Chapter Thirty-four

“I don’t sense him.”

Amunet opened her eyes, coming clear of her visionary search for any sign of her son. “I don’t feel our child, Ahriman. He is not in this world, and he should be.” She looked up from where she was seated cross-legged on the floor. “I can tell he’s in this universe, but… not here.”

Ahriman stood across from her, just inside the circle Amunet had drawn on the hotel room floor. The Nomad that had been known as the Entity for years now appeared as a tall black-haired man with black eyes who reminded Amunet a lot of Roman D’Angelo. He even wore a suit, finely tailored, and not a raven hair was out of place.

Amunet had been born into a form his polar opposite, fair haired and tiny, petite with a heart shaped face and brown eyes. They’d been reborn together, coming back into this world at the same time. Amunet believed it was her son’s pull that had drawn them both here so quickly and efficiently.

But now he was gone. That was what her spell was telling her.

She looked away from her mate to the red outline of the circle. It was drawn with paint made of the most powerful ingredients. The blood of ten specific creatures mingled in that paint. She’d have thought the human child would be a difficult ingredient to obtain, but it turned out to be the xenobe goblin that was the hardest. They’d withdrawn into their Goblin Kingdom in the wake of losing their queen, and the kingdom’s defenses were strikingly difficult to breach.

Fortunately, Ahriman was still the Entity, and until he took solid form at Amunet’s side, the Entity was still capable of inhabiting the bodies of living beings. Just as fortunately, despite Queen Chroi’s changes for the better in the Goblin Kingdom, there were still some xenobes who preferred to rebel than behave.

Hence the powerful circle was drawn, and Amunet’s mind traveled the distances of all thirteen realms. And yet, there was no sign of her son in any of them.

Fury boiled like a teapot coming to steam, the volume of her anger rising within her until she nearly couldn’t stand it.

“Solan.”

Amunet looked back up. Ahriman’s eyes were glowing a bright silver. It was the sharp edge of a killing blade drawn in the sun. It was a mirror, one to her own wrath.

“This is the Time King’s doing,” said the handsome and terrible man.

Amunet bared her white teeth. “Show me Cronos!” she screamed, stretching out her arms, her hands palms-up. The circle of blood burst into bright red flame; black smoke rose toward the ceiling in billowing clouds of death.

Amunet’s vision flashed, and within that flashing vision, she saw faces. Twelve of them, all beautiful.

When the vision ended, it ended with such ferocity, she was thrust forward. Her breathing was ragged. She closed her eyes and curled her hands into fists in the carpet. “He has taken Helena and hidden her beyond my sight.” Behind her closed lids, she felt her eyes heat up and knew they were as bright and hot white as her husband’s. “And like the coward he is, he’s gone with her.”

“What of the queens?” asked Ahriman. He was naturally concerned about the women. It was prophesied that only the Thirteen Queens would be capable of defeating a “great evil.” Amunet was under no false compunctions that the great evil in question referred to her and her family.

Hence, there had been an order to things, a “To Do” list, so to speak, upon awakening. Find her son. That was the first order of business. Find Helena and make certain she made the appropriate choices. That was second. And third was to kill the queens. Just in case.

But now Amunet was seeing her goals in a different order. “He has squirreled them all away like nuts for the winter,” she hissed. “He thinks to save them.”

There was a brief silence before Ahriman turned and left the now dead circle and made his way to the window of the large hotel suite. “Is that so?” he asked softly, more to himself than to her.

His magic had prevented the alarms from going off when the circle had caught on fire, and that same magic moved before him now as if it were a servant bowing and scraping to prepare his way. The window opened before he reached it, and a gentle breeze invaded in from the daylight outside.

Down below, Amunet could hear the traffic of the city moving to and fro like blood cells in the massive, shining veins of the living creature that was society.

“Then let us bring winter,” said Ahriman beautifully. “If we cannot go to the enemy, we shall make the enemy come to us.”

He raised his hand and flicked his wrist. The sounds of traffic came to an abrupt change. She heard the screeching of tires, and the crunch of metal on metal. Seconds passed, and the shift was made whole by the punctuating cacophony of human screams.

Amunet rose from her place within the circle and joined him at the window. She leaned over the sill to look down at the street; her body’s stature demanded she do so in order to achieve a good view. The hotel was on a block corner. The intersection below was a blocked artery at society’s heart, the disease of wreckage causing the blood flow to back up behind it. All around, humans milled and reacted like tiny white blood cells, trauma sending them skittering.

Vermin. That’s what they looked like to Amunet.

“Hurry back, Time King,” whispered Ahriman as he focused on a helicopter flying overhead. It was marked with a cross on its tail; a hospital chopper most likely ferrying a patient from one location to another for more intensive care. “Or the world you’re trying so hard to save won’t be worth saving.”

Ahriman flicked his wrist once more. His eyes flashed white, and the helicopter took a nose dive, its tail spinning wildly out of control. It spiraled downward, sending the human rats scurrying. At the very last second, the aircraft suddenly lifted out of its impending, disastrous dive.

But then it flipped upside down. And hovered in place, twenty feet above the street.

That was certain to get someone’s attention.

Beside her, Ahriman lowered his hand, then turned slightly and smiled down at her. “Freak accidents,” he said softly. “No one ever knows why they occur.”

She returned the smile, feeling genuinely better. The enemy had absconded with her flesh and blood and his fated queen and there was no way to reach them. But the traffic accident below would draw the authorities. And more importantly, the helicopter hovering upside down without explanation would then gain media attention.

Which would no doubt gain the attention of the Kings.

In turn, the Kings would know how to reach one of their own – William Balthazar Solan. Otherwise known as Cronos, the Time King.

And then Cronos would bring back their son. Helena would make their son whole. And finally, peace would come to the human realm. No woman would ever again know the agony of a man’s senseless lust and abuse. No families would ever again be torn apart by such a thing. No one would be taken, kidnapped, abducted and stolen away to be used again and again by callous, apathetic hands that tore and rendered and hurt.

There would be no abductors. There would be no families.

There would be no men.

In the end, Amunet and those she loved would see to it that justice was finally served. Fate would be done. Death would reign supreme once and for all.

“You always know how to cheer me up,” said Amunet softly as her own king laced an arm around her waist and drew her in close. Warmth and the scent of expensive cologne washed over her, and she sighed.

He tenderly kissed the top of her head. “Always.”