Chapter 1 Nightmares Made Real
The nightmare always started the same way: fire, screaming, and a voice calling my name.
I jolted awake in my Portland apartment, tangled in sheets soaked with sweat, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. The digital clock on my nightstand blinked 3:47 AM in accusatory red numbers. Another night, another dream about cities burning and shadows with glowing eyes hunting me through ruins I'd never seen but somehow recognized.
I pressed my palms against my eyes, trying to scrub away the lingering images. It didn't work. It never worked. The dreams had been getting worse for weeks now, more vivid and more frequent, like something inside me was trying to claw its way to the surface. My therapist would probably say it was stress from work or unresolved childhood trauma. She'd be wrong, but I couldn't exactly tell her the truth when I didn't understand it myself.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand. I grabbed it, grateful for the distraction, and found a text from my best friend Maya lighting up the screen.
Happy birthday, bitch! 23 and still single. We're fixing that tonight. Drinks at 8. No excuses.
I smiled despite the residual terror still coursing through my veins. Today was my birthday. Twenty-three years old, and I'd spent most of them feeling like I was waiting for something I couldn't name. Maybe Maya was right. Maybe I just needed to get drunk and make some spectacularly bad decisions like a normal person instead of spending my nights dreaming about apocalypses.
I typed back a quick response promising I'd be there, then hauled myself out of bed. My apartment was small, a studio in an old building that probably violated half the city's safety codes, but it was mine. Books lined every available surface, most of them rare editions I'd restored at the shop where I worked. I had a gift for it, for taking broken, damaged things and making them whole again. It was the only thing I was genuinely good at besides pushing people away.
The hot water in my shower took forever to heat up, and I stood under the spray trying to wash away the feeling that something was wrong. Not just wrong with me, which was a given, but wrong with the world. Like the air itself was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.
I told myself I was being ridiculous. I told myself a lot of things that weren't true.
By the time I made it to Powell's Books, where I worked in the restoration department, the sun had burned through Portland's perpetual cloud cover. I grabbed my usual coffee from the cart outside, extra shot of espresso because functioning on three hours of sleep required chemical assistance, and headed inside.
The shop smelled like old paper and possibility, my two favorite things. I waved to Marcus at the front desk and disappeared into my workspace in the back, a small room filled with tools, glue, and projects in various states of repair. Today's task was an 1890s edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales with a cracked spine and water damage. Delicate work. The kind that required complete focus.
I'd been at it for maybe an hour when the first odd thing happened.
The lights flickered. Not unusual in a building this old, except they flickered in a pattern. Three short pulses, one long, three short again. Like Morse code. Like a warning. I looked up from the book, frowning, and the temperature in the room dropped so suddenly I could see my breath.
"What the hell," I muttered, reaching for my cardigan.
Then I felt it. A presence. Not someone watching me, but something aware of me in a way that made every instinct I had scream danger. I turned slowly, half expecting to find someone standing in the doorway, but the room was empty. Except it didn't feel empty. It felt crowded, like the shadows themselves had weight and intention.
My hands started shaking. I set down my tools before I could damage the book and tried to rationalize what I was feeling. Low blood sugar. Lack of sleep. Anxiety. Except I'd never had anxiety that made the air feel thick enough to choke on.
The lights went out completely.
I fumbled for my phone, using the flashlight to cut through the sudden darkness, and that's when I saw it. In the corner of the room, the shadows were moving. Not flickering or shifting the way shadows should when light played across them, but moving with purpose. Gathering. Forming into something almost solid.
My logical brain insisted this wasn't possible. The rest of me was too busy backing toward the door to care about logic.
"Marcus?" I called out, hating how my voice shook. "Marcus, did the power go out?"
No answer. The building had gone completely silent, which was wrong because Powell's was never silent. There should have been customers browsing, employees chatting, the ambient noise of a busy bookstore. Instead, I heard nothing but my own ragged breathing and the strange whisper of shadows that shouldn't be able to make sound.
I reached the doorway and stopped cold. The hallway beyond was pitch black, darker than it should be even with the power out. And in that darkness, I saw eyes. Dozens of them. Glowing faint red like dying embers.
This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. I was still asleep, still trapped in one of my nightmares, and any second now I'd wake up in my apartment and laugh about how vivid it had been.
Except I knew I wasn't dreaming.
The eyes moved closer, and I did the only thing I could think of. I slammed the door and locked it, my hands shaking so badly I nearly dropped my phone. The thin wooden door wouldn't stop whatever was out there, but maybe it would slow it down long enough for me to figure out what the hell was happening.
My phone buzzed. I looked down at the screen and felt my blood turn to ice. The text was from a number I didn't recognize, but the message was clear enough.
Run.
The door exploded inward in a shower of splinters. I threw my arms up to protect my face, and when I lowered them, I saw him. A man stood in the doorway, except man didn't feel like the right word. He was tall, maybe six-three, with black hair that fell past his shoulders and eyes so dark they looked like voids. He wore a long coat that seemed to be made of shadows themselves, and when he moved into the room, the temperature dropped another ten degrees.
He looked at me, and I felt the weight of that gaze like a physical thing. Recognition flared in those impossible eyes, followed by something that might have been shock.
"You," he said, and his voice was smooth and cold as winter ice. "You're real."
I wanted to run. I wanted to scream. Instead, I heard myself say, "Who the hell are you?"
His expression shifted, something almost like pain crossing his features before his face went carefully blank. He took a step toward me, and I stumbled backward, hitting the edge of my worktable. Tools clattered to the floor. My phone slipped from my numb fingers.
"My name is Jeron," he said quietly. "And I've been looking for you for twenty-three years."
The world tilted sideways, and I realized with distant horror that I was about to pass out. But before the darkness could take me, Jeron moved faster than should have been possible and caught my arm. The second his skin touched mine, everything exploded.
Power surged through me, through us, a connection that felt like lightning and recognition and something I had no name for. I gasped, and Jeron's eyes went wide with what looked like genuine shock. Whatever he'd expected to feel when he touched me, this clearly wasn't it.
"Impossible," he breathed.
I jerked away from him, and the connection severed, leaving me dizzy and aching. "Don't touch me."
"Athena," he said, and hearing a stranger say my name made something inside me crack open. "You need to come with me. Right now. There are things hunting you, and if they find you before I can get you somewhere safe, you'll die."
"How do you know my name?" My voice came out barely above a whisper. "What's happening to me?"
Jeron opened his mouth to answer, but he never got the chance.
The window behind me shattered, and another man came through it in an explosion of glass and violence.