Its reality hung behind it, looming vast and bright as a sun, voracious. Crept into the crevices of his Self and boiled his blood. Its heart was a sun, just as huge and blindly hungry, but trapped at the end of a wick, trying to stretch beyond its own form.
It saw the little piles of ammunition scattered about them, a driving desire for the taste of gunpowder, and laughed its crackling laugh when it felt him knowing. Felt him wanting it, too.
And it was starting to hurt.
“Listen to me,” Dallin growled, angry now. “Just trust me, I won’t let anything happen. Push it, Wil. I know you can do this— you know you can do this. Push it.”
Wil latched onto the confidence in the voice, twitched his shoulder just so he could feel the weight of Dallin’s hand shift against his skin beneath the linen of his shirt.
He didn’t push; it was too big for that—he clenched his teeth and shoved.
If he hadn’t already been sitting down, the great whoosh and flare would’ve sent him to his arse. As it was, he fell back against Dallin, sent him half-reeling sideways with a startled grunt, but that hand never let go.
“Bloody hell,” Dallin breathed as they watched the fire reach out through the doorway, fan over the wall of the passageway and flare toward the ceiling then thin and choke itself on stone and mortar. A scrim of smoke wafted about them as the flame weakened then sputtered broodingly over the splash of wax and wick, all that was left of the ruined candle. One tiny blue spark floated in a liquid carcass of milky beeswax, and even that only lived a few seconds longer.
They sat silent, staring, watched the smoke fade to a thin haze at the ceiling. Listened to the hiss and final faint pop from the corpse of the candle. Blinked stupidly, wonderingly, and tried to re-hinge their jaws.
The force had knocked them both back, Dallin’s hip upending the pitcher when he’d landed. He sat now in a puddle of water, trousers dark and sopping. And he didn’t even seem to notice.
“So,” Dallin managed after a moment, a little thin and strained. “That went well.”
Wil couldn’t help it—he barked out a laugh. Dallin just stared at him with eyes gone comically wide. Wil threw himself into the broad chest and laughed again, louder this time, maybe a little bit wild, but genuine humor and relief beneath it.
He hadn’t burnt the place down. It hadn’t eaten him. He didn’t hurt. And…
He reached up, swiped at his nose, fingers coming away with nothing more sinister coating the tips but a trace of gun oil. He pulled back and waggled them at Dallin with a slightly hectic grin.
Dallin puffed an edgy little chuckle as he scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Well,” he told Wil, peering up at the sooted ceiling and then down to the pool of wax. He smirked. “It’s probably a good thing we didn’t start with the torches.”
Not only the ceiling but the passageway wall and floor were singed by the time Dallin peered at Wil, judged him pale, and deemed they’d played at pyromania enough for today. They’d had to use four of the pitchers—and the blanket, when one of the lamps out in the hallway had exploded—and they hadn’t even chanced anything bigger than the candles.
Most of Wil’s efforts were spent on control, manipulation and confinement. Making sure he didn’t wander inside of it all, misplace himself or allow it to grow beyond what they could control was left to Dallin.
Well, and putting out the various little blazes that cropped up in the periphery. There’d been a few of those. It was amazing neither one of them had been singed, though that was likely because Dallin never let Wil forget to push away. After the first one, Dallin had ordered a pause so he could move the ammunition and everything else flammable he could find down to Wil’s room. Not that it mattered—the flames would eat the dust in the air, if they couldn’t find anything else. Wil had to respect and admire the mindless craving for survival.
There was a touch of disappointment when Dallin called a halt, but relief, too. And a great deal of satisfaction.
“You look like you’re feeling well,” Wil observed as he sat on the floor and watched Dallin shove the bed back to where it had been. He was moving very easily, like he’d never been hurt at all. Wil was curious to have a look under that bandage.
“And you look like a cat with a mouse’s tail hanging from its mouth.”
Wil didn’t even try to hide the grin. “I wish you could feel what it’s like,” he answered as he watched Dallin move about the small room, trying—likely fruitlessly—to put it back to at least a semblance of what it had been.
