Monsters, Book Two: Hour of the Dragon Read online

  I’ve met a good number of those races now, so I should know.

  My own private Hamlet came to me at the beginning of that November more than fifty years ago. At the time, my mom was very pregnant with my little brother, Joshua. I’m the one who decided on my brother’s name. It was my dad’s middle name, so it was a safe bet and it was perfect.

  To help with bills, I was working part time at the diner down the street from our house. And Antares….

  Ares.

  Ares was working there with me. And because of that, and because of what Ares meant to me, I was happy. It didn’t matter that my family was “broken” or that I had a shit job or that we were in the red, not really. As long as the two boys in my life were there, I was okay: My unborn brother Joshua held my father’s DNA. He was the only piece of my dad I had left. And Ares was my best friend. And so much more.

  It was baffling as hell to me, I have to tell you. Ares was the most perfect specimen of the male sex I had ever seen. It went without saying that he was the best looking guy in our school, hell in the whole town. Not that Philly was all-encompassing. Now that I’ve been around the world a few times, I can tell you with some certainty he was the most beautiful creature on the planet. At seventeen, he was already more than six feet of solid muscle. He had thick, soft hair the color of night, and eyes that reflected the stars right back at me. I got lost in them time and again.

  To me, he was pretty much a god, and in 1967, I wasn’t going to look a gift god in the mouth. I was thrilled he enjoyed my company enough to stay by my side and call me friend. Best friend.

  What’s more, I was well enough aware of how guys behaved and what they wanted to recognize that Ares would have been more than happy to get even closer. That was a thrilling thing to know, I admit. The most gorgeous guy in the world wanting to take me for a roll in the hay? It was liberating. My mom’s pregnancy scared me straight enough that I was too afraid to go that far with anyone, even with Ares. I didn’t want life to become even more complicated for me than it already was, and Ares’ friendship gave me what I desperately needed to get through each day. But the sheer knowledge that he would have accepted me in that way was sometimes the fuel that kept me running. It frankly gave me strength. He gave me strength. And Joshua did too.

  My boys and the love I had for them kept me waking up to the alarm in the mornings, kept me studying hard, kept me getting my butt to work on time, and kept me happy enough to be friendly enough to keep me in good tip money. I even started a jar for Joshua’s private school. I wanted him to go to one. I knew he was going to have my dad’s genius brain. I just knew it. And the schools in my neighborhood were frankly shit.

  But one night the diner was short-handed, and I was called in to work when Ares wasn’t scheduled. It was overtime pay for me, so I didn’t even hesitate.

  An hour into my shift… he walked through the door. Not Ares. It was my Hamlet, so to speak.

  The warlock, Jarrod Sterling.

  The café was so busy, at first I only saw the newcomer at a glance, and he was tall and dressed in black, so I automatically assumed it was Ares. I turned a bright smile on him and froze when he locked eyes with me. My smile slipped. Looking at him as the door to the diner shut behind him and the wind rustled his dark trench coat, I was struck with a solid certainty. I knew this man was going to change my life forever. And maybe not in a good way.

  He replaced my missing smile with one of his own, then turned and sat himself down at one of the booths. He was strikingly handsome. His movements were all grace and confidence. And I myself seemed to lose both of those qualities then and there.

  “Wow. He looks like money,” said my friend Lisa with an appreciative grunt. She’d come up beside me with a freshly brewed pot of coffee in her hand. She glanced sidelong at me, shook her head, and pretended to fan herself. But then she stopped and tilted her head to the side. “You want his table, hun’? You and your mom could use the dough.”

  The booth Sterling was at was normally Lisa’s. But I took her up on the offer because she was right. And I was curious.

  I went to Sterling’s table, pulling out my pad and pencil on the way. He was in the process of taking off his gloves. They looked like soft black leather, the expensive kind no one in that part of town could afford to wear. But rather than excite me, it made me more nervous.

