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

by Gwynn White

  I held up a hand. “Okay, yeah. I got it.”

  I stared at him, though, thrown by the coldness of his voice.

  “Great,” he said, that fight still in his voice. “Then you can just save it up and bitch at me later, okay?”

  “Bitch at you?” I said, bewildered. “Jaden, seriously. What did I do?”

  “I asked if it could wait, Allie,” he said, his voice openly angry. “Can you for once just not pretend you know what’s going on in my head? I had a bad day. I’m stressed about the show… there’s nothing for you to fix, okay? I told you everything.” His frown deepened. “I can’t just sit here and get fucked up with you and your little pals, not unless I want to tank the show. This is something I actually care about. Remember?”

  Corey and Cass were staring at Jaden now, too.

  Corey seemed to take the weather and wander off, back towards the stage.

  “…I’m glad you had fun with your friends,” Jaden added. “It must be nice, just hanging around all day, not having anything to do.”

  “Seriously?” I said, staring. “What the hell, Jaden? Was I supposed to be at the photo shoot? Because I thought you told me not to go to that. Are you mad I was gone all day? Or are you mad that I’m in New York at all?”

  He shook his head, eyes cold. “For the last time, I’m not mad. I’m just stressed… and I’ve got shit to do. Whatever it is you think I’m doing wrong, we’ll talk about it later.”

  I watched, bewildered, as he walked away, back towards the stage.

  I couldn't help but notice he was wearing the same jeans, T-shirt and motorcycle boots he wore onstage for a lot of Eye of Morris gigs. So the changing clothes excuse was probably an exaggeration, if not an outright lie. Was he really mad I’d been gone all day? Why? I’d told him about our plans before we left SF. He’d openly encouraged me to not hang around, telling me we’d just be bored, anyway.

  In fact, he’d encouraged it so much, I’d almost been offended.

  I knew this was a big show for him, so maybe he really was nervous. Maybe from his perspective I wasn't being supportive enough––either by being hammered, or by leaving him alone when he was doing the networking thing.

  Was he mad I took off that morning without saying anything to him?

  As I watched Jaden go, the feeling I got was different, though.

  It felt like he was just running away from me. It felt like he wanted any excuse to get away from me, that he’d pushed the conversation into a fight on purpose. I wondered if he’d been doing that a lot lately, and I just hadn’t noticed.

  Or maybe I had noticed and just didn’t want to.

  When I looked at Cass, she raised an eyebrow.

  “What did you do?” she said sarcastically.

  From her tone, I could tell she didn’t think it was me who had done something.

  I answered her anyway.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I said, watching Jaden leave.

  14

  The One True God

  The food didn’t help. A few hours later, I really was drunk.

  I told myself it was fine. I needed the break from thinking.

  Cass didn’t exactly discourage me from going that route. She talked me into doing a few more shots with her after I ate a bunch of nachos and picked at part of a basket of french fries with Jon and the two female friends of the sound guy, Jolee and Erika.

  Given my mood, I let her––talk me into the shots, I mean.

  Now she was jumping up and down in kind of a weird dancing pogo stick thing along with about thirty other people near the front of the stage.

  She laughed and grabbed my arm when I handed her a beer, trying to get me to join her in the mass of sweating bodies and flailing arms. Her black hair was stuck to her forehead, giving her almost a China doll look with the deep black eye-makeup and bright red lipstick she wore. She’d already dragged me out on the dance floor with her twice, and I wasn’t ready for round three yet.

  I also didn’t want to lose my seat at the bar with Jon while the place was starting to fill up for real.

  At the thought, I glanced towards the door. The line was growing out there. I knew a lot of people would be coming to see Eye of Morris, not just the headliners, especially given all the radio play they’d gotten over the past month. I probably only had about thirty minutes before Jaden would be in the thick of it and completely surrounded by other people.

  The band onstage now was decent for an opening act. Under normal circumstances, I probably would be out there with Cass.

