A rustling behind her had her lowering one blade to look over her shoulder, but it was only Finn — unarmed, since his knives were still somewhere in the mess of the attacked Bureau, but he’d grabbed the lamp from his night stand and hefted it as if it was a weapon. She’d have laughed, as Shades would take more than having their heads bashed in to leave, but with Finn, anything had weapon potential.
“What’s coming through?” she breathed, shifting her grip on her knives, and wasn’t even sure Finn heard her. Maybe she was asking the world in general.
The room seemed to tilt and Ella clenched her leg muscles, sure for a moment she’d fall. Then the room righted itself with a lurch and she shook her head to clear it. A quiver went through the walls, and the golden threads appeared and vanished again, there and gone. Her head ached. A low-level buzzing echoed in her ears, and the sound was rising like a tide, turning into a note — a melody.
It should have been a warning, Ella realized later, but what the hell, hind vision was most times twenty-twenty. She wasn’t prepared when the Veil ripped from top to bottom with a screech that hurt her brain, felt like it was tearing it to shreds.
And then...
A dark avalanche was dropping on top of her, made of flailing limbs and teeth.
Time stopped.
An impact hit her side and she went sprawling on the mattress. The avalanche never hit.
Finn was keeping it at bay, delivering blows right and left — with what? Trails of light followed his fists, and his bandage had fallen off, the mark on his shoulder blazing with white fire.
Holy hell. Ella pushed herself up and gathered her knives, her ears still ringing, the golden threads surfacing once more, suspended in space.
Her eyes narrowed.
That was no avalanche at all.
Spiders. Huge, black spiders — and they kept morphing as she stared, shifting shapes, growing longer limbs and humanoid heads and then melting back into their insect forms.
Ella retrieved her knives from the floor and tried to form coherent thoughts. Another seal had broken. She remembered now. The Jotunn, the sorcerer giants and Loki, their spider shamans, were free — and in her bedroom.
She’d send the fuckers back to hell.
No fucking privacy anymore. She launched herself at the creatures, swinging her blades in a wide arc, cutting through them. Then she flipped one knife and called out, “Finn, here.”
He spun and grabbed the knife she offered without stopping. He slid under a descending spider and sliced through it, then turned and kicked another into the closet. The furniture cracked.
A spider morphed into a wolf as it threw itself at Ella, muzzle growing, opening, teeth glinting, claws reaching for her—
Twisting aside, she stabbed it in the neck and turned to slash at a new flood of spiders tumbling out of the Grey. She cut and stabbed and kicked at the creatures that kept falling. They were getting bigger. Large as armchairs, they crashed down, writhing and hitting her with their hard legs; piling on top of her.
“Ella!” Finn cut through the pile of creatures from the side, reaching in and pulling her out. But then he was jerked backward. Vaguely humanoid even if headless, the transformed spiders were hauling him toward the dark rip in the Veil.
“No!” Ella shot to her feet, slashing at the encroaching spiders and hacking her way through to Finn. “Let him go!”
Finn kicked and struggled in the creatures’ hold but their oversized arms — or tentacles? — wrapped themselves fast around his limbs and waist.
“Close the rip,” Ella shouted as she fought a new onslaught, slicing through spider limbs and stabbing their bloated bodies. “Now, Finn!”
He stilled and his eyes closed. Pale fire jumped from his hands, the mark on his shoulder leaking light and blood. Silver flames looped around his arms, and his eyes glowed like lamps. Blood flowed from his shoulder and dripped from his nose, painting his face with a macabre half-mask of crimson.
And he was still being dragged back, heels dragging on the floor, toward the looming, gaping tear — a slash in the fabric of reality, pulsing with darkness.
The rip wasn’t closing fast enough.
“Stop!” A stitch in her side, Ella knocked a spider aside and kicked another as she approached Finn. “I said let him go!”
With a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, she knew she wouldn’t make it to his side in time.
She threw her knife into the spider closest to Finn and kicked at another. “How dare you?” she hissed. “He’s with me and you can’t have him!”
