The sense of exhilaration vanished. Somewhere in the night, there was a frightening scream. He realized as he fell that the scream was his own.
The dreams left him after that, but he slept poorly for the remainder of the night anyway. He rose shortly after dawn, showered, called room service for breakfast, ate, dressed in the clothes he had bought yesterday, and caught a cab out front of the hotel shortly after nine. He took his duffel bag with him. He did not think he would be returning.
The cab took him south on Michigan Avenue. It was Saturday, but the streets were already beginning to clog with Christmas shoppers anxious to beat the weekend rush. Ben sat back in the relative seclusion of the cab and ignored them. The joys of the approaching holiday were the furthest thing from his mind.
Traces of last night’s dream still whispered darkly to him. He had been badly frightened by that dream and by the truths that it contained.
The Paladin was a reality he had not fully come to grips with. He had become the armored knight only once — and then as much by chance as by intention. It had been necessary to become the Paladin in order to survive, and he had therefore done what was necessary. But the transformation had been a frightening thing, a shedding of his own skin, a crawling into someone else’s — someone or something. The thoughts of that other being were hard and brutal, a warrior’s thoughts, a gladiator’s. There was blood and death in those thoughts, an entire history of survival that Ben could only begin to comprehend. It frankly terrified him. He could not control what this other thing was, he sensed — not entirely. He could only become what it was and accept what that meant.
He was not sure he could ever do that again. He had not tried and did not wish to try.
And yet a part of him did — just as in the dream. And a part of him whispered that someday he must.
He had the cab take him to the offices of Holiday & Bennett, Ltd. The offices were closed on Saturdays, but he knew Miles Bennett would be there anyway. Miles was always there on Saturdays, working until noon, catching up on all the dictating and research that he hadn’t gotten to during the week, taking advantage of the absence of those bothersome interruptions that seemed to dog him during regular business hours.
Ben paid the cab driver to drop him at the end of the block across the street from his destination, then stepped quickly into the doorway of another building. Pedestrians passed him by, oblivious to what he was about, caught up in their own concerns. Traffic moved ahead at a rapid crawl. There were cars parked on the street, but no one seemed to be keeping watch in them.
“Doesn’t hurt to be careful,” he insisted softly.
He stepped back out of the doorway, crossed the street with the light, moved up the block, and pushed through the storm glass doors to the lobby of his building. He saw nothing out of place, nothing odd.
He hurried to an open elevator, stepped inside, punched the button to floor fifteen, and watched the doors slide closed. The elevator started up. Just a few moments more, he thought. And if Miles wasn’t there for some reason, he would simply track him down at his home.
But he hoped he wouldn’t have to do that. He sensed that he might not have the time. Maybe it was the dream, maybe it was simply the circumstances of his being here — but something definitely felt wrong.
The elevator slowed and stopped. The doors slid open, and he stepped into the hallway beyond.
His breath caught sharply in his throat. Once again, he was face to face with Meeks.
* * *
Questor Thews brushed at the screen of cobwebs that hung across the narrow stone entry of the ruins of the castle tower and pushed inside. He sneezed as dust clogged his nostrils and muttered in distaste at the damp and dark. He should have had the sense to bring a torch…