Beloved Son

by Carole Cummings

  “Take it,” he tells Wil, only now notices that Wil bleeds here too, a hard knot of fear grinding in Dallin’s gut as he watches the small stream leak scarlet-bright onto the clean white of Wil’s shirt.

  “The Vessel is too weak,” says a voice that’s too familiar, and only now does Dallin turn to see Calder—eyes with that same righteous exaltation, shoulder lumped and out of true, Wil’s bolt still lodged in his broken wrist, and the blooded white fletching of his niece’s arrow jutting from his throat. It bobs obscenely as he speaks. He raises his broken arm, bone grinding and crunching in the shoulder, and points at Wil. “I serve the Aisling, even in this. The Heart of the World sits too heavily on your soul. The Mother seeks to break you beneath it, take it to Herself. She weakens the Father.”

  “Liar,” Wil grinds out, already standing taller, accepting everything flowing through Dallin and steadying himself on it. “You take truths and twist them into lies. You wear faces not your own.”

  Wil shoves again. Dallin can feel it buffeting through him and is heartened just the smallest bit that not-Calder seems to stagger.

  “Show me your own face, fraud.” Wil’s tone is deeper now, more powerful than only a moment ago. “You hide behind masks and accuse deception. You steal from others and claim it your right.”

  Calder’s form ripples, glimpses of other faces melting into and out of the scarred countenance, some faces Dallin knows and many more he doesn’t. The echoes of souls consumed then cut free, he thinks, and shudders.

  “It is my right,” Calder hisses, the voice now raw and croaking, thick with the obstruction of the arrow. “Do you think yourself so far above me, boy? You’ve had the taste of it, have you not? You’ve taken the magic of another, fed on it, and grown stronger with the taking. Do you think your right more righteous than my own?”

  The man in Dudley, Dallin thinks. He hadn’t really thought it through before, but it’s truth; it has to be. Wil’s magic before that was weak and sporadic by his own testimony, and after that….

  After that, Wil called storms, tamed fire. And Dallin explained it to both of them in ways that made sense, still make sense, but he wonders now if he’s known what it all meant and just hasn’t dared the knowing.

  “Your Guardian knows it.” Not-Calder chuckles and jerks his chin at Dallin, the arrow’s fletching bobbling gruesomely. “Look at him. He can’t help the disgust, can’t help the revulsion at knowing that he’s been the accomplice to daeva.” A slippery little laugh, and Dallin is both shocked and repelled that the face that mocks so casually is now his own. “The things that happened, Wil… they offend me. I don’t know how to say it any better. They offend me to my core.”

  It’s Dallin’s own voice, coming from Dallin’s own mouth, like looking into some kind of noisome mirror. Dallin reaches instinctively for the gun at his hip and wraps his fingers around its grip. Would it do any good here? Can bullets kill if their real shapes exist in another reality?

  “I didn’t know,” he watches himself say. A sad shake of the head, and a hand that’s Dallin’s but not reaches out toward Wil. “I’m sorry, but you can’t think I could countenance this.”

  Wil’s frowning, shaking his head, and he glances helplessly between the two Guardians as though he’s unsure which is the truth.

  “You are dearg-dur,” Dallin’s other self says, low and trying for kind but with a hard edge beneath it that makes Dallin’s teeth go tight—he’s got the inflections down so well that even Dallin’s not sure if he’s here or there. “I can’t love you, Wil. I can’t even look at you.” And to prove it, dark eyes turn away.

  Wil stares, eyes narrowed, scrutinizing, trying to find the flaws and telltales. Dallin thinks to tell Wil not to bother, there won’t be any, but he can’t seem to bring himself to speak, too unsettled by hearing his voice coming out of… that. His words—Dallin can’t deny them—he spoke them, and he’d meant them, he still means them, but not in the way they’ve been twisted.

  “I saw your face.” Wil drags his eyes up to Dallin’s. “I saw the look on your face when you realized… when you saw what—” His frown deepens. “Why are you here?” He hesitates, lip quivering. “I won’t be your task. I won’t be your duty.”

