Darkness Rising Part 1
Darkness Rising
By capnzebbie
Hunger.
We/I hunger.
In the vastness of the Void, the Dark join together, float apart; fewer every time they part. The ones left behind on the journey from one world to another, searching, searching the Void for a way out. No meat, no blood, no minds, no souls to eat, they feed on themselves, on each other, turning cannibal to survive…
eating one’s own leg to survive.
We/I hunger….
Darwath
Ingold sighed in relief as the glowing, twisting portal closed. “That’s done, then. We’ve done our best to make certain that Kris and Adam and their world are safe. I only hope it’s enough.”
“What do you mean?” Rudy asked.
“There are still several things that could go wrong. When I was closing the way through the Void, I sensed that some of the Dark Ones are still trapped there.”
Gil said something foul, gripping her sword. “I thought we got them all!”
“We destroyed all the ones who came back through to this world,” Ingold agreed, “and I’m certain that none of them have found their way to Kris and Adam’s world, the world from which you two came. I just hope the gnoddyr spell holds. There’s danger if their memories of this place come back.”
“What do you mean?” Rudy asked. “I mean, I know it’ll be better for their peace of mind to not remember travelling between universes and coming so close to death, but…”
“Not just for their peace of mind. If they remember this world, the Dark Ones may be able to track them by their thoughts.”
“Oh. Crap.”
“Rudy?” Gil assessed him with glacial eyes.
“I uh, may have done something…um…”
“Stupid?” Gil finished for him.
Los Angeles
Kris Allen was happy. Giddy, even. He knew he shouldn’t be, after parting ways with his label. He should be worried, but he was more excited about his career than ever, working with Pearl Group Entertainment and with Lindsay, (kinda, sorta) living with Adam Lambert, in love, excited about his music and his coming tour, his life, and pleased with the world in general. There was just one tiny bit of unhappiness shadowing his life. Well, two really. The first was that he and Adam weren’t out as a couple. Kris still had his own place in LA, although he didn’t spend much time there. And he had to sneak in and out of Adam’s house, constantly on the watch for the paps. Only a few people, family, close friends, management (of course) knew that they were together. Management was waiting for it all to fall apart so they wouldn’t have to deal with it. Family and friends on Kris’s side were confused, disturbed, or cautiously supportive. Reactions from family and friends on Adam’s side ranged from ‘it’s about time’ to cautiously supportive to thrilled. Neil and Brad each sent Adam a toaster (because they’re dorks) which cracked Adam up. He donated them both to a Salvation Army store in the middle of one of the seediest parts of downtown Los Angeles; the store where they had miraculously found a working pay phone after coming to their senses with no idea of how they had gotten there, and with no cell phones, money, or IDs to be found in their pockets.
Which brought Kris to the second problem; he couldn’t remember how he and Adam had gotten together. He remembered wanting Adam for so long, even when he shouldn’t; avoiding Adam because he had to, even though it hurt. He remembered seeing Adam again for the first time six months after the divorce. Adam was so angry that he would barely speak to Kris. A brief car ride so unpleasant that the earthquake was almost a relief. Then, the next thing Kris remembered was waking up on the sidewalk, holding hands with Adam, with more than two months of his memory gone. All he and Adam knew was that they had been held captive by some kind of homophobic cult, but instead of the captivity driving them apart, they had somehow healed their friendship and found love. Kris did not want to remember whatever the cult had done to them (the cuts, burns, and bruises, as well as Adam’s broken arm, told him quite enough, thank you very much), but he did want to remember how he and Adam had found their way to each other.
Adam wasn’t as worried about it. He knew their relationship had happened; that was enough for him. He, too, had a big blank spot where the cult memories should be; but he fervently didn’t want to remember any more than he did. Poking at that part of his mind made him feel vaguely nauseous. He was, however, as supportive of Kris as he could be, coming up with ideas for memory recovery ranging from mundane to bizarre, everything he or his friends could think of. He and Kris had both spent some time in counseling for possible PTSD from the kidnapping, but they hadn’t recovered any memories during the sessions. He suggested hypnosis, but Kris was uncomfortable with the idea of someone messing with his head; someone had already done that once. Adam also suggested massage, chanting, affirmations, rituals, mind readers, positive thinking.
“Mushroom tea! It’s like epiphany juice!”
“No, thank you,” Kris replied with a laugh.
“Lucid dreaming?”
“What’s that?”
“Scarlett told me about it. Hey, it might work! You kind of take control of your dream and use it to help you find out something. It’s a way of getting in touch with your subconscious mind. It would just be you messing with your head instead of someone else.”
“So what do I do?”
“Well, it takes practice, so it may take a while. Before you go to sleep, you just tell yourself you’re going to be aware that you’re dreaming and that you’ll be in control of your dreams. Once you start having a dream, and you’re aware you’re dreaming, you can talk to people in the dream and ask them questions and stuff.”
“Um, okay, I can give it a try.” Kris frowned, and said, “I don’t want to remember the bad, you know, cult stuff. I just want to remember… us. Like, our first time. I mean, that’s a big deal for me, and I can’t remember it.”
“I know, baby, I wish I could remember more of it, too,” Adam lied, as he pulled Kris into a hug. “I’m so glad we have this now, but it would be great to remember when and how we started.”
Darwath
“So you taught Adam and Kris how to sabotage the gnoddyr spell? To what end?” Ingold sounded more weary than angry.
“Just sabotage it a little. They wanted to remember their own, um, relationship here. I just thought, if it was me and Alde, how would I feel about someone wiping out the memory of the first time we met, our first kiss, you know….” Rudy trailed off sheepishly.
“Yes, I know.” Ingold glanced at Gil and she raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing to be done for it now but just try to keep an eye on the situation, so to speak. It should be safe for them to remember just that, just each other here, but if they start remembering anything about this place…I don’t know, I just don’t know. I’m not sure how much the Dark would need to be able to find them, to find their world. We three probably know more about the Dark than anyone, but we still know so little about them!”
“Can you…can we go into the Void after them? I mean, can we go hunt them down?” Rudy asked.
“The Void is not a destination for humans, it is a place to go through to somewhere else. And even if we could remain there for any length of time, it is, well, vast isn’t truly the correct word. More like infinite. We wouldn’t be able to find them,” Ingold responded. “Also, every time I open the way, it leaves cracks that take years to heal. I don’t want to make Darwath or your own world any more accessible to creatures from other worlds. The Dark Ones were enough of danger. We don’t need any more.”
“Can you set up some kind of watch? Something to let you know if there’s a breach in the Void?” Gil asked.
“Yes. Rudy, I’ll need you to work with me on this. We’ll need a constant monitor, with an alert to let us know if something happens. And please let me know if you have any other bright ideas about sabotaging my spells!”
“Right. Just tell me what I need to do.”
Los Angeles
“Oh…kay,” Kris said around a yawn. “I’m going to try the lucid dreaming thing. Or start practicing anyway.”
Adam sounded on the edge of sleep, murmuring, “For someone with a trained mind like yours, it shouldn’t be hard.”
“What?”
“Hmm?”
“You said I have a trained mind? What?”
“Well, yeah, when you did the…” Adam trailed off, looking confused. “I don’t know where that came from. Huh.”
“Dang it! I hate having a chunk of my life gone!”
“So, work on it.” Adam turned on his side and pulled Kris close. “I’m sorry, babe, I have to sleep. Early meeting.”
Kris spooned in and tried to think about being in control of his dreams….
Adam was on top of him, head thrown back, riding Kris as if he were having a spiritual experience. He gasped and shook, and Kris felt come splattering his belly and chest, all the way up to his chin. God, Kris was so close, so close…Adam looked down and smiled, and Kris somehow knew he was dreaming. “Is this our first time?”
Adam laughed, now stretched out on the bed beside him. “You remember, you know you remember, a trained mind like yours.”
“But I don’t. I remember you were mad at me. Wait, did I kiss you?”
“See? You do remember. You kissed me like you’d never kissed anyone before. By that I mean you didn’t seem to know what you were doing.” Adam grinned, standing up from a chair in a room with black stone walls, smooth as obsidian, wearing something black with white decorations, reaching for…a sword?
And Kris did remember their first kiss, so awkward, so desperate, Adam taking control, so perfect, so, so what they both wanted…a moment of light in a universe of darkness…darkness…the Dark…the dank smell of a cave invaded his nostrils and he pushed that thought away…
Adam, looking grim in his black and white Guard uniform…Kris watched in horror as Adam’s uniform began to smoke in spots as if someone (something) had dropped acid on it…the lights began to flicker and dim, and Kris began to shake, fear-sweat dripping down his back…a loud gonging noise sounded throughout the Keep of Dare….
Kris woke with a gasp, the gonging noise echoing in his head. “What the heck?”
Adam jerked, waking abruptly. “Whassat? Is someone bangin’ on the door?”
Kris didn’t hear a thing.
~*~
In the Void, one of the Dark Ones jerked to a halt, a movement so unusual and unexpected that two others bumped into it. They temporarily merged, knowingfeelingsmellingsensing a direction, a hint, a possibility of escape from this endless nothing. The rest of the Dark rushed in and floated toward the hint.
And found a tiny crack.
~*~
Raffie jittered and shuffled his way down Hopper Avenue, all unknowing and uncaring that this street was the place where Kris Allen and Adam Lambert had mysteriously reappeared after their release from the cult that had held them captive for over two months. He was about to round the corner at that very spot when he saw what looked like a small, glowing tear appear in the air right in front of him, as the few working street lights flickered and died. Through the tear oozed a nightmare shape more frightening than his worst drug-induced delusions, a light-sucking black blob that grew and grew until it seemed to fill the sky. Raffie stared, gape-mouthed and too terrified to scream, as the blob seemed to split apart, each part growing a mouth lined with shark’s teeth, dripping saliva that sizzled as it hit the sidewalk. Fortunately for Raffie, the Dark were hungry for meat and blood. Had he known what he was facing, he would have been glad for the quick death.
~*~
In the Keep of Dare, Ingold awoke with a start.
~*~
The Dark Ones felt their way through the man-made canyons of Los Angeles, spreading darkness before them and leaving death behind them. With newfound strength from their meals of meat and blood, they spread their awareness to its limits. The sheer volume of life on this world! They could sense billions of wild humans to domesticate, to turn into food, tame into herds, and to line the nurseries. But first, they needed a place to bring the humans for domestication. The Dark were so pitifully few; they needed to increase their population rapidly. And they needed to find the ones whose minds had led them here. Their knowledge was a danger; they needed to be brought to heel as soon as possible.
It took Kris nearly twenty minutes to stop shaking, and much longer than that to shake off the fear from the end of his dream. It was almost dawn before he was finally able to drift back to a dreamless sleep. He told Adam about the dream over breakfast, trying to communicate the feeling of creeping horror that pervaded the last part.
“I don’t know, Adam, it was really…it was awful. But it didn’t feel cult-y. It felt worse. I don’t think I want to do that again.”
“I don’t blame you.” Adam felt a bit queasy, wishing he hadn’t suggested the lucid dreaming thing. Sometimes forgetting is for the best. “Maybe just…let it go for a bit. You’ve been focusing on this so hard for the last few weeks. Let it be for a while and maybe some of the nice stuff will come back. But hey, you remembered the kiss!” Adam grinned happily.
Kris laughed, shaking off the last of his discomfort. “Yes, the terrible, awkward first kiss. I think I’ll be satisfied with remembering that, because I know that was real. It just felt real.”
“Fortunately, we’ve gotten much better at it since then,” Adam replied, pulling Kris closer so he could demonstrate how much better at it they were before he had to head out to his meeting with management.
