by Addison Fox
“You can thank my grandmother for the first-class seats.”
“What?” Brody shifted to find Ava’s eyes open again and a small smile at the corner of her lips. Although the corners of her mouth were turned up, the smile didn’t reach the sad depths of her chocolate brown eyes.
“These seats. We were supposed to sit back there.” She pointed toward those foul, evil seats that must have been designed by Zeus’s bitch-wife Hera, and Brody felt an involuntary shudder. “We’re in first class thanks to the Harrison money. It makes a flight like this easier to handle.”
“My sincere thanks to her, then.”
“You can fully recline in these seats. Even sleep in them.”
You could recline? Brody eyed the other passengers, none of whom were reclining. “No one else is.”
“Once we’re airborne, you can do it. They like everyone sitting upright for takeoff.”
As if on cue, the plane began to lumber down the runway. The heavy, rumbling feeling made him think of the giants who used to roam the forest near his childhood home. Their overly large bodies made the same thudding sounds as they ran through the forest after their prey.
Ava’s voice was low and he had to lean closer to hear her over the sounds of the plane as it picked up speed down the runway. “Isn’t it funny, really, how we’re all afraid of something?”
“What are you afraid of?”
“Hold my hand and I’ll tell you.”
He glanced down at the long, tapered fingers capped off by softly buffed nails. Her hand was lovely. Elegant. He laid his own large one over hers and watched as their fingers intertwined, as if of their own accord.
When he pulled his gaze away from their hands and to her face, her eyes were already closed. Squeezing lightly, he waited for her eyes to open.
“What?”
“You didn’t tell me what you were afraid of.”
She smiled again and this time it reached her eyes. “Nothing worth mentioning. I just wanted you to feel better as we took off.”
Ava smiled at her father, his large, oversized presence reassuring. She always felt safe with Daddy. Protected. He’d been away traveling for so many weeks, it was wonderful to have him home. He promised they’d have daddy-daughter day when he got back and now, after all those weeks of waiting, here they were.
“I can’t wait to see your special stones that you discovered. And the rubies like the one in Fergie’s ring. You’ll let me take you to the rubies, too. Right?”
He smiled down at her, his eyes so warm and golden with crinkly edges when he smiled at her. “Yes, sweetie, we’ll go see your rubies.”
Ava danced down the street next to him, her hand enfolded in his big one.
They walked up to the front entrance of the Natural History Museum and Ava could feel her excitement growing even bigger—sort of like her tummy, but in a good way.
Fergie was her new most favorite person-she-didn’t-actually-know, ever since she married Prince Andrew. Ava remembered how beautiful the wedding was, watching the videotape of the news coverage at least six times since Daddy had left on his trip. It was one of the few things Grandmother deemed acceptable. Ava had watched it so many times, she could even recite their vows by heart.
With a skip, she walked through the doors of the museum, no longer frightened by the humongous dinosaur in the front hall. She wasn’t a baby anymore. No way.
Now she wanted to be a duchess. And an archaeologist, like Daddy. With a shrug as they passed the large dinosaur skeleton she’d named Fifi when she was little, she decided she’d be both.
An archaeologist duchess.
They walked toward Daddy’s office and she gave a little tug on his hand. “Don’t you want to see the rubies first?”
He smiled down at her, but there was something funny in his voice. “Come with me, Ava. I said we’d go look at my new stones first.”
“Okay.”
They walked into his office and she ran over to his leather jacket, hanging on the back of his chair. She loved that jacket. It smelled so good, like leather and like the outside and the way it got at night after a hot day where you could still smell the sun.
And it smelled like Daddy.
Her hero.
She looked up from the coat, a sleeve still wrapped in her arms. “You know what? I think I’d like to have a ruby engagement ring like Fergie.”
“What?” Daddy was bent over a worktable on the other side of his office, looking down at something.
“The Duchess of York, Daddy. The one I’ve been telling you about. The pretty red-haired lady.”
What was the matter with him today? He wasn’t listening to anything, as if he had earphones in his ears. Daddy always gave her his full attention. Not in that mean, teasing way like everyone at school, or in that focused way like Grandmother, but in that wonderful Daddy way that meant she mattered.
“Daddy!” She walked over and tugged on his hand.“What’s wrong today? You’re not listening and I’m trying to tell you all about Fergie and Prince Andrew and their wonderful wedding.”
“What?” He pulled away, but his attention and his eyes stayed on the case in front of him.
A small kernel of unease rumbled in her belly. It felt like that horrible Halloween movie Cousin Brett tricked her into watching over the summer.
“Will you shut up about that stupid woman, Ava? I am sick to death of hearing about her wedding.”
Tears threatened, but she held them in. “Oh. Okay.”
“I told you, I wanted you to see my work. Well, here it is.” He reached for her hand, but when she didn’t move fast enough, he tugged harder, pulling her closer, then picking her up. His movements were jerky as he struggled with her weight.
He hadn’t picked her up in a long time.
