I’d never made it so far into this swamp. Over seven hundred thousand acres was a lot of area to cover and I’d usually only been able to come on weekends or vacations. But every single time I’d find myself zoning out. The prickling unease worked as a major deterrent.
“This isn’t about me!” I yelled into the quiet. “This is about my sister. I want my sister back.”
The egret shifted slowly with my words but didn’t take flight. Instead, he faced a different direction.
“Are you trying to help me or are you just snubbing your nose—er, beak?”
I hefted my backpack to a more comfortable spot and started walking. Sally had told me only a local would know the safest route to drive at this point. I was glad I’d worn the jungle boots because the drain holes allowed the water to pour off. The ground went from thick, hard dirt to thin, barely-covered slick limestone. Though I’d never been bitten by a snake I could sense more than the usual number around me, so I wished I’d picked up a pair of those snake-proof gaiters.
Sally had spewed more information as I’d filled the extra cans with gas. She’d said that folks stayed away after helping build this new cabin—that the only person to visit was its owner, Castor. She smiled when she said his name. Smiled like one would if she talked about the Pope or Mother Theresa. Or a beloved child.
I didn’t want to have to kill Castor. The thought had me breaking out in a cold sweat. I’d already realized we were somehow connected and since I’d been found kind of around the time he’d been taken into town, I had a pretty good idea how. I still couldn’t wrap my head around the thought.
But I had to keep Elsa in mind. Elsa and the countless souls trapped around Nikolos because Goddess help me, I couldn’t yet bring myself to free them by killing him. I guessed the Dweller had somehow attached a part of itself to him the first time around—stored those souls on him for power. The souls that kept him alive. My sister was in there—she had to be and that meant…
I choked on a sob. Then another.
I would be killing someone today. I knew that to the bottom of my own tarnished soul. I never ever thought I’d contemplate such a thing. Killing someone who didn’t entire deserve it. I also never thought that there could be someone out there who fit me the way Nikolos had last night. My skin went hot as memories of his body on mine filled my head. He was obviously meant to be a part of my life. His lying made it a short part. I had no idea why or how and all this mystical shit surrounding us bothered me on some level—made me think we were purposely being thrown together. Like the ankhs. Did I, in fact, wear the one his wife had worn? How would that even be possible? Did that make our feelings real? Or manipulated?
If there is one thing I hate, it’s being manipulated.
I had to cast away all these negative thoughts. It was time to face Castor—the host—stare into his eyes and know the truth.
And now that I stood there, sweating in the silent swamp, I wondered what happened to the usual noisy creatures. The crickets and red-winged blackbirds, the frogs. My boots made the only sounds—squishy noises in the wet areas, crinkly in the dry. Not as much dry in this mist-covered swamp, though.
Fred appeared silently beside me. I stopped in ankle-high water and glared at him. He was fading in and out, and the closer I looked the more I realized his face was blurred—like it was changing shape. I took a step back. “Fred, what’s going on? You’ve been acting weird for days. What’s up with your face? You look kind of melty.”
Brown hair flopped over one eye as he turned a nearly frantic gaze my way. “Beri, I can’t hold on to my energy in this place, but I have to tell you something.”
I waited, hearing the slither of a snake under leaves near my feet.
“Remember when Nikolos asked if I’d been assigned to you? In Elsa’s kitchen before he ran off?”
I nodded. “Yeah, you never answered.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Assigned to me?”
He shuffled his feet and blew out a deep breath. “Beri, I wasn’t supposed to be your guide. I came down to protect you and just kind of stayed.”
Shock locked my jaw for a second. I struggled to swallow, to bring saliva into my mouth. “What? What the hell, Fred? That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.” He stared at his hands, seemed to be watching them fade in and out.
I looked up at the sky. Looked back for the egret, which was gone… my stomach was swirling like I’d eaten bad fish. “Are you saying I don’t have a real spirit guide, Fred?”
