The Thirteenth Realm (Sarah's Story)

The Thirteenth Realm

Sarah looked over her shoulder at yet another heart-stopping sound, but it was only the wind, ripping through the night with the shrill call of winter. It caught the tips of her scarf and whipped them around her face, the flutter of cloth scattering the warm plumes of her breath and momentarily blocking her vision. She tucked them into her coat and looked around again. The lawn was deserted, the few bare trees branching up into the starlight so that they stood out in stark relief. Someone had hung ornaments on some of the lower branches, a decoration which might have seemed festive on any other night but tonight only seemed to clank ominously.

Tonight, everything was suspect.

Catching herself, she forced her gaze forward. She was probably crazy. She knew she was crazy, because what she’d seen simply didn’t make sense. Coincidence could always be made to look like a pattern if one simply held the pieces right. What was it Dr. Graden always said? Paranoia was the same as hope for the fantastic – they both stemmed from dissatisfaction with the facts. Still, crazy or not, it wouldn’t do to look paranoid.

Especially if she was right.

After the frigid wind of the commons, the library seemed to blast her with warmth and quiet and light. Nearly as deserted as the rest of the campus, the place boasted only three occupied tables: a cluster of students likely studying for the same test, a dedicated and slightly mad looking law student buried under an ocean of horrendous looking books, and Benny.

Just the sight of him had her sighing with relief. She hadn’t doubted that he’d come – he was always there when she needed him – but she had feared…. She shook her head and cut off the thought. It didn’t matter what she’d feared. Paranoia again, she told herself. And there was no cause to be dissatisfied with the facts. She just needed to understand them in a way that wasn’t absolutely insane.

“Hey.”

Benny stood and smiled, offering his softly spoken greeting well before she was close enough to hear. His hands fidgeted nervously as they always seemed to do – though she didn’t know it – around Sarah. They tugged at his sweater, pushed his unruly hair off his forehead – where it just flopped right back, pushed up his glasses, adjusted his bag on the table. And then he just absorbed the sight of her. The lovely blond of her hair was something of a mess from the wind, and her cheeks and nose were pink from the cold. But it was her eyes he loved the most – especially when they were here. The dark green always seemed to catch the golden lights of the library, so that the rust colored flecks around her pupils flashed like a secret only he could see.

When she reached his table, he realized she hadn’t heard him. So he said again, “Hey.” And then his customary greeting, “How’s history?”

“Nothing new,” she replied, but her usual response almost stuck in her throat. She managed, “How’s the psyche?”

“Just the right amount of damaged.” He grinned, loving the exchange, loving her scent, loving everything about her face. When she barely managed a smile in return, his faltered. “You okay, Sare?”

“Yeah,” she replied absently. She was looking around the library as if searching for someone, and his heart sank.

“How’s Jason?”

“Jason? Why…oh.” She was stunned to realize that, in the strangeness of everything else that had happened, she hadn’t told him about Jason. The surprise was enough to pull her attention back to him for the moment, and she sat, relieved to set the weight of her bag on the table. But instead of unpacking it or moving it to the floor, she pulled it close and wrapped her arms around it. “We broke up.”

“You…oh.” He wondered if his face reflected his internal war between delight and sympathy, and he glanced at the table. “I’m sorry. What happened?”

“Well, let’s see. Thirty minutes after we were supposed to meet at La’Fontaine for dinner, he called me to ask to borrow money. No mention of our dinner reservations at all. When I asked him if he was planning to show up, he said he was too drunk to drive.”

“Oh. Huh.”

She snorted, reassured by the normalcy of the moment. “I believe the word you’re looking for is douche.” When he laughed, she continued. “The thrills didn’t end there. An hour after I got home from my solitary meal, he showed up with two sorority girls in tow and asked if we could share dessert.”

“Oh…huh.”

She laughed outright. “I’m going to pretend that’s disgust in your eyes. Let’s say that this time the word you’re looking for is gross.”

He grinned and rubbed her back in commiseration. “Sure it is. Nothing intriguing at all about the thought of you sharing anything with sorority girls.”

She laughed and hit his shoulder. And oh, it really was good to feel normal. She could always count on Benny, she thought again, and the warmth she felt lit her eyes. Then she looked down at the bag she still held protectively close, and the light in her gaze dimmed.

What if she was putting him in danger?

When she quieted, he pulled his hand away, not quite confident with the gesture of affection. He waited for her to speak, but she said nothing. For no reason that he could name, a kernel of worry wormed its way into his heart.

“Sarah, why are we here? We had a no-dissertation pact for the holidays. You took your last class over the summer, so you have nothing to study for. What’s up?”

She looked through the room again. The group of students let out a startling round of laughter and then glanced around guiltily. The law student was gone, his plethora of books abandoned. No one else was near.

She looked at Benny again and took a deep breath. “It’s probably nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing. I just…I need your help with something. I found something. Or, at least, it looks like something, and I need…I need you to look at it and see if you…see what I saw.”

One black brow lifted over his incredibly blue eyes, and his lips seemed on the verge of a smile. On any other day, she would have been tempted to smile back.

“With that perfectly clear explanation,” he said, “I’ll do my best.”

She tossed another furtive glance around, and then she pulled the paper out of her bag.

It was thin, the disposable paper from a large sketch pad folded to fit in her pack. She spread it out across the table, careful not to smudge the ink as she smoothed the creases. And then she waited.

It didn’t take him long. She knew the moment he saw what she had seen, and her heart dropped and then began to thud. He looked at her, his usually cheerful eyes narrowed with concern, and she felt her hands tremble.

“Sarah, this can’t be right. Are you sure this is right?”

“Of course. I checked the facts a dozen times before I even called you. It’s all accurate.”

“Then it has to be a coincidence.” He looked at the sheet again, his frown deepening as he ran his fingers over the words. “It has to be-”

A thud rang through the library, as if someone had dropped a book. Three more thuds followed in quick succession, and then silence. Benny glanced around, suddenly as furtive as Sarah, and then he leaned closer and lowered his voice.

“It has to-”

This time, a great creaking groan cut him off – the complaint of wood under duress, eerily familiar and unaccountably ominous. Another series of thuds followed, as if someone had pushed all the books off of a shelf. The echo of them made it hard to determine their location, but a sense of premonition had Sarah glancing over her shoulder. She could see nothing beyond the massive row of shelves at their backs, but when the creak grew into a roar, she knew it came from somewhere behind them. A thunderous crash seemed to shake the walls, and she could have sworn she felt her chair tremble.

“Oh, my god,” she said, and at the same time, Benny said, “What the hell?”

Another groan, another round of thuds. Suddenly, she realized what was happening. She looked up the shelf that stretched to the ceiling at their backs, a thick wall of dense book and dark, heavy oak.

It would kill them.

“We have to get out of here.”

She said it softly, automatically, the vocalization of a thought that was not entirely conscious. And for seconds that felt like minutes, she sat unmoving, her eyes staring at the books behind them as if she could see through them to the nightmare fast approaching. Another crash – a much louder bang – and someone in that sea of knowledge screamed. And then another boom followed by a horrific crunch.

And the scream was cut short.

Sarah jolted. For a second, overwhelming silence followed that scream, as if even the disaster itself paused out of respect for the sudden loss of life. Then the thuds came again, and Sarah shuddered.

“They’re falling,” she said. But her voice was too quiet, so she had to say it again. This time, she forced the words out through lips gone numb, a jerky statement that was nevertheless loud enough to get Benny’s attention through the din. “Someone knocked over one of the shelves, and they’re falling. We have to move, Benny. We have to move now!”

He looked at her, and she saw the understanding click through his mind in the space of a heartbeat.

He always had been quick.

And then every movement they made seemed to be punctuated by another resounding crash. Benny stood and grabbed the paper she’d brought.

Bang!

He grabbed their bags and her arm, and he yanked her around the table.

Bang!

He shouted to the study group, “Get out of here!”

Bang!

She wondered how many shelves were between them and the one that would crush them.

Bang!

And then she saw, as Benny backed her away from that wall of death, that the shelf behind their table was all that was left. She watched as the thing began to tip, and the books began to fall – thud, thud, thud-thud-thud-thud – and she shuddered. And a girl beside her screamed, and a sob seemed to tear through the racket, and she realized that someone had fallen beside their table. It was a girl, young enough to be a freshman, lying utterly still beneath the monstrosity that was about to take her life.

She’d passed out, and she was going to die unless someone did something.

Sarah darted forward, crouched low to the ground as if that could possibly prevent her from being killed under the crushing weight of the bookshelf. As she moved, she heard Benny shout, “Sarah, NO!” And then she had the girl’s hand, and she pulled with all her strength, but the girl barely moved. Sarah made a sound under her breath, a strange guttural roar that seemed to harmonize with the groan of the wood, and she pulled again. And then she saw someone grab the other hand, and she knew without looking that Benny was with her.

They yanked in concert, and the girl slid a few precious feet toward safety. The bookshelf crashed onto the table, shattering the thing as if it had been built with toothpicks. Splinters the size of fingers puffed through the air in an almost graceful display, and a sharp stake of broken wood speared past Sarah’s head. And then the bookshelf was down, stopped from crushing the freshman’s leg by the small bit of table not yet pulverized.

They tugged again, and the girl was free. Sarah stood, shaking uncontrollably, and looked out over the rubble of shelf and book.

Someone was dead in there. She’d heard them die. And if this had happened earlier in the semester – or even earlier that day – more would have lost their lives. Nausea welled within her, and under it, the terrifying fear that this had been for her.

That this had happened because of what she’d found.

The horrible, skittering sensation of being watched shivered over her skin, and she looked toward the back of the library.

And there, watching her with the eerily flat expression of the soulless, stood the law student.

He pulled his sleeve down over his arm, and she realized that he’d covered something silver that ran from wrist to elbow. He put a finger over his lips, shook his head, and walked away.

She had to go. She studied Benny for a moment – his perfectly blue eyes, his adorably floppy hair, the kind face that had drawn her in the moment she’d met him four years before. He was looking down at the freshman in concern, and she suddenly wished she could kiss him. Not a kiss of passion, but not entirely a kiss of friendship, either. He was special to her, she suddenly realized, in ways that she hadn’t even begun to understand. Because of that, she had to leave him behind.

As other students rushed over to help, Sarah silently backed away. When she was clear of the crowd, she picked up the sheet of paper that had started all of this, and for a moment, she considered destroying it. Burning it, shredding it – whatever it took to get this to stop. But she knew that wouldn’t be enough. The paper wasn’t the problem; she was. Because she knew what they didn’t want her to know. She looked at Benny again and told herself that he was safe. He didn’t know enough to be a threat to them.

And she was going to keep it that way.

She left the library without a backward glance. The cold hit her face like a sheet of ice, but the chill was welcome after the shimmering heat of panic and sick. It cooled her mind, cleared her thoughts, and she stopped on the lawn of the commons to plan her next move.

“What in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Sarah jumped and turned around to see Benny striding after her, angrily tugging his jacket on with one hand while he held his bag in the other. With a grunt of frustration, he tossed his pack toward her, where it landed with a thud at her feet. He finished pulling on his jacket and just stopped, hands on his hips and a murderous glint in his eye.

