Can't Look Back (War for Dominance Book 1) Read Free Page A

people in costumes. The two scary ones had left by the door, but the third one...the midget...had left through the mirror? He must have imagined that after hitting his head on the floor. He must have imagined the whole thing. Maybe someone had put something in his drink the night before. Maybe...he didn’t know what, but it couldn’t have happened the way he remembered it.
    The knocking on the door stopped as he stood up and stretched. The mirror on the dresser looked normal, and he chuckled. People don’t travel through mirrors. That was just in books and movies. He laughed at himself. He must have a concussion or something. He froze as he saw the reflection in the mirror. It looked like there was something on the bed. He turned. The cheap mirror sat in a pile of broken glass where the devil smashed it. Had it happened then, after all?
    Wait, he thought; I put a coin in the pocket of my pants. Dreading what he would find, he picked up his pants from where he had thrown them. His hand shaking, he reached into the right front pocket. Nothing. He breathed a sigh of relief. He smiled at his gullibility as he threw the pants back onto the floor. They clinked with a metallic sound when they hit. He had forgotten to look in the other pocket.
    He stared for several seconds at the pants lying on the floor, not sure if he wanted to know. Finally he decided that he had to know, whether he wanted to or not. With shaking hands, he picked up the pants. The coins in the other front pocket jingled. He reached in and grabbed the coins in a fist and pulled his hand back out. He could tell there were at least three coins, but he couldn’t tell if any were different. Finally deciding they all felt normal, he opened his hand. A quarter, a nickel...and an indecipherable gold coin.
    He hadn’t dreamed it.
    So if it had really happened, what should he do about it? Report it to the police? Like the midget said, there’s no way anyone would believe him. “Really, officer, I was attacked by an orc and a devil at a fantasy convention.” If he was lucky, they would only think he was joking; if they thought he was serious, they’d take him away as crazy. That was out.
    The safest thing he could do would be to forget about it. He had just turned 21; he could head out to some of the party suites, have a drink or three and forget the whole thing happened. 
    But then the midget would get away. The orc and the devil were obviously looking for a criminal; they would never know that their midget friend was the person they were looking for. He had to tell them.
    But how? When the first two left, it sounded like they were going back to wherever they were from. He had no idea where that was, or how to find them. Before he passed out, he thought he saw the midget go through the mirror. That couldn’t have happened...but then again, none of this made any sense.
    Before the midget went through the mirror, he had looked to see if John was watching. When he saw that John wasn’t, he had done something to it and then had gone through it. John hadn’t been watching him directly; however, John was watching in the reflection of the picture on the opposite wall. He had seen everything that the midget had done. There were three buttons on the bottom of the mirror; he had pushed them from left to right.
    John went to the mirror. Push three buttons and then go through the mirror? That couldn’t be right, could it? Before he could change his mind, he pushed the buttons like the midget had done. He reached out toward the mirror with a finger and tentatively poked it. His finger bent backward from the hard surface.
    He sat down on the bed and looked at the mirror. Something was wrong. Well, lots of things were wrong, if he were being honest with himself. He probably had a concussion and was delusional. That was the most likely excuse, with alcohol and/or drug poisoning running a close second. If the events had really happened, and he wasn’t delusional, then the