“Hunters never cease to amuse me. I’m not too worried about this new threat. I know all about him. With Nemesis assets in place we’ll be able to handle anything the other side throws at us. No more being puppets on a string for a bunch of cosmic superpowers and their endless bickering. I’m changing the rules of this game once and for all.”

Stricken turned and walked to the door, then paused, deep in thought. “But, tell you what, Pitt, just in case you’re not completely delusional…I wouldn’t drink that water if I was you.”

I looked over at the cup, then back at Stricken, but he was already gone. I hadn’t even seen the door move. I reached over, picked up the cup of water, poured it back in the pitcher, dumped the whole poisonous thing into a potted plant next to the bed, and went back to sleep.

“Oh, my head…” This time I woke up to a much more welcome sight next to my bed. “Hey, hon.”

Julie startled awake. She’d been sleeping in the chair next to the bed. “You’re up.” I was glad to see the relief on her face. “Thank goodness. You’ve been out forever. How’re you feeling?”

“Sore and drugged.”

“You took a beating. Two broken bones in your foot, a compound fracture in your arm, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Sore is understandable.”

“Is Stricken still here?” I asked suspiciously.

“No…He was never here. Nobody’s seen him since he left the city during the dragon attack. There are several hundred Hunters in town who’d love to make him have an accident.”

“He was just here,” I looked over at the potted plant, suspicious that it would be turning brown already, but it was fine. “I think he was.” The concept of linear time was still a little fuzzy.

Julie reached over and stroked my cheek. “I’ve been here almost the whole time, and when I wasn’t, somebody else was. Trip and Holly have been practically camped in the hall. We didn’t see anybody.”

Weird. Had I imagined that conversation? I felt okay. The memories started coming back. “You…You came back on the chopper…”

Julie nodded. “What’s a girl supposed to do? And by the way, that twenty millimeter is great. It’s so big I had to use all the bungees to hold it up, stick the barrel out one door, then hang myself out the opposite side to aim it.”

“But the Nachtmar—” It had wanted to possess a new host. “The baby!”

“Don’t worry.” Julie patted her abdomen. “Tanya promised she could ward it off with elf magic if it came around. Skippy almost had an aneurism when he found out she was drawing runes on his helicopter, but I talked him down because they were only in Sharpie. Tanya said she could handle anything disembodied.”