“You think you can just walk away after that?”

“Benny…” She looked over his shoulder, where campus security was already pulling up to the old marble building. “You should stay and help. You know you’ll feel guilty if you don’t. I have some things I need to take care of.”

He just looked at her for a moment, and the expression on his face had her stomach twisting. She realized he was disappointed in her, and defensiveness put her back up. But before she could attack, he asked, “You really think I’m buying that?”

And she just exploded. “You don’t understand what’s happening here, Benny!” Terror made her voice shake, but fury strengthened it. “They’re coming after me! I’ve found something that someone didn’t want me to find, and now they’re coming after me. And I won’t have you put in the middle. I won’t put you in danger that way.”

She watched, fascinated despite herself, as a vein began to throb at his temple. “You think I don’t know that?” he asked. “What is it about me that makes you think I’m that much of a fu-.” He cut himself off and took a breath. “Either you think I’m an idiot or a coward. Tell me which one it is so we can deal with it and get on with whatever the hell is happening here.”

Stunned, she realized that he was furious. Her sweet, gentle, patient Benny looked like he wanted to smash something. Completely unsure of how to handle this side of a man she’d thought she knew better than anyone else, she could only say quietly, “Neither. I…I don’t think you’re an idiot or a coward.”

He studied her for a moment longer, and the tension in his shoulders seemed to release slightly. When he nodded curtly, she realized he was still angry. “Now that that’s settled, come on. I think I know someone who can help.”

*          *          *

The bar was narrow and dark, the kind of place where career drinkers build their resume. There were two old men arguing in the back corner, and a middle-aged woman of questionable reputation sitting at the bar. Just after Sarah and Benny walked in, the door behind them opened again and a group of giggling undergrads piled in on a rush of cold air. They stopped, took one look around the bar, and filed right back out without a word spoken between the four of them. Sarah lifted a brow and turned to Benny, but he was already walking up to the prostitute.

“Hey, Mary,” he said as he leaned against the grungy wood. “How’s it going today?”

She gave a mock shiver. “It’s a cold day to work outside, Benny-boy. Might just take the night off.”

“Yeah. You get dinner yet?”

She smiled and patted his cheek. “Yeah, sweetheart. Don’t you worry about me.”

“Alright.” Benny glanced at the men in the corner and then, though he knew no one else was here, gave the whole bar another sweep. When his gaze landed on Sarah, looking so out of place in this hole in the wall and utterly confused as to why they were here, he sighed.

“You finally bring us a girlfriend?”

“No.” Benny thought of Sarah trying to ditch him at the library, and he shook his head. “No, she’s just a friend. Look, Mary, I need to talk to him. Have you seen him yet today?”

“No, honey. But I’m sure he’ll show up at some point. He always does.”

“Yeah,” Benny agreed, his heart heavy and – though he knew it was unfair – angry. He couldn’t help thinking that the one time he needed the old man to be in a bar, he wasn’t. Benny pushed the thought away. “We’ll hang out a while and see if he shows up.”

He ordered two whiskeys and motioned for Sarah to follow him to a table near the back of the bar. As they sat down, one of the old men said, “Hey, Ben, he ain’t here tonight.”

“I know,” Benny said. “But he’ll show up eventually.”

“Ayep,” the man said and went back to his dispute.

Sarah tried not to think about what might be on the cracked leather booth as she sat. It was obvious this place meant something to Benny, and she didn’t want to offend him by looking dubiously at everything she touched. It was for the same reason that she took a big gulp of the drink he set before her, sending a stream of fire down her throat and contorting her face into an involuntary expression of baffled horror.

“What is that?” she managed to wheeze.

Despite himself, Benny had to laugh at the look on her face. “Evan Williams. Sorry, this place isn’t has highbrow as the Crooked Pen.”

She stiffened at the apparent dig on her favorite bar. “I didn’t realize the Crooked Pen was highbrow.”

“No, I didn’t mean…” Benny stopped and sighed again. In one night, it seemed he’d managed to ruin the headway it had taken him four years to gain. “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I just…when you tried to shut me out, it made me wonder if…”

When his voice trailed away, Sarah forced herself to meet his gaze. He looked so miserable, her heart twisted. Suddenly, for no reason she could name, she thought of that moment in the library. When she’d thought about kissing him. Having the thought now, when the threat of danger seemed a little less real, made her flush. Still, something in her needed to know what he’d stopped himself from saying.

“Made you wonder what?”

He met her eyes, that heart-stopping blue not dimmed even in the dark of the bar, and her breath caught. But before he could answer, the door behind her opened. His gaze went over her shoulder, and his whole countenance visibly hardened.

Sarah glanced back to see who had caused this transformation, but she only saw a drunk old man stumble in from the cold. He shout-slurred, “Gimme ano’er one,” though he clearly hadn’t ordered anything here yet, and he scanned the room in a manner that seemed oddly familiar. Just as Sarah placed it, her eyes widening in surprise, the old man’s gaze landed on Benny. He grinned and said, “There’sss ma boy, the docker.” He shook his head at the mispronunciation, moved his mouth more slowly, and over corrected, “Dock-tore.”

Sarah looked at Benny, who shook his head, downed his whiskey in one gulp, and stood. “I’m not a doctor yet.” He turned to Sarah and said grimly, “Sarah, meet Henry. My father.”

*          *          *

Between the two of them, they managed to prop Henry up long enough to walk him to the diner across the street. Benny seemed almost as well known there as he was at the bar. Two servers and a line cook called out greetings when they entered, and as they were piling into a booth, one of the waitresses walked over with a pot of coffee.

“The usual, Ben?”

Benny shook his head, an uncharacteristically jerky motion. “Just hot wings tonight.”

“Actually,” Sarah said as she slipped in beside Benny, “could we split a burger and some fries?”

Benny glanced at her in surprise as the server walked away. It was their usual order when they shared a meal, but he understood that tonight it was also a gesture. Some of the tension in his shoulders eased, and he looked at his father.

“Dad, I need you to do something.”

“I know, I know,” Henry mumbled with shame and regret. “I tried, Benny, I really did. I’ll stop drinkin’, I promise-”

“No, it’s not about that. We need your help, Dad.”

“My help.” Everything about Henry went still, and he lifted watery, bloodshot eyes to Benny. Sarah wondered how long it had been since someone had asked for Henry’s help. By the change she saw come over him, she guessed quite a while. He took a long swig of black coffee, and he said as clearly as he could, “What do you need?”

Benny hesitated and glanced around the diner. When he was sure no one was near, he leaned forward and asked quietly, “You served with a man named Venquist once, didn’t you?”

Sarah looked at him in shock, and her arms wrapped protectively around her bag. She thought of the paper still hidden inside, and a chill swept over her.

Henry paled and set down his mug with a thud. “How do you know that? You shouldn’t even know that name, Benny. How do you know that name?”

“Dad, you told me. You told me a story about him. I need you to tell Sarah.”

But he was shaking his head, his expression surprisingly stern. “I should never have told you that. I should never have mentioned him. I was drunk anyway, Benny. It wasn’t real. That’s what you said, and you were right.”

“Maybe.” Benny pulled the paper from Sarah’s bag and spread it out over the table. “But the name is real, Dad. When I saw this, I thought it was just a coincidence. And then someone tried to push a bookshelf on top of us.”

Henry’s eyes moved back and forth over the sheet, an ever faster motion that started as a study and morphed into panic. His gaze seemed to lock on one spot near the top of the page, and his finger tapped there restlessly. Then he looked at Sarah with wild eyes. “You did this?”

When she nodded hesitantly, he seemed to freeze with an odd, old man kind of tremble. Then he snapped out of it and ran his hands over his face. “Put that thing away,” he said.

“Dad-”

“I’ll tell her. Just put that damn thing away before someone sees it.”

And he began to talk. As he did, the server brought their order. The caffeine from the coffee woke Henry up a little bit. The combination of fat and protein from the wings absorbed the alcohol still in his system. Between those and the story, he was soon sober enough to wish for another drink.

“You had it in there,” he said. “Not the details, of course. But you were right that he was there.”

Sarah frowned, confused. “Where?”

“Vietnam. I was eighteen when I joined the army. Poor and kid-stupid, and I couldn’t think of any other way to make money.” He looked at Benny with haunted eyes. “Killin’ people ain’t no way to make money.”

“I know, Dad,” Benny said softly, and something about the tone of his voice hinted that he’d heard this before.

“Well.” Henry looked at Sarah. “There was talk that they were pullin’ troops out, but they sent us in. And it was a bloodbath, almost from the moment we had boots on the ground. I didn’t know what I was doin’, and I got shot pretty soon in.” He patted his side, where the scar from the old bullet wound still ached when the drink wore off. “I ended up buried under a pile of men I’d met eight weeks before, wounded but alive while my squad fell all around me. Driftin’ in and out, couldn’t really make sense of what was happenin’. But I saw him.”

“Venquist,” Sarah breathed, and she put her hand on Benny’s without realizing it.

Henry shuddered. “Yeah, Venquist. Went by Ian then. Maybe he still does; I don’t know. He was part of our squad, but there was somethin’ strange about him. Somethin’…he didn’t connect, you know? He didn’t talk to no one, and no one talked to him, and after a while I just kind of forgot he was there. Until I saw him that day. Could barely focus for the blood in my eyes, but I saw him walk into the middle of that battle as if no bullet could touch him. And no bullet did. He pulled up his sleeve, had some kind of wide, silver bracelet under there that ran from his wrist to his elbow.”

Sarah started, remembering the law student, but Henry was still talking.

“He pressed a button on that thing, and this blue beam came out from it. And everything it touched just seemed to…vaporize. Just poof! into thin air. Killed every one of those men in seconds. And all I could think was….Why did he wait? If he could do that, why did he let the rest of the squad die first?”

“What happened to him?” Sarah asked when Henry fell silent.

Henry shook his head, shrugged. “He just walked away. Never saw him again. The army declared him dead, and I never said otherwise. Figured they’d just think I was crazy. Wouldn’t have changed nothin’, anyway.”

“How old was he then?”

“That’s the thing,” Henry said, his eyes coming up to Sarah’s. “He was Benny’s age, maybe a few years older. Definitely not more than thirty. So he couldn’t have been in all those places you say he was.”

“I didn’t know he was in any of the wars themselves. It never even occurred to me that he would be. That’s not what the chart is about.”

“Then what?”

She hesitated, but if they couldn’t trust Benny’s father, then who could they trust? “That man was present at the declaration of every war I could find. For the last three hundred years.”

“Well,” Benny clarified, “not that man. That name, passed down through a family, I guess.”

“No, Benny,” she said, shaking her head. She pulled another piece of paper out of her bag, this one a print-out of a faded picture from the 1920’s. “The same man. This man.” She pushed the paper forward, but she could already see by the look on Henry’s face that she was right. “Is this the man you saw in Vietnam?”

“Yes.” His voice shook, and the memories flashed through his mind, conjured by the image of a man who should never have existed. He pushed the picture away with trembling hands. “You’re saying that man, the man I saw kill more than twenty men like they were nothin’, has been alive for three hundred years?”

