Sarah's Story: Segment #5

Dear readers,

I apologize for the delay in this post. I was very ill last week and simply didn't have the energy to write. I hope this next segment was worth the wait.

In the last vote, we had our first ever tie! You selected both Special Teams (Henry enlists help from a friend) and Offense (the group sets a trap to lure out the law student). To honor your votes, I incorporated both options into this week's segment.

Here is Segment #5 with a brief lead-in from Segment #4 (or read from the beginning):

“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.”

Sarah's Story, Segment #4

Dear readers,

It has been brought to my attention that, in the poll following this post, the word "defense" has been misspelled. I could lie and say that I deliberately chose the European spelling, but the truth is simply that the poll widget has no spell correct. *sigh*

Since I can't make changes to a poll after a vote has been cast, I must live with my mistake until Sunday, when I will at last be able to take down the poll. Until then, enjoy the post and my error - and know that there will likely be many more of both to come.

Sincerely,
Lillian James  

The poll: What makes Sarah scream?

And the winner?  (insert drum roll here...) 

Sarah sees a car about to crash into the diner!

So here you go, with a brief lead-in from segment #3 (or read from the beginning):

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.”

Sarah's Story, Segment #3

The vote is in! And the winner is: Sarah and Benny go to a nearby bar.

In case you were wondering, here's what would have happened with the other options:

• Benny's apartment: Sarah and Benny would have met up with one of Benny's neighbors, who just happens to be a conspiracy theorist. 
• The train station: Sarah and Benny would have hopped a train to go to the VA hospital where Benny did an internship the year before in order to talk to a patient there.

But the bar gave Sarah and Benny the opportunity to get personal in a way that I hadn't anticipated before I started writing. I hope you enjoy! 

Here's segment #3 of Sarah's Story, with a brief lead-in from segment #2 (or read from the beginning):

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.