Dominion Rising: 23 Brand New Novels from Top Fantasy and Science Fiction Authors

by Gwynn White

  “––Doormat-ish,” Jon finished for her, glancing up, the pen still gripped in one hand. “Cass is right. Jaden made it clear in SF that he didn’t want our help with the band stuff. Staying at this point, given how he was on the plane, feels weird.”

  “And fuck Jaden, anyway,” Cass exclaimed, throwing up her hands. “You did almost die in that bomb, and he still played footsie with that bimbo the whole flight.” Folding her arms, she frowned. “Anyway, I didn’t come for his stupid show, I came to hang with you… and Jon… in New York. Isn’t that how you talked us into coming in the first place?”

  Jon looked over, smiling faintly. He took a sip from his customary soda water with lime, quirking an eyebrow at me in a silent question.

  I glanced between the two of them, now fighting irritation.

  I knew most of that was because they were right.

  “Do you want to leave right now?” I said, exasperated.

  “Yes!” Cass said at once, jumping up and down. “Yes yes yes yes!”

  Jon let out a low laugh, still bent over his drawing.

  I bit my lip, fighting back the retort that wanted to come out.

  Instead, I walked to the bar and picked up the crappy coffee the bartender made for us while we told him our story of the bombing in SFO.

  Jaden must be at the hotel by now. Hell, for all I knew, they’d stopped for coffee and bagels somewhere, and we were sitting here for no reason whatsoever.

  Why was I waiting?

  But I more or less knew the answer to that, too.

  “Why don’t you just call him?” Cass said, again reading my facial expression.

  “I did call him,” I said, unable to suppress my annoyance. “I already told you that. I said we’d meet him here.”

  “So call him back,” Cass said, exasperated. “Tell him we’re leaving.” Her frown deepened. “You know this is crap. He could at least have offered to meet us for breakfast… not to mention offered to sit with you for part of the flight. Jon or I would have traded with him. Or he could have made bimbo-tits sit with us for a while.”

  I couldn’t really argue with that, either.

  I knew she was right––not just about the flight, or about me waiting for him, but about Jaden in general. But I really, really wanted to trust him.

  I wanted to believe I could trust him.

  “So?” Cass said, making a show of checking her Felix the Cat watch, which I happened to know was broken. “Your ten minutes is almost up, Al. Are you going to call him? Or should I?”

  “Chill out, Cass,” Jon said, sighing a little. “You’re like a harpy right now.”

  “A harpy?” Cass said, turning to glare at him. “You should be on my side, Jonathan.”

  “There are no ‘sides,’ Cass,” he said, giving her a look. “Allie isn’t on trial right now. And we’ve both made our views on Jaden crystal clear. You’re beating a dead horse.”

  Cass threw a plastic swizzle stick at Jon’s head, the same one I’d thrown at her. When it bounced off his temple, she burst out in a laugh, covering her mouth with her hands in mock horror.

  Jon rubbed his forehead. “Okay, I’m officially voting we get out of here… and get a leash for Cass.”

  I sighed, checking my headset’s clock again.

  “All right.” I heard the surrender in my voice. “This is ridiculous. Let’s go.”

  “Yay!” Cass clapped her hands, jumping up and down next to me. “Yay!”

  I was about to say more, when someone else spoke.

  8

  More Cryptic

  Hey,” the male voice said. “One of you Allie?”

  It was the bartender, who’d just appeared from the back room.

  He’d been wheeling crates of beer in from the alley out back for the last few minutes. I’d been ignoring him, truthfully, and figured he was ignoring us, given the hardware he had wrapped around the back of his head and neck.

  He wore a number of actual enhancements too, I noticed, including metallic arm and hand coverings that jointed at his elbow and probably helped with the lifting and carrying. One of his arms also had a jewel embedded at the top, near where it attached to his shoulder. I’d heard people wore a lot more of those in New York, compared to the West Coast.

  When I glanced over now, he was looking squarely at me.

  “Are you her?” he said, setting a box of import beer bottles on the bar. “The guy described someone who sounds like you.”