Kris decided to add the gaps in his memories to the list of things he couldn’t change. Like his fear of the dark that seemed to come from nowhere and which led directly to night lights in every room in the house. And candles. Candles everywhere. Kris now found candles infinitely comforting; just looking at a burning candle made him feel safe. Maybe the cult kept them someplace dark? Kris sighed and let it go. Let it go, a voice in the back of his mind said. Actually, the voice was saying something like, gnoddyr elphuath ang wath mar, which made no sense at all, so Kris’s mind heard it as let it go.
But the dark thing didn’t explain Adam’s newfound fascination with swords; what the heck was that all about? Maybe they had been kidnapped by a homophobic cult that was into medieval reenactments? Adam had always liked fire; that liking was just intensified now, and coupled with the swords it was going to make an amazing show. Kris grinned to himself, thinking about Adam’s enthusiasm for his “Kabuki/circus” thing. After the relative visual austerity of the Trespassing Tour, Adam was going all out for the new one. He couldn’t wait to see it, happy that he could see it after having to stay away from Adam’s concerts for such a long time. He hoped that Adam would be able to make it to one of his concerts as well. And on that cheerful thought, Kris headed out to his own meeting with management.
~*~
Homehomehomehomehome find a home a place to hide to grow a place for the herds for the children someplace dark and warm and secret
There are no caverns in downtown Los Angeles. There are, however, many dark, abandoned buildings. Now one building is even darker, but no longer abandoned.
~*~
Adam’s management was thrilled with his new creative direction. Shel, the PR guy, was practically shitting himself with excitement, and Mariel, the tour booking agent was equally enthusiastic. “We’re really going heavy with tour dates all across Asia-Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore,” Mariel ticked off the countries on her fingers. “We’ve already got three dates at big venues in Japan; I think they’ll like the spectacle and the Japanese influence in the new show.”
“I’m really excited about this!” Adam responded. “So, what about an American leg for the tour?”
Shel and Mariel exchanged a glance. “Well, the first concert will be here, of course. And we do have some dates coming up in the U.S.,” Shel said in an overly cheerful voice and Adam concentrated on keeping the same smile on his face. “Not really part of the tour as such, but they’ll be spectacular, large venues! But we can go over that later.”
Adam knew what that meant, but he decided to just go with the management flow on scheduling and concentrate on the art. He hadn’t yet come up with a name for the tour, but he had it all planned out-pyro, swords, dancers with over-sized masks and exaggerated Kabuki-style makeup, a mixture of martial arts and circus, with both sword fighting and juggling fire. And soaring over it all, Adam’s voice singing of fear and darkness, of triumph and love. The new songs he had been writing in the weeks since he and Kris had come back were crazy, coming from some creative place he’d never accessed before. This show was going to be killer!
@adamlambert: cant wait for the NEW TOUR!!! Faces will melt!
@luvrofadam: So excited!!!
@pintocolada: will u be coming to Brazil? #pleasepleaseplease
@superglamazon: TOUR!!! Yes!
@liz78green: You should wear less clothes this time.
Kris added the last chopped vegetables to the stir-fry, dancing to a song in his head as the television droned in the background. Adam should be home soon, and Kris was looking forward to a quiet evening at home. He had the nice dishes on the table, candles ready to be lit, wine chilling; now all he needed was Adam. When the vegetables were al dente, he took the stir-fry off the heat. It looked so good, he took a picture, and, with a mischievous smirk, uploaded it to Twitter with the comment, Dinner with a friend. #bejelus. He covered the wok to keep the food warm and went to the dining table to light the candles. Just as he held the lit match out toward the first candle, he heard the front door open.
“Honey, I’m home!”
Kris blew out the match, not noticing that both candles had lit without being touched by the match flame. He hurried to the front door and wrapped his arms around Adam. “How was your day, dear?” he asked with a grin.
“Mmmmuch, better now.” Adam kissed Kris thoroughly and enthusiastically. “What’s that smell? Did you cook?”
“Chicken and vegetable stir-fry.”
“No…”
“No rice or noodles, just meat and veggies.”
Adam laughed happily as they headed to the dining room. “You know me so well. And god, I love your cooking.” He stopped short with a pleased look at the dining table, lit only by the candles in the center.
“Candles and wine? Why, Mr. Allen, are you trying to seduce me?”
Kris propped his sneaker-clad foot up on one of the dining room chairs. “Do you want me to seduce you?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You know it, babe,” Adam responded with a wicked grin and a nibbling kiss to the back of Kris’s neck. “But food first, I’m fucking starving. Nothing to eat since breakfast.”
“Ha, I see where I fit in your priorities. Have a seat, and pour the wine. I’ll get the food.”
Just as they sat down, Kris’s phone started singing alerts of direct messages and tweets.
DM @LindsayPGE: Kristopher >:(
@negativeneil: People who tweet pics of food are losers
@krisbert549: Ooo who are you cooking for?
DM @KatyOConnell: So, has Adam’s wok ever appeared on the internet anywhere? Cause you know….
@maddieissocool: Looks delicious! Can I come over?
Adam looked at the messages. “What did you do?” he asked, looking amused.
“Tweeted a pic of the food,” Kris responded with an innocent look. “Just said I was having dinner with a friend.”
“You are such bad boy, Kris,” Adam said with a laugh. “Okay, phone off during dinner. We can look at the twats later.”
Phones turned off, they settled in to enjoy dinner.
“Has your wok ever appeared on the internet?”
“God knows. Or the fans know. If it has, we’ll all know it soon enough. You may get more than an angry face DM from Lyndsay if it has.”
“I’m…,” Kris hesitated, and Adam looked at him inquiringly. “I’m not sure how much longer I want to wait.”
Adam looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, Kris. I mean, I want to say that it’s up to you, and you know I’ll support you whatever you decide. I don’t like having to hide any more than you do, but…”
“But?”
“But…I met with Shel and Mariel and some other people about the new album and the tour. It’s going to be all Asia and Europe, with ‘a few U.S. shows,’ Mariel said. And I know that means Pride, and GLAAD, and PFLAG, and as much as I love all that, it’s frustrating that everywhere else in the world I’m ‘pop singer Adam Lambert,’” Adam struck a pretentious pose, “but here at home, I’m ‘openly gay pop singer Adam Lambert.’” He looked at Kris ruefully. “I don’t know, are you ready for that for yourself?”
Kris felt a little quiver down in his belly. Was he ready for that? Was that a quiver of fear or anticipation? “I don’t know either,” he said slowly. “And if I don’t know, then I’ll wait until I do know. But I don’t think it’ll be much longer.”
“There will be meetings and meetings and meetings! Ugh! Let’s think about something else,” Adam said, shaking off the somber mood. “Hey! How did the writing go today?”
They sat at the dining table talking about everything and nothing, their appetite for food satisfied so that they were both just picking at the food and sipping wine, other appetites growing as they moved closer to each other. They kissed away the taste of wine and spices until they could only taste each other; Adam smiled at Kris and ran his hand down Kris’s arm until he reached his hand, then pulled him to his feet so they could feel each other all the way down as they kissed. And that was it. Adam knew they weren’t going to make it to the bedroom. They’d be lucky to make it to the sofa before they fell down. Laughing and stumbling, kissing and pulling each other’s clothes off, they fell onto the sofa with Kris straddling Adam.
Much later, they lay naked on the sofa, tangled together, trying to catch their breath.
“You know,” Kris said between gasps, “I used to think I was kind of un-sexual.”
“What?” Adam laughed breathlessly. “Are you nuts?”
“Like, low sex drive or something. I mean, I liked girls, they were nice to look at and all, but I never felt like…I mean, I loved Katy. I still love her…” Kris felt Adam tense slightly at this and he reached up and caressed Adam’s face with a trembling hand. “But I never felt this…craving. From the first time I saw you, I was curious about you. I wanted to know you. And as we got to know each other, got to be friends, I just wanted to be closer.”
Adam laughed weakly. “And I was trying to keep myself from…from wanting you too much, trying to keep a little distance between us, and you just kept moving closer.” He smiled fondly at Kris. “You were like a persistent suitor.”
Now Kris was laughing. “And here I didn’t even realize we were courtin’. I just knew that I had to be next to you, had to be touching you. And I had no clue that I…”
“That you-that we--were falling in love.”
“Yeah. That whole year is such a blur, but I feel like I went into it one person and came out-no pun intended-as another person.”
Adam looked down and happened to catch a glimpse of a familiar Los Angeles street on the television. The anchor was saying, “What’s happening with the city’s homeless population? Unusual activity…”
Kris noticed Adam’s distraction and said, “So, deep emotional talk time over?” He pressed on Adam’s cheek to bring his attention away from the television. “Maybe time for some action?”
“You have the best ideas,” Adam responded with a breathless laugh, reaching for the remote. Just as he hit the power button, the anchor began with, “In other news, random, small-scale blackouts around the city have the power company baff.…”
As the television went silent, Kris took Adam’s ear lobe in his teeth and moved his mouth slowly down Adam’s neck to his chest. “Much better,” he said.
Kris was in a forest full of damp, dripping trees, unsure of how he got there or which way to go to get out of it. He felt the same foreboding that had crept up on him during the last dream. He heard footsteps rustling through the leaves behind him and whirled around, relieved to see Adam striding toward him in a fringed, studded tailcoat and a top hat with a red ‘A’ on the front.
“What are you wearing? Is that the costume from your If I Had You video?”
“Yep. Except for this,” Adam pulled the ‘A’ off of his hat. “It’s for you.” He stuck the ‘A’ to Kris’s chest.
Kris smiled at him. “I’ve been wearing this since we first met,” he said fondly, brushing his fingers across the letter. Adam brushed his fingers over Kris’s, and Kris opened his mouth to say something sappy when he heard screams ringing out through the forest and fear shot through him. Adam grabbed his hand and started running toward the screams.
“No! Adam! Not toward the screams, we have to run away!”
But he continued to follow Adam because he would always follow Adam. “They’ll find us anyway,” Adam said grimly. “They’ll always find us. It doesn’t do any good to run away. We could run across all the worlds and they would still find us….”
Kris’s eyes opened. His heart was racing and he was drenched in sweat as if he really had been running. He wiped a shaking hand across his face and whispered to the night, “There is definitely something wrong with my brain.”
“Dude! Look at this!” Tommy thrust his hand in front of Adam’s face.
“What?”
“My finger!”
“Okay.”
“No, man, you remember I cut my finger on the guitar string yesterday? I was worried about whether I was going to be able to play properly today?”
“Oh yeah, I remember.” Adam looked curiously at his hand. “There’s nothing there now! What did you use on it? That was a pretty bad cut.”
“Nothing, man! I mean, I washed it and put a band aid on it, but this chick outside, you know that weird chick with the blue and pink fauxhawk who’s always hanging around outside waiting for a glimpse of your fine ass? She’s like, a faith healer or something. She just touched my finger and the cut went away!” Tommy looked both gleeful and slightly freaked out.
“Bullshit! No way!” Adam exclaimed.
“Yuhuh, way!” Tommy said. Ashley came over and grabbed his hand, examining it closely.
“There’s hardly even a scar, Tommy,” she observed. “That’s…well, kinda freaky-weird, ‘cause it was a pretty bad cut.”
Keisha made a sign against the evil eye and Reyna slapped her lightly on the arm. “Don’t be doing that. She must be a good witch if she healed Tommy,” Reyna said hopefully.
“Or maybe Jesus did it,” Keisha responded. “I hope so, anyway.”
“Well, she didn’t do any praying; she just touched it and closed her eyes for a minute,” Tommy said.
“She was probably praying in her head,” Reyna decided.