He furrowed his brow, thoughtful. “I’ll bet you could, y’know.”
Dallin balled up the black-smudged, still partially sopping blanket. “Could what?” He gave the blanket a dubious grimace, then gave it up and dropped it to the floor.
“Feel what it’s like.” Wil shrugged. “We share dreams, after all. And there’s the Calling and all. That would’ve been handy, if I knew…” He shook his head; no beating himself up today. “But, I mean, there must be some kind of connection, right? Maybe you could… sort of follow me when I do it.”
He watched with sharp interest as Dallin’s face closed up and he looked away, retrieved the blanket again and paced slowly over to the doorway. Still stone-faced, he knelt and applied it to the scorch-marks on the floor. He seemed far too intent on watching his own hands as he tried to mop up the mess, staring broodingly at the faintly iridescent trail of moisture on the stone in its wake.
“Is that something you want to do?” There was an edge of distinct unease beneath the question.
Wil drew a knee up and rested his chin atop it. “Is it something you don’t?”
“I didn’t say that.” Dallin kept himself busy with his makeshift mopping, peering across the passageway and at the marks climbing the wall there. Like he was avoiding Wil’s gaze.
Interesting.
Wil narrowed his eyes. “Would you do it if I asked, even if you didn’t want to?”
Dallin didn’t have to answer, Wil already knew, but he was very keen to see the reaction, the struggle to find the right words. He watched as Dallin dredged up answers in his mind then pitched them away, one after one, until he settled on something he apparently thought was the right thing to say. With a slow nod, Dallin dropped the blanket and twisted to sit on the floor, back propped to the wall.
“I will do whatever it takes,” he told Wil, gaze even, with a hardness behind it that nearly sent chills up Wil’s backbone. He wasn’t looking at Dallin anymore; this was Constable Brayden staring out from those intense eyes.
“What does that mean?” Wil asked quietly. “Whatever it takes to do what?”
“To right the wrongs,” was the steady reply. “The things that happened, Wil… they offend me. I don’t know how to say it any better. They offend me to my core. And now that…” Dallin waved a hand between them. “The offence is keener. It would be wrong that it happened to anyone, and that’s the way it started out. Now it’s even more wrong because it happened to you. You asked me if I’d stop you from revenge. My answer is no. My answer is that you may have to work pretty hard to beat me to it. So, if you think we need to try whatever it is you have in mind, I’ll do it.”
Wil pushed away the selfish little bit of a glow that was blooming in his chest, concentrating instead on the somber discomfort he’d stirred in Dallin. “You’ll do it. But you don’t want to.”
Dallin shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“But it does,” Wil said simply. Because it really did. For the first time in his life, it mattered at least as much what another wanted as what he wanted. And he wasn’t even sure he actually wanted it in the first place.
“It makes me…” Dallin’s jaw tightened, muscles jumping and twitching. “It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like feeling like I’m invading the mind of another. I don’t like the idea of another invading mine. The things in my head, they’re… it’s the most private place a person can own. They’re for me.”
Wil
could certainly understand that. Except… “You’ve been in my dreams for years. You’ve bidden me into yours. Is this so different?”
“Well, I didn’t know I was in your dreams, did I?”
It was snapped out, angry. Dallin visibly calmed himself with an uneasy sigh. “I don’t know. But that pushing thing you do… it…” His teeth clenched tight, and he shook his head. “This won’t sound right, and please understand that I don’t mean anything by it. But I saw that man in Dudley, I saw how he looked at you, how he looked at me when I touched you. And the boy at the stable—Calder said…” He trailed off, rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “How am I supposed to put this so it doesn’t sound like I’m faulting you for something?”
The blooming warmth chilled abruptly. “Well,” Wil put in slowly, “you could say it plainly. Say that Calder told you what he saw, what it looked like. How he didn’t quite believe I had no intention of dragging the lad into the nearest stall for a quick shag. How he was no doubt wondering if I’d used it to seduce my way through every man from Ríocht to here.”
