by Vicki Keire
Later, with Ethan tucked under the snowy white coverlet, I slipped into the hall with Logan.
“Did you find anything?” I asked again. “Food? Medicine? Anything at all?”
Logan shook his head. The skin around his left eye had already darkened, but he insisted it didn’t hurt. It was hard to get upset when I compared him to battered Ethan. “I don’t think there’s enough to keep a mouse alive here.”
I sagged against the wall. “We’ll have to do something then. One of us will have to get supplies in the morning.”
“Me, obviously. The whole point of all this was to keep you here. Because of the vengeful forces of darkness hunting you? Remember them?”
The fact that he managed to say this with minimum sarcasm reminded me how far things had spiraled out of control. “You should stay. If Asheroth shows up, you’re the only one who has a chance at fighting him.”
What I was really thinking was that Logan was at risk now, too, but he just rolled his eyes at me. “Asheroth won’t hurt you, Cas. Just throw yourself over Ethan or something.”
I buried my face in my hands. “Yeah. That will totally work. I’ll try that with every threat we encounter from now on.”
He rubbed my shoulders roughly. “Hey now. Just get some rest. We’ll worry about the morning when it comes.”
For the first time in over a decade, I let my brother tuck me into bed. I stared at Asheroth’s rose, its petals almost black in the darkness, and thought of Jack.
Please come, Jack, I chanted softly, thinking of his strange tattoos like some people count sheep. Please, Jack. I don’t know where else to turn.
***
I don’t know how long I slept before I managed to wrestle control of my own dreaming. It was nothing like being summoned by Jack and walking straight into a mirror version of the waking world. I opened my eyes to an insubstantial place made of mist and wind. Lightning flashed far in the distance. I found it difficult to walk in a straight line, as if the rules of physics didn’t quite apply, so I stayed where I was and hugged myself in the t-shirt I’d borrowed from my brother.
Some people called this lucid dreaming. It meant that I’d managed to become self-aware while I slept, and it was as different from Jack’s perfect Dreamtime as crawling was from ballet. I was cold. Leave it to me to have cold foggy dreams. Logan’s t-shirt barely skimmed my thighs, but it was all I’d had to sleep in. Asheroth kept as much clothing on hand as he did food. At least I’d brought my clothes with me. I’d had plenty of dreams where I’d realized I was doing something important, only to realize I’d been naked the whole time.
Not naked. Half a point for me, then.
But how to find Jack? I spent several frustrating minutes concentrating on him, hoping thought alone might be enough in this place. When that didn’t work, I started to wander a bit across the spongy, unsteady ground, yelling his name.
Nothing.
I would have collapsed on the ground in frustration, but I wasn’t sure it actually was ground. I walked a bit more instead, and as I did, things began to look more familiar. So much so that it began to really bother me. Where had I seen this before? A world shrouded in mist, with lightning flashing off in the distance?
I suddenly felt lonely and cold and like I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life. I thought of Ethan, battered and sleeping in a soft warm bed.
And then I had it.
I had dreamed this place the first night Ethan came to me. I’d been drawing with Shadows, before I even knew what they were. Drawing dark shapes in the mist that stayed after I’d made them. Ethan held me around the waist and warned me. At the time, I’d been more concerned about the fact that a total stranger was appearing in my dreams and putting his hands on me. But the warning… there had been a warning.
“You’re not supposed to do that yet. It will draw their attention,” he’d said in my dream.
I’d dreamed of them before I could actually summon them, or even knew they existed. Even since the first time I’d set eyes on Ethan, some part of me had know the Shadows were dangerous.
I shivered in the damp mist. Had everything been building to this conflict since that very first day? The idea could make me panic, if I let it. But right then, I needed to draw some attention. So I did what I remembered from my dream, and began to draw. With Shadows.
