Prologue
Arabella
This had been a horrendously long night, and absolutely nothing was going to plan.
I slid off my wire-framed glasses, the clink of them sounding against my desk causing me to jump slightly. I let out a low, tired sigh, rolling my shoulders as pain pulsed through my lower back. Crap. How long had I been up now? It had to be at least four in the morning. This was ridiculous. Maybe I needed more coffee. Looking through my fingers that covered my eyes, I scowled at the three empty coffee cups that were laying on top of my scattered paperwork. I could literally feel frustration mounting inside of my chest as my brain pulsed, nearly convincing me to put down my head and go the hell to sleep.
I couldn’t though. That wasn’t an option right now.
Maybe I was incorrect about my assumption of the time? I mean, it was purely based off the small streaks of pale sunlight attempting to break through the dark clouds outside my bedroom window. Something told me I was right on the mark, though. Unfortunately.
Taking a deep breath, the calm night air settled me, my eyes tracing the horizon with interest. Sometimes in the very early morning I would catch glimpses of flight training. Not that I should be focused on that right now, but you couldn’t blame me completely. It would be absolutely wicked to be able to fly.
Rationally, I knew I needed to sleep so that I could examine this with a fresh perspective. Still, I didn’t move from my desk, knowing that if I didn’t figure this out, my team would be at a disadvantage on their upcoming mission. That was simply something I wasn’t willing to risk. Ever.
It was even more frustrating since normally I never had an issue with locating and planning access points. As in, that was my literal job, and I was damn good at it. My team was usually in and out before the target could even blink. Frowning, I ran a hand over my neck, not enjoying the weird pulse of anxiety that ran through me about this mission. Something about this felt different. Granted, it literally was very different, but this felt larger than that. Something in my center told me that this mission would change something. Something fundamental.
We had never attempted to infiltrate such a massive MAM base, and the target that we were attempting to rescue was far more ‘important’ than usual.
Pressure? Yeah. You could say that. If we screwed this up, it would leave one of the most powerful nightmares on Earth in the hands of dangerous, vile humans.
Rolling my neck, I shook myself and recentered, feeling more motivated at that thought. At the thought of failure being absolutely not an option. I tugged my hair back tighter and slid on my glasses, beginning to reexamine the map in front of me with semi-fresh eyes.
Come on, Arabella.
This was a puzzle. That was all this was. Narrowing my eyes, I started at the top left and began to extensively trace the blueprints of what used to be Luke Air Force Base. In some ways, the alien-like terrain of Arizona was easier to navigate than our base in northern Michigan. In other ways, I felt like it’d leave my team far too exposed for my liking. Sliding my manicured fingers along the freshly printed plans, I narrowed in on a small element that I hadn’t noticed before. Pulling my desk lamp closer to relieve the rendering from the shadows, my smile began to grow.
Bingo.
The small entrance, tiny and hidden, appeared to be an access door right behind a water heater. There’s no telling why that door was originally placed there, but it would absolutely work. It would get my boys in without a problem… and that was where my job ended. Once they were inside a building, there was absolutely no hope of stopping them. No hope of stopping your own untimely death. Unfortunate for those who had no idea what was coming for them.
I began to type out the coordinates and directions for my team on a skinny tablet, the bright blue light from the screen making me frown. I entered the information as quickly as possible so I could shut the thing off again. I wasn’t exactly a huge fan of technology, if we were being honest. I preferred books to tablets. I liked maps instead of directions from my phone. It was partly due to my vision, but mostly because it left me with a more grounded feeling of satisfaction when I used paper. I already spent so much of my life disconnected from this cosmic plane that it was very needed. As I went to turn it off, a news banner popped up, the headline regarding a recent attack by a MAM group based out of Kentucky.
Fury pulsed in my chest as I shook my head, hating that nightmares weren’t more protected in this country. That they had to hide in small, walled suburbs, never venturing out because of the attacks that humans threw at them. This one appeared to be particularly vile, but I walked away before I could scan through all of the details, not trusting my temper not to get the best of me.
What would life be like if it wasn’t for Man Against Monster? If this country wasn’t constantly in a state of civil war? If we didn’t have to fight for every small ounce of a real, normal life? Or you know, just to not worry about being shot on the goddamn spot?
My fist pressed against my desk as I muttered out a curse, knowing I was much too tired to get into this mental tangent. Even on my best days, it had the potential to fuck up my day.
I was suddenly pulled from my thoughts when a soft scraping sound echoed through my large bedroom. A smile grew on my face as I adjusted my glasses, turning in my chair to face the darkness of the room. A familiar icy sensation worked its way through the space, draining any warmth from the room as the window creaked shut and the desk light flickered in a fashion that would be terrifying to most. I wasn’t concerned though. No, I welcomed the darkness and every single nightmare within it.
Darkness only scared those who couldn’t accept the world outside of what they considered to be ‘normal.’ Darkness only terrified those that weren’t brave enough to look into the void of light and meet the nightmares that existed within head on. The nightmares appeared to be horrifying… but only because you didn’t understand them. The nightmares existed in the dark and therefore had to be untrustworthy because they were the unknown, right?
Wrong. The nightmares were far more trustworthy than any human I’d ever come across.
I had never been afraid of the dark.
The center of my being craved it. I went crawling towards the darkness willingly. I wanted to meld into the shadows; I wanted the nightmares to bring me home. I only felt safe away from the eyes of those that didn’t understand me. In the arms of those that worked every day to. I may have looked normal, but I was a nightmare, soul-deep. A monster. A title that I celebrated, despite being viewed as an abomination. A human living amongst nightmares, willingly.
The darkness in my room shifted as I lifted my gaze to meet a pair of void-like eyes that flashed in the upper corner of my bedroom ceiling, directly diagonal from me. You would have thought at some point he would have scared me. It would have been a rational reaction to finding out that the monster under the bed was very, very much real. Yet as I stood and began walking across the room, fear was absent from me completely, even as I neared the corner where the phantom face looked down on me in a seemingly emotionless fashion. We all knew that wasn’t the case, though.
Coming to a stop, I watched as icy tendrils of black began to make their way down the wall, crawling and creeping until they eventually brushed across my skin. I sighed at the familiar touch, surrendering to the predatory vines that began to slowly wrap around me. As his face moved closer, attached to the shifting mass, I found myself reaching out as I always did. I needed his touch.