The Aesir commander spoke a few more words, eying the creature with eyes red as flames. He fiddled with the lines running from the machine hanging over Finn, making colors flash on the device.
She walked around the table, her gaze drawn in spite of herself to the rows of blades jutting out of Finn’s back, the rivulets of crimson running down his sides. Familiar horror that never got better.
“Can you see me?” She stood in front of Finn and stroked his cheek, cupped his face in her hands and lifted it. He groaned, lashes flickering. “You never killed those elves on the plain, Finn. It wasn’t true.”
Finn’s grey eyes opened.
And in them were dots, red like blood drops that seemed to pulse.
“Not real,” she whispered and let her hand fall. Finn’s head drooped forward and above, in the air, another dot hovered, flashing like a beacon.
Ella took a step back.
This part wasn’t real either - the cave, the Aesir, the knives, the tubes running from the machine to his body — but what about the scars on his back? How could this part not be real?
What was real?
The cave began to crumple around them, the forms of the Aesir commander and the Ettin cracking like glass.
Real or not real, Ella cried out when the floor caved in and a dark vortex sucked her down.
Then it was still and quiet.
Emptiness. Darkness. Starry space.
Wait, no. Those weren’t stars.
A long dim hall, its vaulted ceiling studded with lights. Doors opened on either side and she could hear the whirring of machines.
A faint brilliance emanated from the other end. Silhouettes moved against the light — massive shapes, smaller ones flitting around them, sporting leathery wings that sometimes spread. Dark elves?
She started walking, icy fingers of fear curling around her spine. She had a bad feeling about this.
Then again, what was new? You sucked in the fear, turned it into a fiery ball of anger and kept moving. Nothing else to do.
Time to see the truth.
The hulking figures of the Aesir blocked her view until she was almost at the other end of the hall.
It was then she saw the shimmering web and the nightmarish creature weaving it. The giant spider had a humanoid head and arms, though the fingers were black and thin like long nails.
Loki.
The spider moved inside the web, shiny thread coming from its mouth, its legs manipulating it, wrapping it around something, a cocoon that hung in the air, suspended from the web.
Not a cocoon. A body.
Oh, hell, no.
She approached, taking in the threads wrapped around the limbs, bands of white around the legs, the torso, the arms, leaving the head free to hang forward, long blond hair tumbling like a curtain, hiding the face.
But she knew every inch of that body, the line of that jaw, the scarred hands hanging from their shiny bonds, the graceful back.
She took a horrified step back. On either side of his spine jutted thick, glass-like needles, long as her hand, attached to lines that weaved through the web. While Ella watched, they vibrated in various colors, from deep blue to yellow — or maybe that was liquid passing through them, dripping into Finn’s body.
Behind the web, a slender woman stood, talking low to an Aesir dressed in glittering armor. A diadem of spikes crowned her fair head.
Well, what do you know. Queen Adramar supervising in person the breaking of candidates for the role of John Grey.
Anger simmered in Ella’s blood, growing hotter with every second that passed, watching the liquid running down the lines, entering Finn’s body.
Watching him thrash and arch back, cry out and writhe.
Watching his blood drip to the floor.
Watching the monstrous spider spit more thread out, bind him more securely.
And not a single red dot in sight. This was the real memory, the real nightmare. The tangle she’d set out to find. The event blocking Finn’s mind and magic.
But no threads criss-crossing space to be seen. How did you untangle something you couldn’t sense?
Here were Loki, the Dark Elves, the Elven queen. This was it.
There had to be a way.
Finn choked on another cry. “Ella!”
Her heart raced. “I’m here.” She moved closer. Sweat trickled down his temples and his lip was bloody as if he’d bitten through it. “You’ll be all right.”
He sighed, his head rolling forward.
She brushed back his hair, fingers snagging in the long strands. “Finn, can you hear me?”
He didn’t stir. Had he even seen her or was her name a cry for help? She had to get through, had to jolt him into seeing her, sensing her, so he could reshape the dream.
But it looked like words wouldn’t cut it this time.
So she gripped his chin, lifted his face and kissed him — softly, deeply. He tasted of blood, pain and despair; bitter and yet unbearably sweet.
For a long moment nothing happened. She put her other hand on the back of his neck, brought him closer.
He stirred. His eyes flew open, silver mirrors.
She pulled back, trying to catch her breath.
“Ella.” He clenched his hands into fists, flexed his arms. “You’re here.”
The web snapped; the room shattered.
And the memory changed.
THE END of EPISODE 4 (SEASON II OF BOREAL AND JOHN GREY)
The Weave
Episode 5
I walk in dark fields steeped in blood,
I see old friends, shades of grey,
I hear a song and I know the words,
I long to go home.
I know a house where venom drips,
through the smoke-vent down,
around the walls black serpents wind,
I think that’s home.
It’s pain, it’s death,
it’s sorrow and fear.
It’s a faint memory I keep,
soft sounds and silent beats,
and songs in which the words have faded.
And then I hear another heart
that beats in time to mine,
fighting the darkness.
That’s where I long to be.