In this mist world of mine they stayed exactly where I left them. I decided to approach it like any drawing. Both Jack and Ethan seemed to think this was a good approach for me. First, I experimented with a series of lines to get a feel for the way the Shadows would interact with the mist. They came eagerly, obediently; I summoned without fear this time, and without the intention of harming anyone. Perhaps that made a difference. I felt some of that same excitement I always did when confronted with any new blank canvas. The difference was that this was a living canvas with unknown consequences.
After a series of practice lines and scribbles, I tried writing words. They actually hung, suspended, in the mist exactly as if written on a chalkboard. I wrote names: Jack and mine, wondering if that would summon him. When that didn’t work right away, I moved on to basic shapes. And then I had an idea that seemed to come out of nowhere. Very carefully, with attention to detail, I sketched out one of Amberlyn’s paper cranes.
It hung in the mist, a flat version of its colorful counterparts that littered my apartment, Andreas Academy, and just about any other place we went together. I felt a powerful longing for my absent friend. With a few more strokes of my fingers and some reminders from two semesters of sculpture classes, I added enough form and depth to make it three-dimensional. And then, for no reason I could explain, I thought of Amberlyn and blew on the crane, exactly as if blowing out a birthday candle.
When it began to wave its wings and flutter like a live thing, I almost tripped getting away from it. As I struggled for balance on the uncertain spongy mist-floor, the Shadow-crane flitted around exactly like a cross between a crude butterfly and a paper airplane.
“Congratulations,” said a familiar voice behind me. It was not the voice I wanted to hear. “You’ve made your first Shadow-shape. That’s very dangerous, Miss Chastain. Now there’s no way your little town will be safe. There’s nothing Belial won’t do to claim you, and nothing the Realms of Light won’t do to eliminate the threat you pose.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve made more threatening play dough creations.”
Dr. Christian laughed. “Charming, as always.”
“So you aren’t dead,” I said flatly. I didn’t turn. His was the last face I wanted to see, the last voice I wanted to hear, and the last creature I wanted to deal with. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been watching the mist wall,” he said. “When you disappeared from town after our last encounter, I knew this was the only place you could go. Besides,” I felt him behind me, his hand coming to rest briefly in the hollow of my spine. I spun away, outraged. He gestured at my writing and the shapes I’d made. The little Shadow-crane flitted around in the mist, sometimes visible, sometimes not. “Such activity does draw attention. You might as well have put up a sign.” His smile showed teeth, too many and too white.
“You’re still his creature, then? Belial’s?” I squared my shoulders and tried to ignore the fact that I was wearing one of my brother’s Indie rock t-shirts and it barely covered the tops of my thighs. “He didn’t slaughter you after your last epic failure?”
“I am still the one who is going to bring you to him, bound and gagged if necessary, yes,” he replied in iced tones.
I swallowed hard. “Good.” He barely managed to mask his surprise. “I was hoping I might find someone else, really, but you’ll do.” I tried to loosen my hands from the fists they’d automatically curled into. Last chance to back out, I thought, then remembered Logan’s changed eyes; the charred remains of the coffee shop; Amelie’s back as she walked away. “I want all this to stop. I want you to leave my town alone. I don’t want you or
Belial or anyone who works for him to bother a single person or place within its boundaries ever again. If you do that, if you swear to it, then I will come with you.”
Dr. Christian’s smile was sickening, but his words were surprisingly soft. “I’m glad you came to your senses before I had to crush this city. I don’t like hurting people, Caspia.”
“What the hell do you think is happening to the Nephilim gifted Belial’s kidnapped, then?” I snapped, incredulous. But he just shook his perfect blond head.
“You’ll see when you come. Things aren’t always as they are represented, Caspia.” But I stalked away so he wouldn’t see the way my eyes had begun to water. I looked for my Shadow-crane, but I couldn’t see it anymore.
“One more thing,” I said at last. “The little girl. Caroline Bedford. The one you took from her father’s house. You let her go when you get me. There’s no room for children in this.”