“Not just that. I’m saying he started every war that occurred in his lifetime.”

Henry shook his head, and he looked at Benny. “Listen, kid, I know what I saw was crazy, but this…. This goes beyond nuts. This is just plain impossible.”

Sarah began to answer, but then something moved in the window behind Henry. She couldn’t see what it was at first, but something in her, some instinct she couldn’t have voiced, had chills racing over her spine. Suddenly, the movement stopped, and what stood behind Henry came into focus.

And Sarah opened her mouth to scream.

Almost before the sound of her fear registered with Benny, the blinding glare of high beams filled his vision. Somewhere in the street that he could no longer see, an engine revved, and the roar was louder than any sound he’d ever heard a car make. The window rattled in its pane, and one of the servers behind them dropped a coffee pot. The glass shattered against the linoleum, spewing stale coffee down the aisle. Sarah’s scream cut off with a click as her jaw snapped closed, and then she whimpered something he could barely understand.

“It’s just a car, Sare,” he reassured her, though he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. The engine roared again, and the window behind Henry burst into a million prisms that refracted the light from the car in a beautiful and deadly array.

“Jesus,” Benny said. And then he understood what Sarah had tried to tell him.

Venquist.

“You saw him?” She didn’t answer, just continued to stare at the headlights now framed by shards of glass. He took her by the shoulders and shook. “Sarah! Is that him?”

It was the warmth of his hands that snapped her out of it. Strange how she could feel them through her jacket, as if the intensity of the moment had stripped away all but the most essential of sensations.

She didn’t understand what was happening here, didn’t know if they’d survive this. But she knew that there was no time now to explain.

“Come on,” she said. She grabbed her bag and slid out of the booth, pulling Henry’s hand as she moved. On some elemental level, she knew Benny moved with her. On that same primal level, she knew they were too slow.

The car surged forward, its growl a chilling sound of triumph. Henry froze under the white of those headlights, his hair frosted with bits of untreated glass, entranced as the car jumped the curb so that its hungry grill angled up toward his haggard face.

“Dad!” Benny screamed and dove toward his father, sending them both to the ground.

The instant before the car hurtled through the diner window, a flash of silver shone beside it. And from that silver, a blue ring of light burst forth on a strange reverberation of sound that seemed to pulse through the diner with physical force. The ring of blue hit the side of the car, buffeted there for a moment.

And then the car flipped over with a great wrench of metal. It landed on its roof with a horrendous crash, and the windows burst onto the street in tempered fragments.

The headlights winked out, and then the lights in the diner, and then every light on the block. And in the midst of all that dark, Sarah could still somehow see the man standing on the sidewalk. He met her eyes, and this time he didn’t bother to cover the silver cuff that covered his left forearm.

It was the law student again. And this time, he wasn’t trying to hide what he’d done.

Sarah could feel the blood drain from her face. He took a step toward her, and then another flash of blue filled the street, and he was thrown out of sight.

“Come on,” she said again. She grabbed Benny, dragging him more than helping him up, and they pulled Henry up together. “There has to be a back way out of this place. Let’s go!”

They made their way through the kitchen while the servers screamed and chilling, otherworldly booms of power filled the air. At first she couldn’t find the exit, but then a series of arrhythmic pulses of blue flashed against the back wall, highlighting the door they needed. When they spilled out into the alley behind the diner, Sarah looked desperately around. If they went left, they’d end up back on the street beside the diner. So she turned right, and she began to run.

With Benny and Henry keeping pace, they sped down back alleys, taking every turn that seemed as if it would put more distance between them and the diner. It didn’t take long for each inhalation of frozen air to become an exercise in agony. Still, when Henry held up a hand to stop and sank into the shadow of an empty house, Sarah was reluctant to pause. She looked over her shoulder warily, searching for some sign that the impossibility that had followed them to the diner had somehow found his way here, too.

Benny leaned forward, hands on his knees, and gulped in the freezing air. When he had enough breath to speak, he asked, “Was that Venquist?”

“No.” Sarah frowned and shook her head. She knew they needed to rest, but she couldn’t seem to keep her feet still, so she paced back and forth in the dim. “When I saw the car, my first thought was that Venquist was causing it, but I didn’t see him.”

Benny frowned at her phrasing. “Causing what? Are you saying he was causing whoever was driving that car to aim it for us?”

“Benny, the car was empty.” When he just stared at her, she threw her hands into the air. “I know it sounds crazy, but there was no one in the car. That thing drove itself into position, and then it tried to drive itself into the diner.”

Benny hesitated, but one of his brows rose into what she’d always affectionately called his Look of the Skeptic. Affectionately, that was, until now.

“I know what I saw,” she snapped.

He held up his hands in a gesture of peace and sat down beside his father. When Sarah continued to eat up the ground at their feet, he grabbed her hand and tugged. At the touch, Sarah stilled and took a small breath. It was his warmth again, she thought. His calm assurance settled her thoughts enough to allow her to rest. She sighed and sat before he and Henry so that they formed a triangle, but she didn’t let go of Benny’s hand. She needed his warmth for a little bit longer.

She didn’t notice the look he gave her when she held on.

“I didn’t see Venquist,” she explained slowly. “But…I saw someone else. When I walked into the library tonight, there was a law student sitting near you. Did you see him?”

He frowned and shrugged. “Maybe. Yeah, I guess. Why?”

“After the bookshelves fell, I looked back to where they’d started to come down. He was standing there. He had something silver on his arm.” She glanced at Henry. “It ran from his wrist to his elbow.”

“Venquist,” Henry said and visibly paled.

“No,” Sarah assured him. “I don’t think so. This man looked different. But he saw me looking at him, and he covered whatever was on his arm and gestured for me to keep quiet. I thought it was a threat; that’s why I left. But he followed us.”

“He was at the diner,” Benny guessed.

Sarah nodded. “I think he’s the one who stopped that car from hitting us. That thing on his arm…it has some kind of power. Like a…” She sighed in frustration. “I don’t even know how to describe it. It was like a wave of energy came out of the thing and just pushed the car over. But someone else was there, too, someone I couldn’t see. They had the same kind of power, and they used it to push him over.”

When she fell silent, Benny was quiet for long enough to make her fear he wouldn’t believe her. But then he said, “He was trying to help us.”

“Maybe,” Henry said slowly. “Or maybe he just wanted to get to you first.”

Sarah met his eyes and shuddered. She wished the same thought hadn’t already occurred to her. The fact that it had only made it seem more likely.

“So how do we find out which?”

Henry held her gaze for a long moment, and then he gave a surprisingly wicked grin. “We ask him.”

With that enigmatic statement, he stood, mumbled something about needing to make a call, and wandered a short distance away.

Sarah raised a brow. “What’s he doing?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.” When she glanced over to watch Henry, Benny studied her profile. Before he realized the thought was there, he heard himself say, “I’m sorry I never told you about him.”

Surprised, she turned back. “You don’t owe me an apology, Benny. It’s really none of my business.”

He stiffened and drew his hand from hers. “I understand.”

She realized she’d said the wrong thing. “No, you don’t. Even if it’s none of my business, I’m glad to know him. Benny…” She struggled to find the right words, and finally she decided that she couldn’t plan what she needed to say. She had to just say it. “I want you safe, maybe more than I want anything else right now. But…I’m really glad you’re here.”

He tilted his head, and his fingertips brushed lightly against her cheek. When he pulled them away, they were dotted with blood. “You’re cut. The glass from the window, I guess.”

Something in his gaze made her heart trip, and suddenly she found it hard to draw in a breath. “Benny…”

“Alright,” Henry closed his old flip phone with a snap as he walked up behind them. The sound made Sarah jump, and she realized she’d leaned embarrassingly close to Benny. She pulled back, face hot, and rose quickly to her feet. “We’re ready to roll, kids. Let’s move on out.”

“Wait,” Sarah said. “What are we going to do?”

“First, we’re gonna figure out what the hell it is that they want. And then,” Henry added with a dangerous glint in his eyes, “We decide if we’re gonna let ‘em have it.”

*          *          *

There was something almost reassuring about walking down the dark, deserted road in the middle of nowhere, especially with Henry walking protectively several feet ahead. It was the dairy farms that did it. For miles now, nothing had been on either side of them but wide open spreads of grazing land. The space and the quiet made it seem as if nothing could sneak up on them, and it was the first time Sarah had felt such since she’d discovered Venquist’s unbelievable secret.

As if he knew the direction of her thoughts, Benny asked, “How did you find out about all this? It’s nowhere near your area of study. Why were you even looking into who was in what war?”

“I wasn’t. I was just minding my own business, trying to honor our no-dissertation pact.” She bumped his shoulder with hers, trying to elicit a smile, but he was still too worried to oblige. When he instead took her hand in his, her heart did a little flip in her chest. Suddenly warm, even in the harsh wind, she continued, “I got a package in the mail yesterday morning. Well,” she corrected as she checked her watch, “the day before yesterday.”

He felt a chill at the thought of her receiving something that had brought her into this kind of danger, and his unclaimed hand clenched into a fist in response. “What was in it?”

“That picture I showed your dad. Four more of the same man, but at first I thought they couldn’t possibly be real. Standing over the body of Franz Ferdinand, dining with Hitler in 1934. With Khrushchev in ’62, and then three weeks later with JFK.” At his questioning look, she added, “Cuban Missile Crisis. He was there, and that time he was fueling both sides. Probably not the first time he’d done that,” she mused. “Anyway, there was a note with them that just said ‘Venquist.’ It was bizarre enough to catch my interest, so I started looking into it. And the same name kept popping up. In every major conflict I could find in the last three centuries, he was there. And then the fire happened, and that’s when I called you.”

“Wait a minute. What fire?”

She shook her head when she realized she hadn’t told him about that, either. How bizarre was it that an electrical fire was the least strange thing that had happened to her that night? So much so that she’d forgotten to even mention it to her best friend.

“It was the bedroom outlet again, but I wasn’t in there when it started. My desk was too small to hold everything I was finding. I was in the process of moving stuff to the kitchen when I smelled smoke. By the time I got in there with the extinguisher, everything on my desk was ruined. The laptop, my notes, the other photos. All I had left was what I’d already moved.”

He frowned. “I thought you had that outlet replaced last month. Don’t you think it’s strange that it would crap out on you like that?”

“Well…” She remembered what she’d thought she’d seen. At the time, she’d convinced herself she was being paranoid. But now… “Maybe it’s not so strange. I thought I saw Venquist, Benny. I’m not sure, because I was too busy trying to get that little clip off of the fire extinguisher to look closely, but…it looked like him. Just for a second, and then he was gone.”

“Jesus.” He stopped and just stood for a moment, as the rage began to build within him. When he looked at Sarah, his eyes were ice in the moonlight. “That’s two attempts on your life. Two times he’s tried to kill you. I swear to you right now, Sarah. He’s not going to get away with it.”

Her heart rate picked up speed at the look in his eyes, but any response she might have made was cut short by the sound of a distant engine. They looked down the road in time to see a pair of headlights rounding a curve toward them.

