by Zile Elliven
He was so efficient at everything he did, she kept forgetting that he wasn’t from her world. “A nightmare is a creature that has escaped from the dreamscape; they are created from the fears of humans. Guardians are supposed to hunt them down and destroy them before they make it to the Real—the waking world—but I think this one has been running around here for a long time.”
“Guardians? I met some people claiming to be guardians earlier today, right after you got taken,” Fourteen offered.
Excited, Sterling said, “If we can get out of here and make it to the Guard, we might have a chance. Aeyliana, the entire family isn’t like her.” He motioned toward Hester.” There are a few of us who are just scared and want away from what’s been happening. If you go to the Guard, they can help you take over the family. I mean, it’s supposed to be yours in the first place.”
Aeyli looked at Fourteen, questioning.
“Whatever you choose, I’ll get you there.”
“Well, that’s no damned help at all.” She huffed out an irritated breath. Then, after taking in his stiff posture, she added hurriedly, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s just . . . I’m not a leader. I’m not anything!”
He took her uninjured hand carefully, treating it like something more precious than diamonds, and kissed it. “Then your possibilities are limitless.”
When her magic rose to pour into Fourteen, she noticed it felt different than it had moments before. Instead of a desperate need to fix something, Aeyli felt like it was reaching out to greet an old friend. She gazed into his eyes, shadowed with the stress of the past few days, and smiled.
“What did I just say?” Sterling waved a hand between the two of them to break their eye contact and then jumped back to a safe distance. “We. Don’t. Have. Time. For. This.” He enunciated each word carefully to impart his full meaning.
Reluctantly, she pulled her hand free with a gentle tug. “Sterling is right. Let’s get out of here first, then we’ll can all decide where to go next.”
With a miniscule quirk of his lip, Fourteen nodded his assent and strode over to the door to peer outside. “My guy did a good job. Half the place is in flames. Sterling, can you carry Hester?”
Sterling made a face. “If I have to.”
Once he had loaded Sterling with the dead weight of Hester’s body, Fourteen said, “I’ll go first. I’ll wave my hand like this when I want you two to follow.” He made a quick motion with his hand. “Stay as low as you can and keep close unless I tell you to fall back. And remember, Aeyli, don’t issue any commands.”
She saluted with a wink. “Yessir!”
He quirked his mouth again and disappeared from the doorframe.
Aeyli hadn’t seen the compound her family had evacuated to—she hadn’t woken up until after she reached the garage. Fourteen must have taken careful notes though, he made his way through the buildings like he’d lived there his whole life.
At one point they heard shouting and saw three mercenaries directly ahead of them. Aeyli thought they would be trapped when burning rubble fell behind them, but Fourteen just stopped, shoved Aeyli and her brother down a small passage between buildings she had missed, and picked off all three mercs with efficient headshots.
She was grateful for the adrenalin pumping through her body. It allowed her to keep up with Fourteen—regardless of how her foot felt—as he wove through narrow alleys and shepherded them past open spaces. During their mad dash through the compound, she became so attuned to his body language that when Fourteen stopped abruptly, she stepped to the side automatically to keep from smashing into him. Sterling wasn’t so lucky, and Aeyli had dodge out of his way so her magic wouldn’t roll him.
“What is it?” She was so quiet she wasn’t sure he’d hear her.
“No cover,” Fourteen replied in a low rumble.
She peered into the darkness ahead and saw a barren field between them and the forest. There was at least three hundred yards of empty space between them and freedom.
“If we’re going to have to run for it, I’m going to need a rest. I don’t think Hester has been going easy on the snacks.” Sterling propped her body against the wall of the building giving them cover and let out a sigh of relief.
“No time. We need to get out of here while our distraction is intact. If you fall behind I will leave you here,” Fourteen replied coldly.
“Then you will leave me here too,” Aeyli stated, daring him to test her on this.
The corners of Fourteen’s eyes tightened, and she wondered if he would just throw her over his shoulder right then and make a run for it. “Fine,” he snapped and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. “Two minutes.”
“Maybe I can help you carry her, Ster—,” she began but stopped when both men shook their heads.
“I’ll carry her if it comes down to it.” Fourteen said, ending the conversation.
“Don’t get so excited, okay? I just needed to take a breath before the big push. I’m sixteen—I recover quickly.” Sterling eyed Fourteen with annoyance. “Not like this guy. He’ll probably have a heart attack if he's not careful. What are you, forty?”
“Twenty-eight,” Fourteen said, unfazed. “Probably. Are you recovered yet, or do I need to carry you and Hester both?”
“I’m ready, Terminator.” Sterling tried to pull Hester onto his shoulder with one smooth movement and almost succeeded. When Aeyli tried to steady him, he scowled at her, and she skittered backward, remembering—again—the need to give Sterling plenty of room.
“On my mark, run as fast as you can. Aeyli, lean on me as much as you need to.” Fourteen peered into the darkness waiting for something Aeyli couldn’t sense. “Now.”
