“I can’t imagine what you two are doing in here,” he said, using the wheelchair’s controls to position himself to see them better.
“Daniel,” said Eric by way of greeting.
“Hiding from you,” Ryan said. “How did you know we were here?”
Rolling toward them, his brother replied, “I was playing with my drone just now and the camera picked up the cars out front.”
Ryan silently cursed. He hadn’t planned on using the garage but now they would need to. That might require more cleaning out depending on what was in there. He wasn’t even sure they had working garage door openers. Part of him wanted to tell Daniel the truth, but so far only Jack knew. No one else had been discussed and Ryan hadn’t raised the possibility. It might be better, really, since Daniel could keep their parents and anyone else from prying while they were gone. But how do you tell your younger brother that you are being magically summoned to other worlds full of magic and fantastic creatures? Having been an avid Dungeons and Dragons and Tolkien fan, Daniel would have loved it and been supremely jealous. But he also wouldn’t have believed a word of it and thought Ryan was making fun of him.
“What are you doing in here?” Daniel persisted.
“Checking out the place,” said Eric, and Ryan realized his friend was a better liar and should do the talking. “The press has been a pain, so I was thinking to move. Ryan suggested here.”
“Not seriously though,” said Ryan, not sure he liked that lie. Daniel would invite himself too often. “Just showing him around. The media will die down.”
Daniel looked skeptical. “Yeah, maybe. Did you see that report today of someone being healed in Argentina somewhere? With new stories of weird shit cropping up all the times now, you guys and the Stonehenge thing should be forgotten before long. All you did was vanish for three weeks without explanation.” He paused. “Still waiting for you to tell me what really happened.”
Eric and Ryan exchanged a look, and on a sudden instinct, Ryan told the truth as if he was lying. “Someone summoned us to another world for a quest to save the planet from a horde of dragons. I fought off some ogres, too.”
“Me, too,” added Eric, sounding flippant. “Matt and Anna tagged along but were on so much help. It was really us.”
“Yeah, and then I killed this dragon. It was freakin’ huge. Breathing fire and everything, but my armor was fireproof.”
“Well, mostly fireproof,” Eric corrected with a grin.
“Yeah. It doesn’t work so well against dragon fire, just other kinds. And ‘almost’ only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”
Daniel smirked. “Did you get to deflower a virgin while you were at it?”
Ryan pretended to consider. “Come to think of it, no.”
“I think we got screwed,” Eric suggested.
Daniel’s shrewd eyes appraised them. “You know something? Reports of weird shit going on around the world started right about the time you guys went missing. You probably missed a few of them, and it took a while for them to really start catching on in the news, like about two weeks, which was a couple weeks ago. Be straight with me. What the fuck happened out there?”
Eric opened his mouth, but Ryan knew he was going to joke and adopted a more serious tone. “Seriously, we don’t know. It surprised us when everyone said we had been gone three weeks.”
The martial artist added, “That did explain why the SUV we’d driven there was gone. We were wondering where the hell it went because we would’ve thought we’d hear someone driving off with it.”
Daniel rolled closer on the hardwood floor. “So, are you suggesting it was some sort of time dilation shit? I mean, that only happens in sci-fi.”
“Yeah, but all this other stuff is supposedly happening in the real world,” said Ryan, “so maybe we were just the first of these incidents.” He looked at Eric because he hadn’t thought of this before, but now was no time for discussing it. Had they been the first?
“Do you guys feel any different after?”
They exchanged a look and shrugged. “Like what?”
“I don’t know, like the ability to do magic or heal people like some are saying? I assume you would tell me that at least.”
“Come on, man,” started Ryan, “Of course, I would tell you if that was going on. Besides, the first thing I would do if I could heal people would be get you out of that chair I put you in.”
Daniel frowned. “What makes you think I want out of this chair?”
That brought Ryan up short. He had never thought of that. He had just assumed Daniel wanted to be healed, which he wanted Anna to do the moment she was able. This was the first time he’d broached the subject because there hadn’t been a way to do so before without being weird about it.
“Why would you not want to?” he asked. “Don’t you want to walk again? Run? Go swimming?”
“Yeah, sure, those are all fine. Why not? Ryan, just because people are talking about being healed lately doesn’t mean it’s not a bunch of bullshit. I accepted being in this chair for the rest of my life a long time ago. Don’t get your hopes up about this crap. That’s all it is.”
“Yeah, okay. I didn’t mean it like that. I just thought that if you had the chance, you would take it.” He hesitated to ask. “Would you?”
Daniel
