock green.
Liam parked the car directly beneath the marquis sign, in the well-lit part of the lot. She’d been feeling rather doomed, so as Liam opened the door and let her out from behind him, Helena told herself, If all else fails and this goes pear-shaped, I did just meet someone who will probably take good care of the car.
At least there was that.