The Duelist Read online

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  Chapter 1

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  The clock was going so slow today. All of them were. People often asked me if it was annoying working in a clock-repair shop, and the simple answer was a big fat yes. I even heard the ticking bastards when I tried to fall asleep at night. I didn’t even own a clock. Who does these days anyway?

  I pulled out my phone to check the time. Maybe the clocks were all somehow slow?

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  Fuck. There was still ten minutes left.

  I eyed the security camera in the corner. I knew old man Leary who owned the place would probably kill me if I flipped the “open” sign to “closed” before six o’clock exactly. Actually, he would definitely kill me. And then fire me. And getting fired was something I really couldn’t afford right now, not if I wanted to eat more than ramen noodles in the foreseeable future. Let’s just say I’d had “aggression issues” in the past that made me a less-than-ideal employee.

  But it was fine now that I was able to channel said aggression into MMA.

  About a year ago, I met a guy at the local gym, kind of a meat-headed asshole who picked a fight with me for accidentally kicking his water bottle. Anyone would have looked at a dweeby nobody with glasses against Mr. Mega Roid Rage and would have come to the logical conclusion I was toast.

  But the haters would be fucking wrong because I am proud to say I held my own until he got me with a double-leg takedown.

  Apparently, I’d surprised him more than I’d angered him. He helped me to my feet, said his name was Ricardo, and then offered to teach me a few things. We developed a standing Friday appointment so we could spar together ever since. An appointment I would really love to keep this week.

  And now this fucking clock was fucking with me. I swear I saw the big grandfather clock behind the door tick backward. Dick clock.

  I grabbed the broom and began sweeping the floors in the back workshop.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  Seven minutes left, and I almost dropped my broom when the shop bell clattered and jangled.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me!” I said out loud to the broken Felix the Cat clock on the workbench. Actually, her name was Felicity the Cat due to a factory error where they painted a bow on its head instead of around its neck. And thus, Felicity was born. Leary swore up and down he was going to fix the old antique and sell it for a mint, but that would probably be the day pigs fly. It had been sitting in the shop ever since I was hired, probably longer. Honestly, I didn’t want Leary to fix it. The stupid clock was way better company than the old man any day. And that was saying something.

  I crouched down so the customer couldn’t see me through the small window. Maybe they would just go away.

  The service bell on the front counter rang twice, so I groaned and stood up.

  “Who does that, Felicity?” I asked. “Who comes in right before closing on a Friday? A sadist, that’s who.”

  Felicity just grinned her coy cartoon grin as if to say, “You’re on your own, buddy.”

  “Hey, you’re supposed to be on my side,” I said to Felicity and walked out to the front.

  I was preparing the typical speech I used for rude assholes in these situations. Something along the lines of the credit card system is down et cetera come back Monday like a decent human being, yada yada.

  “Sorry for the inconvenience, but--” I started and then stopped dead in my tracks.

  A beautiful woman--no, goddess. A goddess walked up to the counter, with something clutched tightly against her perfectly round breasts. The posture made her cleavage even more pronounced, but I didn’t want to be rude so I looked up to her face.

  “I know you are about to close, but I was wondering if you could help me,” she said. Her stunning blue eyes shimmered with hope, and her perfect teeth bit into her lush bottom lip. Her mouth looked like a peach I wanted to suckle, and I kind of spaced out for a second.

  “Guh, what? Sorry?” I said and tore my eyes back up to hers.

  “I said, I know you are closing, but could you make an exception?” the gorgeous woman asked. She shook out the fall of her shiny blonde hair and tugged her skin-tight black mini-dress down over her toned thighs. The motion caused her cleavage to dip lower, and my heart skipped a beat, or two, or thirty.

  “Sure, I can make an erection--err, exception!” I blurted out. Screw Friday night sparring, I decided as I walked out from behind the counter to appear more friendly.

