The Book of Dreams Forgotten: (A Broken Creatures Novel, Book 2)

by A L Hart

  I felt like one of those demons in the old movies, those who couldn’t pass the threshold if they meant the occupants harm. Heart heavy, I nodded. “Sure did, Breone.”

  “Oh goodness,” Mary-Luanne said. “I keep telling her a tiny garden man will come when the time is right.”

  Odd as it was, the two of them reminded me of mother and daughter despite their stark differences. I kept the thought to myself. I’d only come today because with each passing morning I felt myself losing my nerve. It was best to get it done as quick as possible, keeping my mind as blank as possible.

  In my pocket, I felt my phone vibrate. I ignored it.

  “Well this pixie, he can’t wait to meet you, Breone. Only thing is, I have to take you to him. Something came up and he couldn’t tag along.”

  The wings fluttered faster, the light in her eyes shining brighter. These really were gullible and pure creatures.

  “Ah, well, go on then, dear. But don’t stay gone too long.” Mary-Luanne, her hair of white and eyes of gentle blue, would regret this day. Would regret me.

  Breone and I headed for the car, the pixie doing to me what she’d done to Mary, zipping around back and forth, her excitement sinking into her energy so that she glowed inside and out.

  “I see you took our advice,” I noted, making small talk as we got into the car. “You’re looking better already.”

  The pixie beamed, settling down on the dashboard, watching me as I buckled my seatbelt. “Thank you, thank you! So, what is he like?”

  I grimaced, just as I lied. “He’s very kind. Good. Polite. A real charmer.” I felt my voice dying down into a lifeless echo, ringing in the back of my head. Eventually, I became unaware of what words I used, how I said them. What lies I crafted.

  Foot on the petal, I headed in no specific direction.

  Moments later, I felt a tiny, heated weight descend upon my shoulder, and suddenly, the pixie was nestling into my neck. The heat, I’d forgotten to turn it on. Had gotten used to the cold, welcomed it even, if it meant ridding of the staunch emotions threatening to drag me under.

  “In fact, he made a pixie pearl for you to try. Asked me to give it to you so you can tell him what you think later.” I retrieved the little pebble from the napkin in my pocket, shutting my mind down further as I handed it off to her.

  Breone was ecstatic as she accepted the white little ball. “Really?! What an odd color it has.”

  The better to end you with, I thought bitterly, but even Little Red Riding Hood’s wolf wouldn’t stoop as low as I had. No, not even the big bad wolf would have crafted a sedative for a pixie and lured her to her death quite like this.

  When she put the whole thing in her mouth and began to chew, I felt her cringe but swallow it anyway. “Blegh! Are you certain he’s a pixie? If so, what sort of song was sung to get him to make that?”

  “Huh?”

  “A song, when it’s sung to us, the more beautiful it is, the better the pearl—and that one, not to be rude, but a troll must have sung for him to create that.”

  I didn’t answer. My voice, I’d lost it, and were I to try and force it, there was no telling what it would do to my resolve. There was a good chance I would stop the car immediately, turn back around and deliver the pixie to Mary-Luanne in one piece. Not . . . not this.

  “But it’s alright,” she whispered. “My ability to make pearls is not the best either, so I guess that makes it okay. It’s better we be with those that understand us, right, Peter?”

  I said nothing.

  Minutes passed and I felt her tiny head dip over to rest on my neck, her wings soft like cotton. “And so maybe . . . maybe he won’t think I’m too fat,” she whispered on a yawn, hopeful, the words fragile.

  My chest clenched. “No,” I found myself saying. “He won’t. He’s going to think you’re beautiful, Breone, because you are. And if Mary-Luanne is kind enough, she might even allow him to stay with the three of you and together you could tend to the garden and grasses until you’re as old and grey as Bill and Mary.”

  “You really think so?”

  I nodded. “I know so.”

  No response, only the rumble of the car’s engine. My thoughts, they disconnected. My emotions, I shut them down, and when I was certain the pixie was fast asleep, I pulled over into an abandoned lot and simply stared at the closed gas station.

