Praetorian Series [3] A Hunter and His Legion (52 page)

Only one way to find out
though.

I grunted reluctantly and once again debated whether to turn bac
k or not, but instead of deciding I let my actions do my thinking for me.  I reached out with both hands and pushed both doors wide open, and stepped through like a cowboy entering a saloon.

If only I felt as confident as the swagger suggested.

***

Stopping
just past the threshold, I felt my heart drop into my stomach.

Not because I was feeling the orb’s draw
or the crushing pressure from all that I was responsible for, but because I had just stepped into a room I’d stepped into a thousand times before.  It was a space more familiar to me than anywhere in Ancient Rome, but I hated it just the same.

The space was large and open
, with a series of low walls spread throughout like a basic maze.  To my right were a series of low couches and in front of me, a small podium, but the most prominent feature here were the low walls that created sectionalized rooms with booths, tables, and chairs arranged to seat people in an efficient manner.  Narrow pathways connected these small sections, but only one of the four contained a large, U-shaped bar that dominated its center along with an innumerable number of bottles filled with alcohol.

Finally, scattered along the walls, ceiling, and pretty much everywhere else where stupid knickknacks could be crammed, were decorations and items that gave the entire room a
distinct Western/Cowboy theme.  Large pictures of desert locations or Native Americans, statues of desert creatures, and many other stupid things were everywhere, and a familiar resentment and sense of loathing swelled in my heart.

“Holy shit,” I said
, still not believing my eyes.  “Is this my…”

“
Do not say the name, Jacob,” a voice that was becoming familiar said from beside me.

I turned to see the wizard Merlin standing
there, still leaning heavily on his staff. 

“Why not?”
  I asked.

He turned to meet my eye.  “Don’t give them the free advertisement.”

I blinked twice.  “What?”

Merlin
smiled.  “A jest, Jacob, little more.”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Right.
  Sure.”

I looked out over the restaurant again, memories I’d long since tried to forget flooding back into my mind
as I stood there.  The day after I’d turned sixteen, I’d applied for a part-time job at this place, after one of my best buddies had already been employed here for a few months.  The two of us had thought it would be so much fun spending our time working part time as bus boys.

Boy
had we been wrong.

I’d spent
two years here in an oppressive and tyrannical environment, with dictatorial managers and bitchy waitresses who hated the two of us because even though we screwed around and had fun together, we still managed to be the two best damn bus boys in the joint.  It was a thankless job, and the two of us had hated it within months, but had stayed on until we went off to college, probably because we thought we were sticking it to them somehow.  I suppose the joke had been on us, however, because we’d actually done the restaurant a huge favor. 

One of the
managers even pleaded for us to stay when we had later quit together.

I honestly hadn’t thought much about this place in recent time, even before arriving in
Ancient Rome.  A decade had elapsed between when I’d quit and when I’d ended up here, and between going to college, spending some time in grad school, and fighting in a bloody and devastating world war, I’d pretty much forgotten everything about my life from those happier years.  Kids never really understood just how good life was until they finally grew up, and my friend and I had thought the two of us so damn clever, but we’d grown jaded over our silly, part time jobs, never really appreciating the simplicity of it all.

What I would give to go back to those times
again.

“So am I dead?”  I asked.
  “Because if I am, please tell me this isn’t Heaven.”

“Far from it,” Merlin answered.

“Am I hallucinating?

“Not in the slightest.”

“Dreaming?”

“Not quite.”

“Being manipulated?”

“Aren’t you always, Jacob?”

I coughed out a laugh, and raised a hand to encompass the restaurant before me.

“Good God, I spent so much time here in high school,” I said, turning to offer Merlin a small smile, “but n
ot as much as I was supposed to, you know.  I was always trying to get out of work whenever I could.”

Merlin nodded.  “The youth often shirk their responsibilities.  Quite normal, I think.”

I returned the nod appreciatively, turning back to the restaurant.  “In retrospect, I think I loved working here.  It had helped that my best friend worked here too, but honestly, the managers only rarely put us on the schedule at the same time together.  They always tried to keep us apart so that they kept their two best bussers spread out as much as possible.  We despised them for it, and did everything we could to get back at them.”

“In what ways
?”

I shrugged.  “Simple things, really.  Only filling the peanut bins half full at the end of the night, loading the bathroom soap dispensers
backward, stealing unused silverware off tables and then using them for our end of the night quota.  You see, everyone always had to roll thirty sets of silverware before they could go home after their shift: a knife and fork within a cloth napkin.  We fucking hated doing it, so we’d just take unused ones off tables as we bussed them, hide them on top of a cabinet in the back, and present them before going home.  We were quite clever, you know.”

“Apparently,” Merlin said with a chuckle.

I laughed at the memory, unable to help myself, but when I looked out over the restaurant again, confusion returned.  Something was out of place.

“What is it?”  Merlin asked
.

“It’s just that I
didn’t get to see this place so empty very often,” I said.  “I rarely worked opening and closing shifts so I always saw this place filled with…”

And then, just like that, there were people everywhere.  Patrons and staff both,
and not just present, but alive and going about their lives or business like this was actual reality.  I looked to the hostess station and…

I recoiled
backward, my heart skipping a beat, almost panicking at what I saw.

Standing there was a teenage girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen
years old.  She had dark hair pulled back into a pair of pig tails, with dark freckles speckling her face.  She had light colored skin and round, puffy cheeks.  She wasn’t overweight, but her face had always been a bit round, which I’d always thought made her look exceptionally cute.

