This was one of a crap-your-pants-sideways level of terror. No longer dressed in armor, he wore the guise of a zeitjäger. The creepy, creepy ravenesque demons who were in charge of monitoring time and anyone who would abuse it.
More than that, Nick saw him pulling off the bloodied plague doctor mask they all wore to expose his eyes with an all black sclera.
Yeah, that’s just what I needed today …
To have another run-in with those beasts. The one he’d had awhile back had been enough for his life. Nick really didn’t want another.
Ever.
Simi, however, appeared immune as always to the scary thing in front of them. In fact, she ran over and hugged him!
’Cause yeah, that was a normal thing for someone to do …
In nightmares only.
“Akri-Tashi! I gots someone for you to meet!”
Nick cringed at the thought. Honestly? He’d rather meet his mom three hours after curfew, reeking of alcohol and wearing her best shoes.
On a Sunday night.
After missing Mass.
A slow smile spread across the man’s face as he returned Simi’s exuberant hug. Neither friendly nor sinister, that smile managed to hover somewhere between those two things. “Nick, good to see you, little buddy. Wasn’t expecting the Malachai to come waltzing into my house today.”
Oh yeah, that wasn’t the least bit unnerving.
Nick let out a sarcastic laugh. “Dude, do I know you?”
His smile turned a bit warmer, which was even scarier somehow. “Takeshi. We’ve met in your future.Manytimes.”
O-kay … Nick was even more uncomfortable. “That supposed to make sense to me?”
Simi laughed. “You wanted to travel through time … Takeshi do it lots and lots. Sometimes he lives backwards even. Though he not supposed to,” she whispered. “So we not tell people about that … shhh.”
Ah, that explained it.
Sort of.
Yeah … no. Nick was completely lost and confused.
Cocking his head, Takeshi scowled. “So what have you screwed up now, kid?”
Nick pressed his hands to his temples as his head began to ache from trying to keep up and understand what was going on. “Okay, I’m really on the losing end here. ’Cause I’m not sure what you’re asking. Or even where I am, or what’s going on.”
Screwing up for him was like an Olympic sport. He did it so much and so spectacularly that he didn’t even think about it.
Sometimes, like now, he wasn’t even aware that he’d done it. At least not until Kody or his mom stopped talking to him for a day or two, and “stink-eyed” him every time he got near them. And left him every bit as confounded as Takeshi did on what Nick could have done to piss off everybody.
With a real laugh, Takeshi shook his head. “I know you, boy. While I don’t live my life in a straight line, you do. And we shouldn’t be meeting like this. At least notnow. So for you to be here means you’ve screwed something up. What have you done?”
“You see what I was talking about, babe?”
Nick choked at the last voice he’d expected to hear. But it at least answered the most probing question that had been eluding him for weeks now—where one of his generals and protectors had vanished off to. “Nashira? What are you doing here?”
For that matter, how had she gotten to this dimension?
Why was he even surprised at this point?