  “Guy?” I glanced at Jon and Cass. “What guy?”

  “Some guy out back. Said he knew you. Allie Taylor, right?”

  “Oh.” I felt my shoulders relax. “Yes, that’s me.”

  My brain jumped off its paranoid, conspiracy-laden track involving seer terrorist bombings and drunk SCARB agents, and returned to the realm of the much more probable. I craned my neck, peering behind the bartender’s not-inconsiderable form.

  “Is the band back there?” I said. “Do they need our help?”

  The bartender shook his large, bald head, which had a tattoo of a spider web on the back.

  “I don’t think this guy was in the band,” he said. “Didn’t say so, if he was… and he wasn’t on the list. He couldn't wait, and I couldn’t let him in.” He gave me a faintly wary look, but the wariness didn’t seem aimed at me.

  He tossed a folded square of paper on the bar.

  “I told him to ping your headset, but…” He shrugged. “Whatever. He gave me that. Guy was kind of weird.”

  Puzzled, I walked over to the bar and picked up the slip of paper.

  Once I had, I could only stare.

  Across the perfect square of white paper, my name was written in thick, block letters. They were identical to the letters I’d seen on the note from the plane.

  I stared at it, feeling my stomach drop.

  Without tearing my eyes off my name written there in black ink, I spoke.

  “What was his name? The guy out back? What name did he give you?”

  Jon touched my arm. “What is it, Al?” he murmured.

  I only shook my head, still looking for the bartender. He’d gone back to unloading and stacking boxes from the handcart behind the bar.

  “Hey!” I leaned over the padded bar, raising my voice. “Do you remember the name? Of the guy who gave you this?” I waved the note.

  The bartender straightened. I saw his eyes lose their faraway look and realized he must have turned off his headset to answer me. He frowned, thinking.

  “It was a weird name,” he said, still thinking. “Sounded fake.” His dark brown eyes lit up briefly. “Dorcan something. Huntiger? I think that was it. Dorcan Huntiger.”

  I frowned. “What did he look like?”

  The guy pursed his lips, resting his metal-enhanced hands on his waist.

  “Like a punk,” he said finally, his tone making it clear he didn’t mean it as a compliment. “Maybe yea tall.” He held up one hand, indicating someone about two inches shorter than him. “Red hair. Had a bit of an accent. Kind of a dick, honestly.” He gave me a wan smile. “If he’s your boyfriend, you can do a lot better, honey.”

  Smiling back at him, I fought to think. As I did, I found myself thinking I liked him––the bartender, that is. Not because he’d flirted with me, but more the realization that he’d been protecting me, in his own way, by grilling the guy outside. Moreover, he’d been paying attention enough to find the guy’s story fishy. Both things made me think he was probably a decent person. That, and something I saw in his eyes––a kindness, maybe.

  “Thanks,” I said. “…For not letting him in. And for the description.”

  He nodded. I saw from his eyes that he understood what I was thanking him for, and liked him even more.

  Looking down at the stack of boxes, I hesitated, still gripping the note. It occurred to me that we hadn’t even offered to help him bring in supplies so he could restock the bar faster.

  “Hey,” I said a little awkwardly. “Is there more out back? We’
re just sitting here, waiting. Might as well use the hand-truck so you can stock.”

  Turning, the bartender gave me a surprised smile, his brown eyes softening. “No, doll. That was the last of it.” He smiled wider. “Thanks, though. I think you’re the first band person who’s ever asked me that… even if it was a little late.”

  I flushed. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t even think about it. We’re a little jet-lagged.”

  He shook his head. “That wasn’t a dig. I mean it. Thanks.”

  He winked at me, heading back for the alley.

  As he disappeared through the swinging doors, Cass snorted.

  “See?” she said. “Why are you wasting your time with Jaden? We’ve been here five minutes and you’ve got hot New York guys hitting on you. He’s super cute, why don’t you get his number? You could at least––”

  But Jon cut her off before she could get any further.

  “Dorcan Huntinger.”

