by Zile Elliven
As Adelle stalked up the stairs, the red sigils enmeshed with the front door lashed out violently, only to be absorbed by the warm orange halo surrounding her. She pressed forward, drawing the red into herself and transmuting it into orange. By the time she passed though the door, it was nothing more than the white rectangle its original designer had meant it to be.
Fourteen covered their six as he entered the building. If they were going to be attacked, now would be the time for it. “Where is she?”
“He is straight ahead,” Adelle corrected. “It’s quicker to follow the magic I pumped into Sterling, all I have to do is look for it.”
“You mean you aren’t even looking for her?” His voice was a barely controlled growl.
Adelle was unfazed and turned her back to him as she made her way down the long hall in front of her. “Aeyli’s essence is different than other witches. It’s more slippery and tends to blend in with the magic around her, making her difficult to find. If I checked specifically for Aeyli, I’d have to stop every few yards and reconnect to her to make sure she hasn’t moved or been affected by someone else’s magic. In this situation, it’s quicker for me to follow the brother.”
“It’s sound logic.” Jack jumped in to assure him. “I mean, if he didn’t cut and run on her before, he isn’t likely to now.”
“Unless they were separated by the explosion.” Fourteen pointed out angrily. He might respect their fighting skills, but optimism was a weakness that had no place on the battlefield.
Adelle hesitated and turned, “I’m sure—” The door at the end of the hallway burst open releasing a dozen or so people—all running as if their lives depended on it. Sterling brought up the rear.
“It’s nice to see you guys,” Sterling grabbed Adelle’s arm and turned her back the way she had come, “But for now, run!”
Fourteen stood his ground and blocked the way. “Where. Is. Aeyli?” He gripped the staff so tight he heard the leather of his glove creak.
“Safe in the forest. Now go!”
Fourteen complied.
As one, the team raced back the way they came, quickly catching up with the people in front of them. He was fairly certain he saw the building ripple around him.
“Not that I don’t love a good run, but might I inquire—?” Jack attempted.
“No!”
They reached the front door only to come up against a bottleneck as several people tried to force their way through one small door.
“This wouldn’t have happened at the old house,” Sterling said with a touch of hysteria, shifting his weight anxiously from foot to foot. “She couldn’t have spent a few more dollars on a set of double doors?”
The walls rippled again, and this time, Fourteen felt something in his body ripple too.
Pulling a slender prepubescent boy out of the doorway to make enough room for an old man and a rotund woman to fit through, Jack asked, “Sterling, what did you . . .? You didn’t?” He threw the young boy through the opening as soon as it was clear.
“The entire upper floor was full of monsters, and I was out of magic!” Sterling dove through the door with Fourteen at his heels.
Fourteen turned at the bottom of the steps to see Jack throw Adelle out of the door and jump after her. The entire house blinked out of existence seconds after Jack’s feet left the concrete. The only thing left was a hole where the foundation used to be.
“What the hell?” Fourteen thought he was past being surprised by the magical world, but apparently not.
“Astin had us trapped in a room upstairs . . . He . . . he wasn’t Astin anymore!” Sterling shuddered and hugged himself. “Alex cut a hole in the floor—he has a carpentry gift—and we ended up in the infirmary. They were going to catch us. Astin was already coming through the hole we made—. There were so many of them, and they had something horrible with them.” Sterling choked as he tried not to cry.
Adelle put her arms around the boy and crooned, “It’s okay, you saved everyone, it’s okay.”
“There was a crate full of crystal boxes that hadn’t been unpacked.”
Jack’s face was grave as he nodded as if in confirmation to himself.
“So, I threw it to the ground and smashed everything inside and ran. I was hoping for a distraction . . .” He buried his face in his arms and shivered. Adelle tightened her arms around him and stroked his hair.
Jack whistled. “That would do it. That much magic blending together and refracting off the crystal . . . My guess is the buildup of all that undirected power took everything it was touching back to the Source.”
“Can we get them back?” Sterling asked sounding much younger than his sixteen years.
Jack’s kind face creased in sadness. “I’ll check when we get out of this, but . . .”
Adelle kicked him.
“There’s certainly a chance of it.” Jack finished lamely.
“My condolences on you killing half of your family, can we find Aeyli now?”
The look Adelle threw him was pure violence, and Fourteen would have been more concerned if he’d seen her magic flare up behind it. Instead, he allowed the cold inside him to show through his eyes. The fewer Blaikes he had to deal with, the better. Hadn’t he just proved that in the alley? If something inside him writhed at the thought, he chose to ignore it.
Sterling straightened and pulled himself away from Adelle’s protective embrace. “You’re right.” He wiped his eyes on a sleeve. “Let’s get Aeyli and get out of here.”
“Can you find her?” Fourteen asked Adelle, holding back an I told you so and feeling virtuous. Even a killer needed a few manners to fall back on from time to time.
Adelle nodded and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ll see what I can find.” She closed her eyes and went still.
Fourteen saw the orange around her pull in tight against her body, condensing and growing still, echoing her body language. He accessed levels of restraint he usually didn’t need to keep from bouncing impatiently.
