Archive of Our Own

Darkness Rising

By capnzebbie

Hunger.

We/I hunger.

In the vastness of the Void, the Dark join together, float apart; fewer every time they part. The ones left behind on the journey from one world to another, searching, searching the Void for a way out. No meat, no blood, no minds, no souls to eat, they feed on themselves, on each other, turning cannibal to survive…

eating one’s own leg to survive.

We/I hunger….

Darwath

Ingold sighed in relief as the glowing, twisting portal closed. “That’s done, then. We’ve done our best to make certain that Kris and Adam and their world are safe. I only hope it’s enough.”

“What do you mean?” Rudy asked.

“There are still several things that could go wrong. When I was closing the way through the Void, I sensed that some of the Dark Ones are still trapped there.”

Gil said something foul, gripping her sword. “I thought we got them all!”

“We destroyed all the ones who came back through to this world,” Ingold agreed, “and I’m certain that none of them have found their way to Kris and Adam’s world, the world from which you two came. I just hope the gnoddyr spell holds. There’s danger if their memories of this place come back.”

“What do you mean?” Rudy asked. “I mean, I know it’ll be better for their peace of mind to not remember travelling between universes and coming so close to death, but…”

“Not just for their peace of mind. If they remember this world, the Dark Ones may be able to track them by their thoughts.”

“Oh. Crap.”

“Rudy?” Gil assessed him with glacial eyes.

“I uh, may have done something…um…”

“Stupid?” Gil finished for him.

Los Angeles

Kris Allen was happy. Giddy, even. He knew he shouldn’t be, after parting ways with his label. He should be worried, but he was more excited about his career than ever, working with Pearl Group Entertainment and with Lindsay, (kinda, sorta) living with Adam Lambert, in love, excited about his music and his coming tour, his life, and pleased with the world in general. There was just one tiny bit of unhappiness shadowing his life. Well, two really. The first was that he and Adam weren’t out as a couple. Kris still had his own place in LA, although he didn’t spend much time there. And he had to sneak in and out of Adam’s house, constantly on the watch for the paps. Only a few people, family, close friends, management (of course) knew that they were together. Management was waiting for it all to fall apart so they wouldn’t have to deal with it. Family and friends on Kris’s side were confused, disturbed, or cautiously supportive. Reactions from family and friends on Adam’s side ranged from ‘it’s about time’ to cautiously supportive to thrilled. Neil and Brad each sent Adam a toaster (because they’re dorks) which cracked Adam up. He donated them both to a Salvation Army store in the middle of one of the seediest parts of downtown Los Angeles; the store where they had miraculously found a working pay phone after coming to their senses with no idea of how they had gotten there, and with no cell phones, money, or IDs to be found in their pockets.

Which brought Kris to the second problem; he couldn’t remember how he and Adam had gotten together. He remembered wanting Adam for so long, even when he shouldn’t; avoiding Adam because he had to, even though it hurt. He remembered seeing Adam again for the first time six months after the divorce. Adam was so angry that he would barely speak to Kris. A brief car ride so unpleasant that the earthquake was almost a relief. Then, the next thing Kris remembered was waking up on the sidewalk, holding hands with Adam, with more than two months of his memory gone. All he and Adam knew was that they had been held captive by some kind of homophobic cult, but instead of the captivity driving them apart, they had somehow healed their friendship and found love. Kris did not want to remember whatever the cult had done to them (the cuts, burns, and bruises, as well as Adam’s broken arm, told him quite enough, thank you very much), but he did want to remember how he and Adam had found their way to each other.

Adam wasn’t as worried about it. He knew their relationship had happened; that was enough for him. He, too, had a big blank spot where the cult memories should be; but he fervently didn’t want to remember any more than he did. Poking at that part of his mind made him feel vaguely nauseous. He was, however, as supportive of Kris as he could be, coming up with ideas for memory recovery ranging from mundane to bizarre, everything he or his friends could think of. He and Kris had both spent some time in counseling for possible PTSD from the kidnapping, but they hadn’t recovered any memories during the sessions. He suggested hypnosis, but Kris was uncomfortable with the idea of someone messing with his head; someone had already done that once. Adam also suggested massage, chanting, affirmations, rituals, mind readers, positive thinking.

“Mushroom tea! It’s like epiphany juice!”

“No, thank you,” Kris replied with a laugh.

“Lucid dreaming?”

“What’s that?”

“Scarlett told me about it. Hey, it might work! You kind of take control of your dream and use it to help you find out something. It’s a way of getting in touch with your subconscious mind. It would just be you messing with your head instead of someone else.”

“So what do I do?”

“Well, it takes practice, so it may take a while. Before you go to sleep, you just tell yourself you’re going to be aware that you’re dreaming and that you’ll be in control of your dreams. Once you start having a dream, and you’re aware you’re dreaming, you can talk to people in the dream and ask them questions and stuff.”

“Um, okay, I can give it a try.” Kris frowned, and said, “I don’t want to remember the bad, you know, cult stuff. I just want to remember… us. Like, our first time. I mean, that’s a big deal for me, and I can’t remember it.”

“I know, baby, I wish I could remember more of it, too,” Adam lied, as he pulled Kris into a hug. “I’m so glad we have this now, but it would be great to remember when and how we started.”

Darwath

“So you taught Adam and Kris how to sabotage the gnoddyr spell? To what end?” Ingold sounded more weary than angry.

“Just sabotage it a little. They wanted to remember their own, um, relationship here. I just thought, if it was me and Alde, how would I feel about someone wiping out the memory of the first time we met, our first kiss, you know….” Rudy trailed off sheepishly.

“Yes, I know.” Ingold glanced at Gil and she raised an eyebrow and shrugged. “Well, there’s nothing to be done for it now but just try to keep an eye on the situation, so to speak. It should be safe for them to remember just that, just each other here, but if they start remembering anything about this place…I don’t know, I just don’t know. I’m not sure how much the Dark would need to be able to find them, to find their world. We three probably know more about the Dark than anyone, but we still know so little about them!”

“Can you…can we go into the Void after them? I mean, can we go hunt them down?” Rudy asked.

“The Void is not a destination for humans, it is a place to go through to somewhere else. And even if we could remain there for any length of time, it is, well, vast isn’t truly the correct word. More like infinite. We wouldn’t be able to find them,” Ingold responded. “Also, every time I open the way, it leaves cracks that take years to heal. I don’t want to make Darwath or your own world any more accessible to creatures from other worlds. The Dark Ones were enough of danger. We don’t need any more.”

“Can you set up some kind of watch? Something to let you know if there’s a breach in the Void?” Gil asked.

“Yes. Rudy, I’ll need you to work with me on this. We’ll need a constant monitor, with an alert to let us know if something happens. And please let me know if you have any other bright ideas about sabotaging my spells!”

“Right. Just tell me what I need to do.”

Los Angeles

“Oh…kay,” Kris said around a yawn. “I’m going to try the lucid dreaming thing. Or start practicing anyway.”

Adam sounded on the edge of sleep, murmuring, “For someone with a trained mind like yours, it shouldn’t be hard.”

“What?”

“Hmm?”

“You said I have a trained mind? What?”

“Well, yeah, when you did the…” Adam trailed off, looking confused. “I don’t know where that came from. Huh.”

“Dang it! I hate having a chunk of my life gone!”

“So, work on it.” Adam turned on his side and pulled Kris close. “I’m sorry, babe, I have to sleep. Early meeting.”

Kris spooned in and tried to think about being in control of his dreams….

Adam was on top of him, head thrown back, riding Kris as if he were having a spiritual experience. He gasped and shook, and Kris felt come splattering his belly and chest, all the way up to his chin. God, Kris was so close, so close…Adam looked down and smiled, and Kris somehow knew he was dreaming. “Is this our first time?”

Adam laughed, now stretched out on the bed beside him. “You remember, you know you remember, a trained mind like yours.”

“But I don’t. I remember you were mad at me. Wait, did I kiss you?”

“See? You do remember. You kissed me like you’d never kissed anyone before. By that I mean you didn’t seem to know what you were doing.” Adam grinned, standing up from a chair in a room with black stone walls, smooth as obsidian, wearing something black with white decorations, reaching for…a sword?

And Kris did remember their first kiss, so awkward, so desperate, Adam taking control, so perfect, so, so what they both wanted…a moment of light in a universe of darkness…darkness…the Dark…the dank smell of a cave invaded his nostrils and he pushed that thought away…

Adam, looking grim in his black and white Guard uniform…Kris watched in horror as Adam’s uniform began to smoke in spots as if someone (something) had dropped acid on it…the lights began to flicker and dim, and Kris began to shake, fear-sweat dripping down his back…a loud gonging noise sounded throughout the Keep of Dare….

Kris woke with a gasp, the gonging noise echoing in his head. “What the heck?”

Adam jerked, waking abruptly. “Whassat? Is someone bangin’ on the door?”

Kris didn’t hear a thing.

~*~

In the Void, one of the Dark Ones jerked to a halt, a movement so unusual and unexpected that two others bumped into it. They temporarily merged, knowingfeelingsmellingsensing a direction, a hint, a possibility of escape from this endless nothing. The rest of the Dark rushed in and floated toward the hint.

And found a tiny crack.

~*~

Raffie jittered and shuffled his way down Hopper Avenue, all unknowing and uncaring that this street was the place where Kris Allen and Adam Lambert had mysteriously reappeared after their release from the cult that had held them captive for over two months. He was about to round the corner at that very spot when he saw what looked like a small, glowing tear appear in the air right in front of him, as the few working street lights flickered and died. Through the tear oozed a nightmare shape more frightening than his worst drug-induced delusions, a light-sucking black blob that grew and grew until it seemed to fill the sky. Raffie stared, gape-mouthed and too terrified to scream, as the blob seemed to split apart, each part growing a mouth lined with shark’s teeth, dripping saliva that sizzled as it hit the sidewalk. Fortunately for Raffie, the Dark were hungry for meat and blood. Had he known what he was facing, he would have been glad for the quick death.

~*~

In the Keep of Dare, Ingold awoke with a start.

~*~

The Dark Ones felt their way through the man-made canyons of Los Angeles, spreading darkness before them and leaving death behind them. With newfound strength from their meals of meat and blood, they spread their awareness to its limits. The sheer volume of life on this world! They could sense billions of wild humans to domesticate, to turn into food, tame into herds, and to line the nurseries. But first, they needed a place to bring the humans for domestication. The Dark were so pitifully few; they needed to increase their population rapidly. And they needed to find the ones whose minds had led them here. Their knowledge was a danger; they needed to be brought to heel as soon as possible.

It took Kris nearly twenty minutes to stop shaking, and much longer than that to shake off the fear from the end of his dream. It was almost dawn before he was finally able to drift back to a dreamless sleep. He told Adam about the dream over breakfast, trying to communicate the feeling of creeping horror that pervaded the last part.

“I don’t know, Adam, it was really…it was awful. But it didn’t feel cult-y. It felt worse. I don’t think I want to do that again.”

“I don’t blame you.” Adam felt a bit queasy, wishing he hadn’t suggested the lucid dreaming thing. Sometimes forgetting is for the best. “Maybe just…let it go for a bit. You’ve been focusing on this so hard for the last few weeks. Let it be for a while and maybe some of the nice stuff will come back. But hey, you remembered the kiss!” Adam grinned happily.

Kris laughed, shaking off the last of his discomfort. “Yes, the terrible, awkward first kiss. I think I’ll be satisfied with remembering that, because I know that was real. It just felt real.”

“Fortunately, we’ve gotten much better at it since then,” Adam replied, pulling Kris closer so he could demonstrate how much better at it they were before he had to head out to his meeting with management.

Kris decided to add the gaps in his memories to the list of things he couldn’t change. Like his fear of the dark that seemed to come from nowhere and which led directly to night lights in every room in the house. And candles. Candles everywhere. Kris now found candles infinitely comforting; just looking at a burning candle made him feel safe. Maybe the cult kept them someplace dark? Kris sighed and let it go. Let it go, a voice in the back of his mind said. Actually, the voice was saying something like, gnoddyr elphuath ang wath mar, which made no sense at all, so Kris’s mind heard it as let it go.

But the dark thing didn’t explain Adam’s newfound fascination with swords; what the heck was that all about? Maybe they had been kidnapped by a homophobic cult that was into medieval reenactments? Adam had always liked fire; that liking was just intensified now, and coupled with the swords it was going to make an amazing show. Kris grinned to himself, thinking about Adam’s enthusiasm for his “Kabuki/circus” thing. After the relative visual austerity of the Trespassing Tour, Adam was going all out for the new one. He couldn’t wait to see it, happy that he could see it after having to stay away from Adam’s concerts for such a long time. He hoped that Adam would be able to make it to one of his concerts as well. And on that cheerful thought, Kris headed out to his own meeting with management.