  “I’ll be back!” I promised her, extricating my arm. “Hold my seat for me?”

  “Promise?” she shouted. “Promise you’ll be back?”

  I grinned, shouting over the sound of the throbbing bass speaker.

  “Of course! Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Cass shook her head, snorting a little after she studied my face.

  “Don’t let him off too easy!” she shouted. “I mean it, Al.”

  I rolled my eyes. But I found myself turning her words over in my mind anyway as I walked away. I knew from her perspective I should be pissed off, but I just wasn't feeling it for some reason, even being fairly hammered. I’d always been a strangely logical drunk.

  I didn’t know why I was so calm about the Jaden thing, though.

  I couldn’t decide it if meant I was being too much of a pushover, like Cass and Jon kept saying, if I was in a zen space for some reason, mentally wiped out from the day we’d had, or just too drunk to really get what was going on. Either way, I didn’t want to leave things on a bad note before he went on stage.

  I wanted him to know I was rooting for them to kick ass, at least.

  Whether it had been partly jealousy or not, I’d gotten dressed up for him. I’d worn the skin tight pants and the lace top for him, the boots I knew he liked, the teardrop jade earrings, the make up, which was a few layers more than I normally wore. I’d spent time on my hair, getting it to hang down in waves and artful curls past my shoulders.

  I’d been trying to do the girlfriend thing.

  I could be lazy about that, truthfully. I’d known for awhile that Jaden cared more about image-type stuff than I did, especially when it came to his band. I also knew he didn’t like to come off as a prick, so he rarely said anything about it.

  Since it was one of the few nights in recent history I’d been getting almost as many looks as Cass, I felt like I’d succeeded, at least more than usual.

  Even so, given his moodiness lately, I gave myself a fifty-fifty chance of being able to turn Jaden around in the time I had left. There was maybe a twenty percent chance I could make it worse, especially if something else had gone wrong with the band. I estimated a thirty percent chance he wouldn’t talk to me at all; but if that was the case, I could at least wish him good luck, and I wouldn’t make things worse.

  More to the point, there was maybe a seventy percent chance Jaden was stoned by now, thanks to his band manager, Randy. If he was, there was a very good chance he’d be in a significantly more mellow mood, and probably affectionate and apologetic and happy I went back there to wish him luck.

  Truthfully, that had me more hopeful than anything.

  Pushing through the crush of bodies to reach the aisle between the bar and the dance floor, I fought to keep my mind calm as I aimed my feet for the door to the backstage area.

  I’d nearly gotten there, when a thick body in a dark suit stepped directly into my path, forcing me to come to a complete stop.

  It wasn’t Jaden. Or anyone in his band.

  It wasn’t even one of the bouncers.

  Looking up, I stared at the blocky, malformed face, and my mind stuttered to a stop.

  Meeting my gaze, the man with the blond ponytail smiled his too-white smile. Before I could recover, he put his hands together in prayer position and bowed, more deeply than he had the other times I’d seen him do it. Something about it reminded me of my encounter with Jewel earlier that day, only the bow
and tilted head were a lot less charming on this guy.

  They were also less natural-seeming.

  He half-shouted to be heard over the band, but I heard that tinge of Southern drawl in his words.

  “Miss Taylor,” he said. “It is such a pleasure to see you again.”

  I stared up at him, still stunned silent.

  The alcohol couldn’t be helping my reaction time, but I think I was in shock. I couldn’t take my eyes off his squarish face, or the smooth, blonde hair that hung down his back, slick with product. He looked more or less exactly as I’d drawn him, apart from the fact that he’d changed his clothes. Even with the more casual cut of his jacket and shirt, he still looked oddly out of place, like a rich parent trying to blend at a club frequented by their twenty-something kid.

  Looking at those watery blue eyes, I remembered the indifferent look on his face while the Russian was kicking the downed, half-naked seer. That sick feeling I’d mostly managed to squelch in the past hour or so came roaring back.

  I’m not sure what the emotion there was.