“There’s some weird shit going on out there, guys, but I don’t know about faith healers,” Rick put in as he twirled his drumsticks. “Don’t know what’s up, but you know that dude who hangs out on Hyperion? The one who always has some stupid sign with, like, doomsday Bible verses or whatever?” The others nodded, all ears. “Well, yesterday he had this sign that was completely different. It said, get this,” he paused dramatically, “’The Darkness is Rising.’ I mean, is that weird, or what?”
Adam shuddered, feeling something trying to break out in the back of his mind. He shook it off. “Okay, guys, enough. Let’s get to work. Just let us know if someone starts coming up with lucky Lotto numbers.” They all laughed, if a bit nervously, but they all took their places for rehearsal.
Brian decided not to mention the two hundred bucks in his pocket. He just knew that scratch-off ticket was a good one before he bought it.
Tia wanders her usual route, a modern day hunter-gatherer, looking for food, looking for a place to sleep, one eye on opportunities, the other on the lookout for the predators. She thinks LA’s not a bad place to be homeless. Good weather most of the time, lots of restaurants with dumpsters, but it’s hard to find a safe place to sleep; the shelters are too full and too risky for a girl who’s just marking time until she turns eighteen, when she’ll no longer be in danger of being dragged back into the system. No sir, no more foster homes or group homes, the streets are safer. In the street, there’s room to run.
She’s in an area that’s usually crowded with other street people, but it’s pretty empty today, which is nice. Just a few people wandering, looking like they’re in a daze; she’s been seeing that a lot lately. Must be some new kind of drug out there. Not too far from the Salvation Army store, there’s an abandoned building that usually has some small space where she can hole up for the night without worrying about being raped, killed, or robbed of her few possessions. The building usually has a few lights shining, flashlights, candles, even some of those camping lanterns, but it’s dark now. That’s creepy, but Tia is not put off. She walks in cautiously, listening carefully for signs of life. Maybe something’s wrong. Maybe the cops cleared the place. She’s about to slide back out the door when she…hears something. Smells something. Feels…something. Something not scary, maybe, but she’s not sure.
A person watching from across the street would’ve seen a young girl approach the building cautiously, take a few steps in, start to turn around, then stop and look…wondering. Happy. Then disappear into the darkness of the building.
Inside Tia’s head, there is the smell of home cooking, a feeling of warmth and welcome the like of which she had never felt in any of her foster homes. So lost is she in these lovely sensations that she doesn’t notice the thick, black, cable-like tail that wraps around her waist, lifts her, and carries her into the dark of the abandoned building.
“Kris? Where are you?”
“Here. In the studio.”
“Ah!” Adam’s head poked around the doorway; he saw Kris sitting on the floor, leaning up against the wall with his cell phone sitting on the floor in front of him. “Why are you sitting in here? And on the floor?”
“Had a call-in radio interview a little while ago. Just been sitting here thinking.”
“What’s wrong? You look so serious.” Adam sat next to Kris on the floor and pulled him close.
“I miss my dog.” Kris leaned his head into the curve of Adam’s shoulder.
“Awww, I’m sorry.” Adam pressed a kiss to the top of Kris’s head. “Is Zorro with Katy or with your mom and dad right now? You were going to go pick him up next week, right? Do you want to go sooner? I’ll reschedule some stuff and go with you.”
“Nah, but thanks. He’s with mom and dad this week. And yeah, I’m supposed to go pick him up next week.” Kris sighed. “That’s not really why I’m feeling, I don’t know. The radio interview.” He stopped.
“What happened, sweetie?” Adam asked softly. He knew sometimes interviewers could be shitty in the name of ‘comedy’, but he hoped that hadn’t happened this time.
“Oh, just the usual, you know. It wasn’t a bad interview. But the guy asked the usual questions about my ‘inspiration for my songs,’” Kris made air quotes, “and I gave the usual blah blah about ‘family and friends,’ and I just wonder if I’ll ever be able to really tell the truth about that stuff.” He gave a little snort and shook his head.
“What?”
“Did you ever read that article in Rolling Stone a couple of years ago about Adele?“
“Yes! That was a good one. Pretty in-depth.”
“You remember she talked about that song, Set Fire to the Rain, and how she was inspired to write it by trying to light a cigarette in the rain after a fight with her boyfriend?”
“Yeah. That was interesting. Such a little thing, but I could totally see it.”
“Mm hm, same here.” Kris took a deep breath and continued, “So, one day, before the divorce, before we’d even talked about divorce, I was on the internet looking at,” Kris blushed fiercely and ducked his head down a little, “gay stuff. Like, gay porn.”
“What? Really!” Adam had to admit that was a turn on, and Kris looked so cute all blushy like that.
Kris poked him in the side. “Yes. Really. I was trying to figure out how it worked, if it was something I could really want. I was kind of scared of the, I mean, I wasn’t sure about the, you know…”
“You were afraid of the Glambulge?” Adam asked with a grin.
Kris started laughing. “Shut up. It’s totally intimidating. Anyway, Katy had gone to the store, so I thought she’d be gone for a while…”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, she forgot her list, so she had to come back for it. She came to see if I needed to add anything to it, and…”
“Caught you red-handed? Wait, you weren’t actually…”
“No! No, I was just, you know, looking. But god, she was so pissed-that was kind of the beginning of the end, really. We had this huge fight, and at the end of the fight she just kind of yelled at me,” he pitched his voice higher, “’Well, why don’t you write a goddamn song about it?’”
“Go, Katy!”
Kris snickered. “Yeah, I don’t think I ever heard her swear before. So anyway, I wrote a song about it. Had to change it up a bit, but yeah.”
Adam thought for a minute and could not even guess. “Which one?”
“Teach Me How Love Goes.”
Adam made a high-pitched, muffled noise, and cleared his throat. “That’s a great song.”
“Thank you. I like it.”
They sat quietly on the floor for a couple of minutes.
“So,” Adam finally said, “can I be there the first time you tell that story on the radio?”
Kris cracked up, and Adam finally gave in to his own fit of giggles. “Absolutely. You have to be there so we can leave the country immediately after and hide someplace where Lindsay will never find us.” He stretched up and kissed Adam firmly. “Thank you. I needed that.”
Once they had calmed down again, Adam whispered into Kris’s hair, “Am I a good Zorro substitute?”
“You are the best Zorro substitute,” Kris answered, hugging Adam.
“You know it’ll get better, right?”
“I know.”
“I was scared of the. Of being with. I didn’t know if I could. What if I didn’t like the…” Kris waved his hands around vaguely, trying to explain, knowing he probably hadn’t explained anything. Or had he? Because Adam was looking more enraged than ever, which he hadn’t thought possible.
“You were scared of dick? That’s your big excuse, the good ol’ gay panic? Fuck, you really are a redneck!”
Kris looked at him, startled. “That’s not what you said before!”
“This is what I said before,” Adam answered irritably. He was naked except for the top hat, sitting cross-legged on a bed in that same dark stone room.
“No, before you said something about the Glambulge. And you weren’t angry.”
“No, that was after. This is before. What I said before was what I said after. I’m a lot less cranky after.” Adam grinned at Kris and took a bubbling hit off of a hookah. He blew out the smoke, black smoke that began to float around the room; it seemed to be growing a tail. Adam waved his sword at it and it broke apart, blew away.
Kris shook his head. ”That doesn’t make any sense.”
Adam shrugged, straightening his top hat. “Dreams don’t have to make sense.”
“Oh. Okay. So, before? Before what?”
“Before this,” Adam whispered against the back of Kris’s neck. Kris didn’t know how Adam had gotten back there or where his own clothes had gone, but dreams didn’t have to make sense. Adam trailed kisses and nips down Kris’s neck to his shoulder. Kris shivered, from the chill air on his naked skin, from nerves, from arousal. Adam’s hands reached around him and caressed his chest and stomach, one moving up to his nipples, the other moving lower. “Tell me you want this,” Adam breathed. “Tell me you need this.”
Kris couldn’t do anything but press back into Adam with a moan, shaking with desire.
“Are you sure, Kris? You were scared before.”
“Not scared now. I want this, I want you.” Saying he wasn’t scared was maybe an exaggeration, but he did want this.
Kris is floating, floating with Adam, Adam’s hands running slowly over him, caressing his face, his throat, down his arms, around his back, down, down, whispering, “Oh fuck, so gorgeous, can’t believe you’re here, can’t believe this is real, love you, love you,” Adam’s whispers blend into skittering sounds, surrounding them, the smell of a cave. Kris starts to tense up, “Shhh, shhhh, it’s okay, just make a fire, it’ll keep us safe, love you so much…” Kris feels arousal spiking low and moving lower, he’s hard and aching, Adam pushing, pushing in, oh god, hurts, so intense, feels so good, so hot, Kris is so hot, but the fire keeps them safe, burning higher and hotter, Adam moving over him, in him, long slow strokes , oh god, oh god, “Adaaaammm, Adammmm…
“Adam!” Kris woke up sweating and shaking with his orgasm coursing through him.
“Whoa, Kris, are you okay?” Adam wrapped his arms around Kris. “Did you have a nightmare?”
“Oh god, no. It was…I think I finally remembered our first time. And it was so...” Kris paused, looking down at himself and laughing a little, “well, obviously it was amazing. I need to clean up,” he finished ruefully. “This is embarrassing. Haven’t done that in a long time. But there was something else,” he continued as he walked into the bathroom, thinking about that same sense of danger and fear in the dream, just like the others.
“What?” Adam asked, sitting up. “Hey, Kris?”
“Yeah?” Kris called over the sound of running water.
“Did you leave the candles burning?”
“What? No. I never leave them burning when we’re going to sleep. Why?” Kris came out of the bathroom and headed over to the dresser for fresh underwear.
Adam was poking at one of the candles; one of several completely melted candles in the bedroom. “Look at this. Completely melted, but the wick isn’t black or anything. Never been lit. That’s really weird.”
Kris joined Adam by the dresser and poked at the melted wax. “Still warm.” He looked at the other candles. “Okay, this one has been lit, I remember lighting it for a little while a couple of days ago, but I put it out. But these others…wow, that is weird.”
“Well, this is a mystery. Hmmm. Maybe hot spots, something wrong with the heating system?” Adam firmly suppressed the thought that this seemed frighteningly familiar. “Oh hey, what was the other thing?”
“Oh yeah, the dream thing. It was kind of like the others-I felt like something was after us, trying to get to us, and this time, the only thing that kept us safe was lighting a fire.”
“We lit a fire by having sex? I can see that.”
“No!” Kris said, laughing. “I had to light the fire, but…I don’t remember how. I remember you told me to light a fire, and I did, but uugggh!” Kris grabbed his head with both hands. “I would really like for these dreams to stop now. It’s like I opened a door and I can’t get it to close, and it just keeps getting scarier.”
“I’ll ask around and see if I can get some help with stopping the dreams. Maybe Scarlett knows something. I don’t remember her ever saying anything about not being able to stop lucid dreaming once you’ve started.”
“We also need to get someone to come in and check the heating. That candle thing is scary.”
Darwath
Rudy raised his hand to knock on the door, unsurprised when Ingold opened it before his hand could touch it. “You felt it too, yes?”
“Yes,” Ingold responded grimly. “The Dark have made it out of the Void and into your old world.”
Gil appeared behind Ingold and pulled the door wider as she stamped her feet to settle her boots. “Come on in, punk. No need to talk about this in the hallway where anyone can hear.” Gil looked like she’d just woken up, her hair more disheveled than usual, standing out around her head like a gray-streaked black cloud, but she looked alert, battle-ready.
Ingold and Rudy sat down at the small table, soon joined by Gil as she set out mugs of tea.
“So, what’s the plan, Ingold?” Rudy asked, taking a careful sip of the hot tea.
“We must go to your old world as quickly as possible.”
Rudy sighed. “I agree. I already told Alde this might happen. She’s trying to be all calm; she’s worried, but she knows we have to go.”
