Aegyir Rises (Guardians of The Realm Book 1)

by Amanda Fleet

  Finn leaned forwards to put his beer down on the low glass-topped table in front of him. “He hasn’t talked to me. And if he was gonna break up with you, he’d talk to me, Billy.”

  Billy nodded, but his shoulders were still bowed. “If you see him, let me know?”

  “Of course,” said Finn. “I’ll try to catch up with him and see what’s up.”

  Billy put his beer down and stood up briskly. “Okay. Well, dinner’s probably ready.”

  He shot out of the room, and I turned to Finn. With half an eye on the door, he sent a text to Rick, then slid his phone away again just as Billy invited us through to the kitchen.

  The house was modern in decor – neutral walls, though more taupe than cream, and with splashes of bright colour throughout. It was nowhere near as tidy and stripped back as Rick’s house and was all the more homely for it. Pictures of Billy’s time in the army scattered the walls – groups of soldiers laughing to the camera, taken during his tours overseas.

  I glanced through the window. It was dark outside, but there was a good view of the garden from the extension normally, and Billy had pots of scented plants near the doors that filled the extension with perfume in the summer.

  Dinner was awkward without Rick as a social buffer between Finn and Billy. When all four of us were there, we were a group of four friends. Tonight, it felt like two employees having dinner with their boss. Neither Finn nor Billy seemed able to put that aside for Billy to open up fully, leaving the conversation stilted. By the time we’d each nibbled on a Mars bar over coffee, I knew Finn was as keen to leave as I was. We made our excuses as soon as was decently possible.

  In the hallway, Billy handed us our jackets and helmets. Finn stayed in the hallway while I stepped over the threshold and from the murmurs between them, I assumed Finn was reassuring Billy that things with Rick might change.

  The front door closed, and Finn pulled out his phone.

  “Rick got back to you?”

  He shook his head. “I always thought he and Billy were solid. And I think Rick would have said something to me the other day if he wanted to call things off.”

  “He seemed okay about everything on Sunday.”

  Finn wrinkled his nose. “Well, if he is getting so stoned he’s that out of it, I can’t see him and Billy lasting. Billy won’t stand for that.”

  He called Rick, nodding at me to wheel the bike down the drive, out of earshot of the house. His call went straight to voicemail. “Hey, Rick. Only me. Everything okay? Billy’s a bit stressed about you guys. Catch you tomorrow?”

  He hung up, rolling his lips inwards, and I rubbed his back. He joined me on the bike and jammed his helmet on. “I’ll see if I can catch up with him tomorrow. I don’t want to get caught in the middle if they are splitting up.”

  I kicked up the stand as Finn settled his arms around me, a horrible feeling of unease settling between my shoulder blades. Rick would never take drugs, so why the hell was he asking about me and Finn like he didn’t know us? And how could he not know who Stephen was?

  ***

  The next morning, I trudged down our lane back to the house, the paper bag from the pharmacy clutched so hard in my hand it was starting to go soft. The GP appointment had been exactly what I’d expected – all too brief with a prescription handed over at the end and a promise to refer me back for counselling. He’d prescribed something to help me sleep and something else for anxiety. I’d had the prescription filled, but I wasn’t convinced I would take them. Well, not the pills for stress. Some sleep would be good, but if a murderous demon was planning on killing everyone, including me, being anxious about that seemed entirely appropriate. I’d been on the same pills before and they’d made me feel dissociated and zombie-like. I wanted to feel sharp.

  I unlocked the door, kicked off my shoes when I got in and locked the door, sliding the bolt across and putting the chain on, too. I shrugged my coat off, heavy-limbed with fatigue. I hadn’t slept well. No surprise there. The old, familiar nightmares about Stephen had marched through my brain, blending with new versions that incorporated Rick and demons and the Realm in a confusing mix. Then Lilja had popped up again, telling me not to trust anyone, but she’d vanished before explaining any more.