“Shit,” Benny said, even as Sarah was pulling him toward the shallow ditch lining the side of the road. But before they’d made it to the shadows, they realized Henry wasn’t moving.

He was just standing in the center of the road, arms outstretched, with a wide smile on his face.

“Henry, come on!” Sarah shout-whispered, even as Benny said, “Dad!”

“It’s ok, kids,” Henry reassured and patted his chest with a loud thump. “This one’s with me.”

The truck pulled close, an old red and white pick-up with a deep, dented scratch running along one side of it. When it came to a stop, a man with a grizzled white beard stepped out and gave Henry a grin of his own.

“Henry, you old bastard.”

“Jack.” Henry stepped forward and clasped the other man in one of those man-hugs that seemed to consist more of loud slaps on the back than anything else. Then he stepped back and gestured toward Benny. “My boy.”

If anything, Jack’s grin widened. “Benny,” he said and took Benny’s hand in a grip that was surely designed to maim. “And this must be your lady friend.”

“Uh…” Face warm, Benny suddenly realized he was still holding Sarah’s hand. He dropped it as if it burned and said, “Friend. Uh, this is my friend Sarah.”

Sarah flexed her hand in the sudden chill of the air, her palm still warm from Benny’s. And for some unidentifiable reason, she felt almost giddy at his sudden and obvious discomfort. The welcome lightness of heart shone in her eyes as she smiled at Jack.

He took her hand in a grip that was only slightly gentler than he’d used with Benny, and then he turned to Henry. “We gonna get this show on the road?”

*          *          *

Somehow, the night seemed darker in the truck. The headlights rendered anything beyond their beam unknowable, and the unknown, Sarah realized, was what frightened her most about this night. Then something Jack had said suddenly struck her as strange, and she frowned.

“What show?”

“Huh?” Henry asked absently, his mind still working on what lay ahead.

“Jack said we should get this show on the road. What show?”

“Oh. Well.” Henry glanced around as if to make sure they were alone, though the headlights had demolished his night vision. He wouldn’t have seen anyone in the bed of the truck if they’d been at eye level. “It seemed to me that we have two options here: go on the run, or stand and fight. It doesn’t make sense to take a stand until we know what we’re dealin’ with, so that left go on the run. Except they seem to find you wherever you go. And that’s when I realized what we need to do.”

Baffled, Sarah looked at Benny. He said, “We’re not following you, Dad.”

Henry asked Sarah, “How did you get my boy to meet you at the library?”

“I called him.” And as soon as the words left her mouth, she understood his train of thought.

“And you,” Henry said to Benny. “What did you do when you came looking for me?”

“I called the bar to see if you were there.” As understanding dawned, he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “You think they’re tracking our phones?”

Henry shrugged. “Don’t know. Figured there was one way to find out.”

“But…” Sarah had been about to suggest they destroy the phones when she realized what Henry had done. “You made a call from Benny’s phone. You wanted them to track us here.”

“But Dad, you just said we don’t know what we’re up against. Why draw them out before we’re ready?”

“The way I see it, we won’t know what we’re up against until we talk to them. And the only way to get them to talk is to use leverage. So that’s what we’re gonna do.”

*          *          *

Thirty minutes later, Sarah stood in the center of the hanger, cell phone in hand and her bag nowhere in sight. It had begun to rain, a slow, steady fall that pinged against the tin roof in a rhythm that would have soothed on any other night. Tonight, it only made her more nervous.

Tonight, it seemed that the rain’s sole purpose was to mask the sounds of approach.

She held her phone in a vice-like grip, terrified that she’d prematurely press the screen and cost them whatever leverage they might have. A light slap sounded behind her, and she jerked around with her heart in her throat. But it was only a cat coming in through a pet door. Beautiful, sleekly black, and utterly indifferent to Sarah, it circled the wheels of the Cessna twice before sauntering toward the back office to find a place to sleep. She turned back to the wide hanger doors.

And he was there.

The law student who couldn’t possibly be a law student. His sleeve was pushed up to reveal the silver cuff, and the look in his eyes was unlike anything she’d ever seen. Absolute calm, as if nothing in this world could hurt him.

And perhaps nothing could.

“What are you?” she asked. When he lifted his arm, she shot up the hand holding her cell. “Don’t! It might not look like much, but I promise you it’s a weapon you don’t want me to use.”

He lifted both hands slowly, a universal gesture of peace, and he tilted his head. At the movement, his eyes seemed to shift from grey to green, and a chill ran down her spine. “I am not here to hurt you, Sarah.”

His voice was soft, smooth, and strangely neutral. Not too high, not too deep. It was an any-voice, the kind of sound she wouldn’t have been able to describe for its singular lack of unusual characteristics.

When fear lumped in her throat, she swallowed. “How do you know my name?”

He smiled, an expression meant to reassure that was somehow only that much more chilling for its success. Distrustful of that smile, Sarah frowned and took a step back.

“I will tell you that,” he promised, “if you tell me what you intend to do with that phone.”

She took a shuddering breath and allowed herself one desperate wish for Benny. “This is insurance. I know about your friend. About Venquist. I’ve drafted an e-mail explaining everything. All I have to do is press one button, and it goes to all kinds of people you don’t want knowing about your secret. People in the government, in the press. This e-mail goes out, and your little game is over.”

“Is it?” He lifted a brow, and she thought he almost looked impressed. His eyes skipped around the hanger, and his hair – which she’d been so sure was brown – suddenly looked darkly gold. “And where are your friends? Did they leave you here alone?”

“They’re safe. They have a copy of this e-mail. If anything happens to me, they send it. But they haven’t read it,” she added quickly. “They don’t know what I know. You can leave them out of this.”

He smiled faintly, and though she was sure it was a mocking smile, it didn’t quite seem like one. His head moved to the other side, and green eyes shifted to blue.

“It is noble of you to try to protect them. Of course, they are already in this. There is nothing I can do about that. But I swear to you, I do not intend to harm them. I do not intend to harm any of you.”

“Then why are you here?”

“I am here,” he responded simply, “to protect you. My name is Lassett. I am a paladin of the Twelve Realms.”

Something about the phrase struck her as familiar. “What are the-”

A terrifyingly loud screech of metal on metal drowned out the last of her words. She glanced behind Lassett to see the side of the hanger rip away from its foundation. In the space where the metal had been, she caught a glimpse of feet and a flash of blue light, and then the wall of the hanger peeled up and back as if it were a scrap of foil. Venquist stood beyond it, a grin on his maniacal face that faded when he laid eyes on Lassett.

“This isn’t your war!” he roared, and he sent another blast from the cuff on his arm. This one pushed the rest of the hanger completely off the ground.

Behind Sarah, the Cessna came to life, the whir of the propellers harmonizing with the purr of the engine. Its door opened, and Benny called from within, “Get in!”

As if in response, the light patter of rain became a torrent. The push of air from the propellers was challenged by a gust that swept across the field, knocking Sarah back several feet. Hail began to drop from the sky, one piece the size of a golf ball cutting a line down Sarah’s brow. And then Venquist aimed his cuff toward the ground, and rocks began to shoot up and toward them with a speed near that of bullets.

“Run!” Lassett yelled, and he stepped in front of Sarah just as one of the rocks came careening toward her. It sliced through his side instead with an eerie tearing sound unlike anything she’d ever heard. A pearlescent shimmer spattered from the gash and arced through the air like a dance.

For a moment, Sarah could only stare, but Venquist wasn’t done. He sent another rock toward Lassett, this one funneled to a viciously sharp point on one side, and the thing grazed Lassett’s temple. He staggered, and Sarah instinctively caught him. And as soon as she touched him, she knew.

He wasn’t human.

He felt immaterial, almost buoyant in the growing storm, as if the wind alone could carry him away. Venquist’s grin returned, a chilling show of triumph made more pronounced by the glare of the plane’s headlights.

“Help me,” Sarah said as she backed toward the door. “He saved my life. We have to get him out of here!”

Benny reached out and grabbed Lassett by the shoulders. Sarah saw the instant that he felt what she’d felt, but he didn’t pause. He pulled Lassett easily into the plane, and Sarah scrambled up after him. As soon as the door was closed, Jack pushed the plane forward. Venquist lifted his cuff toward the Cessna, and as it began again to emanate that light, Benny curled his body over Sarah’s.

And then, suddenly and impossibly, the plane caught air.

“Shit!” Jack muttered as the controls shuddered in his hands. He struggled to process what physics dictated couldn’t happen, even as some corner of his mind registered the faint blue light under the wings. Sarah looked over Benny’s arm to see Lassett propped against the wall of the plane, one hand pressed to the wound in his side. She looked out the window to search for Venquist, but it took her a moment to find him. When she saw him, she let out a small, involuntary, “Oh.”

He was on his back, pinned under Jack’s truck and pelted by the product of his own magic. But even as the hail rained down on him, he aimed his cuff toward the plane and shot one last burst of energy.

“Look out!” Sarah screamed as the blue angled toward them. Lassett opened the door to the stormy sky and aimed his own cuff, and he sent one more defensive blast.

And then he passed out.

*          *          *

Dawn crested the horizon just as Jack settled the plane on the banks of the Little Miami River. Sarah and Benny pulled Lassett out onto the grass, and then the four of them simply stood and stared.

A stream of iridescent white leaked from the wound in his side, but it didn’t quite pool on the ground. Instead, it seemed to dissipate slowly, a gentle glide of dust on the air, a beautiful shimmer in the delicate morning light.

“Is it blood?”

“I don’t know,” Sarah replied, though it didn’t quite register with her who’d asked the question. She knelt beside Lassett and reached with trembling hands to lift his shirt.

“Don’t touch it,” Benny said in a near whisper, as if afraid to wake the being on the ground.

“We might need to clean it,” she argued softly. “Or stitch it, or…I don’t know.”

The sight of the wound was even more shocking than the strange lifeblood. The cut was deep and perfectly smooth, the edges of flesh so even as to seem fake. And something about the singularly neutral feel of his skin caused Sarah’s heart to flutter wildly. It was one thing to suspect that this creature wasn’t human, and she’d certainly thought of almost nothing else during their flight.

But it was another thing entirely to be faced with incontrovertible evidence.

As she pulled her fingers away, her eyes fell on the blood-dust. As if her hand had a will of its own, she felt it move toward the stuff even as a part of her mind screamed for it to stop. And then her fingertips were immersed in it, and a wash of sorrow and joy and powerful lightness filled her. She pulled her hand back with a gasp as tears welled in her eyes.

“Sarah?”

She realized Benny had sunk to his knees beside her, and she buried her face in his shoulder. As his arms came around her to soothe, she whispered, “He’s special. He’s not supposed to die here; this isn’t his place.”

“What do you mean?” When she didn’t answer, he pulled away to look at her face. Cupping her cheek with one hand, he said gently, “Sarah, talk to me. It’s going to be ok; just talk to me.”

“Benny, that’s not blood. It’s him.” She shook her head, and a tear dropped onto her cheek. “The body is just a shell, a…a container. It’s holding him in place, and now that it’s broken, he’s slipping away.”

