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Her lips were warm and inviting, just like the air surrounding us and I pulled away, opening my eyes. Her wide brown eyes stared at me and then to our surroundings. I didn’t need to look, I already knew we were on the porch to her house, but my smile faded at the rush of memories layering over me like a bizarre slide show, each one charring around the edges like they had been shuffled through a forest fire.
I glanced toward the road and my heart jumped in my throat. I expected Ben and Danny but a wildly confused Noah stood uncertain between them on Julia’s walkway. I assumed that if I did a time jump, all of my memories would disappear along with anything that happened between May and September, resetting events to a prior time.
That assumption was obviously faulty and I spun, staring at my home. More pointedly, at my father now standing on the front step with his jaw unhinged. His fear carved into the lines on his face like a particularly unsettling Halloween mask. A shadow passed over the shiny sports car in the driveway and both our gazes snapped to the side of the house.
My perception of terror altered as I got my first glimpse of Leviathan and my knees stopped holding my weight. They smashed into the hard deck sending a bolt of pain up both my thighs. Julia’s screamed behind me and the beast turned its laser-red eyes in our direction.
None of the pictures I had ever seen prepared me for this pre-historic nightmare. A T-Rex would have been more welcome. This thing reminded me of a carnivorous dinosaur, although the size was more like Godzilla in height. But the thing that frightened me the most, beyond the razor claws and teeth, was the intelligence in its eyes. This wasn’t a dumb lizard that I could fake out, and that left me shaking, with my chest drawn so tightly that forcing a breath brought forth a wave of dizzying pain.
Julia’s nails digging into my shoulder brought me around to the point her words computed.
“Nick, take me back,” she kept repeating, her voice squeaking with fear.
I covered her hand and closed my eyes tight, wishing for the sweltering Florida heat and Mt. Dora High School as opposed to this horrifying scene. The warm concrete scraped under my knees and I opened my eyes to the street view. Julia still gripped my shoulders, her breath coming in frantic hitches. I glanced to my right where Ben, Noah and Danny had stood and they were still within whatever bubble I created to travel through time, although Noah was deathly pale and his gaze bounced like a ping-pong ball.
Before anyone could speak, I climbed to my feet and wrapped my arms around Julia, trying to calm the shakes racking her body and mine.
“What the fu...” Noah whispered trailing off before finishing the curse.
I met his gaze. “Sorry,” was all I could muster with no spit left in my mouth. I tried to swallow and winced at the dryness, but after a few attempts, saliva began to alleviate the sandpaper quality of my tongue. I moved my gaze to Ben. “Did everything go back to the way it was supposed to?”
He offered a half-nod accompanied by a shrug.
“What was that thing?” Noah asked.
“Leviathan,” the four of us answered in unison.
I’m sure the only introduction to the fabled creature he ever had was from the show Supernatural, so seeing the real thing must have been as much of a shock to him as it was to Julia and me.
“You are not going up against that thing,” Julia said, pulling away from the spot on my shoulder she had nestled into. Her eyes didn’t give me any leeway and I wasn’t in the position to argue.
“No wonder Izzy was decimated,” I said and started towards school. The group followed in stunned silence. “It’s not just a dumb reptile that we can fake out either,” I added.
Noah grabbed my arm, spinning me toward him, his eyes still in that what-the-hell-did-we-just-witness mode. “What is going on?” he asked.
I traded a glance with Ben and Danny and sighed. When I opened my mouth to try to explain, I got the same look of alarm from both of them. The same look they had given me before I decided to turn back time and I clamped my mouth closed again, carefully inspecting the words I was about to say.
“That... thing... has my father,” I said, settling on the least controversial point in the entire sordid story.
He paled. “That was real?”
I glanced at him and shrugged. I was hoping it wasn’t real, that it had been a trick of our collective imaginations. But I knew better, and seconds later Danny confirmed it.
“Yes, it’s real,” he said under his breath and looked away from all our stares. “Only one person was able to turn back the clock successfully,” he added and sent a glare in my direction.
“Who was that,” I asked with the same level of venom in my voice as he’d delivered.
“Your father, on the day he agreed to take the job.”
The answer stunned me. I mean, I knew he changed my fate, but I didn’t realize it was by manipulating time. I thought he had made a deal. He’d take the job if my mom and I didn’t die. The more I thought about it, the more I understood. The only way for that to happen was to turn the clock back, but if he did that, why couldn’t he make it so those planes didn’t hit the towers?
Ben answered my silent question. “The playbook had already changed and once that happens, you are not supposed to be able to alter the outcome. Not on a mass scale like that.”
His answer still didn’t help my current situation.
“He told your mother you had a fever,” Danny added, his voice carrying less of a bite. “He changed your fate.”
Noah’s mind swirled with a flurry of questions, none of which he voiced out loud, but I heard them as if he was ranting in one continuous stream. The fact I was hearing Noah’s thoughts as if he was speaking settled in my brain and I blinked at the shock that tingled through my skin. Something significant was happening to me, and even with the school within sight, I needed to sit down. I parked my butt on the curb for a minute, covering my ears, trying to drown out the drone of questions.
“Are you some sort of god?” Noah asked after a minute and I looked up at him. The question, along with the sincere awe on his face, produced a bark of a laugh.
“No, Noah, I’m not a god, or a demi-god or a wizard or an alien or anything like that,” I said answering his follow-up questions before he even had the chance to voice them. “I’m just a kid with a bizarre lineage. One that you do not want to know about.”
He looked at Danny and Ben and then pressed his lips together.
“How come you told them?”
I bit my bottom lip and dropped my gaze to the road. “I didn’t. They’re relatives of mine. They already knew,” I said and glanced back at Julia wondering just how much of my history I’d have to reveal and how that would impact Noah. As it was, Julia shouldn’t know all this, at least not according to the trouble my father got in for telling my mother. But I wondered what would happen if we came clean. The warning glares I received from both Ben and Danny gave me a hint and I was learning to listen to their aged wisdom.
Silence permeated the street and then he took the seat next to me.
“So, what’s so special about your lineage?”
In my peripheral vision, Noah propped his elbows on his knees, his natural bounce quieted by his curiosity. I slid my gaze to him and then to Julia beyond, but by the cross-armed stance, I knew she wasn’t going to help matters.
Instead of answering, I focused on picking at the cuticle on my thumb. I knew I’d have to answer sooner or later. “I died on September 11th and my father somehow reversed it.” When I turned toward him, the crease between his eyes increased before it smoothed out and his jaw dropped.
“New York?”
I nodded and glanced at Ben and Danny, receiving a slight nod of approval. Focusing on me was okay as long as I didn’t bring Death or Fate or reapers into the equation.
“Is that why that thing has him?” Noah asked, his voice dropping in a hushed whisper like he could conjure the beast just by saying its name.
I glanced at him and shook my head. “No. I’m the reason he’s there. Last year, I screwed up. I didn’t know the rules and because of that all hell broke loose and he’s now somewhere guarded by that thing.” I took a breath and glanced at Julia. “And it’s my job to get him.”
Julia’s expression turned sour. Her pout of anger made me drop my gaze to Noah. Confusion still clouded his eyes and he stared at me, debating whether I was giving him a line of crap or not.
“Seriously?” he finally asked and I nodded. “What the hell kind of rules did you break that brought that thing around?”
I chuckled and glanced at Ben and Danny. “Why don’t you ask them,” I said and stood, turning and leaving Noah with two very pissed off reapers.