by Kate Keir
Too exhausted by our journey to argue with him, I leaned over to dim the light on the bedside table before climbing under the soft down cover.
“Lyall?”
“Hmm?” His amber eyes burned from the shadows.
I sat up in the bed, steadily returning his gaze. “No matter what, we can’t hurt humans. The whole reason we exist is to protect people from Sluag.”
He stood up and slowly crossed the room to sit on the edge of the bed. He reached out and gently stroked the back of his hand down my cheek.
“When it comes to stopping Sluag from tearing down the veil and destroying the whole world, we’ll do what we have to, love. Finlay must have taught you that.”
Part of me wanted to lean into his touch and part of me wanted to recoil from his casual acknowledgement of possibly killing Laurel Cambridge. I settled for keeping as still as a stone and concentrating on breathing deeply.
“When we get back to Castle Dion, we can work on a way to stop her. Pen will find a solution.” I sounded more confident than I felt.
“Of course, she will,” he whispered before leaning forward and planting a familiar kiss on my forehead. “Now go to sleep, Flora.”
I snuggled back down into the covers while he retreated back to his chair by the window. I studied his beautiful face highlighted by the silver light of a half-moon which poured through the open curtains. It took only a few minutes before sleep claimed me.
Chapter Ten
“Hello, Flora.”
My eyes snapped open at the sound of the familiar rasping voice.
“Oh, yay, it’s you.” I rolled my eyes at Sluag.
He hissed laughter, making me think of the sound of air being let out of a car tyre.
“So jovial, even in the face of your dear friend’s death, Little Dreamer.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes at him. “You’re hideous, do you know that?”
“Thank you.” He swept into a deep bow.
I weighed up telling truth versus telling lies and realised that he could take whatever information he wanted from my head anyway, so I told him the truth.
“Finlay isn’t gone. His memories have been preserved, and as soon as we find a way to do it, he’ll be back inside a proper body.”
He raised one sparse eyebrow at that. “My, my, my. The Soul Keeper forgives even treachery from her Dion. You do so much for one who did so little for you, Flora.”
I was not about to start discussing the prophecy with him. He didn’t need any more of an incentive for my death, I began to walk through the blackened landscape of the Endwood. I wasn’t really sure where I was going, but I felt as though I didn’t want to stand still too long. I guessed it was a symptom of running as a wolf for the last two weeks.
He followed after me. I suspected he was confused by my relaxed pace. I could almost be out for a Sunday stroll.
“So,” I tossed casually over my shoulder. “Laurel Cambridge. Tell me about her?”
He caught up with me and grinned, exposing his rotten teeth. “Ahh, so you do see her for the threat she is to you, Little Dreamer.”
“Not a threat, more of a complete witch, to be honest,” I retorted.
He wheezed laughter again. “Laurel is a very loyal follower of mine. We both want the same thing.”
“To destroy the world,” I spat.
“Yes, and you, Flora. Let’s not forget that we want to destroy you too.”
“I guess I can’t blame you for that, really. As long as I’m around, you can’t quite get rid of that pesky veil, can you?” I thought of my strong, brave, dark-haired Dion watching over my body as I slept in my bed at the White Horse.
“Be honest, Sluag. I am so well-protected that you have no chance of getting to me, and it drives you insane, doesn’t it?”
He stopped walking. I paused mid-step and turned to assess the impact of my observation.
He was smiling broadly. “I got you to the Endwood once, Flora. You’d barely discovered your legacy, and you were falling over yourself to come and meet me in person.”
“I was set up,” I responded confidently.
“Yes, by your dead best friend. Because let’s be honest, Flora, no matter what way you look at it, Finlay is dead. He’s never going to inhabit that lovely original body of his again, is he?”
That did hurt. I started walking again, a little faster this time. “It doesn’t matter what body he’s in, he’ll still be him.”
He caught up with me easily. “Ahh, I touched a nerve. Never mind, Flora, you still have the brave and handsome Lyall to take care of you.”
