With that, Harry Santa Stanton Claus, the once and future King of the Underworld of Newyork, laid a finger up the side of his nose, and with a nod and a wink, up the brick-and-mortar chimney he rose.
Ryan gaped. He managed to crawl over to the mantel, his knees uncertain as he crossed J.B.’s lifeless leg, for a better look at the flickering fireplace, the source of the strange light and shadows that had been bothering him since he arrived here, in this place, in this state of mind. His gaze delivered more details about the fireplace.
There were photographs on the mantel, framed pictures of himself as an older man, with a hint of silver in his hair; of himself and Krysty together, smiling, at ease, with a tiny red-haired child held proudly between them; and of Dean, only Dean at the age of thirty, with the lines of maturity and age set in his cheeks and forehead.
Photographs. Memories. Visions of things to come?
Ryan took all of this in and was moved to speak a final time.
“I didn’t know there was a fireplace in here,” he whispered, half-hypnotized by the flickering of the flames, and then he woke up.
Chapter Four
Even through his closed eyelid, Ryan could still see the light.
A second ago, he had opened his right eye and immediately snapped it shut. In the instant Ryan had looked up into the blinding light, he’d been struck down hard by the coruscating illumination surrounding him. His lone orb ached, like someone with a massive fist had smashed a hairy knuckle into his lone good eye socket.
That wasn’t a light caused by smoldering embers glowing inside a jump-dream-inspired fireplace. The light seemed to come from all sides, washing down from above and splashing up from below, bathing him from all angles in white brilliance.
Flat on his back, Ryan willed himself to reach down blindly for the weapon holstered at his hip and was rewarded with the comforting feel of the butt of the SIG-Sauer in his palm. He pulled the weapon free of its holster and scooted backward until the base of his spine hit the solid surface of what he figured to be the mat-trans armaglass wall.
The nova-hot light had begun to slowly fade to a more reasonable wattage. Through the spots dancing in front of his vision, Ryan was able to make out the forms of his companions, all of them scattered like discarded shell casings across the floor around him, their positioning identical to how he’d seen them in his mat-trans induced nightmare.
Krysty was to his right, facedown and unmoving. Her flowing red hair was shining bright in the brilliant illumination. Near her was Dean’s tense body. Ryan gathered that the boy had also come to consciousness and been exposed to the sheer ferocity of the lighthe was on his side, his eyes clenched shut like a fist. A dark streamer of blood covered his lips and chin, the standard nosebleed the mat-trans jumps so frequently induced. Ryan had come to consciousness many a time to find a smear of red across his face.
“Dean, you all right?” Ryan barked.
“Yeah, Dad. Got a triple-bad hammer going at my head,” the boy replied. “Eyes feel awful. Like somebody rubbed ashes in them.”
“Open them,” Ryan ordered. “You’ve got blood on your face.”
Dean carefully opened one eye, then the other. He touched the sticky blood on his chin and sighed. “Gets old. Wish I could figure out a way to stop this from happening.”
“Don’t we all. Anybody else awake yet?” Ryan asked the room, regaining his usual composure as the light continued to fade to a normal level.
“Yeah, but I wish I wasn’t,” Mildred Wyeth replied. “I think I scarred my retinas.”
“Light was pretty damn bright. Never seen it go so high,” Ryan said. “Guess it doesn’t matter much as long as we’re all here in one piece.”
“Speak for yourself, Ryan. I haven’t tried sitting up yet,” the black woman replied.
The last thing the physician remembered was feeling all of the fillings in her teeth starting to vibrate and a metallic hum rising within her mouth to match the pitch and frequency of the teleportation disks overhead and underfoot in the small redoubt in the desert.