For once, the look in his eyes didn’t make me feel slimy when he nodded his agreement. Instead I saw… what? Pity? Respect? Coming from Dr. Christian, I didn’t know. “Just get beyond the mist wall. Through the forest, surrounding the estate,” he said at last. “As soon as it’s full dark. South would be ideal, but anywhere though the forest should get you beyond the city limits.”
“I’ll try,” I said. “They’re watching very closely, and the security here is….”
“Try hard.” He examined his spotless fingernails for dirt. “Should you not appear, we will wait again the next night, and the next. But every night that you do not appear will be bad for this town, Caspia. You must know we have other enemies as well; as long as we wait here for you, Whitfield and everyone you love will be caught in the crossfire.”
I paled. Crossfire. Logan.
And then he was gone, leaving me alone in the mist of my amorphous dreamscape, wondering what the hell I’d just gotten myself into.
I didn’t have to worry long. As easily as punching through a wall made of paper, a familiar tattooed arm appeared in the mist and latched onto my forearm.
Hard.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the mist wall demanded. Exactly half of Jack followed his arm through the opening. “Come with me.” With a terrible scowl, he jerked me behind him. The mist world of my own dream melted around me like warm butter. We stood together on the wide veranda that overlooked the St. Clare. The house was quiet and dark.
I pried his hand from my forearm. “If you don’t mind,” I sighed. “I’ve been dragged around and roughed up pretty much since I woke up today. I could use a break.”
He stared at me like I’d slapped him. “Roughed up? You’ve been roughed up? You’ve been brain damaged, you mean. You just made an agreement to turn yourself over peacefully to our number one enemy.” He squared his body as if preparing to spar. “I’ll repeat my previous question. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Was it possible to fall asleep when you were already dreaming? I sank to the sanded boards beneath my bare feet and pulled my knees to my chest. Logan’s t-shirt tented over my bent legs and came down to my ankles. Jack loomed over me, shirtless as always and faintly blue against the deeply indigo sky. “We sort of match,” I said, looking out at the far banks of the river. “In a backwards way.”
His scowl didn’t loosen one bit. “What makes you think Belial will keep his word?”
“You don’t have a shirt and I don’t have pants. Put us together and you have an outfit.” I started giggling then, tiny noises at first that grew harder and harder to control. Eventually my entire upper body shook with laughter and tears while I buried my head in my knees and tried not to think of anything at all. Jack kept talking at me. I didn’t hear a word he said. Finally, he just reached down and hauled me up to face him, his hands supporting me by the elbows.
“You cannot just hand yourself over,” he said, cold and low. “You have no idea…”
“Don’t you dare say that to me,” I hissed. “I have every idea. You told me once we gifted burn like candles in your Dreamtime.” Now I held his forearms in a death grip between us. “Look into that house behind me and tell me what you see.”
His dark eyes widened as he swept the house behind us. “I don’t understand.”
“Welcome to my life,” I told him tiredly.
“Where did he come from?”
“That,” I said tersely, “is my brother. The one who almost died. The one a full-blooded Nephilim gave up immortality for. My brother who suddenly, inexplicably, fought with Nephilim strength and summoned Light for the first time tonight. I won’t let Belial have him. Surely there’s someone who would make the same sacrifice for you.”
He actually flinched, but he covered it quickly. “Summoned Light?” Jack echoed. I’d stopped feeling cold. The tension between us was fading, too, replaced by a sense of shock and shared purpose. “That will attract…”
“Yes,” I said. “Exactly. Them. The forces of Light are on the other side of us, Belial’s armies waiting just beyond the mist wall. Logan and I are trapped between. He’ll draw their attention soon, if he hasn’t already, and Whitfield will be even more in the middle than it already is. The very best thing I can do for him and my town is getting the hell out of here and taking the army of darkness with me.” I could feel the desperation in my expression. He looked at me with something like understanding.
Then I saw our arms.
Linked forearm to forearm, Shadows lay across our skin in warm peaceful layers. Always before they had swarmed across me in cold, terrifying waves. Now they seemed energizing. Instead of a sucking black abyss, the layers of Shadow across our joined arms had a hard, polished look to them, like hematite or obsidian. I looked at Jack in amazement.
