by Zile Elliven
“You aren’t my mother, are you?” At this point, she sincerely hoped she wasn't.
“I’d give you points for cleverness, but since it took you thirteen years to notice, I’m going to pass.”
“Who . . . what are you?”
The woman studied her as though trying to decide if the conversation was worth its time. She shrugged. “Why not? We have a little time before the big event.”
“What event?”
“Your coronation, silly. Do try to keep up.” The imposter wearing her mother’s face moved closer to her cage but stopped herself. “Kids today, honestly. If you could just refrain from asking so many questions, you’d find that illumination would come sooner.”
She looked around the garage until she found a stool. With a grimace of distaste, she gingerly moved the stool closer to Aeyli, but not too close. She reached into her purse, pulled out a handkerchief, and placed it on top of the stool before perching delicately on the edge.
“I am your grandmother, the first Hester Blaike. With about two—no wait”—a pink-tipped fingernail touched her mouth thoughtfully—“three greats in front of that. I suppose technically I am all your grandmothers and your mother, if you think about it. You have known me longer than her after all.”
“Run that by me again?”
With disappointed sigh, the woman said, “I suppose it was too much to hope for intelligence in a child who spent most of her life alone in a room.”
Anger spiked in Aeyli’s chest in violent shades of pink, making her skin feel too small for her body.
Elanor-Hester’s eyes widened slightly, and she scooted back on the stool, but her voice was steady. “Let me spell it out for you then. I make my way through life possessing my heirs. Once my current body dries up, I just hop into a new one, easy as pie. Hester is the name I prefer, by the way.”
“And you plan on hopping into me next because Elanor is drying up too fast for you?”
“The process does seem to be subject to the laws of entropy, unfortunately. Your mom lasted half as long as the last one for some reason.”
Hester’s body jerked like a marionette. For one ghastly moment it looked as though she had broken her own neck, but then she sat straight, and the wrongness around her intensified. “Love, should you be giving out all of our secrets, right now?” When she spoke, no trace of humanity remained, instead leaving Aeyli with the impression that the words spilling out of the creature in front of her were a thick sludge oozing across her skin. There was nothing left of her mother inside whatever she was facing now.
Another horrible jerk and the wrongness faded drastically, and Aeyli was looking at Hester again. The creature laughed, a high-pitched squeal of joy that clashed with the situation. “Darling, you’ve just given away our biggest secret of all. You are such a tease.”
Aeyli felt like reality was fracturing, and she gripped the bars of her cage tightly, unable to do anything but stare helplessly at the monster in front of her.
Hester laughed again. “Look at her! I think you broke her, sweetie.” She waved a hand in front of Aeyli. “Ah well, it doesn’t matter what you know or what state you're in, we just need your body. You see, the process is almost complete, so however long you last will get us the rest of the way. Right, dearest?”
Her body spasmed once more, giving way to the nightmarish presence. “We could probably do it now, but I’d rather be certain, wouldn’t you? No one wants to enter the demon realm at anything less than fully charged.”
Understanding dawned on her at last. From an early age, the children of the magical community were taught about nightmares. They were such a plague that the Guard wanted every person able to spot a nightmare possession to have the knowledge to do so. Before Aeyli had been locked away, she’d been brought up on stories of nightmares being defeated by dreamwalkers.
Her favorite one had been about Guardian Shael and his battle to destroy the nightmare-turned-demon that had subjugated an entire village. It had possessed the town elder and was using its power to consume unsuspecting travelers and anyone who had no family. At the height of its power, it had gone on a killing spree and had wiped out half of the town before Guardian Shael and his team arrived. Shael and his team had sacrificed their lives to bring it down before it could enter the demon realm, bloated on stolen life.
“How did no one notice?” Her voice was quiet as she absorbed the revelation. “Most of the people in our family are powerful enough to see you for what you are.” Aeyli herself should have been able to see it.
The body jerked and twisted like a puppet under the control of too many puppeteers. “I want to tell her, it’s just too clever to keep to ourselves.” Her grandmother Hester wiggled on the stool like an excited child. “We discovered if we possess a body together, my soul acts as a disguise for Sekt. He is free to consume the spark inside the body at his leisure, and my soul makes it look like everything is normal. Of course the last few months of the process make it harder to disguise what’s going on. A soul in its final moments of being devoured makes quite the spectacle—to a guardian anyway. So I hide away during that time staying with members of the family I can trust.”
“The family knows?”
“Most of the family knows, dear. You be surprised how many people are willing to sacrifice a few useless morals for the sake of more power—my sister, for example. When your magic showed you to be an undesirable vessel, I had decided to take her instead. Personally, I find it hilarious that she fought so hard to kill you. If she had, she’d be in your place right now.” Hester giggled, and the sound made Aeyli’s skin crawl. “Ah well, what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
“That little brawl between you two ended up changing everything, by the way. When we saw that you managed to keep from driving that champion of yours away, it got us to thinking. If we could figure out how he resisted your ridiculous magic, we could find a use for you after all. I mean really, what use is possessing a body that drives everyone around them insane? Feel like cluing us in on how you did it?”