I felt a strong sense of Déjà vu. This felt almost exactly like the first conversation I ever had with Sluag about Finlay.
“Yes. I do,” I agreed.
“Has he told you his story, Little Dreamer?” Sluag’s tone was wheedling.
I smirked, delighted Lyall had in fact opened up to me about his past. You’re not catching me off guard this time, monster.
“I know about his past.” I was careful not to volunteer any information Sluag didn’t already have.
“So, you know that your devoted suitor has in fact killed a man? Not a Draugur, but an actual human being?”
My stomach clenched. When I heard Sluag say the words, it felt even more real and terrible than when Lyall had confessed his history to me.
“Yes,” I whispered.
He smiled at my discomfort. “He did it for sport, Little Dreamer. Not to protect those he loved, or even himself. He did it for fun.”
“He was a child, and he had no choice,” I snarled.
“I think we always have a choice, Flora. Tell me, should your wonderful Lyall encounter my Doctor Cambridge, what do you think he would do?”
I swallowed hard. “I–I think…”
“Yesss?” he hissed.
My mind was spinning as I sought the right words in my head. Sluag was studying me as I squirmed under his questioning. Then, suddenly there was a response on the tip of my tongue.
“I think he’d do what was right.” I sounded more confident than I felt.
“I suppose your view of what’s right is entirely dependent on which side of the veil you are, isn’t it?” He chuckled.
“I suppose it is,” I agreed.
“You don’t trust him, do you?” Sluag sounded genuinely intrigued.
I stopped walking again. Turning to face the grey-skinned monstrosity that had haunted my dreams for months now, I laughed aloud.
“You know what, Sluag? I don’t think I completely trust anyone, anymore. Probably not even myself.”
“A dreadful predicament to be in, but that didn’t answer my question about Lyall, Little Dreamer,” he pushed.
I gave thought to the relationship I had forged with my handsome, mysterious Dion since I had arrived at the castle. He had saved my life at least twice, he had patiently helped me to become a shifter, and he hadn’t left my side when I was trying to find my way through the agony of Finlay’s betrayal.
“I do trust him,” I finally replied.
Back to his usual theatrics, Sluag clamped one of his hands over his mouth and widened his orange eyes at me as he peered over his bony index finger.
“I’m so proud of you, Flora. You’ve come a long way. When we first met, I would never have believed you could place your trust in a cold-blooded killer.”
“Draugur killer, maybe,” I replied.
He took his hand away from his mouth. “But he’s not just a Draugur killer, is he? It’s a funny thing, you know, killing a person. It’s a life event that you can’t really come back from. It changes you, forever.”
“I’m sure it does. But maybe it can change you into a better person than you were when you killed. Perhaps, Lyall is the best version of himself now that he’s come to terms with his past.” I sounded sure.
Sluag nodded sagely. “Perhaps he is, Little Dreamer. Yet, in my experience, the people who have taken another’s life are the easiest to
coerce into taking part in more evil. I believe, with a little effort, I can work my way under Lyall’s skin and turn him against you and your little group. You’re on the road to ending up without a single Dion, Flora.”
I stood my ground, and my voice didn’t falter. “No. You made me doubt Finlay. You will not make me doubt Lyall.”
Sluag hissed in delight. “Well done, I like your fire. I suppose you would be a fool if you didn’t trust Lyall, seeing as he’s the only thing protecting your mortal body from harm in the White Horse Hotel right now.”
I flinched. He knew where we were, meaning it was only a matter of time until his Draugur showed up. I needed to wake up and help Lyall.
“Flora, when will you learn that you can’t leave until I say so?”
I lifted my chin and spoke with defiance. “He’s strong enough to deal with anything you throw at him. He doesn’t need my help.”
“Oh, silly.” Sluag giggled, and the sound made me nauseous. “I’m not sending my Draugur for you and Lyall. I doubt they could take you two on. You make quite the couple. No, I’m sending them to collect Enid from the zoo. It looks like you and I are in a race to secure the new animal Soul Keeper.”