Benny looked down as Lassett as her words sunk in. And then he looked at Henry. “What do we do, Dad?”

Henry looked at Jack and then down at the body on the ground. Finally, he said, “I guess we wake him up.”

It took handfuls of ice cold river water to wake him. After the third shock of wet, Lassett sputtered to life with a great, wheezing gasp and his chest bowed into the air. His eyes wheeled wildly, their color shifting through the hues on the spectrum with a speed fast enough to make Sarah dizzy. Then they landed on her, and the color change slowed, and his gaze came into focus.

“You’re hurt,” she said quickly. “We don’t know what to do.”

He touched his side with an oddly slow, drunken movement. When he pulled his hand away to see the shimmer of white that rested there, he shuddered. The use of his cuff made quick work of the gash there and on his temple, and in a matter of seconds, the wounds were closed.

His eyes drifted shut almost immediately. Sarah thought he’d lost consciousness again, but after a moment, he said without opening his eyes, “I owe you my gratitude. You saved my life.”

She let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and she said, “Consider us even.”

*          *          *

Jack rummaged through the plane for food while Henry and Benny worked on building a fire. Sarah’s lips burned with questions she knew would have to wait for the others. When Lassett aimed his cuff at the river and three fish floated up out of the water to land gently at Benny’s feet, Sarah considered her restraint to be of Herculean proportions.

“What are you?” she asked him for the second time, once they were all seated around the fire with the fish crackling comfortingly in the heat.

Lassett repeated his previous answer: “I am a paladin of the Twelve Realms.”

Benny frowned. “Do you mean the geography thing?”

Weak as he was, Lassett still managed to smile. “No, although there is a certain symmetry between your world and the exoverse.”

“Exoverse. Wait…are you saying that the Twelve Realms exist outside of this universe? Or…”

“Or they contain it,” Sarah guessed, picking up on Benny’s train of thought. “Our universe is one of the realms, isn’t it?”

Lassett nodded. “Very good. Your universe is the Twelfth Realm. Also known as the Corporeal Realm, and sometimes as the Realm of Realities.”

A rush of awe and wonder swept through Sarah, an incredible mix that left no room for skepticism. “Which realm are you from?”

“None. I am a product of the exoverse at large, a being with no beginning and no end. I have only endless alternative states of existence.”

“Only,” Benny said with something akin to distrust.

Sarah glanced at him, but he shook his head and waved his hand as if to tell her to continue. She turned back to Lassett. “You called yourself a paladin. That means a protector, right? A guard?”

“It means defender of a cause,” Henry supplied. He looked at Lassett with the same distrust in Benny’s eyes. “What cause do you defend?”

Lassett accepted a makeshift plate of fish and crackers from Jack, and he bit into the crisp and flake of the meat before he answered. “I defend progress. There are only three realms in which such a construct even exists, and it is the most vital here. Everything within this realm requires movement and growth. When these things are lost, more than life dies. Ideals, possibilities. Alternate futures. I preserve the opportunity for their existence.”

“How?”

“By changing what I can. By setting events in motion using the tools I have been given so that the best possibility of progress – with all other factors considered – is opened to the realm. The Twelve Realms exist within varying levels of solidity. This realm, your realm, is the most solid, the most corporeal. That is why I wear this.” He gestured with the cuff on his arm. “It allows me to control all things of ultimate solidity – with one exception. I cannot direct the bodily or mental movement of beings with conscious thought. I cannot affect free will.”

“You’re talking about humans.”

That ghost of a smile graced Lassett’s face again. “Humans, among others. But as Venquist has targeted humans, it is to you that I must turn for assistance.”

“Is that why you sent that package to Sarah?”

Sarah looked at Benny in surprise, taken aback as much by the accusation in his tone as by the meaning of his question.

“Yes,” Lassett answered. “She can help me stop him.”

“How?” Sarah asked.

“No,” Benny interrupted before Lassett could respond. “This is bullshit. You’re telling me you’re some magical creature who can move tons of metal and heal what’s basically a bullet wound with the push of a button, you can transport out of this universe, and somehow you need us to stop one of your own? No deal, we’re out. Come on, Sare.”

“Benny.” She said it softly, and when he shook his head and started to rise, she put her hand on his knee. He stared at it for a moment, that gentle touch that was so new and somehow felt so natural, and then he met her eyes. “I understand why you’re mad, and I’m glad you’re looking out for me. But I need to hear what he has to say.”

He held her gaze for several heartbeats, a muscle ticking in the corner of his jaw. It took everything he had not to simply pick her up and carry her away, but he could see in her eyes that she needed to do this.

So his only choice was to stay with her and hope he could protect her when the time came.

When he nodded curtly, Sarah took his hand and turned to Lassett. “Venquist is one of you?”

Regret passed over Lassett’s face, clearly deep enough to cause even Benny’s heart a twinge of sympathy. “Yes, he was one of us. A defender of progress, like me. Somehow, sometime, he lost his way. And now he seeks only one end.”

“And what is that?”

“He wants to create the thirteenth realm.”

Sarah frowned. “The thirteenth realm…. He wants to create another universe?”

Lassett shifted against the tree trunk, feeling with some discomfort how the living shell he embodied digested and used the fuel he’d consumed. “There is a story among our kind that such a thing will happen. That a paladin will gain too much power and control, and that wielding that power, he will produce such possibilities as cannot be contained within the current realms. That these possibilities will have nowhere to go but out and will by necessity coalesce and then burst forth, generating a new and wholly different realm.”

Sarah lifted a brow. “That doesn’t sound like a real thing.”

Lassett smiled again. “It is…a myth, I believe you would say. A reminder to those of us who guard progress that the product of our work might be beyond anything we’ve ever considered or experienced. A warning to tread lightly, to know always that we influence something far greater than ourselves. But, above all, it is a reminder to not interfere once we’ve set events in motion, for progress has its own end, and it is not for us to judge the value of that end.”

“And Venquist took that story to heart? He believes that he’s going to be the paladin to create the thirteenth realm.”

“And that’s why the wars,” Benny realized, intrigued despite himself. “He thinks that in order to create these uncontainable possibilities, he has to start with wide-scale events. And nothing gets lots of people involved quite like a war.”

Lassett nodded somberly. “Wars are the most evocative of events, to be used sparingly and only when a lack of war limits possibilities to the extent that progress is not only halted, but reversed.”

“Wait,” Henry cut in, voice rough and hands trembling. “You all start wars?”

Lassett’s eyes shifted rapidly in color, blue then green, green then brown, brown then gold then black then blue then green. And Sarah realized that underlying that change in appearance was a sorrow few humans could emulate. It was the sorrow of a being that had sent thousands, if not millions, of men to their deaths. Even if that act was for the greater good, for an overarching purpose that transcended the life of one person, it came with a toll so huge as to send the payer into irreparable moral debt.

“I have started wars,” Lassett confirmed, but the words were unnecessary. His face had said it all.

Though she wasn’t entirely sure he deserved it, Sarah couldn’t quell the sympathy she felt for Lassett. And so when she changed the subject, it was as much an act of mercy as an attempt to facilitate progress of their own.

“How do we stop Venquist?” She glanced at Benny and then back again. “What could I possibly do to help that you can’t already do?”

“Perhaps nothing,” Lassett answered. When Benny tensed, Sarah squeezed his hand to signal patience, and Lassett continued. “Before, I told you that we cannot affect any creature of free will. That holds true even of paladins, even when those paladins have lost their way. But I have hope that you will be able to affect his will.”

Baffled, Sarah frowned. “How?”

“As a human, you are essentially a charge of Venquist’s. A being whose future he has been purposed with guarding, to the extent that that future is likely to promote progress. And I can assure you, your future is likely to promote progress.”

Goosebumps spread over Sarah’s flesh, but she shook her head. “I still don’t get how I could impact his free will.”

“He has attacked you directly. In doing so, he has violated numerous tenets of our kind, but more than that, he has rendered you an oppressed. A being under the care of another whose safety has been violated by that same caregiver. Under our philosophy, the oppressed have been deemed those whose progress has been hindered most egregiously and are, therefore, most in need of interference.”

He lifted the arm wearing the silver cuff. Though he said nothing and touched nothing on the cuff, the thing opened with an almost mechanical whine. Upon its release, he slid it off and handed it to Sarah. The moment she touched it, a buzz rushed through her body – the physical sensation of a power never before felt by a human.

“This is called a foil,” he explained. “It is normally only activated by the skin of a paladin, but I have been told that in rare cases, an oppressed might be able to use it. It is my hope that this foil will recognize your status as an oppressed and will allow you license with its use. In particular, I hope that it will grant you a license that has never been granted to paladins: the license to affect your oppressor.”

Awed at what she held, chilled by what she thought he was asking her to do, she raised wide eyes to Lassett. “You want me to use this on Venquist?”

“I want you to use that to banish him from the Twelve Realms.”

*          *          *

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Sarah tore her gaze away from the cuff in her hands and looked up at Benny. He’d pulled her to the side, out of earshot of the others, his face dark with worry. And she was suddenly struck by the change that had come over him since all this had begun. Or perhaps that part of him that had always been there, but that she hadn’t seen it before now. She found herself taking a breath as a feeling of heat swept her, and she had to clear her throat before she could respond.

“Of course I’m not sure. But what’s the alternative?”

“Let someone else do this,” he insisted. “Sarah, what he’s asking you to do…you don’t know what the consequences will be. You might kill Venquist. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve it, but have you thought about what that would do to you? You saw my dad. He drinks every night to forget the men he’s killed, and that happened forty years ago. This will change your life. Do you want that?”

“No!” She let out her breath in a huff and deliberately lowered her voice. “No, I don’t want that. I don’t want to get into a battle with someone who has Venquist’s powers, and I don’t want to be responsible for sending someone to their death – or whatever the hell will happen to him if he’s banished. But that still doesn’t answer my question. What’s the alternative?”

Benny opened his mouth, but he didn’t have an answer for her. He knew she wouldn’t leave this to someone else; she just wasn’t built that way.

And he would never have fallen in love with her if she was.

He gentled his hand, ran it down her arm. And then brought it up to brush over her cheek. Her dark green eyes seemed suddenly liquid in the shade, her skin made delicate by the circles forming under them. She needed sleep, he thought. She needed sleep, and safety, and that future Lassett had hinted held a multitude of possibilities.

“Let me do it.”

“Benny-”

“You can’t wield the foil,” Lassett said.

Sarah jumped, and Benny dropped his hand and looked over at the paladin in frustration. “This was a private conversation.”

Lassett seemed surprised, and his coloring shifted twice as he said, “I apologize. I sometimes forget your social conventions.”

Benny sighed and waved away the offense. “Why can’t I use the thing?”

“Venquist has not yet directly affected your fate.”

“So then let’s get him to do that. How do we make that happen?”

Lassett inclined his head toward Sarah. “If she dies through Venquist’s actions, then your fate will have been affected. At that point, the foil will accept your right to its use.”

“If she dies? What the-”

Sarah put a hand on his arm. “Benny, that won’t happen. You won’t let it happen. And Lassett won’t let it happen.” She turned to Lassett, her expression grave. “Will you?”

