Dark Consort

by Amber R. Duell

  “Nora?” Kail called. It was far off, I thought, but perhaps not. Reality was fading in and out. Heavy footfalls echoed in my ears. “Nora!”

  Kail’s hands were on me, lifting me up. I groaned, wanting nothing more than to lie back down.

  “What happened?” he barked when I ignored him. If I ignored him. Was he talking a second ago? He gave me a quick shake, and my brain rattled against my skull. “Hey,” Kail coaxed again.

  Fine. Answer him, then nap.

  “I—” I coughed blood all over his mask. “Hate you.”

  “What happened?” he asked again, his voice raw.

  “I conquered the Barren.” I leaned into his grip, letting it hold me up since it was obvious he wasn’t going to let me go. Maybe I could sleep like this—

  “Nora?” Kail gently tapped my cheek. “Hey, stay awake.”

  “But I’m tired,” I whined.

  “You probably have a concussion, among other things. Don’t fall asleep.”

  “I’m the Lady of Nightmares,” I said, the words slurred. “Immortal. Strong.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said as if he were talking to a child, and he lifted me into his arms. “Stay with me, Oh Powerful One.”

  My head nestled perfectly into the crook of his neck. Today he smelled like pumpkin spice, and I wondered, abstractly, if my family had celebrated Thanksgiving without me. “Your surprise better be worth it,” I mumbled.

  “Stay awake, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  My eyes slid shut, and I forced them open as much as I could. “Wouldn’t that ruin the surprise part?”

  “You slipping into a temporary coma would ruin it too.” His hands tightened around me. “I found them. The nightmares that killed your friends.”

  My breath caught. “What?”

  “Rowan promised to take care of the culprits if you killed the Weaver, didn’t she?” He sounded defensive. Annoyed. “I figured if she wasn’t going to keep her word, it fell to me to get it done.”

  I shifted in his arms and wheezed. “Why?”

  “Think of it as my apology for not stopping Rowan.”

  Apology. Ha! As if he was capable of such a thing. I couldn’t deny the appeal of his gift though. Natalie with her eyes in her hands and Emery with her arms sliced to ribbons. Coils of black swirled through the fog surrounding my mind, clearing it away. My friends would be avenged as brutally as they were killed. Blood would flow, black or red. Mindless or intelligent. Their lives were mine, and I would take them with the entire force of the Nightmare Realm behind me.

  This time, when the darkness grinned, I grinned back.

  The pounding in my head broke through the blissful silence. My eyes cracked, the lids heavy and swollen, but my vision was no longer obstructed. I sucked in a crackling breath. Everything hurt. Places that I didn’t even know existed. But at least I was alive. And awake. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been out—just that, at some point on the way here, I gave into exhaustion—wherever here was. I was grateful for the cushioned surface beneath me. There were lumps, sure, but it was a thousand times better than the ground.

  “Nora?” It was a hesitant whisper, jarring, considering the source.

  I blinked my eyes open and stared up at Kail’s masked face as he leaned over me. “Ow,” I moaned and batted at the tip of his beak.

  He let out a breath that was half-laugh, half-relief. “It took you long enough. I was beginning to think I’d have to kill those nightmares myself.”

  Ah, yes. The nightmares that killed Natalie and Emery. Everything flooded back to me—the Barren, the armored woman, the magic rushing to save me. “How long have I been asleep?”

  “A day and a half.” Kail sat on a chair beside the bed and brushed the hair from his forehead. A wet cloth hung off the side of a basin with small bits of green leaves scattered on the tabletop. “How do you feel?”

  Better than I should. I eased into a sitting position. “Where are we?”

  “Here.” Kail held out a wooden cup of water with more tiny leaves floating on top. “This will help with the pain.”

  I scowled. Rowan had tried to give me something to ease the pain of her touch, and I was glad I refused it. “I’m fine.”

  He glowered. “Don’t be stubborn.”

  “Why am I always getting head injuries around you, anyway?” I snapped.

  “Maybe because you pick fights you can’t win?” He shoved the cup into my hand and wrapped my fingers around it. “Now drink this. You’ll heal quickly thanks to your magic, but this will take the edge off.”

