If I brought them to me, the same immortal, what would happen?
“Meh.” I brought the eyeglasses higher.
How did one make these do the trick anyway? Using them to see creatures was easy. Using them to write a path on the fate of others so they did what you wanted them to? That was weird. I was already running on hopes, spit, and prayers. This would work because it had to.
I put them to my eyes, looking through them and across the sky at nothing, and I made a wish. It was a big wish but a simple one.
Immortals, come to me.
Then I lowered the eyeglasses and pouted at them, shook them, as if a gift would fall out or they’d do something. A big fat nothing had occurred, as far as I could tell.
To the left, a brightness flittered across the concrete roof then zipped away before I could focus. A faery? The sky and the scattered wisps of cloud occupied me for a while.
There was one other thing I could try, and it was far, far better to try than to spin in circles and weep. At the hospital I’d found two creatures—a jackalope and a white stag—by using the eyeglasses, since they made it easier for me to scan the surroundings. Now, they were visible to my naked eyes, and I’d glimpsed a waist-high spidery one hanging about at the heels of the King.
Immortals could be touched by creatures, yes? If I could summon those two, what about bigger, badder? Something with teeth to bite the Nightmare King on the ass.
A month later, Baja California Sur
I sat on the beach with my legs outstretched. The small waves coming in from the Bay of Mexico sometimes washed up to my thighs, and my red bikini bottoms had sand inside them.
And the eyeglasses had failed me.
I poured handfuls of water back into the sea, amusing myself with the feel of the warm liquid dribbling from my hands. My phone and watch were in my bag, a few feet farther up the beach, so I wasn’t sure of the time, but the dulling light, lengthening shadows, and vanished tourists were a huge clue.
The darkness rose. That phrase summed up my life.
Time to go back up to my cabin, and almost time to return to the US, since my money was running out. Mr. Bernard Hudson would give me more. He was the one surviving Stitched and I’d grown rather fond of him, despite his rich-bastard status.
I’d been up and down the Sur and had seen no one who looked vaguely like an immortal.
No Stitched followed me because I had ceased to make them. Phase Two from my plan seemed called for.
I poured another handful of seawater over my thighs, and the sea surged up to my hips then withdrew, leaving swirls of sand and seashell fragments on my skin. Perhaps the ocean was mocking me. Phase Two did not yet exist.
My theory about how the Nightmare King had found me seemed proven. It was proximity, closeness; both of us being in Houston had done it. A sound made me raise my head.
A man rose from the sea a few yards before me, and my gaze travelled up his body, past the thick muscles of his thighs and the bulge in his swim trunks, all the way to his dripping chin and bearded face. He swept a fan of tangled locks from his forehead. The sea surged again. A wave swept in. The last of the sun made his beard and the wet hairs on his legs glisten.
He shook his head then showed his teeth as water sprayed in droplets of gold.
The man was godlike, and for a moment, for just a few seconds, I struggled to remember that this was not Val.
Fuck. There went my theory.
The darkness around us diminished and slinked closer to the abyss. The sun had decided to go on vacation.
“Hello, my sweet girl. Long time, no see?” Val aka the Nightmare King cocked an eyebrow as he leisurely gestured around him at the ocean. “A joke for you, a last piece of joy before I fuck you, slowly…”
He took a step, slushing a path through the receding water.
“…then just as slowly dismember you, cracking your fingers backward, ripping them from their sockets, juicy strands of flesh for me to gnaw on for sustenance…while my cock stretches you and reams you, and pumps you full of hot, steaming…cum. Give me the knife, and I will show you mercy.”
The knife was in my bag. I doubted he would let me reach it.
A pity I hadn’t had time to retrieve the antique flintlock from the armorer I’d found, a man who knew how to make the powder, how to prime the weapon and load the musket ball.
A pity I had no Stitched to defend me.
The multiple shadows with spindly limbs creeping closer to either side, told me he had brought company, but so had I.
I raised a hand to him and slowly extended my middle finger.
CHAPTER 2
SEASIDE FROLICS
Zara
My theory number two was that the nightmares could touch me, and were more visible, the closer I was to being the Cucitrice.
Which was why I’d summoned my new friends and kept them close.
Beyond the King, a gigantic bulge formed in the ocean on the horizon. The last rays of sunlight gleamed in bronze and pink on the rolling, accelerating mound. Waves crested and rushed downward from the peak. I frowned. Wait. Was that mine?
The rasp of feet on the beach sand reminded me that something threatened my rear, but my gesture and a mind command brought my reinforcements spewing from the sand and out from hiding.
I glanced over my shoulder; my eyes were now wonderfully good at seeing in the dark. The King’s men wore holiday clothes—shorts and bright shirts that did not match their emotionless eyes. They stalked my way, kicking sand, shuffling forward before they stopped as one.
“Tsk, tsk. What have you been doing, little Zara?”
No human could see the ragged line of creatures running at the Possessed. My recruits were what I had stumbled across. A minotaur, a unicorn, three vampires that seemed a coven of sorts, a feathered Aztec snake, and whatever the fuck that wolflike creature was. The crash of one line into the other was weirdly silent until I strained and clicked into some subsonic range that brought cries, grunts, and whistles to my ears.
My creatures couldn’t kill the human part of their foe, but they could touch nightmare. And the stupid things had erupted with the miasma of the Possessed.
The skyward bounce of a gorgon’s head satisfied me. Theory two variation, verified. A shriek accompanied the spiral horn of a unicorn thrusting through a chest. A minotaur charged, and whatever it hit exploded into blueish-grey smoke that trailed skyward.
“Fuck,” the King muttered.
After jumping into a crouch, I backflipped to the bag. I had my hand inside it and seeking the knife, even as I spun to face the King. My fingers closed on the hilt, and a smirk rode my mouth.
Water drenched my face and front, blinding me. Then his hand crunched about my throat, and he flung me to the sand. He pinned me and ground me deep with knee and hand, until I was half-buried. With my legs painfully doubled over beneath me, my feet were squashed under my ass.
Spitting sand and gasping, I raised the knife to stab his back, only to be wrenched off the ground then high in the air with my full bodyweight carried only by his hand. My knife spun into the night.
Though my legs dangled, I kicked at him. As he casually batted me away, my feet thudded into his arm.
“Call them off!” He shook me by the throat, brutally reminding me of the rape against the wire.
Judging by the noises, my allies were close, and moving closer.