My phone buzzed. I groaned, rolled over, and forced my eyes open. 3:12 a.m. I didn’t recognize the number, and I was tempted to just send it to voicemail, but in my job you sometimes have to answer unknown callers in the middle of the night. “Y-yeah? Hello?”
“It’s me.” David Beckerman, but his voice sounded different. Distant. “I remember everything.”
Rachel grabbed my pillow and stuffed it over her head. I swung my legs to the floor and staggered out to the living room. “Okay. What do you remember?”
“I’m at the cemetery. You have to come here to see it.”
Oh, hell. “No. No way. It’s dark outside. How did you get out of the hospital? Isn’t the cemetery locked up now?”
“You need to see it. The gates will be open.”
“Is that a metaphor, or do you mean—” But he hung up.
God damn it. I stared at the glowing screen for a moment, trying to tell myself I should just go back to sleep and check it out in the morning. But I knew I wouldn’t. Worse, David knew I wouldn’t.
And even worse than that, Rachel knew I wouldn’t.
“What are you doing?” she murmured from the bed as I tried to hurriedly dress in just the light of my phone.
“David Beckerman. Says he remembers everything, and he’ll only tell me if I go out there and meet him at the cemetery.”
“Shit.” She sat up. “Hang on.”
“You don’t have to come.” I sat to tie my shoes.
“Someone’s got to keep you from traveling to another dimension. I’m not living through that again.”
Several years ago, when we were dating, I’d gone through a portal in a tree to an alternate reality called Forsythia. I came back alive, but Rachel hadn’t been happy with me. “Fine. No portals. We’re just going to listen and then take him back to the hospital.”
“You’re lucky you made enough baked ziti for the week. Give me a minute to find my bra.”
So 45 minutes later we were at the cemetery entrance. The front gate was open in the literal sense, and the camera watching it didn’t appear to be moving. No security guards were in sight, so I slowly drove in.
“I can’t say I didn’t know what I was getting into when I married you,” Rachel said as I navigated the road winding past all the tombstones. “Wasn’t something like this our third date?”
“No, that was the museum with the ghosts and the kidnapped girl. The first time I took you to a cemetery we had to fight off a newly risen vampire and destroy a book of spells. We’d been going out a month or two, I think.”
“I remember now. We had pretty good sex that night.”
“Pretty good? I thought it was great.”
Rachel patted my leg. “You do fine.”
I followed the map and my memory, and after 15 minutes I was pretty sure I saw the tree. I stopped the car. “Flashlights in the trunk. I’ve got the pepper spray. You got your stun gun?”
“I know the drill.” Rachel yawned. “If you were an accountant I’d still be asleep.”
“If I’d become an accountant we never would have met, and you’d be bored silly.”
She hesitated. “You do have a point.”
At first I thought we were alone, that David had fled or he’d lied about being here. Then I saw him standing next to the tree, motionless.
We walked slowly. David didn’t seem to notice us, but once we got in front of him he lifted a hand, shading his eyes from our flashlights. He was barefoot, in his jeans and a T-shirt, with the hospital gown around his shoulders like a cape for warmth.
“You came.” His eyes flicked between Rachel and me. “Hi.”
“What’s going on, David?” I wanted to point my flashlight into his eyes. “It’s four in the morning, we were asleep, and you called me. Start talking.”
He sighed, tired, and walked to the side of the tree where the symbol had been carved. “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . .”
“I can have the cops here right away to take you back,” I told him.
“Sorry.” He stood straight. “It is far away, or maybe it’s right here, I don’t know. When I went through . . .” He stared at the symbol. “When I went through—I don’t know how it happened. I was looking at it, and then I was just—falling. For a long time, or just a second or two. I felt the same. I never really stopped, I just sort of floated, and I could hear these—beings, talking. Not to me. I couldn’t understand them, but after a while I could. They were all around me, above me, under me.” He tapped his forehead. “Inside me.”