The golden threads vibrated, whispering, and this time she reached out, snagged one and yanked.
Finn cried out, a pain-filled sound — but the screech from the spiders was worse, a deafening pitch that sent spikes through Ella’s head.
And the spiders unraveled, falling into piles of dust. Letting Finn drop to the floor with a thud.
He curled, hands over his ears, grimacing. Their panting breaths filled the quiet.
Ella blinked drunkenly and braced her hands on her knees, waiting for her head to stop swimming. Okay, she’d done that, no doubt about it. She’d done something pretty cool with the threads and sent the bastards back to the Veil.
But she’d hurt Finn worse in the process. Why? Cautiously, she knelt by his side, not knowing if to touch him or wait until he moved.
He finally looked up. He had bloody tracks on his cheeks.
“Are you okay?” She swallowed hard. “Finn?”
“Don’t pull my threads,” he rasped.
She shook her head. “I don’t understand. The threads look all the same to me.”
“You can’t see the pattern yet.” Finn slowly sat up. Strands of blond hair were stuck to his temples with blood. His eyes glimmered darkly. “And I don’t know how to show you.”
***
In the dream, light seeped under the carved door, spreading like a pool of gold on the polished stone. Finn reached for the handle — he was too little in this dream-memory, the handle too high — standing on tiptoe, straining his limbs, stretching up—
The door slid open with a whine of hinges, spilling him inside. Gasping, Finn staggered into the room, his steps silent, muffled by his soft skin shoes.
The fire burned in the hearth, the silver cone sucking the smoke out with soft sighs. Ella knew Finn wasn’t allowed in here as she followed him. His face was rapt, his small mouth open as he slunk between fur-covered easy chairs and book-weighed tables. Everything was huge, towering over them.
“Finn?” Ella followed him inside, dread twisting her stomach. “Where are you going?”
He didn’t answer; didn’t seem to hear. A couch sat before the fire and a woman lay there, her head on an embroidered, crimson cushion. A heavy book was open in her hands, displaying drawings of plants and animals, and lines of densely packed handwritten text.
Finn stopped and grinned, his eyes lighting up. “Modhir,” he whispered, his voice full of joy.
A memory of his mother.
But a shadow moved behind the couch — a tall, broad-shouldered man with long silver hair, similar to Finn’s, and yet his face larger, harsher. He pushed the couch aside, jostling the woman resting on it, and she rolled and fell to the ground with a horrible crack.
Finn cried out and stumbled forward. Ella’s heart seized, her own cry dying on her lips.
“You killed her,” his father said, his voice even and quiet, an incongruous smile playing on his lips. “You did this.”
“No,” Finn whispered as his mother’s pale face came into view — papery skin like parchment, sharp cheekbones and why did it seem all so familiar?
“You broke her heart,” his father went on, relentless, still smiling. “Her death is on your hands.”
“Stop it!” Ella shouted, trying to touch Finn, to pull him away from there, to cover his ears. But she couldn’t reach him no matter how hard she tried. “You can’t blame him for this. It was your fault, dammit.” She clawed
at the still air; a barrier between her and Finn, just like it used to be before she managed to make herself heard in his dreams. “Let me in.”
“You kill people,” Finn’s father went on, looming over him. “You destroy everything and everyone. Stop fighting it. Stay dead.”
Ella’s throat closed. “Don’t listen to him, Finn,” she rasped. “Please, don’t listen.”
But boy-Finn’s eyes closed and he hung his head, tears tracking down his cheeks. “My fault.”
Space and time lurched, throwing her down, tumbling her around until she didn’t know which way was up or down. Her back hit hard, rocky ground. She rolled, coming to a stop against a wall, wet with moisture. Groaning, she pushed up to her knees, then sought a handhold on the wall to drag herself upright.
Then space opened again to a familiar snowed plain, framed by steep mountains.
Finn stood with the shiny tube-like gun in his hand, his face pale like death. “No,” he whispered, his voice rising, “no!”
