Dream

by Carole Cummings

  Síofra just kept coming, walking steadily toward Wil, still smiling, until his chest met the barrel of the rifle. “Chosen.” He lifted his arms at his sides, welcoming.

  “Don’t call me that,” Wil whispered through his teeth, shaky and small.

  “And what should I call you, then?” Síofra’s fake sincerity oozed through the words. “Aisling? Gift?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Wil?” His smile dipped sad, and he shook his head. “None of these are your name, my lad.”

  “I’m not your lad!” High-pitched and near to hysterical.

  Wil’s grip tightened around the gun. Dallin only watched carefully, a bit of warmth seeping into the chill in his bones as the metal in Wil’s grip calmed him, steadied him.

  Wil took a long breath. “I don’t belong to you—you didn’t choose me, you stole me—and I have no name because you didn’t give me one. I was never anything to you, and I’m nothing to you now but a well you want to suck dry. You’re doing it right now. I can feel you.”

  Dallin could feel it too, a small shift in the pressure around him, a tug and gutter of that tensile presence that leaked from Wil’s pores. Thunder boomed directly above them, loud and violent enough to make Dallin nearly flinch, but Wil and Síofra stood perfectly still, eyes locked.

  Light steps pattered behind Dallin, steady and familiar, and then the simple relief of the accustomed grip of his revolver was pressed into his hand. He glanced over at Corliss, a tangle of sopping auburn swathed like a cap to her head, sticking to her face, her eyes terrified, scudding between the three of them and settling on Dallin, asking. Dallin gave her a slight nod and a twitch of a smile he didn’t believe any more than she did, then turned back.

  Wil and Síofra hadn’t even noticed. It was like only the two of them existed. Dallin gripped the gun in his right hand and laid the other on Wil’s shoulder, just to remind him.

  “We are one, you and I.” Síofra closed his eyes and lifted his face to the rain. “Bound in heart and spirit. I feel you every time you open your soul.”

  Dallin didn’t need the stray lightning to reach out and tap him on the shoulder for that one to click into place. “It’s how he found you so quickly,” he told Wil. “He can feel it every time you use your magic. He can follow you even when you’re not dreaming. He will always be able to follow you.”

  He couldn’t tell if Wil even heard him. No movement, not even a blink, just that steady hum beneath Wil’s skin, that power leaking from him, thick and charged. Dallin could almost see Síofra growing more substantial, more present somehow, as he pulled it into himself.

  “He’s doing it now.” Dallin’s heart was racing, his gut curling and lurching, the revolver growing steadily heavier in his grip. “Alive inside a cage, Wil. Don’t make me do this.” His fingers tightened around the burled grip. “Kill him,” Dallin growled, low and frantic. “Kill him now.”

  Síofra opened his eyes. “I kept you safe.” He jerked his chin at Dallin but didn’t take his eyes from Wil. “I kept you safe from all of them. You know his destiny. And you’ll stand here and listen to him trick you into betrayal?” He reached out his hand, palm up. “We’re one, my lad, my Chosen. Come to me, and we’ll sing your true name to the stars.”

  Wil’s face had been set in stone; with that last cajoling whisper, it twitched, melting to confusion and pain. The air around them changed again—slipped. A staggering of control, and a shift Dallin could actually feel. The earth trembled, a shimmy of energy that spangled up from beneath Dallin’s boots to tremor up his spine.

  “Oh shit.” Dallin’s index finger, all by itself, slipped around the trigger of his gun. He flicked the safety.

  “What?” Corliss touched her hand to the small of Dallin’s back and leaned in. “What’s happening?”

  Dallin sucked in a shaky breath. “He’s winning.”

  “I’ve a name?” Wil asked, lost and small as a little boy.

  Síofra slid his glance to Dallin… grinned. “Ask your Guardian.”

  Wil turned to Dallin, the rifle sagging in his grip. His eyes were full of confusion, complete emotional upheaval, but no real accusation yet.

  “He whispered it to me.” Síofra pushed the barrel of the gun away and stepped in closer to Wil.

  Dallin held Wil’s wounded gaze as steadily as he could. “He’s done nothing but lie to you your whole life.”