  “Fine,” I said, because I needed relief. Any relief. If Kail wanted to hurt me, he would’ve done it while I laid there unconscious. “But I need something to write on.”

  “If I leave, you’ll dump it out,” he accused.

  I downed the entire thing in three gulps. It tasted like grass with a bitter kick, and when it was gone, I threw the cup at him and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. “Paper. Now.”

  He batted the cup away before it hit him. It clattered against the concrete. “I doubt there’s any here.”

  I scanned the small, dank room. No, not a room—a cell. Three walls were covered with names and tally marks, the fourth with thick black bars. Thankfully, the door was wide open. “Are we in a prison?” I asked.

  “See? Not all my safe houses have trap doors.”

  I glowered at him.

  “I needed somewhere to keep your presents,” Kail said with a shrug. “It’s as good a place as any.”

  “I’m sure there are a million other places to lock things up around here.” I sighed. It didn’t matter—he was right. It was probably one of the better options. “I need something to write on, Kail.”

  He reached under my pillow, searching.

  “What are you—”

  “When in Rome.” He winked and produced a crude shank. Someone had wrapped half a roll of duct tape around the handle of a warped spoon, filed to a point. “I think there’s some free wall space by your head.”

  I groaned and snatched the sharp object from him. It didn’t have to be a fancy image; it just had to get my point across. The more I concentrated on the scraping of metal on concrete, the more my head throbbed, but the shape of the armored woman’s face gradually took shape on the wall. Not my best work, but it would do. “What is that?”

  Kail stared at it a moment before speaking. “It’s Three.”

  “Three?”

  “One of the Hours.”

  “The Hours? You mean the nightmares that destroyed the Blood Tower?” I asked. Kail nodded, and I swallowed hard, shifting to tuck the shank into my back pocket. “She attacked me in the Barren. Something about my letting Mara back in.”

  “Ah.” Kail stretched his back. “Well, yes. That’s bound to be an unpopular move.”

  “It was an accident. I didn’t know she hitched a ride.”

  “Your intentions won’t matter when she decimates the entire realm for the fun of it.”

  My stomach twisted. The Sandman warned me—unlike with the Weaver, I had listened. My mistake was letting Mara think there was a chance. Or maybe it didn’t matter either way. She had made up her mind that she was coming, and there had been no changing it. Lying to her had seemed like my only way to return to the Nightmare Realm without the Sandman. I chewed my bottom lip to keep it from quivering. I was such an idiot.

  “Don’t worry, Lady,” Kail said, interrupting my self-pity party. “I’m sure the Sandman will come up with a plan. If he’s good at anything, it’s that—unless you get in his way yet again.” It was a slap in the face, yet said without accusation.

  “I don’t want to rely on the Sandman to fix my mistake,” I said quietly and flicked my gaze up to meet his.

  His good eye changed slowly, switching between colors almost lazily. “We have to concentrate on Rowan. No one wins when they’re fighting a war on two fronts.”

  “You’re right.” I slid off the lumpy cot and took a shaky breath. Movi
ng seemed to push the ache from my muscles, so I bent my joints a few times. “How do I look?”

  Kail stood with a smirk. “Two black eyes have never looked so good.”

  I made a tsking sound with my tongue. Black eyes were a vast improvement from what I was sure I looked when I stumbled out of the Barren. “Show me these nightmares.”

  “Now?” His eyes widened.

  “Do we have anything better to do?”

  “That’s a loaded question, Lady. We obviously do,” he answered cynically.

  I rolled my eyes. “Your ex-girlfriend can wait another day. Let’s go.”

  Kail shrugged and led the way down a hallway full of identical cells, down two flights of stairs, and around a corner. He paused, his hand on a door that said solitary confinement. “She’s not, you know. For the record.”

  I bounced on the balls of my feet. The nightmares were close—I knew it. “What?”

  His jaw twitched. “Rowan. She’s not an ex. Or a girlfriend.”

  “Oh.” That wasn’t what I expected. I wondered why he cared what I thought on the matter. I hadn’t even meant it when I called her that. “Okay.”

