But it was pretty, and it felt nice against her sweater.If the gift had some hidden cost, she’d find a way to tear it off.And it went without saying that as soon as she found a way to escape, she could take some bolt cutters to the chain.
The icy wasteland outside her window didn’t look quite so forbidding now.Neither did the room—the table laden with neatly stacked paper and the huge collection of multicolored gel pens, the bed neatly made, the bathroom just as painfully clean as when she’d been deposited here.All the sludge of daily living just seemed to disappear.
These guys could hire themselves out to clean houses, I bet.It was a good thought, a strong, sane thought, and she was startled into a laugh.
Liv clapped a hand over her mouth, horrified at herself.It was probably all part of their plan—give the trapped girl a pretty piece of gimcrack jewelry, and watch her be so pathetically grateful.She had to stay strong, watch for her moment…
…and then what?Fight monsters by herself?
Liv stared at the frostflowers at the window, wondering if that was a better or worse prospect than being held in these rooms for however much longer.
The sun, having better things to do, slid down from its apex toward the horizon’s grim swallowing line.
* * *
Liv hid in the bathroom while Jake dropped off the usual domed silver tray, trying not to feel like an errant child.She did it again when Ignatius, again as usual, visited, and told herself hunger was a reasonable punishment for accepting anything from them at all.Curling up in the bed was a welcome reprieve, though she probably should have slept in the bathtub or somewhere else uncomfortable just to drive the point home.
The necklace didn’t catch in her hair or try to strangle her.It simply lay quietly where it was supposed to, warm metal light and comforting.Was it a tracking device?Some kind of weird ritual?
Was she beginning to bend toward what they wanted, isolation and fear chipping away at her personality?Humans were social creatures, and it was only a matter of time before she lost all sense of reality and started believing whatever crazy shit they could come up with.
It didn’t help that she’d seen the monsters.Once your own eyes were on a kidnapper’s side, what chance did the rest of you have?
Liv thought she’d have trouble sleeping, but she was out as soon as her head touched the pillow—that is, until past midnight, when the strip of light under the bathroom door dimmed and a sharp icy wind scraped the windows.A formless mutter crossed her lips, fingers turning into claws at a signal from her dreaming brain, and she tossed restlessly, theoneirosglowing against her breastbone.Small, swift-moving shadows dappled the walls.
Skritch-scratch.Another shadow brushed the window, rubbing like a cat.The light under the bathroom door dimmed further, sputtered out; mullioned glass creaked, an uneasy murmur like her dreaming.
More scratching, and theoneiros’s glow was a single dim star in the room’s thickening gloom.It flashed once, a pale stiletto.
Liv Stellack sat bolt upright amid tangled, sweat-damp blankets, her eyes wide and wild, and screamed.
PartTwo
The Flame
Incursion
The baffle brokeinto shivering pieces; Erik almost took the door off its reinforced hinges.His potential huddled amid rumpled sheets and blankets, her eyes white-ringed and her mouth contorted with a cry of utter terror.That was worrying enough, but the bigger danger was the cracks flowering over the ice-freighted window, rippling and bulging as sorcerous energy wedded to its physical structure sought vainly to ward off something deadly.
Oh, shi?—
He launched himself for the bed, hoping he wouldn’t snap any of her fragile bones, and hit just as the window exploded, broken glass and sorcery-stiffened iron shrapnel peppering walls, furniture, and floor.A burning slice touched his calf right before he hit the ground on the left side of the bed, his arms full of stiff, still-screaming, impossibly small woman.Theoneirosdug into his chest, a dilating scorch-spot, and he was upright in a trice, wishing he’d been able to roll her to the other side.As it was, he’d be bottled with her in a corner, which wasn’t so bad—he could hold out for a long time, if he had to—but it wasn’t optimal.
Still, she was unhurt.There was no delicious, wickedly perfumed tinge ofliraiblood or trauma filling the room; theoneirosflashed with an uncoordinated flood of a Dreamer’s power, lighting up the battlefield as hairy questing tentacles coalesced through the shattered window.The bulk of the creature was trapped outside by the temple’s solidity, and as soon as he realized as much Erik bent, his fist closing around her right arm, and hauled.
Hislirai, now fully awake, screamed again and began to struggle.The tentacles, tiny hairs bristling at the sound and sensing a high-value meal within range, snaked for the corner with spooky, fluid speed?—
—and retreated, bunching against themselves, as Erik lopped off two sensitive, questing tips with one knifestrike.Theliraiwas a vulnerable softness behind him; he backed her up by the simple expedient of retreating so she was trapped against the wall between the bedside table and the corner; then he exhaled sharply, dropping into the groove of the battle like a record player’s needle into the vinyl valley.
Next came getting her over the bed and out into the hall, but he couldn’t do that until the thing in the window was at least partly driven away.The wall groaned, the temple’s stones and massive timber frames tolling like a bell.Something whizzed past his head—it was the pretty stained-glass lamp from the tiny bedside table, the twin to the one on the nightstand.A good, accurate throw, and glass shattered against rubbery, squeaking tentacles.Far more damaging was the burst of weak, untutored power wedded to it.
It was nothing more than a gifted civilian might throw under extreme duress, but when focused by theoneirosit must’ve stung like hell.The thing writhed, its screech spiraling into a diseased, sawing falsetto as its arms curled like salted slugs.
The knot’s outside.It’ll heave itself through, given enough time.The thought flashed through Erik and away, and something soft hit his back.
It was her fist.She punched him again, with more enthusiasm than skill or force, and Erik turned his head slightly as the tentacled shadowbeast pulled back, ready for another assault upon shattered stone, shards of sorcerous protection attempting to heal the breach.“It’s me,” he snapped.“Calm down.”
Hisliraiwent still, but whether it was from fear, shock, or because she’d heard and understood was an open question.Erik inhaled, bracing himself, and when the beast at the window heaved forward again he lunged, knives biting deep in unholy flesh.It lurched back, surprised by the sudden stinging pain—which was exactly what he’d hoped for.