  Síofra edged closer. “He is the Mother’s creature.” His voice curled distressed, sympathetic. “Oh, my poor lad—you didn’t honestly believe his lies, did you?”

  His hand came up, reaching. Without thinking, Dallin let go of Wil’s shoulder and knocked Síofra’s hand away. He stepped around, shouldering Síofra aside, and pulled at the rifle’s barrel until it rested against his own breastbone. Corliss gasped, but Dallin didn’t hesitate. He lifted his own gun and pointed it at Síofra’s head, marking out the corner of his eye as every soldier behind Síofra shouldered his rifle and aimed it at Dallin.

  “Do what you have to do,” Dallin told Wil, as calmly as he could manage. “Believe what you must, but don’t let him touch you. He’s taking it now—can’t you feel it?” He pulled the hammer back on the revolver. “If you can’t do it, say it and I will. We’ll end it here.”

  Corliss gasped, dismayed. “They’ll kill you. Brayden, you do it and the war starts right here and now.”

  Wil’s eyes narrowed at her, flashed. Dallin was glad she was behind him—Wil already held a grudge against her, and he wasn’t the forgiving sort. Of course, if he believed Síofra, Dallin wasn’t going to be much of a barrier for long.

  “Wil?”

  Wil’s chin trembled. “D’you know my name?”

  “No.” Dallin shook his head. “I didn’t know you had one. Wil’s always been enough for me.”

  “It’s never been enough for me.” A strained whisper, so very quiet beneath the steady wail of wind and rain. Wil jerked his chin at Síofra, but he kept his eyes on Dallin. “He knows it.”

  “So he says.”

  “If I kill him—”

  “Then we find it another way. He said it was the key to your soul. D’you really want him walking about with that in his pocket?” Dallin firmed his tone. “This is yours. Of all the things you’ve taken on, this is truly yours. Say the word and I’ll take it from you.”

  Wil stared at Dallin long and hard, skimming his glance over the soldiers, pausing on each and every one before peering over at Síofra, measuring.

  “Lies.” Síofra was smug. “He knows nothing else. He’ll use you and take from you and empty you at the feet of his whore-goddess.” Síofra’s hand came up again, beckoning. “Come to me, lad. Come out of the rain. We’ll warm your cold hands by the fire, just like when you were a boy, remember? You’d sit on my knee, listen to the old tales, and—”

  “And drink….” Wil met Síofra’s eyes, brow twisted tight. “And drink my draft.” His eyes had gone dull with memory and… something else Dallin couldn’t define.

  “Yes.” Síofra’s smile curled triumphant. “You’ve missed it, haven’t you? The peace, the sweetness of the dreaming.”

  Wil nodded, slow and heavy. “I have.”

  Dallin’s stomach dropped into his boots.

  “He’s an addict. He still wants it. I saw him wanting it.”

  Dallin could see him wanting it now. Could see the bone-deep wish for the simple serenity of standing beside a river and listening to it sing.

  “…knives everywhere, and they’ll never let me live it.”

  Could feel the remembered pain and the grief that had washed from Wil’s heart and into Dallin’s as they’d stood and watched stars reflected in a river’s night-rippled surface.

  I can’t fight that. I’ve nothing to offer him but more of the same.

  Dallin adjusted his grip on the gun. “Wil?”

  Síofra stepped in again, hand still outstretched, stopping just short when the barrel of Dallin’s gun came to rest against his temple, but he kept his eyes on Wil, av
id. “You loved me once. You were as my own, and I took care of you, protected you. I was as a father to you, starless boy.”

  Wil just kept staring, standing there in the driving rain, brow twisted tight and eyes burning, flashing incandescent with the crackle of lightning. Dallin couldn’t tell with the rain dripping over his cheeks, but he thought Wil might be weeping.

  Slowly Wil turned to Dallin, face made of marble. He lowered the rifle, stepped in, and placed his hand over Dallin’s. He pushed the revolver down.

  “Wil, don’t—”

  “Do I look like I don’t know what I’m doing?” Wil slipped the rifle’s strap over his shoulder. “Trust me.” With a small, sad smile, he leaned up and placed a warm kiss to Dallin’s mouth. “Remember your promise.”