Aeyli spat at her in response. It always seemed so offensive when the heroine did it in a book. The satisfaction she received when Hester looked at her in disapproval was worth accidentally getting some on her pants.
“Try to at least pretend you weren’t raised like a savage, Girl.”
“I wasn’t raised at all, you saw to that.”
Her once-and-future grandmother shrugged. “It’s up to you how you spend your last hours in control of your own body. Personally, I would attempt to go out with class.”
“Is that what the coronation is? A spell to steal my body?” Aeyli wondered how much damage she could do to her body before she was stopped. If she encountered stairs on the way to the coronation, she was throwing herself down them. With some effort and luck, she might be able to break her neck or some important bones. The least she could do was give the bitch a broken body for what she’d done to Aeyli’s family.
“Once we’ve figured out how to control your power, there will be no need to keep you around, so why wait?”
“Good luck with that. You’ve had years to work on the problem, I don’t know what makes you think you’ll figure it out now.”
“Once we get our hands on your champion, it’ll just be a matter of time. After all, we don’t need his body to be in good shape, only yours.”
Aeyli forced herself to laugh even while fear made her throat painfully tight. She always hated reading scenes where the heroine had to lie her ass off to save her lover, but now that she was here, she knew exactly why they had done it. “Yeah, so here’s the thing, creepy Grandma Hester, that guy couldn’t give a crap about me. He was just in it for the money. Before Stella and company showed up, he and I were in the middle of an argument. He didn’t think putting up with me was worth what I was paying him. He was minutes from ditching me, so chances are good that you’ll never see him again.” She tried to look irritated but unconcerned. Whatever happened to her, she needed to keep
Fourteen out of her family drama.
The abomination in her mother’s skin smiled enigmatically. “We’ll see.”
A knock on the door drew Hester away from where she was perched. With slow, lazy strides she drifted toward the door, a queen in her own castle. She opened the side door a crack. “Stella! Do you have what I need?”
Aeyli could just make out her aunt’s quiet tone. “You’re going to have to come see this for yourself.”
Hester looked back at Aeyli. “I’ll be just a moment, dear one.” She blew a kiss to Aeyli’s one-fingered salute and closed and locked the door behind her.
Aeyli didn’t feel as though the lying thing had worked very well. She would need to practice more if she ever got free. Though, in hindsight, it rarely worked out for the protagonist in any of the books she’d read, so she wasn’t sure she should waste any more time on developing that skill.
Rather than getting all worked up over the potential of having her soul eaten, she decided to figure out how to get out of her smelly crate. It was really beginning to get to her.
As she examined the structure, she specifically chose not to think about how her family might track down Fourteen. As long as he kept his armor on, any spellwork done would be fruitless. As she twisted her fingers around every screw and bolt she could find, she also specifically didn’t wonder about how angry Fourteen would be at her right now. If he could even be angry. It was possible, without her around, he would regress back to what he had been before—a mindless killer. It should probably bother her more that he had killed countless numbers of people, but it didn’t. She knew it wasn’t him.
As she was not thinking about Fourteen, she found a bolt holding one of the bottom corners together that wiggled a bit when she poked at it. The problem was, it was rusty, stripped and wedged deep inside the bolt hole. There was nothing for her to hold onto. The bars were spaced closely together, but upon further examination, she found a spot she might be able to fit her hand through. It was nearly a foot from where she needed to reach, but the alternative was sitting on her ass and being a half-frozen, helpless damsel in a stinky cage.
She squeezed her fingers through the bars, snagging strips of skin off her hand as it caught on bolt after bolt. Nausea swirled in her stomach, reminding her how much she hated pain. She told her stomach to stuff it and kept pushing. Slowly her arm followed her hand, and tears burned in her eyes as the bolts tore into her flesh the farther she pushed. When she finally reached the bolt, she had left a good deal of her skin behind and was panting from the strain and the urge to vomit. Gripping the nut as tightly as her blood-slicked fingers could manage, she worked at the rusty nut. It looked like she was well on her way to giving creepy Grandma a damaged body. She wondered if there were spells to counteract the effects of tetanus.
Once she had the nut free from the bolt, she had to push the bolt back through the hole but didn’t have the leverage necessary. She reached and twisted until she heard a pop and felt a sharp pain lance down her arm. Grandma was going to love that development.