~*~

Homehomehomehomehome find a home a place to hide to grow a place for the herds for the children someplace dark and warm and secret

There are no caverns in downtown Los Angeles. There are, however, many dark, abandoned buildings. Now one building is even darker, but no longer abandoned.

~*~

Adam’s management was thrilled with his new creative direction. Shel, the PR guy, was practically shitting himself with excitement, and Mariel, the tour booking agent was equally enthusiastic. “We’re really going heavy with tour dates all across Asia—Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore,” Mariel ticked off the countries on her fingers. “We’ve already got three dates at big venues in Japan; I think they’ll like the spectacle and the Japanese influence in the new show.”

“I’m really excited about this!” Adam responded. “So, what about an American leg for the tour?”

Shel and Mariel exchanged a glance. “Well, the first concert will be here, of course. And we do have some dates coming up in the U.S.,” Shel said in an overly cheerful voice and Adam concentrated on keeping the same smile on his face. “Not really part of the tour as such, but they’ll be spectacular, large venues! But we can go over that later.”

Adam knew what that meant, but he decided to just go with the management flow on scheduling and concentrate on the art. He hadn’t yet come up with a name for the tour, but he had it all planned out—pyro, swords, dancers with over-sized masks and exaggerated Kabuki-style makeup, a mixture of martial arts and circus, with both sword fighting and juggling fire. And soaring over it all, Adam’s voice singing of fear and darkness, of triumph and love. The new songs he had been writing in the weeks since he and Kris had come back were crazy, coming from some creative place he’d never accessed before. This show was going to be killer!

@adamlambert: cant wait for the NEW TOUR!!! Faces will melt!

@luvrofadam: So excited!!!

@pintocolada: will u be coming to Brazil? #pleasepleaseplease

@superglamazon: TOUR!!! Yes!

@liz78green: You should wear less clothes this time.

Kris added the last chopped vegetables to the stir-fry, dancing to a song in his head as the television droned in the background. Adam should be home soon, and Kris was looking forward to a quiet evening at home. He had the nice dishes on the table, candles ready to be lit, wine chilling; now all he needed was Adam. When the vegetables were al dente, he took the stir-fry off the heat. It looked so good, he took a picture, and, with a mischievous smirk, uploaded it to Twitter with the comment, Dinner with a friend. #bejelus. He covered the wok to keep the food warm and went to the dining table to light the candles. Just as he held the lit match out toward the first candle, he heard the front door open.

“Honey, I’m home!”

Kris blew out the match, not noticing that both candles had lit without being touched by the match flame. He hurried to the front door and wrapped his arms around Adam. “How was your day, dear?” he asked with a grin.

“Mmmmuch, better now.” Adam kissed Kris thoroughly and enthusiastically. “What’s that smell? Did you cook?”

“Chicken and vegetable stir-fry.”

“No…”

“No rice or noodles, just meat and veggies.”

Adam laughed happily as they headed to the dining room. “You know me so well. And god, I love your cooking.” He stopped short with a pleased look at the dining table, lit only by the candles in the center.

“Candles and wine? Why, Mr. Allen, are you trying to seduce me?”

Kris propped his sneaker-clad foot up on one of the dining room chairs. “Do you want me to seduce you?” He asked with a raised eyebrow.

“You know it, babe,” Adam responded with a wicked grin and a nibbling kiss to the back of Kris’s neck. “But food first, I’m fucking starving. Nothing to eat since breakfast.”

“Ha, I see where I fit in your priorities. Have a seat, and pour the wine. I’ll get the food.”

Just as they sat down, Kris’s phone started singing alerts of direct messages and tweets.

DM @LindsayPGE: Kristopher >:(

@negativeneil: People who tweet pics of food are losers

@krisbert549: Ooo who are you cooking for?

DM @KatyOConnell: So, has Adam’s wok ever appeared on the internet anywhere? Cause you know….

@maddieissocool: Looks delicious! Can I come over?

Adam looked at the messages. “What did you do?” he asked, looking amused.

“Tweeted a pic of the food,” Kris responded with an innocent look. “Just said I was having dinner with a friend.”

“You are such bad boy, Kris,” Adam said with a laugh. “Okay, phone off during dinner. We can look at the twats later.”

Phones turned off, they settled in to enjoy dinner.

“Has your wok ever appeared on the internet?”

“God knows. Or the fans know. If it has, we’ll all know it soon enough. You may get more than an angry face DM from Lyndsay if it has.”

“I’m…,” Kris hesitated, and Adam looked at him inquiringly. “I’m not sure how much longer I want to wait.”

Adam looked thoughtful. “I don’t know, Kris. I mean, I want to say that it’s up to you, and you know I’ll support you whatever you decide. I don’t like having to hide any more than you do, but…”

“But?”

“But…I met with Shel and Mariel and some other people about the new album and the tour. It’s going to be all Asia and Europe, with ‘a few U.S. shows,’ Mariel said. And I know that means Pride, and GLAAD, and PFLAG, and as much as I love all that, it’s frustrating that everywhere else in the world I’m ‘pop singer Adam Lambert,’” Adam struck a pretentious pose, “but here at home, I’m ‘openly gay pop singer Adam Lambert.’” He looked at Kris ruefully. “I don’t know, are you ready for that for yourself?”

Kris felt a little quiver down in his belly. Was he ready for that? Was that a quiver of fear or anticipation? “I don’t know either,” he said slowly. “And if I don’t know, then I’ll wait until I do know. But I don’t think it’ll be much longer.”

“There will be meetings and meetings and meetings! Ugh! Let’s think about something else,” Adam said, shaking off the somber mood. “Hey! How did the writing go today?”

They sat at the dining table talking about everything and nothing, their appetite for food satisfied so that they were both just picking at the food and sipping wine, other appetites growing as they moved closer to each other. They kissed away the taste of wine and spices until they could only taste each other; Adam smiled at Kris and ran his hand down Kris’s arm until he reached his hand, then pulled him to his feet so they could feel each other all the way down as they kissed. And that was it. Adam knew they weren’t going to make it to the bedroom. They’d be lucky to make it to the sofa before they fell down. Laughing and stumbling, kissing and pulling each other’s clothes off, they fell onto the sofa with Kris straddling Adam.

Much later, they lay naked on the sofa, tangled together, trying to catch their breath.

“You know,” Kris said between gasps, “I used to think I was kind of un-sexual.”

“What?” Adam laughed breathlessly. “Are you nuts?”

“Like, low sex drive or something. I mean, I liked girls, they were nice to look at and all, but I never felt like…I mean, I loved Katy. I still love her…” Kris felt Adam tense slightly at this and he reached up and caressed Adam’s face with a trembling hand. “But I never felt this…craving. From the first time I saw you, I was curious about you. I wanted to know you. And as we got to know each other, got to be friends, I just wanted to be closer.”

Adam laughed weakly. “And I was trying to keep myself from…from wanting you too much, trying to keep a little distance between us, and you just kept moving closer.” He smiled fondly at Kris. “You were like a persistent suitor.”

Now Kris was laughing. “And here I didn’t even realize we were courtin’. I just knew that I had to be next to you, had to be touching you. And I had no clue that I…”

“That you—that we--were falling in love.”

“Yeah. That whole year is such a blur, but I feel like I went into it one person and came out—no pun intended—as another person.”

Adam looked down and happened to catch a glimpse of a familiar Los Angeles street on the television. The anchor was saying, “What’s happening with the city’s homeless population? Unusual activity…”

Kris noticed Adam’s distraction and said, “So, deep emotional talk time over?” He pressed on Adam’s cheek to bring his attention away from the television. “Maybe time for some action?”

“You have the best ideas,” Adam responded with a breathless laugh, reaching for the remote. Just as he hit the power button, the anchor began with, “In other news, random, small-scale blackouts around the city have the power company baff.…”

As the television went silent, Kris took Adam’s ear lobe in his teeth and moved his mouth slowly down Adam’s neck to his chest. “Much better,” he said.

Kris was in a forest full of damp, dripping trees, unsure of how he got there or which way to go to get out of it. He felt the same foreboding that had crept up on him during the last dream. He heard footsteps rustling through the leaves behind him and whirled around, relieved to see Adam striding toward him in a fringed, studded tailcoat and a top hat with a red ‘A’ on the front.

“What are you wearing? Is that the costume from your If I Had You video?”

“Yep. Except for this,” Adam pulled the ‘A’ off of his hat. “It’s for you.” He stuck the ‘A’ to Kris’s chest.

Kris smiled at him. “I’ve been wearing this since we first met,” he said fondly, brushing his fingers across the letter. Adam brushed his fingers over Kris’s, and Kris opened his mouth to say something sappy when he heard screams ringing out through the forest and fear shot through him. Adam grabbed his hand and started running toward the screams.

“No! Adam! Not toward the screams, we have to run away!”

But he continued to follow Adam because he would always follow Adam. “They’ll find us anyway,” Adam said grimly. “They’ll always find us. It doesn’t do any good to run away. We could run across all the worlds and they would still find us….”

Kris’s eyes opened. His heart was racing and he was drenched in sweat as if he really had been running. He wiped a shaking hand across his face and whispered to the night, “There is definitely something wrong with my brain.”

“Dude! Look at this!” Tommy thrust his hand in front of Adam’s face.

“What?”

“My finger!”

“Okay.”

“No, man, you remember I cut my finger on the guitar string yesterday? I was worried about whether I was going to be able to play properly today?”

“Oh yeah, I remember.” Adam looked curiously at his hand. “There’s nothing there now! What did you use on it? That was a pretty bad cut.”

“Nothing, man! I mean, I washed it and put a band aid on it, but this chick outside, you know that weird chick with the blue and pink fauxhawk who’s always hanging around outside waiting for a glimpse of your fine ass? She’s like, a faith healer or something. She just touched my finger and the cut went away!” Tommy looked both gleeful and slightly freaked out.

“Bullshit! No way!” Adam exclaimed.

“Yuhuh, way!” Tommy said. Ashley came over and grabbed his hand, examining it closely.

“There’s hardly even a scar, Tommy,” she observed. “That’s…well, kinda freaky-weird, ‘cause it was a pretty bad cut.”

Keisha made a sign against the evil eye and Reyna slapped her lightly on the arm. “Don’t be doing that. She must be a good witch if she healed Tommy,” Reyna said hopefully.

“Or maybe Jesus did it,” Keisha responded. “I hope so, anyway.”

“Well, she didn’t do any praying; she just touched it and closed her eyes for a minute,” Tommy said.

“She was probably praying in her head,” Reyna decided.

“There’s some weird shit going on out there, guys, but I don’t know about faith healers,” Rick put in as he twirled his drumsticks. “Don’t know what’s up, but you know that dude who hangs out on Hyperion? The one who always has some stupid sign with, like, doomsday Bible verses or whatever?” The others nodded, all ears. “Well, yesterday he had this sign that was completely different. It said, get this,” he paused dramatically, “’The Darkness is Rising.’ I mean, is that weird, or what?”

Adam shuddered, feeling something trying to break out in the back of his mind. He shook it off. “Okay, guys, enough. Let’s get to work. Just let us know if someone starts coming up with lucky Lotto numbers.” They all laughed, if a bit nervously, but they all took their places for rehearsal.

Brian decided not to mention the two hundred bucks in his pocket. He just knew that scratch-off ticket was a good one before he bought it.

Tia wanders her usual route, a modern day hunter-gatherer, looking for food, looking for a place to sleep, one eye on opportunities, the other on the lookout for the predators. She thinks LA’s not a bad place to be homeless. Good weather most of the time, lots of restaurants with dumpsters, but it’s hard to find a safe place to sleep; the shelters are too full and too risky for a girl who’s just marking time until she turns eighteen, when she’ll no longer be in danger of being dragged back into the system. No sir, no more foster homes or group homes, the streets are safer. In the street, there’s room to run.

She’s in an area that’s usually crowded with other street people, but it’s pretty empty today, which is nice. Just a few people wandering, looking like they’re in a daze; she’s been seeing that a lot lately. Must be some new kind of drug out there. Not too far from the Salvation Army store, there’s an abandoned building that usually has some small space where she can hole up for the night without worrying about being raped, killed, or robbed of her few possessions. The building usually has a few lights shining, flashlights, candles, even some of those camping lanterns, but it’s dark now. That’s creepy, but Tia is not put off. She walks in cautiously, listening carefully for signs of life. Maybe something’s wrong. Maybe the cops cleared the place. She’s about to slide back out the door when she…hears something. Smells something. Feels…something. Something not scary, maybe, but she’s not sure.