David shivered, and not just because he was outside, in a cold graveyard, in the middle of the night. “They were trying to figure out who I am, but mostly they wanted to make sure I wasn’t—somebody else. Eventually they . . .” He rubbed his head. “I saw it, like a movie or something inside my brain. There was a war, a kind of a war, and when it was over they kicked somebody out. Exile. They wanted to know if it was me, but I guess they figured out I wasn’t the guy, so they—they sent me back.”
He looked down at the ground. “I guess you found me.”
“Yeah.” I looked over at Rachel.
She stepped toward David and put a hand on his arm. After a moment she let her arm drop. “It’s gone now.” She stepped back. “The thing that was trying to get out. Maybe being near this thing knocked it loose.” She took a step toward the tree, and for a moment I thought she was going to put her hand on the symbol and let it pull her into another dimension. But she stopped before I could yell, and just stared at it. “It’s like a wave pulling you in,” she murmured.
I looked back at David. “So Styles is an exile, trying to get home. What are you doing here?”
He pointed to the symbol. “Guarding it.”
“Just you? Alone, in your bare feet?”
David smiled shyly. “Well, now you’re here.”
“Oh, no.” Rachel shook her head. “We’re not getting involved in a civil war from another dimension. No way.” She turned to me. “How about we just chop down this tree and burn that carving?”
“Not a bad idea,” I agreed. “Except we don’t have an ax in the car.”
She groaned. “Add that to the supplies. Along with the mallet and stakes.”
“No,” said a voice from behind a tombstone. A dark form walked toward us, steady but impatient. I flicked my flashlight at his face even though I’d recognized the voice.
Quentin Styles stopped in front of David. “David, David—you were doing so good. You were my favorite student, from the first day. Are you turning against me now?”
“They showed me what you did to them.” David’s voice quavered, but he stayed firmly on his bare feet. “You didn’t just kill them, you ripped them apart.”
“They didn’t show you what they did to me!” His voice shook. “It was worse. Much worse. An eternity of agony, and then—cast out. Exiled to this pitiful plane of so-called existence.” He shook his head sadly. “They only showed you what they wanted you to believe. You’re a better student than that.”
“They didn’t just show me,” David said. “I felt it. I was inside them as you shredded them piece by piece.”
“It was war.” He sounded haunted. “Total and complete. There’s no other path.”
“I can’t let you go through.” David clenched his fists. “They don’t want you.”
“You think you can stop me? The three of you? In my world I’m a god. A boy, a middle-aged detective and—who are you, now?” He looked at Rachel.
“I’m Rachel.” She crossed her arms. “And I know krav maga.”
He shook his head. “None of that will help you. It’s my destiny. You can’t stop me.”
“Who burned down your house?” I asked. “Your office? They’re here, aren’t they? Looking for you? Maybe that’s why you’re so desperate to get out of here.”
Styles glared at me. “They have no power over me here. They can only sneak and hide, peer around corners and cast blunt darts at me. I am still a god. They’re nothing.” He waved an arm at David. “Out of my way, boy.”
David flinched but stood his ground. “No. Not a chance.”
“Let him go, I say.” Rachel smirked. “Good riddance.”
“I can’t! You didn’t see—or feel—what he did! And now it’s in my head! I can’t forget—and I can’t let him do it!” David backed up, standing against the tree, arms wide. “You can’t do it!”
“I will!” Styles crouched, and then he rushed forward like a rabid dog and grabbed David’s arms, pulling him away from the tree.
“Stop him! Stop him!” David tried to struggle, but he was too weak and tired to put up a fight. Fortunately I had my pepper spray, and Rachel was reaching for her stun gun. I didn’t much care who was on the right side of a war in another universe, but I couldn’t let Styles injure my client’s son.
I darted forward, pepper spray raised, while Rachel went in from the other side. She got to him first and jabbed her stun gun into his arm. Styles screeched and shook, but kept his grip on David’s arms, so I leaned in and squirted his face.
