Cold Front

by Nikolai Joslin

  He knelt beside me, his gray robes pooling around him. He touched my shoulder. “We have given her back to you, child. She is alive and well again.”

  I nodded, looking down at the white floor, trying not to remember. Trying not to think about it. “Why did you bring her back?”

  “She’s more help for you alive than dead.”

  “And her punishment?”

  He frowned. “Even the dead have laws they must follow, and we must pass punishment to those who break them equally.”

  I nodded again. “Will you take her back? When this is all over?”

  “We do not kill people, only guide them once they have gone.”

  “You didn’t say no,” I whispered.

  “You are special, Casey. Your actions directly affect the future of the world. Leaving for your Proving Journey, joining Ston, Cam, and Liam, saving the elves, even becoming engaged to Regan has changed things. We are not sure of anything when you are involved, so I don’t know if she will join us at the end of all of this. We will not take her if we do not have to.”

  I nodded again. “You didn’t come here for that. You haven’t come to me in a year, so why now?”

  “I came to tell you that we want to help you. If the dark elves win this war against the humans, there will be chaos. Destruction. Demons will overrun the world. Humans enslaved, dark elves’ old power restored, and the underfae will roam freely and without anything to hold them back from the anger they’ve spent generations building. This is bigger than the pesky necromancer from last year, Casey, much bigger. We cannot allow this to happen.”

  “What do you want from me?” I wasn’t sure if I was being sarcastic or not. I wasn’t sure what I was thinking actually. I just felt raw.

  “We want you to win. And we’re sending you help, Casey. You need not do this alone. There is a man who has been Touched.”

  Did he say Touched? I looked up at him curiously. There were stories of the Touched, ancient stories that told of even more ancient times. The Touched were said to have a connection with the Old Ones. And the demons. They could see the demons, were often plagued with visions of the future and past, and had hidden magical powers that even they didn’t usually know about until they manifested. There wasn’t much on the Touched, and they had more or less faded into myths and been forgotten. Being Touched was something you didn’t want. And most people would have run from anyone they knew was Touched, even with the little we knew about them.

  “How will I know who he is?” After everything I’d seen in the past few years, I wasn’t going to say they didn’t exist. I’d learned too much about fairy tales that weren’t just fantasy lately.

  He reached a hand out toward me and rested his palm against my forehead. I closed my eyes and let whatever he was doing come to me.

  It was a vision. A young man was working hard in the pouring rain. I couldn’t see much else, just the man with his back turned to me and the floor beneath him. He looked up from the ground to shout something, flinging water from his short hair as he did. Lightning struck somewhere in the not so far distance, and he didn’t even flinch. I heard a muffled yell, and he turned to respond, showing his face for the first time. Pale skin was dripping with water, and he had a short, dark goatee. His mouth began to move, but I couldn’t hear anything. I was too focused on his eyes.

  Gold.

  Not brown, but gold.

  The floor shifted suddenly, and he grabbed on to a nearby pole and laughed, throwing his head back in the rain. As the world shifted, I could see more around him.

  A ship, dark water crashing up along the sides of it and men scattered around in the rain. Each one of them had at least one gun strapped to them, and most of them had murderous glints in their eyes. Some had long scars, and one was even missing an eye but wore no patch over it. Instead he just let the scarred, warped flesh out in the world. All of them wore a scowl except the young man who was shirtless and laughing with such joy that I wondered if he was really in the same place as the rest of them. He wore no gun, just loose jeans, made dark by the rain and held up with a leather belt, and a pair of heavy boots.

  “What is this?” I whispered, keeping my eyes closed to watch the scene unfolding.

  “A pirate ship. They still exist. They’ve just changed with the times,” the Old One said and pulled his hand away, the vision leaving with it.

  “You want me to join up with a pirate? A murderer? Thief?”

  “Are you suddenly above taking in those who require guidance and help? Cameron was no better than that when you took her in. The title of pirate makes him no worse than a thief.”

  “She stole for survival!” I argued.

  “As does he. He was not born into piracy, nor did he join it willingly. As a boy he was sold into slavery to the captain of this ship. He’s lived here since he was just a child, unable to leave.”

  “If he’s not able to leave, how do you expect me to take him with me?”

  “It’s simple, Casey. You have to save him. Take him away. He will not go willingly, and he will not believe most of what you say, but you must take him. The ship is to go down in three weeks’ time. Take the boy before then. He is already feeling the effects of being Touched. He can’t ignore it for much longer.”

  “How do I know where to find him? How can I convince him?” I was desperate. I was caught between the urge to help him, but also the fear of what he could do and probably had done in the past.

  “In five days he will arrive at a city by the sea, Scanton. Find him there.”

  My stomach flipped. “Why will they be there?”

  “Fear not. They are only passing through for now.”

  I thought back to his face, the gold eyes and dark goatee.

  “They call him Wulf.”

  “That’s an animal, not a person’s name,” I scoffed, not fully believing him.

  “It’s a slave’s name,” he replied calmly.