A person watching from across the street would’ve seen a young girl approach the building cautiously, take a few steps in, start to turn around, then stop and look…wondering. Happy. Then disappear into the darkness of the building.

Inside Tia’s head, there is the smell of home cooking, a feeling of warmth and welcome the like of which she had never felt in any of her foster homes. So lost is she in these lovely sensations that she doesn’t notice the thick, black, cable-like tail that wraps around her waist, lifts her, and carries her into the dark of the abandoned building.

“Kris? Where are you?”

“Here. In the studio.”

“Ah!” Adam’s head poked around the doorway; he saw Kris sitting on the floor, leaning up against the wall with his cell phone sitting on the floor in front of him. “Why are you sitting in here? And on the floor?”

“Had a call-in radio interview a little while ago. Just been sitting here thinking.”

“What’s wrong? You look so serious.” Adam sat next to Kris on the floor and pulled him close.

“I miss my dog.” Kris leaned his head into the curve of Adam’s shoulder.

“Awww, I’m sorry.” Adam pressed a kiss to the top of Kris’s head. “Is Zorro with Katy or with your mom and dad right now? You were going to go pick him up next week, right? Do you want to go sooner? I’ll reschedule some stuff and go with you.”

“Nah, but thanks. He’s with mom and dad this week. And yeah, I’m supposed to go pick him up next week.” Kris sighed. “That’s not really why I’m feeling, I don’t know. The radio interview.” He stopped.

“What happened, sweetie?” Adam asked softly. He knew sometimes interviewers could be shitty in the name of ‘comedy’, but he hoped that hadn’t happened this time.

“Oh, just the usual, you know. It wasn’t a bad interview. But the guy asked the usual questions about my ‘inspiration for my songs,’” Kris made air quotes, “and I gave the usual blah blah about ‘family and friends,’ and I just wonder if I’ll ever be able to really tell the truth about that stuff.” He gave a little snort and shook his head.

“What?”

“Did you ever read that article in Rolling Stone a couple of years ago about Adele?“

“Yes! That was a good one. Pretty in-depth.”

“You remember she talked about that song, Set Fire to the Rain, and how she was inspired to write it by trying to light a cigarette in the rain after a fight with her boyfriend?”

“Yeah. That was interesting. Such a little thing, but I could totally see it.”

“Mm hm, same here.” Kris took a deep breath and continued, “So, one day, before the divorce, before we’d even talked about divorce, I was on the internet looking at,” Kris blushed fiercely and ducked his head down a little, “gay stuff. Like, gay porn.”

“What? Really!” Adam had to admit that was a turn on, and Kris looked so cute all blushy like that.

Kris poked him in the side. “Yes. Really. I was trying to figure out how it worked, if it was something I could really want. I was kind of scared of the, I mean, I wasn’t sure about the, you know…”

“You were afraid of the Glambulge?” Adam asked with a grin.

Kris started laughing. “Shut up. It’s totally intimidating. Anyway, Katy had gone to the store, so I thought she’d be gone for a while…”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, she forgot her list, so she had to come back for it. She came to see if I needed to add anything to it, and…”

“Caught you red-handed? Wait, you weren’t actually…”

“No! No, I was just, you know, looking. But god, she was so pissed—that was kind of the beginning of the end, really. We had this huge fight, and at the end of the fight she just kind of yelled at me,” he pitched his voice higher, “’Well, why don’t you write a goddamn song about it?’”

“Go, Katy!”

Kris snickered. “Yeah, I don’t think I ever heard her swear before. So anyway, I wrote a song about it. Had to change it up a bit, but yeah.”

Adam thought for a minute and could not even guess. “Which one?”

“Teach Me How Love Goes.”

Adam made a high-pitched, muffled noise, and cleared his throat. “That’s a great song.”

“Thank you. I like it.”

They sat quietly on the floor for a couple of minutes.

“So,” Adam finally said, “can I be there the first time you tell that story on the radio?”

Kris cracked up, and Adam finally gave in to his own fit of giggles. “Absolutely. You have to be there so we can leave the country immediately after and hide someplace where Lindsay will never find us.” He stretched up and kissed Adam firmly. “Thank you. I needed that.”

Once they had calmed down again, Adam whispered into Kris’s hair, “Am I a good Zorro substitute?”

“You are the best Zorro substitute,” Kris answered, hugging Adam.

“You know it’ll get better, right?”

“I know.”

“I was scared of the. Of being with. I didn’t know if I could. What if I didn’t like the…” Kris waved his hands around vaguely, trying to explain, knowing he probably hadn’t explained anything. Or had he? Because Adam was looking more enraged than ever, which he hadn’t thought possible.

“You were scared of dick? That’s your big excuse, the good ol’ gay panic? Fuck, you really are a redneck!”

Kris looked at him, startled. “That’s not what you said before!”

“This is what I said before,” Adam answered irritably. He was naked except for the top hat, sitting cross-legged on a bed in that same dark stone room.

“No, before you said something about the Glambulge. And you weren’t angry.”

“No, that was after. This is before. What I said before was what I said after. I’m a lot less cranky after.” Adam grinned at Kris and took a bubbling hit off of a hookah. He blew out the smoke, black smoke that began to float around the room; it seemed to be growing a tail. Adam waved his sword at it and it broke apart, blew away.

Kris shook his head. ”That doesn’t make any sense.”

Adam shrugged, straightening his top hat. “Dreams don’t have to make sense.”

“Oh. Okay. So, before? Before what?”

“Before this,” Adam whispered against the back of Kris’s neck. Kris didn’t know how Adam had gotten back there or where his own clothes had gone, but dreams didn’t have to make sense. Adam trailed kisses and nips down Kris’s neck to his shoulder. Kris shivered, from the chill air on his naked skin, from nerves, from arousal. Adam’s hands reached around him and caressed his chest and stomach, one moving up to his nipples, the other moving lower. “Tell me you want this,” Adam breathed. “Tell me you need this.”

Kris couldn’t do anything but press back into Adam with a moan, shaking with desire.

“Are you sure, Kris? You were scared before.”

“Not scared now. I want this, I want you.” Saying he wasn’t scared was maybe an exaggeration, but he did want this.

Kris is floating, floating with Adam, Adam’s hands running slowly over him, caressing his face, his throat, down his arms, around his back, down, down, whispering, “Oh fuck, so gorgeous, can’t believe you’re here, can’t believe this is real, love you, love you,” Adam’s whispers blend into skittering sounds, surrounding them, the smell of a cave. Kris starts to tense up, “Shhh, shhhh, it’s okay, just make a fire, it’ll keep us safe, love you so much…” Kris feels arousal spiking low and moving lower, he’s hard and aching, Adam pushing, pushing in, oh god, hurts, so intense, feels so good, so hot, Kris is so hot, but the fire keeps them safe, burning higher and hotter, Adam moving over him, in him, long slow strokes , oh god, oh god, “Adaaaammm, Adammmm…

“Adam!” Kris woke up sweating and shaking with his orgasm coursing through him.

“Whoa, Kris, are you okay?” Adam wrapped his arms around Kris. “Did you have a nightmare?”

“Oh god, no. It was…I think I finally remembered our first time. And it was so...” Kris paused, looking down at himself and laughing a little, “well, obviously it was amazing. I need to clean up,” he finished ruefully. “This is embarrassing. Haven’t done that in a long time. But there was something else,” he continued as he walked into the bathroom, thinking about that same sense of danger and fear in the dream, just like the others.

“What?” Adam asked, sitting up. “Hey, Kris?”

“Yeah?” Kris called over the sound of running water.

“Did you leave the candles burning?”

“What? No. I never leave them burning when we’re going to sleep. Why?” Kris came out of the bathroom and headed over to the dresser for fresh underwear.

Adam was poking at one of the candles; one of several completely melted candles in the bedroom. “Look at this. Completely melted, but the wick isn’t black or anything. Never been lit. That’s really weird.”

Kris joined Adam by the dresser and poked at the melted wax. “Still warm.” He looked at the other candles. “Okay, this one has been lit, I remember lighting it for a little while a couple of days ago, but I put it out. But these others…wow, that is weird.”

“Well, this is a mystery. Hmmm. Maybe hot spots, something wrong with the heating system?” Adam firmly suppressed the thought that this seemed frighteningly familiar. “Oh hey, what was the other thing?”

“Oh yeah, the dream thing. It was kind of like the others—I felt like something was after us, trying to get to us, and this time, the only thing that kept us safe was lighting a fire.”

“We lit a fire by having sex? I can see that.”

“No!” Kris said, laughing. “I had to light the fire, but…I don’t remember how. I remember you told me to light a fire, and I did, but uugggh!” Kris grabbed his head with both hands. “I would really like for these dreams to stop now. It’s like I opened a door and I can’t get it to close, and it just keeps getting scarier.”

“I’ll ask around and see if I can get some help with stopping the dreams. Maybe Scarlett knows something. I don’t remember her ever saying anything about not being able to stop lucid dreaming once you’ve started.”

“We also need to get someone to come in and check the heating. That candle thing is scary.”

Darwath

Rudy raised his hand to knock on the door, unsurprised when Ingold opened it before his hand could touch it. “You felt it too, yes?”

“Yes,” Ingold responded grimly. “The Dark have made it out of the Void and into your old world.”

Gil appeared behind Ingold and pulled the door wider as she stamped her feet to settle her boots. “Come on in, punk. No need to talk about this in the hallway where anyone can hear.” Gil looked like she’d just woken up, her hair more disheveled than usual, standing out around her head like a gray-streaked black cloud, but she looked alert, battle-ready.

Ingold and Rudy sat down at the small table, soon joined by Gil as she set out mugs of tea.

“So, what’s the plan, Ingold?” Rudy asked, taking a careful sip of the hot tea.

“We must go to your old world as quickly as possible.”

Rudy sighed. “I agree. I already told Alde this might happen. She’s trying to be all calm; she’s worried, but she knows we have to go.”

“When do we leave?” Gil asked, pulling her hair back into a low ponytail and checking to make sure her sword was secure in its scabbard.

“Tonight. Our worlds are so far apart right now that every minute we delay could mean weeks in their world. You saw it when Kris and Adam were here; it’s been less than twenty years here since you two crossed over, but it’s been over thirty years there. We need to go as soon as possible.”

Rudy nodded. “The longer the Dark are in that world the more people die.”

“Not only that,” Ingold added. “The longer they’re there, the more likely it will be that Kris will start accidentally doing magic again, and perhaps other people around the area will start finding their magic, because of whatever it is the Dark give off that helps magic to work.”

Rudy nodded. “Kris, especially, could be a danger to himself and others if that happens. I mean, he has a real affinity for fire. Lord knows what he’s going to be setting on fire without even realizing it.”

Lebanon, Kansas

Headquarters of the Gentlemen of Letters

Sam Winchester frowned at his laptop as he studied the evidence, each story more bizarre than the last. “Hey, Dean? Something weird’s going on in LA.”

“It’s LA.”

“I mean, weird for LA, even.”

“What’s up?”

“Okay.” Sam clicked the mouse a few times as Dean leaned over his shoulder to look at the screen. “It started about six months ago. A few people disappearing, news reports of mysterious black outs, not associated with power outages, in the areas where the people disappeared. There’s no big public outcry yet, even though it’s been going on for a while, because it’s mostly transients that are dying or going missing. Then there started to be news stories about some kind of migration of homeless people toward one area of town. People are trying to say that it’s good news, decrease of homeless people loitering and panhandling in other areas of the city, mayor and law enforcement are taking credit, blah blah…but there’s also been an increase in homeless people acting strangely. Some of them are wandering around aimlessly until they starve, completely uncommunicative. Some of them have been taken into the ER, but nothing helps—it’s like there’s no mind anymore. Some of them, though, are attacking people, trying to eat them—that part’s being blamed on bath salts…”

“What? Bath salts?”

“Oh, you weren’t, uh… Anyway, there’s this stuff you can buy at truck stops that’s supposed to get you high, but instead it turns people into zombies that eat people’s faces.”

“So, not real zombies?”

“Don’t think so. Not most of them, anyway. But in LA, there’s no evidence of any kind of drugs causing this. They’re just putting that out to the media. And there’s more. Over the past couple of months, they’ve been having some odd corpses and partial corpses turning up.”

“Odd how?”

“Some of them are completely bloodless…”

“Vampires?”

“Some of them are stripped of flesh as well as blood. And the bones are partly melted, like by acid.”

