Chapter Fifty-nine
William was again attempting to send a mental call to Katrielle when Ahriman used the distraction of the attempt to land another solid blow. It had happened so many times, William was beginning to wonder whether the Nomad were toying with him. He felt like Charlie Brown with the football. And he really wanted to take off Lucy’s head.
Katrielle was going to die if she continued sustaining that shield. But the Nomad wasn’t answering to simple mental communications any longer. Either she was too wrapped up in the hard magic of keeping the damn thing up, or she was hurt. Out of commission. Maybe dead. He could no longer sense her where he’d left her behind the copse of trees either, so that last option was weighing heavier and heavier on the scales of possibility.
He could have blinked out of one place and transported to her location if he only knew where she was. He didn’t dare reach out to one of the other Queens with his new information to see if they could go after her. The Queens were busy cooking something up; he could feel it. And he would do nothing to alter that. But he had managed to contact one of the other Kings. Kristopher Scaul received his message and would have tried to find the old witch if it hadn’t been for the tentacle that shot through the ground, wrapped around Kristopher’s ankle, and pulled him under the earth.
The Winter King simply vanished beneath the soil and grass with a cut-off cry of surprise and a cloud of ice dust that coated everything in a ten foot radius. Then he was gone.
Whatever monster had taken him was yet another of the souls pouring through the door Helena had opened when she’d manipulated Time in the alternate dimension. That door had yet to be closed, and the beasts kept coming. The one good thing he could say for the shield was that it seemed to be acting like a beacon to the worst of the monsters, drawing them there to that field in Illinois rather than allowing them to roam free in the mortal world.
Not that a number of them wouldn’t get out and cause trouble anyway. There was sure to be some of that. But the majority were here, either on the field, lurking about below it like the one fighting the Winter King, or flying above it as floating gas balls and tiny dragons. And that would end as soon as the shield fell.
This was a lose-lose situation. They were damned if it came down, and Kat was damned if it didn’t. But he had to at least warn her. She had a right to know they were using it to kill her. So he put more force behind his mental call, effectively turning it into a kind of seek-out-and-deliver spell.
Casting a spell in the middle of a fight always slowed you down – and Ahriman was there to take advantage of it every single time William tried. He was on his third attempt when the field lit up with twelve individual, miasmic balls of glowing energy.
William recognized them at once, and just like that he knew what the Queens had been planning. The glowing orbs were the coalesced and prepared powers of twelve magical Queens. He reached out for his own Queen, choosing to touch her mind this time around instead of seeking out the Nomad’s.
He found her at once – she was directly above him – and she was scared out of her wits.
He looked up to find her floating steady and still, surrounded by her own brand of ruby dark magic. She was haloed like a godsend in the moonlight, and she still held her gun in her right hand. He noted the weapon because it, too, was glowing.
Helena.
She opened her eyes, but Ahriman attacked before William could meet her gaze. William fought off the bastard, and the moment he felt Helena’s gaze on him, he gained the upper hand, shoved Ahriman away, and looked up to capture her eyes with his.
He knew what the Queens had planned now. The idea was brilliant, in more ways than one. William knew he had little time. So he told her it was up to her now and then told her to end it.
He was beyond weary of this struggle, but he would not let his opponent see as much. The Nomad locked his arms around him in an attempt to knock him off guard, but William was not born yesterday. He’d had nothing but time to train, and he countered the attack, saw them both to the ground as he tripped Ahriman up, and they rolled for several bumpy feet.
That was when the floating balls of magic erupted into hard, full streams of power that shot up and over the field directly for Helena’s floating form.
Now both Ahriman and William looked up.
William’s pocket watch was in Helena’s left hand. He stared at the watch, and a multitude of heart-hammering emotions went through him at the vision. Truths and realizations came with it, confirmation that he was no longer alone in this unending rule, but that he was no longer the sole target for the danger that came with it, either.
The watch was open – only William had ever been able to open it until that moment – and its magic was feeding into the Queen with fast purpose. William had never seen anything like it, and he couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like to Helena. He knew where the magic was going, what it planned to do.
But he wasn’t the only one looking on. Ahriman’s ancient gaze locked on the woman up above them all as her glowing form filled with the power that had the potential to wipe him off the face of the map, and the Nomad reacted. William grasped the man’s hand when it flew up, his obvious intent to flick Helena from the sky the way he’d managed to move the mobile home earlier.
But William slammed that hand into the ground hard, and Ahriman grunted from the pain of the impact. His eyes were still burning red fires, and now those fires now jumped and doubled in size as if gasoline had been poured on them. William felt the Nomad’s power swell beneath him.
The Kings had always wondered whether Ahriman were different from the other Nomads. They were all a powerful breed, but Ahriman, the Entity, had nonetheless felt separate from them. More powerful.
Staring down into the man’s eyes then, it hit William why.
Ahriman was the first. He was the first Viatorem, the very first Nomad ever to be created.
The recognition struck William like a ton of bricks. Ahriman was the first Traveler to wander the halls of existence. And he’d done so alone. For eons.
He and William Solan had something in common, and it happened to be the most important thing.
No wonder, he thought, staring down at the man in a new light.
Ahriman stared right back. But it was several long beats before he said, “What would you do for your Queen, Solan? Would you destroy the world for her? If she truly needed you to?”
Yes.
He would destroy a hundred of them. Hell, he’d already destroyed two – made them crash into each other, anyway. But he didn’t have to say any of this aloud. Ahriman read the answer in his gaze.
“That’s what I thought,” the Nomad hissed. “So now at last you understand. I would do anything for my love.”
William empathized so well in fact, it was like he was Ahriman for a moment. Amunet was the Nomad’s sole salvation. She was the end to his loneliness. It was a loneliness so vast, only William could fully comprehend it.
But it was that comprehension exactly that had his grip tightening around the Nomad’s wrist. “And I would do anything for mine.”
Ahriman gritted his teeth and roared, bucking so hard beneath William, he managed to throw the Time King off him entirely. William hit the dirt and was instantly on his feet again. There was a furious scramble as he tried with all his might to immobilize the Nomad, using every trick he had in the book. But Ahriman was different from the others. He was older, and he was much more powerful, and in this final desperation to save the woman he loved, the Traveler finally managed to spin away from him for a single, precious second.
That second was long enough. It was all it took.
The Nomad looked up at his target and his arm swept across the sky. William knew the barrage of power was stronger than anything he’d ever used before, and it was meant to swat the fly in his proverbial chardonnay once and for all.