“He was… condescendingly sympathetic,” Dallin agreed, shot a rueful glance to Wil, and shrugged. “I, on the other hand, am thoroughly behind whatever you need to do to get what you need. I want you to understand that.”
Wil’s eyebrow went up. “How very… generous of you.”
“See, I knew I wouldn’t be able to say anything right. It isn’t generous—it’s a statement of simple fact. I want you to survive, Wil. And I want you to do whatever you have to do, whatever you can live with after, to do it. I want you to—”
“I’ve used it to defend myself,” Wil cut in, “and that by accident. I didn’t even know I could do it, it happened by panicked chance, and I don’t just go about…” Frustrated and weirdly hurt, he clamped his jaw tight and shook his head. “What d’you think Orman wanted, that night outside Ramsford’s? And what d’you think I was prepared to give him to make him think he got exactly what he wanted? You think I wouldn’t take a dirty little encounter in an alley as a better alternative to letting him kidnap me back to the Guild and everything that means? Look at me—you think I could win if it came to an actual fight? If Palmer hadn’t shown up, Orman would’ve gone away, happily satisfied and blithely alive, and all it would’ve taken was a few moments of my time.”
Then again, if it had all tumbled that way, Wil never would have got arrested, which meant he’d never have been confronted with Dallin, which meant… He didn’t even want to think about what that might’ve meant.
“Give them what they think they want,” Dallin said softly.
Wil shrugged, defiant and embarrassingly defensive.
“Women want to feed me. Men want to bed me. Well, some women want to bed me, too, and some men only want to feed me. Or, you know, do nice things for me. It’s their own wants inside them that determine whether it’ll be a pleasant experience or whether I’ll end up running for my life. Some are more greedy than others.” He sat back, kept his gaze frank. “Some of it was very nice. I won’t apologize for any of it.” He raised his eyebrows.
“Disappointed?”
Wil didn’t know how it happened, when it happened, but Dallin had somehow become the mean by which he judged himself. Likely because there was a decided lack of judgment and it was easier on his self-opinion that way.
He liked himself a lot less than Dallin apparently did, and he had to admit he rather liked seeing himself reflected in those dark eyes; they showed him a much better image than any he’d ever even thought to look for before. Until perhaps now, anyway.
Dallin was going a bit red in the face. “And that’s… see, it’s not you or what you’ve done, and… fuck, Wil, apology, for the Mother’s sake. Disappointed.” He ground his teeth, hands fisted. “You can’t hear it right and I keep saying it wrong. It isn’t you or anything you’ve done. Do I really have to repeat, yet again, that every last bit of it… I don’t think you could disappoint me. I’m afraid of disappointing you. Disappointing myself.” He stopped, mouth open, like he hadn’t meant to say it. He set his jaw. “When you first told me what happened at the Guild, that first day in Dudley, remember that? I walked out of that cell and one of the first things that occurred to me was how easily a power like that could make even the best of men into the worst of men. And what you do, take that want and use it, that…” He paused. He looked like he wanted to tear his gaze away, but willfully held Wil’s with it instead. “I’ve already got the want, y’see. I’d be afraid I’d…” He didn’t finish, just left it lying there, like a stone had fallen out his mouth.
That chill inside Wil thawed all at once. He really should have known better than to think… whatever he’d been thinking. That any intention this man had could be anything less than honorable. Dallin really was, very simply, a good man.
“That right there,” Wil told him, quiet and a little hoarse, “that’s what makes it possible to ask you. That’s how I know. And I’m not quite as helpless as I was. You don’t need to protect me from you. I can do that well enough on my own.” He paused, shook his head. “It isn’t that people want me, surely you see that? They want what’s in me, even if they don’t know what it is—some would open my chest and dig out my heart looking for it, and still not realize they didn’t know what they were looking for. What you want…” A flush rose, hot and tight. “You see me. It’s just…” There really was no good word for what it was, at least not in Wil’s vocabulary.
