in the darkness, like light reflected on diamonds. His pulse thundered behind his eyes in ever-increasing pain as he focused on that flash until it came into focus—a bright circular light towering impossibly high and reflecting against a glass wall. Was it the moon? Before he could figure it out, movement behind the glass drew him in until he was standing on one side of what seemed to be a giant snow globe, with the faceless giant from his dreams on the other side only an inch or two away.
“Stop.” The voice that emanated from the featureless form reverberated in his head until the throb in his eyes was excruciating. “Stop looking at me, abomination. I can feel you watching me. I know you are there. I’ve always known.”
Abomination. Another word for the Nephilim. Nate had never felt much like an abomination, but he decided not to quibble over semantics.
“Of all things, it is your sight I fear the most. I wonder...if I show myself to you, will I no longer be hidden? Will you become blind to me long enough for me to become complete?”
Complete? What...?
Even as Nate’s short-circuiting brain reeled in confusion, the featureless waxwork lifted its arms, spreading its fingers out wide, and a ragged pulse of urgency hit him so intensely it bordered on panic. Holy crap, he didn’t want to look at those fingers. There was something...not right with them. They were spider-thin and stomach-churning in their length, with extra knuckles evident along the backs.
This is bad, oh shit, this is all sorts of bad...
As he watched in a sickening mix of disgust and horror, eight of the ten multi-knuckled fingers continued to elongate with a terrible wrongness. They twisted and snaked until the tips reached the edges of the glass walls and swelled into humanlike shapes, but there was something off with them as well. Each bodylike growth resembled a desiccated mummy, something that had been sucked dry of all life. “Just two more, abomination. Then I will no longer fear you. I will fear nothing.”
The pain in Nate’s head swelled to a frenzied crescendo and with a hiss he squeezed his eyes shut to ward off what had to be his impending death. When he cracked them open again, instead of darkness he saw the gym exactly as he’d left it seconds or hours ago, he couldn’t tell which. Numb, the pain behind his eyes trickling away like water down a drain, he stared without comprehending at the dumbbell still in his hand before jerking his gaze to where he’d last seen Ella. She was still working with her client as if nothing had happened and the world hadn’t become a nightmarish LSD trip.
What the freaky fuck was that?
“Don’t you have a job to get to?”
Dazed, and not sure he wasn’t about to puke his guts out, Nate turned to find the bristle-haired kickboxing sadist—Jacob, Ella called him—glaring at him. For a long moment he tried to prod his brain into gear, and when it finally got going his gaze swung back to Ella. She was what was important now. Whatever the hell just happened to him—an aneurysm or a tumor or whatever that was—it would have to be put on the back burner. No matter what kind of shit storm just uncorked in him, it paled in comparison to whatever stalked Ella now.
“Believe it or not, I’m happy to see you.” After all, it was always good to have another pair of paranoid eyes on the job. Especially since his just went on the fritz.
Jacob snorted. “Oh, really? Why is that?”
“You’re not merely an instructor who knows his way around a punching bag, are you? You’re ex-military or law enforcement of some kind, am I right?” As he spoke, Nate’s attention didn’t waver from Ella’s side of the gym. Still struggling with the last vestiges of near-panic, he couldn’t quite shake the fear that if he looked away, she would vanish in a puff of smoke.
Or a gory puddle of blood.
“Maybe this is true.” Jacob stood at parade rest and stared down his nose at him. “You got a problem with that, little boy?”
Geez. “I’m hoping you can help me convince Ella to keep her guard up.”
Those bulging eyes went a little crazier. “And why should I do that?”
“Gabriella Littlefield.”
Jacob went still, which was Nate’s only warning. He shot to his feet even as Jacob went for a classic choke hold, his movements smooth and deceptively fast for someone his age. But