The Druid's Spear (Ascent of the Gem Bearers Book 1) by Parker Payne, Lee Thornton III Page A

cell phone and fiddle with it. He dismissed the intruder.
    The waitress came back with the order, a ready smile on her face, when she glanced up at the window and screamed. The tray slapped against the table and sloshed them both with liquid and food before toppling over.
    “Whoa!” John exclaimed, jumping to his feet and gaping at his ruined clothes. Ken escaped most of the damage except for a few splatters.
    “Go away! Go away!” she cried out. The woman’s eyes were wide with fear and her body trembled.
    The man outside stared into the window look up at them, then shook his head and walked away.
    Ken stood to help with the clean-up.
    “What happened?” John asked the woman as he bent to pick up the debris.
    The woman swallowed audibly and wiped her hand on her skirt. She bowed low. “ Sumimasen .” As she knelt to help another porter came over. “I don’t know what came over me. I thought—”
    “Thought what?” John prompted.
    Ken watched her shake again. “I thought it was that strange man from before.”
    “Who?”
    Dark brown eyes met his. “A few days ago, a very tall man, hooded and gloved, came into the diner. He was extremely rude to me. When he left, he didn’t pay for his drink.”
    “Prick,” John muttered, “but that doesn’t seem so bad.”
    She shook her head. “When I approached him to pay for his meal…”
    If possible, the color from her face whitened further. The trembling that had subsided returned in full force.
    “Hey, hey, sweetheart,” John cooed, as he gripped her hands in his. “Did he attack you? Hurt you?”
    A dry sob heaved from her throat. “When he looked back at me, I saw his eyes. They were gleaming like…like…cat’s eyes.”
    “Oh, come on!” John rocked back on his heels. “You have to be kidding.”
    “I’m not making this up,” the woman declared emphatically. “I know it sounds like something from a movie but I know what I saw. And what I felt.”
    “What do you mean?”
    She fixed her gaze on the broken pieces of dishes on the floor. “I was glad to be alive. He looked at me and I knew I was glad to be alive. Something was strange about him. Wrong. Evil. Almost as if he wasn’t human. I didn’t even want his money. If I never see him again, it would too short a time.”
    “You must have imagined. Oh!” John perked up. “Or, maybe it was the glow-in-the-dark contacts you can get from—”
    “Do you take me for a fool?” She shook her hands out of his grip. Ken saw John’s admiration plummet like the stock market prices. “I know what I saw.” She stood briskly and then and gave a polite bow. “Please feel free to order again, and it’s on the house.” With that, she turned and walked away. The porter finished the job.
    “Wow, and I was beginning to like her,” Don Juan shook his head mournfully and sat down again. “Now look at my clothes.”
    “You’ll live,” Ken answered in a dry tone. “Did you want to order something else or just leave?”
    His friend’s lips pursed comically. “I never turn down free food.” John picked up his chopsticks when suddenly they broke without an apparent cause. Although Ken didn’t consider himself superstitious, nonetheless, a wave on unease passed over him.
    His friend played it off with a nervous laugh. “I’ll just get another set.”
    A different server came, a man who didn’t pique John’s interest at all. Ken smiled at the hilarity of a budding relationship gone astray. Such was life.
    Over the food, they went through the Net, trying to discover more information about the picture and how his ancestor fit into it. It was a couple of hours before they decided to call it quits.
    “Maybe those books from the library will help.” John yawned and stretched as they rose to leave.
    “What books?”
    “When I saw that picture, I went to the library to see if I could get more info and took out a couple.” He gave a shrug. “It won’t hurt anything.”
    “If nothing comes from it,