Living Nightmare

by Shannon K. Butcher

Page 2

 

  They’d found her.

  Panic gripped her by the neck and choked the air from her lungs.

  How had they found her? She’d been so careful to drive only during the day, when they were all asleep and couldn’t read her thoughts. And tonight none of them had tried to pry from her where she’d gone when she left the safety of Dabyr. They couldn’t know where she was.

  Tentatively, Nika sent her mind out, searching for any nearby Synestryn. Their alien thoughts and uncontrolled hunger would be easy to find among the humans nearby. Their thoughts were bleak, festering spots of darkness among the bright, clear human thought patterns.

  If there was only one Synestryn and it wasn’t too strong, she could probably control its mind long enough to kill it with the shovel. If she was lucky.

  Her body fell away as she went seeking into the night, searching for the source of that eerie cry of hunger. She found one Synestryn slinking through the darkness less than a quarter mile away. It was small—the size of a large dog—and it was weak with hunger. That hunger gave her the edge.

  She could take it.

  Nika had just begun to whisper into its mind to come her way when she felt another Synestryn nearby. Then another. There were three, then four, then seven. They were closing in. They smelled blood. Her blood.

  Before they could trap her within them, Nika pulled back into her own mind and scanned her body for signs of blood. There was a smear on the leg of her jeans; muddy, but definitely blood.

  She looked at her hands. Sure enough, the shovel had scraped off several layers of skin until she bled. The Synestryn smelled it and were moving in to feast.

  The car was parked outside the metal fence several hundred yards away. As cold and weak as her legs were, she wasn’t sure she was going to make it to the car before they made it to her, but she had to try. She couldn’t let them get her blood. Thanks to Madoc’s recent killing spree, she was just now regaining the pieces of herself that had been taken the night her family was attacked. She’d spent almost nine years living inside a nightmare, unable to tell what was real and what wasn’t, and she refused to go back to that hell.

  She’d rather die than let them have her mind again.

  Nika grabbed the shovel, knowing it was the only weapon she had to hold them at bay, and sprinted for the fence.

  Behind her a loud chorus of rasping howls rose up into the night as the Synestryn closed in.

  Madoc found the stolen Volkswagen Bug outside a cemetery, but Nika was not inside the car as he’d hoped. Intense pressure rolled through him in a painful wave, growing until he was sure it would tear him apart. He sucked in huge gulps of frigid air, but it did little good.

  He needed to be killing or fucking—bleeding away some of the pressure—not chasing after a girl who was too crazy to not go running off alone in the dark.

  Clearly, what he wanted had no bearing on reality. Madoc fought the pain back with a snarl, slammed his truck to a stop, rammed the gearshift into park, and left the engine running.

  One way or another, this wasn’t going to take long. If she wasn’t nearby, then he’d call Joseph and tell him to send someone else to search for her. If she was, he was going to shove her in the Bug and follow her ass all the way back to Dabyr, where she belonged. No more joyrides. No more scaring the shit out of him. She was grounded.

  But first he had to find her.

  He leaped the fence and landed with a thud as his heavy boots hit the frozen ground. The wind had picked up, tugging the front of his leather jacket open.

  If Nika was out here in this wind, she was going to be freezing her bony ass off. Not that he cared. Served her right for leaving home, where she was safe and warm.

  They want to touch me. I don’t like it, Madoc. It hurts when other men touch me.

  She’d begged him to take her with him last time he was home, to get her away from the male Theronai who came from the four corners of the world to see if she could channel their power and save their lives. That had been seven months ago, when he’d gone home in a moment of weakness, needing to see her again. Unfortunately, watching her flinch away from those men—seeing pain pinch her features—was more than Madoc could stand. He’d hit the road and hadn’t been back since.

  Best decision he’d ever made. Being on his own was safest for everyone. Besides, he had plenty of hookers to keep him company. That and a pile of nasties to kill was all he needed.

  A high-pitched, feminine cry ripped through the cold night air. Fear shimmered inside the noise, and with it came instant recognition. That was Nika’s voice. He’d heard her cry out in fear too many times not to recognize it.

  Madoc spun around toward the sound, releasing his sword from its sheath with an almost inaudible hiss of steel on steel. He raced over the ground, letting free the rage that was bubbling barely below the surface.

  Whatever or whoever had made her afraid was going to die.

  He cleared the top of a rise, saw Nika, and nearly came to a dead stop. Half a dozen sgath surrounded her. Her back was against a thick tree. Moonlight shone off her stark white hair, and she wielded a shovel like some kind of war club, batting at the Synestryn that dared to inch closer. Her blue eyes were wide with fear—a familiar sight—but the snarl of rage twisting her mouth was new and completely startling.

  She swung the shovel, hitting one of the sgath in the head. There wasn’t enough force behind the blow to do any good, and it bounced off, shaking her entire body. She looked unhurt, but that wasn’t going to last for long if he didn’t step up and take over.