  The cold blue evening, it was still. Holding its breath, waiting on me.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to Breone as I lifted her limp body carefully and held her in the palm of my hand.

  Inoli had been specific in that it had to be my bare hand, and it wasn’t until after that I understood why. Because before, staring down at the little creature of purple wings and blue hair who only wanted to have another beside her in life who she could love unconditionally, this was all I saw her as. But only after, when I closed my eyes and asked God and any other spectators to look away as I started to close my hand, did I understand the true weight of it all.

  Our skin against one another’s, her head pressed to the digits of my fingers, I understood why it had to be a pixie and nothing human sized.

  Because, this small, I could feel every part of her as I closed my fingers. And when she began to squirm and I began to panic, it was over before I could digest it.

  Hot liquid spilled in my hand.

  The sound of crunching branded itself forever in my memory.

  And as I sat, staring straight ahead at that gas station, I tried to filter out the debris in the back of my head, the threat of sensation. Instead, I stuffed the images of the corpses at the forefront of my head. Forced myself to see them, ask myself if that was what I wanted the world’s population to turn into.

  The numbness to creep into me, I wanted it to last, my hand still balled into a fist—but the sudden vibration of my phone kept me from that peace.

  This time I answered (with my clean hand), in case it was the twins or Danny calling to check in. Though Danny had gotten better about giving space.

  It was none of them.

  A man’s voice came through the other end. “Hello, Peter.”

  Caught off guard, the pixie’s blood dripping onto my pants, I cleared my throat. “Who is this?”

  “A friend.”

  The way he said it, his voice rich and smooth, sent a chill down my spine. “Do you have a name?”

  “I do, but not one you’d recognize.”

  “What do you want?” I was getting tired of the unexpected surprises, unorthodox introductions to things I’d rather not ever be introduced to.

  But then he said, “I want you to return to the shop. Return to the boy, Danny, and keep him far away from Ophelia.”

  My back straightened. “Who is this?”

  He sighed, but answered with nonchalance, “The stranger in the dark, as you deem me. He with the ever-changing eyes.”

  My mouth dropped, my paranoia rising as I glanced around the the car. There wasn’t another soul for miles. Mary-Luanne lived in the middle of nowhere.

  Of all the ways I’d imagined encountering the man responsible for sending cases my way, I never would have thought this would be it. And at this time.

  “You shouldn’t have killed that pixie, child. You’re playing on the wrong side.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do not follow them into the Shatters. Stay at the shop with the boy. Allow the pieces of time to fall as they may, lest you destroy not just your world, but many, many others.”

  “Why are you calling me? Why now?”

  “When I noticed your absence, I did call you earlier. There was no answer. Other than that, I’ve been . . . busy.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Closer than you think.”

  Before I could respond, the line clicked out.

  Only then did I truly feel the cold.

  Ch. 22

  Hands shaking, thoughts drowning out the incessant pound of my heart, I sped home. The early night was a bl
ur at the back of my consciousness, body operating on muscle memory alone as I raced to the shop.

  The steering wheel, my fingers wrapped around it, they still tingled with the lingering energy residue of the pixie’s blood. There was a liquid warmth beneath my fingernails, threatening to make me lose it on the spot.

  That phone call, I couldn’t think about it. The stranger, the man I’d been so anxious to know, I wanted him as far from my thoughts as possible. I wanted . . .

  I wanted it all to go away. What I’d done, what more I was expected to do.

  I didn’t want to go to the Sanctuary. I didn’t want to heal the creatures who came to me. I didn’t want this. Not if this was what the job entailed.

  The images of those corpses, I tried to block them out as I was sure I missed multiple stop signs, stop lights and road guides as a whole. As if I could outrun it all. When I knew there was no undoing it.

  The pixie, her vibrant, gentle wings, I could still feel them fluttering against my neck.

  It was the first thing I did when I got back to the shop. Raced to my office, the bathroom, and scrubbed my neck until there was blotches of red.

