by Hopkins, Amy
I sighed and sat back in my chair. There is something surreal about surviving an attempt on your life, then finding out the danger is far from over.
"I have no gifts," I said. "And as half-bloods go, I'm weak. Hell, I've barely cast a handful of spells today and I have a headache".
Harrod looked thoughtful at that.
"He must want something from you," Martin said. "Perhaps he thinks you're stronger than you are. We think he's found a way to harvest talent."
"Oh shit." I said. Harrod raised an eyebrow, surprised. "If that's true, he'll take out every half-blood in the city and we won't be able to do a damn thing to stop him. He's a freaking dream stalker! He must be a major Talent and now he's got the power of five half-bloods! He's getting stronger with each attack and we've got what, a lone Talent, a useless half-blood and a mortal who have no clue who he is or how to stop him?"
I was worried. Terrified even. I wasn't usually that rude, especially to mortals who formed a good percentage of my paying customers. Certainly not to a full Talent. I think they understood though, for neither took offense at my outburst.
"The first few victims were very weak in the Talent and were ill or suffering in some way. He's moving up to stronger half-skills and the last two victims were gifted. It doesn't seem random; we think he's moving on to stronger targets each time." Martin left the obvious unsaid. What did the guy want with me? He looked at me, questioning.
"No. I'm weak, even for a half-blood. No gifts, either."
"What's your heritage? Maybe that's of note. One of the women was African, another was a Scot with a trace of the older Celt blood in her."
"Mostly English. My mother and all her line are mortal, but my father was a full Talent, not highly ranked though. He was a bit on the out with some of the other Lords." That was an understatement. "How many others have been attacked? I only know about the ones who... didn't make it."
Martin and Harrod glanced at each other, Harrod looking uncomfortable. "Oh." I said. "Not even one?"
"You're the first survivor we've found. There might be others but no one has heard anything. We've been tracking this since the second victim. We're trying to get word out for information and to let people know they aren't safe. That was why we came to you."
"Harrod, surely there's some way for you to find him. A spell, something!" I sounded desperate and I didn't care.
"It's not working. I've tried. The second victim had a bit of a talent for hiding - we damn near didn't see the body until we tripped over it. I think I was close to him soon after that. I mean I'm not sure, completely. I sensed a Talent nearby but couldn't see anyone, you see. It was after that I realised he might have harvested the talent from those he'd killed."
Harvesting, the act of stealing other's talent, was an ancient, outlawed skill that was all but forgotten now. In the past it had been used to create terrible warlords and excuse the murder of millions of weaker Talents (and quite a few stronger ones, too.) The problem was, these powers were only temporary. They only lasted a few weeks at most, so anyone relying on this artificial boost to power had to top up at regular intervals. Once the Council of Lords had been formed - originally to take down a rather nasty dictator trying to flatten Scotland, England and Wales under his thumb all in one go - they basically formed a sub-government of their own to prevent harvesting and the unlawful killing of Talented. If they hadn't, Talents would have all but died out by now.
"When was the first death?" I asked.
"Over two months ago. It would be wearing off by now, assuming we're right and that he's using the old methods," Martin replied. For a mortal, the guy knew a lot about our world. "I think we've done all we can here. You know what we do, so take care. If we have any more questions, we'll return. We'll take this and see if we can track it to anything." Martin picked up the knife and slipped it in his pocket.
"What?" I gasped. "You can't just leave me here! What the hell am I going to do?"
"Of course we're not just going to leave you here," Harrod said. "I'm going to ward your house. I'll give you Martin's phone number, you can call if you run into any trouble. If you can imbue some tea with dreamstop, that should give you some amount of protection. I'm afraid there's really not much more we can do, but we'll pop by and check on you in the morning."
"We will?" asked Martin, seemingly invisible to my distress.
"Of course we bloody will," Harrod said, sounding exasperated.