“When do we leave?” Gil asked, pulling her hair back into a low ponytail and checking to make sure her sword was secure in its scabbard.
“Tonight. Our worlds are so far apart right now that every minute we delay could mean weeks in their world. You saw it when Kris and Adam were here; it’s been less than twenty years here since you two crossed over, but it’s been over thirty years there. We need to go as soon as possible.”
Rudy nodded. “The longer the Dark are in that world the more people die.”
“Not only that,” Ingold added. “The longer they’re there, the more likely it will be that Kris will start accidentally doing magic again, and perhaps other people around the area will start finding their magic, because of whatever it is the Dark give off that helps magic to work.”
Rudy nodded. “Kris, especially, could be a danger to himself and others if that happens. I mean, he has a real affinity for fire. Lord knows what he’s going to be setting on fire without even realizing it.”
Lebanon, Kansas
Headquarters of the Gentlemen of Letters
Sam Winchester frowned at his laptop as he studied the evidence, each story more bizarre than the last. “Hey, Dean? Something weird’s going on in LA.”
“It’s LA.”
“I mean, weird for LA, even.”
“What’s up?”
“Okay.” Sam clicked the mouse a few times as Dean leaned over his shoulder to look at the screen. “It started about six months ago. A few people disappearing, news reports of mysterious black outs, not associated with power outages, in the areas where the people disappeared. There’s no big public outcry yet, even though it’s been going on for a while, because it’s mostly transients that are dying or going missing. Then there started to be news stories about some kind of migration of homeless people toward one area of town. People are trying to say that it’s good news, decrease of homeless people loitering and panhandling in other areas of the city, mayor and law enforcement are taking credit, blah blah…but there’s also been an increase in homeless people acting strangely. Some of them are wandering around aimlessly until they starve, completely uncommunicative. Some of them have been taken into the ER, but nothing helps-it’s like there’s no mind anymore. Some of them, though, are attacking people, trying to eat them-that part’s being blamed on bath salts…”
“What? Bath salts?”
“Oh, you weren’t, uh… Anyway, there’s this stuff you can buy at truck stops that’s supposed to get you high, but instead it turns people into zombies that eat people’s faces.”
“So, not real zombies?”
“Don’t think so. Not most of them, anyway. But in LA, there’s no evidence of any kind of drugs causing this. They’re just putting that out to the media. And there’s more. Over the past couple of months, they’ve been having some odd corpses and partial corpses turning up.”
“Odd how?”
“Some of them are completely bloodless…”
“Vampires?”
“Some of them are stripped of flesh as well as blood. And the bones are partly melted, like by acid.”
“That’s new. We’re looking for some kind of bone-melting, flesh-eating, blood-drinking, mind-eating, soul-sucking monster?”
“Or more than one kind of monster, maybe? LA’s a big place.”
“When do we leave?”
Los Angeles
Adam arrived home after another decidedly weird day of rehearsal to find Kris sitting on the sofa in the living room, looking worried and frightened.
“Kris?”
Kris looked up. “Hey.”
“What’s up. You look…what happened?”
“I need to show you something. And I won’t ask you to promise not to freak out, even though I’m already doing that enough for both of us.”
Adam slowly sat down in the chair next to the sofa. “Okay, I’m already kind of freaking out…”
“Just watch.” Kris looked at the candle sitting on the coffee table. The wick began to smoke, then it burst into flame. Adam’s heart began to race. As he watched, the candle went out, then lit again.
“What the fuck,” Adam whispered. Again, that sensation of something trying to break free in his mind.
“And that’s not all,” Kris said hesitantly. “I ran into a couple of paps outside the house. I mean, almost literally ran into them. They were walking toward me, and I started thinking, ‘I’m not here, I’m not here. It’s just a cat rustling through the bushes. And the paps were looking right at me. And one of them said, ‘Nothing here. Must’ve been a cat or something in the bushes.’”
Adam remembered the nauseating shock of an earthquake, smelled a damp forest, heard an echo of Kris’s voice in the back of his mind, saying, “I just yelled at the fire to light up and it did. Um. Then a voice in my head told me how to distract the creatures.” Smelled a dank cave filled with smoke and fear and blood. “I. I can make it quick. For us.” “So, you’d use the fire? Burn us both?” “Yeah, from the inside. Like a small nuke.”
Adam jumped up from the chair and ran to the bathroom, locking the door behind him, wishing he believed that locking the door would keep the nightmares out, and fell to his knees in front of the toilet, dry-heaving, trying to vomit out the smell of smoke and fear, but nothing came up because the smell was only in his mind.
“Adam!” Kris ran after him. “Adam! Adam, are you okay?” Kris rattled the door knob and started banging on the door.
Adam closed the toilet and leaned his forehead against it. “I’m okay,” he called weakly. I’m NOT fucking OKAY. He stood and got a drink of water at the sink, looking into his own haunted eyes in the mirror. He saw an image of himself superimposed over his real reflection, himself with those same haunted eyes, looking haggard and frightened, with at least a month’s growth of ginger roots showing under the black hair; closed his eyes to block out the sight, but it stayed in his head.
He turned away from the mirror and burst out of the bathroom, grabbing Kris into a fierce hug. “What, Adam, what…” Kris stuttered, returning the hug just as fiercely.
Adam didn’t want to answer any questions, didn’t want to think, just needed to know that he was here, that Kris was here with him and not there, wherever there was with the smoke, fear, and blood, so he sealed Kris’s mouth with his own, kissing Kris breathless, slamming him up against the wall and swallowing Kris’s startled grunt. Kris tried to push him back, to look into Adam’s eyes, worry in every line of his body, but Adam kept kissing him, kissing him until Kris finally got with the program and kissed him back. Adam grabbed Kris’s hand and pulled him toward the bedroom, Kris stumbling behind him, still trying to talk, but every time a word came out of his mouth Adam stopped and kissed him again until Kris couldn’t remember what he was going to say.
When they reached the bedroom, Adam pushed Kris onto the bed and began stripping off his own clothes as Kris dazedly tried to keep up with him. Adam approached the bed like a predator, and Kris felt a thrill of anticipation and want rush through him. He had always felt as if Adam were holding back during sex, treating him like some fragile, delicate thing that might flee at the first show of strength. There was no holding back now. Hands grasping flesh just a little too hard, just right, Kris knew they would both have bruises from this and he reveled in it, knowing that anyone would be able to look at them and know what they had been doing. He cried out as Adam slammed into him, feeling utterly claimed, completely overwhelmed, cried out again as his come splashed onto both of them.
Adam pounded into him, gasping, “Please don’t leave me, don’t leave, I love you.” please don’t die. don’t hurt me. don’t kill me.
“I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, I love you, I love you,” Kris panted.
Adam came with a groan and collapsed on top of Kris.
Sometime later, Adam rolled off Kris and lay on his back staring at the ceiling. He twined his fingers through Kris’s and just held on. “What’s happening to us?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” Kris answered, just as quietly.
~*~
something familiar something magic smellfeeltastesense it somewhere near somewhere find it
Little magics had been popping up all over the city. The Dark knew when each one happened; they reached out to each one to see if it was the one they were looking for. But none of them was the magic, the magic that had killed them before and would kill them again. But this, this might be it, if they could just find it.
Darwath
“Are we ready?” Rudy asked.
Ingold and Gil nodded. “I’ve already said good-bye to Alde,” Rudy said. “She’ll tell the king. Do we need to let anyone else know?”
“I already told the Commander of the Guard. He can let the rest of the Guard know as he sees fit,” Gil responded. “I didn’t give him any estimate for how long we would be gone, since I don’t know if….”
Ingold nodded. “Yes.” He smacked the table with determination. “Let’s go now. We need to do this outside, as close as we can get to the place where we sent Adam and Kris back. No need in leaving a crack into the Void that leads right into the Keep of Dare.”
They made their way as quickly as possible out of the Keep and set out at a ground-eating jog through the darkness toward the nearby forest. Once there, Ingold took a deep breath, raised his clasped hands, and began to chant. He slowly drew his hands apart as he chanted, and Gil and Rudy could see the air between his hands begin to twist and glow. A crack appeared, widened to a tear, then a portal big enough for the three of them as wind from the Void began tearing at them, pulling them in. Ingold grabbed Rudy’s and Gil’s hands and stepped through, pulling them with him.
They stumbled out of the portal onto a (fortunately) deserted street in a rundown part of Los Angeles. Ingold immediately snapped out a word to close the portal as Rudy chanted a few words to cover them with a veil spell just in case someone happened by. The magic felt much weaker here than in Darwath, but it was definitely present. Which meant that the Dark Ones were also here.
“Well, that was just as unpleasant as I remembered,” Gil said irritably.
“Damn,” Rudy said. “So is this neighborhood. I know where we are, and really, it hasn’t changed much in thirty-some years. South Central. We aren’t too far from the bike detail and repair shop where I used to work. Wonder if it’s still here?”
“Perhaps we can take a tour later, if we’re not all dead,” Gil responded dryly.
“Right. Focus.”
~*~
Fear rippled through the Dark Ones who were on watch. He is here.
~*~
“Rudy’s knowledge of this area might be helpful, though,” Ingold interjected. “We need to find Adam and Kris as quickly as we can. This should be close to where they came through from Darwath, but that doesn’t mean it’s close to where they are now.”
“Ingold,” Gil said in low voice, “look over there.” She nodded her head toward a lone figure coming around a corner and shuffling down the sidewalk across the street. The man was soon joined by a few other people, all walking the same slow, shuffling walk. They were converging on a deserted-looking building just a little way down the block from where the three travelers were standing, hidden by the veil spell.
“This reminds me of Gae, after the coming of the Dark,” Rudy said quietly, shuddering inside as he remembered the lost humans, stripped of their minds and souls, wandering the streets of that once beautiful city, searching for something to eat, anything, even if it was another human.
“In Darwath, they had millennia to selectively breed humans into herd-folk,” Gil observed. “I think here they’re taking shortcuts, stripping their minds before they take them into the lair.”
“I can feel the call," Ingold said quietly. "The Dark Ones are calling them into the lair. They’re still weak, only able to bring in these weak, pitiful souls, but they will quickly get stronger, ruling this world from beneath the surface with no one the wiser.”
“Also, there’s something odd here,” Rudy added. “No traffic. No regular people walking around; just them. This used to be a busy place. Now it’s just…creepy.”
Ingold sighed and leaned on his staff. “Possibly some other power of the Dark. Keep some people away and bring some people in. I don’t know.” He straightened up with a determined look. “We have to find Kris and Adam as soon as we can. Even though the Dark are few, they are still too many for just the three of us to fight.”
“How are we going to find them?” Gil asked.
“Rudy?”
“Let’s head north for now. They’re musicians, and there are a lot of studios up that way,” he indicated the direction with his head, “so I think we should just head that way and hope we…well pick up their ‘vibes’ or whatever.”
“That seems like as good a plan as any,” Ingold agreed. “I do hope they are in this city. The Dark followed them here, but we have no way of knowing how long ago that was. Rudy, I think you should keep your mind on Kris, since you spent more time with him than I did, and Gil and I will concentrate on Adam.”
“Well, let’s do it, then,” Gil said, heading off up the street.
~*~
he is here HE is here he is HERE Merging to spread the alarm, to make plans. Communication is instantaneous, but merging is necessary. The main goals of the Dark Ones now are still feeding and producing young, but Two Dark Ones are tasked with the third goal. They leave the collective, find the tracking spells Ingold and Rudy are weaving, and finally find the minds they have been seeking. It is still daylight outside, but fortunately the wild humans have created a lovely network of tunnels that enable safe travel in darkness all over the city.