  Before he even looked up, I put on my friendly face, introduced myself, and welcomed him to the diner like usual. Then I asked him what he’d like.

  As long as I live, I will never forget his reply.

  He still hadn’t looked up when he said, “I would very much like you, Annaleia Faith. For one night. And I believe that once I tell you what I can give you in return, you’ll agree to my terms.”

  I stood there stunned, trying desperately to process exactly what he’d just said to me when he finally looked up and met my gaze. He was starkly handsome, and even in the same dark way that Antares was. But his eyes were fathomless. They were like mysteries, unknown and dangerous. Where Ares possessed the stars of galaxies in his gaze, this man’s eyes held all that dark matter and energy between the stars.

  They terrified me.

  All I could do was stand there and stare at him.

  “Please have a seat, Miss Faith. You look stricken, and we must talk, you and I.”

  I sat down, but only because my legs were giving out under me. It wasn’t that I hadn’t been propositioned before. It was a diner and I was a waitress. That was enough right there. But I also happened to be a female in high school, which was all it took for most boys. All in all I’d become pretty good at turning my customers and classmates down. Well, unless Ares got to them first, that is.

  I’m smiling now, remembering that. He thought I didn’t know how he would chase them all off. But I knew.

  Anyway, it wasn’t the stranger’s proposition that unsettled me. It was the man himself. It was Sterling. From the moment he’d walked in, he’d had me in some sort of sway. I wouldn’t understand that it was literally magic he held over me until much later. When it was too late.

  “My name is Jarrod Sterling,” he said quietly. Calmly. “You have something that I desperately desire, Annaleia. Or rather, you soon will. It’s something precious and rare. I would never take it from you against your will. I’m not that kind of man.” He paused, glancing at the table top, and I could swear I heard him think the words, Not yet, anyway. And then he continued. “But if you agree to give it to me, I will grant you a great boon in return. I will give you what is most important to you.”

  He laced his fingers together on the table, and I noticed they were beautiful, long and tapered and manicured. He radiated some kind of aura that made him and those fingers seem more than capable, in every respect. And I kid you not, I started to feel… well, I started to feel turned on. Despite the warning in his eyes.

  My mouth went dry as he leaned forward. “As a matter of fact, I will grant you several boons. And believe me my dear, you will need each one.” He paused and studied me with a tilt to his head. The overhead lights hit those dark eyes, and they reflected oddly, almost like mirrors. He was an animal in the darkness at the end of a long, lonely road.

  I felt mesmerized sitting there across from him.

  One time, I had walked in on Lisa’s friends in the basement of her house on a Saturday night, and the air had been filled with smoke. Not cigarette smoke, either. The feeling I had with Sterling was similar to the one that came over me in that basement. But this was stronger. And definitely hotter.

  He smiled at me. I’ll never forget that smile either. It was like he knew damn well what I was feeling. “Will you hear me out?” he asked.

  All I could do was nod. I internally kicked myself ten ways to Sunday at my weakness in front of this complete stranger, but it didn’t change anything. I still sat there like a ragdoll and let him do his thing. It seemed like I should have been worried about my other tables, about taking orders or checking on customers. I should
have been thinking about the scene we were probably causing. But none of that crossed my mind.

  At my acquiescence, Sterling’s smile became relieved and even a little friendly. It touched his eyes, making them seem not quite as deep and dark. It was an enchanting smile. “Wonderful,” he said. “Then allow me to take us somewhere a little more private.”

  He raised his graceful fingers and snapped them. The sound rang out far louder than it should have, and I felt something pull at me in all directions. I didn’t even have time to cry out in surprise before the entire world blinked away, out of existence. Then it blinked back in.

  We weren’t in the diner any longer. And from that moment on, my life was a topsy-turvy impossibility of magic and the anything-but-mundane. It all changed in that moment, at the snap of a warlock’s fingers.

  He told me what he was – or part of what he was, anyway – and what he wanted from me. Then he told me what he could offer in return.