“You do… no, you don’t. Weren’t supposed to. Or if you were, something happened to her or him when VonBrahm did what he did to you—”
He broke off when a loud buzzing broke the silence of the swamp. We were suddenly surrounded by bees. I knew they came with my emotion because everything I’d been feeling lately rushed to my throat until it was all I could do not to scream. I choked and stumbled back, the bees a blur of buzzing color around me.
What VonBrahm had done to me.
My body went cold—my heart just stopped. Closing my eyes, I searched for memories—ones that might have been blocked from terror. I found nothing.
Nothing, damn it!
But Fred knew. He’d always known. “All this time,” I choked out, tears sliding down my cheeks. I took a step toward him. “All this time you’ve known who I am.”
He nodded, his regret so clear in his eyes it took me a minute to figure out his face was still changing. It became broader—the hair black, his eyebrows bushier. Skin, pale before, darkened. When he threw his head back and released a hoarse, keening sound of pain, I tried to reach him. I walked right into space.
He was gone.
Gone again and I was in a clearing surrounded by trees and hives. Over a hundred hives. I’d been walking—led by the swarms of bees—and hadn’t even realized it.
Then I saw him. High. His cabin built on the highest point I’d seen in this low wet place.
I walked right across that grassy area and up to the bottom step of his porch, barely keeping myself from swaying as my world was ripped from under my feet. Light gold eyes like mine. Hair copper-colored like mine. He’d cut his short. I wondered if he did it daily as I had for a few years.
His expression showed no surprise. He came down the porch steps and sat on the bottom one, his boot-covered feet on the ground. “Took you long enough to get here,” he said. “I felt you before and couldn’t believe you never found me.”
“You’re Castor? The owner of this place?”
He nodded. “And your brother.”
I had pretty much guessed this after listening to Sally, but hearing it still made me want to sit and cry. Or scream. In truth, the emotions fighting for dominance were nothing more than a confusing mass of pain. Why had Fred disappeared before finishing his explanation? I still had goose bumps on my arms and something in the air around me stirred, rustling dried leaves and swinging the thinner branches of the surrounding cypress trees. The bees had backed off but they stayed in the circle of trees, hovering. I held up my hand before Castor could speak again, took a deep breath to steady myself and peeled back dimensional layers to see the subtle beings I sensed around him. I was terrified I’d see VonBrahm’s silent murder victims.
Instead, what I saw made me take a step back. Spirit guides. Tall and regal—they stood in a circle about him. He had six. They weren’t like any guides I’d ever seen. They looked as if they’d each been created from the same mold—the same perfect mold. They could have been male or female, but all had long silvery white hair that fell past their hips. In turn, each lowered their head in acknowledgement, glittering blue eyes shiny and intent on me. Their presence together sent power thrusting into the air. It hit me. Hard.
Angels? Gods? What were they?
I shook my head and collapsed on the ground. My heart was beating so hard the sound had filled my ears so I could only gape at Castor for a moment. Burying my fingers in a small patch of grass, I tried to anchor
myself with the earth—with the world as I’d known it.
I stared at this man and couldn’t believe how alike we were. He was my height, but the difference between us was so very, very plain. He was gentle. And he glowed with an inner light that made me want to hug him or—yes, the Dweller Demon had been right—protect him.
“Victor VonBrahm was your father?” Somehow that was just wrong. Someone who exuded goodness like this couldn’t have come from that. Couldn’t have.
He nodded. “And yours. And before you ask, I don’t know who our mother was. I asked around here but no one knows anything and they don’t like to talk about Victor.”
“Do you blame them? I’m sure it bothers them that this went on so long—” I stopped. Choked. A few bees zoomed in to hover about my head. I pressed so hard into the soil, sharp rocks gouged my palms, sliding through skin. I stayed there, feeling the wet warmth of my blood spill into the ground. The earth spun around me even with my eyes closed and I wanted to throw up. If I’d eaten those biscuits I would have.