He bowed to her as if in agreement. It was not lost on either Sarah or Benny that a bow was in no way close to a promise.

But again, Sarah thought, what was the alternative? So she asked Lassett, “Will you teach me how to use this?”

*          *          *

They practiced in the clearing by the river, drenched in the sunlight and spurred by the need to move quickly. The controls for the foil were simple: she aimed the thing at what she wanted to affect and then simply thought of what she wanted to have happen.

The implementation, on the other hand, was extremely difficult.

Mental control of the foil required supreme focus of thought, a feat made nearly impossible by the sheer importance of what she was trying to do. Every time she settled on a command, her thoughts drifted to Benny, or to her family, or to Venquist himself, and the foil would become wildly unpredictable.

It helped to use her other hand to steady the thing, as she’d seen Lassett do in the past. But real control came from the mind, and until she mastered that, she’d have no chance against a seasoned paladin like Venquist.

When they broke for lunch, Benny began to walk over to Sarah. Henry waved him away and put his arm around her shoulders.

“Take a walk with me, kid,” he said, nudging a smile out of her.

They walked along the river bank, returning the waves of three kayakers who passed. When they were out of sight, Henry asked, “How’s it goin’?”

She shook her head. “I can’t do it. Not even the simplest things, like getting a pebble off the ground. If I can’t move a rock two inches into the air, how am I ever going to get Venquist to leave this entire universe?”

“What seems to be getting’ in the way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. Tell me.”

She sighed and met his eyes. They were enough like Benny’s to calm her, and she found herself saying, “I get scared. I think about what will happen if I fail. About what Benny would do if I die, about what Venquist will do to my family, and I just…I can’t do it. And it doesn’t matter how hard I focus; I can’t keep those thoughts from popping in there.”

Henry nodded and looked out over the water, lips pursed in thought. After a moment, he said, “Maybe you don’t have to keep ‘em out. Maybe trying to fight all that is what’s givin’ you trouble.”

“But Lassett told me to empty my mind. He said that’s how it’s done.”

“Well.” Henry scratched at the graying stubble on his chin. “Lassett’s not human, now, is he? Maybe what works for him ain’t what’s right for you. Here, bring me that branch over there.”

She looked where he pointed. There was a large piece of a branch about twenty feet down river. When she began to walk toward it, he stopped her.

“No, use the cuff.”

She sighed and aimed the foil. Then she took another breath and tried to focus her thoughts on the branch. She cleared her mind of every thought but that piece of birch, imagined it lifting from the ground, floating gently toward them. The thing quivered on the ground-

-And then Benny’s face popped into her mind, the look in his eyes when he’d touched her cheek. She tried to block the image, but it was too late. The branch stilled on the ground.

“Now, don’t give up,” Henry cajoled. “Try again, but this time, don’t fight whatever pops into that genius brain of yours. Just let the thoughts flow. You have thoughts for a reason; that’s the way your mind is supposed to work. Just let them happen.”

She tried again. Just like before, Benny’s face popped into her mind the moment the branch began to shimmy on the ground. This time, she didn’t fight the image. She let it rest there, a calming, centering thought, while the rest of her was focused on the branch.

And the thing rose into the air, a gravity defying miracle that made her whoop in triumph.

“It worked! It worked!” She hugged Henry, and then she ran back to the rest of the group. “It worked,” she told them, and she threw her arms around Benny.

He hugged her back, burying his face in her hair for a moment before releasing her. When he pulled back to study her face, he couldn’t help but return her grin.

And for the first time, she began to believe that they might prevail.

*          *          *

“We’ve been here four days.” The deep rumble of Jack’s voice disguised his unease, but even in the firelight, it was clear in his face. “If we’re not careful, Venquist is going to find us before we get the chance to go on the offensive. Sarah, girl, I know you needed to learn how to use that thing. But target practice is only going to get you so far. I think it’s time we go hunting.”

“We’ll go when she’s ready,” Benny asserted before Sarah could respond. “Pressure is only going to slow that process down. I know you’re worried, Jack, but you have to back off.”

To prevent an argument, Lassett said quietly, “Venquist will not find us before we are ready. The foils cannot track one another, and only the Invigilators know where we are. They will not tell him.”

Sarah lifted a brow. “Invigilators?”

Lassett only shook his head. “That is a story for another day. But Jack is right. It is time that we seek out Venquist. You are ready for this battle,” he assured her. “There is nothing left for me to teach you. With practice, your skills might improve incrementally, but the potential benefit of such change is debatable. I believe the time has come to devise a plan.”

“I thought you had a plan,” Henry put in, frowning. “She’s going to send him out of this realm.”

“Can you even do that?” Benny asked Sarah.

“I did it today.” She looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes while the memory of that was still fresh in her mind. She would never be able to explain to another human being what it felt to send something – anything – outside their realm of existence. To send inanimate objects had been strange, producing an utterly unpleasant kind of shifting inside of her, a sense that she’d upset the natural order of things. To send a living thing, even just a plant, had been immeasurably more horrifying.

She dreaded taking that action against a sentient being – even one as foul as Venquist.

Benny recognized the look on her face, though he’d never experienced anything like its source. He put his hand over hers, and she gave him a weak but grateful smile.

“So we want this to happen on our terms,” he said, squeezing Sarah’s hand. “We need to pick the location, set up the chain of events so that they go the way we choose. And then we bring Venquist to us.”

“Yes,” Lassett agreed in his calm, understated way. His eyes shifted in color as they measured Benny, and he inclined his head in a gesture of respect. “You will be there.”

“Of course,” Benny said, even as Sarah said, “No.”

“Sarah.” Benny met her eyes with that show of strength that still had the power to take her by surprise. “You asked me to understand why you couldn’t walk away from this. You have to understand why I can’t.”

She swallowed, her fear suddenly and quite intensely amplified, and then she nodded. “We need a place far away from people. I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

“And it needs to be open,” Henry put in. “So we can see him coming.”

Sarah shook her head and gestured with the foil. “He can basically teleport with this thing. We might not know he’s there until he’s just…there.”

“So then we need to be ready,” Benny concluded. “Once he’s there, what do we do?”

“Hide the foil from him,” Lassett told Sarah. “What we are trying to do has never been attempted before. As long as we maintain the element of surprise, he will assume you to be defenseless. And you must let him strike first. This will ensure that the foil recognizes your right to use it against a paladin.”

“What’s to stop him from killing her with the first attack?”

“The blow does not have to land to be recognized. As soon as he launches any sort of attack against Sarah, she will be able to defend herself. And then,” he shifted his gaze to Sarah, and the golden brown slid silkily into green, “you counterstrike. Once you, an oppressed, send him out of the Twelve Realms, he will never be able to return.”

“So where do we take our stand?” Henry asked.

“We can use the farm.” Jack leaned forward, far more comfortable with talk of action than with the wait that preceded it. “I’m the only one who lives there, and there’s no one else around for miles.”

“Perfect. How do we get him to come to us? Do we call those…the…”

“Invigilators,” Lassett replied with a small smile. “I could contact them, but such a thing takes time. I would have to leave this realm to do so, which requires the use of the foil. You would be unprotected in my absence.”

“We can use the phones,” Benny suggested. “I thought we might need them eventually, so I took them apart instead of destroying them. They’d be easy to fix. All I did was turn them off, remove the GPS and SIM cards, and take out the batteries.” When the others just stared at him, he shrugged sheepishly. “It might have been overkill.”

 Sarah smiled, a far brighter gesture than the one she’d given him minutes before. It was one of her sweet, appreciative smiles, the kind that was only for them, and for three heartbeats, he forgot where they were. He forgot what they were doing, forgot what was to come. Looking at that smile, at the way it lit her eyes so beautifully, he realized that this was a moment. A point in time that he would always remember, that he would visualize in the future when he needed to simply see her face.

And abruptly, he realized what a fool he’d been. He’d wasted the last four years of his life watching her from the seemingly impassable distance of friendship, too afraid of losing that friendship to risk asking for more. And now they were on the cusp of something unfathomable. They were actually planning a scenario in which she would risk her life, and all his fear and hesitation suddenly seemed so childish.

And unforgivably stupid.

“Sounds like we got ourselves a plan,” Henry said, knowing his son well enough to understand the look on his face. “I think it’s time we all turn in. We got ourselves a big day tomorrow.”

*          *          *

Benny lay on his back, staring at the stars – an impressive array that should have brought him peace. Instead, he struggled to hold down his dinner.

Since they’d been here, he’d been lulled into a false sense of calm. Watching Sarah train, talking to his father – something he’d come to realize was an entirely different experience when Henry was sober. And, he understood now as an awful fear churned in his gut, believing on some unspoken level that a hero would swoop in to save them all. That this fight, which couldn’t possibly be a human fight, would be taken out of their hands.

And then he wouldn’t have to watch the love of his life put herself in harm’s way to stop a psychotic killer.

If the asshole had had the decency to come after Benny instead, then he would be the one taking a stand tomorrow. And Sarah would be safely far away. It was a small comfort that he’d be there when Venquist attacked. There was no way he was going to let that first strike get close to hurting Sarah.

But that just didn’t seem to be enough.

Giving up on sleep, he rose to take a walk along the river. If he couldn’t get any rest, then at least he could figure out all the ways he might need to protect Sarah tomorrow, so that she could do what she’d set out to do.

*          *          *

Sarah heard the rustle as Benny stood. They’d taken to sleeping next to one another, a habit she secretly thrilled in. When he didn’t return after a few minutes, she walked to the river’s edge to check on him. She found him easily, a silhouette in the moonlight that was familiar enough to warm her heart and mysterious enough to give it a little flutter. Taking a moment to relish the feeling, she just watched him. And then she walked over.

“You okay?”

Her voice was soft in the dark, a little worried, a little sleepy. At the sound of it, Benny sighed. “Yeah. Just couldn’t sleep.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

He studied her face. Even in the moonlight, he could see the circles under her eyes. The last thing he needed to do was add to her worry.

“I just can’t stop thinking about…” He paused, letting her mind conjure all the things that could have kept him up. And then he finished, “A shower. I don’t think I’ve ever smelled so bad in my life.”

When she laughed in surprise, he smiled, immensely glad simply to have brought her some humor on the eve of such an event.

“I think we all smell terrible. Trying to bathe in the river probably only made it worse. It’s gotten to where I don’t even notice it anymore.”

Benny smiled. “Maybe that’s all the weapon we need. The five of us can just surround Venquist and banish him with our collective stench. Except maybe Lassett. I don’t think he sweats.”

“He sweats,” she supplied. “I’ve seen it. I think his body works just like ours, except that it’s not quite…real. And his blood is actually his soul. Or something like that.”

“I can’t even wrap my head around it. And I don’t know why, but it totally weirds me out that he eats.”

Sarah laughed again, tears coming to her eyes. “I know. And what was with the Invigilators? What the hell was that?”

Benny shook his head, grinning. “Don’t even ask. I don’t want to know. This is already too much for me to process.”

Caught up in the moment, he ran a hand over her hair. Imagining what it smelled like after she washed it almost brought a fresh wave of hilarity mingled with the nostalgia. Then her smile softened, deepened, and he was reminded of that moment by the fire. Giddiness quieted, and he took her hand.