“That’s new. We’re looking for some kind of bone-melting, flesh-eating, blood-drinking, mind-eating, soul-sucking monster?”

“Or more than one kind of monster, maybe? LA’s a big place.”

“When do we leave?”

Los Angeles

Adam arrived home after another decidedly weird day of rehearsal to find Kris sitting on the sofa in the living room, looking worried and frightened.

“Kris?”

Kris looked up. “Hey.”

“What’s up. You look…what happened?”

“I need to show you something. And I won’t ask you to promise not to freak out, even though I’m already doing that enough for both of us.”

Adam slowly sat down in the chair next to the sofa. “Okay, I’m already kind of freaking out…”

“Just watch.” Kris looked at the candle sitting on the coffee table. The wick began to smoke, then it burst into flame. Adam’s heart began to race. As he watched, the candle went out, then lit again.

“What the fuck,” Adam whispered. Again, that sensation of something trying to break free in his mind.

“And that’s not all,” Kris said hesitantly. “I ran into a couple of paps outside the house. I mean, almost literally ran into them. They were walking toward me, and I started thinking, ‘I’m not here, I’m not here. It’s just a cat rustling through the bushes. And the paps were looking right at me. And one of them said, ‘Nothing here. Must’ve been a cat or something in the bushes.’”

Adam remembered the nauseating shock of an earthquake, smelled a damp forest, heard an echo of Kris’s voice in the back of his mind, saying, “I just yelled at the fire to light up and it did. Um. Then a voice in my head told me how to distract the creatures.” Smelled a dank cave filled with smoke and fear and blood. “I. I can make it quick. For us.” “So, you’d use the fire? Burn us both?” “Yeah, from the inside. Like a small nuke.”

Adam jumped up from the chair and ran to the bathroom, locking the door behind him, wishing he believed that locking the door would keep the nightmares out, and fell to his knees in front of the toilet, dry-heaving, trying to vomit out the smell of smoke and fear, but nothing came up because the smell was only in his mind.

“Adam!” Kris ran after him. “Adam! Adam, are you okay?” Kris rattled the door knob and started banging on the door.

Adam closed the toilet and leaned his forehead against it. “I’m okay,” he called weakly. I’m NOT fucking OKAY. He stood and got a drink of water at the sink, looking into his own haunted eyes in the mirror. He saw an image of himself superimposed over his real reflection, himself with those same haunted eyes, looking haggard and frightened, with at least a month’s growth of ginger roots showing under the black hair; closed his eyes to block out the sight, but it stayed in his head.

He turned away from the mirror and burst out of the bathroom, grabbing Kris into a fierce hug. “What, Adam, what…” Kris stuttered, returning the hug just as fiercely.

Adam didn’t want to answer any questions, didn’t want to think, just needed to know that he was here, that Kris was here with him and not there, wherever there was with the smoke, fear, and blood, so he sealed Kris’s mouth with his own, kissing Kris breathless, slamming him up against the wall and swallowing Kris’s startled grunt. Kris tried to push him back, to look into Adam’s eyes, worry in every line of his body, but Adam kept kissing him, kissing him until Kris finally got with the program and kissed him back. Adam grabbed Kris’s hand and pulled him toward the bedroom, Kris stumbling behind him, still trying to talk, but every time a word came out of his mouth Adam stopped and kissed him again until Kris couldn’t remember what he was going to say.

When they reached the bedroom, Adam pushed Kris onto the bed and began stripping off his own clothes as Kris dazedly tried to keep up with him. Adam approached the bed like a predator, and Kris felt a thrill of anticipation and want rush through him. He had always felt as if Adam were holding back during sex, treating him like some fragile, delicate thing that might flee at the first show of strength. There was no holding back now. Hands grasping flesh just a little too hard, just right, Kris knew they would both have bruises from this and he reveled in it, knowing that anyone would be able to look at them and know what they had been doing. He cried out as Adam slammed into him, feeling utterly claimed, completely overwhelmed, cried out again as his come splashed onto both of them.

Adam pounded into him, gasping, “Please don’t leave me, don’t leave, I love you.” please don’t die. don’t hurt me. don’t kill me.

“I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, I love you, I love you,” Kris panted.

Adam came with a groan and collapsed on top of Kris.

Sometime later, Adam rolled off Kris and lay on his back staring at the ceiling. He twined his fingers through Kris’s and just held on. “What’s happening to us?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Kris answered, just as quietly.

~*~

something familiar something magic smellfeeltastesense it somewhere near somewhere find it

Little magics had been popping up all over the city. The Dark knew when each one happened; they reached out to each one to see if it was the one they were looking for. But none of them was the magic, the magic that had killed them before and would kill them again. But this, this might be it, if they could just find it.

Darwath

“Are we ready?” Rudy asked.

Ingold and Gil nodded. “I’ve already said good-bye to Alde,” Rudy said. “She’ll tell the king. Do we need to let anyone else know?”

“I already told the Commander of the Guard. He can let the rest of the Guard know as he sees fit,” Gil responded. “I didn’t give him any estimate for how long we would be gone, since I don’t know if….”

Ingold nodded. “Yes.” He smacked the table with determination. “Let’s go now. We need to do this outside, as close as we can get to the place where we sent Adam and Kris back. No need in leaving a crack into the Void that leads right into the Keep of Dare.”

They made their way as quickly as possible out of the Keep and set out at a ground-eating jog through the darkness toward the nearby forest. Once there, Ingold took a deep breath, raised his clasped hands, and began to chant. He slowly drew his hands apart as he chanted, and Gil and Rudy could see the air between his hands begin to twist and glow. A crack appeared, widened to a tear, then a portal big enough for the three of them as wind from the Void began tearing at them, pulling them in. Ingold grabbed Rudy’s and Gil’s hands and stepped through, pulling them with him.

They stumbled out of the portal onto a (fortunately) deserted street in a rundown part of Los Angeles. Ingold immediately snapped out a word to close the portal as Rudy chanted a few words to cover them with a veil spell just in case someone happened by. The magic felt much weaker here than in Darwath, but it was definitely present. Which meant that the Dark Ones were also here.

“Well, that was just as unpleasant as I remembered,” Gil said irritably.

“Damn,” Rudy said. “So is this neighborhood. I know where we are, and really, it hasn’t changed much in thirty-some years. South Central. We aren’t too far from the bike detail and repair shop where I used to work. Wonder if it’s still here?”

“Perhaps we can take a tour later, if we’re not all dead,” Gil responded dryly.

“Right. Focus.”

~*~

Fear rippled through the Dark Ones who were on watch. He is here.

~*~

“Rudy’s knowledge of this area might be helpful, though,” Ingold interjected. “We need to find Adam and Kris as quickly as we can. This should be close to where they came through from Darwath, but that doesn’t mean it’s close to where they are now.”

“Ingold,” Gil said in low voice, “look over there.” She nodded her head toward a lone figure coming around a corner and shuffling down the sidewalk across the street. The man was soon joined by a few other people, all walking the same slow, shuffling walk. They were converging on a deserted-looking building just a little way down the block from where the three travelers were standing, hidden by the veil spell.

“This reminds me of Gae, after the coming of the Dark,” Rudy said quietly, shuddering inside as he remembered the lost humans, stripped of their minds and souls, wandering the streets of that once beautiful city, searching for something to eat, anything, even if it was another human.

“In Darwath, they had millennia to selectively breed humans into herd-folk,” Gil observed. “I think here they’re taking shortcuts, stripping their minds before they take them into the lair.”

“I can feel the call," Ingold said quietly. "The Dark Ones are calling them into the lair. They’re still weak, only able to bring in these weak, pitiful souls, but they will quickly get stronger, ruling this world from beneath the surface with no one the wiser.”

“Also, there’s something odd here,” Rudy added. “No traffic. No regular people walking around; just them. This used to be a busy place. Now it’s just…creepy.”

Ingold sighed and leaned on his staff. “Possibly some other power of the Dark. Keep some people away and bring some people in. I don’t know.” He straightened up with a determined look. “We have to find Kris and Adam as soon as we can. Even though the Dark are few, they are still too many for just the three of us to fight.”

“How are we going to find them?” Gil asked.

“Rudy?”

“Let’s head north for now. They’re musicians, and there are a lot of studios up that way,” he indicated the direction with his head, “so I think we should just head that way and hope we…well pick up their ‘vibes’ or whatever.”

“That seems like as good a plan as any,” Ingold agreed. “I do hope they are in this city. The Dark followed them here, but we have no way of knowing how long ago that was. Rudy, I think you should keep your mind on Kris, since you spent more time with him than I did, and Gil and I will concentrate on Adam.”

“Well, let’s do it, then,” Gil said, heading off up the street.

~*~

he is here HE is here he is HERE Merging to spread the alarm, to make plans. Communication is instantaneous, but merging is necessary. The main goals of the Dark Ones now are still feeding and producing young, but Two Dark Ones are tasked with the third goal. They leave the collective, find the tracking spells Ingold and Rudy are weaving, and finally find the minds they have been seeking. It is still daylight outside, but fortunately the wild humans have created a lovely network of tunnels that enable safe travel in darkness all over the city.

Cale and Torres looked up as Kris walked in wearing his long-sleeved, button-down shirt with the lightning print.

“Whoa, dude! I didn’t realize it was a dress-up day.” Cale grinned at him.

“Or have you finally turned into a real Californian, where any temperature under 75 degrees means breaking out the winter clothes?” Torres asked.

Kris blushed. “Nah. Just feelin’ like lightning today,” he said with a laugh. “Maybe we can have a speedy rehearsal.”

“Lame, dude,” Torres groaned.

“C’mon, guys, let’s get going,” Kris said. He was exhausted from worry and lack of sleep, but they had a show coming up. Kris knew that he and Adam needed to talk about this weirdness, but they hadn’t had time to talk this morning (and Adam made it clear that he didn’t want to talk about it last night, what with the whole hot sex thing every time Kris tried to talk about it), but he definitely didn’t want to talk to Cale and Torres about it. As he reached for his guitar case, the sleeve of his shirt rode up, and Cale noticed the obviously finger-shaped bruises on his wrist.

“Kris? What the heck?” Cale grabbed Kris’s wrist and fit his own fingers into the pattern of the bruises.

“What?” Kris yanked his arm away.

“Did Adam do that? Did he…”

“No! Well, yes, but it’s not like that.”

“He may be 6’1” and 175 pounds of muscle, but I will kick his ass if he...”

“No! No ass-kicking required, it was just…” Kris blushed so hard that it must have been contagious, because Cale started blushing too, and backed down.

“The mystery of the dress-up shirt is solved, anyway,” Torres observed with a grin. “Kind of like trying to hide a hickey.”

“Shut up. I just like this shirt.” In the face of the other guys’ laughter, Kris just gave up and covered his red face with his hands and groaned. “Moving on, please. We really do need to rehearse.” He grabbed his guitar and tried to will his blush away.

“Okay, guys, let’s go with Leave You Alone from the top. And one, two, three,” Cale and Torres came in on the downbeat at one, swinging their way into the song.

They were coming to the end of a good rehearsal, having made it through about half the songs from the new album, a couple of songs from the first album, and fooled around with some possible covers, when Kris started feeling...something. He felt nervous, antsy, itchy, felt like someone (something) was watching him. Calling him. He looked around, looked at Cale and Torres, who didn’t seem to notice anything, tried to shrug off the feeling and focus on the chording for this Katy Perry song, but the feeling wouldn’t leave. The lights outside the studio flickered and died, and the lights in the studio dimmed. He set the guitar down and was about to ask Cale and Torres if they felt anything weird when he noticed Cale setting down his own guitar and slowly edging back. His eyes grew impossibly large as he stared up and behind Kris. “What the ever-lovin’ heck is THAT!” He ended on a shout that was close to a shriek.

Kris spun around in time to see the thick tail drop down toward Torres. No. NO! Kris pulled from that place inside himself he was just rediscovering, and called Fire by its True Name (What?). Not the fire of a candle, or even a bonfire, but the fire inside, the fire he was going to use to finish himself and Adam when they were trapped in that cave (WHAT???), burning from the inside out. He focused on the blob with its slavering mouth and watched it shrivel in on itself, tail curling up, smoking, crumbling, falling to the floor of the studio in a crispy heap. Torres fell all over himself and his instruments running to the other side of room, cursing in two languages.

“And who are you?” Cale exclaimed, pointing into the darkness outside the studio door. Kris looked up from the smoldering corpse of the blob, and saw an oddly-dressed man standing in the wings, breathing hard as if he’d been running. Sudden recognition bloomed in Kris’s mind.

“R-Rudy?”

“Yeah, kid. We got a problem.”

