A Wolf at the Door

“You’re not getting older. You’re what, like twenty-two?” That at least earned me a chuckle from my thirty-something wife. “Hey, you know I love you, right?”

“Yeah, Jess. I know. I love you too.”

We spent a few minutes catching up on Annabelle’s antics and Estéban’s high school drama. I hadn’t realized until that moment how homesick I was. God, I wanted to see my family, smell my little girl’s hair, kiss my wife. I didn’t want to be out here in La La Land anymore.

My phone started giving me the sad little chirp to remind me that I hadn’t charged it in forever. “Baby, I gotta go, my phone’s dying.”

“Okay. Jess, please be careful out there. It’s making me nervous.”

“Hey, you know me. I’m always careful.” I’m not sure she heard me, though, as that was the moment my phone gave up the ghost. Dammit. I didn’t get to tell her good-bye. At least I’d snuck an “I love you” in there before it croaked.

Not saying good-bye felt like bad juju, and I couldn’t shake the feeling as I returned to the living room.

“So what do we do now?” Gretchen looked at me expectantly.

“We do nothing. I am going to go wander through the hotel and stab more people with pins.”

Tai raised a brow. “Seriously? You think they’ll let you do that?”

“It’s Hollywood, right? And I’m with Gretchen Keene, right?” I nodded toward the movie star in question. “According to her, that means I can do anything I want and no one will say anything.”

And apparently, I could. You’d think someone would object to a random guy strolling through the hotel kitchens, poking people with safety pins, but I got surprisingly little resistance. Well, until I got to the head of hotel security. I guess poking him with a pin was probably not high on my list of smart acts.

The nice security men delivered me back to the suite, and Tai, who answered the door, promised them I would be on my very best behavior from then on. Before I could come in and take my lumps like a good boy, Gretchen came out the door, obviously dressed for a trip out.

“Um…where are you going?”

“Your friend Ivan gave you the address, right? For the translator?”

Tai gave me a look that said he’d been trying to talk her out of it for some time now, obviously with zero success.

“You realize that there is a big mud man out there who seems to know your every move, right? You’re safer here.”

Her jaw firmed obstinately. “Look, whoever sent this golem thing, it’s because of my contract. If I’m going to defend myself against whatever this is, I have to know first and foremost why it’s here and what it wants.”

Dammit. When the girl’s right, she’s right.

“Okay, but we’re all running on fumes right now. Let us get some rest and we’ll go this afternoon. Fair?”

I think she still would have balked if Dante hadn’t backed me up. “He’s right, Boo. You look like death warmed over. A few hours of peaceful sleep in a safe place…you’ll thank me later.”

Finally, Gretchen relented, allowing Dante to slip her purse off her shoulder. “Okay. But I’m setting an alarm. Four hours, then we go.”

That, I could live with. Hell, I’d lived on a lot less for a lot longer.

Dante left, mumbling something about appointments or something, and everyone else fell into a coma. I didn’t even mind that I was once again plastered to the leather sofa.

My dreams, though…I hadn’t had too many bad ones since I banished the Yeti last fall. And this one wasn’t bad, per se. Just…odd.

It was night, that much was certain, and as I took long strides out of a tunnel, the stars seemed unusually bright. Almost like they were fake, or like there were too many of them in the night sky for reality.

Semi-conscious-me noted the oddity, but dream-me didn’t seem to care. I stepped out of the tunnel, feeling concrete give way to hard-packed dirt beneath my boots. The air still smelled of the heat of the day, of sweat and breath of people only recently absent. Dream-me was glad they were gone.

I stepped from the tunnel (again, like I was on a perpetual loop) into an enormous open space. The dirt field spread out before me, silent and waiting. I was waiting too, I realized. Waiting for someone, or something. Deep down, I knew that whatever it was, it wasn’t coming.

I stepped from the tunnel, and I could feel palpable fear beating at my back. Weariness, pain, anger…whatever was behind me had given all it could, and there was simply nothing left to wring out of it. It was finished.

I stepped from the tunnel, and across the great open area, someone stood. Even with the unnatural starlight, it was too far away to see who it was. It was tall and slender, a black shadow against the blacker night (and I had to wonder, how could such a brightly lit night be black?). The next time I came out of the tunnel, the hard-packed dirt was empty again.