  It nearly staggers Dallin, the doubt sliding through the question, the sudden ache that blooms in his chest, because it was so bloody easy to wake it. The insecurities Síofra planted are rooted too deep. Wil expects to be betrayed and abandoned, as though it’s his lot in life.

  Dallin tightens his hand around Wil’s until he feels bones rubbing together. “Can you doubt me now?” is all Dallin can ask. He turns his gaze on the thing that pretends to be him. “I also told him I would do whatever it takes. I told him I want him to do whatever he has to do to survive. Did you forget that part, or did it just not fit your plans?”

  Wil’s fingers twitch in Dallin’s grip, but that’s all the response there is.

  A red wave of rage that’s not his pounds through Dallin, sharp and blazing hot, an oozing, darkling touch from the monster’s mind directly into his. Seeking out Dallin’s cracks and weaknesses again, but only succeeding in revealing his own. He can’t take from Dallin, not this time, but he can impart, whether Dallin wants it or not.

  Insanity—oh, save him, the madness is almost a live thing. Every base emotion there is—envy, fury, greed, hatred, lust—and beneath that, a low seed of mewling, childish impudence.

  A teacher of men once, wielder of fire. Æledfýres was not always the daemon with no face. Something gone wrong, some fundamental bit of his being tweaked and twisted out of shape, and the innovation of damnation tasted so much more delightful than what his brothers pretended was life. Men were such stupid animals, anyway—minds so easily bent by a whisper inside their brittle skulls or a booming voice of authority from a rostrum—too willing to be cattle, chattel, and so he’d given them their wish.

  He sipped the first of his dark craft from the screams of the daughters of men. Their flavor was sweet and piquant, so he moved on to others, always wanting for More and Better, and when he found his first sorceress… nectar like he’d never known. It almost—almost—filled the blanks in his spirit.

  He took and took some more—it was his to take, his right, for he owned the strength and the will—they nearly begged him to take, for weak minds leech the strength of others like ticks to deer. Revenants, all of them. Corruptible children after his own black heart. He only gave them what they thought they wanted, after all. They’d proved it when they took the Slattern and the Fool as their gods.

  And neither envy nor vengeance would suffer the get of the Slattern and the Fool.

  Dallin shoves the dark touch from out his mind and squeezes Wil’s hand again. Could it really be so simple, so… normal? A jealous soul moved to gluttony, and with the power to take unchecked—finally checked and thwarted, and reeking of furious insanity. The simplicity—the grand mundanity—makes him want to vomit.

  He grits his teeth. “You hide behind my face, you spout my words, but you can’t seem to get them quite right.” He’s angry now, and it fills him up, pushes out some of the fear and uncertainty until the pulse that hammers through his head is his own heartbeat. He cocks his head to the side, an odd, slithering realization wending through him.

  “He uses others,” he tells Wil slowly, “because he can no longer tell which Self is his. I’m not so sure he even has one anymore. All he knows is his own hunger, his own greed, but he’s fed on the greed of others for so long it’s taken him over.” Dallin smiles, for the first time on ground that’s sure and real—he knows this, just as he knows when a suspect is lying. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he forgets his own face.”

  The tension in the air notches up again, the push nearly crushing, but Wil pushes back, keeping the middle ground steady. Dallin’s hand tightens around his gun, still wondering what would happen if he just leveled it at the not-him and pulled the trigger. It’s what he promised to do for Wil, after all, and it seems Æl
edfýres is just as trapped in Wheeler’s body as he would’ve been in Dallin’s, had Dallin prevailed in his half-formed strategy. Dallin raises the gun just to see if there’s a reaction, just to test, and it’s flung from his grip before his thumb can even twitch toward the hammer. Dallin’s hand feels too light now as he watches the gun dissolve into nothing.

  Æledfýres merely chuckles with Dallin’s voice, but Wil sighs, contrite.

  “I’m sorry,” he tells Dallin. “I don’t doubt you.”

  Perhaps not now, but he had. Then again, Dallin’s own righteousness has bitten him on the arse quite a lot since he met Wil, and it’s only Wil’s own nature that prevents it from killing them both. More, it’s what Æledfýres wants, and they’ve very nearly just handed it to him—the power of belief even now bolsters the power of Lind, and if they don’t stand together….