"Right, yes. Of course we will. We'll see you in the morning then. Cheerio!" Martin headed for the door with Harrod trailing behind him. The Talent Lord stopped to etch a small design on the door frame with his wand, then spent a few minutes tracing a spell as his companion tapped his foot impatiently. Then, they were gone.
* * *
The next few days passed slowly. Harrod had returned the knife to me, saying he hadn't been able to find anything of use. He and Martin popped in each morning to check on me, but the wards Harrod had used seemed to be doing the trick. Despite the uneventful nights, I wasn't sleeping well and I spent my days in an irritable funk.
On Wednesday morning, Gibble arrived at his usual time. He shuffled over to the counter, then grunted at the already boiled teapot. He didn't like it when I threw off his morning routine. In protest, he stomped over to an armchair, pulled a book from his back pocket and started reading. "That's it, huh? No work from you today?" I said dryly. He just snorted. I left him there and went to open the shop.
My morning stretched out. A feeling of dread had settled in my gut and I just didn't want to be there. My customers could tell - even those who would usually stay for a chat seemed to want to get their order and leave. I wanted it to be quiet, so I could disappear and think for a bit, but despite the reduction in loiterers, the day was still busy. There were lots of custom orders for the weekend and a few for those who liked to party (or hunt, study or whatever else my teas were used for) mid-week. Eventually, the sales slowed and it was a few minutes between customers.
Gibble was a decent attendant, as long as you didn't give him anything too complicated to do. In busy periods I tried to stay close as he didn't have the personality for customer service but today, I really didn't care about the damn customers. I wanted to go. Anywhere. I needed to think.
"Gibble, I'm going for a walk." Lenny immediately rose and came to my side, his big, brown head leaning into my hip. He'd stuck to me like glue this week, getting under everyone's feet and raising hackles at the guy who snapped at me when I made him wait. I guess we were all on edge.
After I'd clipped on Lenny's lead and grabbed my coat, we left. We meandered through the streets for a bit, heading towards the City. I'd intended to go talk to the guards about lodging a report days ago, but as I got nearer my pace slowed. Was there really any point? I railed inside because I knew there wasn't. Frustration and fear warred inside me, and I had no one to turn to. Too old to rely on my parents, I wished for the days when my father would come to the rescue. He wasn't the smartest or most competent person I knew - far from it - but he was Dad. The grown up who fixed things. Now I was the grown up and I didn't have the faintest clue what I was supposed to do. I was lucky to even have Lenny and Gibble.
Gibble was a family heirloom, a boggart that was bound to our family for so long that he'd started serving them, for lack of anything else to do. Oh don't get me wrong, if I left the milk out for even a moment, he'd sour it and things often weren't where I had left them. He played the odd trick to keep up the appearance of being a malevolent deity but in reality, he was happiest sitting in a big chair with one of his little books. He worked at my shop in return for peace and quiet when it was closed. He vanished at sundown, and turned up some time the next morning - rarely at dawn, but usually before it got busy. He'd often spend his days off curled up on the window seat like a big, ugly cat.
I wandered. Up past the wall, past the guards who protected those with 'enough' magic and disdained us lesser folk. I hated them in that moment. Until now it had never both
ered me, but I knew that with their help I could be safe. Again, I was pulled to speak to them, lodge a report and beg for protection. I remembered a rumour from a while back, about a half-blood who was being harassed by a Talent. She'd asked for protection and when it was denied, she'd stood at the wall, screaming obscenities until they'd arrested her. After keeping her for three days, they'd dragged her back to her house and warded her inside for another week, leaving her at the mercy of the Talent who'd been stalking her. I didn't know if it was completely true but... No thanks. I'd just have to figure this out myself. Well, unless Harrod and Martin came through.
I could go inside the wall. There was no law against that, so long as I had my papers and checked in regularly. I could try and hire a room at one of the lodges. Being around the Talents might give me some level of protection - they wouldn't want a death inside the Inner City after all - but I couldn't afford to do that for long. I'd have to endure constant looks, questions asking why I was somewhere I didn't belong. No, may as well give up on that line of thought all together.