Men and women. Elves. They lay facedown on the snowed-on ground, pools of blood spreading around them.
Oh god, no.
Chapter Two
Guilt
It was morning, but after a night of nightmares interspersed with fighting monsters from beyond the Veil gave everything a dream-like quality, and not in a good way. Her head weighed a ton and she felt as if she should be holding it in place so it wouldn’t roll off her shoulders.
Crap.
‘My threads.’ The words echoed in Ella’s head as she sat down on the sofa. Finn said he couldn’t explain more, that it was a matter of seeing.
How could she see?
It all had to mean something about her own abilities, and if she managed to decode it, to understand what she could do, then maybe she could find a way to unlock Finn’s memory.
Maybe Dave knew. But was it worth it, giving Dave more information and with it more power over Finn?
Was there any other choice if she wanted to save Finn and her world?
“Do you think there’ll be something useful on this?” She cast the elven gadget they’d taken from the dead Boreal a dubious look. It felt like months since they’d been inside the abandoned ship’s hold to feed the dragonets; since Finn had opened the gizmo and extracted the gleaming crystalline egg that apparently held the dead Boreal’s last orders.
Finn wore a blue t-shirt with the words ‘Warning: Permanent Sugar High’ that Mike had given him for Christmas. He lifted the egg in his palm. His knuckles were bandaged, a result of fighting the spiders bare-handed, and he had a scabbed-over cut on his cheek.
Were they Shades? It was as if the definition was getting looser each time. She’d have to ask Finn, but it looked like these creatures — the Ettin and the Jotunn — could walk through the Veil as if it were a corridor, waiting for a rip so they could step out. Last night hadn’t been such a bad trip she still expected to wake up and find out it had all been a nightmare — the rip, the spiders, and the motherfucking threads.
The pattern, Finn had said. She couldn’t see it. If she had any power, she was blind to it and caused more harm than good.
Figured it’d be that way. Story of her life.
The egg began to glimmer, distracting her. “Finn?” She eyed the evil gadget. “Wait...” She wanted to ask if it would work with her. Somehow she didn’t think Finn had any more energy to spare. He looked like a ghost as it was, his skin ashen, his face gaunt and bruised. “What if I—”
Finn wiggled his fingers and the egg seemed to melt, then run up, coating his hand and wrist in a transparent glove. The transparent material lit up — and a golden projection appeared in the still air of the apartment. It expanded like a bubble around Finn, red symbols running down like rivers of blood. A flashing frame was rotating around the display, symbols spinning.
Ella remembered to shut her gaping mouth. She leaned toward the dizzying display and had to shade her eyes. “Holy shit. Can you read any of this?”
His eyes were wide, tracking the streaming symbols, and the last of the color was draining from his face.
Shit, that didn’t look good. Her hands curled, nails biting into her palms, as she waited.
And waited.
The projected bubble around Finn began to flicker. Then it faded, leaving bright afterimages in Ella’s eyes. She could barely make out the liquid glass retreat from Finn’s hand, gathering in the palm of his hand, returning to its original egg shape.
She reached out to touch Finn’s arm, when light rippled in the air and she stiffened.
Threads.
The Veil about to tear. She reached for her knives.
But it didn’t. Finn’s head bowed and the egg rolled from his hand, thumping onto the carpet, yet he didn’t seem to notice. His lips peeled back and pale flames rolled down his corded arms, swirling on his skin from the short sleeves of his t-shirt to his long fingers. They danced on his flesh, so beautiful Ella almost forgot the danger.
Almost. She realized her hand was steady on the handle of her knife at her belt in case Finn failed to control the Veil.
Shudders went through his body, and his muscles bunched up across his chest. Her heart was in her throat as he battled something she could barely see, barely understand. Sweat shone on his forehead and trickled down his temples.
The light dimmed and she swallowed hard, relief rushing through her like a cooling tide.
“Ella.” Finn’s rasping whisper was barely a breath.
