Paranormal Realities Box Set (14 page)

“Great,” I said. “We have less than
thirty-six hours until Juliette and Franky are trapped in Dorcha for the next
twenty-nine plus years.”

Rom drove us back to my house.

The car ride was as silent as a night in
a tomb. Of course we all had a lot of information to process, including the
"plan" we'd devised with Zen to get Juliette and Franky back.

Once we arrived, we all exited the car.
Petra wrapped me in a tight hug before she, Chase and Senji piled into her
Buick and drove away. Rom and I were left on the sidewalk to stare at one
another.

Was Rom still keeping something from me?
Had he been completely honest...finally?

“When did that tsunami hit your city?” I
asked, breaking the silence.

“I know not,” Rom said. “The
psychomanteum's images were the first I had seen of such a wave.”

“Oh no.” Despite all the questions
between us I couldn’t help but encircle him around the waist with my arms. “I’m
sorry,” I mumbled into his chest. “I was so wrapped in my own grief, I didn’t
think about your family and how worried you must be.”

“Mayhap the vision reflected merely my
fears and not a true happening,” Rom said. His arms came around me in an
embrace. “Neither I nor my family harmed your brother. I vow it.”

“I believe you,” I whispered a few
moments later. After squeezing hard for emphasis, I released him. I truly did
believe him. Rom wouldn't kill an innocent child.

Stepping back, I cast him one last glance
before walking into the house.

My mother met me at the door. “Did you
find out anything about Juliette?”

“Yes.” I climbed half way up the stairs.
“I spoke to someone who had seen her.”

“Thank God.” Mom sighed. “She’s all
right.”

As all right as a person could be trapped
as a prisoner in another dimension when they're being used as a sippy cup by a
vampire.

“I asked the person who saw Juliette to
call the detective and give him the details.” The first actual lie I’d told Mom
today.

“Where did they see her?”

“At a hangout, but not one I recognized,
“ I hedged. “We couldn’t actually find her and bring her home tonight. Maybe
tomorrow.”

When I reached my room, I didn’t turn on
the light, just closed the door and leaned my head against it. The situation
seemed impossible. Zen's plan was as crazy as Zen. Besides, did I have the
courage to go through with it? Sure it seemed okay in theory, but in practice
those monsters were pretty scary. Plus, we didn’t even know their actual
location.

The bedside lamp snapped on illuminating
the room. I jumped and stifled a scream with my hand as I wheeled around.

Billy Broadrick sat on my bed.

“Finally. It’s about time,” he muttered.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I
asked. “How did you get in?”

“I came in through the window like you
do.” He sneered. “I want to talk to you about Juliette.”

“You couldn’t do that today at school?”

He ignored my question and rose. Thank
goodness. I had to sleep in that bed after all. Yuck. I’d probably have
nightmares from now on. For more reasons than one.

“How are you going to get her back?” he
demanded.

“How do you know I’m going to try?”

“I want to help you.” His voice rose with
agitation.

“Shhhh.” I cracked open my bedroom door
and glanced out. No sign of Mom. I shut the door. “You can’t help.”

“What if I know where those things are
hiding?”

He couldn't be saying what I thought he
was saying. How would Billy know anything about where the monsters were?

"What things?" I asked
bluffing.

"The things...creatures...whatever
they were that came through when Juliette and Franky disappeared. One of the
BQs followed them out of the hospital."

“Maybe you can help, after all," I
said.

After punching in the number for Zen on
my phone, I waited five rings for him to pick up.

“What do you want?” Zen answered finally.

“That’s some greeting.”

Earlier on, I’d arranged to meet Rom and
the others in about an hour and a half to search for the monsters. Now we knew
where they were thanks to Billy. I told Zen where we’d be and what Billy had
said.

“Why don't we meet now?” Zen suggested.

“Because I have to wait for my mom to go
to sleep that’s why.” I hung up.

At my insistence, Billy climbed out the
window with instructions to wait. If Billy had told the truth, getting the
monsters just became a lot easier. At least the finding part. The catching
part? Not so sure.

Zen seemed certain he could catch them
and he'd finally be able to prove the people wrong who drummed him out of the
military for his belief in the paranormal.
Well
, I thought,
everyone should have a hobby
.

I sat down at the computer to kill time.
A click of the mouse brought up a search engine and I typed in the words
“Prince Leopold”. The man in the mirror had a British accent so I added the
word “England” to the search terms and pressed enter. As the computer worked I
felt stupid. Did I really think I could Google a monster from another
dimension?

When the search results filled the
screen, I leaned forward in excitement. The top result was a Wikipedia entry
for HRH, the Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany and son of Queen Victoria. Scanning
down the page, my heart leaped. A man gazed serenely from a sepia photograph
near the bottom. This was the image of the same man I’d seen in the
psychomanteum, minus the fangs of course. But this Prince Leopold had suffered
from hemophilia and died after a fall led to internal bleeding in 1884.

Clicking on another result, I continued
reading and was so intent I didn’t hear someone slip in through the window and
prowl toward me. A hand touching the spot where my shoulder met my nape sent me
rocketing up and out of the desk chair. As the chair skid and fell, I whirled
and found Rom behind me.

“Is everything okay, honey?” Mom called
almost immediately from downstairs.

I crossed to the bedroom door and opened
it.

“Just knocked the chair over. I’m fine.”
I turned back to Rom. “You scared the crap out of me,” I whispered furiously.

“Apologies,” he said in a quiet voice.
“The observation of that boy departing your window caused concern.”

