Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,22
with us, right?”
“Nope.” Thane shook his head. “Two-hundred people singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat. And they were singing in a perfect harmonious round.”
His wife, Siobhan, spoke up. “That combined with the fact that all two-hundred people showed up in our garage at once was enough to convince us that we needed to meet with the others right away. We think this…. Well, we think it has Victor Maze written all over it.”
At the other end of the long table, seated in the chair that would have been reserved for the head of the household had this been a dining table, a red-headed young beauty leaned back in her chair and tapped her finger thoughtfully on the armrest. This was Katrielle the actually ancient Nomad who had once been known to the sovereigns as Lalura Chantelle the crotchety Nomad. Nomads were bafflingly powerful beings capable of godlike acts and who were born time and again in different forms, but retained the knowledge of each form every time they were reincarnated. The red-haired Katrielle was not only this Nomad’s latest form; it had been her first as well.
“So… it has never happened before that victims of large-scale tragedies show up in Purgatory at the same time? Not during any of the deadly events in history’s past?” she asked. “Such as with the Bubonic Plague? Hiroshima? Mount Vesuvius?”
Thane shook his head. “No. Natural disasters don’t create anime. They’re natural deaths, whether they’re thought of as fair or not. Even disease doesn’t count. But as far as war casualties are concerned, even large-scale events such as bomb droppings? Their spirits come to me individually, each anime appearing one after another, no matter what. Time moves differently in my realm, you know that.”
Katrielle nodded. She did know that; the Nomad knew a lot of things. Thane had a feeling she was only having him reiterate it all for the benefit of everyone else in the room.
Since, due to war and homicide, there were simply too many “wrongful” deaths to count, time in Purgatory worked differently. It stretched itself out, turning the seconds into days and the years into centuries. As the Phantom King, Thane retained control of this time bubble and dealt with the plethora of wronged one at a time.
“This is the first time more than one has appeared at once,” said Siobhan. “And it was wholly unnerving. I mean you can just imagine…” she gestured, leaning back in her chair as Katrielle had done, “two-hundred semi-transparent people suddenly appearing at the open end of a dusty garage, their spirits backdropped by a vast, empty desert and hollow wind,” she described and then sat forward again and lowered her voice, “as they sang an old nursery rhyme with absolutely eerie perfect pitch.”
There were sounds all around of general agreement that it would be quite the sight to take in.
“That would make an incredible scene for a video game,” said Pitch, who was not only the Shadow King but also a self-made billionaire in the mortal realm where he’d made his fortune creating more than a few stupidly popular video games as the mysterious mogul-gamer, Shadenigma. Shadenigma was a man in a black hoodie and leather jacket who never showed his face, but for the glowing eyes that peered from the darkness of his drawn hood.
Angst. The gamer generation ate it up.
“Leave it to you to think of that,” said Caliban, the Unseelie King. The Unseelie were Tuathan Fae, who practically dripped power and sex appeal, and unlike his brother the Seelie King, Caliban was more than a little fond of using both to wicked ends. Fortunately his queen usually kept him in line these days. At the moment however, both the fae queens were back in the Unseelie Realm dealing with matters concerning the Taal.
That was a Noah’s ark load of trouble right there. When it rains it pours, Thane thought as he pondered the dark and dangerous fae. Taal were what Thane imagined you’d get if you took a vampire and an unseelie Tuathan fae and mashed them together. In fact… maybe that’s what they were? They were unseelie fae, and they did drink blood. Thane had no idea. But whatever their origins, they were absolutely deadly. He should know; victims of the Taal had been steadily coming to his realm as anime for thousands of years. And right now they were on a literal hunt for something they couldn’t seem to find and they were crabby as hell about not having