She caught him as he slumped forward, pulled him up, hugged him close. His skin was cold as ice. “You did it,” she said into his soft hair. “It’s okay now.”
He shook his head. “It’s not.”
“You stopped it, nothing bad happened.” Frowning, she noted that his shaking hadn’t stopped. “You’re cold. I’ll make you some hot coffee to warm you up. Just sit tight.”
“No.” He gripped her hand in his icy one and squeezed. “I read the information.”
She stilled. It had been at the back of her mind, but she’d been worried about him, dammit. He was pushing himself so hard and sooner or later something was gonna give, she just knew it, and it scared her shitless. “What did the zombie device say?”
“Boreals work...” He had to stop to catch his breath. “They work for the Dark Elves.”
Ella sighed. “We’d suspected as much. The tech that crashed through the Gate was Dark elven, after all.”
He gripped her hand tighter, grinding her bones. “They have the Weaver.” His voice was so hoarse it made her wince. “Ella... They caught others like me, without magic. There are lists of names. And lists of Boreals reporting to them.” He looked away. “One of them was my father.”
***
What else had Finn read on the device? He’d been quiet afterward, not responding to her questions. What did the information about his father mean? Was he a traitor? Or had he been forced to report that his son had no magic? It wasn’t like he could keep it a secret.
Meanwhile, they had more pressing problems. Dave wanted them to meet him at the office, and no way was she taking Finn along.
She couldn’t leave him alone, either, what with everyone out to get him. Too dangerous and he was too damn exhausted. Yeah, overriding mother-hen mode was near impossible.
So sue me.
Only one solution she could see: invite her best friend over.
Said friend — aka Mike — stood in front of the coffee table and stared at the crushed gizmo, his eyes round as saucers. He reached out a shaky hand toward the broken transmitter, then retracted it.
Finn arched a brow.
“You can talk,” Ella said. “The transmitter’s dead.”
“Dead.” Mike glanced at Finn, then back. He paled. “Oh god.”
Ella would’ve laughed, but the threads were making another appearance, shimmering and then vanishing, reappearing, keeping all her senses on alert. Since Finn’s real name had been whispered behind the Veil, since the second seal broke, the at
tacks had intensified, and the only reason their apartment wasn’t a bloodbath and they were sitting there having tea and coffee, just talking, was Finn. He was keeping the Shades at bay, the magic pulsing behind the Veil back.
No wonder he looked so tired. She looked over at him where he sat on the armchair, still as a statue.
‘You’re growing stronger,’ Dave had said.
Yeah, but what about Finn? What should she do? She had no clue.
“Where did you find this transmitter?” Mike asked. “We looked everywhere. We even checked the car and everything.”
“Finn cut it out of his shoulder.”
“Out of his...?” Mike’s eyes bugged out.
“His shoulder,” Ella said. “It was—”
“Holy shit!” Mike finally exploded, stomping around the table and throwing himself onto the sofa. He waved both hands in the air. “That vampire thing was inside you? How can it... How do you...?” He fell back, his face a picture in frustration. “Did your boss do that?”
Ella shrugged. “He won’t admit it, but yeah.”
“Can’t believe it. This is... ugh. And he still has one of those in his leg?” Frustration gave way to anger. His dark brows knitted. “How do we get the fucker out?”
“That’s the problem,” Ella said. “We don’t know if we can.”
“Why not?”
Ella glanced at Finn. He was frowning. “From the x-rays, it seems the tracker has bonded to the shin bone. Taking it out might require surgery. We still don’t know who to ask about it.”
‘Three growths on the bone,’ Darla the physiotherapist had said. But the third looked odd and was probably the tracker.
“So what can I do?” Mike sighed. “Except for going and busting Dave’s chops, the only other thing I’m good at is giving parties and mixing drinks.” He shot to his feet. “Talking of which, I think a stiff drink is in order.”
“Sit down,” Ella said.
Boreal and John Grey Season 2 Page 25