Kris felt walls breaking and doors opening in his mind, and it all came crashing back.

“Oh, Jesus! Adam!” Kris started to run.

“Wait, Kris!” Rudy grabbed Kris’s arm as he sprinted past. “Ingold and Gil should be with him right now.”

Kris wheeled around. “I thought you said I couldn’t do…” his voice dropped to a whisper, “magic here.”

“Uh, yeah, we might not have been completely accurate about that,” Rudy said sheepishly. “The Dark Ones,” Kris’s stomach rolled as if he were going to vomit at the mention of those creatures, “they give off this, I don’t know,” Rudy continued in a low voice, “some kind of like, vapor, or waves or something, that makes magic work if you’re born with the gift for it. And sorry, Kris. You are.”

“How long have they been here?” Kris said in a harsh whisper. “How long does it take? I knew some weird stuff was happening, but I never,” he laughed shortly, “Well of course I never knew, because those memories were gone. Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea.”

“Um, Kris?” Cale broke in, “What the heck? More explaining and less whispering in the corner with your new friend, please?”

“Yeah, dude,” Torres agreed. “I think that big flying thing almost ate me. What the hell?”

Kris gave Rudy a pleading look. “Rudy, I can’t, I don’t want them involved,” he whispered. “Can we do that? Can we keep them out of it?” He was terrified, nearly paralyzed with it, and he couldn’t bear the thought of his friends going through what he and Adam had gone through, the terror that apparently had followed them home.

Rudy nodded. “I’ll handle it. You take care of that,” he said, pointing to the mess on the floor. Kris ran off to find a broom and dustpan, hearing Rudy say behind him, “I can explain everything, guys, if you’ll just give me your attention.” He heard Rudy begin the gnoddyr spell.

When Kris returned with the cleaning supplies, Cale and Torres were heading out.

“Man, that was frightening!” Cale exclaimed. “I’ve never seen an electrical fire like that.”

“Me neither,” Torres agreed. “We’re lucky that Rudy just happened to be in the building. Usually you have to wait a while for building maintenance. You’re going to call the studio manager, right?”

“Yeah,” Kris said faintly, “We’ll get right on it.”

“We can help you clean that up,” Cale offered.

“No, no you guys go on,” Kris responded quickly, stepping in front of the, to him, obviously alien corpse. He wasn’t sure what Cale and Torres were seeing there. “And I’ll call you when the next rehearsal is scheduled,” he improvised, thinking if there is a next rehearsal. “We may have to find another space.”

“Sure, man.” Cale and Torres headed out, calling back to Rudy that it was nice to meet him.

“Electrical fire?” Kris looked at Rudy with a raised eyebrow. “That was quick thinking.”

“Yeah, I thought it was pretty good. Fit the situation well enough. Here, let me help you with that.” He grabbed the plastic bag. “We’ve got to hurry.”

“A’ight people, listen up!” Debbie, the stage manager, lifted her arms as if she were about to conduct an orchestra. “Out of the Dark run through with full props, no costumes, in ten! Remember, that includes lit torches. Please do not set yourselves or anything else on fire. You got time for a quick break, so make good use of it.”

Adam looked over at the prop master and his assistants getting the torches ready as the dancers all ran for the restrooms, craft services, or their phones. The swords, some real and some fake, were set, ready to be grabbed by the dancers and fencers on the way to the stage. The director, choreographer, and musical director were going over notes down in the orchestra section. Everything looked fine, just as it should be, so why was Adam feeling so antsy, so uneasy? He felt almost…nervous about singing, like maybe there was a reason he shouldn’t sing. He had never suffered from stage fright, so what the hell was this?

“Hey, Adam, you okay?” Tommy put a hand on his shoulder. “You look a little stressed. Or maybe your boy kept you up too late last night?” he asked, noticing the marks on Adam’s neck.

Adam smiled distractedly. “I don’t know, man, not stressed…just…” Adam trailed off as the stage lights flickered. Cries of irritation and dismay echoed from backstage as the lights off stage left went out.

“What the fuck!” Debbie exclaimed. “Mike! I thought the electric stuff was sorted! Goddamn antique wiring. Where’s the fucking fuse box!” She stalked off stage right with her assistant trailing after her trying to call building maintenance.

Adam had a Very Bad Feeling about this. He kept his eyes on the darkened area off stage left and edged his way toward the torches. Toward the swords.

“Adam?” Tommy followed him to the prop table.

Adam felt it before he saw it, a thrumming malice that beat at him in waves. He felt the Call, the call to walk into the dark at the edge of the stage. Tommy’s mouth was still moving, the concern on his face growing, but Adam could only hear the beating of his own heart. Time seemed to slow down as Adam grabbed one of the real swords in one hand and a lit torch in the other. The prop assistant ran over in slow motion, said something in a loud voice, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the evil waiting for Adam, calling to Adam from the wings. Slowly, slowly Tommy’s face changed from concern to terror as he fell back from Adam and pointed toward the thing edging out of the wings.

Someone was screaming, someone was running, toward him, away from him, Adam let it all wash over him as he dropped into a perfect High Guard position, using the torch as if it were a second sword. He danced gracefully through First Cut, turning his wrist for the Second Cut, then a slight twist for the Third Cut, hearing a cold, soft voice in the back of his head: Don’t neglect the Point positions, but with the Dark Ones, the Cut positions are more effective, and vaguely wondered to whom the voice belonged, as he twirled and dipped, engaging his opponent in this most intimate dance, the dance of death. If you were fighting a human, the cold voice said, I’ll never fight a human, his own voice answered, you would need to work harder on the Parry. But there is no Parry with the Dark Ones, only Guard and Cut. He finished with the sword and thrust with the torch, setting ablaze the remains of his opponent before they even touched the floor. It all happened in under a minute, but to Adam it felt like he’d sung a full concert. Time sped up, returned to normal. Adam came out of the battle trance as he looked down at the burning heap at his feet.

Tommy cautiously came up behind him. “Duuude!”

~*~

Ingold and Gil slipped in the side door of the theater Adam was using as a rehearsal space.

“How are we going to get in? Famous people are usually surrounded by security to keep people away.”

“The veil spell has allowed us to come this far, so I think…”

“You two! You’re late! Everyone else is already here.” A short blonde woman came striding over, looking annoyed. “What are your names? Do I have you on my list?”

“I am Ingold Inglorion, Archmage for the Kingdom of Darwath, and this is my companion, Gil-Shalos of the Guard.”

Gil boggled at him, at a loss for how to salvage the situation, but the woman lost her annoyed look and started laughing. “Already in character? Okay then. I’m in charge of casting; name’s Reba. But I don’t think I have a call for a wizard and a…” she looked Gil up and down, “ninja librarian?”

Gil wasn’t sure whether to be offended by the assessment or impressed by its accuracy.

“Adam!” The woman grabbed Gil’s sleeve and pulled her in the direction of the stage. “You’re supposed to let me know when you change something! Did you put in a casting call for a….”

All three of them stopped dead at the sight of Adam, smoking sword in one hand, flaming torch in the other, standing in front of a freaked out Tommy, with a tattered, oozing blob smoldering at his feet.

“Adam.” Gil called to him, and Adam whirled around when he heard the cold, soft voice of his broadsword instructor.

“Gil? Ingold? Oh my GOD! What the actual fuck is going on? Is this real?” Adam flinched as his lost memories came back in a vertiginous rush. “Oh fuck, KRIS!” He turned to run, but Gil and Ingold both caught his arms.

“Rudy is with him, Adam. He’s okay,” Gil reassured him.

Lainey, Adam’s PA, came rushing over and herded Adam, Ingold, Gil and Tommy over into the wings, where the lights were slowly coming back on. “You!” She rounded on Adam. “What the hell? What is that thing and who are these people?”

Adam looked helplessly at Ingold and Gil. Ingold raised an eyebrow and Gil shrugged. “Are these the cult people?” Lainey whispered harshly. “Or were you actually…Oh. My. God. I was right, wasn’t I? That thing’s a fucking alien! You were abducted by aliens!”

“Adam, I could…” Ingold said hesitantly.

“Jesus, Lainey, please calm the fuck down,” Adam whispered back. “Pull it together and help me with this; I need you.” He turned to Ingold and said, “No, I trust her with everything. And I need all of her brain.” Lainey looked at Adam and Ingold with big eyes; Adam closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, feeling the beginning of a headache.

“Right.” Lainey snapped to. “Monica,” she crooked her finger at her own assistant. “Clean this up and put it where no one will ever find it.” She gave her assistant a meaningful look.

“Got it, boss. If you can keep people away until I get the cleaners here, that’ll help.” Monica was a PA’s PA, but she was good. She trotted off, scrolling through her phone contacts for her very handy (and very shady) crime scene cleanup guy. There would be no trace of the mess when they finished with it.

Lainey pointed at Tommy. “Can you keep your mouth shut about this?”

“Of course!”

“Good. Help me keep people away while I go tell the director we need to stop for the day and get everyone the hell out of here.”

“Adam…” Tommy began.

Adam couldn’t bring himself to worry about Tommy right now; he had a nightmare to face. He squeezed Tommy’s shoulder and said, “Later, okay? I have to go with these people now.” Then he looked at Lainey and jerked his head toward the stage where the musicians, acrobats, dancers, and fencers were beginning to filter back in. He was lucky that most of them had been on break and that very few people had actually seen what happened.

“Okay,” Lainey said, squaring her shoulders and smoothing down the front of her shirt. “I’m going to tell them that this was something you were experimenting with for the instrumental bridge. You’re lucky you’re the boss and can do pretty much whatever the fuck you want to. You go do what you need to do.” She pulled off her black leather jacket and dropped it down over the alien corpse, where it sort of blended right in. “But you owe me a new jacket. And a pair of shoes,” she added, as she poked at the alien with her toe to make sure it was all under the jacket. “And an explanation.”

“You are the best PA a guy could ever want, Lainey. And I'll buy you a whole new outfit.” Adam turned to Ingold and Gil, who had been waiting somewhat impatiently through all this. “Sorry for the freak out and the wait.”

“No, it’s understandable Adam. I’m sorry we didn’t reach you before it did,” Gil said.

As Adam, Ingold and Gil headed quickly to the exit, they could hear the director calling after Adam and Lainey trying to placate him. Adam put it out of his mind and pushed his way through the exit door.

Only to be nearly knocked over by Kris, running up and grabbing Adam in a tight hug. “You’re okay,” he said breathlessly, “Oh God, you’re okay. Thank God, thank God!”

“Kris.” Adam choked on his name and held back tears of relief. “I remember….”

“I know. Me too,” Kris mumbled against Adam’s neck. “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Sorry, guys,” Rudy interrupted, “but we need to get going.”

“Where to?” Adam asked, releasing Kris from the hug but keeping his arm around him as they started walking toward the cars.

“Did Ingold and Gil tell you what’s happened?”

“There wasn’t really time,” Gil responded. “Too many people around.”

“I think I’ve got it anyway,” Adam said grimly. “They’re here. I mean, one of them just came to my rehearsal.”

“Same here,” Kris said.

“So where are we going? Do you know where they are?” Adam asked again.

“They’re in an old, abandoned building in the South Central area,” Rudy answered.

“Let me guess: not too far from a Salvation Army Thrift Store,” Adam said resignedly.

“True,” Gil said. “That must be where you two returned, yes?”

“Yeah.” Adam sighed. “So, apparently we didn’t get them all?”

“Well, we got all the ones that were on our world, but it turns out there were still some left in the Void,” Gil responded.

Adam stopped by his Mustang and saw that Kris had parked the Fusion next to it. “My car only holds two people. Yours will be a tight fit, but it’ll do.”

On the way, Adam and Kris caught the others up on what had been happening for the past few months, and had some blanks filled in themselves on why the strange things had been happening. Ingold appeared to be more interested in the workings of Kris’s car, since he hadn’t had much of a chance to ride in one on his previous, very brief visits to this world. He was riding shotgun out of deference to his age, and kept a keen eye on everything Kris did as he drove. Kris kept glancing at Adam in the rear-view mirror. He remembered this Adam, by turns angry and frightened, haunted-looking. Remembered Adam in Darwath, afraid to sing because he thought it would help the Dark Ones find them. Turns out, they only needed to think for the Dark Ones to find them. Kris tightened his grip on the steering wheel and gritted his teeth, angry at himself for wanting to remember. This is all my fault.

“Kris,” Ingold said softly, touching his arm. “This is not your fault.”

“Stay outta my head, Ingold.”

“Then stop thinking so loudly,” Ingold said with a smile.

“How is this not my fault?”

