by Lisa Lace
“I want to go get my mil’kra,” Sabin said. “I need to tell her what’s happening and give her a chance to prepare.”
“I’ll go with you,” Lilera replied. “The alarm’s been raised now, so there are others containing the fire.”
Sabin inclined his head just once, and when Lilera was dressed, they set out.
Sabin’s mother lived closer to the edge of town alone. His hosh’kra, father, had been killed in a battle when Sabin was much younger, and his mother had retreated a bit after that, wanting her solitude. She’d always been somewhat different from the rest of the Samis Das, and they all chalked that up to her having been attacked by the Nine when she was younger.
Something about that changed a person, Sabin was coming to realize that now, and his mother was quiet and sad, but he wasn’t going to leave without her.
As they made their way through the town, the signs of their ongoing struggle with the Nine were apparent. Aside from the flickering flames of the fires and the sounds of screaming and people running to and fro to put out the fire, buildings were deserted or in ruin, and the smell of death was thick in the air. The incinerator sat at the edge of their town, pointing up towards the sky like a beacon.
Death came for everyone, Sabin knew that, but this was unnatural.
His mother’s home was dark, just like most of the others. The energy field wasn’t up around it, though, and Sabin frowned. He talked to his mil’kra every day, and every time they talked he told her to remember to put her field up. She always said that she did, and she was one of the most cautious when it came to understanding what the Nine were capable of.
So something wasn’t right here. He held up a hand to Lilera, gesturing for her to stop and let him go on ahead. He had that feeling in the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands that wanted him to spring into action because something wasn’t right.
“Why isn’t her field up?” Lilera asked, voice soft.
“I don’t know,” Sabin replied. “Stay here.”
She snorted. “Not likely.”
No one ever got far telling Lilera what to do, and she was armed, so Sabin didn’t waste time arguing with her. Instead he put a hand to the door of the house and waited for the sensor to recognize him.
With a soft beeping sound, the door accepted his handprint and then slid open. A quick glance inside proved that the house was dark, and Sabin pulled his blaster from the holster at his side and stepped in, firing it up.
“You don’t think…” Lilera whispered, and Sabin was glad that she didn’t finish her sentence.
“I don’t know,” he said again, but there was a sinking feeling in his chest that was threatening to suffocate him.
His fingers found the button for the lights, and he held his breath like he was expecting there to be evidence of some kind of massacre when the lights turned on. Instead the front room was empty, and he sighed.
He wanted to call out for his mother, but that was more than likely a bad idea, so he kept the urge to himself and moved through the house on quiet feet, eyes darting to and fro for any sign of something out of place or someone hiding in the shadows.
They walked the whole house except the hall that led to his mother’s private rooms, and Sabin’s free hand curled into a fist because he knew if they were going to find anything then it would be there.
Once again, he pressed his hand to the door and waited to be acknowledged.
And then really wished he hadn’t.
Right there in the doorway was his mother, on the floor, arm outstretched like she’d been trying to drag herself to the door. Like she’d been trying to go for help.
There was no blood, no wound that Sabin could see, but her skin was grey and she was still, leaving little doubt to her status.
Dead.
His mil’kra was dead.
The woman who had taught him about different kinds of strength and the value of being gentle, who had held his hand and talked him down from nightmares, who’d stood and watched him practice for his training, even though she couldn’t really stomach violence anymore. She was gone.
For what seemed like a long time, Sabin just stood there. He stared down at her body, unseeing. There was no way. There was just no way.
Lilera moved to his side so she could see what he was staring at, and he heard the soft intake of breath and saw her cover her mouth with her hand out of the corner of his eye. “Vieryn,” she murmured, and bowed her head.
She touched two fingers over her heart and then to her mouth and then held them up to the sky, in the symbol for sending a spirit on to their rest.
Sabin couldn’t move or say anything. Rage and sadness and disbelief were fighting for dominance inside his chest, and he wanted to break something and then cry. Or maybe just run for a very long time.
“Sabin?” Lilera said after a moment. “Sabin, we can’t stay here.”
He knew that. He was the one who’d told her that just a little bit ago, even though it felt like an eternity had passed since then. Whatever had done this to his mother could still be in the area, waiting, lurking, and it wasn’t safe. They had a lot of work to do if they were going to get off this planet alive.
The sounds of screaming were louder in the distance, now, and Sabin went to the window, staring out.
“It’s getting worse,” he murmured. Where the flames had once been being contained, they were now spreading with a speed that seemed unnatural. People were running here and there, and it was utter chaos.
“This is a disaster,” Lilera murmured.
“We need to head to the ruins, I think,” Sabin replied, and his voice was dull. “At least it’ll be quiet there. We can plan.”
Lilera nodded, and without looking back, they made their way out of the house, weapons still drawn. Ordinarily, Sabin would have wanted to give his mother the proper sending off, but there wasn’t time.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered and clenched his teeth against the tide of emotion.
One of the reasons he’d wanted to be a guard in the first place was so that he could protect his mother, and he hadn’t even been able to do that. He hadn’t really been able to protect anyone, and he swallowed hard and shook himself. There was no time for self-pity now.