  Madoc closed the distance, lifted his blade, and let out a battle cry.

  Immediately, six pairs of glowing green eyes turned toward him. A smile stretched his mouth. Playtime had finally come.

  Chapter 2

  Carmen lifted her sword to block Joseph’s swing. Their wooden practice swords clacked together as the hilts locked, and the next thing she knew, a sharp pain radiated from her ribs where he’d poked her with his finger. Hard.

  “You can’t open yourself up for attack like that,” lectured Joseph. His dark hair had been cut short again, showing off more gray at his temples than she remembered. His shoulders seemed to bow as if he was carrying some kind of weight around that no one could see. Maybe he was. As leader of the Theronai, the man probably had a lot on his plate.

  Yet he still found the time to train with her nearly every day. No one had ever taken that kind of time with her before. Not the uncle who took her in when her parents died, and sure as hell not her own father. But things were different since the Sentinels had taken her in. The ancient blood running in her veins allowed her to become a Gerai—a human who aided the Sentinels in their war—but that didn’t mean they had to put a roof over her head or pay for her education. They could have left her to make her own way, but thanks to Thomas—a Theronai who had sacrificed his life to save another—she now had a home at Dabyr. And a future.

  She found herself craving the time she spent with Joseph, soaking up everything he had to teach her. She desperately wanted to make him proud, though she knew she was a long way off from that kind of miracle.

  “You were going to chop my head off,” she argued. “What did you want me to do?”

  “Ducking would have worked. Not being in the way of my sword when it comes at you is always a good option. ”

  Carmen shoved herself away from him in frustration and stepped to the far edge of the practice mat. She was panting, sweating like crazy, and feeling like she was about to fall over. Joseph wasn’t even winded.

  He’d told her several times that she was going to regret asking him to train her, and now she was beginning to believe him. Not that she could ever let him know. He’d be way too smug and self-satisfied and she’d have to kill him for real then.

  She couldn’t give up learning to fight. There were too many evil things in the world—things that stole people from their loved ones. Someone needed
to kill them, and even though she was only one puny human, she intended to be the deadliest puny human the Synestryn had ever seen.

  But the training wasn’t going as fast as she’d hoped. She needed to be out there, fighting the good fight. Right now. Frustration weighed down on her, making her anxious and impatient. “This is pointless. It’s not like the things I’ll be fighting use swords, anyway. Teeth and claws, sure, but not swords. ”

  The worry lines around his mouth deepened with his frown for a second before his expression went back to the neutral, patient mask he always wore while teaching her. “It’s good for your reflexes, builds your strength, and even if the things you fight don’t use a sword, you need to. It’s the best weapon for the job, next to magical firepower. Besides, I’m in charge of what you learn. You don’t like it, you can always walk away. ”

  “Nice try. No thanks. ”

  Joseph shrugged. “Your call. Just like it’s your call when you let me read Thomas’s note. ”

  Thomas. Just the mention of his name made her insides shrivel a little with sadness. He’d been good to her when no one else seemed to care whether she even existed. She’d known him for only a few hours, but those hours had changed her life. Sometimes, she thought she’d fallen in love with him.

  “I’m not ready,” she told Joseph.

  “It’s been months since his death. ”

  Months since he’d handed her a note she’d been unable to read. It was his death wish—his dying wish—and she’d promised Thomas she’d let Joseph read it first.

  Carmen wasn’t ready for that. What if it was full of pity for the slutty teenager who’d come on to a man way too old for her? Way too good for her? She’d thrown herself at Thomas, but he hadn’t taken the offer. He’d treated her with respect—something no other man had ever done before him. What if that had all been an act and the note said not to trust the whacko kid who would slide her tits over anything with a penis? What if it said to keep her away from other teens so her trampy ways didn’t rub off on the young, impressionable girls?

  Not that she’d done anything like that. She’d kept her vow to Thomas and hadn’t even thought about a man in a sexual way since coming here. Not one of them could hold a candle to Thomas, anyway. Why bother?

  She’d come so close to opening his note several times without letting Joseph read it, but her promise to Thomas kept her from breaking down. Even though he was dead and no one but her would ever know, she felt she owed him enough to respect his wishes.

  “I know how long it’s been,” she said. “I’m not ready. ” Even as she said the words, she knew she had to stop delaying the inevitable. She needed to grow a backbone.

  Joseph sighed and gave her a silent nod. “Are you done for the day? You look like you’re about to fall over. ”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Grandpa?” He didn’t look that old—maybe mid-thirties—and by his race’s standards, he was still in his prime, but even so, he’d been acting like a tired old man lately, and it was time she snapped him out of it.

  The faintest hint of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. It was good to see. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile. “Grandpa?”