“Rather, say it is Rudy’s fault, for teaching you, out of kindness, how to sabotage the gnoddyr spell.”

“I said I was sorry,” Rudy called out from the back seat.

Ingold continued, “Or that it is my fault for deciding, out of concern for your peace of mind, to subject you to the gnoddyr. Or that it is the fault of the random twist of fate that dragged you to our world in the first place. But truly, Kris, the responsibility for this can be laid at the feet of the Dark Ones. Well, if they had feet.”

Kris smiled a little, which astonished him. He felt a bit better, until he glanced in the rear-view mirror again and saw Adam’s eyes, angry, frightened, and haunted.

“This is the place where we came through,” Adam said as they walked cautiously down the street. The ghouls shuffling down the sidewalks were completely creeping him out; he and Kris hadn’t seen those during their forced stay in Darwath. “We walked a little ways, looking for a phone, and finally found one at that Salvation Army store.”

“Hey, y’all, there’s a couple of guys looking around that building over there.” Kris tried to discreetly nod his head in the direction of the two guys.

“Indeed,” Ingold studied the two men. “They are in danger. They look as if they are preparing to deliberately enter the building, instead of being drawn there by the Dark.”

“We should stop them, right?” Adam asked. He could see the two men approaching the door of the abandoned building with purpose, unlike the pitiful figures shuffling toward the door as if they were puppets drawn by invisible strings. The men were warily watching the ghouls and conversing softly, tension in every line of their bodies.

“We must. We may not be able to save anyone who is already in the thrall of the Dark Ones, but we can perhaps prevent these two from being taken. Come.”

They made their way across the dark street with Ingold in the lead, trying to keep watch for any approaching ghouls.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Ingold called quietly as they approached the sidewalk across the street. Sam and Dean whirled around, staring at them. “You would be well-advised to come away from that door. There is danger here.”

Sam tried to look stern. “What are you people doing here? This is police business.”

“Police business?” Rudy snorted. “Tell me another.”

“We’re LAPD,” Dean replied, sounding very official. “We’re investigating the disappearances that have been happening in this area. I’m Detective Manzarek; this is Detective Krieger.”

Kris gave them an amused look. “And in your spare time you perform in The Doors?” Kris asked.

Dean looked a bit surprised. “What? No! We…That’s just a coincidence.”

“There are no coincidences, young man,” Ingold responded. “Whatever your names are, you are in grave danger. What has brought you to this building?”

“And please don’t say ‘police business,’” Adam said. “We recently spent weeks being interviewed and then followed by both the LAPD and the FBI. No way you guys are cops.”

“Hey, you look familiar,” Dean said to Adam. He turned to Kris. “And you do, too.”

“Not really important right now,” Kris responded. “Who are you?”

Sam and Dean looked at each other for a moment, then looked at Ingold, who seemed to be the leader of the group facing them. Dean spoke up. “Something…there’s something bad in this building. We’re not sure what it is, but you people shouldn’t be here.”

“There is truly something ‘bad’ in this building, and I know exactly what it is. What has drawn you here? You still have your minds, so you haven’t been brought here by the creatures that inhabit this building.”

Sam stared at him. “Wait, you know what’s in there? How…Who are you?”

“I am…” Ingold began, drawing himself up to his full height, only to be interrupted by Gil. “We asked you first, son,” she said sternly, placing a hand on the pommel of her sword. “Give. And make it the truth this time.”

Sam looked at Dean again; Dean shrugged and said, “I’m Dean Winchester, and this is my brother Sam.”

“We hunt things,” Sam finished.

Kris looked skeptical, “What, like squirrels? ‘Possums? Not many of those in this part of town.”

Dean looked uncomfortable; Sam looked annoyed. “Things,” Sam said firmly. “Things like what’s inside that building.”

“There are no ‘things’ in this world that are like the ones in that building,” Ingold replied ominously, “for they are not of this world.”

“Are you saying they’re aliens? We’ve been invaded by aliens?” Dean looked both skeptical and contemptuous. “Bullshit.”

“If by ‘aliens’ you mean creatures from another world, then yes.” Ingold smiled slightly. “Of course, technically, I am an alien, but I have no wish to invade this world.” Sam and Dean took a couple of steps back warily. “These others are from your own world, however.” He gestured toward his companions. “The creatures who have laired in that building, the Dark Ones, are indeed from another world. They may be from my own world, or they may have come there from someplace else. We don’t know. But we do know that on this world they are, as yet, small in number, and we must attack now while they are relatively weak.”

“Wait. Before we talk about attacking—who are you people?” Sam asked. “We told you who we are. It’s your turn.”

Ingold drew a breath, but before he could speak a strange voice said, “Ingold Inglorion, Archmage of Darwath. We greet you.” The tense group whipped around to see a teenaged girl emerge from the darkened building behind them.

“Dark Ones,” Ingold responded calmly with a nod as the others began slowly backing away.

“Why are you here, Ingold, son of Inglor?” The girl’s voice was odd, sometimes sounding like the voice of a teenaged girl, sometimes sounding like many voices trying to squeeze through one small throat.

“You already know why. This is not your place. You don’t belong here. I am here to help you leave, one way or another.”

“We would stay here. This world is good. It is getting warmer, where your world was getting colder.”

“You can go to the rest of your kind; they are on a warm world with their herds.”

“The wild ones here are tasty; their minds are delicious. We would stay here and feed, and we would give them the magic in return.”

“She’s one of the Dark Ones?” Adam whispered to Gil. “She looks nothing like…”

“They can inhabit humans, use their bodies to communicate with us,” Gil answered quietly.

The quiet exchange drew the girl’s attention, and she turned to look at them. “You are the ones we have been seeking. You, with the magic that killed us. And now you have come to kill us again.” Her face was slack, and her eyes were completely black. Sam and Dean tensed at the sight of those black eyes, and Sam began to speak:

“Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus
omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio
infernalis adversarii, omnis legio,
omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.”

Sam’s voice carried from the middle of the deserted street.

“What is this spell?” The voices wheezed and growled from the girl’s mouth.

“Ergo draco maledicte
et omnis legio diabolica adjuramus te.
cessa decipere humanas creaturas,
eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare.”

Sam continued the ritual as the girl began backing away from him. “We do not know this magic. What is this spell?” Ingold approached the girl, watching her curiously as she reacted to Sam’s spell. He was also unfamiliar with this particular spell, and hadn’t pegged Sam as a mage in any case.

“Vade, Satana, inventor et magister
omnis fallaciae, hostis humanae salutis.
Humiliare sub potenti manu dei,
contremisce et effuge, invocato a
nobis sancto et terribili nomine,
quem inferi tremunt.”

The girl’s back was against the brick wall of the building from which she had emerged. She looked terrified, eyes flashing back and forth between solid black, and a normal warm brown. Sam pushed on with the ritual, as Ingold reached out and held the girl still.

“Ab insidiis diaboli, libera nos, Domine.
Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus
omnis satanica potestas, omnis incursio
infernalis adversarii,omnis legio,
omnis congregatio et secta diabolica.”

“Is he doing an exorcism?” Rudy asked incredulously. As the only lapsed Catholic in the group, he recognized some of the Latin words.

“Hey, don’t knock it, man. It looks like it’s doing something,” Dean responded, watching the girl struggling against Ingold’s grip. The old man was surprisingly strong.

“Ergo draco maledicte
et omnis legio diabolica
adjuramus te.

“But these things aren’t…they aren’t demons or, or devils!” Gil exclaimed. “They’re natural creatures.”

“They’re bad things inside a human. It’s worth a try,” Dean insisted.

Cessa decipere humanas creaturas,
eisque aeternae Perditionis venenum propinare.

Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire
te rogamus, audi nos.”

As Sam intoned the last words of the ritual, the girl’s head flew back, and what looked like black smoke vomited out of her mouth. When it was gone, she slumped and would have fallen were it not for Ingold’s support.

Ingold, Rudy and Kris paled, feeling a wave of fear/rage wash over them.

“We need to go. Now.” Ingold said grimly. He looked at Sam and Dean. “Will you come with us? It looks like the sun is setting, and this place will not be safe in the dark.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a look. Sam shrugged, and Dean said, “Sure. Our car is right over there.”

“Woah!” Rudy exclaimed, looking at the vintage Impala parked across the street. “That’s your car? Can I ride with you?”

“Uh, sure, man,” Dean said with a shrug. “Where are we going?”

“My house,” Adam said.

“No, Adam, I don’t want those things…” Kris began.

“It’s the best option, Kris. The studio will be a good place to hole up if we need to; no windows and I don’t think they can get through that soundproof door.”

“That’s a great idea, Adam,” Rudy said. “And I agree about the door.”

“Now that we have a destination, I suggest we leave,” Ingold said urgently. “We need to be indoors before the sun sets.”

“What are we going to do with the girl?” Sam asked.

“I think we have to take her to a hospital,” Gil said. “We can’t take her with us, but we can’t leave her here to be retaken by the Dark. Ingold, can you tell if the Dark are really gone?”

Ingold kneeled down and placed his hands on the girl’s head. They all watched silently for several minutes as Ingold muttered to himself. “They’re gone,” he finally said. “Is there a place we can take her that is far from this place?”

“There are some up closer to where we live,” Adam answered. “But we can’t just drop her off…”

Sam cleared his throat. “We’ll do it. We’ve, uh, done this before.”

“A lot,” Dean added.

Sam carried the still-unconscious girl to the Impala with Dean and Rudy following, while the others headed to Kris’s car. After a quick veil spell from Rudy and Ingold to protect both groups from detection by their enemies, they were on their way to Adam’s house in West Hollywood by way of a hospital.

Adam was avoiding Kris, and Kris knew it. He wasn’t sure why, but Adam was hiding something under the façade of a cheery, helpful host to their unexpected guests. Kris watched Adam bustle around (and since when did Adam bustle?) offering food, drink, a place to sit, a shower, spare clothes, whatever. He was avoiding Kris. After that first frantic, relieved hug, everything seemed okay, but something happened during the drive to South Central. No one else noticed, but Kris knew when Adam was being real and when he had his game face on; this was his game face.

Since Adam’s culinary skills were confined to calling for takeout and concocting truly disgusting (in Kris’s opinion) smoothies, dinner was a mix of pizza and Thai food. As soon as everyone was settled in for dinner, Ingold began quizzing Sam and Dean about the exorcism ritual—where had it come from, what was it used for, how had they learned it, how did it work, could they do other spells, and the brothers did their best to answer his questions. This was partly curiosity and partly an exploration of how the spell might be used strategically against the Dark Ones. Gil made occasional comments based on what she remembered of her previous life as a citizen of this world and her doctoral study of medieval history.

Sam and Dean, in turn, had their curiosity satisfied as to how a couple of musicians (Dean had finally recognized Adam and Kris) had gotten mixed up with aliens and magic. Then Rudy, Dean and Kris got caught up in a rambling conversation about music, magic and, of all things, sports. Kris was bringing Rudy up to date on the way his magic had gradually come back, and how much he could use it now.

Adam poked at his food, trying to watch Kris without being an asshole about it. This was a familiar sight; Kris and Rudy, talking about magic. It made him want to stab something. But that was probably because he was always at sword practice when Kris was doing his magic lessons, not because he was upset or anything. He gave up on his dinner and excused himself quietly, trying to avoid interrupting the vigorous conversations around him. He made his way into the living room and sat on the sofa to continue brooding with a little more privacy.

Adam now had a complete memory of what had happened on that other world, and he was pretty sure he didn’t want it. Ripped from their own world and dropped on another in the middle of a dark, damp forest full of monsters, he and Kris had only survived the night because Kris had suddenly discovered he was able to do magic, and Adam had suddenly discovered he had more talent for swordplay than his limited experience in one Shakespeare play could have given him. That horrible night was followed by a two month long nightmare highlighted by fencing lessons, magic, and constant danger, with the extra added bonus of falling into a trap set by the Dark Ones in which he and Kris had nearly died. Adam took a deep breath and thought, Okay, be honest, Kris nearly did a murder/suicide thing to keep us from being taken by the Dark Ones. That’s a memory I could’ve done without.

A two month long nightmare, but now the nightmare had followed them here. Adam looked at Kris where he was still huddled with Ingold, Sam, and Dean at the dining table, and thought, He is the love of my life, but he kept hearing a girl’s voice from some TV show saying, I can kill you with my brain; only now it’s real life, and it’s Kris.

“I don’t think Ingold will get much use from that exorcism ‘spell,’” Rudy said, pulling Adam out of his dark thoughts. “The church in Darwath was no help at all against the Dark Ones; in fact, they kind of worked against us because they thought that all wizard powers came from the devil.”