“Billy just came to tell me he knows
where the monsters are.” Taking Rom by the arm I pulled him over to the
computer screen. “Look at this.” I pointed to the photograph of Queen
Victoria’s son. “Seem familiar?”

“The vampire, but not the vampire,” he
said.

 
As Rom scanned the screen, I scanned him. He’d lied to me
overtly and by omission but still I couldn’t help being drawn to him
physically. Those pesky teenage hormones I suppose. But more than that, somehow
I knew Rom was innately good.

It occurred to me that when I’d touched
his arm I had grasped a point near the bandage and he'd flinched. I must have
been staring at him with an expression of anger or something because when Rom
glanced at me, he exhaled a long breath.

“Shall I depart and await you outside?”

“Is that bite on your arm hurting?” I
asked.

“No.” I could tell by the way he glanced
away that he'd lied.

“Let me see it." I grasped his arm.
When he tried to pull it away I tugged it back. “Come on.” I peeled back the
Band-Aid revealing an angry red wound. The edges were hot to my gently probing
touch.

“This could be infected.” I tried to keep
the fear off my face.

After leading him by the hand into the
adjoining bathroom, I held his arm over the sink and dumped almost a half
bottle of the hydrogen peroxide into the wound. Rom gasped and then stood it
stoically.

“Tomorrow you need to get this looked at
by a doctor.” After applying an antiseptic cream, I re-bandaged the wound. “You
probably need antibiotics."

Rom nodded and moved out of the bathroom
and toward the window.

“No.” I stopped him. “Wait with me until
Mom goes to sleep. We'll be able to leave together.”

We stared at one another for long moments
before, by unspoken agreement, we moved to the bed and sat down side-by-side. Rom
continued to gaze into my eyes searchingly. A shadow passed over his face. For
some reason I knew he was thinking about his family.

Wishing with all my heart I could comfort
him, I took Rom’s hand between both of mine, lifted it to my lips and kissed his
knuckles. My action only seemed to make his expression more tortured than
before.

“Do not think me less than full honor,
but…” he hesitated.

“What?”

“May we lie on your bed together?”

His words sparked both excitement and
fear. Between all the painful tingles and poundings in my heart and head, I
couldn’t tell which belonged to which feeling.

“The comfort of arms around me would mean
much now." Rom pulled his gaze from mine to stare at his lap as if ashamed
of what he’d revealed.

 
My answer was to scoot further up onto the bed and lie down.
Rom made his little quirky half-smile and joined me. With a bit of awkwardness
we put our arms around each other. Mine wrapped around his waist. One of his
rested under my shoulder and the other draped over me to lie loosely on my hip.
His breath on my face spawned more tingling throughout my body. We lay watching
each other in silence for a few minutes.

“Why didn’t you just tell me about the
vortex so I wouldn’t open it,” I asked and felt him stiffen. “I mean I’m not saying
you’re to blame, I just wonder."

“You would have believed a strange young
man with an even stranger tale?”

He had a point.

“Tell me about your world,” I urged.

“My world has beauty,” Rom said. He
lifted his hand from my waist and placed it on my wrist, before tracing small
circles with his index finger. “The air blows and the sea moves more cleanly
than in this world. But my world is brutal too.”

Brutal? What did that mean?

“In my world, the exploration that opened
the continent of Augustinia for incorporation into the empire was undertaken by
Cristoforo Colombo in 1492 at the order of the Roman Emperor, Tiberius Claudius
Caesar Augustus IV.”

His caressing hand moved up my arm to my
shoulder and I fought to keep a gasp from escaping.

The fact that something so similar yet
different had happened in Rom's dimension made me wonder. How much of what we
experienced was fate and what was left to chance?

“So the Roman Empire never fell and your
country is located on the same land mass as America in this dimension?” I
asked.

He nodded.

“What about the American Revolution?
Obviously, it wasn’t called that but did something like that happen?” Although
I was interested in the answer, his fingers were interesting me also. They had
me floating above my own body with excitement.

“A revolution was fought,” he replied.
“The provinces of Augustina rebelled against Rome in 1776 but the treason was
quashed. The rebels and all of their household were beheaded in the arena.”

That brought me back to earth. “The
arena? Like gladiators?”

"Accord," he said. "Today
the arena is much attended in person and through television. Most gladiators
are no longer slaves but highly paid athletes much like your football players.”
Reaching a hand up he brushed the hair off my forehead, tracing my brow with
his fingers. “Yet slaves are common in Augustinian society. We have many in our
household.”

“What about England? Were they involved
at all in the Revolution?”

“I know not much more of the rebellion,
being an imperfect academic.” he continued. “ I leave perfection to my
brother.”

“Brother? Do you have any sisters? What's
your family like?”

“One brother Marcus and one sister
Nicia.” He smiled gently when he said his sister’s name and his navy eyes
warmed. “My sister is the soft heart of our family. We all dote upon her. My
father in particular.”

“Tell me more about Nicia.” I wanted to
see more of that warm expression.

“She has attained the age of twelve
years. We celebrated her natal day the evening before I journeyed here. Nicia is
fair and as lovely of face as she is of disposition.”

“Like your sister, my brother Adam was
the one with the sweet personality in our family.”

“Truly?” A wry smile twisted his lips.
“You shock me.”

Laughing, I smacked his arm lightly.
“Anyway, Mom and Dad had Adam to save their marriage, I think. But it didn’t
work.”

We were quiet for a time. “What’s your
father like?” I asked to break the silence.