  Slave’s name. Slaves weren’t given real names, even now, with the small amount of slavery that went on behind the government’s back. People can’t take a name from you. It’s one of the few things people can call their own. It gives you something to hold on to, a memory of another time where you were stronger, better. It gave you hope.

  That’s why slavers take children. They can’t do much so young, but can be raised however they’re needed. To be strong, rough, without remorse, and most important, nameless. Something demeaning, animalistic, not even a dog’s name, but a dog itself.

  “Wulf,” I whispered. “Why is that?”

  “The slavers said they found him with wolves at a young age. Maybe four. He ran with them; they protected him, fed him. He was with them, but they don’t know why. I do. I watched it. I sent the wolves for him, to protect him from the darkness of the night. To keep him alive.” The Old One looked away, as if ashamed. “I broke the rules. I influenced the world to keep one boy alive. A boy with no destiny. I did it without the approval of the rest. I have rules to follow as well, and alone we are not strong enough to change things on your world without leaving something behind. The boy will suffer because I didn’t take my plea to the others so that they could help me. They would have turned me away, told me to realize that we had no place in meddling in these affairs. So I did it alone. And I left traces of my power behind.”

  “Touched,” I whispered. Not just everyone who had contact with the Old Ones became Touched. Cam and I weren’t, but that was because they had followed the laws set in place. The Old Ones were obsessed with their laws, and if someone as powerful as an Old One changed the world for one person without permission, they would become Touched, permanently connected to the Veil. The connection would grow worse over time, stronger, and more painful for both the human and the Old One. “Why did you do it?”

  “Pirates.” He smiled sadly. “Ironic, isn’t it? I saved him because the pirates had torn his family from him. He barely escaped himself. He lived in a small sea town, and he ran off into the woods thinking h
is parents and brothers would be behind him. They weren’t. They were killed in the onslaught. I knew they’d look for the boy, and so I had the wolves watch over him. A year later, he was found by unsavory people and sold into slavery. Sold to pirates to put an end to many people and children much like himself.”

  “Did he ever have a name?”

  “All children have names.”

  “What was it?”

  “I never learned it.”

  “You saved a child, broke the rules for this kid, and never learned his name?” I asked, not believing it.

  “They reminded me of my own family from a long time ago. We haven’t been around for forever, you know. I was alive once. I had a beautiful wife and a wonderful son.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “We died. I became one of the Old Ones, and they stayed in the Veil until they faded into nothing, as all people do.”

  “And what about you?”

  “I still do my duties as the communicator between the worlds.”

  “You never fell in love again?”

  He looked at me long and hard before saying, “I did. Once more. And I had to watch her die as well. We’re not talking about my life, Casey. We’re talking about the boy. About the war that will begin soon. We’re talking about the difference between your victory and your demise.”

  There was so much that I didn’t know about the Old Ones and the Veil. “So you want me to find a pirate and take him under my wing to win a war?”

  “You can’t disregard something entirely, Casey. Meet him, talk to him, take him with you. If not for him to help you, then to stop him from dying on the ship. Save his life at least, give him a chance.” He was pleading. The sudden realization that he wasn’t asking to help with the war but purely to help the man hit me like a train. He may not have even known if this “Wulf” would help us; he just didn’t want him to die. He was saving him again, only this time through me.

  I looked at him for a while. His watery blue eyes met mine with a fierce look in them. “All right, I’ll try and help him,” I promised.

  He nodded and stood up. “All right. Now you better get back. You have some other people to meet pretty soon. You have a lot to do in the next few days. Oh, and you should probably suggest going to one of the bars down there in the underground called The Dirty Gem.”

  “What’s there?”

  He shrugged, a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. “A friend in need. Now let’s get you back to where you belong.”

  “Right,” I said, nodding a little. “And Regan? Is she… is she going to be okay?”

  “She is going to be as she always has.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that whoever you see now and whoever you see in the time to come will be Regan Cartmell. She will not turn like Martun did. She will not become someone else. We see many futures, Casey, and I cannot tell you what you will find or who will hurt you. I can only tell you that Regan has not been corrupted by the Veil. She is the same as she always has been.”

  That sounded ominous, like there were futures where Regan was someone I didn’t want to see, like there was the possibility Regan would become someone I wanted to blame on the Veil. It also meant the awkwardness between us and the slowly building tension wasn’t caused by something else—it was just us.

  I tried desperately to push that from my mind. Regan was the same, meaning she was the woman I fell in love with. There was nothing that would change that.

  “Wake up, Casey,” the Old One said, and I closed my eyes as things began to fade away.

  “CASEY, LOVE, it’s time to wake up.”

  “Your cuteness makes me want to barf.”

  “Shut up, Cam. She’s tired. She’s had a lot on her mind. You’re just jealous you don’t have this.”

  There was a minute of silence, and then I heard the reply, “I am.”

  I decided that would be the best moment to wake up before something happened. I opened my eyes and noticed I was still snuggled up against Regan’s chest. She was rubbing my back slowly, and I reached up around my neck and followed the thin chain until my fingers found my engagement ring. “Morning.”

  “Hey there. We have to get going. We’re going to get to that camp today, you know.”