A hand softly touched my back. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Being a product of that man doesn’t mean you are like him.”
His touch sent instant peace into my heart. I stared up at him.
The stories I’d read flashed in front of my mind and I closed my eyes, whimpering when they sped up. Men, women and children… mostly the children. Taken from families already devastated by lingering fatal illnesses. VonBrahm’s victims. So many of them.
It was then the crying dead finally managed to break through whatever barrier had been keeping them from me. Screams filled my head, one after the other—their agony so immense it snapped into mine like we were all connected by electric rubber bands. I had a vision of bodies floating in a flooded basement.
Moaning, I stayed on my knees. I couldn’t decipher any particular set; they were all melded together in the largest gathering of terror I’d ever felt.
Why weren’t they silent? They were murder victims, weren’t they?
Castor had stayed in place, watching with the kind of compassion one usually found on a priest’s face.
“I’m making one hell of an impression.” I managed to gasp out the words. “My name is Beri, by the way.”
“I’m just glad to finally meet you.” He smiled. “And I know the agony you’re feeling. I’ve had time to grow used to it.”
“Do you know why I’m here?”
He nodded. “There is evil here, attached to this place… attached to me. It’s deep in this earth.” He gazed at the cabin, his expression drawn. “I was to keep it here.”
“Yet you’ve always known about me? Why didn’t you come find me?”
“I couldn’t leave. I’m—” He broke off, swallowed. “I’m keeping something here. I waited for you to come back. Even tried to come out to meet you when I sensed you near, but every time my feelings and emotions scattered and I got disoriented.” He tilted his head and I saw that he didn’t have the crown of glowing white at the top like I did. Yet the sun still sparkled in the copper. “You don’t remember me?” he asked.
“Of course I don’t.” I closed my eyes and stood, letting the rising sun warm my face. When I opened them, he was frowning. “What? I was two years old when I was found wandering these woods. Two! I have no memories of you or this place.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“Because Victor did not want a daughter.”
The heaviness of what he didn’t say weighed down the air. I felt a surge of some malevolent energy prick the atmosphere. I turned a slow circle, sensing that more than tortured spirits witnessed our reunion. We were being watched. I looked back at my brother. “He hurt me? How can you remember this? We’re the same age, aren’t we? We look like twins.”
“I guess some things are so traumatic they make some remember. And some forget.”
“I have a sister,” I blurted out. “Not by blood but love. She’s the best friend I have. I came here because of her. To help her.”
He nodded. “You’re here because her soul has been taken. I don’t know what’s doing this. I only know my presence keeps it physically here even though it has been able to reach other cities with its power. I believe it’s a part of me—like my soul or something.”
“Can you call it?” If he could call the Dweller, maybe I wouldn’t need to drag anyone else into this. Maybe I wouldn’t have to kill the person who was keeping the souls. Kill Nikolos. Kill my fucking brother. I held back another sob.
“No.” He came close and touched my hat. “Can I see your hair?”
I took the hat off and pulled out the pins, letting my hair fall to the ground around me.
He touched it. Smiled again and this one was full of genuine warmth and amusement. No wonder the people in town hid him—protected him.
“I know why you came here,” he said, his voice low.
I couldn’t look away. A masculine version of me—and one who looked more feminine. That should have bothered me, but sometime in the last few days I’d quit thinking of myself as an Amazon. Might have had something to do with making love to Nikolos. “I told you why I was here,” I said. “My sister.”
He stepped back and crossed his arms. The sun chose that moment to break through the canopy of trees overhead and he was bathed in pure, sparkling light. I squinted, worked at the dimensional layers and let myself see his army of guides. All six stared back at me then looked over my shoulder. I followed them to find Fred, his face lowered and hidden from me.
If Castor and I were twins—and I still wasn’t able to wrap my mind around that fact—what was with the very different protectors? If he was a being of light—and had been given what looked like gods and goddesses as guides—what did that make me?
