Stillbringer (Dreamwalker Chronicles Book 1)

by Zile Elliven

  “And leave you here to frolic with monsters and such? Not going to happen. What if Hester comes back for you?” His voice squeaked indignantly, making him seem much less like a teenage boy and more like the child Aeyli had once known.

  “Like she wants to tangle with me again. At best we’ll end up in a stalemate.” Unless Hester hit her with another rock. Aeyli rubbed her sore head and scowled. “Besides, you know where to go to find help, I don’t. And with this near-concussion, I’d be dead weight slowing you down.”

  “The Chapter House is over an hour away! Any help I bring will come too late.”

  Clearly Sterling was going to be a pain in the butt about being sent to safety. She abandoned her first attempt and moved on to the next. “What about the rest of the family? You said not everyone was in Hester’s pocket, where are they?”

  “The main house has a dozen or so people tucked away in the panic room for their own protection. It’s what I was coming here to tell Mother—er—Hester. It was my job to oversee their safety if we came under attack,” he said bitterly. “In hindsight, the people in there were all the ones who were less than enthusiastic about what has been going on here lately.”

  “How was Hester able to keep them from running to the guardians for help? How did she hide this corruption from you all?”

  He sucked in a hissing breath of air through his teeth and shifted his weight. At first Aeyli though he wasn’t going to answer. Then he let out the breath, and it was like the floodgates had opened. “I don’t know how much you remember from before you were locked up, but family loyalty has been shoved down our throats since I can remember. Things would have had to have been terrible for anyone to consider going outside for help. Until the past month or so, everything ran same as usual, with the exception of random temper flares from normally calm people. We all attributed it to you, to be honest. We just assumed they got too close to your building. Everyone was strictly warned to keep away from it. Of course, random mood swings are also a side effect of prolonged demon exposure, but none of us even considered it as a possibility.

  “Clearly, some people in our family knew exactly what was going on. Astin is an obvious choice for demon bitch of the month—he has been into some really sketchy portal magic lately. And the magic Stella used to get us away from your champion was probably demon magic as well. Gods, how could I have been so blind?” He threw back his head and shouted up at the stars.

  “Flagellating yourself isn’t going to help anyone right now!” Aeyli tugged at his sleeve, but he refused to turn toward her. “Sterling. I need you to focus. Can you get our family out of the panic room and to safety?” If she could convince him he was needed, she might be able to get away after all.

  Slowly, heavily, he tilted his head back down.

  In the darkness, she couldn’t tell if he was looking at her, but she chose to assume she had attention. She might not be able to fix his issues right now, but she could give him something else to focus on and accomplish her goal at the same time. “They need you, Ster.”

  Silence stretched between them, but she could almost hear her brother thinking.

  Sterling snapped his fingers, startling Aeyli. “With everything that is going on, there is a good chance no one is even thinking about the panic room.” He began to pace, a dark shadow weaving in and out of the underbrush before her. While he moved, his words came out faster, as he gained confidence in himself. “I should be able to get them out, but you can’t go back in there. If someone recognizes you they’ll either freak out or try to capture you, and that’s not going to help anyone.”

  Now he was doing her work for her. “If I hide here I should be safe enough until you return.” Aeyli crossed her fingers behind her back, though it wasn’t exactly a lie—she probably would be safe here. If she stayed, that is.

  “Good. Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll meet you back here.” Aeyli could hear the relief in his voice. She imagined he was probably congratulating himself on keeping her out of harm’s way.

  The second she could no longer hear her brother, she stumbled and thrashed back the way they came. Her aunt Stella was a beacon of evil flashing against her senses. If she couldn’t be of any help to Fourteen during a fight, perhaps she could go where she would be needed. Adelle had said some guy named Marshall would need her help fighting Sekt, so that’s where she was going to go.

  It took longer than she liked to fight her way back through the forest. Snow had drifted through the thin defenses of the bare branches overhead and was making it impossible to walk. After falling for the third time, she resorted to crawling across the cold forest floor. She was fortunate Adelle had helped her heal herself—if she’d had to do this with a recently dislocated shoulder and a sprained ankle, she would have quit right then and there. She was cold, tired, and terrified. And starving—she would cheerfully maim someone for a taco right now.

  Aeyli was one hundred percent done with this day. All she wanted was to be somewhere warm while she curled around a healthy and happy Fourteen. Everyone else could just fall straight down a well, for all she cared.

  But Fourteen wasn’t safe, and her brother was only slightly less unsafe. She was going to have to lady up and get this over with before she could have her well-earned and hopefully taco-laden snuggle.

  By the time she made it to the edge of the forest closest to where she could feel the demon, her bones ached with cold, and her fingers were completely numb. She shuddered to think about how she would feel if Fourteen hadn’t thought to bring her more clothes.

  She was about to take a short rest, but when she emerged from the forest, she saw a young man lying prone at the feet of her aunt. In the firelight, she could see his features twisted in agony as something bright tried to force its way into his body.

  Time slowed for her as she raced toward the young man. Snowflakes pelted her cheeks and clung to her eyelashes. The wind shifted, and a wave of heat from a nearby fire melted them away.