Chapter One
Memory
The plain stretched in every direction, covered in fresh, immaculate snow. A sharp wind blew, whipping up flurries.
Finn stood there, blinking at the never-ending expanse. He wore a tattered grey coat that lashed around his legs. His hair flew around his face, across his dazed eyes.
He looked up at the bruised sky, then at the mountains lining the horizon. The ground rumbled under his feet.
Ella took a step toward him and stopped to glance around. A dark pole with a blinking light poked out of the snow in the distance. As she watched, it rotated like a periscope. Was there something underneath their feet? Could it be the hall where Finn had been held and tortured — in underground chambers?
He still looked puzzled as he set off in a seemingly random direction. He moved with difficulty, his back stiff, his boots dragging, leaving deep tracks in the white.
How long was it since he’d been released from the Dark Elves’ hold, where he’d been tied in a giant web and injected with paralytic and hallucinogens? With traces of the substances surely still running in his veins, his back a mass of wounds, it was a miracle he was making his way at all.
He stumbled, then, and she was by his side in a flash, wrapping an arm around his middle, cringing at how thin he was. Had his captors fed him? How long had they kept him?
A memory, she reminded herself. This was in the past.
“Ella?” His eyes were on her face, grey like the sky, and he smiled.
“Yeah.” Her throat closed up. “Where are you going?”
His smile slipped. “The army. My camp. Don’t know what I’m doing here.”
That simple statement filled her with dread.
“Yes, you do. Don’t push the
memory away, Finn.” She shook him. “You remember now. I understand it’s hard to deal with, but you know what happened in that hall. You can recall it all, which is why you can see me, and hear me, and feel me.”
He looked away, the wind lifting his hair. Fear made his skin glow.
“It’s right there, in your mind,” Ella said, hating herself for reminding him and certain she had to. “They injected you with a substance, made you believe you killed your own people. Tried to hide behind the illusion. They let you go, Finn, because you convinced them you’re not John Grey. Do you remember now?”
He groaned, his knees bending, and they went down together in a tangle of limbs, thudding into the snow.
“I remember,” he whispered as she hugged him close. “I remember, yes.”
“Good. Hold onto it, okay?” She reached up for his face and stilled.
His eyes turned silver for a moment, flat mirrors.
Then the wind picked up; a gale bringing a front of hurling snow.
He put his arms around her, and she held onto him as the space lurched underneath her and the memory shifted.
They stood in the shadow of rows of standing rocks — huge dark fingers of stone. A structure stood among the natural pillars. A pyramidal building.
Finn pushed away from her and headed toward an opening in the building wall. Ella followed, curious, squeezing through the narrow opening.
A bright fire burned in the center of the empty structure, the smoke escaping through a hole at the tip of the pyramid. Men and women sat huddled around it, wrapped up in thick blankets. They turned when Finn approached, their pale eyes widening.
Ella almost tripped over her feet.
Elves.
She’d never seen so many together. Fifteen or so were seated around the hearth. Oh, she should’ve expected to see their delicately pointed ears, their long pale hair and the bright lines flickering on their stunned faces. Faces angled like Finn’s, with high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes.
Yet it was still a startling sight.
She hung back as they got up and clapped him on the back, asking where he’d been, saying they’d written him off for dead.
He’d been gone for two moons.
God.
She walked closer as they drew him toward the fire and rubbed his arms. Touching his back proved a mistake — he pushed them off and bent over, his face ashen — but they returned, more cautious, and pulled off his coat. They exclaimed over the wounds on his lower back and made him sit.
His friends. The ones he didn’t kill.
Ella couldn’t help but grin. It occurred to her this was the first real happy memory of Finn’s she’d shared. Okay, so it wasn’t all hearts and violins; just friends showing their concern and affection.
Still the happiest she’d seen, and it was deeply moving. Her chest hurt with bittersweet joy as she watched Finn’s bent head, the faint smile on his lips as his friends fussed over him and brought a steaming mug to press into his hands.
She crouched a few feet away, observing as they asked him where he’d been and listened to his evasive answers. He did say he was captured by Dark Elves, then said he’d been held in a dark cave and had managed to escape.
Now she took her time, Ella could see Finn didn’t quite look like the other elves there. He wasn’t taller or wider than the men, but his face was narrower, his eyes more uptilted at the corners, his colors a shade paler.
And their ear tips didn’t have any colors or designs, although many of the elves looked much older than Finn, lines etched around their eyes and mouths.
Interesting. Because now she remembered, these weren’t Boreals. They didn’t come from the Royal Houses like Finn, didn’t have the same amount of magic and weren’t fond of the aristocratic mountain elves who held the power in this world.
She remembered how Finn was thrown out of every village he visited when he was alone and starving, and suddenly she wanted to hug these elves here for accepting him and caring for him.
A woman knelt behind Finn, pushing aside the blanket someone had thrown over him, a bowl in her hands. She set about cleaning the wounds and Finn jerked. He clutched his shoulder, where the mark was.
The walls around them wavered, and Finn was back in the Dark Elves’ hall, hanging in the monstrous spider’s web, bound and bleeding.