  He gave me a flat look, frowning.

  I blinked. “You actually know who that is?”

  Jon grunted, twirling his swizzle stick in a circle through his soda and lime. “Sure,” he said drily. “I’m pretty sure that’s not who left the note for you though, Al.” He gave me a flat look. “He’s been dead about eleven hundred years.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “Sir Dorcan Ulric Huntiger, supposed prophet and futurist, writer of arcane commentaries on the seer Myths. He comes up in a lot of conspiracy feeds.”

  Cass came up beside me to stare at the note. “Why would someone use his name? Could they have been named after him?”

  Jon shrugged, taking a sip of his soda water.

  “I guess. It’s kind of like naming your kid Thomas Aquinas, though. He’s credited with most of the same commentaries Third Mythers base their ideology on. He’s like their John the Baptist. Or one of their apostles, at least. He wrote large chunks of the Myther bible. He’s also one of those who prophesied the seer apocalypse coming in our time period.”

  He frowned as I continued to stare at him.

  “…Or that’s how his words have been interpreted, anyway,” he added. “Some think he was a seer, that he came into the world of humans to teach them, about a thousand years before official First Contact with Europe. There are theories that seers were directing and influencing human culture for millennia. A lot of Mythers believe that, at least.”

  I stood there, thinking, when Cass nudged my arm.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” she said.

  I hesitated. I’d been considering telling them about the note I’d gotten on the plane.

  Deciding that could wait, I unfolded the square of paper and flattened it on the bar.

  A drawing of the three-pronged spiral stood there, in black marker.

  It was the same exact symbol I’d seen all over Myther signs at the San Francisco airport. I’d also seen it on the T-shirt of one of the three men who’d first been staring at me outside the terminal, not long before the bomb went off.

  One of them had red hair, too.

  Frowning, I traced the symbol with a finger.

  Under it, someone had written in those same, dark block letters:

  WILL YOU BE THE FIRST?

  THE ONE TO WHICH THE OTHERS FLOW?

  NOT THE MIDDLE.

  NOT THE SECOND.

  BUT THE FIRST?

  WHO WILL TAKE UP THE CALL?

  WHO WILL BE THE BALANCE OF THE EARTH?

  WHO, INDEED, WILL CALL THE BRIDGE DOWN FROM ABOVE?

  I flipped the piece of paper over, looking at the other side. Like before, it was blank, apart from the square with my printed name. No signature, not so much as a smiley face.

  Fighting a wave of nausea, I passed the note to Cass.

  She read it, frowned. “What the hell does it mean?” She read the lines a second time, then flipped it over like I had. When Jon clicked his fingers at her, she leaned past me over the bar to hand it to him.

  Turning to me while Jon read it, she shrugged.

  “Well, your freak magnet is clearly still fully operational.” She frowned. “Jesus, Al. How the hell do they find you? Did you go out in the middle of the street and scream ‘Here I am!’ while Jon and I were in the shower?” She cocked an eyebrow, folding her arms under her breasts and pushing them up slightly. “This must be a world record, even for you.”

  I hesitated, thinking again about the plane.

  “Well, it might not be New York,” I said, reluctant.

  “Meaning what?” Jon said.

  Frowning, he tossed the note down on the bar after reading it, giving me a piercing look and folding his fingers together on the padded surface.

  Instead of answering him directly, I nodded towards the note.

  “Can you make anything of that?” I said. “More Third Myth gibberish?”

  Studying the symbol and re-reading the words, he frowned.

  “Sounds religious. The triskele is on a lot of their signs.”

  I rolled my eyes at his statement of the obvious. “I know it’s their symbol, Jon. Do the actual words mean anything to you?”

  Frowning down at the spirals again, he shook his head.

  “No.” Exhaling, he shrugged. “I think I remember reading something about a ‘Bridge,’ though. That’s more esoteric seer stuff… some savior of theirs. Maybe it’s like a trinity, given the three spirals.” Still thinking, he shook his head, his brow furrowing. “Although, I’ve also read that the Mythers believe there are three races in total. Us, seers and one other race. The third race might be like angels, though. That’s where the three in ‘Third Myth’ supposedly comes from. It’s not really their third myth so much as the ‘Myth of Three.’ As in, three races.”