  I nodded and yawned. “Good. We have a lot of things to do still.”

  “What do you mean? We have no idea what to do after going to this camp,” Regan said, a little confused.

  “A bar and a pirate,” I mumbled tiredly into her chest.

  I heard a laugh start in her chest as she chuckled. “Whatever you say, love.”

  Chapter 6

  SKYE THREW a bag at Regan and said, “We need to go.” All business.

  “What’s wrong?” Regan asked, slinging the bag over her shoulder.

  “A patrol will be coming around soon. The dark elves make regular rounds around here now, forcing those they find into their damn army.” She scowled and started stomping the fire out, mumbling about the days when everyone would just leave them alone.

  Cam came up behind her. “I think it’s best we leave too. I don’t like just hanging around in the open knowing everything can see us, and we can’t see a damn thing.”

  Cinder was relieving himself on something nearby, but jogged over when he saw us getting things ready to go. Did you dream last night? I could feel how restless your mind was.

  Yeah. We have a bit of a problem to deal with. We’re going to pick up a pirate.

  Why?

  The Old Ones think he can help. I just don’t know if I want a murderer with us. How can you trust a pirate?

  The way we trust everyone else. Cautiously until they prove us wrong, like they all have.

  Ston hasn’t. He’s back on my “Watch List.”

  So we’ll keep an eye on him. There’s not much we can do until he does something.

  I nodded, mostly to myself, but Ston must have noticed because he spoke up. “Something wrong, Casey?”

  I didn’t even look up, but my heart jumped at the thought that he might know what we were talking about, even if that were impossible. “Nothing. Just talking to Cinder about what we have to do next.”

  “You said you want to go to a bar after we get to camp?”

  I nodded. “It’s called the Dirty Gem. I’m not exactly sure what we’ll be looking for there, but I don’t think we should be passing up any opportunities.”

  “I know where that is. I’ve been there before. It’s not exactly a nice place, Casey. It’s disgusting by anyone’s standards, human, elf, or underfae, and it’s full of unsavory characters. Why this one?”

  “I had a dream.” I didn’t want to talk to anyone in detail about it all, especially not in front of Ston.

  “A dream? You want to go to a shady tavern with people who will realize that you aren’t dark elf or underfae and will probably start to plan how to kill us because of a dream?” he hissed.

  “Yes. Because someone in a dream told me that we could find someone of use in a shady tavern where we might die, and if I’m going to go to war soon, I want all the help I can get,” I snapped back and left him standing there in shock to catch up with Regan.

  “Are you all right?” she asked when I fell into step beside her.

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled darkly.

  “I just wanted to be sure,” she answered as she slipped a hand in mine, instantly relieving my tension.

  “I know.” I sighed, feeling sorry for taking it out on her. “I just have a lot to think about right now. I mean, how am I supposed to know what to do? A war? How big is this? I mean, I obviously can’t do it with a few people this time; it’s on a much larger scale. A huge scale. I’ve never made treaties with a people before, and what can I offer them? I’m nobody of importance up there, up on the surface. I can’t give them food or power or acceptance into human society. How can I convince people to help me when I can’t give them anything in return? Our demise doesn’t affect them at all, so
what is their motivation to help?”

  Regan didn’t look over at me, but she squeezed my hand. “You’re not ready,” she observed.

  “No,” I whispered back.

  “You will be. You just need something to happen that pushes you to take that step.”

  “How will I know when I’m ready?” I asked after a moment.

  “When you stop asking people to help you and start asking them to follow you,” she answered.

  I wanted to say something, but Skye came up to us and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

  Ston stood beside her. A greenish white light was suspended high above his head, following him wherever he went and lighting our way. He nodded to Skye, letting her know that we’d follow her back to the camp, and she turned around and started to walk. I didn’t know what direction she was going. Being underground was too disorienting; I wasn’t even sure which way we had come in.

  What are you thinking? Cinder asked. He walked beside me, and I reached a hand up to touch his side. He had grown up to my shoulder; fortunately I believed this would be as big as he got.

  Regan said that I need to ask people to follow me. She wants me to lead. And not a few soldiers who would listen to me or a few friends I could go to for input and be equals with who would agree with me, but an army who would follow orders. She wants me to command an entire army. I can’t do that. That isn’t who I am. One person dying because of me is too much to handle, but a hundred? A thousand? I can’t do that. We have to find someone else, a military genius who can do that.

  Cinder didn’t answer me for a moment, and then, calmly, he said, I don’t think you have a choice in the matter, Casey. You are the hand that turns the world lately; you are the pivot point in all the change we have experienced in the last year. You are destined to change the world once more, and it is through war, and through leading men. You are smart, you are strong, people like you and instinctively follow you. You won’t do this alone; you will have plenty of people you trust to advise you, but you will be the final word. People will come to you with conflicting ideas, and you will have to determine which is the best one. No one else is equipped for this job. Some people have the smarts but not the power. Or the people skills, but not the intelligence. The power, but not the people skills. And nobody shares your connection with the Old Ones. You are what this world will need soon.