Aeyli gritted her teeth and continued, ignoring the unstoppable tears springing into her eyes from the pain. Whatever she had done to herself had given her the reach she needed, but it had made her fingers go numb—ignoring any and all orders she was sending it. It took time, but she managed to flop her hand back and forth until it knocked the bolt far enough for her to pull it out from the other side. She eased her mangled hand back inside the crate, losing even more skin in the process. Gingerly, she placed the useless hand on her lap and decided to ignore it, instead inspecting the crate to see what her sacrifice had bought her.
She put her foot to the corner and pushed with everything she had, gaining herself a four-inch opening. When ten minutes of pushing earned her less than an additional inch of space and a reminder that her feet weren’t doing great either, she bit down on a howl of frustration. There was no point in drawing the attention of whoever was outside guarding the door. If the creature was to be believed, most of her family wanted everything to keep going as planned.
At least it wasn’t all of them, she mused. Creepy Grandma must have been keeping up the façade with Sterling. She was momentarily warmed at the possibility that her baby brother might not want her dead. If she could find a way to contact him, maybe he could help her.
Her attention went to the door as it opened.
“Look what we found!” Hester announced gaily as she breezed back into the garage. “Please put him over there.” She pointed at the floor next to Aeyli’s cage.
Her uncle Grant came through the door and took up a position by Hester. He avoided eye contact with Aeyli and watched silently as two young men dragged a body into the room. Hope shattered as she watched them drop Fourteen on the floor beside her.
“You should see your face!” Hester crowed triumphantly. “You really are the worst liar ever. If I hadn’t known he meant something to you before, there’s no doubt about it now. Are you going to cry? Please do, I’d like to see that.” She clapped her hands like a small child anticipating a special treat.
A guttural cry tore from her throat as a single thought resonated through her entire being —how dare they? After she had sacrificed his trust and her own well-being to get him away from a dangerous situation of her own making, how dare they drag him back here?
She began to thrash wildly in her crate, kicking and straining at the damaged corner of the cage mindlessly, screaming like a wild thing.
“Oh for . . . Aeyli, stop that, right now.” A welcome voice said in long-suffering tones.
She paused her efforts and looked at where Fourteen was now kneeling, hands bound before him, but looking none the worse for the wear.
“This would have worked better if everyone here thought I was unconscious, but I’m not going to let you damage yourself over this.” He frowned, as he took in her blood-stained, mangled arm. “What did they do to you?” he demanded, his voice sapping what little heat there was from the room.
“She did that to herself, champion.” Hester clucked her tongue in disapproval at Aeyli. “Did you really think I wouldn’t want your body if you injured it? This is nothing—a day wearing a few spellpatches at most.”
Aeyli ignored her. “Fourteen, you can’t—”
“Don’t!” His voice rang out sharply. “Just, don’t, okay?”
Hester clapped her hands again and twirled around in a circle in delight. “Oh yes! Stella told me about this. Does that beautiful man really have to do everything you tell him to? Aeyliana, you naughty minx, I can’t wait to play with him once I’m you.” She wiggled in anticipation.
Nausea returned in full force. Aeyliana. That was her name, her full name. It had been so long since she’d been called anything other than The Girl that she’d only been able to give Fourteen a mangled version of it. Hearing it come out of the mouth of the freak show in front of her sounded foreign and wrong.
“Over my dead body, bitch.” Aeyli would choose a reenactment of what she’d done at the cemetery over letting this monster have control of Fourteen.
During the interplay with her grandmother, Fourteen had crawled over to inspect her arm. “We need to get the bleeding stopped,” he informed the room. “This is worse than it looks.”
“I’m not an idiot. No one here is going anywhere near her until we figure out how to control her. If you want to patch her up, that’s your business.”
“Your people took everything I had, I need supplies.”
“Then I guess you’re out of luck. Why don’t you do us all a favor and fill us in on how you can stay free of her magic? Is it a norm thing?”
One of the young men in the room piped up. “When I questioned the people in her last apartment building, they all showed signs of being affected by her. If it’s a norm thing, it isn’t common.”
“Aeyli, I need you to promise me you won’t tell me to do anything for the next few minutes.” Fourteen whispered under the cover of the debate going on overhead.
/> “You can’t—”
“Promise!” he insisted harshly.
“Fine.” She choked down her protest. It was foolish of her to keep railing against what was happening. Unless she decided to blow up the entire building, and them along with it, she was going to need Fourteen to get them out.
“I’m holding you to that.” His bound and gloved hand squeezed hers awkwardly.
“I don’t know how you’re going to accomplish this. If my whole family is here, you’re looking at fighting off at least a hundred people.”
“I know what the situation is.” Fourteen came to his feet in a graceful motion. “Is it possible for you to accept that you might not?”
“And what do you think you’re—” Her uncle Grant’s demand was cut off by a boot to his throat.
“Oh for Vis’ sake!” her grandmother exclaimed. “This is ridiculous.”