Patterns. He could actually see them, could see how they worked, could see how they twined around themselves to make a whole and then changed in less than an eyeblink, making new shapes to fit into old patterns, winding into an entirely new whole, only to unmake it all in another making.
I think there’s so much more that if you’re not very careful in how you use it, you could lose yourself.
Wil stretched inside it, reaching out inside forever, and still his grasp was endless.
Oh, Dallin… you don’t know how very right you were.
“I can see it.” Wil shook his head and breathed a quiet laugh.
“What do you see?”
Wil lifted his hand, tracing the shapes with the tip of his finger, fascinated when they swirled and dipped with his own invisible touch. A chaos of color, right at his fingertips, bending to his will. The flame expanded and churned, reaching impossibly halfway up the doorjamb for a moment until Wil dipped his hand, flattening the flare so it fanned out and spat when it touched the wax.
“I can see how it works.” Wil couldn’t seem to speak above a reverent whisper. “I can see its heart. I can touch it. It’s fierce and hungry. It wants to stretch and breathe, eat everything in its path. It loves the burning.”
Wil loved the burning. It was as though it were a part of him, an extension of his own body—
No. An extension of his soul. It knew when Wil wanted it to jump. It knew when he wanted it to kindle down to only a spark at the end of its wick. It wanted to unfold at the end of Wil’s hand. It wanted him to flick his fingers and send it leaping out, free it to its hunger.
It wanted in. It wanted to eat the emptiness Wil left behind as he swallowed it.
It was amazingly, mind-blowingly beautiful.
“Don’t hold back,” Dallin told him. “Go ahead and push.”
A jolt of fear shot through Wil. “You said I could lose myself.”
“But you won’t.”
Wil shook his head, eyeing the flame with wary distrust. “I’m… I can’t. It’ll—”
“The bleeding comes when you hold it back. Let it go. See what happens.”
“It’s too greedy.” Pressure was building at the backs of Wil’s eyes, sending a thumping pulse through his temples. “It wants… everything.”
Dallin’s hand tightened on Wil’s shoulder. “It’s only a candle. It can’t do any damage. Holding back will damage you. Now push.”
Dallin didn’t understand. He couldn’t see the patterns. Couldn’t see the ravenous vacuum splayed out just beneath his vision. How could he not see it? It was so bright it was blinding Wil.
“I can’t.” Wil was warm—hot—the flame pulsing erratic, an echo of his own heart. And he couldn’t pull it back this time—the fire might come with it and burn him from the inside out. “It’s too big.”
Its reality hung behind it, looming vast and bright as a sun, voracious. It crept into the crevices of Wil’s Self and boiled his blood. Its heart was a sun, just as huge and blindly hungry, but trapped at the end of a wick, trying to stretch beyond its own form.
It saw the little piles of ammunition scattered around the room, a driving desire for the taste of gunpowder, and laughed its crackling laugh when it felt Wil knowing. Felt him wanting it too.
And it was starting to hurt.
“Listen to me.” Dallin growled it, angry now. “Just trust me. I won’t let anything happen. Push it, Wil. I know you can do this—you know you can do this. Push it.”
Wil latched on to the confidence in Dallin’s voice, twitching his shoulder just so he could feel the weight of Dallin’s hand shift against the skin beneath the linen of Wil’s shirt.
Wil didn’t push. It was too big for that. He clenched his teeth and shoved.
If he hadn’t already been sitting down, the great whoosh and flash would’ve pitched him to his arse. As it was, Wil fell back against Dallin and sent him half reeling sideways with a startled grunt, but that hand never let go.
“Bloody fuck.” Dallin watched the fire reach out like a great hand through the doorway, fan over the wall of the passageway, and flare toward the ceiling, seeking fuel, then thin and choke itself on stone and mortar. A light scrim of smoke wafted as the flame weakened, snapping out its thwarted fury, then sputtered broodingly over the splash of wax and wick, all that was left of the ruined candle. One tiny blue flame floated in a liquid carcass of milky beeswax, and even that only lived a few seconds longer.