  He pulled back and turned to Síofra. Slowly the corner of Wil’s mouth curled up, and he glanced sideways, looked at Dallin, sly and halfway wicked, then… smirked.

  He took Síofra’s hand.

  7

  HE’D KNOWN how this had to go, had known it for… he couldn’t remember, didn’t know where the knowledge came from, but it was no less real for its ephemeral origin—you either killed the monster or the monster ate you.

  Dreams, he supposed. Too damned many dreams. Too damned many times walking through someone else’s nightmares not knowing if you were the monster or the sacrifice, just knowing your feet wouldn’t move fast enough and you couldn’t scream.

  Dallin was watching, too obviously afraid, but he didn’t move away, didn’t back down. “It’s yours, it’s in your hands, but…. Wil, it’s only a name. Is it worth the risk?”

  Only a name. Only everything.

  Dallin didn’t understand. How could he? He had one—pride’s people, from the valley, brave—made of the hearts of mountains, and he never had to wonder.

  Wil snarled. “It’s mine.”

  He stopped there, choking on it, because it was far too big for mere words, and there was far too much of his Self tied up inside them. How did you say there was a blank, you-shaped space wandering around the universe, and it wasn’t named Wil, and it wasn’t named Aisling, and it wasn’t named Chosen—not even vicious little shit who never bloody quits—and none of those names even began to define what you needed it to be? How did you say you were searching for a definition of yourself—your Self—and you could only find it in a word someone else had handed you, handed it to you because they loved you, thought you worthy of it? That all your life you’d thought you didn’t deserve one, thought you were nothing, and then you find out it was there, you were there, and someone had kept it all from you, stolen everything about you when they’d stolen you, right down to that one little word attached to your Self?

  “He has it, and it’s mine.”

  Dallin said nothing to that, though Wil could tell he wanted to. Probably wanted to drag Wil away from here and just go, or maybe shoot Síofra and end this now, clean and quick. But Dallin only nodded.

  And stayed.

  Wil dragged his eyes from the only gaze that had ever really cared enough to look, to see. He eyed the soldiers, the guns, the men and women cowering in the street and flooding from the constabulary. Calder was there, flanked by the two men in blue and brown who had shown up with the woman Dallin called Corliss. They stood back behind the line of red and gold, Commonwealth soldiers all in a neat row, potential firing squad. Shaw watched from the steps of the Temple with some of his initiates and apprentices, worrying his thin lips, brown hair stuck to his skull, anxious eyes burning across the city’s ruined square.

  Even the horses were quiet, standing almost at attention where Wil had left them tethered half-arsed to an ale cart by the fountain—the first stationary object he’d come to when he’d barreled his way down the street from the stables the second time. Not running from this time, but running to.

  Everyone was watching, waiting.

  Wil put them all aside and turned to face his monster.

  It was strange. Patterns danced all around him, wove themselves in and out of each other. Twining, then severing, tightening and slackening as time and synchronicity, synergy and stasis changed them, let themselves be changed, tangling down into continually shifting templates. A raindrop splashing against a stone, momentarily joining the weave of it, then changing it, rejoining the torrent, widening the pattern before slipping slowly to the ground, appending the shapes of soil and cobble. Everything had a pattern. All threads changed and rewove themselves, wed inextricably to water and earth, air and fire.

  Wil couldn’t see Síofra’s patterns. No threads, no weave. Just a man-shaped blank spot sucking fibers of Wil’s patterns into itself, forcing them into empty crevices, glutting itself.

  He can’t take from you anything you don’t give him.

  Taking the statement purely on faith, Wil staunched the flow, dwindled it to a trickle, just enough to maintain a tether. Almost shocked that he could even as he was doing it.

  I couldn’t find you. I looked for you, and I couldn’t find you. You hid your thread from me, and now you’re trying to hide behind mine. How are you doing this, and how am I supposed to fight it?

  There was a push there. Wil couldn’t see it, but he could feel it. Grinding at his senses, digging inside his head, whining and chittering, angry that it couldn’t gain purchase. Harsh and brutal, willing to tear away layers of Self to find what it wanted.

  Wil had felt it before, felt it the second before he’d heard Síofra’s voice back in the stable, had kept feeling it since. Felt it in Old Bridge, in Dudley. Síofra was… one of them. Alike, somehow, somewhere at the core. He came from them. Or maybe they came from Síofra.

