The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [65]
That, and the fact that the beer was cheap and they served free peanuts.
The place was all but deserted, and what few patrons there were seemed more intent on their glasses than on Travis. He sat at the bar, showed his money to the bartender, and ordered a beer. The man plunked down a glass in front of him, pale brew slopping over the edge and onto the scarred wood of the bar. In this place, they didn't bother with niceties like cocktail napkins.
The bartender halfheartedly dabbed at the spill with a grimy rag, then started to turn away.
Travis cleared his throat. “Peanuts?”
The bartender glared at him, then grabbed a big bowl from behind the bar and pushed it across the bar. “Only as long as you're drinking.”
Travis nodded. He could drink slowly.
He took a sip of the beer—it was none too fresh—then shelled and ate boiled peanuts with deliberate motions. It wasn't much of a meal, but it was better than nothing, and better than he had gotten some days. When the bartender wasn't looking, he shoved a handful of peanuts into a coat pocket.
I must say, this is absolute madness, Travis, Jack's voice spoke in his mind. You shouldn't be here, scrounging for crumbs. You're a runelord, by Olrig—you should be back on Eldh, standing with Queen Grace against the Pale King.
These words pricked at Travis's heart; he hated feeling like he had abandoned Grace to face her fate alone. However, Jack was wrong. Eldh was Grace's world; she belonged there. But this was his world, and if it was up to her to fight the Pale King on Eldh, then it was up to him to stop Duratek here on Earth.
Only he didn't see how he could. Even after everything he had learned since returning to Denver, up until tonight he had still clung to a fragment of hope. However, it was as if being forced to run from the burger joint had leeched the last drops of resolve from him. He was tired and cold and trapped, and if he couldn't get out of Denver, there was nothing he could do to stop Duratek.
Yet that didn't mean there was nothing at all he could do. Maybe he could help Grace and Eldh after all. Because if Plan A wasn't going to work, there was always Plan B. . . .
What are you intending, Travis? An anxious note sounded in Jack's voice. You're not hiding something from me, are you? I gather that destroying Duratek's gate was your Plan A. So what in the world is this Plan B?
“Never mind, Jack,” Travis said.
The bartender shot him a dark look, then turned up the sound on the television above the bar. The local news was on—the usual parade of unrest, violence, and disaster.
Travis ignored it, gazing down at his hands. A thin scar that ran across the back of his right hand—the only trace left of the wound through which a drop of the scarab's blood had entered. The power of blood sorcery flowed in him now, along with the power of rune magic. Travis didn't know what that meant, only that there had to be a way to use that power. Blood sorcery had its source in the morndari, the ravenous, bodiless spirits who inhabited the Void between worlds. Their power was that of consuming, of destruction; he had learned that when he faced the demon—one of the morndari bound in rock—in the Etherion. Could there be a way to use sorcery to do what he intended?
“—and her report on more rumored disappearances among the homeless,” blared a tinny male voice.
Travis glanced up. The bartender had turned up the volume on the TV another notch. Doe-eyed local reporter Anna Ferraro was on-screen, standing in front of Union Station downtown. Travis had noticed before how men tended to stop and stare vacantly every time Anna Ferraro appeared on TV, though he couldn't quite understand the attraction. She was pretty in a thin and fawnish way, but there was something about her—a calculating air—that left him cold. She reported about death and disaster with a glint in her eye, as if she could see the ratings going up even as she spoke. The bartender remained fixated on the screen, and Travis took the opportunity to sneak another handful of peanuts into his coat pocket, cleaning