  Only then did I notice the mark. That black dot I’d noticed weeks ago at the back of my neck—there was another one directly beneath it. A mark that hadn’t been there this morning when I’d monitored the speck. And come to think of it, the first dot hadn’t been there until after Danny’s brother had died.

  What did that mean? What did any of this mean?

  My breaths came out in a shudder.

  The universe, was it watching me? Counting all those I’d failed?

  No. Not that. Dave, the HB agent, had come to me in search of help and he’d been murdered by his own agents. There hadn’t been a black dot then. This one hadn’t come until Ethan died on my desk. In my shop.

  Did . . . did the universe blame me, then? For Ethan and the pixie . . .

  I was hyperventilating when I stumbled into the dark office, the room tilting around me. It wasn’t just my deeds. It was all of it combined, this new world bundling with my own, rewriting it and forcing me to conform. To play my part.

  “Rough night, Phillip?”

  I jumped, flattening back against the bookshelf.

  Niv sat on the lounger near the desk, a glass in hand. Her fiery hair was more prominent than the rest of her, shining like an entity in and of itself. “Here, why not have a drink with me.” She disappeared momentarily, then reappeared with two glasses and a bottle of wine.

  I pursed my lips, shaking my head. Immortals, their sense of smell was a hundred times better than humans. Could she smell the blood on my hands no matter how much I’d scrubbed them just now?

  Not that she needed any help; the faery was a master of minds.

  She chuckled, appearing directly in front of me, eyes clear and luminous. “That I am. And your mind tells me you’ve had a terrible night. Here, drink. Tell me what’s wrong.” She all but curled my fingers around the glass, filling it with a purple liquid that may have been wine or grape juice.

  “You should already know,” I pointed out, voice as shaky as my hands.

  “Ah, yes, but it’s much more fun when you relay turmoil aloud. Come now, drink.” She wrapped her free hand around mine, urging it up towards my lips. “You’ll feel much better.”

  And to my surprise, this was all I needed to hear—an escape, a release. I drank.

  Whatever was in the glass couldn’t have been wine or juice but something carbonated and almost too sweet to swallow—but when I did . . .

  The high was instant. The dread clawing at the coffin in my head, a serenaded serenity shrank it into a hardly noticeable pebble. Until I could no longer envision Ethan’s face or the pixie’s wings. Until my head began to buzz and the room faded away.

  A white light lit in my core.

  “I often have moments of regret,” Niv said, leaning against the bookshelf beside me, drinking from her own glass. “Times where I curse my faulty memory and all that it costs me, but if we dwell on things out of our control—”

  “That pixie’s life was entirely within my control.

  “But you’re doing it for the greater—”

  “Please don’t finish that sentence.” This drink, it may have been like a firelight lit inside of me, but it didn’t make me stupid. There was never any justification for the murder of the innocent. That was the rite of passage, right? That was what the Shatters wanted, my soul stained so that it would know I was a monster like the rest of the creatures in that world.

  “Wait—what was that?” Niv asked suddenly.

  My brows creased. “What?”

  “Your thoughts. The Shatters? What . . .” She clutched her head, her eyes having gone wide.

  Inoli had told me I wasn’t allowed to divulge our plans to anyone. So what if a faery heard it from my thoughts? I drank more of the too-sweet beverage, willing it to black me out completely as Niv continued.

  “I’m . . . I’m not supposed to be here,” she muttered more to herself. “I’m supposed to be there, with them. Saving them? Who?”

  And when the faery proceeded to thump her hand against her forehead as though that would jog her memory, I found myself laughing, or chittering. Giggling as I sank down to the floor and let the drink bubble up inside of me, tickling and feathering at my awareness like dancing spirits.

  Across the room, the shop’s door opened.

  Jera stood in her nightclothes. She took one look at the scene before her before she closed the distance between her and the distraught and confused faery. When Jera took her by the throat, I found myself laughing again, even as Niv blinked, then looked at Jera closely.

  “Do I know you?” she asked.