  It probably should have felt fear.

  At the very least, I should have been deeply alarmed.

  More than anything, though, I felt disbelief––a part of me just couldn’t believe he was there. The fact that he knew my name shocked me marginally less, but maybe that was because the crystal-eyed guy knew it first.

  Somewhere in those few seconds of looking at him, my brain switched tracks.

  I went from disbelief to a harder, more calculated assessment. I found myself sizing him up––physically, demeanor-wise, possible weapons, the fact that he likely wasn’t alone––even as my mind stripped itself of the effects of the alcohol.

  I noticed details my first once-over missed.

  He wore a thick, dark jacket with a greenish sheen; something about the texture and that green hue made me think the material might be enhanced, even armored, or infused with nanites that served some other purpose. I’d seen features on the black feeds about clothing that could project images, block GPS, terminate headset signals or hack them, neutralize SCARB cameras, even confuse government-issued implants.

  His synth-material boots looked expensive but also highly-functional, almost military. His dark gray shirt appeared designer, and I saw it push out slightly on one side under the coat, which made me think he was probably carrying.

  I stared at the chain necklace around his neck. On the end of it hung a symbol in silver––the three interweaving spirals with a small triangle in the center.

  When I finished my assessment, meeting his gaze, he smiled.

  He must have been following my eyes. He fingered the necklace while I watched, touching it reverently with a ring-clad hand. From his expression, I knew something else: he’d wanted me to see it. His eyes bored into mine, clearly looking for a reaction.

  I took a step back, instinctively looking for Jon.

  The crowd had closed the space around me. I couldn’t see the bar at all, apart from the lit area above the bartenders.

  Remembering the weirdness of the man’s jacket, I activated my headset.

  “Jon?” I continued to stare up at the man’s face as I opened a second channel. “Jon? Cass? Anyone listening?”

  Nothing.

  I refocused on the man with the ponytail.

  I admit, at that point, my nerves screeched into overdrive.

  “Who are you?” My eyes flickered around the dark and crowded corridor, looking for his friends. “Do you intend to arrest me? If so, I request a reading of the charges.” Returning my eyes to his, I added, “Earlier today, I informed private counsel I’m apparently a person of interest. They advised me––”

  The man laughed, cutting me off.

  “Very good,” he said, smiling. “Very, very good, Miss Taylor. And very clever. But no. You have not informed counsel––private or otherwise. Nor did you call your criminal lawyer uncle in Arizona to ask him about your options. We would have known, if you had.”

  My jaw hardened as I stared at him.

  I didn’t miss the “we” he’d thrown in there.

  The man held up a hand, as if to reassure me. “Relax, Miss Taylor, please,” he said. “I’m not here to arrest you. We do not represent who you apparently think.”

  My mind was churning, trying to make sense of the necklace, the note that morning, the note on the plane, the bombing, the arrested seer.

  “Who are you?” I said. “Third Myth?”

  He gave me a wry smile. “No.”

  My frown deepened. “Then what? Are you with the Sweeps?” My voice sharpened, growing louder. “Home-Sec? Police? IPF? Who the fuck are you? And what do you want with me?”

  The man raised his voice to be heard over the band.

  “There is no reason to be alarmed, Miss Taylor.” He smiled again. “We are not with any of the branches of SCARB. We are not police or Homeland Security, either.”

  “So who the hell are you?” I said. “If you’re some kind of terrorist––”

  “Are you aware of the One True God, Miss Taylor?”

  I blinked, staring at him. “Excuse me?”

  “Do you know of Dragon? The God of Beginnings?”

  I glanced around where I stood, once more looking for familiar faces, friendly or not. At that point, I would have been happy to see pouty lips among the crowd milling around that end of the stage. Instead I saw people ignoring us, walking around us like we were pebbles in a fast-moving stream. A few men stared briefly at my clothes and bare skin, but that was it.

  I turned back to the blond with the ponytail.