They sat silent, staring, watching the smoke fade to a thin haze at the ceiling. The hiss and final faint pop from the corpse of the candle had them blinking stupidly at each other and trying to rehinge their jaws.
The force had knocked them both back, Dallin’s hip upending the pitcher when he’d landed. He sat now in a puddle of water, trousers dark and sopping. And he didn’t even seem to notice.
“So.” Dallin’s voice was thin and strained. “That went well.”
Wil couldn’t help it—he barked out a laugh. He turned to Dallin, who peered back at him with eyes gone comically wide, and threw himself into Dallin’s broad chest. Wil laughed again, louder this time, maybe a little bit wild, but with genuine humor and relief beneath it.
He hadn’t burned the place down. It hadn’t eaten him. He didn’t hurt. And….
Wil reached up and swiped at his nose, fingers coming away with nothing more sinister coating the tips but a trace of gun oil. He held them up to Dallin and waggled them with a slightly hectic grin.
Dallin puffed an edgy little chuckle and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Well.” He squinted up at the sooted ceiling and then down to the pool of wax. He looked back at Wil with a waggle of sandy eyebrows. “It’s probably a good thing we didn’t start with the torches.”
NOT ONLY the ceiling but the passageway wall and floor were black and singed as well by the time Dallin peered at Wil, judged him pale, and deemed they’d played at pyromania enough for today. They’d had to use four of the pitchers—and the blanket, when one of the lamps out in the hallway had exploded—and they hadn’t even chanced anything bigger than the candles.
Most of Wil’s efforts were spent on control, manipulation, and confinement. Making sure he didn’t wander inside it all, misplace himself, or allow it to grow beyond what they could control was left to Dallin. Well, and putting out the various little blazes that cropped up in the periphery. There’d been a few of those. It was amazing neither of them had been singed, though that was likely because Dallin never let Wil forget to push away. After the first one, Dallin had ordered a pause so he could move the ammunition and everything else flammable he could find down to Wil’s room. Not that it mattered—the flames would eat the dust in the air if they couldn’t find anything else. Wil had to respect and admire the mindless craving for survival.
There was a touch of disappointment when Dallin called a halt, but relief too, and a great deal of satisfaction.
“You look like you’re feeling well.” Wil was sitting on the floor and watching Dallin shove the bed back to where it had been. He was moving very easily, as though he’d never been hurt at all. Wil was curious to have a look under that bandage.
“And you look like a cat with a mouse’s tail hanging from its mouth.”
Wil didn’t even try to hide the grin. “I wish you could feel what it’s like.” He watched Dallin move around the small room, trying—likely fruitlessly—to put it back to at least a semblance of what it had been. Wil furrowed his brow. “I’ll bet you could do, y’know.”
Dallin looked over with a lift of an eyebrow, balling up the black-smudged, still partially sopping blanket. “Could do what?” He gave the blanket a dubious grimace, then gave it up and dropped it to the floor.
“Feel what it’s like.” Wil shrugged. “We share dreams, after all. And there’s the calling and all. That would’ve been handy, if I’d known….” He shook his head. No beating himself up today. “But, I mean, there must be some kind of connection, right? Maybe you could… sort
of follow me when I do it.”
He watched with sharp interest as Dallin’s face closed up and he looked away. In utter silence, Dallin retrieved the blanket again and paced slowly over to the doorway, kneeling to apply it to the scorch marks on the floor. He watched his own hands and nothing else as he tried to mop up the mess, leaving a faintly iridescent trail of moisture on the stone.
“Is that something you want to do?” There was a distinct edge of unease beneath the question.
Wil drew a knee up to rest his chin atop it. “Is it something you don’t?”
“I didn’t say that.” Dallin kept himself busy with his makeshift mopping, peering across the passageway and at the marks climbing the wall there. Like he was avoiding Wil’s gaze.
Interesting.
Wil narrowed his eyes. “Would you do it if I asked, even if you didn’t want to?”