  I had until just after lunch to myself. Finn finished at two, and we were trying out a session at a climbing wall when he got back. It was something both of us had fancied doing for a while and there’d been an online voucher that made it cheap enough for us to sign up for. Mind you, we’d signed up before the break-in and we now owed Rick shed-loads for the door. The session was non-refundable though, but at least the landlord had made positive noises about covering the costs of the door when Finn had called him.

  The cottage was cold. Putting an electric fire on just for me seemed extravagant. Since I was knackered, I decided to snuggle back under the duvet upstairs while Finn was at work. I’d be cosy and warm and if I fell asleep that would only be a bonus. I bunched the pillows together and tucked under the covers, still fully dressed. Right enough, I was toasty, but my brain was too busy for me to sleep so I fetched the book and took some painkillers, hoping to prevent the screaming headaches I got whenever I tried to read the runes. Back upstairs, I flopped back on the bed. Something twitched in my brain that I couldn’t ignore.

  The book had said that the Guides began to hide the bodies of those they had killed, so they could resemble their form without suspicion. Hence the woman in the library. Hence the man in the market square. Hence Toby Hall in my interview. All managing to be strolling around and making my charm glow blue, long after they were dead. Blue for danger – the danger being that these weren’t people, but rogue Guides looking like their dead victims.

  My heart rate stuttered.

  Was Rick dead?

  “The way he was talking… it was like he was someone else entirely. If I didn’t know better, I’d have wondered if he had a twin.”

  No. No! Not Rick. Kind, funny, caring Rick who’d kept Finn together when I fell apart. Who might look like a big scary guy but who was as soft as butter. Who would do anything for me and Finn.

  I closed my eyes, my stomach knotting, and I ground the heels of my hands into my cheekbones. This was madness. Did I seriously believe this?

  My head said no.

  My heart knew it was true.

  An image of Rick’s body, abandoned in a corner of the quarry, flooded my brain and I swallowed hard, scrubbing tears from my eyes. Were we going to tune into the news and see our friend’s face flash up on the screen as the latest body to be found in the quarry?

  I needed answers. I reached for the book and flipped it open to the section where this had been described. The runes settled into words and phrases and I re-read the section greedily, hoping desperately to find something that gave some wriggle-room.

  “At first they chose to resemble those still alive, but soon they began to hide the bodies of those they had killed and mimic their form.”

  I drew in a deep breath. Okay. So they could just resemble living people. I fought my stuttering heartbeat. Maybe Rick was still alive, but Aegyir had been pretending to be him when Billy saw him.

  Except Billy said he’d been at Rick’s place. Rick wouldn’t let a stranger walk around his house as if he owned it, any more than Finn would.

  Why Rick? Why did Aegyir want to resemble him? Why not keep looking like the woman from the library? Or Toby Hall from my interview? Or even the guy who’d been staring at me the other day?

  Because their bodies had been found. Presumably Aegyir needed a new victim because he couldn’t appear as the others without raising suspicion. I grabbed my phone and checked the local news. My heart lifted a little to find there were no reports of new bodies and certainly not any that sounded like they could be Rick. I clung to the hope that Aegyir was just pretending to be him and that Rick was still alive somewhere, though deep down I knew I was clutching at straws.

  I scraped my hair back from my face and drew the duv
et tighter around me, shivery with stress. Even if Aegyir was just pretending to be Rick, it had to be linked with me, didn’t it? No one else was seeing demons or wraiths shepherding spirits from a dying person as far as I knew.

  Why the woman from the library? Or the others? Were they just in the wrong place at the wrong time? I closed my eyes, trying to remember if I’d seen any of them before my charm had glowed. I was sure I hadn’t seen the woman in the library or the guy who’d been staring at me in the gym, but there was a possibility I’d seen Toby Hall. Or that Aegyir had connected him with me. On Friday, on my way to the library, I’d walked to the place where my interview was, so that I could check how long it took to get there. If Aegyir was following me, he could have thought the people there were important.

  I screwed my face up, queasiness roiling in my gut. How long had he been following me? Who else was in danger? Not Alison. Please not Alison.

  He’d been watching the cottage. He’d seen me any number of times. Why not attack me directly?