She used to be sad about that, but now, with his arms pressed in the roly part of her tummy, it was hard to breathe. Maybe she didn’t want to be carried around like a baby anymore.
His arms jostled her as he held her up over the table. “Look at it!”
There was only one stone, even though he’d told her he’d found five of them. She was glad there was only the one. The blue stone was more than enough. It was about the size of her Walkman, but rounded like an egg. The moment she stopped thinking about how big her belly was and actually looked at the stone, the scared feeling in her tummy rolled completely over, just like when she watched Freddie Krueger jump into kids’ dreams.
A wave of heat swamped her and she thought she was going to throw up right there on the table. Her mouth started to water and horrible images, way worse than Freddie Krueger, hit her. Some flashed in front of her eyes while others felt like they lived in her head, slithering through her mind so that she couldn’t stop seeing them even when she closed her eyes.
Snakes with bared fangs danced before her eyes and heavy drumbeats stuck in her ears while an icky, metally smell hit her nose. A pit of fire held writhing people she somehow knew were dying as more snakes fell on their naked bodies.
Stark terror crawled down her spine as something that had the body of a man and the head of a wild animal started dancing around the pit. “Daddy!”
She screamed it, trying to make him let go of her; trying to get them away from the case and whatever horrible thing was pulsing behind the glass.
“Daddy!”
Chapter Seven
“A va!” Brody gripped her shoulders, trying to wake her from whatever nightmare had her in its hold. Her eyes were open, but the blank stare let him know she was still locked in the hell she’d visited in her sleep.
Ava whimpered her father’s name one more time before the haze in her eyes began to clear. He saw the moment the dream winked out and recognition of her surroundings took its place as those deep brown orbs drank him in.
“Shhh. You’re safe here.” He brushed at her hair, frustrated when he couldn’t pull her limp form onto his lap over the privacy divider between their extended seats.
With impati
ent movements, he pressed the controls to close up his own seat so that he could reach her. Lifting her, he folded Ava in his arms. Her body trembled with cold and her clammy skin was icy to the touch.
With soft, soothing words he held her as she calmed down. The beat of her heart pressed against his chest, the rapid count slowing along with her breath as his words slowly penetrated the last vestiges of the nightmare.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, her voice coming out as a scratchy sound from the back of her throat.
“Want to talk about it?”
She whispered again, but her tone gained strength. “I don’t know.”
“It was a dream about your father?”
She gripped a fistful of T-shirt as she curled farther into his arms. “How did you know?”
“You were moaning his name. Have you had it before?” She struggled, her eyes going wide. “Did anyone hear me?”
“No. Shhh. Come here.” He pulled her close again. “Tell me about it.”
“I used to have it every night. It stopped when I got older. I haven’t had this dream in years.”
He was tempted to push some soothing thoughts toward her, pressing them into the recesses of her mind where fear of the dream still lingered, but he held himself back. No matter how well-intentioned it was, the more time he spent with her, the less he felt it was a fair thing to do. He’d done it last night without reservation, hoping the calming thoughts would replace the nightmare she’d experienced with the Destroyers, but now, well, it just felt wrong.
Pulling her closer, he whispered, “Tell me about it. Telling it will get it out of your head. Make it less real.”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“I never talk about it. It’s too real. It was real.”
Fear dripped off the end of her words like blood. This was something more than just a bad dream, conjured by her subconscious mind. A memory?
“Did something happen to you?”
She was silent for a while, her fingers running over the duvet. “Yes.”
“Did someone hurt you?” The mere thought of someone laying a finger on her filled him with rage, awakening the lion tattoo on his back as adrenaline spiked through his system.
“Not exactly.” He thought she would go silent again, but she took a deep breath and began to tell him. “It happened a couple of days before my father died.”
“Why don’t you want to talk about it? What are you afraid of? It obviously happened a long time ago. Whatever it is, it can’t hurt you now.”
“But it makes my father sound like a horrible man.”
Something dark unfurled in his stomach. Had the man hurt her? Abused her? “Did he touch you, Ava?”
Catching the thread under his words, she immediately struggled to sit up straight again. “Oh no. Nothing like that. He was a wonderful father.”
“What is it, then?”
“It’s just that this story makes him sound like he’s not a great father. And he was. He was the best.”
“Why don’t you just tell me and I promise to give him a fair hearing.”
She sighed, the sound heavy between them. “The first time I saw the stone in New York, I was with my father. We’d gone because I wanted to see the Burmese ruby collection the museum is so known for, and he was so excited to show me the stones he found on his dig, so we made a day of it.” He listened as she explained their visit and how she had always loved spending time with her father. They were clearly the words of someone who had loved her parent very much—not someone trying to hide flaws.
“So we went to his office first and I was immediately obsessed with telling him all about the rubies and imagining myself as Fergie.”
“The singer?”
She smiled, the first real smile he’d seen in a while. “No, silly. This was more than twenty years ago. I’m talking about the duchess. Of York.”
An image of a beautiful red-haired woman came to mind and he nodded. “Got it.”