  “Are you sure?” she asked coyly. “Maybe I should make an appointment…”

  Before I could respond, all of the clocks in the shop hit six o’clock, and a loud cacophony of chiming, bonging, and general clock noises resounded around us. The beautiful woman jumped sky-high and clutched my shirt instinctively, and I wrapped my arms around her before I could think if this was proper. She smelled like honey and roses, and her chest was just as soft as I imagined when she pressed her body against mine.

  Oh. My. Fucking. God. Best day ever.

  “Goodness!” she said with a wiggle against my body, and I angled my hips away from her so she wouldn’t feel my growing hard-on.

  “Heh, yeah, it can be quite… alarming,” I said with a cheeky wink.

  The woman took a step back, smiled, and then brushed a lock of blonde hair behind her ear. “Do you normally use clock puns to pick up women?”

  “Well, that depends on if it’s working,” I said and waggled my eyebrows. “Is it working?”

  She did that maddening thing with her lip again and then batted her blue eyes. “Maybe. My name’s Alicia, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you, Alicia,” I said. “How can I help you today?”

  “Oh! Yes, I have this old family heirloom here,” she said and showed me the item in her hand. It was a beautiful antique timepiece. A tarnished silver pocket watch with an amethyst embedded in the center. There was also something etched around its circumference. Runes, or some type of cuneiform, maybe?

  “It belonged to my father and is now being passed along to my brother,” she said. “My dad wants me to get it fixed in time for his homecoming. My brother is a marine.”

  “When is he coming home?” I asked.

  “Monday?” she said and blushed prettily. “I’m a procrastinator.”

  I smiled at her and took the timepiece. “I think I might be able to do something.”

  “My hero,” she sighed and leaned in close to me again.

  I chuckled and then realized my mistake. The truth was I wasn’t a master clock-repair man, and Leary only hired me to do simple tasks like battery replacements between when I cleaned the shop and helped balance the books.

  But how could I say no to this beautiful creature?

  “Let’s see what we’re working with,” I said as I examined the watch.

  “It won’t even open.” She pressed closer.

  “It looks like there’s rust or something sealing it shut,” I said after I pressed the button on the top that normally released the catch and nothing happened. “Is this genuine silver?”

  “Yes,” Alicia said as she took a step back, and I suddenly felt the cold air where her body heat used to be. “You should try harder. Really work to open it.”

  “Man, it’s really… Stuck.” I frowned and tried to jam my thumbnail into the seam.

  “Come on,” Alicia urged, and her fingernails dug into my forearm. “Open it! You can do it, Alex! I need you to open it!”

  I looked up at her, and I saw her expression was no longer gentle. Instead, a fierce gleam entered her eyes, and her
nails were like claws in my skin.

  “Wait…” I tilted my head to the side like a confused puppy. “I didn’t tell you my name--”

  Suddenly, the watch opened with a click.

  “Ahhh!” I shouted as a bright flash of light erupted from the watch and blinded me, and I fell back until I hit the wooden floor, hard. The ticking noises from the shop clocks amplified ten-fold, but louder than that was the ticking of the now-open pocket watch. Every tick felt like a thud against my chest until it became indistinguishable from my own heartbeat.

  Tick. Tick… Tick.

  And everything went black.

  Who knew how much longer it was until I woke up, but when I did, I was in a lot of fucking pain. My head felt like it would burst open at any second like that one guy from the movie Scanners. I rolled over on my side in a ball and bit my lip until I tasted blood. The ticking noise was now my hammering pulse inside my ears, and I clamped my fists against my temples as if I could hold my splitting skull together. After a few moments where I honestly thought I was dying, the drumbeat in my head started to fade into a gentle throb.

  I hesitated before I opened my eyes. I could tell I was outside from the hot sun on my face, so I took a moment to do some mental inventory. Aside from the lingering headache, all my parts seemed to be accounted for and uninjured. Now the question was what the fuck had just happened? Did that hot chick Alicia hit me over the head with something? Was the clock store robbed? But then why was I outside?