I turned down another street, heading toward the deli. Perhaps I'd stop for a bone for Lenny. A sort of apology for what had happened. The dog appeared to bear me no ill will after his night locked away, he just seemed worried about me.
When I came back into the shop, Gibble was still sitting in the chair as though he hadn't moved. I noticed a pot on the sink behind the counter though, so he'd been up to make some sample teas for customers. He didn't drink it himself.
"Gibble, how much do you know of dream stalkers?" I asked. A hot cup of tea would put things to rights, I hoped. I selected a blend of the top shelf that helped with cognition and making mental leaps.
"Dream masterss? They slippery. Slipss into dreams and make you mad." He said melodramatically.
I just looked at him, tapping my foot. Really. All 32 years of my life and he still thought he'd fool me? I waited.
"They enter the mind when you be sleeping. They be able to twist the dreams and hurt the seers. The worst ones, they be making the body move. They be making the people do things, bad things. They be nasty, dangerous." He heaved a worried sigh. "You be staying away from them. The Guardians will not be pleased if the Lady is hurt."
"One came after me last week," I said, wondering what the Guardians had to do with any of it. "Your owner would be most displeased if he'd succeeded in his task, so perhaps you could share a little more information?" Gibble's eyes widened. I knew he'd deny it if asked, but he cared about me, despite his protestations that he was simply here because he had no choice.
"Last... Why did you not tell? This be bad, very bad... The dream masters be hard to defeat. They be hard to protect against. The Lady must not be dreaming." He rose, went to the counter and started shoving boxes around on my shelves. He grabbed one out and thrust it at me. "The lady should be using this one, imbuing with a dreamstop and sleepmore. The lady should be using the warding of protection on the windows and doors and the warding of the harbour on the beds. The Lady must not try to fight. The lady must resist but not fights. If the lady fights, she will lose. Resisting is the only ways." His anxiety garbled his speech, making him harder than usual to understand.
"Gibble, it's ok. A Talent came by, he offered to help. Everything is warded. The dream stalker might come back though, and I don't know how to fight him if he does."
"He won't kill the lady!" Gibble protested. "He cannot, they will not allow it!"
"Gibble, I think it's the same person that killed the other half-bloods. He left something here and he might come back for it. I have to stop him; how can I do that if I can't fight him? What if he gives up trying to get me through my dreams and comes after me on the street?"
"The Lady must fight."
"You said I'll lose if I fight"
"Lady must fight in the world, not in the dream. If Lady fights in the dream, she will lose. Lady must squash the dreamer in the this-world. Lady must remember."
I didn't think he'd have much else to tell me and his worry was making it too hard to understand him. He had some knowledge of the Talents, but not a great deal.
"Gibble, can you ask the Others? See if they know of a dream stalker that's been active. See if they know of his identity, his plan or his weaknesses. Tell me what you find when you come back."
"Yess Lady. Gibble be asking". He'd gone back to his poor uneducated boggart act. I sighed and left him to go back to his reading. He wouldn't leave until sundown but I had confidence that he'd do as I asked during the night.
* * *
I went upstairs and sat at my laptop, sipping tea brewed to Gibble's specifications. Harrod's wards had worked so far but it wouldn't hurt to double up. My muscles felt loose and my limbs were heavy; the tea had already started to take effect. I turned on the computer and started searching. Unsure where to begin, I looked for anything I could find on Talent murders, suicides, news reports, unusual crimes. Navigating the othernet wasn't too difficult - I was no expert at trawling for information there, but I'd used it before to source tea suppliers and look for the ex-boyfriend of one of my friends.
Not expecting to find anything meant I wasn't disappointed when I didn't. I mainly looked for chatter amongst the half-bloods, the main users of the Othernet, for complaints about strange dreams or night time occurrences. There were more mentions than I expected of bad dreams, sleepwalking and one user, 'hornykitty91', who'd had his mortal mum start sleepwalking and attack him once during the night. It had happened just before he'd gone backpacking across Europe. The dates would place it at the first attack, if it had been the same perpetrator. I sent the guy a message, snorting at his choice of user name. Having Talent didn't unfortunately mean having class, sense or the ability to pick an appropriate pseudonym.