Part Two
By capnzebbie
Hunger.
We/I hunger.
In the vastness of the Void, the Dark join together, float apart; fewer every time they part. The ones left behind on the journey from one world to another, searching, searching the Void for a way out. No meat, no blood, no minds, no souls to eat, they feed on themselves, on each other, turning cannibal to survive…
eating one’s own leg to survive.
We/I hunger….
Darwath
Ingold sighed in relief as the glowing, twisting portal closed. “That’s done, then. We’ve done our best to make certain that Kris and Adam and their world are safe. I only hope it’s enough.”
“What do you mean?” Rudy asked.
“There are still several things that could go wrong. When I was closing the way through the Void, I sensed that some of the Dark Ones are still trapped there.”
Gil said something foul, gripping her sword. “I thought we got them all!”
“We destroyed all the ones who came back through to this world,” Ingold agreed, “and I’m certain that none of them have found their way to Kris and Adam’s world, the world from which you two came. I just hope the gnoddyr spell holds. There’s danger if their memories of this place come back.”
“What do you mean?” Rudy asked. “I mean, I know it’ll be better for their peace of mind to not remember travelling between universes and coming so close to death, but…”
“Not just for their peace of mind. If they remember this world, the Dark Ones may be able to track them by their thoughts.”
“Oh. Crap.”
“Rudy?” Gil assessed him with glacial eyes.
“I uh, may have done something…um…”
“Stupid?” Gil finished for him.
Los Angeles
Kris Allen was happy. Giddy, even. He knew he shouldn’t be, after parting ways with his label. He should be worried, but he was more excited about his career than ever, working with Pearl Group Entertainment and with Lindsay, (kinda, sorta) living with Adam Lambert, in love, excited about his music and his coming tour, his life, and pleased with the world in general. There was just one tiny bit of unhappiness shadowing his life. Well, two really. The first was that he and Adam weren’t out as a couple. Kris still had his own place in LA, although he didn’t spend much time there. And he had to sneak in and out of Adam’s house, constantly on the watch for the paps. Only a few people, family, close friends, management (of course) knew that they were together. Management was waiting for it all to fall apart so they wouldn’t have to deal with it. Family and friends on Kris’s side were confused, disturbed, or cautiously supportive. Reactions from family and friends on Adam’s side ranged from ‘it’s about time’ to cautiously supportive to thrilled. Neil and Brad each sent Adam a toaster (because they’re dorks) which cracked Adam up. He donated them both to a Salvation Army store in the middle of one of the seediest parts of downtown Los Angeles; the store where they had miraculously found a working pay phone after coming to their senses with no idea of how they had gotten there, and with no cell phones, money, or IDs to be found in their pockets.
Which brought Kris to the second problem; he couldn’t remember how he and Adam had gotten together. He remembered wanting Adam for so long, even when he shouldn’t; avoiding Adam because he had to, even though it hurt. He remembered seeing Adam again for the first time six months after the divorce. Adam was so angry that he would barely speak to Kris. A brief car ride so unpleasant that the earthquake was almost a relief. Then, the next thing Kris remembered was waking up on the sidewalk, holding hands with Adam, with more than two months of his memory gone. All he and Adam knew was that they had been held captive by some kind of homophobic cult, but instead of the captivity driving them apart, they had somehow healed their friendship and found love. Kris did not want to remember whatever the cult had done to them (the cuts, burns, and bruises, as well as Adam’s broken arm, told him quite enough, thank you very much), but he did want to remember how he and Adam had found their way to each other.
Adam wasn’t as worried about it. He knew their relationship had happened; that was enough for him. He, too, had a big blank spot where the cult memories should be; but he fervently didn’t want to remember any more than he did. Poking at that part of his mind made him feel vaguely nauseous. He was, however, as supportive of Kris as he could be, coming up with ideas for memory recovery ranging from mundane to bizarre, everything he or his friends could think of. He and Kris had both spent some time in counseling for possible PTSD from the kidnapping, but they hadn’t recovered any memories during the sessions. He suggested hypnosis, but Kris was uncomfortable with the idea of someone messing with his head; someone had already done that once. Adam also suggested massage, chanting, affirmations, rituals, mind readers, positive thinking.
“Mushroom tea! It’s like epiphany juice!”
“No, thank you,” Kris replied with a laugh.
“Lucid dreaming?”
“What’s that?”
“Scarlett told me about it. Hey, it might work! You kind of take control of your dream and use it to help you find out something. It’s a way of getting in touch with your subconscious mind. It would just be you messing with your head instead of someone else.”
“So what do I do?”
“Well, it takes practice, so it may take a while. Before you go to sleep, you just tell yourself you’re going to be aware that you’re dreaming and that you’ll be in control of your dreams. Once you start having a dream, and you’re aware you’re dreaming, you can talk to people in the dream and ask them questions and stuff.”
“Um, okay, I can give it a try.” Kris frowned, and said, “I don’t want to remember the bad, you know, cult stuff. I just want to remember… us. Like, our first time. I mean, that’s a big deal for me, and I can’t remember it.”
“I know, baby, I wish I could remember more of it, too,” Adam lied, as he pulled Kris into a hug. “I’m so glad we have this now, but it would be great to remember when and how we started.”
Darwath
“So you taught Adam and Kris how to sabotage the gnoddyr spell? To what end?” Ingold sounded more weary than angry.
“Just sabotage it a little. They wanted to remember their own, um, relationship here. I just thought, if it was me and Alde, how would I feel about someone wiping out the memory of the first time we met, our first kiss, you know….” Rudy trailed off sheepishly.
“Yes, I know.” Ingold glanced at Gil and she raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing to be done for it now but just try to keep an eye on the situation, so to speak. It should be safe for them to remember just that, just each other here, but if they start remembering anything about this place…I don’t know, I just don’t know. I’m not sure how much the Dark would need to be able to find them, to find their world. We three probably know more about the Dark than anyone, but we still know so little about them!”
“Can you…can we go into the Void after them? I mean, can we go hunt them down?” Rudy asked.
“The Void is not a destination for humans, it is a place to go through to somewhere else. And even if we could remain there for any length of time, it is, well, vast isn’t truly the correct word. More like infinite. We wouldn’t be able to find them,” Ingold responded. “Also, every time I open the way, it leaves cracks that take years to heal. I don’t want to make Darwath or your own world any more accessible to creatures from other worlds. The Dark Ones were enough of danger. We don’t need any more.”
“Can you set up some kind of watch? Something to let you know if there’s a breach in the Void?” Gil asked.
“Yes. Rudy, I’ll need you to work with me on this. We’ll need a constant monitor, with an alert to let us know if something happens. And please let me know if you have any other bright ideas about sabotaging my spells!”
“Right. Just tell me what I need to do.”
Los Angeles
“Oh…kay,” Kris said around a yawn. “I’m going to try the lucid dreaming thing. Or start practicing anyway.”
Adam sounded on the edge of sleep, murmuring, “For someone with a trained mind like yours, it shouldn’t be hard.”
“What?”
“Hmm?”
“You said I have a trained mind? What?”
“Well, yeah, when you did the…” Adam trailed off, looking confused. “I don’t know where that came from. Huh.”
“Dang it! I hate having a chunk of my life gone!”
“So, work on it.” Adam turned on his side and pulled Kris close. “I’m sorry, babe, I have to sleep. Early meeting.”
Kris spooned in and tried to think about being in control of his dreams….
Adam was on top of him, head thrown back, riding Kris as if he were having a spiritual experience. He gasped and shook, and Kris felt come splattering his belly and chest, all the way up to his chin. God, Kris was so close, so close…Adam looked down and smiled, and Kris somehow knew he was dreaming. “Is this our first time?”
Adam laughed, now stretched out on the bed beside him. “You remember, you know you remember, a trained mind like yours.”
“But I don’t. I remember you were mad at me. Wait, did I kiss you?”
“See? You do remember. You kissed me like you’d never kissed anyone before. By that I mean you didn’t seem to know what you were doing.” Adam grinned, standing up from a chair in a room with black stone walls, smooth as obsidian, wearing something black with white decorations, reaching for…a sword?
And Kris did remember their first kiss, so awkward, so desperate, Adam taking control, so perfect, so, so what they both wanted…a moment of light in a universe of darkness…darkness…the Dark…the dank smell of a cave invaded his nostrils and he pushed that thought away…
Adam, looking grim in his black and white Guard uniform…Kris watched in horror as Adam’s uniform began to smoke in spots as if someone (something) had dropped acid on it…the lights began to flicker and dim, and Kris began to shake, fear-sweat dripping down his back…a loud gonging noise sounded throughout the Keep of Dare….
Kris woke with a gasp, the gonging noise echoing in his head. “What the heck?”
Adam jerked, waking abruptly. “Whassat? Is someone bangin’ on the door?”
Kris didn’t hear a thing.
~*~
In the Void, one of the Dark Ones jerked to a halt, a movement so unusual and unexpected that two others bumped into it. They temporarily merged, knowingfeelingsmellingsensing a direction, a hint, a possibility of escape from this endless nothing. The rest of the Dark rushed in and floated toward the hint.
And found a tiny crack.
~*~
Raffie jittered and shuffled his way down Hopper Avenue, all unknowing and uncaring that this street was the place where Kris Allen and Adam Lambert had mysteriously reappeared after their release from the cult that had held them captive for over two months. He was about to round the corner at that very spot when he saw what looked like a small, glowing tear appear in the air right in front of him, as the few working street lights flickered and died. Through the tear oozed a nightmare shape more frightening than his worst drug-induced delusions, a light-sucking black blob that grew and grew until it seemed to fill the sky. Raffie stared, gape-mouthed and too terrified to scream, as the blob seemed to split apart, each part growing a mouth lined with shark’s teeth, dripping saliva that sizzled as it hit the sidewalk. Fortunately for Raffie, the Dark were hungry for meat and blood. Had he known what he was facing, he would have been glad for the quick death.
~*~
In the Keep of Dare, Ingold awoke with a start.
~*~
The Dark Ones felt their way through the man-made canyons of Los Angeles, spreading darkness before them and leaving death behind them. With newfound strength from their meals of meat and blood, they spread their awareness to its limits. The sheer volume of life on this world! They could sense billions of wild humans to domesticate, to turn into food, tame into herds, and to line the nurseries. But first, they needed a place to bring the humans for domestication. The Dark were so pitifully few; they needed to increase their population rapidly. And they needed to find the ones whose minds had led them here. Their knowledge was a danger; they needed to be brought to heel as soon as possible.
It took Kris nearly twenty minutes to stop shaking, and much longer than that to shake off the fear from the end of his dream. It was almost dawn before he was finally able to drift back to a dreamless sleep. He told Adam about the dream over breakfast, trying to communicate the feeling of creeping horror that pervaded the last part.
“I don’t know, Adam, it was really…it was awful. But it didn’t feel cult-y. It felt worse. I don’t think I want to do that again.”
“I don’t blame you.” Adam felt a bit queasy, wishing he hadn’t suggested the lucid dreaming thing. Sometimes forgetting is for the best. “Maybe just…let it go for a bit. You’ve been focusing on this so hard for the last few weeks. Let it be for a while and maybe some of the nice stuff will come back. But hey, you remembered the kiss!” Adam grinned happily.
Kris laughed, shaking off the last of his discomfort. “Yes, the terrible, awkward first kiss. I think I’ll be satisfied with remembering that, because I know that was real. It just felt real.”
“Fortunately, we’ve gotten much better at it since then,” Adam replied, pulling Kris closer so he could demonstrate how much better at it they were before he had to head out to his meeting with management.