No. No, that shit was over. Ella jumped to her feet and took a step toward him. “Come back, Finn. It’s finished. You’re not there anymore.”
He looked up as the web shattered and the hall dissolved. He was falling.
His cry tore through the quiet like a blade.
***
“Finn. Finn! Wake up.”
He twisted in the covers, curling in on himself with a moan. She reached over to touch his hair and stroked it off his sweaty brow. “Come on, wake up.” The clock read four in the fucking morning. “It’s okay.”
His eyes opened to slits. Good. That was something. And there was someone banging on the apartment door. What the hell?
Ella slid out of bed and padded into the hall. “Who is it?”
“Is everything okay, ma’am? We heard shouts.”
The bodyguards. “Everything’s fine. False alarm.”
She returned to the bedroom, chilled to the bone, to find Finn trying to push up to a sitting position. He didn’t make it and fell back down on the mattress. “Off.” He was struggling to take off his t-shirt as if it burned his skin.
“What’s wrong?”
He tugged on the t-shirt, tearing it down the seam, his movements growing frantic. He was panting by the time she put her hand on his arm.
“Calm down,” she said, keeping her voice low and even. “I’ll help you, okay? Be still.”
His whole body was shaking but he stopped moving. She wrestled the soaked fabric over his head and threw it to the floor.
Finn twisted, turning onto his stomach, and whimpered in the back of his throat. His back rippled, slick with sweat, and his hands fisted on either side of his head.
Holy shit, his mark. It was darkening. And from the scars along his spine, black lines spread, tangling on his lower back like a briar.
Ella stared. Was that normal? Was it supposed to happen? She gripped fistfuls of the sheet to keep her hands from shaking and wished she knew what to do. Should she call Dave? Or Mike? Should she wait and see what happened?
“Finn?” God, her voice shook as badly as her hands. “What’s going on?”
She remembered the descriptions in the sagas of the starburst design, but there was never any mention of the color, and...
Oh god. She leaned closer, over Finn’s shivering form. The mark on his shoulder had changed — subtly, but enough to notice for someone who’d stared at it so often.
The circle with a blossom-like symbol in its center had dots surrounding it. Those dots had now moved in an irregular constellation. Could it be his mark was still changing? It had originally been black, but when its shape had changed it had faded to grey, and now...
Now it looked like it was setting into his skin like ink, and the tips of his ears were also darkening, turning black.
Okay. Calm down.
She lay back down next to him and stroked his hot brow, held his confused gaze. “You’ll get through this. You’ll be okay.”
As his eyes fell shut and he drifted back into uneasy sleep, she couldn’t help thinking that if this was a sign that the magic had finally matured all the way, with Finn remembering the last scrap of memory his mind had been hiding — then the full power of John Grey would be unleashed for the first time.
She hoped the world could take it.
The world and Finn.
***
It was early dawn in Finn’s memory.
Ella lay on her side in the snow, facing him, an icy breeze knifing through her red coat and thick pants. He was wrapped up in an ash-grey blanket, his exposed face and hair blending with the white. He was asleep, pale lashes fanning on his cheekbones, his breath
fogging the cold air.
A screech rose on the wind and Finn stirred, sitting up and pushing hair out of his face. He pulled the long strands back with trembling hands and tied it with a strip of leather.
When the howl sounded again, closer, he swore and climbed to his feet, rubbing a hand over his chest where she knew the long, ragged scar ran from his heart to his navel. A scar left by a wolf.
Was that a beaked wolf screeching?
She scanned the plain. Hills darkened one side, riddled with structures that might be houses. It was too far to be sure but it might have been a village. A dark mass loomed at the horizon, maybe a forest.
Finn had rolled up his blanket and added it to his pack. Now he waded through the deep snow toward two shapes stretched out on the ground. They twitched when Finn called out something that might have been names, and pushed off their own grey blankets to sit up.
One of them, a broad-shouldered elf with sandy hair pulled in a top-knot, growled low as he shoved to his feet, brushing snow off his legs. “Damn, Finn, the wolves are far, and I was having such a good dream.” He rubbed a big hand over his face. “We’re still far from the rest of the platoon. Just calm down.”
“You know he hates wolves,” the other male elf said, slinging an arm over Finn’s tense shoulders. He clucked his tongue and shook his shaggy blond mane. “He almost pissed his pants, huh, Boreal?”
“I’m fine,” Finn ground out but ducked his head and made no move to push the other elf off. He kept glancing in the direction of the fading screeches.
“He’s fine, did you hear that?” The elf draped over Finn shook with silent laughter. “Is that a high-brow Boreal way of saying you’re pissing your pants?”
“He’s too scrawny to be a Boreal anyway,” the other elf said. “Can’t believe it for a second.”
“Fuck you both,” Finn muttered and this time he did pull away. “I woke you up so you wouldn’t get eaten in your sleep, and this is my thanks.”
“I’ve got thick skin. Wolf’ll spit me out before he swallows,” the friendly elf — Elsen — said, still chuckling. “Come to think of it, the smell of piss on you will probably put the beast off as well.”
Boreal and John Grey Season 2 Page 34