“So I was dancing around his office and smelling his leather jacket and imagining myself as a duchess and all of a sudden my father called me over. And he was gone.”
“What do you mean, gone? He disappeared from the room?”
“His body might have been there, but his soul most certainly wasn’t. I can’t explain it, but I’ve never forgotten it, even though I’ve desperately wanted to. To the depths of my toes, I know the man I stood in that room with was not my father. Something happened to him when he looked at the stone.”
“Ava. You were a child. Did something else happen? Maybe he yelled at you for touching it and you misinterpreted his actions.” Brody felt stupid even saying the words. From the prophecy, they knew what the stones were capable of; knew they needed a conduit to bring out their potential.
But he wanted to draw out the story. He knew there were answers in there, buried somewhere in her memories.
Was Russell Harrison that conduit?
“No. I know what I saw. I know it wasn’t him. And—” She grew quiet as another round of shivers wracked her body.
Brody pulled her closer, rubbing her back in an effort to restore some warmth to her system.
“And what?”
“The stone makes me sick when I look at it.”
Oh shit. A funny feeling hit him low in the gut. He’d studied ancient artifacts long enough to understand how they worked. And one truism was that families had connections. And where one family member had a reaction, their child had a greater likelihood of the same thing.
If Russell was a chosen channel for the stones, was it possible Ava was, too?
“Sick how?”
“I see visions. And the visions make me so nauseated I get sick. It’s worse if I look at the stone when I’m running low on energy. I had to go look at it a few weeks ago for the exhibit. It was right before lunch and I hadn’t eaten breakfast. Waves of images assaulted me and I thought I was going to pass out.”
“What are the images like?”
“There are snakes—so many snakes you can’t believe it. And loud chanting and fire and naked people. Victims. They’re being sacrificed in some way.”
“For what?”
“I can’t tell. I’ve never been able to look at the stone long enough to understand what it is.”
“Do you know where these things are happening?”
“I assume Egypt.”
“You said your father’s soul disappeared. Does the same happen to you?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. It doesn’t feel like that’s happening, but what do I really know?”
They sat there in silence. Brody stroked the soft waves of her hair, helpless to do anything else.
“Brody?” She looked up at him, those dark circles under her eyes dragging a wave of empathy through him so strong he felt dizzy. “I went to look at the stone today. After lunch and on a full stomach.”
“And?”
“It was no different.”
Brody pulled her close, pressing kisses to her forehead. “Shhh. Just relax. I promise I’ll take care of you.”
She might not know what was going on, but it was quickly becoming clear he knew exactly what was happening.
And in order to take care of her and get her out of this mess, she’d have to face her most horrific nightmares.
The Destroyer huddled in his coat, wrapped up against the biting November cold.
“You had a simple job last night: Remove the woman.”
He shrugged, memories of his former life—and this sector of the park—coming back to him. “She had protection.”
“Not an excuse I ever want to hear. You act. You take down anything in your way. Hence the name, Destroyer.”
Destroyer. Yeah, right. His name was Bill. Bill, you motherfuckers! he wanted to scream. “What the fuck do you want me to tell you? Me and Paulie ran up against the guy. I got away. Paulie wasn’t so lucky.”
“You le
ft a man behind?”
“Behind? Damn, I told him he needed to regroup. Didn’t pay any attention. I wasn’t going down just cuz Paulie was stupid.”
Bill saw the assessing gleam in the guy’s eyes. He knew that look. He had used it himself on several occasions when he was sizing up his dealer crew, trying to figure out which ones would get the job done and which ones would just take his blow for themselves.
Dealing was hard business. Underappreciated work, he chuckled to himself.
Course, this gig was better by far. He had so much power in his little finger, he’d started working his magic back in the park. He figured he could do double duty—jobs for Queenie and back to his old business to line his coffers.
He looked at the guy in front of him. Blond hair. Chiseled jaw. He knew this one. Right-hand guy to Queenie. Didn’t take a leak unless she told him it was okay.
“I’ve got a situation I need your help with. Consider it a chance to redeem yourself.”
“Fuck off. I got nothing to redeem.”
The asshole was on him before he had time to take another breath. Hot waves of electricity lit up his insides like the Fourth of July.
What was this shit?
Hot, molten pain filled his head as a great, horrible pressure built at his temples.
Holy shit!
Bill looked down at his hands as his eyes bulged in their sockets. His fingers looked bigger. Plumper. Was this asshole going to blow him up?
“Now are you ready to listen?”
Bill nodded, his body paralyzed.
“That woman. The sweet piece you couldn’t manage to handle last night? I’m going to give you a second chance. She’s on her way to London, and you’re going to help me capture her and the asshole she’s traveling with.”
Bill took a great gulp of air as the pressure eased slightly. “Man, I think that guy was a Warrior. He didn’t act like no standard boyfriend.”
A malevolent smile spread across Queenie’s man’s face. “He is a Warrior. So nice of you to finally show up to the party.”
“Fuck man, so what do you want me to do? They’re not easy to kill.”
