In the men’s room he found Scott still primping, but otherwise the place was empty.

  “You’re on the news.” Dave told him, stomping up to the sink and digging his new razor out of his Super-Mart bag.

  Scott glared at his reflection in the mirror. “What?”

  “We’re both on the news. I’m a kidnapping thief drug pusher and maybe murderer, and you’re my accomplice.” Dave cursed under his breath.

  “Damn it, why did Charis have to pick you up?!”

  “Shut the hell up, Scott.” Dave splashed water on his face and began rubbing on shaving cream.

  Scott muttered obscenities as he stormed out of the restroom, finally giving up on his hair.

  Five minutes later Dave returned to their table, freshly shaved. It wasn’t as easy as he’d hoped to get rid of a fully formed beard and he’d done a hack job of it, but at least he looked like himself again. Except he needed a hair cut. His locks were brushing his shirt collar. “I was hoping I was insane. I guess I’m not that lucky. Why couldn’t I have just been insane? It would have been so much easier that way.”

  “Hey, man,” Dusty looked up from a magazine, chewing on a toothpick. “Do you wanna look like this?” he pointed to a skinny eighteen year old male model with puffy lips from a perfume ad.

  “No.” Dave scooted in beside Charis, ignoring the glower Scott leveled him with. “Thanks anyway.”

  “We need to disguise you,” Charis said. “Dusty can make you look like anything. Trust me. Anything. He’s an illusionist.”

  “The last thing I need is a makeover from a little skater dude. Please tell him I’m not into makeup.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you, man,” Dusty promised solemnly.

  “Hello, are you all ready to order yet?” a fifty-something waitress sidled up to their table.

  “Yes indeed, love,” Miradon smiled at her, oozing old world charm. “I am in desperate need of Earl Grey tea, and your bottomless waffle plate if you please. Hold the bacon.”

  “Sure thing,” she eyed his ermine-trimmed crimson cloak and the matching top hat set on the table beside his elbow. “I love your hat. Do you do reenactments?”

  “Not a bit of it, I’m afraid. I fear I’m simply behind the times when it comes to fashion.”

  “You look great,” she beamed at him. “Where’d you buy that stuff?”

  “Oh, well,” Miradon looked absurdly pleased by her compliments. If Dave didn’t know better, he’d swear the weirdo was blushing. “The hat was made for me by a hatter on Bond Street in London. The cloak… well, it was already an antique when I found it in a delightful little boutique down in Brighton.”

  “You’re from England, then? You have a great accent.”

  “Thank you, love,” Miradon replied warmly, leaning in just a touch. “And may I say, you have a simply charming accent yourself.”

  “I want the All American burger, extra pickles, extra fries,” Scott interrupted loudly, sounding more annoyed and Bostonian than ever. “And a large coke.”

  The waitress frowned but wrote his order down before moving on to take everyone else’s. When she was done she cast one last wink at Miradon before bustling away.

  “That was rude,” Miradon admonished Scott.

  “Yeah, well, flirt with waitresses on your own time. I’m hungry.”

  “I wasn’t flirting,” this time Miradon was definitely blushing. “I was being polite. She’s far too young for me.”

  Dave raised his eyebrows. She had looked older than his grandmother when she’d died. If that was too young for Miradon’s tastes, he couldn’t help wondering if the guy usually picked up his dates in nursing homes.

  “Anyway,” Dusty pushed his magazine over to Scott. “Choose your disguise. Or if you want, I can make you look like Brad Pitt.”

  “Brad Pitt, huh?” Scott perked up. “How about Tom Cruise? No, Tom Cruise back when he still had a nose?”

  Dave leaned closer to Charis. “Is he compensating for something?”

  “How should I know? I don’t keep track of Scott’s fantasies.” Her cell phone rang a moment later, causing her to dive into her purse to find it. “Yah?” she said as soon as she had the thing to her ear. “Yah… okay… what do you have?”

  “Taking on the appearance of a celebrity would hardly assist us in keeping a low profile.” Miradon told Scott.

  “You’re just jealous that you don’t get to look like Tom Cruise.” Scott shot back.

  “We’re on the news! Tell the DSS to fix it. Now.” Charis told her cell phone, pouting.

  Miradon continued without missing a beat. “Not at all, I assure you. I am perfectly content with my appearance; I have had two and a half centuries to become accustomed to it.”