The message I sent was brief- I told him I believed the experience he'd had was occurring elsewhere and could he please get in touch as soon as possible. I hoped he'd do so. The other mentions seemed concentrated within London, close to the Inner City, anything outside this seemed to be more general bad dreams. Though users of the othernet didn't give out personal details, I thought I could figure out two of them. One was Wendig, the second victim, asking if anyone had an effective spell for bad dreams after a night of restless sleep. He'd dreamed of suicide, and though he didn't give specifics, I imagined it to be a bad one given his efforts for what was, at that point, a one off event. This had happened just before his death. Carmel I knew immediately from her username - one night, after a dinner party with friends, we'd tried to use magic to create caramel flavoured popcorn. The mix had exploded, coating the entire kitchen in gloopy brown syrup and starting a small fire. Since then, she'd taken up the handle 'CaramelFlambe' in her online dealings.
I was ready to shut down the browser when I noticed something. Carmel, amongst her regular posts about everything possible under the sun, had mentioned her house-mate's sleepwalking tendency. That wasn't what caught my eye as I knew Melanie had started rousing during the night a few weeks before Carmel's death. Carmel had come to the shop to request a sleep tea for her roommate. No, what caught my attention had nothing to do with sleep or bad dreams... it was the knife. Melanie had woken one morning with a scratch on her leg. She'd found a strange knife in bed with her. Neither of the women recognised it. Carmel had intended to show it to someone - she didn't mention who - but had died two nights later.
It was the same knife, it had to be. I scrambled for the police files and went through Carmel's with a fine toothed comb - no mention of a strange knife at all. They'd catalogued those in the kitchen and a craft knife found at her house, but none of them fit the wound left in her back. I checked the time - it was late, but not terribly so. I decided this couldn't wait.
I grabbed my boots and a coat, slipping the knife in one of the pockets. I paused at the door, looking back at the happily prancing dog.
"No boy. I'm sorry, you can't... no! I'm going to... Oh, for goodness sake!" I went back to grab Lenny's lead and clip it on. He wagg
ed his tail and happily followed me out into the freezing weather. I only lived a short distance from the port-gates and once through, it was about a twenty-minute walk to where I had to go. We traipsed through the streets, cold wind whipping around us in the dark until we reached Carmel's house. The lights were on. I knocked at the door.
* * *
For a mortal, Melanie had always been very welcoming of Talented and half-bloods. I'd asked her about it once and she said it was because of her wheelchair. No stranger to being treated like an outcast herself, she'd quickly identified with the ostracised half-bloods. I'd met her a few years ago, when she came to my shop looking for a reference for Carmel. She was an exuberant, kind person, always ready for a laugh and deeply caring of her friends. We'd often spent time together, the three of us. Tonight, she didn't seem as friendly.
"Hello? Oh, Emma."
"Hi Melanie. I'm sorry, I know it's late but I was hoping we could talk?"
"Well...." Melanie opened her mouth to grasp for an excuse, but I wasn't feeling generous.
"Melanie, I think I know what happened to Carmel."
Terrified eyes shot up at me and she tried to close the door. Dammit, I'd scared her. "Please, he's after me. I need your help!" I pushed against the door as Melanie stopped protesting and wheeled her chair out of the way. It swung open to reveal an absolute mess. Drawers were emptied, cupboards hanging open.... How could she even navigate through this mess?
"What happened?"
"The police. They wrecked the place when they were searching it. They went through everything." That had been weeks ago but I didn't say that out loud. Melanie looked so different from how I'd remembered her - she looked broken. Her hair was limp and her clothes hanging looser than normal on her small frame. Dark circles under her eyes hinted at sleepless nights and her flat voice made my heart break.