  Three feet from her destination, her still-tender ankle folded under her, and she slipped, skidding until she landed on top of the man. She braced herself on his chest with one hand and put another hand up to push Stella and Sekt away. The man’s hand shot up to wrap around her wrist, and she was plunged into chaos.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Fourteen

  Turn. Dodge. Strike. Twist. Kick.

  Fourteen had never been more in his element. Side by side with Jack and Adelle, he felt free, powerful, and in complete control of himself. If he could only get to Aeyli and get her out of here . . . well, he was getting to that part.

  “On your six!” A black, formless shape had stolen up behind Adelle. It crept over her shield, flesh sizzling as it made contact. In front of her was an older man, roiling with the white, cancerous rot of a nightmare, trying to overwhelm her shield with raw magic. Angry white and yellow lightning burned at her shield, trapping her against the black sludge at her back.

  Both guardians had stopped using their shields offensively once the sheer numbers against them forced them to begin conserving magic. Both had adopted a fighting style more akin to Fourteen’s—it took more finesse, but it had combined the three into a lethal fighting unit.

  Adelle’s whip lashed out at the man, grabbed him by the neck, and snatched him off his feet. She ducked and rolled under him, using the momentum to throw him into the demon behind her. It swallowed the man whole without slowing down.

  “Keep them off our backs!” Adelle shouted to Fourteen.

  As he swung his weapon in a wide arc, a trail of rainbow fire drove back a crowd of nightmare-infested witches straining to get at Jack. Now their attention was on him. He wasn’t worried—Fourteen only needed to keep them occupied until his team managed to exorcise the demon. There were only eight of them. No problem.

  He spun his glorified poleaxe, enjoying the play of colors as it moved through the air, waiting for someone—anyone—to be brave enough to attack.

  He wasn’t in the best
surroundings for such a confrontation. The building beside him was putting off enough heat to make his pants burn hotly against his leg. The smell of overheated leather coming from his jacket let him know he wasn’t too far from being cooked in his own armor.

  It was a small mercy, but he was grateful the fire kept too many witches from ganging up on him at once. Between the occasional gusts of flame bursting randomly from the window between them, to the wall of unconscious bodies he had formed on his other side, he was able to keep his opponents down to reasonable numbers.

  A man dressed like an accountant lurched through the flames, hands outstretched and spitting orange and white fire at him. Fourteen allowed the fire to roll over him as he angled his poleaxe—friendly side pointing at the man—and scored a direct hit to his solar plexus. With a twist of his wrist, he lobbed the unconscious body onto the pile.

  A smaller figure vaulted over the pile trying to catch him off guard, and he twisted his body to kick at the teenage girl he had recognized from the cemetery. His enchanted boots no longer had the initial power from his first jump, but they still had enough juice to send the girl sailing back into the crowd of Blaikes, causing her head to smack against the head of a young man. Judging from the amount of blood pouring from both of their faces, they would be out of the fight for some time.

  Fourteen smirked. He could do this all day.

  He had the next wave onto the pile with little effort, and the three remaining Blaikes hung back, unwilling to engage.

  Pent-up energy buzzed under his skin and begged to be released. Normally he would pace, but with each step he took, the boots lost momentum. He’d rather save what they had left for the fight. He risked a look back at his teammates and saw Jack kneeling, hands outstretched with Adelle standing behind him, her hands on his shoulders as she pumped orange fire into him.

  A loud groan at his back had him turning around to see the wall of bodies undulating. An arm at the bottom twitched and smacked frantically at the press from above. A woman’s eyes stared at him hatefully from under the arm. To his magical sight, the pile of bodies had been giving off nothing more than static feedback, but now a white aura filled person after person, starting from the bottom and moving toward the top like a wave.

  He took an involuntary step back. “I hope you guys are almost done, because things are about to get really messy over here!”

  The wall writhed and pulsed as bodies fought to untangle themselves. Fourteen took the opportunity to stab his weapon into as many bodies as he could but had to jump away as four witches, still somewhat entwined, flailed their way off the top of the pile to come at him snarling and spitting with fury.

  He managed to dispatch them, fighting his instinct to simply fling them into the fire on his right. There was a small chance some of these people were unwilling puppets, and he’d rather not have more innocent blood on his hands than he already did.

  With a tortured groan, the wall of bodies tipped over. More nightmare-tainted people struggled to break free of the mass of writhing limbs, kicking and clawing as they went. The wet pops of dislocated joints and compound fractures followed them as they fought their way to freedom.

  Fourteen exorcised them, nightmare after nightmare, as they came for him. Most bodies were far too damaged to be effective, but they kept coming, trying to bury him with sheer numbers.

  He faced an unstoppable onslaught as more and more bodies managed to untangle themselves from the pile.

  Thought ceases. Cold pours in.

  Thinking is certain death. Training is all.

  He slices, stabs, kicks, spins, thrashes, cuts, disembowels—the bodies pile up around him until he can’t breathe. He is failing, failing, he must keep going no matter what. An unending wave of death and destruction rushes over him. He’ll keep going, he’ll never stop. Stopping means losing. Losing is not an option. Swing, slice, kick, stab, slash. Pain. Ignore. Keep going. Never stop. Never. Stop. Protecting. Her.