  Dave really hoped he’d misheard that. Maybe Miradon meant decades instead of centuries; he didn’t look much past fifty-five.

  Purposefully ignoring the ongoing argument, Dave leaned his elbows on the table and pinned Dusty with a determined look. Maybe he could get some answers while they ate, before something else straight out of a Twilight Zone episode happened.

  “I’ve got some questions, Dusty. You think you can answer them?”

  Dusty smiled, fine lines around his eyes bunching together like an old man, a weird cross between sixteen and sixty. As always he looked serene and untroubled. “Sure, man.”

  “All right. Now, assuming this is all real, and I’m not actually imagining all of you—what in the hell is going on? Tell me straight. Just lay it out.”

  “Can’t, man,” Dusty said sorrowfully. “Top Secret.”

  “Okay but what CAN you tell me?” He wasn’t giving up.

  Miradon and Scott looked at each other. Then the Professor gave it a shot. “First let us clarify. Which part, exactly, don’t you understand?”

  “I got that there’s demons. Demons are real. Fine. Why can’t we usually see them if they’re real? Why can I see them now? Were they on earth before Rune came? What did that amulet do to me? And what do demons have to do with the damn aliens and their damn alien moon?”

  Scott winced, and Ebenezer scratched uncomfortably at his stubble. “Well,” said the Brit, “that’s a bit much to explain over breakfast. Can you trim it down a bit?”

  Dave put his hands flat on the table, a look of desperation in his eyes. “The moon. Just tell me what you can about the damn moon. All the aliens are dead, right? The aliens which attacked Earth and killed billions of people before they all fell over dead for no apparent reason?”

  “Why do you assume that we know anything about Rune?” Ebenezer countered.

  “You have to know something.” Dave just wasn’t going to buy that a group of lightning-shooting superman-flying chupacabra killers didn’t have something to do with the alien technology the governments of the world had scooped up on the moon.

  Miradon rolled his eyes and Scott muttered in a confiding tone, “I didn’t hear you tell him anything.”

  Taking that as permission, the Shifter leaned in a bit and lowered his voice (despite the fact that Dusty winked at him letting him know that he had the table covered and their conversation would remain private). “What I am about to tell you cannot leave this table. Do not admit this to anyone. Do you understand me?”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  Dave nodded enthusiastically. Finally some damn answers!

  “When the governments sent their expeditions up to Rune, they did find alien technology. But it was totally useless to us — we couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Couldn’t make it work. But luckily for us…” he stopped and hesitated, choosing how much he dared say. “Let’s put it this way. We found something that helped us translate their technology. Which allowed us to learn to use some of it.”

  “I knew it,” Dave muttered. “And the government’s been telling us all this time that nothing’s been found on the surface. Lying bastards…”

  “Well technically they aren’t lying,” Scott interrupted. “Nothing really is on the surface. I mean the physical surface. Now here’s the part you’re going to have to wrap your head around: there’s more than just one Earth.”

  “What?” Dave’s stomach told him that maybe it wasn’t such a good time to be laying on the stress.

  “You’ve already seen parts of the other Earth. The demons? They live there. People have always called it the ‘spiritual world.’ It’s actually another Earth. A kind of a copy. Well… more like the blueprint and the real Earth is the copy. But anyway. Point is,” Scott waved away the metaphysics discussion, “the aliens learned to study and figure out the spiritual world like we learned to study and figure out the physical world. We have Physics, they have what we’ve nicknamed Etherics. Laws of the Ether.”

  “The Veil world is what they call it,” Ebenezer took over eagerly, enjoying talking about one of his class subjects. “A world just as real as this one as one color is just as real as another color. But you know that colors lie on a visible spectrum, don’t you? Green is green because it’s lower on the spectrum than red. Green is what we call a certain wavelength of visible light. But both green and red are real colors—”

  “Don’t get too technical, I’m not sure he can handle it,” Scott said out of the side of his mouth.

  “Hey, I’m a UCLA undergraduate with honors. What’s your IQ, Hairdo?”

  Miradon had to physically push Scott back into his seat before he tried to reach across the table and shove Dave.

  “HEY!” Charis barked, shifting her phone to the other ear. “Can we please be civilized? Sorry Martin, go on…” she turned her back on them.