Kris decided to add the gaps in his memories to the list of things he couldn’t change. Like his fear of the dark that seemed to come from nowhere and which led directly to night lights in every room in the house. And candles. Candles everywhere. Kris now found candles infinitely comforting; just looking at a burning candle made him feel safe. Maybe the cult kept them someplace dark? Kris sighed and let it go. Let it go, a voice in the back of his mind said. Actually, the voice was saying something like, gnoddyr elphuath ang wath mar, which made no sense at all, so Kris’s mind heard it as let it go.
But the dark thing didn’t explain Adam’s newfound fascination with swords; what the heck was that all about? Maybe they had been kidnapped by a homophobic cult that was into medieval reenactments? Adam had always liked fire; that liking was just intensified now, and coupled with the swords it was going to make an amazing show. Kris grinned to himself, thinking about Adam’s enthusiasm for his “Kabuki/circus” thing. After the relative visual austerity of the Trespassing Tour, Adam was going all out for the new one. He couldn’t wait to see it, happy that he could see it after having to stay away from Adam’s concerts for such a long time. He hoped that Adam would be able to make it to one of his concerts as well. And on that cheerful thought, Kris headed out to his own meeting with management.
~*~
Homehomehomehomehome find a home a place to hide to grow a place for the herds for the children someplace dark and warm and secret
There are no caverns in downtown Los Angeles. There are, however, many dark, abandoned buildings. Now one building is even darker, but no longer abandoned.
~*~
Adam’s management was thrilled with his new creative direction. Shel, the PR guy, was practically shitting himself with excitement, and Mariel, the tour booking agent was equally enthusiastic. “We’re really going heavy with tour dates all across Asia-Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore,” Mariel ticked off the countries on her fingers. “We’ve already got three dates at big venues in Japan; I think they’ll like the spectacle and the Japanese influence in the new show.”
“I’m really excited about this!” Adam responded. “So, what about an American leg for the tour?”
Shel and Mariel exchanged a glance. “Well, the first concert will be here, of course. And we do have some dates coming up in the U.S.,” Shel said in an overly cheerful voice and Adam concentrated on keeping the same smile on his face. “Not really part of the tour as such, but they’ll be spectacular, large venues! But we can go over that later.”
Adam knew what that meant, but he decided to just go with the management flow on scheduling and concentrate on the art. He hadn’t yet come up with a name for the tour, but he had it all planned out-pyro, swords, dancers with over-sized masks and exaggerated Kabuki-style makeup, a mixture of martial arts and circus, with both sword fighting and juggling fire. And soaring over it all, Adam’s voice singing of fear and darkness, of triumph and love. The new songs he had been writing in the weeks since he and Kris had come back were crazy, coming from some creative place he’d never accessed before. This show was going to be killer!
@adamlambert: cant wait for the NEW TOUR!!! Faces will melt!
@luvrofadam: So excited!!!
@pintocolada: will u be coming to Brazil? #pleasepleaseplease
@superglamazon: TOUR!!! Yes!
@liz78green: You should wear less clothes this time.
Kris added the last chopped vegetables to the stir-fry, dancing to a song in his head as the television droned in the background. Adam should be home soon, and Kris was looking forward to a quiet evening at home. He had the nice dishes on the table, candles ready to be lit, wine chilling; now all he needed was Adam. When the vegetables were al dente, he took the stir-fry off the heat. It looked so good, he took a picture, and, with a mischievous smirk, uploaded it to Twitter with the comment, Dinner with a friend. #bejelus. He covered the wok to keep the food warm and went to the dining table to light the candles. Just as he held the lit match out toward the first candle, he heard the front door open.
“Honey, I’m home!”
Kris blew out the match, not noticing that both candles had lit without being touched by the match flame. He hurried to the front door and wrapped his arms around Adam. “How was your day, dear?” he asked with a grin.
“Mmmmuch, better now.” Adam kissed Kris thoroughly and enthusiastically. “What’s that smell? Did you cook?”
“Chicken and vegetable stir-fry.”
“No…”
“No rice or noodles, just meat and veggies.”
Adam laughed happily as they headed to the dining room. “You know me so well. And god, I love your cooking.” He stopped short with a pleased look at the dining table, lit only by the candles in the center.
“Candles and wine? Why, Mr. Allen, are you trying to seduce me?”
Kris propped his sneaker-clad foot up on one of the dining room chairs. “Do you want me to seduce you?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You know it, babe,” Adam responded with a wicked grin and a nibbling kiss to the back of Kris’s neck. “But food first, I’m fucking starving. Nothing to eat since breakfast.”
“Ha, I see where I fit in your priorities. Have a seat, and pour the wine. I’ll get the food.”
Just as they sat down, Kris’s phone started singing alerts of direct messages and tweets.
DM @LindsayPGE: Kristopher >:(
@negativeneil: People who tweet pics of food are losers
@krisbert549: Ooo who are you cooking for?
DM @KatyOConnell: So, has Adam’s wok ever appeared on the internet anywhere? Cause you know….
@maddieissocool: Looks delicious! Can I come over?
Adam looked at the messages. “What did you do?” he asked, looking amused.
“Tweeted a pic of the food,” Kris responded with an innocent look. “Just said I was having dinner with a friend.”
“You are such bad boy, Kris,” Adam said with a laugh. “Okay, phone off during dinner. We can look at the twats later.”
Phones turned off, they settled in to enjoy dinner.
“Has your wok ever appeared on the internet?”
“God knows. Or the fans know. If it has, we’ll all know it soon enough. You may get more than an angry face DM from Lyndsay if it has.”
“I’m…,” Kris hesitated, and Adam looked at him inquiringly. “I’m not sure how much longer I want to wait.”
Adam looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, Kris. I mean, I want to say that it’s up to you, and you know I’ll support you whatever you decide. I don’t like having to hide any more than you do, but…”
“But?”
“But…I met with Shel and Mariel and some other people about the new album and the tour. It’s going to be all Asia and Europe, with ‘a few U.S. shows,’ Mariel said. And I know that means Pride, and GLAAD, and PFLAG, and as much as I love all that, it’s frustrating that everywhere else in the world I’m ‘pop singer Adam Lambert,’” Adam struck a pretentious pose, “but here at home, I’m ‘openly gay pop singer Adam Lambert.’” He looked at Kris ruefully. “I don’t know, are you ready for that for yourself?”
Kris felt a little quiver down in his belly. Was he ready for that? Was that a quiver of fear or anticipation? “I don’t know either,” he said slowly. “And if I don’t know, then I’ll wait until I do know. But I don’t think it’ll be much longer.”
“There will be meetings and meetings and meetings! Ugh! Let’s think about something else,” Adam said, shaking off the somber mood. “Hey! How did the writing go today?”
They sat at the dining table talking about everything and nothing, their appetite for food satisfied so that they were both just picking at the food and sipping wine, other appetites growing as they moved closer to each other. They kissed away the taste of wine and spices until they could only taste each other; Adam smiled at Kris and ran his hand down Kris’s arm until he reached his hand, then pulled him to his feet so they could feel each other all the way down as they kissed. And that was it. Adam knew they weren’t going to make it to the bedroom. They’d be lucky to make it to the sofa before they fell down. Laughing and stumbling, kissing and pulling each other’s clothes off, they fell onto the sofa with Kris straddling Adam.
Much later, they lay naked on the sofa, tangled together, trying to catch their breath.
“You know,” Kris said between gasps, “I used to think I was kind of un-sexual.”
“What?” Adam laughed breathlessly. “Are you nuts?”
“Like, low sex drive or something. I mean, I liked girls, they were nice to look at and all, but I never felt like…I mean, I loved Katy. I still love her…” Kris felt Adam tense slightly at this and he reached up and caressed Adam’s face with a trembling hand. “But I never felt this…craving. From the first time I saw you, I was curious about you. I wanted to know you. And as we got to know each other, got to be friends, I just wanted to be closer.”
Adam laughed weakly. “And I was trying to keep myself from…from wanting you too much, trying to keep a little distance between us, and you just kept moving closer.” He smiled fondly at Kris. “You were like a persistent suitor.”
Now Kris was laughing. “And here I didn’t even realize we were courtin’. I just knew that I had to be next to you, had to be touching you. And I had no clue that I…”
“That you-that we--were falling in love.”
“Yeah. That whole year is such a blur, but I feel like I went into it one person and came out-no pun intended-as another person.”
Adam looked down and happened to catch a glimpse of a familiar Los Angeles street on the television. The anchor was saying, “What’s happening with the city’s homeless population? Unusual activity…”
Kris noticed Adam’s distraction and said, “So, deep emotional talk time over?” He pressed on Adam’s cheek to bring his attention away from the television. “Maybe time for some action?”
“You have the best ideas,” Adam responded with a breathless laugh, reaching for the remote. Just as he hit the power button, the anchor began with, “In other news, random, small-scale blackouts around the city have the power company baff.…”
As the television went silent, Kris took Adam’s ear lobe in his teeth and moved his mouth slowly down Adam’s neck to his chest. “Much better,” he said.
Kris was in a forest full of damp, dripping trees, unsure of how he got there or which way to go to get out of it. He felt the same foreboding that had crept up on him during the last dream. He heard footsteps rustling through the leaves behind him and whirled around, relieved to see Adam striding toward him in a fringed, studded tailcoat and a top hat with a red ‘A’ on the front.
“What are you wearing? Is that the costume from your If I Had You video?”
“Yep. Except for this,” Adam pulled the ‘A’ off of his hat. “It’s for you.” He stuck the ‘A’ to Kris’s chest.
Kris smiled at him. “I’ve been wearing this since we first met,” he said fondly, brushing his fingers across the letter. Adam brushed his fingers over Kris’s, and Kris opened his mouth to say something sappy when he heard screams ringing out through the forest and fear shot through him. Adam grabbed his hand and started running toward the screams.
“No! Adam! Not toward the screams, we have to run away!”
But he continued to follow Adam because he would always follow Adam. “They’ll find us anyway,” Adam said grimly. “They’ll always find us. It doesn’t do any good to run away. We could run across all the worlds and they would still find us….”
Kris’s eyes opened. His heart was racing and he was drenched in sweat as if he really had been running. He wiped a shaking hand across his face and whispered to the night, “There is definitely something wrong with my brain.”
“Dude! Look at this!” Tommy thrust his hand in front of Adam’s face.
“What?”
“My finger!”
“Okay.”
“No, man, you remember I cut my finger on the guitar string yesterday? I was worried about whether I was going to be able to play properly today?”
“Oh yeah, I remember.” Adam looked curiously at his hand. “There’s nothing there now! What did you use on it? That was a pretty bad cut.”
“Nothing, man! I mean, I washed it and put a band aid on it, but this chick outside, you know that weird chick with the blue and pink fauxhawk who’s always hanging around outside waiting for a glimpse of your fine ass? She’s like, a faith healer or something. She just touched my finger and the cut went away!” Tommy looked both gleeful and slightly freaked out.
“Bullshit! No way!” Adam exclaimed.
“Yuhuh, way!” Tommy said. Ashley came over and grabbed his hand, examining it closely.
“There’s hardly even a scar, Tommy,” she observed. “That’s…well, kinda freaky-weird, ‘cause it was a pretty bad cut.”
Keisha made a sign against the evil eye and Reyna slapped her lightly on the arm. “Don’t be doing that. She must be a good witch if she healed Tommy,” Reyna said hopefully.
“Or maybe Jesus did it,” Keisha responded. “I hope so, anyway.”
“Well, she didn’t do any praying; she just touched it and closed her eyes for a minute,” Tommy said.
“She was probably praying in her head,” Reyna decided.
“There’s some weird shit going on out there, guys, but I don’t know about faith healers,” Rick put in as he twirled his drumsticks. “Don’t know what’s up, but you know that dude who hangs out on Hyperion? The one who always has some stupid sign with, like, doomsday Bible verses or whatever?” The others nodded, all ears. “Well, yesterday he had this sign that was completely different. It said, get this,” he paused dramatically, “’The Darkness is Rising.’ I mean, is that weird, or what?”
