“Then we are all lost, and this is yet another exercise in futility.”One of his shoulders lifted, torn jacket scratching against leather upholstery, then dropped.“The world is full of such things.Something else troubles me, young one.”
Well, at least he’s not calling me Miss Stellack anymore.“What?”
“A simple potential shouldn’t be able to use anoneiros.Wear it, certainly—but use it?No.”He shook his steel-grey head, a fractional movement, and Liv thought Erik might never know how much he copied the older man.“You must be a very strong Dreamer indeed.And as such, you are quite valuable not just to the Sons and the shadowbeasts, but to the Mad God himself.”
Well, that’s just great.Liv looked out the window.The snow was really coming down, and there was no grey line of dawn on the eastern horizon.“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“He won’t get you.”Jake’s attention retracted like an antenna.“We won’t let him.”
Pardon me for not being very comforted.But saying as much was counterproductive, so Liv just settled on her half of the bench seat and stared out the window.Traffic was thickening, semis rattling and throwing gusts of snow to either side.If Erik was out there, somehow keeping up with them, he was probably very cold.
So was she, as a matter of fact.Her teeth wanted to chatter; she hugged herself, hoping neither of the men in the SUV’s warm, plush cabin would notice.
Not Opportunistic
Just before sunrisethe snow intensified, the flakes growing fluffy again as predawn warming touched the clouds.Despite that, Erik was as dry as could be expected, especially since they were inside Grove City limits.The suburb wasn’t big enough to have a temple, and Erik wondered why they weren’t swinging north and a little east to hit the larger metropolis.
Some cities, big as they were, didn’t have active temples with Flame access, just minor ones to relieve the pressure from the zones where the shadowbeasts hunted almost at will.Liraiwere almost lottery-winner rare, but they were also long-lived after the Flame, well-protected once the Sons found them, and he’d thought the clear zone extended further.
Still, if Ignatius thought the best bet of finding an active temple was in this direction, then that’s where it was—especially given the trouble getting hold of Control.After all, he was the one in contact with liaison officers and controls, all most likely other Fathers, their age and experience providing steady anchor.
It was the Fathers who selected new candidates and chose the territories, who had survived longest with the god’s whispering in their heads, who kept the Youngers stable and taught the Elders how to endure.
Erik’s nerves were raw and danger was a piece of cold metal in his mouth, the taste coating his palate.The SUV was slowing, coming off the freeway—maybe theirliraineeded a bathroom break.
Jake wouldn’t take over the running until true dawn, which would put Erik in the car with her.She had theoneiros, even if she couldn’t use it to laser-focus invisible force or spark the Flame in a new well yet.The created gem would call if she was upset or attacked, and he’dknow.It wasn’t what he’d been thinking of while making the setting, his concentration a white-hot glare as he forced power and metal to his will, but even if she hated him for giving her to the Flame she’d wear the necklace and he could be content.
Even if another Son made a replacement for her, maybe she wouldn’t put the first one in a box.Erik could think of her with star-metal resting against her breastbone, the chain touching her nape, the stone—retrieved and shaped the old way, a gift only a Son of Ymre could give—singing its soft, almost inaudible lullaby as colors shifted in its pale heart.
Erik pitched forward, falling through space, boots kissing the rooftop several stories below with a jolt he was moving too quickly to really feel.The SUV swayed into a long curve; he reached a good vantage point just as it came to a stop at the end of the exit, left turn signal blinking, and remained there just a touch too long.
What the hell?
He skidded to a stop, losing momentum, and scanned.Nothing but the usual seashell buzz of people thinking, dreaming, sleeping, eating, shitting—maybe a few lucky ones were having sex, bright spikes of pleasure in a dark fogbound landscape.The snow whirled, a curtain drawn before him, and he took off at a tangent, sorcery-fueled intuition prickling under his skin.When they stopped, his job was to hold the perimeter, then?—
WHAM.
The impact was so sudden two of his ribs snapped.Erik tumbled sideways, knowing he was going to hit hard, rage rising red under his skin like aleng-urchin’s spikes.The vast hidden dream-plateau where the half-real servants of the Mad God’s elder liches eked out their miserable hungry banishment was riven with deep gullies, cracks, and balkas; sometimes thelengcreatures slipped through the bottom, finding themselves in low, evil earthly places.
He realized that was another thing that bothered him—thejana-spiders and the nightmare beast at hislirai’s window were from different parts of the nightmare lands.Neither were generally opportunistic, even the juvenileshoggoth.
They weresent.
Erik landed, a roar of pain from broken bones spiraling through him.The fury tore him out of the thing’s soft, strangling grip, its pale misshapen hands squirming for his throat, its eyes full of diseased blue pinpricks dancing on shoals of black mud.The constellation-gaze was anigsoth’s greatest weapon—that, and the fact that they were practically invisible until they attacked.
Unless you had anoneiros.The dreamstones pierced their veils and could often hold many of the loathsome hatchlings at bay with its glow alone.He had a brief moment of feeling glad he’d finished making hislirai’s before the agony wedded to fury poured through him again and he struck, knives biting deep in the thing’s guts to loose a flood of foul brackish fluid full of wriggling gutsnakes—the thing was infected, just to add to the fun—and he sensed more than heard the crumple of metal, the tinkle of falling safety glass, and a rush of gasoline-fed flame.
His ribs healed messily, sorcery sparking under his jacket and shredded T-shirt, snow crusting his hair because he was rolling, knives unerringly finding theigsoth’s throat and ignoring the thing’s tiny, diamond-sharp claws swiping his coatsleeve.A single one wasn’t going to keep him down for long, but the damage was already done.
Don’t let anything happen to her.There was nobody to pray to; the jeering cackle of a mad god inside his skull reached a feedback squeal as he tore the life from theigsoth, rising caked with more snow, flicking ichor and wriggling parasites off his blades with quick habitual movements.If theigsothhadn’t bled out by dawn the sunshine, however weak, would take care of it—they were creatures of deepest night.
There was a stinging rosette of red and gold in the near distance, flickering on the other side of a gas station’s bulk.They’d barely gotten off the freeway; hisliraiwas probably hysterical with fear.
Keep her safe for a few seconds longer, guys.He barely noticed the pain, going straight up the side of a brick building, bolting across the roof, and now he could see the fire more clearly.There was another low crumpling sound, oddly distorted by the snow, and he flung himself into empty space, landing with a jolt across the street from a deserted—though still beacon-bright—Shell station.Now he heard gunfire, too, dull terrible popping through veils of falling snow, a treacherous breeze rising from nowhere and driving frozen-wet stinging into his face.
That’s not an igsoth.They can’t work windveils.
More gunfire.A battle-cry—Jake’s, but weirdly distorted, the snow swirling.Erik was soaked, water drift-streaming from his skin and clothes as he tore through shell after shell of illusion, an arrow flying for its target?—