“Walk with me?”

His heart was starting to beat uncomfortably hard in his chest. He knew what he wanted to say. He’d been planning it for years, choosing the perfect words, the perfect setting, the perfect time. And now, when he was faced with the knowledge that there might never be a better time, all those plans seemed to have dissipated.

And he was left with only a pounding heart, the sound of the river, and the feel of her hand warm in his.

“I keep thinking about the movies,” she said, unwittingly granting him a reprieve that was not entirely welcome. “You know, how any time they show you the plan beforehand, something always goes wrong. It’s only when you don’t know what’s going to happen that things seem to work out.”

When Sarah felt a tug on her hand, she realized Benny had stopped walking. She turned to find him staring at her, and he looked quite simply struck.

“I have to tell you something,” he said, and it was as if the words had been pushed from his chest. “I’ve been wanting to for years, and I…. But I was…” He stopped, took a breath.

And the words simply came.

“I’m in love with you.” Her mouth popped open, a tiny “O” of surprise that looked utterly kissable, and his blood rushed. “I have been since the day I met you. I should have told you, but I didn’t want to lose you. And since this started, I’ve been kicking myself for that. For wasting four years of holding you, being with you, being your person.” He touched her cheek and saw with no small amount of fear that tears had welled in her eyes. “If you’ll let me, the moment you send that asshole into oblivion, I’m going to make up for lost time.”

Sarah couldn’t get her breath. She couldn’t think through the feeling coursing through her. Couldn’t, for the life of her, have said a word. She managed, somehow, to force her head into a small nod. He smiled, nerves transforming into joy. And then his smile shifted into a wicked and surprisingly sexy grin, and she shivered.

And then he kissed her.

It was more than a meeting of the lips; that was certain. But oh, there was something to be said for the sheer passion of the kiss. The feel of his arms around her, the things he was doing with his mouth that inexplicably made her knees go weak. Shockingly, deliciously, she had to hold onto his neck to stay upright.

And tunneling through and over and around it all was the knowledge – the utter certainty – that he had always been, and always would be, her person.

And then he was ripped away from her.

Sarah had one heartbeat to process the sight of Benny being flown through the air, wrapped in an orb of unbreakable blue. Another heartbeat to recognize Venquist, floating over the river, with a horrible smile that seemed to break the lines of his face. She said No with lungs still light on air from the kiss.

And then Benny vanished.

“NO!” She aimed her foil at Venquist, instinct and training taking over thought, anguish, and fear.

Venquist’s smile widened, and then he vanished, too. In a flash, the stories she’d heard and the things she’d seen over the last few days flashed through her mind. Soldiers being vaporized with a flash of blue light. Possibilities so overwhelming that they could not be contained within this realm.

Venquist’s mad plan to develop a new and wholly different universe.

And she knew where he’d taken Benny. Desperate, unwilling to believe that she might be wrong, Sarah aimed the foil at herself.

And then – with a mix of thought, magic, and faith – she sent herself into the fabled thirteenth realm.

*          *          *

Silent.

Empty.

Weightless.

A sheen of white that seemed to press against the eyes, revealing nothing.

A complete lack of air, accompanied by the oddly insufficient presence of mind to fear suffocation.

A shadow – or a face? Featureless but for solidly brown orbs that seemed like eyes, membranous skin the color of rain, a whispered question that sounded only in her head in a language that was a mere continuum of muffled sound.

A push against her chest: solid, like the heal of a hand with the force of a tank.

A tumble backward that felt impossibly stationary: no physical input that her body moved, no visible proof – but her mind was utterly certain.

Then: pop!

And she was standing on the river bank. Her lungs convulsively sucked in air, and her knees threatened to buckle at the sudden gravity. Venquist floated above the water, unmindful of her, his face lit with chilling glee.

Benny lay on the ground beside her, free from the blue, terrifyingly still.

“Benny!”

She knelt beside him, yelled for Lassett and Henry though she didn’t hear herself make a sound. Even as they clamored through the undergrowth toward her, she was checking Benny’s pulse with shaking fingers.

“He is alive,” Venquist said as the others arrived, his eyes shifting slowly, never settling on one thing before they moved to examine something else. He added absently, “If I had killed him, you would not have done what I wanted you to do.”

His voice drifted toward her, an odd echo that seemed to fragment and hover in the air. She suddenly realized that nothing was as it should be. The light of the moon looked broken, sparkling in miniscule pieces that fluttered away with the push of her breath. A whisper flittered through the air around her: a sort of buzzing with no discernible source. And…

Something was drifting away from her skin.

Thin tendrils of…color. She ran her fingers through it, and her heart was shot through with heat and light, with passion, love, hope, fear, rage. The color was seeping from everything: the grass, the trees, the water. Even Benny seemed to emit a trail of light, every strand of it moving gently upward.

She turned to Venquist in horror. “What have you done?”

And he finally looked at her, the wonder still clear in his eyes. He cocked his head, as if she were the most curious thing he’d ever seen. And he said, “You still do not understand.”

“Understand what?”

“I did not do this.” He smiled, and his eyes rose slowly toward the sky. She followed his gaze, and her breath left her.

The night was torn.

A great, reaching gash seemed to bleed upward into a black so absent of color that it consumed all that drifted toward it. The sky was rent down the middle, the stars simply…gone. And in their place was a vast nothing. The wisps of color seeping away from everything she could see were drifting up toward that orifice, as if the very essence of the world was departing.

“What is that?” she asked on a hitch of breath.

Venquist’s smile faded, as if even he was frightened by the phenomenon before them. “Extraction.”

“Extraction.” Beside her, Lassett’s voice was cold and flat in a way no human could produce. “You could not have done such a thing.”

“What….” Her breath hitched again. The air was growing thin, she realized. Drifting upward toward that vacuum, so that what remained grew less breathable by the second. “What does that mean?”

Lassett asked Venquist in that awful voice, “Have you done it, then? Have you destroyed this realm for the sake of another?”

Henry looked up, Benny’s head on his lap. Sarah stared at Venquist, her hand clutching Benny’s lifeless fingers convulsively. Jack cursed, but it was a pointless, ineffectual sound.

Venquist shook his head, barely aware of them now. He said to Lassett, “I told you, I did not do this.”

And then he aimed his foil at himself and shot up toward the rip in the sky.

“What’s extraction?” When Lassett didn’t answer, Sarah grabbed his arm. That strange feeling that he was not human – that he was other – swept her, but she ignored it. When his shifting eyes turned to her, she asked, “What’s going on?”

“I believe that,” he gestured toward the laceration above, “is a gateway to the thirteenth realm. It is taking what it needs from the realm that birthed it. Eventually, it will turn all of this potential into something utterly different from anything in your experience.”

“Are you saying it’s feeding off of us? You have to stop it!”

His eyes flitted uncontrollably from one color to the next, a visible spectrum of distress. “I am afraid I cannot. Only the foil that created the gateway can close it. Only Venquist can stop this now.”

Panic reared within her, blackening her vision at the edges. The buzz around her was growing louder, and she found herself raising her voice to compete. “There has to be something you can do.”

But he only watched her, the sadness in his eyes intolerable to see.

“Then I’ll get Venquist. I’ll make him stop this.”

“You cannot. Venquist has gone into the thirteenth realm. If you follow him, you will die.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” Lassett insisted. “It is a different universe. Most of the Twelve Realms do not support life such as yourself. If you were to try to visit them, you would be decimated upon arrival – with no sign that you had ever attempted entrance. The thirteenth realm might be so alien as to be completely unsupportive of your life form.  The only way to know would be to go there, an endeavor which you would almost certainly not survive.”

“What other option do we have?”

“No,” Henry said before Lassett could respond. “No ‘other.’ You’re talkin’ about this like you’re thinkin’ about tryin’ it, and that ain’t gonna happen, sweetheart. Benny would never forgive me if I let you die on my watch.”

“Henry, if I do nothing, he won’t survive long enough to be mad at you.”

Unwilling to accept an untenable choice, Henry’s gaze turned fierce. “Ain’t happenin’, Sarah.”

Sarah looked at Lassett, but he only shook his head. The noise was decibels louder than it had been only seconds before; the air was less and less accessible. The hole in the sky was growing, the black steadily overcome by the offerings of the twelfth realm until it was shot through with light and pigment. A great, dark mass moved across it, a blue-black ripple that blotted all else beyond it, and an odd, unearthly wail shuddered across their sky. Utterly chilled, Sarah looked at Benny and wondered if she was just supposed to sit here and watch as their world was destroyed.

She touched the foil still on her arm, her gaze turned up toward that steadily increasing chasm. She said, “The hell with this.”

And she stood and pointed her foil toward the gateway.

Her eyes glowed otherworldly green in the oddly fragmented light. Color rose from her skin, shimmered away from her hair, feathered through her breath. Her essence, drifting away to fuel a universe that never should have been.

And her foil began to emit light.

It was strong, true, a brilliant blue that shone straight and didn’t fragment like the rest of the world. It was not affected by the pull of the new universe above them, and so it didn’t falter on its path toward the rip in the sky. It shone there against that gash, the color so bright that it burned.

And the tear in their universe began to close.

It started with the tinier shreds in the fabric of the sky. They sealed themselves together with hot white flashes of light that looked like a lightning storm might if one could watch it from a thousand miles away. It gave them all the impression that that hole was far more immense – and far more distant – than any of them had realized.

Behind her, Lassett whispered something that sounded like, “Impossible,” but Sarah barely noticed. It took every ounce of her concentration, all of her strength, to keep that blue light working. In the back of her mind was the fear that if she were to let up, even for a second, the gateway would realize that she didn’t have the right to affect it. The whole thing would open up again – perhaps even wider than before.

Suddenly, a pulse of blue that was not her own shot through the gap. She had a split second to understand that Venquist was back before he materialized in front of her.

And then he aimed his foil toward the tree beside her, and the massive oak began to topple onto her.

Sarah turned her foil toward the tree and pushed it away, and the thing lifted up into the air and fell on its side with a gigantic crash. The debris puffed into the air like a cloud, and Sarah was reminded of the table which had splintered in the library days before. Only this time, the bits of tree, soil, and leaf began to float, gently separating from gravity in an ever upward drift toward another realm.

Sarah had been right. Without the power of her foil, the gash was indeed starting to widen again. But before she could try to close it, Venquist began to attack her in earnest. Boulders, trees, waves of river water. The moment she deflected one weapon, another rose to take its place. The barrage was incessant, inescapable, and she barely had time to defend herself. As her strength began to wane and her reaction time to slow, she realized he might defeat her simply by wearing her down.

And that was unacceptable.

Though it left her vulnerable, she aimed her foil at Venquist. The shock registered on his face a split second before she fired. A rock the size of a watermelon slammed into her shoulder, battering the bone with tremendous force, just as the light of her foil speared toward him. The deflection prevented her strike from sending him out of the Twelve Realms, but it did propel him through the air. He landed on the opposite river bank hard enough to rip his living shell. Bits of his life dust shimmered in the air around his body as he stood.