  “Awesome,” Cass snorted. “Religious nuts. Because they’re always the reasonable ones.”

  Jon looked only at me, though.

  “What did you mean before?” he said, his voice more pointed. “You said it might not be New York. Do you think this has something to do with the bomb at SFO?”

  Not answering, I frowned down at the three spirals on the paper.

  “Why would you think it had something to do with that bomb?” Cass said, sounding vaguely nervous. “The bartender just said it was some guy, right? Not a Myther or whatever. He would have mentioned it, if the guy was some religious nut, right?”

  “How would he even know, Cass?” I sighed, combing my hair back with my fingers. “Not all of them are going to be wearing VR shirts with Myther scripture written on the front––especially just walking down the street.”

  “And maybe it was the bartender,” Jon said, still sounding irritated.

  “Maybe,” I said, glancing back at the swinging door.

  But I didn’t think so.

  I doubted Jon did, either.

  I was about to tell them what happened on the plane, when the door to the street slammed open suddenly, letting in a bright swath of sunlight.

  Right after the sun, the whole entourage of Eye of Morris poured into the club.

  I grimaced a little when Jaden walked in first, that same blond girl from the plane hanging on his arm. She chatted away happily to him, oblivious to us while she pushed her ample chest up into the general vicinity of his eyeballs.

  To his credit, Jaden, rather than looking sheepish, met my gaze directly. If anything, his eyes and face looked tired. As soon as he caught my eye, he sighed a bit, then rolled his eyes subtly in apology, motioning his head towards the fluffy blond head below his shoulder.

  He smiled at me then, winking.

  I fought to smile back, and almost made it.

  I had talked to him that morning, just like I’d told Jon and Cass.

  What I hadn’t told them was that I’d also confronted him about the blond girl. I hadn’t wanted to get into any of that with them, because frankly, it wasn’t any of their business, and I wasn’t up to defending him or even explaining what he’d told me.

  Jaden wasn’
t a jerk in our short conversation, but he mostly blew off my concerns.

  He agreed she was probably trying to get him into bed.

  He also pointed out she was a fan, and a well-connected one––someone he couldn’t really afford to piss off. He assured me I had zero to worry about. He also said he saw her sitting with them on the plane as a “work-related” thing, nothing more.

  According to Jaden, the girl, “Tina,” was friends with the indie filmmaker who’d used his song, a detail I’d somehow missed in all my run-ins with her before.

  I think he knew his words didn’t exactly reassure me.

  I really wanted to love him enough to trust him, but it was getting harder.

  After what I’d seen on the plane, watching them together now dug at something in my chest. We’d already had that talk too many times, though. He had his band persona, and then he had me. He couldn’t be a dick to his fans and business contacts and explain it away by saying he was only doing it because his girlfriend got jealous.

  But I was jealous. I couldn’t really pretend I wasn’t.

  And this Tina person, in particular, seemed to enjoy threatening me.

  I knew she knew damned well who I was––she just liked pretending to be surprised whenever Jaden introduced me as his girlfriend.

  I was a little dumbfounded that she was friends with the indie filmmaker, who I’d actually liked. All I’d really tracked before was that she’d shown up as a regular fixture right around the time they started playing Eye of Morris songs on the radio, especially Jaden’s “Under Dark Sky,” which had been the love theme for the indie movie.

  She fixated on Jaden himself pretty quickly, which wasn’t that surprising given that he was the front man for their five-person band. Jaden did most of the lead vocals and played guitar; he was also six-one with dark brown hair that he dyed jet-black, shocking blue eyes and a firm jaw. For his shows he tended to dress like a young James Dean. He was on the skinny side, like a lot of musicians, but his body wasn’t bad, either.

  So yeah, I had to just swallow it.

  Girls liked Jaden even before the band took off, of course.