  In the end, I really had no choice. We will do anything for the ones we love.

  But what he wanted and the way he needed to take it from me made me finally realize something vital. And it sent me flying into the arms of the man I had to at last admit I truly loved: Antares Mace.

  I made plans. Then, on Christmas Eve a month after my initial meeting with Jarrod Sterling, I drove to Ares’ apartment, and I told him how I felt about him. I told him how I wanted him to be the one… the first one. He understood. Maybe he comprehended my meaning in a way only Ares could have. Or maybe it was just that he was a man.

  Either way, that night was the best experience of my life.

  The morning after, however, was the worst.

  That was a long time ago. And now I’m… well, now I’m different. I haven’t seen Ares since that night. That was how it had to be. Sterling took care of everything – moving us and acquiring for us a new place to live, protecting us from the authorities and a host of other aggressors, and making sure no one could find us. Not even Ares.

  What I gave him in return was apparently worth all he did for me and my family. He was grateful for the exchange. And honestly, I was grateful too. I was ashamed at first… but when I watched my little brother grow up over the next few years, even from the distance I had to eventually keep from my family, I was thankful to the man who’d made Joshua’s existence possible. I was glad for the deal that saved his life.

  And it turned out I was right about my brother’s smarts. He’s a physicist now at Cambridge. I’m proud of him. That’s what I tell myself when I think back on 1968, and remember Antares Mace.

  Chapter One – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  The conference room fell into an expectant hush, the closing notepads and set-down pens the signal for Annaleia to begin her pitch. She pressed a button on the controller in her hand and dimmed the lights. The screen behind her came to life with light and a black and white pen drawing of a hunched elderly woman wearing her hair in a loose bun.

  “An old woman is sitting at a kitchen table alone,” she began, and the screen behind her reflected the coming-to-life line sketch animation of the story she began to tell. It was a rough draft sort of thing that she’d imagined utilizing for this pitch due to the transition effect it offered later in the ad pitch. Anna was hoping it would give her ad idea the winning edge. “The kitchen walls are gray and undecorated. There are no paintings, no calendars. The room is devoid of any real indication of life. The old woman’s face and hands are weathered, ancient,” she said. “She is holding a cup of coffee but there is no steam rising from the cup, and the woman’s gaze is distant. There is no music, but the wailing of sirens and sounds of the city can be heard in the background.”

  The conference room’s deep quiet indicated involvement. Anna was encouraged, and she continued.

  “There’s a knock at the front door of the old woman’s house. She very slowly rises, and each and every step can be heard by the viewer as she makes her way to the door to answer. When she does, a young lad, perhaps a neighbor or a caring newspaper delivery boy hands her the morning paper. She thanks him and he wishes her well. She returns to the table and slowly unfolds the paper, which the reader can hear crinkling. It is still eerily quiet, and this quiet lends to an atmosphere of eager tension. The viewer begins leaning forward in their seat, watching closely, waiting for whatever it is that must be about to happen.”

  It was amusing to some degree, but mostly promising, that the people in the conference room were doing the exact same thing.

  “The camera focuses on the old woman’s face, zooming in on her eyes as she reads. Then she runs her ancient, veined hands over the paper and the camera pans around to a point of view over her shoulder so that we can read it ourselves: The date on the paper’s first page is April 16, 1987. The headline reads, ‘Seventy-Five Years,’ and the subtitle beneath it says, ‘Three Quarters of a Century Since the Sinking of the Unsinkable.’ It has been seventy-five years since the sinking of the British luxury passenger liner, the RMS Titanic.

  The woman says nothing, but the sound of a ship’s fog horn plays soft and distant, low enough that we still hear the sounds of the attic and the city beyond it. When she looks up, her gaze is distant. Very slowly she stands up from the table and makes her trudging way up the old wooden staircase of her home. We hear the floorboards creak beneath her slow, shuffling steps.” Anna particularly liked that part – she could hear and see it so clearly herself as she described the scene to the decision makers in the room.