She did the best she could, but it didn’t take long for Aeyli to lag as her injured foot started to campaign loudly for an early day. She wasn’t going to make it. “Fourteen—” The sky above them burst into light, exposing their position to everyone in sight. Stunned, the group stopped in its tracks.
From the darkness of the forest, countless cousins, aunts, and uncles came out. All of their names had been long since forgotten by Aeyli. The clattering of boots rang out on the rooftops behind them, and she turned to see dozens of soldiers, all carrying automatic weapons and bringing them to bear upon Aeyli and her assembly, making her feel small and insignificant.
Twisted laughter came from the alley they had bolted from, and out stepped Stella—or what was left of her. She could see the wrongness even before her aunt emerged from the shadows. The monster possessing her aunt was making no attempt to hide itself now. It had no need to. It had them surrounded.
Her insides turned to ice as she saw how utterly and completely trapped they were. She couldn’t let her brother and Fourteen die here—not because of her. It was incomprehensible the gods would bring them into her life only to take them away so brutally.
“Let them go!” She shouted over the rising wind, but her words were whipped away from her lips and they came out sounding sound small and puny. “You can have me, I won’t fight.”
The monster smiled, a mockery of an expression that stretched grotesquely across her aunt’s face.
Behind her Fourteen growled. “Like hell.” He snatched Hester off Sterling’s shoulder and put a gun to her head. “Let all of us go, or she’s dead.”
Sterling made a squawk of protest.
“Boy, there is nothing of your mother left inside that husk. Why do you think we wanted your sister? We needed another body to sustain us.” Stella’s arm flopped back and forth like a puppet trying to make a shooing motion. “Kill her, that body means nothing to me. But a willing body with your kind of power? That means something. What do you say, Sunny? Want to make a deal with me like your great-grandmother did a few centuries back?”
The idea of sharing her body with the thing inside her aunt caused her bravery to shatter, leaving her an exposed, quivering child screaming for her mommy to make the monsters go away. But the monste
rs had eaten her mother. Paralyzed with fear, she couldn’t respond.
A warm body pressed against her back.
Fourteen. He wouldn’t leave her to the monsters unless she ordered him to, and even then, she had a feeling he would find a way around it. And if he wouldn’t leave her, Sterling didn’t have a chance on his own, so she might as well do something stupid.
Reaching back, she gripped his bare wrist, feeling his comforting energy mingling with her own, and said to the nightmare, “Fuck you.”
Throwing back Stella’s head the monster laughed, a horrible, howling laughter sounding like dozens of voices screaming in unison. It raised a hand toward the mercenaries above it and said. “Kill them.”
Fourteen dragged Aeyli behind him and jerked them both to the ground, but nothing happened.
Aeyli looked up at the rooftops in confusion. All the mercenaries were slumped over in sleep. Before she had a chance to react, the world dropped out from under her.
Chapter Seventeen
Marshall
“You know, I wasn’t expecting him to . . .” Marshall trailed off as he surveyed the destruction before him.
“What? Tear through the compound like a spicy burrito through an octogenarian’s digestive tract?” Jack added helpfully.
Once he and Jack had broken through the shield surrounding the secret hideout for the Blaike family, they had been greeted with complete pandemonium. Though it was long past sunset, the compound was bathed in light from over a dozen fires scattered haphazardly across the base. Sharp barks of gunfire were interspersed between unintelligible shouts from the people fighting fires.
Gunfire was an odd noise to find on property belonging to a member of the Other, even if it was under attack. Witches were far more comfortable using spells for combat over guns. It bore looking into.
“. . . Sure.” Once again, Marshall noticed his hand running through his hair, and he stopped, not wanting to make himself look like a mad scientist.
It was fortunate for Fire that Fzzt had been curious about their mission. The excitement from the day before had sent the sprite back to the Chapter House time and again to check and see if anything new had happened. When Samantha’s blanket spell had alerted them something may or may not be happening near the marina, Fzzt had noticed and decided to follow them.
As soon as he had dropped his strange smoking device and run, Fzzt had followed the warrior without prompting. Adelle had managed to attach a passenger spell to the air sprite before it took off, allowing Fire to experience everything the sprite did.
The team watched avidly as Aeyliana’s champion evaded capture and secured help, offering to give a set of armor to the Company—whatever that was—in return for help in releasing his friend. Marshall learned enough about Agent Fourteen to decide he had made a grave error trying to keep the norm on the sidelines.
After much debate, Marshall decided to allow Fourteen to go through with his plan. The family estate they had visited previously had been vacated, and they had no new leads to find where the Blaike family had holed up.
Normally Marshall wouldn’t allow a norm to be used as bait, no matter how resourceful, but his anger over the near-loss of Jack had changed things. He kept flashing to the echoing void he’d encountered on the beach. His gut would clench painfully, and his mind would race to find a way to prevent something like that from ever happening again. The lines between what he knew to be right and wrong became blurred, and the phrase acceptable risks kept popping up into his speech more often than he liked.
