Chapter8----

Th airport surged around the three of us, Karrey, Charles, and myself, but it was charged with a paranoid energy. Charles was even more on guard and I have to admit even I was feeling the effects, all these people quietly going through the motions, helplessly hoping no one else would try to blow themselves up.
I quietly recited  to myself, nothing important, just the act calmed me enough to look at things with a renewed perspective, the morphine was wearing off and I was trying to put the pieces back together.

That man was only the third person I have met in my long life that could do what I do, this was not a coincidence because we normally avoid each other. It is a dangerous life seeing things that no one else can see, tinkering with the heart of the Reality Matrix, sometimes as carefully as a clock smith, other times taking a flaming sledgehammer to the boundaries and making everything seem as thin as an afternoon dream. It can only get weirder and much more dangerous with a similarly powered person about.

No, this was no accident. That fat little man looked as scared and drugged as me. If I had been alone, hunted and hounded with no one like Charles to sort me out it could have been me over-reacting first and making a big show of myself.

Karrey looked at her plane ticket, she looked at me in confusion,
"Where are you two going?"

It was like a surreal scene from a movie Charles and I both spoke at the same time,
"Canada-"
"Holland-"

In my experience there is a breaking point with everybody, a moment where the last straw is pulled and they just decide to give up and go along with whatever stupid mess they happen to find themselves in. Karrey was about there, her attractive face was screwed up in anger and confusion but the it visibly relaxed and I could almost hear the gears shift down into first.

"This is just stupid, I've been shot at twice now, the guy I'm with is a lunatic and will probably get me killed."

"Hey, I'm right here."

Charles interrupted us,
"Trust me 'Hon you should go home, I know you think something special is happening and you really want to be a part of that but really I've seen it before and you're just gonna end up as dead as that sad, fat, man back there. So please, just go home and forget about us."

I remembered her brother and the things he would make her do, the night -time visits and the sick games, always ending with Karrey losing. He would be mad she was gone for so long, I couldn't let her go home. It might be dangerous with me but I  didn't have the heart to send her back to that.

"No, you can come if you want, Holland is beautiful this time of the year, and besides I would really like you to come with. We'll fly first class and everything."

I'm ashamed to admit my voice was not without a tinge of power, a bit of temptation. Only a taste, but to me it tasted like bile, I don't think of myself as a holy man but controlling people that I knew intimately always made me feel sick to my stomach.

On the other hand telling the girl at the ticket desk that I wanted three first class tickets to Holland didn't have the smallest effect. Go figure.

We spent the time in the boarding hub sitting on blue plastic chairs waiting for the plane to fuel and get into position. I looked over my book, tracing an eldritch rune with my finger, mumbling Arameric under my breath as I followed the confusing mathematical sigil to its labyrinthine core. The attackers would try again, or maybe we still had a little while to go before the trap was really sprung, either way I wanted to be prepared.

Charles read a tabloid magazine, glancing up to watch our fellow passengers mill about, Karrey watched the flat screen TV that hung on the opposite wall, video images of war filled the high definition screen. Fire, people running, a smoldering tank sitting on a street corner, the once proud buildings around it reduced to blackened rubble.

I stopped long enough to catch the headline, a scrolling marquee that told of a rebellion in northern Europe. I shrugged and went back to my book, as long as it wasn't Holland I didn't see much reason to worry over it.