The ruins were in the center of town, and they moved quickly, trying not to stumble or draw attention to themselves. With this kind of chaos, it would be impossible to know who was struck by the madness and who wasn’t. It was dangerous to engage anyone, and Sabin had a moment to realize that this was the true power of the Nine, they turned people against each other, isolating them and making them afraid until they had nothing left.
If he had to escape this place with just Lilera then he’d do it at this point.
The ruins were quiet and dark, and Sabin stepped carefully into the circle of stones that marked them from the rest of the town. It was a dilapidated ruin made of crumbling stone and glass, and the entrance into it was dark and shadowed.
“Lights, do you think?” Lilera murmured, and Sabin hesitated. It wasn’t like him to be so unsure, which was just another sign of how the Nine had gotten into his head.
“Yeah,” he said, finally, nodding, and the two of them reached into their belt satchels for glow sticks. They didn’t do much to illuminate the inky blackness of the ruin, but it was better than plunging headlong into darkness.
Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous inside, and Sabin made a gesture with his hand, indicating they should stay close together. He remembered being a child and one of his friends talking about how the Nine would hide in the ruins and shuddered.
Up ahead there was the sound of something rustling, and both he and Lilera stopped short. “What-” Lilera said, and then she gasped, the sound of it echoing around them.
Sabin saw it, too. It was like his mind was playing tricks with him, making him see things that couldn’t possibly be there. The shadows were moving, writhing almost, like they were alive, and as they watched, eyes as red as blood opened,
darting around and then locking onto them.
Lilera whimpered with fear, and Sabin felt like he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t need to count the pairs of eyes to know.
There would be nine of them.
The smell coming from them was enough to turn his stomach. It smelled like the heavy scent of old bodies rotting with the tang of fear sweat, and Sabin was more sure than ever now that they were feeding off the fear of their victims.
“Lilera,” Sabin said, voice raspy and mouth dry. “Lilera, you have to run.”
But she didn’t go anywhere. It was like she was rooted to the spot, and Sabin felt much the same. He didn’t think he had ever been this afraid in his life. Breathing was difficult and his heart was beating so fast in his chest that it was painful. There was a clattering sound, like something had fallen to the ground, and it took him a moment to realize that it was his blaster, slipped from his fingers.
It was useless to him on the ground, but he couldn’t make himself bend down and pick it up.
The creatures didn’t move, except for their strange undulating in the shadows, but their gazes were unwavering as well, pinning them in place. A strange hissing sound echoed around them, moving in patterns that made them sound like words.
They were talking to each other, Sabin realized.
He really, really didn’t want to know what they were saying.
Before his brain could kick in enough to do anything close to formulating a plan, Lilera had recovered from her temporary paralysis and was pushing past him, fury in her eyes. She held her glow stick up enough to cast light on the creatures, but they didn’t flinch. Creatures of darkness who didn’t fear the light at all didn’t bode well.
All it did was put them in more stark relief, showing that their bodies seemed to be part gaseous and part something that looked old and gnarled like a tree. They didn’t have faces so much as it looked like they were wearing masks, red eyes glowing out of pale grey….something. It was smooth and where a nose would be was a hooked and serrated beak-like appendage. There was no mouth that Sabin could see, and the serrated bits were dripping with blood and something that looked to be a yellowish ooze.
They were hideous, expressionless things, and Sabin reached out, intending to yank Lilera back, but before he could, something shadowy and sharp reached out and stabbed her clean through the chest.
Sabin had to leap back to avoid getting nicked, and he watched with an open mouth and a horrified expression as Lilera fell to the ground in a heap. Her glow stick fell with her and it went out when it hit the stone floor.
His own light was still bright enough to let him see as one of the Nine detached itself from the writhing horde.
It stopped, examining Lilera’s body for a moment, and Sabin had had enough.
He unsheathed his sword with his free hand and brandished it, breathing hard, anger thrumming through him. “You killed her!” he shouted. “You killed her!”
Before he could so much as swing his sword, the hissing got louder, the darkness closed in, and breathing became a struggle.
Winded, Sabin fell to his knees and then dropped like a rock onto his side as he passed out. Chapter 4: Dreams in the Sky
The air is crisp and cold, and Heather can see her breath as she climbs the grassy hill in the dark. Above her, the sky stretches out for miles in a blanket of velvety black, studded with stars. It’s beautiful, and yet her heart aches as she climbs.
She can’t tell if it’s because breathing cold air hurts or if the pain is imagined, but her chest throbs and aches with it, and her breath stutters a few times, making her stop and try harder to drag in a full breath.
Panic lances through her and she bends over double, hands on her knees and tries frantically to catch her breath, fingers digging into her skin.
Heather realizes that she’s freezing because she’s not dressed for this weather. It has to be below freezing out, and as she looks, frost starts to cover the slick grass, turning it icy in the night air and making it sparkle and glimmer with icy crystals. For as cold as it is, she’s only wearing shorts and a tank top, her feet bare, and she shivers hard once she can breathe again.