  Too familiar. Wil tested its limits, felt for its boundaries.

  Found them.

  Wil smothered a smile and looked down at the ground to hide whatever light might be dancing behind his eyes.

  I learned it from you. Isn’t that ironic? Funny? Fucking hilarious? You took from me, but I took from you too. And I didn’t even know it. But the funniest part? You didn’t know it either.

  He glanced again at Dallin, saw jagged worry, brilliant faith.

  It’s yours. You can do this. And if you can’t, we’ll make it ours. Just don’t get lost inside it.

  Wil didn’t need any kind of connection to understand it—it was there, all over that hard-set face. When had big, scary, unreadable Constable Brayden become calm, reassuring Dallin with his heart in his eyes?

  Wil took a long breath and leveled his gaze at Síofra. “As a father to me.”

  Síofra smiled and squeezed Wil’s hand. “Blood to blood.”

  The touch, cool and too familiar, brought back comfort and revulsion both, horrible intimacy and deeply entrenched body-memory that made Wil shudder. “Blood to blood.” Wil made his mouth quirk up in a return smile. “You know my name.”

  “Oh, my lad.”

  Síofra’s face twisted into a mask of concern, a mimic of love that nearly scored Wil’s heart with his pathetic wish for the reality. Wil made himself not flinch when Síofra reached up and brushed cold fingers over Wil’s wet cheek.

  “I know everything about you. I know things your Guardian”—Síofra spat the word—“can only guess, things that would turn him from you, things that would twist that honor of which he’s so proud to righteous murder.” He leaned in, and—slowly, gently—laid a kiss to Wil’s temple. “I know. I see. I only ever wanted to protect you, keep you safe.”

  The push ramped up to a whining buzz, seeking fingers crawling over Wil’s mind, searching for a crack.

  “Keep me safe.” Wil let his cheek turn into the cold caress. “Keep me safe, keep me dreaming.”

  “Yes.” Síofra’s eyes had a glint Wil used to think of as cajoling in his once-naïveté. Now he knew it for predatory. “You understand. It was too big for you, too much—it hurt your mind, so I took you to a place it wouldn’t hurt, to keep you safe and happy.”

  “Happy.” Wil had to pause and choke back bile. “And took
it for yourself.”

  Síofra pulled back, grasping Wil by the arms. “I had to. You aren’t well, my lad. You never were. It dragged at your mind, at your spirit. You weren’t strong enough. You still aren’t strong enough.”

  “I think you are many things, but weak has never been one of them.”

  Wil tilted his head, genuinely curious. “Am I mad?”

  Síofra’s smile slid sympathetic. “Ah, my lad, my Chosen.” He pushed sopping hair out of Wil’s eyes. “‘Mad’ is such a harsh word. Unbalanced. Confused.”

  “I think you’re different. I think that what I might once have seen as madness is more just a way of coping and carrying on that I never would have thought of.”

  “I took the pain away.” Síofra crooned it in that too-familiar tone that skittered down Wil’s spine, sliding oily tendrils into his gut and twisting it into a cold, hard knot. “I took it all away for you. For you, Chosen. Always for you.”

  “And is that what you want to do now?” Wil peered into those blue eyes that had been so many things to him—intimacy and perdition, love and hate, want and revulsion. “You want to take it away? For me?”

  The push was more a shove now. It yammered at Wil, demanding. Strong and unrelenting. Wil dug a mental hand into the weave of it and… tested its grip.

  Pain spiked as he let it all slip just a little, just enough for Síofra to wriggle blade-splined awareness in through Wil’s defenses. It hurt, bit into Wil’s mind with razor teeth, and the push that seared in with it burned like venom.

  The light in Síofra’s eyes had gone fervent, elated. “Yes,” he said, a bare hint of triumph behind the hard blue. “For you.”

  “All of it?” Wil twisted his brow and dipped his voice. “It’s so very big. It frightens me.” He shot a wounded look at Dallin. “He doesn’t understand. He can’t see it all like I can.”

  “Of course not. It’s what I keep telling you, my lad. It’s why I had to keep you hidden. He doesn’t know you as I do, he can’t understand.”