  This was pointless. I couldn’t stall anymore, and I needed answers, so I sat up and peeled open my eyelids.

  My eyes boggled out of my head when I took in where I was.

  I was somehow dumped and left to fry on a rocky beach in the middle of bum fuck nowhere. A vast, glittering ocean stretched out before me under a crisp blue sky absent of any clouds or birds, and there wasn’t even a breeze, just the sound of the waves hitting the shore. Nothing else was around except the brutal sun, the sea, and an ominous thatch of dense forest at my back.

  I scrambled to my feet, and my chest became tight with anxiety. What fresh hell was this? Some kind of joke? I turned around to get my bearings and almost tripped over a narrow marble stone that was standing upright like an obelisk. In fact, when I stepped back a few paces, I noticed there were several of these stones. They were identical and were all balanced upright in a circle centered around me. It looked like… an altar of some kind.

  Did that mean I was the sacrifice?

  I leapt out of the circle with a not-so-manly yelp. The moment I did, the stones instantly faded from their marble white to a pitch-black obsidian, and when I got a closer look, I saw the stones had patterns on them. It was a familiar looking script that was mostly eroded now by the wind and the salty air. I remembered the engravings on Alicia’s pocket watch looked similar, so I stretched out my hand toward the nearest standing stone to see if I could brush away some of the sand and dirt, but before I could touch it, I received the shock of my life.

  The whole fucking island began to rotate around like the fancy revolving restaurant I used to work at before Leary’s. The dining room at that place slowly spun around so the customers could take in the view of the city lights while they stuffed their pompous faces with filet mignon, shrimp cocktails, and top-shelf port wine. It was like that only without the drunk, entitled customers.

  Actually, no. It wasn’t like that at all. The fact the island revolved was where the similarities ended.

  For starters, I fell flat on my ass as the ground bucked and heaved like the Titans themselves were exercising their grudge from the bottom of the ocean. The earth literally rolled underneath me in some sort of violent quake that you only hear about on the news in places like Japan and California.

  But what was odd was neither the trees in the forest nor the waves against the shore moved or changed at all. Not even a whisper.

  In fact, when the event was finally over and the island had revolved a full hundred and eighty degrees, it was as if nothing happened at all. No cracks or gaping fissures in the shore. No fallen tree trunks. No flocks of birds taking to the sky in panic. Even the creepy standing stones remained in their balanced and upright positions. The only thing that indicated anything was different was the fact that now, instead of endless ocean, I was staring at the distant shore of another island.

  I sat there in stunned silence.

  “Okay,” I said slowly. “I get it. This is a dream, right? Maybe you went to the gym after all, and Ricardo caught you in the head with his wicked overhand. Yeah. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve had some fucked up concussion dream. It’s time to wake up now, Alex.”

  I stood on shaky legs and squinted at the other island, but my fading headache reminded me not to push my luck. The island looked smaller than what I first thought, though. Instead of a large landmass off in the distance, it appeared to be smaller and only about a mile away. I could even make out some far-off structure that just had to be man-made. Maybe it was a city? I could almost see what looked like a wall or something. I rubbed my eyes when they began to ache, and that was when I noticed my glasses were missing despite my perfect eagle-eye vision.

  Now, I knew it was a dream. There’s no way my shit vision was magically cured by a whack to the head.

  “Wake up, Alex!” I growled at myself.

  I clutched my hair and scrubbed my scalp in agitation. As cool as it was to discover I was in a dream, there were more interesting places my brain could have conjured.

  For example, an island with sexy naked babes would be at the top of my list.

  I considered my options. The bigger island was definitely only a mile out, two tops. I could swim there easily, but I glanced back at the solemn forest behind me. I could explore there for… well, I didn’t know what, but it might be more interesting than just standing here on the shore, and probably a lot easier than a thirty-minute swim. Would there be sharks and shit in my dream fantasy world?

  Fuck that. Forest it was.

  I stepped over a few boulders and pieces of scattered driftwood and made my way up the slope to the tree-line. Then I stopped at the edge of the forest and craned my neck back.