  “What did you give Peter?”

  “Peter?”

  It was comical to see, given Niv was six feet-something and Jera was a head shorter. Yet still she dragged the faery down to her knees and the creature seemed too disoriented to make a stance.

  “Peter may have welcomed you into this shop, but hear this: you are never to return here.”

  “Never return?” Niv asked, eyes having gone clouded. Something told me she was in an entirely different world.

  “Never,” Jera seethed.

  Then, in a moment of clarity, Niv’s eyes fell on me. “Oh, I see now. You want to protect the human. But, demon, don’t you know? It’s much too late for that.”

  “It’s not,” she grated. “If the lot of you would leave him be.”

  “Ah, but are you not the one who dragged him into this to begin with?”

  “It’s not those creatures I’m protecting him from.” Jera flung the faery away from her. “You and your emotion cocktails are not welcome here. Now go before I change my mind.”

  The faery vanished.

  Jera stood above me, looking down her nose at the state of me. I could never tell with her, whether she was disappointed in my existence or my actions, but just then, her regard of me had me looking away from her and down at my hands, the empty glass.

  “So you did it,” Jera observed.

  I nodded. “It was horrible.” The blood beneath my fingernails, the wings against my neck, the sleeping weight of the pixie. How did I come back from it? The life may have been small, but it’d still been a life. Knees to my chest, I dropped my head in them, willing the emotion cocktail’s light to blotch out the rest of my awareness.

  Warmth brushed my cheek, Jera’s hand gliding back through my hair, head pressed to mine for a moment. Then, “Get some rest. If we are to do this, we have but a week before we’re to return to the Sanctuary.”

  I tensed. That place was nothing but bad news. A deliverer of reality, and me, I wanted to pretend the world wasn’t this awful, ticking time bomb.

  Blindly, I reached up to cradle her cheek in turn, to feel something familiar.

  Her hand closed over mine, guiding it where I sought. Softly, she stroked her cheek against my palm, then her lips. A kiss, gone as soon as it�
�d come, but she whispered over the skin, “You aren’t bad, Peter.”

  When Jera’s heat vanished, I knew I was alone, which seemed to be a running theme as of late. And in her absence, I slumped back against the wall, enjoying the effects of the emotion cocktail, even as it eventually dragged me under.

  *****

  When I woke, it was only 12 midnight. Head spinning, nausea setting in heavily, the first thing I did was make my way to the bathroom to shower twice, and even then, I couldn’t wash away what I’d done.

  For the first time in days, I was eager to sleep, to descend into the dreams forgotten when the morning came, if only to escape reality while the night persisted.

  *****

  “Dear one, I must leave soon.”

  Jera startled at the news, having been enjoying the better part of this evening’s meal. It was just the two of them, seeing as Ophelia was still healing up after the implant. In truth, she herself did not feel all too well or as strong as she could have been—a truth made evident in the absence of a heartbeat in her chest—but never would she miss a time to be alone with him.

  Her heart, it would grow back, but this moment? Ephemeral.

  More so given the deliverance of his news.

  “Back to the humans?” she asked knowingly.

  He gave a faint nod, his spoon doing nothing more than playing at the stew within his bowl. “They are a sorrowful lot and always are they in need.”

  “It doesn’t mean you must help them.” A futile attempt when one such as he would never listen.

  “Just please be sure to care for your sister while I’m away.”

  At this, her appetite fled, her eyes hardening. Always Ophelia. Always winding back to that female. What of her? Who would ever care for her?

  Rather than lay such a question before him, she said, “Actually . . . I was curious if perhaps you might take me with you?” Unlike Ophelia, she had perfect control of her power.

  His eyes darkened, lowering to inspect his meal.

  Jera frowned but kept her head about her as she stated calmly, “I would never hurt the creatures in that world, just . . .” With a quick glance about the dining hall, she admitted somberly, “This place . . . I cannot stand it any longer. There is nothing here but evidence of all in which Ophelia destroyed. There is never any new things, new experiences. I grow restless of it.”