  Because I was never alone? With Stephen being released, neither me nor Finn had wanted me to be anywhere vulnerable. Maybe he’d never had the chance.

  I gnawed on my knuckles, thinking. If the man staring at me at the Farmers’ Market was Aegyir, he’d seen me with Rick in the cafe. Did he think that Rick was a way to get close to me? But he’d also seen me with Finn a lot more. Perhaps Aegyir could only adopt the form but not all of the character. The book said the character always got lost to Chaos. That would explain Rick not knowing about me and Finn or who Stephen was, and seeming like a different person to Billy. Maybe Aegyir wouldn’t choose to mimic Finn because I’d spot the difference instantly. He clearly didn’t realise how well I knew Rick, then.

  Cold fear settled in me as the pieces fell into place. Lilja said that Aegyir wanted me dead. And to get to me, he had to get through Finn. And Finn would never believe that Rick was being impersonated by a life-stealing demon and would let him into the house without qualm.

  My hands shook and my skin turned clammy. Finn had said he was going to stop by Rick’s on his way home. I snatched my phone up. My fingers shook as I dialled. Shit. It cut through to voicemail.

  “Hey. It’s me. Um. Just come straight home? Don’t go over to Rick’s. I’ll tell you why when you get in. Just, please… don’t go over to Rick’s.”

  I hung up and texted him the same message. He was pretty good at checking his phone as soon as his shift was over and I prayed he would today.

  Why did Aegyir want me dead? Presumably, he wanted Aeron dead. A few pages on in the book was another picture of Aeron/me. Should I skip ahead and read that bit? What if it only made sense if I read it all sequentially? Also, a few pages on from where I’d left off there was a gruesome diagram of a body with knives sticking out of it, next to one where the head had been lopped off. The images turned my stomach. Fuck. I hoped that wasn’t the only way to defeat Aegyir.

  I braced myself for the searing pain in my head and started to read.

  Slaves

  Aegyir was hungry for power. The stronger his victim, the more vitality it had and the stronger Aegyir would become if he took the vitality.

  One day, Aegyir went to take the vitality from a man who had a great amount of strength. Aegyir placed his hand over the man’s chest and started to remove the vitality. The man fought Aegyir and bit his arm and Aegyir’s life-fluid entered the man’s mouth. Immediately, the man was calm and obedient to Aegyir and Aegyir took his vitality and the man died.

  This intrigued Aegyir. Why had the man become docile? Aegyir began to experiment with victims, trying to recreate the conditions that led to the victim becoming obedient. After many victims had been killed, Aegyir learned that he could enslave his victims in life and receive their vitality when they died. The victim had to consume some of Aegyir, while Aegyir had contact with the person. The vitality would flow into Aegyir when the victim died. Until then, he would be obedient to Aegyir.

  Aegyir was furious with The Realm for denying him strength and form for so many years. He went to the portal and tried to cross but he was not strong enough to enter The Realm. In his anger, he began to enslave those Outside, building an army so that he could enter The Realm by force.

  The Seers could see that some of the Guides were planning to overthrow The Realm. Scouts were sent from The Realm to find how many Guides had been corrupted by Aegyir. Aeron urged the Council to act.

  That was the end of the section and I studied the pictures accompanying the story. They depicted Aegyir enslaving his victims. The first drawing showed black fluid being dripped into the mouth of someone pinned down with Aegyir’s hand on their chest. The black liquid came from Aegyir’s hand. I assumed this was the life-fluid that had been mentioned and that it was the equivalent of blood. The second image showed pretty much the same thing except that instead of his hand being pressed against the victim’s chest, Aegyir had his index finger in the centre of the person’s forehead while he knelt on his chest. Both pictures showed three drops of black life-fluid falling into the victim’s mouth.

  I nibbled the inside of my lip. Enslaved during life, then Aegyir got your vitality when you died. Double win for Aegyir. At least this looked like it would be more difficult to accomplish than merely touching a person’s spirit for a slow-steal of their vitality. In the pictures, the person looked to be fighting back and was being pinned down by Aegyir.