“Why her? She doesn’t even know what she is,” I growled. I couldn’t fail Enid before I even found her.
“I have no interest in letting her find out what she is, Little Dreamer. I just want to kill her and drain her blood.”
The Endwood began to fade, and the hotel bedroom swam before my eyes. Lyall had obviously heard me cry out in my sleep, and he was standing over me as I returned fully to the present.
“Sluag knows Enid will be at the zoo tomorrow. It’s a race to see who gets hold of her first.” I breathed out the words in a rush.
Lyall cursed under his breath. “Get up, love. We need to leave now.”
Chapter Eleven
I had never been more thankful for having fallen asleep in my clothes. Dawn was already turning the sky a pinkish, golden colour. On any other day, I would have admired the contrast between the dark city skyline and the rose-coloured sky, but there was no time for sentimentality today.
We snatched up only the things we needed: money to buy plane tickets, some spare clothes, and our jackets and shoes. On the way out the door, I glanced at the clock. It had been six fifteen when I awoke, and we were leaving the hotel at six twenty-five. We had wasted very little time.
Once we were outside, I vaguely recognised the first hint of coolness to the morning air; autumn was on its way. I looked to Lyall.
“I’ve never been to London. I have no idea what’s the quickest way to the zoo.”
He looked left and right as though getting his bearings. “I think we should get the tube. We’ll have to change trains, but at least we know we won’t get caught in traffic. It should be the quickest way to get there.”
He began striding along the street, and I jogged to keep up, hoping and praying we would beat Sluag’s Draugur to the zoo. Lyall ducked into a small train station, quickly dropping some coins into a ticket machine and choosing our destination on the touch screen.
The tickets fell into the metal tray at the bottom of the machine, and as he grabbed them, we heard the sound of the train pulling into the station.
“Quickly, Flora,” Lyall murmured as he bolted toward the stairs that led to the platform.
I darted after him, taking the stairs three at a time. We hurtled along a covered walkway and emerged onto the station just in time to bound onto the train before the doors closed.
The train was only half full, and we easily found two seats away from earshot of other passengers. “How long will it take us to get there?” I asked.
“About forty minutes, with a fifteen-minute walk to the zoo when we get off the train.”
I looked at my watch. It read six forty-five. We would be at the zoo before eight. That meant we had a little time to come up with a plan before the doors opened to the public.
As if reading my mind, Lyall spoke up. “We can hide ourselves somewhere near the main entrance until opening time. We should be able to sense Enid, but we’ll need to keep a watch out for Draugur. We have no idea how many he’ll send or when they’ll arrive.”
“Lyall, if they attack us at the zoo, what do we do? We can’t have a full-on fight in the middle of a busy London tourist attraction in August.”
He frowned. “Hopefully it won’t come to that, but if it does then I think we need to stage an evacuation.”
I nodded in agreement and stood up as Lyall signalled that we needed to change trains at the next station. As the doors opened to allow us to exit the train, I felt a tingling at the back of my neck. I turned to look back at the train carriage, and my eyes landed on a man who sat watching us with cold, dead eyes.
We stepped onto the platform, and the doors closed with the man still onboard. I nudged Lyall and looked at the man through the window as the train pulled away from the station.
Lyall hissed under his breath, “Draugur.”
He had confirmed my suspicion. “Why didn’t it try to stop us?”
We crossed the platform, and Lyall guided me onto the next train before he answered. “It’s probably a scout, keeping an eye on us and feeding our location back to the others.”
“If it didn’t follow us, then that means there’s another one on this train,” I said grimly.
He nodded, choosing to stay standing on this train, so I stood next to him. We both used one hand to hold on to the loops in the ceiling to stop us from losing balance when the train braked.
“There’s nothing we can do about it right now. The train is packed.” Lyall’s jaw tensed in anger.