  “Anyway.” He cleared his throat. “I should probably warn you that one of them is pretty strong.”

  “Don’t care,” I said and hurried past him into a dimly lit corridor.

  Something lunged at the first door on the left, and I peeked curiously through the small window to find a giant wolf-man standing on his haunches. He was covered in coarse, wiry grey hair, his snout pressed in so he looked like a pug with giant fangs. Long pointed claws extended from his hands. He stared out at me, part fear, part hate, part something else.

  “He killed Emery?” I asked Kail without looking away from the growling creature.

  “I don’t know your friends’ names,” he said with a stiff shrug.

  I scowled. It had to be. Something told me this thing wouldn’t have bothered asking his victim to hold their own eyes. More likely, he would’ve eaten them. So. How to make him pay? Werewolves, wolf-men, whatever: they weren’t up my alley. All I knew was that they were rumored to change on a full moon, and a person had to shoot them with a silver bullet to kill them. With the nightmare version, all bets were off.

  “Does silver affect him?” I asked Kail.

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You wouldn’t know?” I stared at him. “You caught the thing.”

  “I lured it, if you want to get technical. No silver required.”

  “Worth a shot, then,” I mumbled and put my hand on the wall beside the door. The grin rose up, searching for the bundle of thread that was the prison. It came easily without my resistance, and with a quick flick of my magic, molten silver coated every surface in the room. It dripped from the ceiling, flowed down the walls, swirled across the floor. The wolf-man’s howl was immediate. His paws sizzled as he jumped from one to the other. The molten liquid ate away at his fur, his skin, his bones. My heart ached at the gruesome sight, but the grin held my resolve firmly between its teeth. He deserved to die for killing Emery. He slammed against the door again, his wild eyes begging me through the small window to make it stop.

  “You shouldn’t have touched my friend,” I said, almost as if my voice weren’t my own.

  The wolf-man’s cries slowly faded as he thrashed, trying desperately not to touch any silver. But there was no escape. I stood there watching, waiting for the moment he drew his last breath.

  And I reveled in it.

  When his chest finally ceased rising, when he was little more than a skeleton, I turned to Kail and let out a short breath. “Next.”

  Kail eyed me warily and pointed to the next cell down. “Permission to rescue you if things go bad?”

  I snorted. “Sure.”

  He slid the bolt open and pulled the door outward with a loud screech. Inside the small, musty room, I eyed a figure strapped to a gurney. A straight jacket and brown sack over its head hid its true form.

  “What’s this?” I asked calmly, stalking around the table. My power crackled in my veins.

  “The most beautiful nightmare in the Night World,” Kail said in a careful voice. “So beautiful, in fact, that you’ll feel unworthy to look upon her and will—”

  “Claw your own eyes out. Got it.” I swallowed hard at the memory. “How did you catch this one then?”

  He looked at me like it was obvious. “Do I strike you as insecure?”

  “Far from it.” I took a deep breath and steeled myself. “Let’s see, then.”

  Kail stepped up to the gurney and ripped the sack off the nightmare’s head. The room exploded with golden light. It was like staring into the sun, at the purest thing in existence. And when she smiled, I felt no bigger than an ant. A thing to be trampled. Indeed, someone—something—like me shouldn’t look upon her perfection.

  “Nora,” Kail whispered.

  His voice snapped the nightmare’s hold on me, and anger blossomed in my chest. Natalie. She was pretty and smart. Funny. Loyal. And this… this thing made her believe she wasn’t. I stared into the nightmare’s wide blue eyes and saw no remorse.

  “Beautiful.” I glanced at Kail over my shoulder with a wicked gleam in my eyes. “We can fix that.”

  My magic swelled, ready, but killing her that way would be too easy. I took the shank from my back pocket and studied the crude workmanship. Perfect. Everything that she was—her golden skin, perfect profile, and glimmering hair—ruined by everything she wasn’t. A fitting end.

