Shawn's Reckoning: Book Three of the Aleytha Journeys

Oh hell. I’m dreaming about the accident again.

Mom was behind the wheel—dark brunette hair plastered to her sandy skin, jade eyes staring blankly at the dark stretch of highway ahead. Beside her, Dad was fast asleep. His blonde hair stuck up at funny angles, his skin flushed coral and turning red where his head leaned against the vibrating window glass.

In the back seat, the kid version of Shawn had his nose buried in a book. Cerulean eyes darted back and forth across the pages beneath a mop of shaggy, unkempt blonde hair.

Man, I look just like Dad.

A second later, young Shawn caught sight of the deep ravine yawning beside the road. The car swerved violently to the right—a sharp, sickening jerk that jolted Dad straight into wakefulness. Metal screeched as they crashed through the guardrail. Then, weightlessness. They sailed into the night air before slamming hard into the earth below, spraying shattered glass in a blinding shower.

The kid screamed as Dad was blasted straight through the destroyed windshield. The car rolled three, maybe four times—a brutal, metal-crunching tumble—before finally skidding to a halt. Right as the dust settled, the kid lost consciousness.

Now the memory darkened, melting into a haze. Shawn could see shadowy shapes moving through the dark, hear muffled, panicked voices. When the dream refocused, a thick fog was rolling through the night, sliced apart by the blaring red lights and wailing sirens of emergency vehicles. Dad was lying on the ground, burning.

Help was there… but too late, like always with Justus. Firefighters were already using the Jaws of Life to pry open the crushed frame and pull the kid out. Somewhere through the chaotic noise, a voice shouted that Dad was dead.

Except he wasn’t. I saw Dad… years later. He was Stassia’s prisoner. How in the world did Stassia pull that one off?

Suddenly, the dream shifted. The scene blurred, spinning out of focus with a heavy rush of air before snapping back into a crisp, horrifying reality. Shawn jerked his head toward the tree line at the sound of hushed voices. Leaving the wreck behind, he made a beeline into the dark forest… and there she stood.

Stassia was watching the firefighters, encased head to toe in her usual crimson armor. Plated metal layered heavily around her waist, with red buffers hanging low over her hips and thighs. Thin, vertical chainmail flaps dangled down the front, while grooved chest armor and reinforced metallic padding protected her shoulders. Her flat helmet completely obscured her face, save for the narrow, dark eye slit. A quiver of translucent bolts was slung over her back, and clamped in her heavy gauntlet was a massive crossbow.

What the actual hell? How have I never seen this part of the dream before? Maybe because I didn’t even know Stassia existed back then.

After a second, Shawn realized Stassia wasn’t watching the wreck—she was watching him. The kid version of him. Shawn turned back to face his younger self, his mind completely blown.

I was awake for this?!

Stassia raised a gauntleted hand and pointed a single finger at the boy, her lips murmuring a low spell. Immediately, the kid’s eyes rolled to the back of his head, blank and unseeing.

So that’s why my memory’s always been a total blank. Why did I give that psycho bitch permission to erase it?

Shawn whipped around to glare at Stassia. “I saw something else, didn’t I?”

A slow, cruel smile curled beneath her visor as swirling red smoke began to pool around her boots. Shawn swore right then that she actually heard him.

By the time Shawn rushed back to the clearing, the paramedics were loading Mom into the back of an ambulance. Her face was deathly pale, her wide eyes locked onto the dark line of trees. “You need to get Shawn out of here,” she pleaded, her voice trembling. “It’s not safe.”

“That’s on you, ma’am,” an officer snapped gruffly, scribbling on a notepad. “What, did you fall asleep at the wheel?”

Mom ignored him entirely. “I’m telling you, someone is after him!”

The officer just scoffed and motioned to the EMTs. “Get her out of here.”

“No, you have to listen to me!” Mom screamed, her hands desperately gripping the edge of the doors as they began to swing shut. “She’s here, I know it! She—”

Crack.

The dream shattered. The scene broke apart into jagged shards like someone had thrown a rock through a stained-glass window, falling away until Shawn was left standing in complete, pitch-black nothingness.

No... not nothing.

Shawn crouched down, letting his hand sink into a bed of fine, coarse powder. He scooped up a handful of sand. It was too dark to see the color, but he didn’t need light to know what it was. This place was familiar—and not just because Kotu had dragged Evie and him here the first time they stepped foot in Aletheia. It had been familiar to him even then, long before Kotu ever started torturing him.

The cold sand trickled slowly through Shawn’s fingers as he stood back up, the awful realization washing over him.

I didn’t see what was right in front of my face.

After the accident… while I was lying in that coma… I saw Thanatos.