The orange around Adelle flared out like quills on a porcupine, and her eyes flew open. “Sweet Vis, she’s with Marshall.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Aeyli
Stillbringer.
She could hear snatches of a baby’s cries and loud, stressed-out voices. When the world solidified around her, she was looking through the window of an old-fashioned wooden house. Inside she could see people dressed like they were in a Regency romance novel, but there was nothing romantic about the dying woman on the bed. Next to the bed, a man was clutching a red, screaming infant to his chest as he sobbed.
Aeyli’s eyes burned in sympathy, and tears fell down her cheeks unchecked.
“That’s me he’s holding.” The young man she’d been trying to rescue stood at her side. His ageless eyes were a calm oasis amid the chaos, and when he squeezed her hand, instinctively she squeezed back, comforted. “I was told that when I was born, it was like the life flowed right out of my mother as I was leaving her body. There was nothing they could do to save her.”
The scene changed as the light and noise ended abruptly. The wind whipped at her hair, and for a moment she thought she might be back at the compound in the growing snowstorm, but there was no fire and no buildings. A terrible roar assaulted her, and she tried to cover her ears, but the man held fast to her hand, so she only managed to cover one.
“What is that?” She whispered, not wanting to attract the thing’s attention. She decided to let the stranger keep her hand for now. It was absurd, but she felt more comfortable knowing she wasn’t here alone.
“That is the thing that killed my father. He got it in the end, but it took him with it.” His gentle voice sounded detached, as though it was an event that had happened to someone he had only heard about. “I’m Marshall, by the way. I’m guessing you are Aeyliana?”
At least she found the right guy. “Aeyli,” she corrected. “I think I’d rather be called Aeyli, if you don’t mind.”
&nbs
p; A large, dark shape rolled over the dark countryside, and a yellow flash flared against its side, eliciting another ear-splitting roar.
“That useless lump by the tree is me. I got taken out in the beginning of the fight. You should be able to make out a faint shimmer around it. That’s the shield my father put over me to keep me safe. He probably would have survived if I hadn’t been there—he used up all his magic killing that demon. Throwing that shield around me is probably what used him up.” Marshall’s eyes were unfocused as he spoke, and he played absently with a lock of his hair. “Thank you, by the way. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be in the middle of that, trapped and helpless. Instead you’ve given me a buffer. It’s a bit disorienting, but it’s better than experiencing all of the horrible highlights of my life at once.”
She burned with embarrassment. She’d wanted to help Marshall, not roll him. Though on the plus side, at least she wasn’t driving him insane. “Sorry, I can’t really control how I affect people.” She started to pull her hand away from his, hoping it might give him a chance to reorient himself.
He squeezed her hand tighter, keeping it trapped in his. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea right now,” Marshall said. “I just need to adjust to it, and then we can figure a way out of here.”
We. Marshall included her in their escape without hesitation, without even knowing her. Her chest swelled with heat, and she noticed once again the pink glow of her magic filling her body. She could sense it flowing down her arm and into Marshall’s. Her attention was drawn to the magic flowing between them, and she saw her pink mingling with his cool blue. It reminded her of working with Adelle to heal herself. Except when her magic mixed with Adelle’s, their colors didn’t blend together; they stayed separate as they worked to fix her injuries. Right now, her pink bled right into Marshall’s blue, creating a vibrant purple that ran rampant through his body.
She concentrated, trying to imagine the pink pulling back from his blue, but it felt like trying to push a dump truck up a hill.
It must have done something because Marshall’s eyes lost some of the dreamy expression they held. “Keep going.” He breathed. “If you can pull back a little more, I should be able to take it from there.”
Her teeth bit into her lip as she fought to pull her magic back, millimeter by millimeter. She swayed, but Marshall held her up. They were like two drunks, bracing themselves against one another for the long walk home.
Her mind began to fragment and lose focus and she was certain she was about to pass out, when suddenly she was no longer in the driver’s seat. It felt as though her magic was a ball of yarn and someone was carefully winding it back up.
“There we go, that’s much better.” Marshall’s eyes had lost their dreamy quality and were now focused on Aeyli. “We don’t know one another nearly well enough to blend our magic without serious confusion. Now, we can figure out what went wrong.”
“What do you mean? What went wrong was that Sekt and my aunt are trying to eat you, and we need to figure out how to stop them.” Aeyli could stand on her own now, so she pulled back but made sure to keep her hand in Marshall’s.
“You know its name? That’s helpful. I wasn’t able to get that far.” He looked impressed. “What are you doing here anyway? You should be long gone, by now. What happened?”
“Things have gone sideways out there. Nightmares are using my family as puppets and are letting demons and nightmares through portals as fast as they can. Our friends aren’t going to be able to hold them off much longer.” She couldn’t understand why he was wasting time quizzing her when they should be doing something, anything, to get out of this place.
The scene around them had switched to a street lined with houses. In the distance, she could make out a group of people battling strange, flying creatures in front of a house that had been torn in two.
Rather than responding to the urgency in her voice, he frowned. “That doesn’t explain why you are here. The job was to get you out and then come back for me.” Irritation edged into his speech.