This is a dream. It has to be. She wouldn’t come out like this in the middle of winter, and she’s never seen this hill before.
When she looks overhead, she can make out constellations in the sky. All the familiar ones: the big and little dippers, Cassiopeia, Orion. They aren’t in the right places, though, and some of them are repeated over and over again above her, letting her know for sure that this isn’t real.
Heather counts a third Big Dipper and turns in a slow circle, her eyes scanning the sky and the area around her for some sign of where she is.
Her gaze falls on a solitary figure in the distance, a man, she thinks, his hands shoved into his pockets and his head tipped back to observe the sky. There’s something familiar about him. About the way he’s standing and the way his hair falls over his collar, and with a jolt she realizes.
“Dad?” Heather breathes.
The man doesn’t move, just keeps looking, keeps watching like there’s something important he’s waiting for.
“Dad!” she tries again. “Dad!”
Before she registers the desire to do so, she’s running, her feet slipping in the frosty grass as she makes her way to the figure of her father. He doesn’t move away or towards her, just lets her approach, and she’s out of breath when she reaches him, a stitch in her side, and her heart pounding a mile a minute it feels like.
“Dad,” she gasps. “Dad, what are you doing here?”
Now he acknowledges her, eyes leaving the sky and moving to her face, and he’s every inch Christopher Sutter in his prime.
He smiles at her, and his eyes crinkle up the way they did when he was alive. Heather waits for him to say something, but no words come. He watches her for a long moment and then points upwards towards the sky.
“What?” Heather follows his finger but can’t see anything other than a duplicate of Orion over her head. “What is it?”
He keeps pointing, finger jabbing at the sky and eyes beseeching her to understand. But she doesn’t understand, and it scares her.
“Dad, just tell me whatever it is. Why won’t you say anything? I don’t understand!”
His eyes go wide and he shakes his head frantically, pointing, mouth moving, fear and urgency in every line of his body.
“Dad!” Heather screams and all at once she feels like she’s being suffocated. The image of her father starts to fade, going blurry around the edges. She reaches out to grab onto him, but there’s only air. Only the last lingering impression of frightened eyes and his finger, directing her gaze upwards.
Heather woke up with a gasp, sitting upright in bed, one hand pressed over her chest. Just like in the dream, her heart was pounding faster than could be healthy, and she couldn’t catch her breath.
She forced herself to breathe in deeply and hold it, letting out the breath and then repeating the process until she was calmer. It was then that she realized she had a throbbing headache.
The dream was still vivid in her mind, going a little hazy as she tried to recall the exact details. What lingered the most intensely in her mind was the image of him pointing up towards the sky.
It made a weird sort of sense when she thought about it. Her dad had always believed that the answers to anything could be found by looking up at the stars and thinking for a while.
She had no idea what she was supposed to be finding the answers to, of course, but she did know that trying to go back to sleep was pointless. She was too keyed up at the moment, too wired on the dream and memories and wondering what it all was supposed to mean. There was no point in laying there thinking about it, either, so Heather hauled herself out of bed and stepped into the bathroom to splash water on her face.
Her hair was a mess, but she just wrangled it into a messy bun and decided that would have to do. This late at night, she didn’t think she’d be encountering an
yone, even if she didn’t quite know where she was going yet.
In the end, she wound up dressed in yoga pants and a hoodie and hopping in her car. Heather drove until the streetlights started to thin out and the buildings got smaller and appeared less often. When she found an empty stretch of grass off a back road, she got out of the car and moved to sit on the hood of it.
This wasn’t the brightest idea she’d ever had, probably. For one thing, she had no idea where she was, and for another, being a woman alone in the middle of nowhere was dangerous at any time, but especially at night.
All the same, she stayed where she was. Something just felt right about being there.
To be honest, ever since her father had died, Heather hadn’t made time for stargazing. It had been their thing that they did together, and she missed her father’s warm voice telling her about making wishes on stars and how the wishes he’d made in his life had brought him his wife and daughter.
She’d been skeptical as a teenager, standing there in an open field with her father, listening to him tell her the same stories she’d heard over and over again but somehow never got tired of hearing. It seemed improbable that something so many millions of miles away could grant wishes or change things here on Earth, but there’d been a big part of her that wanted to believe in it.
And then her father had died. Christopher Sutter’s fight with cancer had ended with his daughter searching the sky for a star to wish on and him dying anyway. How could there be anything magical out there if her dad had to be taken from her?
Even now, a few years after it had happened, the thought of how she’d believed and gotten nothing in return made her feel a sickening combination of guilt and anger. If anyone deserved to have their wishes granted, it was her father, who had always believed in the stars and their so called power.
It was Heather who’d been laden with doubt, and to this day she had to wonder if it was her doubt that had made it not work. If she’d looked to the stars for help and then had been found not worthy of it.
It was much more likely that there was just no such thing as wishes being granted by the magic of star dust, and she was being stupid for even entertaining the thought, but the image of her dad from her dream was still there in her mind, and she couldn’t shake the way he’d looked at her and pointed up over and over.