Adam shuddered, feeling something trying to break out in the back of his mind. He shook it off. “Okay, guys, enough. Let’s get to work. Just let us know if someone starts coming up with lucky Lotto numbers.” They all laughed, if a bit nervously, but they all took their places for rehearsal.
Brian decided not to mention the two hundred bucks in his pocket. He just knew that scratch-off ticket was a good one before he bought it.
Tia wanders her usual route, a modern day hunter-gatherer, looking for food, looking for a place to sleep, one eye on opportunities, the other on the lookout for the predators. She thinks LA’s not a bad place to be homeless. Good weather most of the time, lots of restaurants with dumpsters, but it’s hard to find a safe place to sleep; the shelters are too full and too risky for a girl who’s just marking time until she turns eighteen, when she’ll no longer be in danger of being dragged back into the system. No sir, no more foster homes or group homes, the streets are safer. In the street, there’s room to run.
She’s in an area that’s usually crowded with other street people, but it’s pretty empty today, which is nice. Just a few people wandering, looking like they’re in a daze; she’s been seeing that a lot lately. Must be some new kind of drug out there. Not too far from the Salvation Army store, there’s an abandoned building that usually has some small space where she can hole up for the night without worrying about being raped, killed, or robbed of her few possessions. The building usually has a few lights shining, flashlights, candles, even some of those camping lanterns, but it’s dark now. That’s creepy, but Tia is not put off. She walks in cautiously, listening carefully for signs of life. Maybe something’s wrong. Maybe the cops cleared the place. She’s about to slide back out the door when she…hears something. Smells something. Feels…something. Something not scary, maybe, but she’s not sure.
A person watching from across the street would’ve seen a young girl approach the building cautiously, take a few steps in, start to turn around, then stop and look…wondering. Happy. Then disappear into the darkness of the building.
Inside Tia’s head, there is the smell of home cooking, a feeling of warmth and welcome the like of which she had never felt in any of her foster homes. So lost is she in these lovely sensations that she doesn’t notice the thick, black, cable-like tail that wraps around her waist, lifts her, and carries her into the dark of the abandoned building.
“Kris? Where are you?”
“Here. In the studio.”
“Ah!” Adam’s head poked around the doorway; he saw Kris sitting on the floor, leaning up against the wall with his cell phone sitting on the floor in front of him. “Why are you sitting in here? And on the floor?”
“Had a call-in radio interview a little while ago. Just been sitting here thinking.”
“What’s wrong? You look so serious.” Adam sat next to Kris on the floor and pulled him close.
“I miss my dog.” Kris leaned his head into the curve of Adam’s shoulder.
“Awww, I’m sorry.” Adam pressed a kiss to the top of Kris’s head. “Is Zorro with Katy or with your mom and dad right now? You were going to go pick him up next week, right? Do you want to go sooner? I’ll reschedule some stuff and go with you.”
“Nah, but thanks. He’s with mom and dad this week. And yeah, I’m supposed to go pick him up next week.” Kris sighed. “That’s not really why I’m feeling, I don’t know. The radio interview.” He stopped.
“What happened, sweetie?” Adam asked softly. He knew sometimes interviewers could be shitty in the name of ‘comedy’, but he hoped that hadn’t happened this time.
“Oh, just the usual, you know. It wasn’t a bad interview. But the guy asked the usual questions about my ‘inspiration for my songs,’” Kris made air quotes, “and I gave the usual blah blah about ‘family and friends,’ and I just wonder if I’ll ever be able to really tell the truth about that stuff.” He gave a little snort and shook his head.
“What?”
“Did you ever read that article in Rolling Stone a couple of years ago about Adele?“
“Yes! That was a good one. Pretty in-depth.”
“You remember she talked about that song, Set Fire to the Rain, and how she was inspired to write it by trying to light a cigarette in the rain after a fight with her boyfriend?”
“Yeah. That was interesting. Such a little thing, but I could totally see it.”
“Mm hm, same here.” Kris took a deep breath and continued, “So, one day, before the divorce, before we’d even talked about divorce, I was on the internet looking at,” Kris blushed fiercely and ducked his head down a little, “gay stuff. Like, gay porn.”
“What? Really!” Adam had to admit that was a turn on, and Kris looked so cute all blushy like that.
Kris poked him in the side. “Yes. Really. I was trying to figure out how it worked, if it was something I could really want. I was kind of scared of the, I mean, I wasn’t sure about the, you know…”
“You were afraid of the Glambulge?” Adam asked with a grin.
Kris started laughing. “Shut up. It’s totally intimidating. Anyway, Katy had gone to the store, so I thought she’d be gone for a while…”
“Oh, shit.”
“Yeah, she forgot her list, so she had to come back for it. She came to see if I needed to add anything to it, and…”
“Caught you red-handed? Wait, you weren’t actually…”
“No! No, I was just, you know, looking. But god, she was so pissed-that was kind of the beginning of the end, really. We had this huge fight, and at the end of the fight she just kind of yelled at me,” he pitched his voice higher, “’Well, why don’t you write a goddamn song about it?’”
“Go, Katy!”
Kris snickered. “Yeah, I don’t think I ever heard her swear before. So anyway, I wrote a song about it. Had to change it up a bit, but yeah.”
Adam thought for a minute and could not even guess. “Which one?”
“Teach Me How Love Goes.”
Adam made a high-pitched, muffled noise, and cleared his throat. “That’s a great song.”
“Thank you. I like it.”
They sat quietly on the floor for a couple of minutes.
“So,” Adam finally said, “can I be there the first time you tell that story on the radio?”
Kris cracked up, and Adam finally gave in to his own fit of giggles. “Absolutely. You have to be there so we can leave the country immediately after and hide someplace where Lindsay will never find us.” He stretched up and kissed Adam firmly. “Thank you. I needed that.”
Once they had calmed down again, Adam whispered into Kris’s hair, “Am I a good Zorro substitute?”
“You are the best Zorro substitute,” Kris answered, hugging Adam.
“You know it’ll get better, right?”
“I know.”
“I was scared of the. Of being with. I didn’t know if I could. What if I didn’t like the…” Kris waved his hands around vaguely, trying to explain, knowing he probably hadn’t explained anything. Or had he? Because Adam was looking more enraged than ever, which he hadn’t thought possible.
“You were scared of dick? That’s your big excuse, the good ol’ gay panic? Fuck, you really are a redneck!”
Kris looked at him, startled. “That’s not what you said before!”
“This is what I said before,” Adam answered irritably. He was naked except for the top hat, sitting cross-legged on a bed in that same dark stone room.
“No, before you said something about the Glambulge. And you weren’t angry.”
“No, that was after. This is before. What I said before was what I said after. I’m a lot less cranky after.” Adam grinned at Kris and took a bubbling hit off of a hookah. He blew out the smoke, black smoke that began to float around the room; it seemed to be growing a tail. Adam waved his sword at it and it broke apart, blew away.
Kris shook his head. ”That doesn’t make any sense.”
Adam shrugged, straightening his top hat. “Dreams don’t have to make sense.”
“Oh. Okay. So, before? Before what?”
“Before this,” Adam whispered against the back of Kris’s neck. Kris didn’t know how Adam had gotten back there or where his own clothes had gone, but dreams didn’t have to make sense. Adam trailed kisses and nips down Kris’s neck to his shoulder. Kris shivered, from the chill air on his naked skin, from nerves, from arousal. Adam’s hands reached around him and caressed his chest and stomach, one moving up to his nipples, the other moving lower. “Tell me you want this,” Adam breathed. “Tell me you need this.”
Kris couldn’t do anything but press back into Adam with a moan, shaking with desire.
“Are you sure, Kris? You were scared before.”
“Not scared now. I want this, I want you.” Saying he wasn’t scared was maybe an exaggeration, but he did want this.
Kris is floating, floating with Adam, Adam’s hands running slowly over him, caressing his face, his throat, down his arms, around his back, down, down, whispering, “Oh fuck, so gorgeous, can’t believe you’re here, can’t believe this is real, love you, love you,” Adam’s whispers blend into skittering sounds, surrounding them, the smell of a cave. Kris starts to tense up, “Shhh, shhhh, it’s okay, just make a fire, it’ll keep us safe, love you so much…” Kris feels arousal spiking low and moving lower, he’s hard and aching, Adam pushing, pushing in, oh god, hurts, so intense, feels so good, so hot, Kris is so hot, but the fire keeps them safe, burning higher and hotter, Adam moving over him, in him, long slow strokes , oh god, oh god, “Adaaaammm, Adammmm…
“Adam!” Kris woke up sweating and shaking with his orgasm coursing through him.
“Whoa, Kris, are you okay?” Adam wrapped his arms around Kris. “Did you have a nightmare?”
“Oh god, no. It was…I think I finally remembered our first time. And it was so...” Kris paused, looking down at himself and laughing a little, “well, obviously it was amazing. I need to clean up,” he finished ruefully. “This is embarrassing. Haven’t done that in a long time. But there was something else,” he continued as he walked into the bathroom, thinking about that same sense of danger and fear in the dream, just like the others.
“What?” Adam asked, sitting up. “Hey, Kris?”
“Yeah?” Kris called over the sound of running water.
“Did you leave the candles burning?”
“What? No. I never leave them burning when we’re going to sleep. Why?” Kris came out of the bathroom and headed over to the dresser for fresh underwear.
Adam was poking at one of the candles; one of several completely melted candles in the bedroom. “Look at this. Completely melted, but the wick isn’t black or anything. Never been lit. That’s really weird.”
Kris joined Adam by the dresser and poked at the melted wax. “Still warm.” He looked at the other candles. “Okay, this one has been lit, I remember lighting it for a little while a couple of days ago, but I put it out. But these others…wow, that is weird.”
“Well, this is a mystery. Hmmm. Maybe hot spots, something wrong with the heating system?” Adam firmly suppressed the thought that this seemed frighteningly familiar. “Oh hey, what was the other thing?”
“Oh yeah, the dream thing. It was kind of like the others-I felt like something was after us, trying to get to us, and this time, the only thing that kept us safe was lighting a fire.”
“We lit a fire by having sex? I can see that.”
“No!” Kris said, laughing. “I had to light the fire, but…I don’t remember how. I remember you told me to light a fire, and I did, but uugggh!” Kris grabbed his head with both hands. “I would really like for these dreams to stop now. It’s like I opened a door and I can’t get it to close, and it just keeps getting scarier.”
“I’ll ask around and see if I can get some help with stopping the dreams. Maybe Scarlett knows something. I don’t remember her ever saying anything about not being able to stop lucid dreaming once you’ve started.”
“We also need to get someone to come in and check the heating. That candle thing is scary.”
Darwath
Rudy raised his hand to knock on the door, unsurprised when Ingold opened it before his hand could touch it. “You felt it too, yes?”
“Yes,” Ingold responded grimly. “The Dark have made it out of the Void and into your old world.”
Gil appeared behind Ingold and pulled the door wider as she stamped her feet to settle her boots. “Come on in, punk. No need to talk about this in the hallway where anyone can hear.” Gil looked like she’d just woken up, her hair more disheveled than usual, standing out around her head like a gray-streaked black cloud, but she looked alert, battle-ready.
Ingold and Rudy sat down at the small table, soon joined by Gil as she set out mugs of tea.
“So, what’s the plan, Ingold?” Rudy asked, taking a careful sip of the hot tea.
“We must go to your old world as quickly as possible.”
Rudy sighed. “I agree. I already told Alde this might happen. She’s trying to be all calm; she’s worried, but she knows we have to go.”