“Adelle mentioned that I might be able to help you?” What had been intended as a confident statement of fact ended up sounding more like a meek question.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “There is no way she told you to come here. You’re an untrained civilian. It doesn’t matter what you’re packing in there.” He tapped her chest lightly, belying his angry tone.
“She may have been distracted and mentioned that I would be an asset under different conditions,” she admitted grudgingly. “Listen, we don’t have time to be standing around chatting about who sent who where. We’re being attacked right now. For all I know we could be dying!”
“We probably are dying,” he agreed benignly, “but we have time to figure this out. Time works differently here. Outside of this trap, you’ve only just gotten between the demon and me. It’s only been seconds since I grabbed your hand. But you’re right, we should figure a way out of here.”
Marshall stood and stared dispiritedly at the fighting figures down the street and then shook his head. The scene switched to a cemetery, where a man holding a baby stood with a young girl with honey-colored hair next to a headstone.
“To defeat this thing, I need to find out what I did wrong the first time. In order to defeat a demon, a dreamwalker has to unmake it. This demon is incredibly old, but it shouldn’t have taken me out without so much as a whimper. I don’t want to brag—”
Aeyli was unable to suppress a snort of disbelief. “That’s exactly how a bragger begins his sentences.”
Ignoring her, he continued, “But I am fairly powerful as dreamwalkers go. Once I’ve identified how a demon or nightmare has come to be, I can unmake them. This guy surprised me. It took no effort at all to see that he was born from xenophobia. He all but slapped me in the face with it, but when I went to unmake him, I landed here.”
Her memory poked at her. “Can they have more than one origin?” She had no idea if it was a stupid question or not, but now wasn’t the time to be getting squeamish about sounding ignorant. The extreme isolation of her formative years left her feeling constantly out of the loop, and the only way to learn more was to ask questions.
“Why do you ask?” Rather than being irritated by her question, Marshall’s eyebrows drew together as he pondered her words.
“Well, earlier I accidentally went into one of Hester’s memories—his original host—and I learned a lot of things, one being that he and my great-great-whatever-grandmother have been possessing Blaikes for generations.”
Marshall raised his eyebrows at this but motioned for her to continue.
“The other thing they talked about was that his favorite thing to feed off was guilt. It sounded like he found survivor guilt to be especially desirable. Does that have anything to do with their origin?” Internally she cringed, preparing to be told—probably kindly if she was any judge of character—that she was completely off base.
Marshall’s hand went back to his head tidying his already-perfect hair as a myriad of expressions crossed his face. Confusion warred with suspicion as he ruffled his hair and then smoothed it back down again.
On impulse, she grabbed his hand. “You’re going to make yourself go bald if you keep that up.”
Ruefully, he grinned. “Habit. From what you said, it sounds to me like Sekt might have learned a new trick. Instead of hiding his origin like most demons and nightmares, he threw his out into the open. Like an idiot, I grabbed it and tried to unmake him, no questions asked. If I had just slowed down for a minute . . .” He caught himself, waving away his self-recrimination. “It doesn’t matter.”
Aeyli found herself being dragged along behind Marshall as he began to pace. It looked as though he wasn’t planning on letting her go any time soon, so she forced her short legs to work double time to keep up with him.
“He must have created a fake origin to trick me into attacking prematurely—and once I went for the bait, I was no longer as focused on d
efense, which left him free to swoop in and feed on me. And what a bounty he found . . .” he murmured the last part to himself.
He stopped abruptly, and Aeyli smacked awkwardly into his side. Marshall looked at her as if he had forgotten she was there.
“So what do we do?” She may not know much about her world, but she did know guardians were supposed to be a tenacious group. Aeyli was willing to bet Marshall already had a plan.
Marshall let out a short bark of a laugh. “So much confidence in me after such a short acquaintance, Stillbringer? I hope your faith in me is warranted, but it’s going to be you as much as me that will get us out of here.”
Stillbringer. She’d heard that word when she’d fallen into his nightmare. It sounded like a title, but she’d never heard of it.
“What do you need me to do? Whatever you need, I’ll give it. Just . . .” She paused, embarrassed at exposing her feelings to a stranger, but she pushed on, needing it to be said. “Just promise me you will get my brother and Fourteen out of here alive.”
His hazel eyes met hers, and he cradled both of her hands gently, dwarfing them inside his own large ones. “I promise I will get you back to your soldier, and together, we will save what is left of your family.”
Marshall’s gaze promised her a level of safety she’d only felt with Fourteen—which made sense if she thought about it. Both men were warriors, and both of them were clearly hardwired to protect.
“First things first, let’s get out of here.” He blew out a deep breath and shook himself like a boxer readying himself for a fight. “This is going to suck.”
At Aeyli’s quizzical look, he clarified, “For me, not for you. I’m going to have to go back in there”—he pointed to the scene ahead of them. It had cycled back around to the monster on the moor—“and face my own demons. All you have to do is stay with me. Don’t let go of my hand, and focus on your magic. Imagine it flowing to me, but not into me. I’ll take it from there. Adelle was right to want you here. If you hadn’t dropped into my lap, I don’t think I could have done this.”