  “She reaches the second floor and opens a door at the end of a dark hallway. The room inside is undecorated, used as an attic. Peeling wallpaper in some places, dust motes caught by the light streaming through gauzy curtains. Against one wall is a hope chest. She maneuvers her way to her knobby knees to kneel before it. As she opens the hope chest, soft piano notes begin to play, still so quiet they are barely audible. The camera pans to the contents inside, things we recognize as events embedded in the layers of time, each one taking us further into the past… a paper with a headline of the Challenger space shuttle disaster, Nixon’s impeachment, Kennedy’s assassination…”

  Annaleia watched the members of the committee shift slightly in their seats or look down briefly at the table as each event that registered a connection to their particular generation was mentioned. Their ages ranged from forty to sixty-four; she’d chosen the range of time for the events with them in mind. One after another the blips in history appeared and disappeared in shifting black ink on white across the screen behind her, scrawled across the tops of the newspapers and magazines the old woman pulled from the chest’s depths.

  Anna went on, feeling the restless excitement build in the room. It always began low and slightly curious. Like a murmur. “Until at last she reaches the bottom layers and pulls a cardboard shirt box from their depths. She slowly slides the lid off to reveal three objects inside – an engagement ring, another folded newspaper, and a still-wrapped gift complete with bow. The gift is obviously from another era, its corners rubbed off by time.”

  This was where Annaleia began to get chills as she told the story, because this was where it became structurally beautiful, like more of an actual story and less of an advertisement.

  “But the paper is ancient. The old woman carefully unfolds its cracking, yellowed pages in the still silence to reveal a headline similar to the one we just saw on the kitchen table downstairs, but much more meaningful. It strikes a deeper chord because this one is the original. This is the London Herald release from April 16th, 1912, in which the title in bold text read simply, ‘Titanic Sinks.’

  A tear has escaped the old woman’s eyes, and the piano music is unobtrusively rising in volume.” In the conference room, Anna manipulated the controls out of sight in her hand, and the music in the room echoed her words. “The old woman turns silently to the gift, and after a moment of obvious deliberation, she pulls the bow free. It’s stiffened with age, as have her hands, but the bow eventually falls and the woman contin
ues to unwrap the gift.”

  On the screen behind Anna, the animated pen sketch woman removed the paper from a box and then opened the box. “Inside is a crystal bottle. It’s an older design, with the atomizer attached. It has no visible label. She lifts the bottle free from its casing, and with fresh moisture on her cheeks, she squeezes the atomizer. Droplets of mist enter the air around her, and she looks up.”

  This was where the story changed and the audience was drawn in. This was the clincher, the tightening part of the ad, and the point of no return. This was the part that Anna had been waiting for, and the reason she’d wanted the pen sketch animation to help sell her pitch. “We, the audience, look up along with her to see that the drops suspended above and around her are changing, becoming larger. The room is shifting, becoming brighter. Soon the perfume mist has transformed to confetti, and when the camera pans out once more, the old woman has become young again, no older than perhaps sixteen or seventeen years. She is standing in bright daylight amidst a crowd of revelers on the docks of a pier.”

  In the conference room, the fog horn sounded again, accompanied by the pleasant noises of a celebrating crowd and piano music now at normal volume. At the same time, the animated black and white pen drawing behind Annaleia suddenly blossomed into full color, the sky erupted into periwinkle blue, the confetti set with rainbow hues, and the vibrancy of the woman’s eyes was the color of the Caribbean Sea.

  “All around her, people are celebrating, tossing streamers and torn paper. A nearby sign wishes good fortune upon the maiden voyage of the ‘Unsinkable Titanic.’”

  Annaleia heard sounds of appreciation come from several in the room. If she didn’t fully have the audience in her clutches by this part of the pitch, the ad wouldn’t sell. But from the breathless expressions on their faces and the general lack of blinking all around, she was banking she’d pulled it off.