  I re-read the final line. Aeron urged the Council to act. Is that why Aegyir hated her? Did she put a stop to him?

  I read the next section, the runes resolving into words more easily, though a headache still brewed. Only some of the Realm-dwellers could cross the portals that connected Outside and the Realm. The Guides from Outside could force their way into the Realm, but they needed to have a corporeal body and a lot of strength to do so. The Realm Guides couldn’t cross to the Outside, as far as anyone knew. Anyone could be invited into the Realm, however, if the invite came from a Guardian.

  I paused.

  “I invite you in.”

  That’s what I’d heard when the black mist had rocked me backwards, up by the fracking site. It had felt as if I’d said it when I’d heard it in my head.

  I rubbed my brow and read the next bit, trying to reconcile what I was reading, with my dreams and the vision up at the fracking site.

  The Council was split over how to deal with the rogue Guides. Some argued for a group to go Outside to dispatch them; others suggested that the Guides should be invited into the Realm and be dealt with there. Votes were taken but no decision was made.

  I let my gaze settle on the window, my brain trying to piece everything together. Just as I was about to read the next part, my phone buzzed. Finn. Thank God.

  “Hey, just me. Why don’t you want me to go and see Rick?”

  From the way his voice faded in and out, he had the phone clamped to his face with his shoulder as he packed up his things.

  “Tell you when you get in. Just, please, don’t go and see him.”

  There was a scuffling sound and then Finn’s voice came through clearly. “Why? If he and Billy are splitting up—”

  “Finn, please? I think something really odd is happening with Rick.”

  There was a long pause. “Why? What’s happened?”

  I held my breath for a moment. I could hardly tell him my fears over the phone, not least because he’d laugh and go and see Rick. “Nothing. Just come home?”

  Another pause. “Okay. Oh, I went past his tattoo place on my way in and it was still all closed up. Not even a sign on the door saying when it’d be open again.”

  “Oh. He’s usually pretty good about that.”

  “Yeah. Okay. I’m on my way.”

  We rang off, and I tossed my phone down on the bed. If Finn was just setting off, he’d be back in about ten minutes. Maybe I had enough time to read a bit more before he got back.

  The next couple of pages of the book described how to dispatch a corrupted Guide. T
hey needed splitting into various components in order to be ‘dispersed’. There appeared to be three phases a Guide could have – a wraith that shepherded a spirit from body to body, a physical form once the wraith had stolen a person’s spirit, and a dispersed form that resembled mist or smoke. I exhaled slowly, forcing my emotions to calm and my mind to focus. I was pretty sure the wraith-form was what I had seen with the old man who had been hit by a car and in the grainy pictures from 1918. The physical form was just like Aegyir in his raw form – cadaverous, with leathery skin and red eyes. Even the thought of him made my skin crawl. I wondered if what I’d seen that day when I’d taken the bike out – the black ball of mist – was the dispersed form. If the Guide was dispatched by a Guardian, it was turned into the dispersed form and could be sealed in a vessel.

  I paused, thinking back to the day on the bike again. If a dispersed form was trapped in a vessel, how had it got loose in the countryside? I closed my eyes, re-running the afternoon. There’d been a tractor in the field. The fracking had boomed and made the earth shiver.

  Goose bumps chased across my skin. Had the mini-earthquake from the fracking released a dispersed Guide somehow? The ball of mist had appeared immediately afterwards. Had it been buried where the fracking was taking place?

  The way in which the Guide was dispersed was what the diagrams with the daggers and the beheading indicated. It wasn’t pretty. The vitality needed to be separated from the body. To do this, three daggers needed to be driven into the Guide in specific places – one in each side of the chest and one into the diaphragm. Once they were in, the Guide was then beheaded, at which point all the stolen vitality would exit the body, leaving the Guide resembling smoke or mist. The Guardians could then trap the mist in a special jar and seal it. For reasons not made clear, this went better if it happened on Realm soil, and all of the stabbing, beheading and trapping had to be done by a Guardian.