“When do we leave?” Gil asked, pulling her hair back into a low ponytail and checking to make sure her sword was secure in its scabbard.
“Tonight. Our worlds are so far apart right now that every minute we delay could mean weeks in their world. You saw it when Kris and Adam were here; it’s been less than twenty years here since you two crossed over, but it’s been over thirty years there. We need to go as soon as possible.”
Rudy nodded. “The longer the Dark are in that world the more people die.”
“Not only that,” Ingold added. “The longer they’re there, the more likely it will be that Kris will start accidentally doing magic again, and perhaps other people around the area will start finding their magic, because of whatever it is the Dark give off that helps magic to work.”
Rudy nodded. “Kris, especially, could be a danger to himself and others if that happens. I mean, he has a real affinity for fire. Lord knows what he’s going to be setting on fire without even realizing it.”
Lebanon, Kansas
Headquarters of the Gentlemen of Letters
Sam Winchester frowned at his laptop as he studied the evidence, each story more bizarre than the last. “Hey, Dean? Something weird’s going on in LA.”
“It’s LA.”
“I mean, weird for LA, even.”
“What’s up?”
“Okay.” Sam clicked the mouse a few times as Dean leaned over his shoulder to look at the screen. “It started about six months ago. A few people disappearing, news reports of mysterious black outs, not associated with power outages, in the areas where the people disappeared. There’s no big public outcry yet, even though it’s been going on for a while, because it’s mostly transients that are dying or going missing. Then there started to be news stories about some kind of migration of homeless people toward one area of town. People are trying to say that it’s good news, decrease of homeless people loitering and panhandling in other areas of the city, mayor and law enforcement are taking credit, blah blah…but there’s also been an increase in homeless people acting strangely. Some of them are wandering around aimlessly until they starve, completely uncommunicative. Some of them have been taken into the ER, but nothing helps-it’s like there’s no mind anymore. Some of them, though, are attacking people, trying to eat them-that part’s being blamed on bath salts…”
“What? Bath salts?”
“Oh, you weren’t, uh… Anyway, there’s this stuff you can buy at truck stops that’s supposed to get you high, but instead it turns people into zombies that eat people’s faces.”
“So, not real zombies?”
“Don’t think so. Not most of them, anyway. But in LA, there’s no evidence of any kind of drugs causing this. They’re just putting that out to the media. And there’s more. Over the past couple of months, they’ve been having some odd corpses and partial corpses turning up.”
“Odd how?”
“Some of them are completely bloodless…”
“Vampires?”
“Some of them are stripped of flesh as well as blood. And the bones are partly melted, like by acid.”
“That’s new. We’re looking for some kind of bone-melting, flesh-eating, blood-drinking, mind-eating, soul-sucking monster?”
“Or more than one kind of monster, maybe? LA’s a big place.”
“When do we leave?”
Los Angeles
Adam arrived home after another decidedly weird day of rehearsal to find Kris sitting on the sofa in the living room, looking worried and frightened.
“Kris?”
Kris looked up. “Hey.”
“What’s up. You look…what happened?”
“I need to show you something. And I won’t ask you to promise not to freak out, even though I’m already doing that enough for both of us.”
Adam slowly sat down in the chair next to the sofa. “Okay, I’m already kind of freaking out…”
“Just watch.” Kris looked at the candle sitting on the coffee table. The wick began to smoke, then it burst into flame. Adam’s heart began to race. As he watched, the candle went out, then lit again.
“What the fuck,” Adam whispered. Again, that sensation of something trying to break free in his mind.
“And that’s not all,” Kris said hesitantly. “I ran into a couple of paps outside the house. I mean, almost literally ran into them. They were walking toward me, and I started thinking, ‘I’m not here, I’m not here. It’s just a cat rustling through the bushes. And the paps were looking right at me. And one of them said, ‘Nothing here. Must’ve been a cat or something in the bushes.’”
Adam remembered the nauseating shock of an earthquake, smelled a damp forest, heard an echo of Kris’s voice in the back of his mind, saying, “I just yelled at the fire to light up and it did. Um. Then a voice in my head told me how to distract the creatures.” Smelled a dank cave filled with smoke and fear and blood. “I. I can make it quick. For us.” “So, you’d use the fire? Burn us both?” “Yeah, from the inside. Like a small nuke.”
Adam jumped up from the chair and ran to the bathroom, locking the door behind him, wishing he believed that locking the door would keep the nightmares out, and fell to his knees in front of the toilet, dry-heaving, trying to vomit out the smell of smoke and fear, but nothing came up because the smell was only in his mind.
“Adam!” Kris ran after him. “Adam! Adam, are you okay?” Kris rattled the door knob and started banging on the door.
Adam closed the toilet and leaned his forehead against it. “I’m okay,” he called weakly. I’m NOT fucking OKAY. He stood and got a drink of water at the sink, looking into his own haunted eyes in the mirror. He saw an image of himself superimposed over his real reflection, himself with those same haunted eyes, looking haggard and frightened, with at least a month’s growth of ginger roots showing under the black hair; closed his eyes to block out the sight, but it stayed in his head.
He turned away from the mirror and burst out of the bathroom, grabbing Kris into a fierce hug. “What, Adam, what…” Kris stuttered, returning the hug just as fiercely.
Adam didn’t want to answer any questions, didn’t want to think, just needed to know that he was here, that Kris was here with him and not there, wherever there was with the smoke, fear, and blood, so he sealed Kris’s mouth with his own, kissing Kris breathless, slamming him up against the wall and swallowing Kris’s startled grunt. Kris tried to push him back, to look into Adam’s eyes, worry in every line of his body, but Adam kept kissing him, kissing him until Kris finally got with the program and kissed him back. Adam grabbed Kris’s hand and pulled him toward the bedroom, Kris stumbling behind him, still trying to talk, but every time a word came out of his mouth Adam stopped and kissed him again until Kris couldn’t remember what he was going to say.
When they reached the bedroom, Adam pushed Kris onto the bed and began stripping off his own clothes as Kris dazedly tried to keep up with him. Adam approached the bed like a predator, and Kris felt a thrill of anticipation and want rush through him. He had always felt as if Adam were holding back during sex, treating him like some fragile, delicate thing that might flee at the first show of strength. There was no holding back now. Hands grasping flesh just a little too hard, just right, Kris knew they would both have bruises from this and he reveled in it, knowing that anyone would be able to look at them and know what they had been doing. He cried out as Adam slammed into him, feeling utterly claimed, completely overwhelmed, cried out again as his come splashed onto both of them.
Adam pounded into him, gasping, “Please don’t leave me, don’t leave, I love you.” please don’t die. don’t hurt me. don’t kill me.
“I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, I love you, I love you,” Kris panted.
Adam came with a groan and collapsed on top of Kris.
Sometime later, Adam rolled off Kris and lay on his back staring at the ceiling. He twined his fingers through Kris’s and just held on. “What’s happening to us?” he whispered.
“I don’t know,” Kris answered, just as quietly.
~*~
something familiar something magic smellfeeltastesense it somewhere near somewhere find it
Little magics had been popping up all over the city. The Dark knew when each one happened; they reached out to each one to see if it was the one they were looking for. But none of them was the magic, the magic that had killed them before and would kill them again. But this, this might be it, if they could just find it.
Darwath
“Are we ready?” Rudy asked.
Ingold and Gil nodded. “I’ve already said good-bye to Alde,” Rudy said. “She’ll tell the king. Do we need to let anyone else know?”
“I already told the Commander of the Guard. He can let the rest of the Guard know as he sees fit,” Gil responded. “I didn’t give him any estimate for how long we would be gone, since I don’t know if….”
Ingold nodded. “Yes.” He smacked the table with determination. “Let’s go now. We need to do this outside, as close as we can get to the place where we sent Adam and Kris back. No need in leaving a crack into the Void that leads right into the Keep of Dare.”
They made their way as quickly as possible out of the Keep and set out at a ground-eating jog through the darkness toward the nearby forest. Once there, Ingold took a deep breath, raised his clasped hands, and began to chant. He slowly drew his hands apart as he chanted, and Gil and Rudy could see the air between his hands begin to twist and glow. A crack appeared, widened to a tear, then a portal big enough for the three of them as wind from the Void began tearing at them, pulling them in. Ingold grabbed Rudy’s and Gil’s hands and stepped through, pulling them with him.
They stumbled out of the portal onto a (fortunately) deserted street in a rundown part of Los Angeles. Ingold immediately snapped out a word to close the portal as Rudy chanted a few words to cover them with a veil spell just in case someone happened by. The magic felt much weaker here than in Darwath, but it was definitely present. Which meant that the Dark Ones were also here.
“Well, that was just as unpleasant as I remembered,” Gil said irritably.
“Damn,” Rudy said. “So is this neighborhood. I know where we are, and really, it hasn’t changed much in thirty-some years. South Central. We aren’t too far from the bike detail and repair shop where I used to work. Wonder if it’s still here?”
“Perhaps we can take a tour later, if we’re not all dead,” Gil responded dryly.
“Right. Focus.”
~*~
Fear rippled through the Dark Ones who were on watch. He is here.
~*~
“Rudy’s knowledge of this area might be helpful, though,” Ingold interjected. “We need to find Adam and Kris as quickly as we can. This should be close to where they came through from Darwath, but that doesn’t mean it’s close to where they are now.”
“Ingold,” Gil said in low voice, “look over there.” She nodded her head toward a lone figure coming around a corner and shuffling down the sidewalk across the street. The man was soon joined by a few other people, all walking the same slow, shuffling walk. They were converging on a deserted-looking building just a little way down the block from where the three travelers were standing, hidden by the veil spell.
“This reminds me of Gae, after the coming of the Dark,” Rudy said quietly, shuddering inside as he remembered the lost humans, stripped of their minds and souls, wandering the streets of that once beautiful city, searching for something to eat, anything, even if it was another human.
“In Darwath, they had millennia to selectively breed humans into herd-folk,” Gil observed. “I think here they’re taking shortcuts, stripping their minds before they take them into the lair.”
“I can feel the call," Ingold said quietly. "The Dark Ones are calling them into the lair. They’re still weak, only able to bring in these weak, pitiful souls, but they will quickly get stronger, ruling this world from beneath the surface with no one the wiser.”
“Also, there’s something odd here,” Rudy added. “No traffic. No regular people walking around; just them. This used to be a busy place. Now it’s just…creepy.”
Ingold sighed and leaned on his staff. “Possibly some other power of the Dark. Keep some people away and bring some people in. I don’t know.” He straightened up with a determined look. “We have to find Kris and Adam as soon as we can. Even though the Dark are few, they are still too many for just the three of us to fight.”
“How are we going to find them?” Gil asked.
“Rudy?”
“Let’s head north for now. They’re musicians, and there are a lot of studios up that way,” he indicated the direction with his head, “so I think we should just head that way and hope we…well pick up their ‘vibes’ or whatever.”
“That seems like as good a plan as any,” Ingold agreed. “I do hope they are in this city. The Dark followed them here, but we have no way of knowing how long ago that was. Rudy, I think you should keep your mind on Kris, since you spent more time with him than I did, and Gil and I will concentrate on Adam.”
“Well, let’s do it, then,” Gil said, heading off up the street.
~*~
he is here HE is here he is HERE Merging to spread the alarm, to make plans. Communication is instantaneous, but merging is necessary. The main goals of the Dark Ones now are still feeding and producing young, but Two Dark Ones are tasked with the third goal. They leave the collective, find the tracking spells Ingold and Rudy are weaving, and finally find the minds they have been seeking. It is still daylight outside, but fortunately the wild humans have created a lovely network of tunnels that enable safe travel in darkness all over the city.
Part Two