The looks he kept getting from both Jack and Adelle told him his behavior hadn’t escaped their notice, but he chose to ignore it. Once this was over, he would calm down and things would go back to normal—or whatever passed for his normal these days.
So the team had followed the man and watched in fascination as Fourteen had plunked himself down in the middle of a parking lot and taken off his jacket. The strange nothingness that he gave off had been stripped away, and Marshall had been able to fully witness the deep black of his essence, rather than the pale shadow of it he had given off when they met. The confusion Marshall had felt, when listening to the discussion between Harper and Fourteen about new tech and armor that could negate it, lifted.
His armor repelled magic.
Curious, Marshall had reached out a tendril of his own magic to learn more about the man and discovered another puzzle. Once inside the man’s head, he found only scattered fragments of a person. Delving deeper, Marshall saw that the fragments were knitting themselves together slowly but surely, and the person who was emerging from the fragments was someone Marshall wanted to know better.
After few minutes, Fourteen put his jacket back on, removing himself once again from magical sight. Shortly afterward, two black vans arrived, bristling with people, but instead of fighting, he put his hands on his head and allowed himself to be searched, bound, and stuffed into the back of one of the vans.
It was simple matter for Fzzt to follow the convoy north, right over the border to New Hampshire, with Fire trailing close behind.
The air next to them wavered as Adelle came through the shield around the compound. Her eyes went wide as she noted the uncontained fire sweeping through most of the buildings. “At least you don’t have to worry he’s in over his head,” Adelle remarked.
“There is that.” Marshall shook his head to clear it. “Come on, we need to get down there and see what’s going on.”
✽✽✽
Rounding the corner of the closest building, they came face-to-face with complete bedlam. Most of the outbuildings were on fire, and each had at least one witch casting suppression spells in an attempt to minimize the damage.
“Sheeze, are you sure our man is still alive in all of this?”
On the opposite side of the compound, they heard shouting, followed by gunfire.
Marshall raised his eyebrows and said, “I am now.” He motioned for his team to follow him and ran toward the sound of fighting.
As they ran, Marshall sifted through the surface thoughts of anyone within eyesight of his team and told the bystanders not to see them. He could have gone deeper to find out exactly what was going on, but the time it would have taken to do so might end up getting the heiress killed.
When they reached the far side of the compound, there was nothing but a pile of bodies.
“We need to find them. Fast. Ideas?” Marshall dug a hand roughly into his hair as if trying to pull out an idea.
Adelle chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Hold on, maybe we can’t find where soldier boy is, but what if we could find where he isn’t?”
“You mean looking for a deadzone? That might work in the ’Scape, but here, it’ll be fairly iffy. We’d need a lot of people around him for his nothingness to bounce off in order to find him.”
Adelle motioned to the chaos around him. “You don’t think the perpetrator of this has a ton of people after him?”
“Fair point.” He grinned sheepishly, “Cover me, I’m going to take a Walk.”
They crowded into the alley behind them, and Adelle and Jack bracketed him facing outward on either side. Marshall sat down and did his best to accept and transcend the chaos surrounding him. Immediately, pinpoints of lights popped into his awareness, and he saw a mass of yellow, red, and orange dots—converging on a point behind him and to the right. The general emotion of all the points was excitement, but without going deeper he couldn’t see why and he didn’t have the time.
He let his mind unfocus and zoom out to see if he could sense the nothingness of Fourteen. As he did, he noted a small cluster of blue, green, and purple lights grouped in the main building. He also noticed a swarm of aggression-laden black lights moving quickly toward the same place as the yellows, reds, and oranges.
He caught no trace of Fourteen’s nothingness, but the converging lights were enough for Marshall to go on. He was ready to come out of his trance until his attention was captured by a blazing white light so putrid—had
he been in his body—he could have retched.
He came back to himself so fast he saw starbursts in his vision. “Demon. Great big massive demon. That way.” His body was panting and covered in sweat. Marshall felt like he had just run a marathon.
The flames from the building across the street illuminated Jack’s shocked face as he reached down and hauled Marshall to his feet. “How?”
“You tell me, I’ve never heard of them getting this big in the Real.” Even the one that took his father hadn’t been this size.
The edges of Adelle’s eyes tightened minutely. “Lead the way, we’re behind you.”
“At least we’re at full power this time.” Jack said, his weak smile doing little to back his brave words.
Marshall nodded in agreement, but inside, his mind crawled with terror and doubt. His team wasn’t up for fighting a demon without notice. No team was. He’d just come from a battle where he’d almost lost Jack. What if he lost his whole team?
They couldn’t run for backup. It could be hours before help arrived. Even if he pulled the entire Boston Chapter House, which consisted mainly of politicians and scholars, they’d never get there in time to stop what was happening.
At that moment, all Marshall wanted to do was run into the night with his friends and not look back—he was pretty sure he could control both of them long enough to get them far away. Only the memory of those who died to protect him kept his feet rooted to the ground. Being a coward was no way to repay them for what they had done. Fire Team was going to have to stand and fight. He hoped the soldier had something special up his sleeve.