“It’s just different.”
He watched as Dallin sighed in defeat, knew he’d won something for which he hadn’t even meant to contend.
Except now that the necessity had evolved out of the murky disarray at the bottom of his consciousness, it made too much sense to put away again. Anyway, now that he was in it…
Wil set his jaw. “Calder said your magic felt green, untapped. He said he shouldn’t’ve been able to read you, which means you ought to be able to deny anyone you don’t want mucking about in there. The Old Ones can all do it. You’ve more in you than any one of them. And you must’ve been doing some thing all this time—I looked for you. I looked hard.”
He paused, thought carefully about what he actually wanted here, and what he ought to want, and what he ought to be saying to get it. And how he was going to do it without making an obviously touchy matter into something altogether untouchable.
It was hard work, this caring thing. And knowing that you were cared for in return—probably more, and cleaner—made it all the harder. Made it… heavy.
“I don’t want to be inside your head.” Wil spoke it very clearly, putting all his sincerity behind it. “I don’t want you inside mine. But I also don’t want anyone finding me the way I found you in Lind.” He swallowed as Dallin shot a narrow look at him, but kept his voice calm and his expression open. “That second Watcher—he heard me. And I wasn’t even calling for him. Or, at least, I didn’t know I was. What if there comes a time when I need you to hear me? It’s selfish, I know, and I’m sorry, but… Don’t you think we need all the ammunition we can get?”
It wasn’t fair. He was using Dallin’s own sense of honor against him. But that didn’t make the need any less needful. Perhaps Wil had only just thought of it, but now that he had and voiced the concern, there was no choice but to see it as imperative.
“Would you, um…?” Wil hesitated, shifted a little.
“Should you maybe ask Calder if he could—?”
“Not on your bloody life,” Dallin cut in, terse.
Wil sighed. “Then you’re stuck with me, I guess.”
Dallin’s jaw tightened, gaze gone flat, almost angry.
“Right,” he muttered, low and gruff. Irritably, he picked up the drenched blanket, only to throw it back down to the floor with a heavy splat. “I expect it’s your turn as tutor. Let’s get on, then.”
After all of the apprehension, all of the heavy sighs and clenched teeth from Dallin, it turned out to be incredibly easy. Wil had wondered, after he’d
more-or-less tricked Dallin into it all, if it could actually work. Wil had tried very hard to push him that night in Dudley, after all.
There was no push to this, no patterns, no chaos. There was merely a reaching out, a concentrated call. And then a diffident rebuff that rocked Wil’s mind only slightly. Some gentle cajoling, assurance, a request for trust. Then, finally, an answer. Hesitant.
Permission.
Connection.
Warp and Weft.
I will do whatever it takes, Dallin had told Wil. There couldn’t be more profound proof of that statement. The denial was so much simpler. Almost nothing more than a mental No. For Wil, it was like butting his mind against a stone wall. He was fairly confident it would be the same for anyone else who might decide to give it a go. Dallin’s belief was hard in coming—the knee-jerk Prove It in him endlessly walking his mental watchtower, Reason and Logic its sentries—but once it came, it was unflinching.
They were both fairly exhausted by the time Dallin declared them through and himself tired and in need of the sleep he hadn’t got last night. He still had that broodiness about him, his mood dark and discomfited, so Wil didn’t argue. Anyway, it had to be going on midday by now, and he was starting to get hungry. They’d had a good morning’s work, and though he was genuinely regretful that the exhilaration of taming fire—taming bloody fire—had been so thoroughly dampened by what followed, he couldn’t regret the result.
“You’ll need it,” Wil told Dallin as they finished up assembling and loading the weapons. He made his voice soft and sympathetic. “We had to do it.”
“I know,” Dallin replied, stretched his neck, loosing a heavy sigh. “Anyway, I’m glad it’s done, and I’m glad you thought of it. It was… necessary.”
Wil gave him a rueful smile and a lift of an eyebrow. “Glad?”
The Aisling Trilogy Page 56