Adam snorted. “Not surprising, I suppose. We have people here who believe that sort of thing, too. Anything they don’t like comes from the devil.”

“You okay, man?” Rudy asked, settling on the sofa and nudging Adam with his elbow. He, too, had noticed that Adam was avoiding Kris, watching him while pretending not to watch him.

“Yeah. Well, no, not really. I mean, these past few days…weeks…hell, months, I knew there was something wrong, but I had no idea…” He stopped and sighed. “It’s been a helluva day.”

“Helluva day,” Rudy agreed. “How have you and Kris been?”

“Um, good. Great!” Adam said with fake cheer. except that he can kill me with his brain. “Why do you ask?”

“Just being sociable,” Rudy said, trying to figure out what the hell was up.

“Well, we’re great,” Adam said determinedly.

“What about the not great part?”

“What?”

“Something’s eating at you, man, and you need to get rid of it. Get it out. You cannot afford to be distracted by anything tomorrow.”

Adam dropped his face into his hands. “Kris,” he whispered. “You know what happened in that trap, in that cave. I just remembered it today, and it’s seriously fucking with my mind. I’m trying to work my way through the fact that Kris was going to burn me alive and then do the same to himself. With just his mind.”

Rudy sat quietly for a few minutes, thinking. Remembering. Then he said in a soft voice, “When I first met Minalde, I thought she was the Crown Prince’s nurse, just a pretty, sweet servant girl. I didn’t realize that she was the Queen until I had already started to fall in love with her. And I didn’t realize what Alde being queen really meant until much later. She was so small and quiet—well, you met her, you know…”

“Yeah. She seemed very nice.”

Rudy smiled. “She is nice. But she was also the most powerful woman in Darwath. Before her son came of age, she was his regent. She had the power of life and death over everyone in Darwath, including me. It was hard for me to adjust to that—a woman who seemed, well, kind of meek and unsure when we first met, then watching her grow and learn to wield nearly absolute power in the space of less than a year. And she was damn good at it. For fifteen years, until King Tir came of age, she ruled the kingdom of Darwath.

“So anyway, there I was, this macho…hey, do people still say ‘macho’?”

“Only ironically,” Adam answered with a small smile and Rudy grinned back at him.

“Alright, this macho guy from South Central, and I fall in love with this woman who can kill me with a word, you know?”

Adam looked at him steadily. “Yeah, I know.” I can kill you with my brain.

“But she wouldn’t. By the time I figured all this out in my head, I knew she wouldn’t, because I knew her.”

“I get that,” Adam said hesitantly, “but…but I know he would.”

“Consider the circumstances, Adam,” Gil said, and Adam jumped. He hadn’t even heard her approach. “You were imprisoned by the Dark Ones, and they didn’t just want to devour your flesh, they wanted to devour your minds so that they could find their way to this world and ravage it the way they had ravaged our world.”

“Yeah, that’s true.” Adam heaved a deep sigh. “I don’t really…hold it against him. It’s just a lot to take in all of a sudden.”

Gil’s pale blue eyes met his, full of memory and old pain. “Once, back when we were first fighting against the Dark, Ingold was captured by them. We, Rudy and I, went looking for him, not knowing what we would find…maybe we’d find him dead, maybe find him with his mind taken. We never expected what we did find, though. Ingold lying on a slab of rock, covered in Dark Ones. They were crawling over him like giant bugs.” She looked away and shuddered. “We found out later that it was the only way they could communicate with him without using a human puppet to say what they wanted to say. They have to touch to communicate.” She laughed a little and looked at Adam. “They were actually asking him for a favor, for a ride through the Void and off the planet. Anyway, when it all shook out, and everything was done and we knew he was safe, I did tell him that I had come prepared to kill him if I needed to, if I found that he was enslaved, that he was a danger to the kingdom, to the planet. And do you know what he said?”

“No idea,” Adam said softly.

“He laughed, and he said, ‘That’s my Gil.’ He was proud of me.” Gil looked at Adam with a faint smile. “He knew that we were fighting creatures that wanted to enslave us, and he knew that my willingness to kill him was an act of love. Not just for the kingdom or the planet, but for him as well.”

Adam had to clear his throat to speak. “I understand.”

~*~

Ingold determined that a retreat to the studio would be prudent. He had confidence that his veil spell would hide them from their enemies, but he also believed that it was better to be safe than sorry. They brought all the blankets and pillows in the house into the studio, locked the door, and claimed various bits of floor for sleeping.

Adam saw Kris watching him with a hopeful expression on his face. He walked over and pulled Kris into a hug; felt Kris relax against him with a sigh.

“How do I say I’m sorry I was afraid you were going to kill me?” Adam asked quietly.

“Well, that’s a good way to say it, I guess,” Kris answered. Adam could feel him smiling against his shoulder. “And besides, I was going to kill you. And myself.” Kris shuddered, and Adam gathered him closer. “I…hope you can forgive me?”

“Oh god, yes,” Adam said. “I forgave you when it happened. I just freaked out about it all over again. I hope you can forgive me for being an idiot.”

“I always do.”

Adam shook with silent laughter and squeezed Kris affectionately. “Come on, let’s find a nice corner to lie down in. Don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep, but we should try.”

~*~

“This may be just reconnaissance,” Ingold explained the next morning as they prepared to leave. “The battle may have to wait. We need to see the lair, how large it is, see how many Dark Ones there are.”

“Ingold,” Adam said hesitantly, “we had a whole army and lot more than three wizards the last time we fought the Dark Ones. What can seven people do?”

“That is an excellent question, Adam,” Ingold responded. “And thus, the reconnaissance. We need to see exactly what we’re up against and come up with a plan. The two Dark Ones that came after you and Kris never returned to the lair, so the rest will have no idea what happened to them. They will also be disturbed by the new spell that Sam worked on the girl. These circumstances will cause them to hesitate, which gives us a small window before they attack us. We need to use that window to attack them first.”

All seven of them crowded in to the Impala, and they headed south.

The Lair of the Dark Ones

“Gil, please stay close to me. Sam and Dean, you stay close to Rudy. Kris, can you manage the veil spell while walking?”

“I’m not sure if I can,” Kris said. “I’ve only ever done it sitting down. I don’t want to risk Adam’s safety.” Adam grabbed Kris’s hand and squeezed it, trying to communicate love and support, but keeping his sword hand free to grip the sword he had borrowed from the impressive arsenal in the trunk of the Impala.

“Very well. You must both stay close to me as well, then. Let us go.”

The pulsing blue light at the end of Ingold’s staff provided barely enough light for them to keep their footing as they continued down, down the stairs to the basement, into the subbasement, where they found a tunnel going still further down into the earth. A warm breeze flowed from the cavern, carrying the stench of rotting flesh. Sam and Dean hesitated, but as the others stepped into the tunnel they exchanged a grim look and followed after, hands tight on their scimitars. After sloping down perhaps a hundred feet, the tunnel leveled out into a cavern. Not a natural formation; the walls of the cavern were too smooth and symmetrical to be natural. Rudy, Ingold and Gil had all seen this type of cavern before, on their own world. For Kris and Adam it was the first time seeing the beginnings of a city made by the Dark Ones; for Sam and Dean, this was their first sight of the Dark Ones, and they recoiled in revulsion.

The Dark scuttled across the ceilings and walls of the cavern, hundreds of them, like cockroaches scurrying across a kitchen floor. The edges of the cavern were crowded with piles of bones, human bones, some whole, some partially melted. In the center of the cavern was a pool of dark, oil-slicked water, and the walls of the cavern were fuzzy with some kind of growth that was being picked at and eaten by….

“Oh God, those are people,” Dean whispered. “What are they doing?”

“Those are the herds of the Dark Ones,” Ingold said quietly. “They exist only to eat the moss grown by the Dark Ones and then to be eaten themselves by the Dark Ones.”

They watched in horror as the people shuffled through the cavern, eating the moss from the walls, drinking from the toxic-looking water in the pond, or simply sitting, staring into the dark.

“You said they were ‘small in number’ and ‘weak.’ What the hell?” Sam interrupted furiously. “There must be hundreds of them!”

“This is a small number,” Ingold replied. “They numbered in the billions on our world. They had a network of huge underground cities, all over the world. This small cavern would fit into one of those cities many times over. And they are weak,” he continued. “They are only able to draw in those whose minds are already weakened—by hunger, illness, madness…”

“Drugs,” Rudy put in.

Ingold nodded. “Once they’re stronger, they will be able to exert control over anyone who is not constantly on guard.”

“And if we don’t stop them now,” Rudy continued, “They’ll soon number in the billions on this world as well.”

“We don’t know how fast they breed. Just that it’s damn fast,” Gil put in. “Speaking of breeding….”

Rudy shuddered. “We have to find it.”

“Find what?” Adam asked.

“The nursery.”

“Oh fuck,” Adam whispered. He remembered Rudy comparing the Dark’s breeding habits to the movie Alien. “Do we have to?”

“We have to make sure it’s here and not someplace else in the city,” Rudy said firmly. “If we don’t make sure of that, nothing we do here will matter. We also have to verify that there’s no back way out.”

“I see something that may be a passage to another area.” Ingold pointed across the cavern. “Do you see it?” Only Rudy and Kris nodded. The others could see very little beyond the area illuminated by Ingold’s blue-tipped staff. “I wish I did not have to ask this of you, but we may need your swords. We have to cross to the other side of the cavern to see if that is the passage to the nursery. Stay very close together, be quiet, and don’t touch any of the herd; it would interfere with the veil spell. Oh, and before you ask, there is nothing we can do for any humans in the nursery,” he finished grimly.

They moved slowly and cautiously across the cavern, avoiding the herd-folk and the occasional Dark One that had come down from the ceiling to tend the herd. As they neared the opening, they could hear odd squelching noises coming from someplace beyond. They stepped through the passage and…

Kris and Adam had once had to defend their lives with nothing but a sword and a campfire; had once been trapped in a cave full of Dark Ones, ready to commit suicide by letting Kris burn them from the inside out to avoid being taken by the Dark. Sam and Dean had faced all manner of vicious creatures and had both been to Hell and back. Literally. None of that prepared them for the scene before them.

The nursery was lined with dozens of living men and women, queued up like an assembly line. Some of them had bulging abdomens, some did not. The Dark hovered over them, apparently monitoring the progress of the gestations and births. Sam raised a shaking hand and pointed to one of the hovering monstrosities. This one had a pulsating mass hanging from what might be its belly. As they watched in horror, the mass dropped off the Dark One onto the woman below it. With a grotesquely familiar squelching noise, the mass burrowed into the woman’s abdomen as her mouth opened in a silent scream.

“Huh. So they reproduce by budding. Interesting.” Gil commented. “That certainly makes sense, given their….” She trailed off, looking around at her companions.

Five pairs of eyes gaped at her. Ingold simply nodded thoughtfully, still gazing around the small cavern. “Yes, given their collective mind and ability to merge their bodies.”

“This is no time to be taking notes, Professor,” Rudy whispered.

“Oh. Sorry.” Gil had the grace to look chagrined; Ingold merely raised one eyebrow at him.

“Yes. I think we’ve seen more than enough,” Ingold said. “I see no other passages to indicate a back way out.” He looked around the nursery again, paying particular attention to the rocky floor. “I have the beginnings of a plan, so perhaps a strategic retreat would…”

Adam felt Kris’s hand shaking in his, felt himself shaking; realized that the ground was shaking under him.

“Kris! What are you doing?” Ingold cried out in alarm. Several of the Dark Ones whipped around, suddenly noticing the intruders in the heart of the lair.

Kris looked angry. No, he looked furious, lips drawn back from gritted teeth. “Calling Fire,” he growled, not even looking at Ingold. A rumbling in the cavern echoed his growl.

Every Dark One in the cavern streamed into the nursery and merged into one impossibly huge creature. That huge creature then split into hundreds of smaller ones, fanged mouths dripping, bloated bodies extruding tentacles and tails, turning toward the intruders.

“We need to go! Now!” Rudy was shouting now that the need for stealth was past.

The group of three wizards and four warriors ran as if all the hells were opening under them, as, in fact, they seemed to be. There was a loud crack, and a wave of heat with a smell of sulfur rushed out from the nursery, following them toward the main cavern entrance. Dark Ones began swooping out of the nursery, some heading for the cavern entrance, some trying to attack the runners. Swords flashed and cut down the creatures in mid-flight. The cavern floor shook as the entrance to the nursery suddenly crumbled and fell to the ground, trapping the majority of the Dark Ones as well as the pitiful husks of humans in the magma-filled cave.