“Sshh,” he cautioned. “You’re catching on. It’s why he wants the two of us so badly. We can do things together that we could never do apart, like this shielding; not much can get through it. Shared purposes: offense and defense. That’s us.”
I let my arms slip to my side, the Shadows dissipating like smoke. “Good,” I said after a moment. “Because if we’re ever going to be safe, we have to destroy Belial’s army. And that means destroying him.”
I was grateful for his warmth along my side. “You have to remember, no matter what happens, no matter how things look, that I’m on your side, Caspia.”
I nodded. “Me too, Jack.” I felt my eyes grow heavy again, a precursor to waking up. “Will you take me to visit Ethan in his dreams? Can I give him at least that?”
“Yes,” he said, sounding oddly smug. “I promise we’ll pay visits to Ethan. I’m counting on it, actually.”
Chapter Twenty-Two:
Breakfast with Asheroth
When I woke right before dawn, I saw that a silk robe and slippers had been laid under the rose. Asheroth was back. I suppressed the unpleasant image of him watching me sleep. I needed something to wear that wasn’t torn or stained or had belonged to a boy first.
Upstairs, the entire northern wall of the house was made of glass. There were no curtains, no blinds, nothing whatsoever to obscure the view except for a few vines and intrepid branches. I crossed my arms loosely against my chest, reveling in the feel of fine silk against my bare skin. I didn’t want to enjoy myself. I wanted to cling to my anger, my fear, and my sense of edgy desperation. If I didn’t, it would be easy to let the lush security of the upper levels of Asheroth’s compound lull me into a peaceful forgetting. I couldn’t do that, I reminded myself. A whole town’s welfare depended on me getting out of the way.
The carpet was thick and lush between my toes, the silk robe loose and soft against my thighs. The morning light caught the colors of the surrounding forest in perfect, understated hues. It practically begged for a pastel pencil sketch. I tried to remember the last time I had created anything, and couldn’t. I could probably set up an easel and do a fantastic landscape in oil or even watercolor on one of the many wrap-around patios.
Everything about the place was designe
d to draw me in. It would be so painless to forget everything and live in a state of ever-present Eden here. I roamed around the kitchen in the sinfully soft silk robe. That’s where he found me, digging through cabinets in search of coffee. I’d already given up on food. I kept my fingers crossed for caffeine as I ransacked cabinets and drawers.
“I apologize that I am not better prepared.” His arrival made no sound. I jumped as if I’d been caught stealing. I whirled, my back pressed against the empty refrigerator as he advanced on me. “I was not expecting guests. But I’ve taken steps to rectify the situation.”
It always shocked me, how young and delicate he looked when not gripped by madness or hatred. In the clear strong morning light of his kitchen, he looked as normal as I’d ever seen him. If I’d met him on the street, he might have passed for human. A very dangerous, attractive human. He didn’t even wear his red leather jacket. “Is that what I am?” I asked. “Your guest?”
He studied me in the morning light. I stared right back. I’d never seen him in anything but red. The blindingly white silk shirt he wore almost matched the brightness of his eyes. The rest of him was black. Pants, boots, even a thick leather cuff on his wrist. I felt awkward in my silk robe. But he only held out a hand to me.
“Let us not play this game today,” he said. His cold white fingers were still as firm as a marble statue’s as they closed around mine. “Have breakfast with me.” He gave me a little boy’s smile as he drew me out onto the largest patio. He pulled coffees, pastries, and fruit from a box. “I remembered that you like that terrible bitter bean drink. Paris has some of the best.”
“You went to Paris.” He smile got a little brighter. It was hard not to smile back as he handed me a steaming cardboard cup. Nephilim-quick, he appeared again at my elbow and pulled out a wrought iron chair. “Do you even eat?” I couldn’t resist asking as I scooted up to the table. I couldn’t remember Ethan once eating a thing, before he changed.