  “Look, I don’t know what your game is, but I’m not familiar with the Myther religion,” I said, still loud above the band. “I’m also 100% not interested. If you’re looking to recruit me in some way, or think I’m in any way sympathetic to your cause––”

  “I told you. We are not Third Myth.” He continued to smile condescendingly, hands folded in front of his thick torso. “We do not worship their multitude of gods. Our God is far older… as are our beliefs, which predate those of the Sarks, as well. Our God created the Sarhacienne. He created those who came before… and those who have and will come after. He is the God of the Middle, Miss Taylor. The God of the beginning and the end.”

  I knew Sarhacienne was another word for seer, and “Sark” was a shortened version of that. The words “seer,” “Sark” and “Sarhacienne” were basically interchangeable, like “human” and “homo sapiens,” but it felt deliberate somehow, him calling them Sarks, versus just seers.

  I was still too drunk and too much in fight or flight mode to try and puzzle out what he was driving at. I was pretty sure it was just religious nonsense.

  I shifted my weight from one foot to another, fighting a growing feeling of alarm. I considered making a run for Jon and the bar. But if the guy was going to come after me directly, wouldn’t he have done it already? Also, I still wasn’t convinced he didn’t work for SCARB or some other from of law enforcement. If that was the case, I could get in trouble if I ran, even if I claimed ignorance about who he was.

  He might be hoping I’d run, so he’d have an excuse to bring me in.

  I folded my arms, in part to cover some of my bare skin.

  “What do you want from me?” I said. “If it’s religion or politics you’re selling, you’re seriously barking up the wrong tree. If you want me in some official capacity––”

  “You had help today,” the man said, as if I hadn’t spoken. He glanced around, still smiling. “Your friend… is he here tonight?”

  My jaw hardened more.

  Rather than answer him, I tried to walk around him.

  He mirrored my steps, forcing me to give him an increasingly wide berth when he continued to stand in my path. When he blocked me successfully a second time on the other end of the wide corridor, I came to a stop, staring up at him.

  Just then, I saw Corey.

  He was walking out of the backstage area, tal
king to the bouncer sitting there.

  “COREY!” I shouted, raising a hand.

  He looked over, saw me, and grinned, shaking his head to get his shaggy brown hair out of his eyes. He lifted a hand in return, indicating he would be with me in a moment.

  The man standing in front of me surprised me by laughing, clapping his hands slowly.

  “Very good.” He smiled wider. “Very, very good, Miss Taylor. They warned me you weren’t stupid. I’m glad to see they were right, for a change.”

  I glared up at him, sorely tempted to tell him where “they” could shove it.

  I held out a hand instead, motioning towards his jacket. “I want to see some credentials. Now. Or I’m registering a complaint with the police.”

  “For what?” The man smiled wider. “For talking to you?”

  “For stalking me,” I said, not returning his smile. “I’ll show them both notes you left. See what kind of DNA imprints they can pick up from the paper. I’m thinking with the surveillance cameras out back, they probably have some record of you or your thugs giving that note to the bartender this morning. Planes are all wired, so they’d definitely have a record of someone leaving the note in my lap last night. And no doubt they recorded that bullshit you pulled outside Central Park this morning.”

  He laughed again, as if enjoying everything I said. “I do like your spirit, Miss Taylor,” he said, smiling. “I do, indeed.”

  I frowned. I liked being called “spirited” by condescending pricks about as much as I liked being called much worse words.

  “Either way,” I said, as if I hadn’t heard him. “Leave me the hell alone. I get that everyone loves a good religious fanatic, I do… but apparently I need to remind you that it’s illegal to proselytize without a license. So unless you have one, you can take your ‘One True God’ and shove it right up your ass, all right?”

  “Proselytize?” The man tilted his head, as if puzzled. “I merely wish to share with you your own birthright, Miss––”

  “Well, don’t,” I cut in. “Next time, I call SCARB. I mean it. And maybe I’ll get my ‘friend’ to pay you a visit, too.”