  Up close, the trees seemed even more foreboding, and the bark of their tall, skinny trunks was pale like an aspen’s. However, they lacked the iconic black divots and marks common for those types of trees, and the leaves were also strange. Instead of round, green, and coin-like, they were long and feathery, like a willow’s. They also came in a variety of colors: rich rubies, pale violets, and deep emeralds. They were beautiful, but something about them prevented me from going farther.

  It was the feeling I got the longer I stared into the dimness. There was no sound of life, no creatures snapping twigs, no buzzing insect wings. The leaves didn’t even rustle or fall in the breeze. Things were still, as if time had just… stopped. Or maybe instead of stopped, it just completely ceased to exist. It was unnatural and wrong, so I backed up away from the trees.

  I guess I was going swimming, then, so I marched down to the shore with renewed determination.

  I might as well let my delusional concussed brain play out this weird acid trip.

  I stood on the edge of the water and shielded my eyes from the sun. I could absolutely swim that distance in an hour at most. I used to have low stamina, but the martial arts training I did three times a week was doing me favors these days. Especially when old man Leary ordered me to reorganize his storage basement three different times this month. Crazy bastard.

  I waded out into the cold turquoise sea, and a chill raced through me as the fresh-smelling water soaked into my jeans and filled my steel-toed boots. I stopped and looked down as the waves lapped around my knees. I would sink like a rock if I tried to swim in the heavy foot-wear, so they had to go. Good thing this was a dream, or I would be pissed my two-hundred-dollar Iron Rangers were now going to be fish food. I shucked them off and watched them sink to the sandy sea floor. Such a shame.

  Now, about six p
ounds lighter, I dived into the crystal water.

  “Woah!” I exclaimed when I surfaced. I licked my lips, but instead of salt like I was expecting, the water was fresh, clean, and a little sweet. I dunked my head back under and took a huge mouthful, and it was fucking glorious.

  When I had my fill, I slicked my hair back and thought for a moment. Maybe my brain was creating some sort of survival-based scenario due to the hours of Subnautica I played. I just really hoped my brain wasn’t that fucked up to invent deep sea leviathans that wanted to eat my ass.

  What would a shrink have to say about that?

  The water was the perfect temperature, and it felt wonderful. I was very buoyant and free, and there was no current I had to fight against. It was oddly energizing, and I picked up my speed. It wasn’t long until the ocean floor below me disappeared into its own inky blue depths, but when I lost sight of the bottom completely, I paused.

  The shore looked closer. Like, really close.

  Then I looked behind me, and the small island with the eerie forest was gone.

  “Okay.” I swallowed as I pulled myself through the water and tried to shake off the nagging sense of dread. “I’m committed now.”

  As interesting as all this realism was, it wasn’t really what I was used to. Half the time when I slept it was just blackness, and that was even if I slept at all these days. This technicolor Alice in Wonderland shit was… well. I was either a genius, drugged, in a coma, or, and here was a thought I didn’t want to consider: this was really happening.

  Before I could think about this horrifying thought any longer, a large swell had me bobbing up and down like I was a harbor buoy, and I turned around to see what was happening. About five-hundred yards away, I caught a glimpse of a massive dorsal fin before it ducked back under the water, and another swell raced at me like a steam engine.

  “Shit!” I yelled and swam like my life depended on it.

  Dream or not, I didn’t want to find out what would happen if I stuck around to test the Inception theory.

  A huge shadow passed under me, and no matter how hard I pushed myself, I couldn’t out swim it. I pictured that token underwater scene in every shark movie ever made. The one where the poor bastard swimming in open water like an idiot gets his torso chomped in half. I was definitely fish bait right now and utterly helpless about the fact. If Jaws down there decided he was hungry, I would make a perfect snack, so I put my head down and pumped my legs despite the fact they ached and my lungs burned. Then, because the ocean wasn’t salty, I found I could open my eyes and see clearly underwater.