Page 29 of Masked Intentions in Pelican Point
“You think this makes you chosen?” Allison steps forward, voice sharp with contempt. “It makes you pathetic.”
“It doesn't matter what's real!” Dreschner snarls, dropping his fake mystical voice entirely. “What matters is what people believe. And they'll believe I have power over this mask and that Ryan stole it from its rightful guardian. My word against his, with all this as evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” I laugh harshly. “That you're a carnival magician with delusions of grandeur? Every lab in the world will identify your chemicals. Every audio expert will recognize those recordings.”
His facade crumbles completely. The theatrical gestures vanish, leaving only a sweating, desperate man clutching stolen property. “You don't understand. I need this. Ryan destroyed my reputation, my career. This mask was supposed to be my redemption.”
The pathetic admission hangs in the air. This isn't a mystical confrontation anymore—it's the last stand of a failed academic who chose fraud over facing his limitations.
He lunges. Allison intercepts, catching his wrist. He fights like a rabid animal, high on his own concoction. The cold mist burns our lungs, dizzying us, but she won’t let go. “Nolan!” she snaps, her voice the one tether I need. The sound of my name in her mouth cuts through the haze sharper than any command I ever obeyed in combat.
I hurl myself into him from the side, the impact jarring bone to bone as we slam into the wall. His breath bursts out in a grunt, and I wrench his arm behind his back with a savage twist. The mask slips from his grip, clattering across the stone with a metallic ring that echoes like a gunshot. The acrid residue burns my eyes and scalds the back of my throat. Allison reacts in a blur, boot connecting with the mask to send it skidding across the floor out of reach.
She crashes down with me, pinning Dreschner beneath both our weight. He thrashes, nails clawing, teeth bared, but she slams his wrist to the ground with practiced brutality. Our bodies move in perfect synchrony, unspoken understanding guiding every strike and counter—raw, desperate, and intimate, as if we’ve rehearsed this dance a thousand times. The adrenaline is blistering, the danger immediate, yet beneath it pulses a fierce awareness: her shoulder pressed against mine, her breath hot and ragged in my ear, our hearts pounding together in a rhythm that refuses to break.
For long seconds the world narrows to thrashing limbs, the crack of fists meeting flesh, blood slicking our knuckles, and the choking sting of chemicals burning our throats. My pulse hammers in my ears, every muscle locked in the brutal rhythm of survival. Dreschner jerks and claws, but his strength gutters out beneath our combined weight. At last the fight leaks from him in ragged gasps, leaving behind a hollow shell of a man, his bravado shattered, his body shackled to the lies he spun until even he can no longer believe them.
Security floods the room, grabbing hold and yanking him upright. He shrieks about spirits, his words warped by the tiny speaker still crackling against his collar, but the sound has lost its power. Faces around us are no longer fearful, only grim with disgust. The illusion has dissolved, leaving nothing but a desperate fraud exposed under the harsh light of truth.
The mask lies between us, gleaming terrible and beautiful. Allison studies it, then glances at me. Her eyes meet mine, fierce and steady, and in that look is the promise that neither of us is alone in this. “We’ll prove the truth.”
“We already have.”
Later, on the balcony, moonlight silvering her hair, she leans against the rail. The adrenaline drains from both of us, leaving only salt air and exhaustion. For a long moment neither of us speaks. The silence hums with everything we felt in the chase—the fear of losing, the fear of losing each other.
“You saved me back there,” I say quietly.
She shakes her head. “We saved each other. That’s the only way this works.”
I step closer until our shoulders brush. The contact is subtle, but it sparks through me like fire catching dry tinder. I reach for her hand. She lets me take it, fingers threading with mine, warm and strong. For once, neither of us pulls away.
The horizon pales with the first hint of dawn. My pulse hammers with something more certain than adrenaline. I draw a steady breath, the night settling around us. “We stand in this together.”
Her fingers tighten around mine, answer enough. She tilts her face toward me, her eyes soft despite the steel still in her voice. “Side by side.”
Her words settle deep, but I see the flicker of vulnerability in her eyes, the part she guards from everyone else. I lift our joined hands and press my lips to her knuckles, tasting salt from the night air and the faint tang of sweat and gunpowder. She doesn’t pull away. Instead she leans against me, shoulder to shoulder, as if the storm that just tore through Saltmoor has fused us together.
For a moment we simply stand there, watching the horizon bleed into rose and gold. My heart pounds, not with the rush of combat but with the weight of something harder to admit—I want her, not just tonight, not just for missions and danger, but for every dawn after this. When she finally tips her face toward mine, her expression unguarded, the air between us hums with possibility.
“Side by side,” I echo, softer now, before I kiss her—slow, deliberate, sealing the promise with more than words.
CHAPTER 12
ALLISON
The house feels different once Dreschner is gone. The air no longer pulses with false menace, only with the murmur of shaken staff and the heavy boots of the security team dragging Dreschner away. I force myself to breathe steadily, because if I let my adrenaline crash now, I’ll fold.
Ryan and Candace push through the line of guards, pale but determined. Ryan doesn’t waste time. “Show me the mask,” he says, voice rough. His reputation hangs in the balance, and he knows it.
I motion for one of the techs to bring over the evidence case. We've quarantined the mask inside a sealed container, away from curious fingers. When I snap on gloves and switch on the portable UV lamp, a sickly glow crawls across the surface. Resin smears. Trace particles of pollen are caught in the grooves. Even faint fingerprints where Dreschner’s cut palm stained the gold.
“Dreschner is a fraud,” I say, though my voice wavers. But beneath his clumsy theatrics, something else stirred. The temperature readings show drops no coolant could explain. The audio logs capture voices never loaded onto his playback device. Dreschner tried to fake a haunting, but in using an authentic artifact, he awakened something real.
Nolan stands beside me, a steadying presence at my shoulder. “Which means every claim he made collapses under analysis,” he adds. “Forensics will confirm it.”
Candace exhales sharply, relief loosening her posture. Ryan just nods, jaw tight but eyes burning with gratitude. “Then you’ve not only stopped him,” he says quietly. “You’ve protected all of us.”
I meet Nolan’s eyes, and the steadiness there is all the answer I need.