Styles howled, pushing David to the ground as he clawed at his eyes. Rachel backed away and I reached down to help David get to his feet—
And a beam of white flame burst from the symbol in the tree.
It streamed straight at Styles like a spear, lighting up his face in an unearthly glow. His body shook, and he tried to raise his arms, kick with his feet, but they flailed helplessly, as if an electric current was running through him from skull to feet.
His face twisted in a silent scream. I could see the muscles in his throat, fighting to shriek, struggling to breathe. Slowly he rose in the air, his feet dangling, until he was six feet above the ground, shrouded in that glowing white fire.
His body hung there like a fish on a spike, his face contorted in fear, or pain, as his arms and legs jerked up and down.
The white flame burned more fiercely—I could feel it on my forehead as David staggered backward, breathing hard. I grabbed Rachel’s hand to pull her away. “You okay?”
She nodded, shading her eyes. When I looked back, Styles’s body was breaking apart, melting, but his lips were moving with words none of us could hear. A prayer for mercy? A cry of defiance? There was no way to tell. He just stared at the tree, into the light, his arms locked to his sides and his legs hanging down, as if the energy had drained from his body.
“Oh God,” David breathed, his face covered with sweat.
Styles trembled in the air for another long moment, and then he managed to turn his head to look down at us with hatred in his face, snarling with rage. “Never!” It was one last loud howl of fury forced from his throat. “Never—”
Then the flame vanished, taking Styles with it.
Most of him, anyway. One shoe lay on the grass, in the center of a dark circle that smoldered as if a fire had died there.
The symbol on the tree had been burned away too, leaving just a black patch bare of bark. I walked up to and reached out to touch it, but Rachel snapped, “Don’t you dare.”
I could feel the heat emanating from the tree anyway. I didn’t want to burn myself. I let my hand drop.
David sagged, and Rachel caught him before he fell on the ground. “Let’s go out of here,” she said.
“Yeah.” I took one shoulder and Rachel held the other one, and we started carrying David back to our car. It was a long walk.
We took David back to the hospital. Hallie had gone home, but the night nurses and the doctor were all over him, plugging the monitors and IVs back into his body as they snapped questions about what had happened. We told them we’d gotten a call from the cemetery and found him there; we left out the part about a university professor being incinerated by white fire shooting out of another dimension through a tree.
We got back home at 6:30. “Back to bed? You’re not going to the office today.”
“I may as well stay up.” Rachel yawned. “I’ve got paperwork, and I don’t have any phone clients until the afternoon. Make some coffee.”
I slept for a few hours, then got up for cereal and coffee. Rachel was working on her side of the office as I called my client.
“David, uh, told me what happened last night.” Beckerman was at the hospital. “I don’t know if I believe it, but—he’s acting normal now. A little angry, a little embarrassed. That girl Hallie is here, and for once—” He lowered his voice. “Now he’s behaving like a boy who likes a girl who likes him. Which is good. She seems like a nice girl.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Look, Jurgen, I just have to say it, all right?” He took a deep breath. “I was right about Styles.” He sounded pleased with himself. “I mean, wasn’t I?”
“I guess you were,” I agreed. “You might wait a while before reminding your son.”
“Yeah.” He chuckled. “I’ve learned that much about being a father. All right, send me an invoice. You should, uh, include your hours last night. Thank you for helping my son.”
“No problem.” I hung up.
“How’s dad?” Rachel asked from her desk.
“Couldn’t resist saying ‘I told you so.’” I picked up my coffee.
She snorted. “Typical.”
“Yeah.” I sipped. The coffee was cold. “Thanks for your help last night. You going to take a nap later?”
“I don’t know.” She threw a Post-it pad at me. “I might want to lie down for a while.”
“Really?”
Rachel grinned. “Yeah.”
“Me too.” I picked up the Post-it pad and threw it back. “Let me know.”
She caught it. “Oh, I will.”
# # #
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