  Dallin suppresses a shudder. The emptiness of his holster and his hand unnerves him more than he’d thought it would, but not nearly as much as what they’ve almost just let happen.

  He turns to Wil. “You’re right—you’re not Wil, you’re not Aisling, and you’re sure as hell not dearg-dur. You’re Drút Hyse, the Father’s Gift to the Mother. And you give them what they think they want.”

  He watches Wil closely, watches the knowing depth of his eyes, as though Wil already guessed but is afraid of what it might make of him. There’s sadness there, a bit of revulsion, but no balking. Wil pulls his hand from Dallin’s, draws it to his chest, then closes it into a fist, opens it again to reveal the little charm—Sun and Moon, Mother and Father—he’d been so determined not to accept only days ago. He watches Dallin’s eyebrows rise, then shrugs, his smile small but real.

  The power running through Dallin intensifies. Wil’s putting everything into it, building a wall of silence and protection around them, blocking Æledfýres out, even if it’s only for a second.

  “The rifle.” Wil watches Dallin’s eyes narrow, then shrugs again, a smartarse little smirk that’s too characteristic flickering at the corner of his mouth. “It’s a dream, innit?” He shivers, gritting his teeth to keep the barrier for just another few seconds. “I’m blind to my design,” he goes on, a touch more urgent now. “Find my key and you’ll find his.” He stares long and hard into Dallin’s eyes, waiting.

  And Dallin knows, all at once. He almost laughs, because he’s surprised and he shouldn’t be. This is Wil’s element. Wil knows what he’s doing, he has done all along; he’s just been waiting for Dallin to catch up. Dallin curls his fingers around Wil’s, closes the little charm back into Wil’s palm, then—

  —drew his hand from Andette’s, reached out, and slid the rifle’s strap from Wil’s shoulder. One-handed, careful not to let his grasp slip from Wil’s, Dallin placed the rifle into Wil’s left hand and held on until the lax grip tightened. Energized and abruptly confident, Dallin reached once again for Andette and smiled when she wordlessly extended her hand and wrapped her fingers around his.

  “Lind’s power depends on her people lending her the strength of their belief.” Dallin smiled again when Thorne and several of the Old Ones bowed their heads in what Dallin guessed was profound relief. Dallin couldn’t really blame them. He pushed out a quick breath. “Drút Hyse stands now for the Father. And the power of Lind shall stand for him. Get ready.” He didn’t wait for reactions or questions, merely—

  —shoots a quick look at Wil, closes his eyes, and steps back. Lets go.

  Wil staggers with the loss of contact, the power ripping all around them suddenly shifting, a slight tremor rumbling beneath their feet, and a hole opens up in the sky above them. The stars leak through it, shrieking their songs, and Dallin watches them, listens for sense inside the chaos, thinks about Fate and threads and how it hurt Wil’s soul when he changed them. Thinks about how Wil has never been able to find his own, tried and failed to find those of the ones who hunted him, how one does not make a being entrusted with such power invulnerable or all-powerful, and how Calder once told them that the Mother’s wisdom in the making of the Guardian complemented the Father’s.

  Wil’s hand goes almost immediately to his brow, and he shakes his head, swipes at his nose, and draws his hand back bright with blood. He sways, just a little, but Dallin sees it and frowns.

  Too pale too quickly, gaze gone hazy, Wil shakes his head again as if to clear it, then levels a wobbly glare at Æledfýres. “Take off that face.” His voice is tight and thin. He looks at his hand as though he’s bewildered by the blood on his fingers, then clenches it into a tight fist. “Take it off!” A command this time, enraged and feral-eyed. Wil moves away from Dallin, lurching this time, and frowns again before he leans to the side and spits blood.

  Dallin hadn’t realized how quickly Wil would fade, how quickly he’d lose his footing when Dallin stopped sending him power. Now that Dallin sees it, new fear swarms through him and pushes out almost everything else. Time is almost as much of an enemy as Æledfýres is—Dallin can’t waste a second of it.

  “He can’t remember his own,” Dallin goads, the pain sliding into him again, dull agony creeping in, but he doesn’t let his mind tear loose this time, just stands there and takes it and keeps gathering power—his hand to Andette’s, to the Old Ones, to Lind. He bares his teeth at Æledfýres. “Show yourself, if you remember how. Take me on, if you’ve the nerve, but you won’t use that face against him.”

