Minutes to Midnight by Phaedra Weldon Page B

We own the Watchers, we control the Guardians…"
    Her self-speech didn't make much sense to
me. And I wasn't in the mood to comment. I continued to bury my
head in my chest and hands, my thoughts turning to Stella.
    She was still there. I hadn't been able to
help her.
    She was in the 'Pheral, captive to
a…Djin?
    What the hell was that? Was Gabriel talking
about a genie?
    Gabriel stopped pacing and
came back to me. She knelt beside the bed and ran her fingers
through my hair. The gesture was almost pleasant, until she grabbed
a handful of it and yanked my head back so I would be forced to
look at her. "You will do everything in your power to prevent going
back to that place, do you understand me? This isn't a request,
Guardian. If you so much as put another foot into that place, I
will hurt her ,
Darren McConnell. I'll physically rip her spin from her
body."
    And then I was alone in my room.
    I didn't move. I just closed my eyes tight
and sobbed. Some man I was. A guy who'd made so many stupid
decisions in his life that brought him to this. I already knew she
couldn't kill me—if I died, then the book returned to the Well of
Souls. Its knowledge would be shared with the universe. But what
she could do to me was keep me alive enough to keep the book safe.
Gabriel seemed to revel in physical torture.
    There were times, like now, I wished my
family would have left me in that tree after mom died. I think I
drifted off to sleep again, and felt the soft brush of fur against
my skin, and the cold nose of a wolf against my cheek.

 
     
    A BREiF HiSTORY

     
     
    It wasn't a pleasant sleep, filled with
nightmares of giant spiders chasing me through a sewer, and at the
end of the tunnel was Gabriel wielding a knife to cut the book out
of my soul.
    Mike woke me up with glass of water and an
aspirin. He sat on the bed and watched me as I swallowed the pill
and emptied the glass. "I thought you'd look better—but you look
like you haven't rested at all."
    I handed the glass back to him. "I did.
Just…nightmares."
    He held the glass in both hands between his
knees. "Sorry. I had to get the arm back in. So…" Mike shrugged.
"You ready to tell me what happened?"
    "How long?"
    "What?"
    I focused on him. "How long have I been in
bed?"
    "Two days."
    "How long was I gone?"
    "Four." He pursed his lips. "I took it on
faith you'd show back up again like before. And since I saw you and
the officer turn left into the alley, I hung out there. Darius
didn't want to believe me. So when you showed back up…" He
shrugged.
    Jesus. "Mike…it was like before, wasn't it?
Like when I came out of the Cairn?"
    He nodded as he looked at me. "Yeah. Fever.
Chills. You were delirious. It was worse this time."
    I closed my eyes. "I think I was in the
Peripheral."
    "The place Darius talked about?"
    "Yeah." I told him everything I could
remember, except for the part where I woke up with Gabriel in my
face. He'd seen the Angel before, but his abilities weren't a match
for hers. The only person that could send Gabriel back to her World
was Samantha. She'd tried to teach me the spell to do it since she
believed I was a Sentinel like herself, a child of the God Mother
born on this earth to keep the illegal aliens out. But it didn't
work for me. When I told Nona what happened, her take was that my
duel nature wouldn't allow me to banish anything.
    "I did learn something, though." I leaned
back against the headboard. "Alfheim is part of the
Peripheral."
    Mike's expression slackened. "We were in the
Peripheral? The 'Pheral is where the Fairies live?"
    "Yeah. Apparently. And it's where Djin live,
because that's what overshadowed Officer Jones." I swung my legs
over the side of the bed and looked left at him. "It's got Stella,
Mike."
    "Then we have to get her back."
    Two days. I'd been feverish for two days.
And I still felt like hammered shit. Damn. "I have to come up with
a plan. How's Officer Jones?"
    "In a coma. He's got third degree burns on
the side of his face