I
risked taking a step toward her, and glanced at her nametag, but I didn’t need to.

“Suzie-Lu?”  I as
ked, looking at the young girl that stood barely five feet tall.

She giggled and looked up at me with bashful eyes.  “How did you know my friends call me that?”  She asked with a sweet, high pitched
voice that brought a grin to my lips.  “It just says Susan on my name tag.”

“Uh… just a good guess, I
suppose.”

“Yeah, I gue
ss!”  She said excitedly.  She looked up at me in a way that made me somewhat uncomfortable, but performed her job flawlessly. “So how many are in your party?”

“Umm…”

But Merlin stepped up and answered for me.  “Two, miss, but I think we’ll sit at the bar.”

“Oh, okay,” she said, perhaps sadly, but then she perked up.  “Well help yourself.  Our
drink specials are on the wall beneath the TVs.”

“Thank you,” Merlin answered as he turned back to me.  “Come, Jacob
. I hear the cinnamon butter here is amazing.”

I was still staring at little Suzie-Lu, the girl I
’d lost my virginity to sometime around what seemed to be now, and wondered why she’d looked at me like that when she was supposed to be teenage-me’s girlfriend.  I didn’t have long to ponder as Merlin grasped my arm with a strong hand that belied his age, and I stumbled after him, Suzie-Lu watching us go.  Reluctantly, I tore my eyes off of her to see where I was going, not that I needed eyes to know my way around. 

I could walk
around this restaurant blindfolded.

I glanced to my right and noticed the cook’s station behind a display case of meats.  Those faces were certainly familiar
, but I hadn’t interacted with them much, so I couldn’t place their names.  They’d been druggies and real losers and they hadn’t thought much better of me either.

We took the first left and then a quick right and found ourselves in the bar section of the restaurant.
  As we walked, I caught sight of another hostess, a six foot tall stunning blond, who in some ways now reminded me of Agrippina, and I almost looked away out of sheer motor reflex.  I forget her name, but she’d been eighteen when I’d started at sixteen, and had been an aspiring model, and damn, she’d had the potential.  Hell, even now I thought she had potential.  The two of us had flirted occasionally, but I hadn’t been much of a playboy back then – not that I’d ever been much of one – and had often been too nervous to even look at her.

I hadn’t thought myself
a particularly desirable catch as a teenager.  I was young, had acne, and wasn’t nearly as fit as I was today.  In fact, Suzie-Lu had often referred to me as “pleasantly plump.”  I had been tall however, like the blond hostess, and I think she’d simply been jealous that I’d fallen for little, cute Suzie-Lu, instead of a “Victoria’s Secret Angel to be,” as she’d certainly seemed.

I’d fallen out of tou
ch with the blond after I’d quit, much like everybody from this restaurant, and had no idea what she had been up to prior to my arrival in Rome, but I’d never seen her on any of the Victoria’s Secret catwalk shows I’d always tried to catch back home on TV.  I always looked out for her, just in case, hoping to
never
see her because I would have killed myself for missing the chance to date someone who would later become a Victoria’s Secret Angel.

So as Merlin and I walked
toward the bar, I kept my eyes off of her, but surreptitiously sneaked a glance only to find her already looking at me as well.  I smiled awkwardly and she winked back.  Shyness set in again, and I quickly turned away.

I was saved by the bar. 

I took a seat atop a tall stool and leaned my elbows upon the wooden bar, burying my face into my hands as I tried to think of a rational explanation for all of this.  It was all too familiar, but this shit was impossible to believe.

I looked to Merlin accusingly, who stood by an empty stool.  “It was you.”

He smiled smugly at me.  “It was I, what?”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said.  “I know you already know. 
I know it was you who sent Boudicca the vision to help me, and it was you who sent that vision of Agrippina a few days ago.”

He shrugged.  “Guilty.  I wanted to prepare you
as well as I could.”

“And the Druids back on Angle…”

“Friends of mine,” Merlin said quickly as he jumped in place impatiently, glancing over his shoulders frantically.  “Very nice people, but just people.  I asked them a few years ago to send you looking for me when you arrived.

“But how could you eve
n…”

Merlin interrupted m
e, asking, “Where’s the bathroom, Jacob?”

I pointed immediately over his shoulder and toward a back corner of the restaurant.

“Thanks!”  He said, and took off.

I looked at him with wide eyes
.  “Wait you can’t just leave me here!  Where the hell are you going?”

He
paused to look at me but pointed in the other direction.  “Little boy’s room.  Let’s hope your friend put the soap in the right way this time.”

I looked around the restaurant
, hoping to see him.  “He’s here??”

“Try to calm down, Jacob. 
Relax.  Order yourself a drink.”

He rushed off
toward the bathroom, looking completely out of place in his disproportionately large red robes and pointy hat.  I stared at him, still unable to understand any of this.  Who was this guy?  Really?  Was he the elder sage character in the “hero’s quest” story arc, the one put in the story for no other reason than to provide integral plot details and exposition about something too confusing for the writer to explain naturally?

What a lame plot device.

Or was he really just the Druid I was looking for all along?

I was never going to get away with this when…

“What can I get you, handsome?”

Like everything else in this restaurant, the voice was very familiar.  Slowly, I
lowered my hands and turned to the bartender, but when I saw her, my jaw nearly hit the floor.