“Gil! Rudy screamed over the noise of the cavern floor cracking open. “Hold the tunnel entrance! You can’t let even one escape!” He turned with Ingold and Kris to fight a rearguard action while the other four went to head off the Dark Ones at the entrance to the tunnel. Ingold shot fire from his staff, felling multiple Dark Ones with each burst of flame. Rudy waved his arms and sheets of flame flew up in front of him, blocking large swaths of the cavern. Kris stood, fists clenched, tears running down his cheeks, causing Dark Ones to burst into flame with a glance. The three men tried not to look at the herd-folk burning, tried not to think of the nursery now filled with magma.

Gil grabbed Adam, Sam and Dean and pulled them toward the tunnel mouth. “This is it! We hold here!” Four swords whirred in the air as the Dark tried to fly out the tunnel into the building above. Adam and Gil slashed and thrust, spun and whirled; Sam and Dean swung their swords with precision and grim determination that spoke of long years of practice rather than formal lessons. All four made sure that each slash left a Dark One dead or dying on the ground. They had to back up the tunnel as the floor filled in front of them and began to sizzle and smoke from the oozing bodies of the Dark.

“Ingold!” Gil shouted. “Come now! You have to come now!”

The heat in the cavern was becoming unbearable and the three wizards could see the magma flowing out of the nursery, heading into the main cavern. They began to back toward the main entrance, still wreaking fiery havoc with every step backward. They made their way into the tunnel just ahead of the flowing magma and scrambled up the tunnel to the foot of the stairs.

Rudy grabbed Kris’s shoulder and shook him. “Kris, you have to dial it back!”

Kris was still staring back down the tunnel, looking like he wanted to kill every Dark One with his bare hands, rip them apart with his teeth.

“Kris!” Gil slapped him hard across the face. He looked at her, shocked.

“Hey!” Adam shouted, grabbing Gil’s arm. “What the hell?”

“He’s got to get the spell under control or it will destroy this part of the city!” Rudy said, pulling Adam away from Gil.

“Kris.” Adam held Kris’s face in his hands and looked into his eyes, feeling the heat roll off of him in waves. “Look at me. Please, God, pull it back.”

Kris looked at the magma inching its way up the tunnel; breathed in, breathed out. He wrapped his arms around Adam and buried his face in Adam’s chest. “I don’t want this. I don’t want this,” he said into Adam’s chest. Adam stroked his hair and they breathed together, calming the anger, quieting the fire.

Dean, who was the farthest up the stairs, could hear the building making ominous noises. “Guys, we gotta get out of this building. Like, right now.”

The lava slowed before it reached the middle of the tunnel, but it was still coming. Ingold and Rudy had a quick discussion of options, and Ingold dredged up a quick cooling spell from somewhere in the back of his mind. He cried the words out in a loud voice and the leading edge of the lava came to crackling halt. The cooling slowly spread, higher and further back until the entire tunnel was blocked by a solid wall of stone.

The burned and battered warriors stumbled up the stairs and out of the building just as it slowly and loudly collapsed in on itself.

“I am frickin’ exhausted,” Kris said, flopping onto the sofa when they arrived home later.

“You should be,” Rudy responded. “What the hell was that back there? I’ve never seen anything like that! Ingold, have you ever seen anything like that?”

“I haven’t. But there were references to something like it in a few of the books in the library at Quo. I don’t know if it was ever used in quite that way, though. From what I remember in the books, I think it had something to do with generating energy. However, what happened back there was similar to the plan I was formulating. It was just a bit more abrupt and disorderly than I was planning.”

“Yeah, we wouldn’t want to be disorderly when we’re killing aliens,” Dean said, with an edge to his voice; Ingold simply grinned at him.

“I don’t want this!” Kris said again determinedly.

“If it’s any comfort, your abilities should fade with time,” Ingold responded.

“How much time?”

“There is no way to know for certain. It may relate to how long the Dark were here. We do know that the Dark are the reason magic works; with them gone, the magic should go as well.”

“Are they gone?” Adam asked.

“We need to give it a couple of days to be certain,” Rudy answered. “But right now, I’m with Kris. I’m exhausted. Is there someplace I can sleep right now, besides the studio? I need to be awake tonight to be on watch, so I might as well sleep now.”

“I’ll show you to one of the guest bedrooms,” Adam said. “Come on, we can stop by the studio to pick up the bedding. Anyone else want a nap?”

“I don’t think so,” Ingold replied. “I will try sleeping out here tonight, and with no veil spell. If there are still Dark Ones here, I’ll be perfect bait.”

Adam groaned. “Bait. In my living room. I’m not sure I’m down with that.”

“I can sleep outside,” Ingold offered. “It seems to be pleasantly warm here.”

“No, no, it’s okay. Come on, Rudy, let’s get you settled.” Adam and Rudy headed off toward the studio.

“Is anyone hungry?” Kris asked. “I’m starving. I think I’m more hungry than I am tired.”

“I could eat,” Dean said.

“Always,” Sam added.

Kris grinned tiredly. “You guys sound like me and my brother. Come on to the kitchen, let’s see what we have. Ingold? Gil?”

“I’ll come with you,” Gil said. “Ingold needs to be alone anyway. He needs privacy to do his searching for the Dark.”

~*~

Two days and several news cycles later, there was still no sign of Dark Ones. The abandoned South Central building that collapsed into a heretofore unknown fault line was already fading from the news. In the middle of lunch on the third day, Dean’s phone rang. He looked at the caller ID and looked at Sam. “Kevin.” He walked outside to take the call.

Sam looked at the others and said, “I think it may be about time for us to go. We’ve got kind of a lot of stuff going on.”

Dean came back in and nodded to Sam. “Yeah. Monsters to kill, prophets to babysit.”

“This is it, guys,” Sam said. “Do you think it’s safe?”

“I believe so,” Ingold said. “I’ve been searching for signs and I’ve slept outside each night, just waiting for them. Neither Rudy nor I have sensed any trace of them since we left the lair.”

“Adam, Kris, thanks so much for letting us crash here,” Sam said. “Ingold, Rudy, Gil, it’s been quite an adventure. I’m glad we got to meet you.”

“Even though I may not ever wrap my head around the fact that there are aliens,” Dean added. “At least they’re not little bug-eyed grey men. Adam, thanks, man.” Dean shook Adam’s hand. “Kris, you’ve got my number if you need to talk.” He and Kris hugged, and Kris shook Sam’s hand and gave him a hug. They walked Sam and Dean to the door and watched them walk to their car.

Sam gave Dean a side-eye. “You gave Kris your phone number?”

“Shut up.”

“Well, he is kinda cute.” Sam rolled his eyes and grinned.

“Shut. Up.”

After the car doors slammed, the engine roared to life and the Impala rumbled down the street.

“He gave you his phone number?” Adam looked at Kris quizzically.

“Hush. We’ve been talking about the…the…”

“Guilt?” Adam whispered.

Kris leaned against him. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “He and Sam have done some hard things, made some hard decisions. He knows how I feel about this, because he’s felt the same way at times.”

“You know you can talk to me, right?”

“I know.” Kris smiled up at him. “And you’ve been amazing. And I know you’ll continue to be amazing. But you’ve never…”

Adam sighed. “You haven’t either. Not really. They did it. They destroyed those people’s lives long before we walked into that building.” He hugged Kris and pulled him away from the door. “Come on, we still have company in the dining room.”

Arms around each other, they walked back into the dining room to find their three guests standing, waiting for them.

“I think it is time we left as well,” Ingold announced.

“Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?” Adam asked.

“We are as certain as it is possible to be. There are no Dark Ones left on this world. I believe there are no Dark Ones left in the Void. I’m fairly certain they are all still happily ensconced on their new world. I believe the ones that were here were very different from the rest of them. You must remember I knew them extremely well. They are conformist creatures who don’t like change. They prefer peace and quiet as much as we do; tending their herds, living their lives. These others were—I felt their minds, and they were odd; they wanted things to be new and exciting. It almost seemed that they wanted a new world to explore, and, oddly enough, spicy food.”

“So we had something like—the Christopher Columbus of Dark Ones here? Looking for Indian spices?” Adam guessed.

Ingold looked puzzled, but Rudy and Gil grinned. “Something like that, I think,” Gil said.

Rudy cleared his throat and said, “Well, as much as I like you guys, I have a home and woman to get back to, so we should probably head out.”

“Back to the Salvation Army store?” Kris asked.

“Yes. Less damage that way,” Rudy responded.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

Darwath

“Do you really think it’s safe for them?” Gil asked as they walked back to the Keep.

“If I didn’t, we would still be there,” Ingold answered.

“I believe you. I’m not as attuned to them as you are, but I never felt a thing after the big battle,” Rudy added. “Now let’s step it up. I can’t wait to see Alde,” he finished with a grin.

Los Angeles

“Oh my god, this place is a mess!” Adam exclaimed. “I’m glad Marte’s coming to clean tomorrow, but we need to go ahead and do the dishes now. I think every dish in the house is dirty.”

“If you want to get started, I’ll be in there in a few minutes. I have to call Cale and Torres and get them back into rehearsal. We have a show in a couple of days and we’re not quite ready yet.”

Adam groaned. “I have to call Tommy and Lainey. Tommy saw everything the other day. They both saw the one I killed, and Tommy saw me kill it. I owe them explanations. And I have to take Lainey shopping for a whole new outfit.” He brightened. “Actually, that’s kind of a bright side,” he said with a grin.

Kris laughed. “I love you so much.”

“Back at ya, baby,” Adam said, kissing him lightly, then more deeply, thinking about what they had and how much they had almost lost. “Hey, you wanna make the calls and do the dishes later?”

“Absolutely.”

~*~

Later, as they lay in a puddle of cooling sweat, Kris said in a slurred voice, “We nearly died this week.”

“Yeah.”

“No, man, we nearly died this week.”

“And we saved the fucking world, baby.”

“Yeah. Saved the fuckin’ world.”

“Holy shit, Kristopher! Did you just say ‘fuck’?”

“Fuckin’ right I did.”

Adam snorted. “You’re a mess.”

“Kinda makes all that other shit seem unimportant, you know?”

Adam yawned. “What other shit?”

That was the last thing they remembered until the next morning.

~*~

They woke up the next morning to Marte’s voice echoing loudly from downstairs, exclaiming over the state of the house. Adam pulled the covers over his head and elected to stay in bed. Kris got up to make his phone calls. Cale and Torres were on board for a short rehearsal in about an hour after Kris assured them that the “electrical problem” had been fixed. Kris quickly got ready to go, pulled the covers off of Adam’s face so he could kiss him goodbye, pulled them back up, and headed out.

Adam decided he had to go ahead and pay his penance, so he called Lainey and told her he was ready to shop. He then called Tommy and talked him into coming with them so he would only have to tell the story once.

~*~

The house sparkled. Marte was awesome. Adam had already texted that shopping was done, Tommy and Lainey were satisfied (although Tommy did say something about ‘going home to smoke a fatty, so I can process all this shit’), and Adam was on his way home. Kris had everything ready; roast chicken with vegetables—no rice or potatoes, of course, for Mr. No Carbs Before Tour—wine chilling, candles lit, flowers on the table. Kris took a picture of the obviously romantic setting—candles, flowers, wine and food set out on the table along with the china and silver—and uploaded it to Twitter. Dinner at home with @adamlambert ;)

And smiled as his phone lit up with alerts.

Epilogue

L.A. Times Music Blog

On Monday night in Hollywood, Adam Lambert debuted his new tour, “Out of the Dark.” From the moment he strode onstage to the strains of “Ripped Apart” to the last slinky pelvic thrust of “This Is the Way I Love You,” the audience, and this reviewer, were mesmerized. The show is spectacular, in the truest sense of the word; a crowd-pleasing spectacle full of beautiful music, awe-inspiring vocals, astonishing set pieces, and exquisite costumes and make-up. And this is all before we address the action sequences. Yes, action sequences in a rock concert. Only Adam Lambert. The action sequences feature swords, torches, and pitched battles against dark monsters (possibly a metaphor for homophobia?), and the final triumph of love. This concert is a must see. Kudos to Adam Lambert for the best show we have seen this year.

Twitter feed from Kris’s concert

@maki147 Kris Allen: still charming, hot, and tiny

@zipitydoodah Great, great show! The crowd and Kris were on fire.

@allaboutme Lol, right before @KrisAllen start singing, somebody yelled " You are sooo hot". Kris smiled.

@DemiMcCann OMG HE IS SO HOT HOW DID I FORGET THIS

@jambajim Is it just me, or has @krisallen gotten hotter since he came out? (That is what happened, right?)

End