My mind flashed back to a moment from my past. The one that had made me run hiding to the beach. Me, standing over what was left of a black wizard. I looked at my palms now—clean—and remembered them covered in his blood, remembered the grinning fire elemental who had done something to my mind. Taken over my very soul.
At the time I’d thought the fire elemental had made me kill that wizard. Now I could only wonder. I focused on my brother, standing in that stream of sunlight—looking like perfection realized. He’d been brought to life for one reason and one reason only. Love. I could see it in his face. He was happy to meet me, happy to know me.
“Why do you think I’m really here?” I whispered.
His expression didn’t change. He looked serene and untouchable. “You came into this swamp to kill me.”
Chapter Eighteen
What could I say? I sat there on the ground, my hair hanging like a shroud around my head. The swamp was no longer silent—the buzzing of the thousands of bees pretty much muffling the other sounds of wildlife. I could hear birds—which kinds I couldn’t have said since I was trying too hard to figure out a way to solve this without killing anyone.
We had come to find the host—to possibly kill the host. Yeah, we were hoping the spell would keep that from being a necessity but it was the truth. I offered him a weak smile, knowing there wasn’t a thing on this earth that would make me take his life. And it had little to do with the fact that he was my brother. No, it had more to do with the kind of person he obviously was. “One look at you was all it took, Castor. That’s no longer on the agenda.” I didn’t say anything about the only other way I had to free my sister. Instead, I let myself go numb inside.
His hair—short, the color of a freshly polished penny—turned rusty and bright in the sunlight. He sat on the ground next to me and crossed his legs. We were the same age yet he seemed so much younger, as if his lack of experience had slowed the aging process. He didn’t smile, though there was an acceptance in his eyes that drove a chill into my numb heart.
“I’m prepared for that, should it turn out to be our only choice. I’ve been attached to this place my entire life and in the months before people started falling with this illness, I felt something in the
earth stirring.”
“There are many things stirring here,” I said, my voice low. I was speaking of VonBrahm’s victims.
He gazed toward the trees over my head. “I know. I’ve never understood why they’re trapped. Yet so am I.” Sadness etched his face as his gaze returned to me. “There is a creature gathering power here.”
“We’ve been calling it the Dweller. The Dweller on the Threshold.”
“That’s the name?” He shuddered. “Terrible. Tell me what you know about it.”
I sat up straight and started to reply when my attention was snagged by dots of movement around me. I say dots because they started out that way as they came from everywhere. Came from the trees.
The bees were gathering. And they were agitated.
Handfuls hovered around us in a kind of circle. Dried leaves rustled and shifted as the lower, slithery creatures came to investigate. I could hear bigger things moving farther out. I looked into the foliage as I spoke. “I came here with a man who faced this thing down before.”
His copper-colored brows met in the middle of his forehead. “Wait, you mean it isn’t from part of me?”
Something big crashed out there. I scrambled to my feet, fist clenched near my knife. Was that a deer? I shielded my eyes from the sun as the world went still. Swallowing to ease my dry throat, I kept my voice low and told Castor about the karma—the reincarnation and all the other crazy stuff I’d learned over the past few days. Hard to believe it had been less than a week.
The whole time, I never once took my eyes from the woods. Every hair on my body was standing on end—my stomach twisting, my back stiff.
The rumble of an engine broke through the heavy silence that fell between us when I stopped talking. Another swamp buggy, this one filled with Blythe, Dooby, Nikolos, and Elsa bumped over the ground toward us, stopping about thirty yards away. Or getting stuck in the mud thirty yards away. Good thing Sally had told me about the last part of the trip.
I could see the fury emanating from Nikolos from here. I curled my lip and pulled out my knife and the one I’d taken from him, gripping them in both fists. Squinting, I separated the dimensional layers, noticing as I did that I was getting good at doing it. Better than ever before.
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