  “Mm, so touching.” Æledfýres chuckles. “My boy,” he says, Dallin’s own voice, strangely kind, “you demand as though you’ve a right or a choice or even a hope. Nevertheless.” He waves a hand.

  Dallin expected intense relief when his own eyes finally stopped looking back at him, but a new shock weaves through him when he finds himself looking into eyes too like Wil’s. Bloody fuck, he thinks, stomach sinking and new sweat springing to his brow, one of You might’ve mentioned at some point that he can do that.

  “Father?” Wil breathes, eyes cloudy and dull, that constant green pulse down to no more than a murky spark. Terrible confusion crowding out everything else on his face and spiking Dallin’s fear down his backbone, hard and fast. Wil reels, the blood not just dripping from his nose now but gushing, and this was an insane plan, a terrible plan, it’s not working—a huge fucking mistake. “Father,” Wil whispers and steps toward the monster.

  No! Dallin wants to shout. That isn’t Him, can’t you tell? but he can’t, he’s paralyzed, silenced, sent back into that in-between of Watching, put aside, and it isn’t Æledfýres that’s done it this time but Wil. And it matters. That blinding agony that’s become too familiar is still ripping through Dallin, still trying to rend him from himself, compounded now by the strength of the Mother, of Lind, of her people, all pouring into him until he thinks his soul will burst. It isn’t meant for him, only to go through him, and right now it’s got nowhere else to go—he’s a bloody dam for it. He concentrates on feeling the sweaty grip of Andette’s hand around his in another where, concentrates on not letting go.

  “Father,” Wil says again, his tone heartbreakingly sure now, and he extends a hand, says, “Help.”

  If Dallin could move, he’d reach out and snatch Wil back from the monster. He can’t, he can only Watch, and he’s not even sure Wil knows he’s got Dallin pinned, not even sure if Wil did it on purpose or if he’s so far gone he doesn’t realize what he’s done. It couldn’t have been worse if Æledfýres had planned it himself. Then again, perhaps he did—how the fuck would Dallin know?

  Æledfýres closes his hand around Wil’s and draws him in until they’re only inches apart. He smiles, all kindness and love, and Dallin is once again amazed and revolted that Æledfýres is so bloody good at imitation.

  “I never stopped believing,” Wil whispers, and it nearly breaks Dallin’s heart because it’s so sincere. Wil really believes this is the Father, and Dallin can’t do a bloody thing about it. “You guided me even in Your weakness, and I never stopped believing You’d come back.”

  “Darling boy.
” Æledfýres runs his fingers through Wil’s hair, brushing it gently from off his brow. “I would not forsake you like all the others. Síofra has been punished. All who have defied me will be punished.” He spares a small, crafty smile for Dallin before turning it softer, lifting Wil’s chin with a slender hand and swiping at some of the blood with a long white finger. “What lies in you was once mine. It’s too much for you. Forgive me. I never meant to hurt you. Let me help you, lad, and we will go to the Mother together. All you need do is open to me, dear lovely Son.”

  “Together,” Wil murmurs, too soft and distant, and Dallin wonders if it’s some kind of spell. Wil had let his defenses down, trying to get up close, trying to deceive the deceiver, to let Dallin take a strike, and now Dallin thinks Wil’s been caught in his own trap.

  “Is it what you want, dear boy?” Æledfýres asks softly, borderline seductive. “Ah, but I can see it is. It’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Wil takes Æledfýres’s hand and slides it up and over his own smooth cheek. “We all want so badly.”

  Dallin could weep at the familiar turn of phrase, his gratitude is that deep, and he ignores all the pain, all the inner agony, as Wil’s other hand slides behind his back and latches on to Dallin’s. The paralysis breaks all at once, and all Dallin has been pulling into himself, all the power, bursts from him and into Wil in one great raging torrent of strength. Dallin’s knees should weaken and buckle, but they don’t—he’s carried on it, in it, the connection to Wil, to Lind and her people, so deep and profound Dallin thinks he can hear them all, see them all, and all at once.