  With the first cut, the nightmare shrieked so hard the gurney shook. It cracked open the box of emotions I’d carried around for months and months. The anger, the hurt, the sorrow—I carved it all into the nightmare’s flesh. I took my time doing it. Each new cut flared with golden light that dimmed quickly, leaving behind a blackened wound. I swept my hand over her face, her neck, her collarbones as easily as I would’ve used a pencil on paper. Her red blood ran thick down the shank. My grip slipped more than once on the taped handle. I felt the blood dripping off my elbows, and I didn’t care.

  When the nightmare was finally still and the golden glow nonexistent, I dropped the shank to the floor. “I feel better now,” I told Kail in a stale voice.

  “I’m sure you do,” he said in a tone I couldn’t quite decipher. “Look at your arms.”

  I lifted my bloodied hands and sucked in a sharp breath. Beneath the crimson was my own pale skin. No more black. The Weaver’s magic was really, truly mine. Fully absorbed. I flexed my fingers. What was I capable of now? A true smile broke across my face.

  Kail smiled back, a strangely genuine expression, and pointed down the hallway. “The showers are that way, Lady Nightmare.”

  For the first time, there was no condescending tone in the title.

  18

  The Sandman

  My spies were dying faster than I could make them. An unfortunate side effect of my magic, but at least seeking out new ones kept me from dwelling on Nora. And Mare—I was still having trouble wrapping my head around that problem. The Weaver had experience under his belt when we banished her, but Nora…

  I shook my head and focused on the task at hand. Baku crept along the forest ground beside me. The incline to the top of the cliff appeared nearly nonexistent, but it was all an illusion. My thighs started burning halfway to the peak. Now that we were nearly there, I barely noticed it. There wasn’t room to worry about personal comfort when we were approaching nightmares as perceptive as the Watchmen. They had one job, one base desire: defend what they were told to defend.

  “Remember,” I whispered to Baku. “We aren’t here to cause a scene. You can’t eat these.”

  Baku’s lip curled in annoyance, but his eyes were resigned.

  It was smart of Rowan to pull the Watchmen from their assigned landscape to overlook the Keep. The how was the most concerning thing about it though, unless the Weaver had stationed them there before without my noticing or removed their assignment altogether so they could
roam where they pleased. My insides twisted at how much I truly neglected the Weaver during his binding. Too little, too late seemed to be my new motto. I needed to rectify that.

  As Baku and I crested the top of the hill, solid forms of six giant stone men dotted the far side of the clearing. Some were the color of granite to blend with the rocky outcroppings, others a mixture of browns and greens to blend with the trees. If they shifted so much as a centimeter, their appearance changed to match the backdrop perfectly. The six of them worked as a team, so I only needed to secure one to see what all of them saw. The trick was getting close enough. Luckily, their hearing was nowhere near as good as their eyesight.

  Baku and I wove between trees, hiding behind thick trunks and boulders until we reached the edge of a wooded shelter. One of the Watchmen turned toward our hiding place in increments—his head, his torso, then his legs. His marble eyes looked out from beneath a sculpted warrior helmet. I cringed. Their hearing wasn’t exceptional, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t hear at all.

  I eased a handful of sand from my satchel and dropped it to the ground, directing its path toward the nightmare. It would take twice as much, maybe more, to inhabit something this size, but it could give us valuable information. No, not us. Me. It would give me information that I would have to get to Nora without her knowing how I came by it. The sand snaked through the sparse tufts of grass and eased into the cracks of rocks, staying as hidden as possible.

  The Watchman began to turn back to the cliff, but paused. With lightning fast speed, he slammed the spear in his right hand against the shield in his left. The boom echoed down the hill. Baku bristled, and I pressed myself against the closest tree. One by one, the other five Watchmen twisted toward the forest. Then, in perfect unison, they aimed their spears straight ahead.

  “Run,” I told Baku.

  A spear sliced through the tree right above my head. I ducked and rolled to the side as another soared straight toward my chest. The forest groaned around us as we fled down the mountain. Another spear hit the ground directly in front of me, and I flung myself sideways to avoid running into the swaying stone handle. The fourth ripped through my sleeve before tearing apart a tree to my left. It crashed down, taking me with it, and pinned my leg to the ground. My shin bone shattered under the weight. I swallowed the pained cry that rose in my throat and took a series of shallow breaths.