  “You can stop now.”

  Behind him. Somehow, they got behind him. He had to stop them.

  Fourteen spun bringing his full weight to bear on the enemy behind him and stopped his blade an inch from Jack’s throat.

  “Fourteen, it’s over!” Jack reached out a careful hand to lower the glimmering blade from his neck. “It’s okay, you got them all. You got them. You can stop now.”

  Blink. The coldness reigned inside Fourteen’s mind. Why did he stop? What could have induced him to stop his swing at the last moment? Who was the man in front of him? The ice inside his mind gripped him tighter, demanding he finish what he started.

  Jack’s hand went to his shoulder. “This isn’t you. Don’t let him do this to you. Come back. Come back, man.”

  A shudder swept through his frame, and he closed his eyes. Weakness, the coldness insisted. It wanted him to kill his way out of the situation and continue to his goal. He didn’t need anyone else to finish his mission. He was trained from the start to rely only on himself, or, if absolutely necessary, Company operatives and there were none of those on site.

  The hand on his shoulder tightened, bringing him back to his body. Fourteen opened his eyes, and his gore-covered hand caught his attention. It was clenched around the staff. He felt completely disconnected from it. What was it going to do next? Would it try to kill his new comrades again? Would he be able to stop it?

  “This was done to you, Fourteen. This is not of you. You can control this, I know it.” Jack’s voice was calm and low. His hand gentle but firm, as it squeezed Fourteen’s shoulder in a rhythmic, comforting pattern.

  Fourteen concentrated on the feeling in his shoulder, trying to bring awareness to the rest of his body. He realized he wasn’t breathing and released a slow, stuttering breath. Slowly his body came back under his control, and finger by finger, he pried his hand away from the weapon. It seemed an eternity before he heard the clatter it made as it hit the pavement.

  Panting, he said, “Is it dead?”

  “I think everything around us is dead right now.” Adelle’s dry voice came from behind Jack. She pointed to his right. The pile of unconscious bodies had become a pile of dead bodies.

  He felt like a puppy that killed the family cat. He should be put down before he did something worse.

  “Oh, no, none of that now. We’ll get this shit out of you, just hang on a little bit longer.” Jack shook him.

  The hand on his shoulder was griping him hard enough to press his armor plates painfully into his skin, but instead of shaking it off, Fourteen welcomed the pain. It cleared out some of the cold invading his mind, telling him he was nothing more than a misfiring weapon. Now that he didn’t feel like he was freezing to death from the inside out, he could think.

  “He’s back.”

  The hand left his shoulder. He didn’t miss it. Regardless of his temporary break with control, he still disliked being touched.

  “Good, unmaking that demon made me tired. I didn’t relish binding this one.”

  Fourteen stiffened at Adelle’s words.

  “Relax, he’s got this. It was just a small lapse. Ready to go, soldier boy?” Jack scooped up Fourteen’s poleaxe and offered it to him.

  Fourteen raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  “Adelle’s connection to Sterling said he was that way. Is that still true?

  Adelle nodded. “Yep.”

  “You are still interested in getting your girl back, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, but . . .”

  “Then take up your weapon. You aren’t charming enough to rely on your personality to get you past these monsters. I, on the other hand, could probably manage it if I didn’t have you two weighing me down.” Jack’s fathomless eyes sparkled impishly in the firelight as he held out out the poleax.

  Fourteen eyed the weapon thoughtfully. All he had to do was keep it together long enough to find Aeyli. After that it didn’t matter what happened. If he fell apart, Aeyli could fix him, and if she couldn’t, at least she had the guardians
to help her now. They weren’t Fourteen, but they would be the next best thing in keeping her safe.

  He closed his hand around the staff of the weapon. Damned if it didn’t feel good. “Where to?”

  Adelle’s face went distant, and he saw her magic flare around her head briefly before she snapped back to the present. Her eyes locked on to Jack’s, and Fourteen saw a thin thread of orange stretch out to touch Jack. After a minute, she nodded curtly and said, “Fine.” She jerked a thumb back in the direction of the glittering mess of dissolving demon behind her. “This way.”

  Their boots scattered the remnants of the demons as they tromped through. Hopefully the glitter clinging to his pants would dissipate as well—it wasn’t covert to sparkle.

  Fourteen followed Adelle as she led their team unerringly to the main building and questions swam in his head. Why would Aeyli not run to the forest? Had she been captured again? How did he know she was still alive? All he had was the word of near-strangers that she was.

  He quashed the last thought before it had a chance to sink hooks into him. Said near-strangers had saved his life multiple times tonight, and he knew questioning his allies at this point would only hamper the mission. They were all he had, and he had no choice but to follow them.

  The main building had escaped Harper’s fires, probably because it lay at the center of the compound. At first glance it was an unimaginative three-story prefabricated box, but the magic climbing up the walls made Fourteen look at it again. The windows crawled with a red mesh of power, writhing and pulsing inside the glass rather than on top of it. He was willing to guess they were not a weak point of entry. The red bled out into the subtle orange woven into the walls and the effect was unsettling. It made him feel like the house was breathing.