  “Basically,” Miradon got the lesson back on track with some effort, “the physical world exists on a certain vibration of energy. Our atoms are spinning at a certain rate. Slow them down, speed them up, and you what we call ‘tune’… you move from this world into others.”

  “Okay so there’s more than two Earths?” Dave asked.

  “Oh boy,” Scott rolled his eyes but didn’t explain.

  “There’s a lot in this universe, it turns out, that we had no idea about. The physical world is already much more vast than we can possibly explore… well it turns out there’s more than just the physical world. There’s actually quite a few. Possibly infinite worlds, we’re not sure.”

  “Okay…” Dave gestured, trying to urge him along. When did they get to the part about Dave and his amulet?

  “So there’s nothing technically on the physical surface of Rune but dust… much like our old moon. However there is … and this is something I am not allowed to say… there is something there in the spiritual or Etheric version of Rune.”

  “A base?” Dave took a stab in the dark.

  “Something along those lines. Yes. We figured out how to go there, into that other version of Rune. And in the Etheric realm, we can breathe vacuum as if it’s air. So it’s possible to walk around on dead, airless planets.”

  “Planets. Plural. And you know this how…?”

  Another grimace from Scott. “Nope. Can’t go there. Sorry.”

  “That’s classified,” Ebenezer smiled. “Let it be enough to say that our abilities—what you saw with the chupacabra in the city—come directly from the fact that we found a way to step between the worlds. We can go to that other world. The amulet clearly lets you see through visually to that other world. It’s a very dangerous other world… obviously… but also very rewarding, if you know how to use it.”

  “Can I get superpowers too?” Dave asked.

  “No,” Scott said.

  “It seems unlikely,” Miradon said in a much nicer tone. “You’d have to have… let’s say a gift. Potential for a certain…” he stopped and thought about it. “I’ll let the Academy explain when we get there.”

  “Wait… we’re going to your Academy? Where they teach superpowers?”

  “Yes,” Scott said. “Or at least we’re trying to get to a safe house so that we can go to the Academy and get out of this bullshit.”

  “So what about Jim Cragley’s amulet?” Dave insisted. Might as well get as many answers as possible while they were feeling cooperative. “What did it do to me?”

  “You seem to have acquired a pre-packaged… what shall I call it… a ‘gift’ let’s say… which was stored—rather like electricity in a battery—inside the amulet that your Professor Cragley gave to you. We call these sorts of self-contained synthetic gifts ‘mantles’. They are powerful gifts, talents, and sometimes even weapons. Most mantles grant the ability to interact with and control the Veil realms. It would take too long to tell you the details now, but suffice to say the beings who made mantles thought that they were gods. To prove it, they did everything in their power to acquire the abilities of gods. In short, they used mantles to impersonate deities.”

  “Oh, that’s just great. So ancient would-be gods bundled super powers like software programs and I got an accidental download.”

  “Yes! Exactly!” Miradon looked at Dusty happily. “Isn’t the modern age wonderful? It contains such excellent parables for these things. Software and batteries! Precisely. You cannot imagine how difficult it was to explain these things to men in former times.”

  Dusty nodded dreamily as if he remembered.

  Charis was finishing her conversation. “No I don’t think they know where we are right now. Okay. Keep me posted. Bye.” She hung up her phone, joining the conversation. “Yeah, basically your battery was a leaky one. Like I told you before. A shoddy replacement for the original. It would always have been dangerously easy for a mantle that unstable to discharge into somebody. Unfortunately, it did.”

  Scott sighed. “Where the hell is our food? That’s it. We’re not leaving a tip.”

  “So I got a leaky battery and it zapped me. Now I have fake-god power trapped inside me that allows me to see some parallel dimension which has always been here, even before Rune showed up, which is full of angry aliens slash demons.”

  “That about sums it up.”

  “But why me? I’m hardly the first guy to handle the amulet. Why not Jim? Or whoever dug it up in the first place? I didn’t do any rituals or genie-rubbing or candle lighting to make it happen.”

  “You didn’t have to,” Charis said. “A mantle will only bond with someone who naturally possesses talents similar to it. In other words, Jim Cragley didn’t have any true Discernment or Sight abilities. He wasn’t a sensitive able to pick up on spiritual input very easily. Since you seem to have some kind of visual discernment naturally— you talked about being able to see monsters in the closet as a child?— it more easily resonated and bonded with you.”