Unmindful of his injuries, he aimed his foil at his feet, creating a blue disc that rose up to hover in the air. He rode that disc over the water, until he rested feet above the surging waves. He grinned as if all of this had gone according to plan, but Sarah wasn’t fooled.

The balance of power had shifted.

She stood at the ready, her right arm limp and throbbing at her side. Her foil was pointed at Venquist, and she thought she still had the strength to banish him forever. But there was one question that had occurred to her in the moment her foil had moved him across the river. Something she feared signified a far greater power than she’d previously guessed.

“How did you send other people to the thirteenth realm?” He only continued to smile, but something in his eyes seemed to shift in surprise. “That’s what you’ve been doing, isn’t it? But it you shouldn’t be able to. The foil isn’t supposed to work on anyone with free will. The only reason I can use it against you is because you’ve oppressed me. So how did you use it on all those other people?”

Instead of answering, he asked, “Is it not interesting that Lassett chose you for exactly this potential? He had no way to know, of course. He saw only that you possessed the capacity to create great progress. How could he have guessed that this would be the progress you would create?”

An awful sort of tingle began to work its way down Sarah’s spine, as if every nerve in her body fired in a wave. Something Lassett had said tugged at the back of her subconscious, but she couldn’t quite bring it to the surface. Telling herself not to be drawn in by Venquist’s attempts at distraction, she shook her head.

“I didn’t do this,” she insisted. “You did.”

“No. I could not.” His voice was so eerily calm it sent chills skittering over her skin. “I tried. For a thousand of your years, I tried. I sent livestock, people. Entire villages, and then entire armies. I focused my efforts on love at first, and then rage. Fear, horror, triumph, genius. No matter what the possibilities, nothing I sent from your realm ever generated its own universe. Finally, I realized it was not for me to create. It was not for any paladin to create. Such a task could only be accomplished by an oppressed.”

He smiled at her again, and the look had nausea churning in her stomach. She thought of Benny on the ground beside her, her family hundreds of miles away. Every person who at this moment was comfortably asleep in their bed. On the other side of the world, people were going on about their lives, oblivious to the fact that all was about to be destroyed.

She shook her head. “I didn’t do this,” she repeated. But her voice was weak.

“It seems that I owe you a debt of gratitude. You have done what I could not do.” He lifted his arms up, palms open, toward that steadily growing chasm. “By trying to send yourself to it, you have created the thirteenth realm.”

The words held the horrible ring of truth. Though every ounce of her wanted to deny it, she realized that would be a waste of time.

“If I did this, then I can undo it,” she said, her voice sharpened by false bravado. Without looking at it, she knew that the gateway continued to grow, the air around her rushing toward that entrance with ever increasing speed. The din continued to amplify, and she had to shout to be heard over the noise. “Tell me how you banished all those people.”

But Venquist only said, his words an echo of Lassett’s, “Tread lightly. Progress has its own end. It is not for us to judge the value of it.”

He was too confident. He was too calm, completely certain he could deflect any attack she levied.

And it was starting to piss her off.

She thought of a way to take that smirk off of his face, but the result would be horrific. And then she thought of the thousands he’d killed, and any ounce of sympathy she might have felt for him fled.

Sarah aimed her foil at his left arm, where his own weapon stretched from wrist to elbow. She reminded herself that his body was only a shell, and then she fired.

And his arm ripped from his torso and flew through the air, flinging a spray of white, shimmering dust as it went. The blue disc he’d stood on disappeared, and on a cry of surprise rather than pain, he dropped into the water. Sarah used her foil to lift him from the river, set him on the bank far enough away to keep him from being any sort of threat.

His life dust began to drift away from his open shoulder, up toward the thirteenth realm, so she sealed the wound with her foil. That incomprehensible dust was the true Venquist. If she let it escape, she wouldn’t be able to banish him from the Twelve Realms.

Venquist stared at her, his jaw slack, his coloring shifting rapidly, and she realized that for the first time, he was truly afraid. She pointed her foil at his midsection, and she asked again, “How did you hurt all those people?”

“They allowed me to.”

The answer drove up her ire again, and she shot a stream of blue into the ground at his side. “Don’t bullshit me, Venquist. No one gave you permission to hurt them. How?”

He shook his head, his eyes wide. “Not the humans.”

Behind her, Lassett said softly, “No.”

Sarah frowned, glanced at him, and then back at Venquist. “Then who?”

“The Invigilators.”

“Why?” It was Lassett who asked the question. He rose to stand beside Sarah, and in his sudden fury, his eyes glowed with a horrible light. “Why would they do such a thing?”

“I do not know.”

“Then why did you help them?”

Venquist looked surprised at the question. “To see if I could.”

The clamor became a rumble, the rumble a deafening roar that hinted at a crescendo in each moment, until it immediately became impossibly louder.

And then, as if the pull of this universe was no longer sufficient, Sarah’s feet lifted from the ground. As she began to drift up toward that terrifying maw of possibilities, she wondered if she’d waited too long. And still, she couldn’t stop staring at Venquist.

He looked so pathetic now. Broken and utterly defeated. A part of her whispered that perhaps that was punishment enough.

He nodded at her, as if he knew her thoughts, and he said, “You understand now. It was not my fault. They told me to do it.”

And that, she realized, simply wasn’t reason enough.

“You should have said no,” she told him.

And then she sent him out of the Twelve Realms, permanent banishment of a being who had indulged in unforgivable evil to help satisfy a curiosity.

*          *          *

The gateway between this realm and the next was ever widening, stretching for more, as if it were not merely the unintended product of Sarah’s actions but a being unto itself with a purpose all its own. She aimed her foil toward the gap, but even as she did so her body drifted closer to it. She had no leverage, nothing against which to brace herself, but there was no time to try to find a better position.

Her world was ending.

She sent every ounce of her concentration toward the threat above, and the edges of the gap began to fire once more. She thought the break would close, that the edges would seal themselves together – but they didn’t. The pull of the thirteenth realm was too strong. It sucked the life from this universe with such strength that the sheer flow of potential was a force Sarah could not overcome. Small capillaries burst in her nose, her ears, her eyes, with the force of her effort. She began to cry, a silent, horrible admittance of defeat that the rest of her refused to accept.

And then she heard his voice.

Benny, calling her name from somewhere below her. At first she thought she’d imagined it, but then she heard him again. And she knew in that moment that she would succeed.

She could do anything if it meant keeping Benny alive.

She focused her thoughts on him. Let the image of his face drift through her mind, let the sound of his voice fill her. She felt the knowledge of his love swell within her, strengthening all the pieces of her that had been ripped to shreds by this impossible endeavor.

And the gateway, that seemingly indomitable path to a ravenous realm, began to close.

*          *          *

Silent.

Empty.

Weightless.

A sheen of white that seemed to press against the eyes, revealing nothing.

A crushing mass against the chest, blocking all air.

Sarah moaned, fearing the suffocation, dreading the featureless face that was surely coming to tell her all was lost.

Sarah.

The murmur fluttered through her consciousness, a siren’s call to wake, to open her eyes. She resisted, and the heft hit her chest again.

Sarah!

Something familiar about that voice. Something warm, soothing…. It made her long for the love she’d just found, and tears welled at a loss that was too devastating to consider.

Benny, she tried to murmur, but her voice wouldn’t work in this airless space.

Then suddenly, her lungs convulsed. A painful influx of oxygen, devastatingly cold against the raw tissue of her throat. Her body heaved, fighting its way toward life, and her eyes opened against her will.

Stars. All she saw were stars. And then…Benny.

“Sarah,” he said, and she realized he was crying.

Her lungs convulsed again, and her fingers clawed at the dirt. Her mind understood what she was seeing before her body recognized that it truly was alive, and she whispered, “Benny.”

And then she was in his arms, and everything that had been cold within her warmed.

“You weren’t breathing,” he said against her ear, his face buried in her hair. “I didn’t think you were going to wake up. I thought…” He shuddered and held her tighter, and Sarah shut her eyes and squeezed back with her good arm.

“What happened?” Her voice was weak, the effort to make any sound incredibly painful, but they heard her.

“You closed the gateway.” It was Lassett who spoke. She opened her eyes to see him kneeling beside her, his face a reflection of respect. And his eyes looked unbearably sad.

“Venquist?”

“Gone. You sent him from the Twelve Realms. He will never return to hurt anyone in this universe or any other.”

Benny slowly eased back, though he kept an arm around her, and she saw in Lassett’s face that their victory was not of a war, but of a battle.

“Was he telling the truth? Did the Invigilators do this?”

Lassett looked as if he didn’t want to answer, but he finally said, “I believe he spoke the truth.”

“Do you have any idea why they might have done this?”

He shook his head, his expression growing grim. “I do not know. But…”

“If they did it once,” she finished for him, guessing his train of thought, “they could do it again.”

“Yes.”

She nodded, understanding as she studied him that he couldn’t fulfill a purpose set forth by an entity that he could no longer trust. “What will you do now?”

“I do not know,” he replied. But…there was something in his eyes.

She studied him for a moment longer, and then she removed the foil and handed it to him. “I’m guessing you’re going to need this.”

He stared at it for long enough to make her think he wouldn’t take it. Then he accepted it and held it carefully as he looked at her again.

“The Twelfth Realm owes you its gratitude. You saved every living creature in this universe from assured destruction.”

“Which wouldn’t have been necessary if I hadn’t created the source of that destruction in the first place.”

But he was shaking his head. “You were manipulated into a position that would have defeated most, and you persevered. I must apologize for my part in bringing you into this, and yet, I cannot regret it. If I had chosen anyone else, I fear we would have failed.”

He stood, donned the foil with some reluctance. Pointing it across the river, he used it to retrieve Venquist’s weapon. Sarah saw as it drew closer that it was mercifully free from the arm it had adorned. Lassett caught it, considered it silently, and then fitted it to his other arm. He looked at each of them in turn, and then his eyes returned to Sarah and Benny.

“Your future is still rich with possibilities. I look forward to watching it unfold.”

Then he pointed one of the foils at himself, and he was gone.

They sat in silence for a long moment, staring at the space where Lassett had stood. Then Henry put a hand on Sarah’s shoulder and stood, Jack rising with him.

“You did good, kiddo,” he said to Sarah. “We’ll go get the plane started.”

He winked at Benny and followed Jack up river, and Sarah and Benny were alone.

He still had his arm around her. Comforted, she drew close again and rested her head on his shoulder.

“How do we go back to normal after this?” she asked him. “Now that we know what we know, how in the hell are we going to get back to real life?”

Benny rested his head on hers. “I don’t think we can. Everything is different now, and it always will be.”

Sarah’s eyes grew bright, and she squeezed them shut. “We’ll find a new normal,” she said, assuring herself as much as him. She thought of what Lassett had told them. “And as long as we’re together, it’ll have endless potential. We’ll make sure of it.”

At the sound of the plane’s engine sputtering to life, Benny helped Sarah up. He pressed his lips to hers, a fierce branding of possession that she gave back as good as she got, and then he pulled away. And then, hand in hand, they walked together toward the start of their new normal.

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