I mulled that over in my head, remembering back to some of the things I had read in the manuscripts when I had been studying. “Lyall, I read that humans can’t see magic. I mean like the light my magic makes when I pull a rogue soul from a Draugur.”
He smiled grimly. “They can’t see the light but they can see the Draugur. If he keels over on the train, they’ll pull the emergency stop cord, and we’ll never get to the zoo.”
I sagged in disappointment. “Let’s hope we can avoid the Draugur on this train then.”
He smiled. “Cheer up. There might not even be one, love.”
My eyes widened as I looked over his shoulder to see a woman pushing her way through the crowd of people on the train. She looked human, but my tingling senses told me there was a rogue soul nearby, and as I stared at her face, I saw the ghost of her ghoulish features flicker through the fake skin she wore.
“Yeah, right,” I murmured.
He followed my gaze and growled low under his breath. Looking back to me, he seemed to think for a moment before speaking. “How much control do you think you have over your new abilities?”
I blinked. “I–I’m not sure, why?”
“Do you think you could call the soul out of its body far enough to stop it coming for us but not enough to make it collapse, at least until we arrive at our stop?”
I paled. “I don’t think I’m that advanced yet,” I whispered, aware that a human man was giving us a funny look.
The Draugur was getting closer and closer. Lyall raised his eyebrows at me, questioningly.
“All right. I’ll try. How long until our station?”
Lyall looked at his watch. “Seven minutes. Can you do it?”
“We’ll see, won’t we,” I spoke through gritted teeth as I turned to face the approaching Draugur.
I frowned, wondering how I could extend my palm toward the Draugur without looking obviously like I was doing magic. Shifting my body around, I pushed my hand through the ceiling loop fully and stretched my fingers up. It still looked a little strange, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention to anyone else on the train.
I began to murmur the words of the chant quietly under my breath, hoping that no one would hear me. Lyall obviously picked up on my concern and started to hum a song loudly enough to drown out my whispered words.
I felt the pull as my energy leapt from my body in a blue arc that was only visible to me, Lyall, and the unfortunate Draugur. The Draugur whimpered a little and stopped walking toward us. I felt my magic wrap around the rogue soul buried deep inside the human shell. I pulled, but only very gently, and was satisfied to see the Draugur sit down in an empty seat with a thud.
Lyall’s hair brushed against my ear as he whispered to me. “Hold it there, love. That’s perfect. You have four minutes.”
Another sixty seconds passed, and I started to tremble slightly. I could feel the hole left by the missing energy, and it was draining me. My forehead was damp with perspiration and my breathing was coming in shallow pants.
I almost whimpered with gratitude when Lyall wrapped my fingers with his own and pressed his cheek against mine. “You’re amazing, two minutes.”
I felt a warmth in my hand and realised with surprise I was drawing on Lyall’s energy. I hadn’t intended to do it, but somehow my body had sought his power to bolster my own failing strength.
He gave me a look of surprise but didn’t withdraw his hand, and I shot him a look of relief and thanks.
The Draugur did not look as though it was coping very well with my grasp on its soul. I smiled grimly and gently tugged on my energy arc, and I was rewarded by a groan of discomfort from the woman-shaped thing.
The loud speaker announced, “The next station will be Camden Town,” and Lyall nodded to let me know this was our stop.
Reinvigorated by the sudden influx of Lyall’s energy, I smiled and tugged a little harder on the blue fire connecting me with the rogue soul.
The train began to slow down, and we started toward the double doors. All the while I kept my palm trained toward the Draugur and continued whispering under my breath.
The train stopped, and in a flurry of beeps, the doors opened. Just before we stepped off the train and onto the platform, I gave a violent tug on the blue cord and yanked the rogue soul from its hiding place.
The Draugur screamed and fell to the floor with a thud as I finished the words that would banish the soul back to the Endwood. Someone pulled the emergency stop cord on the train as I felt the rogue depart and my own energy bounced back into my body.