  Scott finally put down the magazine as the waitress reappeared. She deposited five plates of unappetizing, wilted, nuked, limp and soggy food on the table. Everyone stared at their lunch aghast, silently shaking their heads when she asked if they wanted anything else. After lingering for a long moment she turned and trotted away, thankfully without trying to flirt with Miradon.

  “Man, I wish I was an alchemist at times like this so I could transform this radioactive shit into something actually edible,” Scott muttered, picking at his droopy eggs.

  Only Miradon seemed delighted by the feast. “Anyone spare a bit of butter?” He asked, digging into his small mountain of waffles with gusto.

  Dave poked at his beef patty, wondering if the meat was supposed to be such a weird gray color. “Well, I don’t want dimensional binoculars, or whatever this ex-god software is. How do I get rid of it? If I lose the mantle, the… er, demons will leave me alone, right?”

  Charis sighed. “Well, probably they would. Maybe. It’s not so easy to lose them once you get their attention. But the problem is, getting rid of a mantle isn’t as easy as picking one up. A mantle can only be voluntarily surrendered; which means you’ll have to learn how to control it before you figure out how to take it off.”

  “No problem. We’re headed to a school, right? They can teach me?”

  They glanced at one another. Nobody looked very sure of that.

  Charis shrugged. “I’m sure there’s some way to get it off. My original plan was to take you to a safe house and work it off you… but, well…” she grimaced. “Seems like the baddies are more interested in whatever you’re carrying than I anticipated. It’s not like mantles are that rare, so I’m kind of surprised. You must have a really powerful one, or a type that’s hard to find, maybe a pre-Ademic one.”

  “Pre what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Nevermind.”

  Dusty straightened in the booth as if he’d just heard something ominous, ignoring his food as he looked slowly around the restaurant. He sniffed the air, narrowing his eyes as he scanned the tired pink wallpaper and faded blue-gray carpet. Sensing nothing, he relaxed slightly, but remained scowling.

  “Another thing,” Dave said around a mouthful of sausage. “Why are the cops after me? I mean, I get that the demons and their big bosses want their fake god-power back, but the cops don’t have anything to do with that. I didn’t shoot anybody, and I’ve never done drugs, much less sold any. Nothing more than weed anyway. Everything they said I did, it’s all bogus.”

  “Ever since Rune showed up,” Scott said in a lowered voice, leaning toward him, “the government’s been involved.”

  The others tried to hush him but he ignore them, evidently having decided that now was a good time to break the ‘top secret’ restrictions he’d previously mentioned.

  “I can’t tell you what’s going on… but just understand that the governments, the police, they’re all involved in what we are finding on Rune and there’s two sides, two different groups so to speak. Good humans and bad humans. Okay? It’s complicated.”

  “Plus,” Charis jumped in, “even before Rune showed up, Demons owned entire governments, Dave. They own stocks. They own bonds. They own companies. They have military forces. Believe me, they can own a few cop departments. Those demons were around a lot longer than our ability to see them was.”

  “Wait, Demons play the stock market?” Dave wasn’t sure if he should laugh or not. Then something else occurred to him. “Do they teach elementary school, too? Because I had this teacher in fifth grade…”

  Miradon laughed, nearly spitting waffle.

  “Yeah, me too.” Dusty said.

  “No, I’m serious. We were sure this guy’s head could turn around three hundred and sixty degrees. He had a voice like Kermit the Frog.”

  “Perhaps he was one,” Miradon chuckled. “You would be surprised how many angels you have met and believed they were simply normal people.”

  “This guy wasn’t no angel. He looked like a cross between Richard Simmons and Michael Jackson.”

  Everyone at the table squinted, trying to picture that.

  “Not all angels are the good kind, man,” said Dusty in a quiet, knowing drawl.

  “Usually, demons can’t actually walk around physically,” Miradon assured him. “In fact, it is exceedingly rare. It takes them far too much energy to Manifest. Although, as you have seen, they have little need to manifest in the Veil when they can hitch a ride on a willing flesh and blood partner.”

  Dave grimaced and concentrated on his food, trying not to think of all the nasty parasites he’d seen in the past two weeks. It would ruin his appetite.