Dallin didn’t have to answer—it was abruptly very obvious—but Wil was quite keen to see the reaction, the struggle to find the right words. He watched as Dallin dredged up answers in his mind, pitching them away one after one, until he settled on something he thought was the right thing to say. He dropped the blanket, and twisted to sit on the floor, back propped to the wall.
“I will do whatever it takes.” Dallin’s gaze was even, with a hardness behind it that nearly sent chills up Wil’s backbone. Wil wasn’t looking at Dallin anymore; this was Constable Brayden staring out from those intense eyes.
“What does that mean?” Wil asked quietly. “Whatever it takes to do what?”
“To right the wrongs. The things that happened, Wil… they offend me. I don’t know how to say it any better. They offend me to my core. And now that….” Dallin waved a hand between them with a shrug. “The offense is keener. It would be wrong that it happened to anyone, and that’s the way it started out. Now it’s even more wrong because it happened to you. You asked me a while ago if I’d stop you from revenge. My answer is no. My answer is that you may have to work pretty hard to beat me to it. So if you think we need to try whatever it is you have in mind, I’ll do it.”
Wil pushed away the selfish little bit of a glow blooming in his chest, concentrating instead on the somber discomfort he’d stirred in Dallin at the prospect of what had been proposed.
“You’ll do it. But you don’t want to.”
Dallin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“But it does.” It really did. For the first time in Wil’s life, it mattered at least as much what another wanted as what he wanted. And he wasn’t even sure he really wanted it in the first place.
“It makes me….” Dallin’s jaw tightened, muscles jumping and twitching. “It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like feeling like I’m invading the mind of another. I don’t like the idea of another invading mine. The things in my head, they’re… it’s the most private place a person can own. They’re for me.”
Wil could certainly understand that. Except.
“You’ve been in my dreams for years. You’ve bidden me into yours. Is this so different?”
Dallin sighed uneasily. “I don’t know. But that pushing thing you do… it….” His teeth clenched tight, and he shook his head. “This won’t sound right, and please understand that I don’t mean anything by it. But I saw that man in Dudley. I saw how he looked at you, how he looked at me when I touched you. And the boy at the stable—Calder said….” He trailed off and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “How am I supposed to put this so it doesn’t sound like I’m faulting you for something?”
The warmth Wil had felt a moment ago leached away. Something inside him had just gone chill.
“Well,” he put in slowly, “you could say it plainly. Say that Calder told you what he saw, what it looked like. How he didn’t quite believe I had no intention of dragging the lad into the nearest stall for a quick shag. How he was no doubt wondering if I’d used it to seduce my way through every man from Ríocht to here.”
“He was… condescendingly sympathetic.” Dallin shot a rueful glance at Wil and shrugged. “I, on the other hand, am thoroughly behind whatever you need to do to get what you need. I want you to understand that.”
Wil had to make himself not clench his jaw or fist his hands. “How very… generous of you.”
Dallin scrubbed at his hair, too obviously irritated. “See, I knew I wouldn’t be able to say anything right. It isn’t generous—it’s a statement of simple fact. I want you to survive, Wil. And I want you to do whatever you have to do, whatever you can live with after, to do it. I want you to—”
“I’ve used it to defend myself.” Wil’s tone came out hard and maybe a little too cold. “And that by accident. I didn’t even know I could do it, it happened by panicked chance, and I don’t just go about….” He flailed, anger climbing, but the hurt beneath it was what made him keep going. “What d’you think Orman wanted that night outside Ramsford’s? And what d’you think I was prepared to give him to make him think he got exactly what he wanted? If Palmer hadn’t shown up, Orman would’ve gone away happily satisfied and blithely alive, and all it would’ve taken was a few moments of my time.”
“Give them what they think they want,” Dallin said softly.
Wil shrugged. “Women want to feed me. Men want to bed me. Well, some women want to bed me too, and some men only want to feed me. It’s their own wants inside them that determine whether it’ll be a pleasant experience or whether I’ll end up running for my life. Some are more greedy than others.” He sat back, keeping his gaze frank. “Some of it was very pleasant. I won’t apologize for any of it.” He raised his eyebrows. “Disappointed?”
Wil didn’t know how it had happened, when it had happened, but Dallin had somehow become the mean by which Wil judged himself. Likely because there was a decided lack of judgment, and it was easier on Wil’s self-opinion that way—he liked himself a lot less than Dallin apparently did, and Wil had to admit he rather appreciated seeing himself reflected in those dark eyes. They showed him a much better image than any he’d ever even thought to look for before. Until perhaps now, anyway.
Dallin was going a bit red in the face. “And that’s… see, it’s not you or what you’ve done, and… fuck, Wil, apology, for the Mother’s sake. Disappointed.” He ground his teeth, hands fisted. “You can’t hear it right, and I keep saying it wrong. It isn’t you or anything you’ve done—do I really have to repeat, yet again, that every last bit of it… I don’t think you could disappoint me. I’m afraid of disappointing you. Disappointing myself.”
Dallin paused, mouth open, face going a lower flush of red, as though only now realizing what he’d said. He shrugged tiredly.
“When you first told me what happened at the Guild, that first day in Dudley, remember that? I walked out of that cell, and one of the first things that occurred to me was how easily a power like that could make even the best of men into the worst of men. And what you do, take that want and use it, that….” Dallin looked as if he wanted to tear his gaze away but willfully held Wil’s with it instead. “I’ve already got the want, y’see. I’d be afraid I’d….” He didn’t finish, just left it lying there, like a stone had just fallen out of his mouth.
That chill inside Wil thawed all at once. He really should have known better than to think… whatever he’d been thinking. That any intention Dallin had could be anything less than honorable. Dallin really was, very simply, a good man.
“That right there,” Wil told him, quiet and hoarse, “that’s what makes it possible to ask you. That’s how I know. And I’m not quite as helpless as I was. You don’t need to protect me from you. I can do that well enough on my own.” He shook his head. “It isn’t that people want me—surely you see that? They want what’s in me, even if they don’t know what it is. Some would open my chest and dig out my heart looking for it, and still not realize they didn’t know what they were looking for. What you want….” A flush rose, hot and tight. “You see me. It’s just….” There really was no good word for wha
t it was, at least not in Wil’s vocabulary. “It’s just different.”
He watched as Dallin sighed in defeat, and knew he’d won something for which he hadn’t even meant to contend. Except now that the necessity had evolved out of the murky disarray at the bottom of Wil’s consciousness, it made too much sense to put away again. Anyway, now that he was in it….
“Calder said your magic felt green, untapped. He said he shouldn’t’ve been able to read you, which means you ought to be able to deny anyone you don’t want mucking about in there. The Old Ones can all do it. You’ve more in you than any one of them. And you must’ve been doing something all this time—I looked for you. I looked hard.”
Wil paused and thought carefully about what he truly wanted here. What he ought to want. What he ought to be saying to get it. And how he was going to do it without making an obviously touchy matter into something altogether untouchable.
It was hard work, this caring thing. And knowing you were cared for in return—probably more, and cleaner—made it all the harder. Made it… heavy.
“I don’t want to be inside your head.” Wil spoke it very clearly, putting all his sincerity behind it. “I don’t want you inside mine. But I also don’t want anyone finding me the way I found you in Lind.” He swallowed as Dallin shot a narrow look at him but kept his voice calm and his expression open. “That second Watcher—he heard me. And I wasn’t even calling for him. Or, at least, I didn’t know I was. What if there comes a time when I need you to hear me? It’s selfish, I know, and I’m sorry, but. Don’t you think we need all the ammunition we can get?”
It wasn’t fair. He was using Dallin’s own sense of honor against him. But that didn’t make the need any less needful. Perhaps Wil had only just thought of it, but now that he had and voiced the concern, there was no choice but to see it as imperative.
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