Stormbringer dreamwalker.., p.20
Stormbringer (Dreamwalker Book 1), page 20
Get up, I urged myself before I yielded to my body’s natural instinct. I prided myself on my stubbornness, my resilience, and I would not allow myself to be broken by my experiences today, no matter how painful or bewildering they might have been. But I had pushed myself far beyond my limits. I shut my eyes and sought respite from my trials.
Time passed. I couldn’t say how much, but at some point, I heard the scuff of shoes on the cement and felt warm fingertips prodding at the pulse point beneath my jaw.
“Micah?” The name was barely more than a rasp at the back of my throat. I wasn’t even sure I had spoken it aloud; I was detached from my body, grasping desperately for the faculties of my senses.
“Found him.” The voice answered as though from underwater. “Employee parking garage…still alive. Seems out of it.”
Consciousness slipped away from me again. The next time I woke, I was being lifted from the ground.
A different voice. “Bring the car around.”
“…don’t think he’s gonna make it.”
Micah’s name once again formed on my lips. I had not recognized him among the speakers and worried—in an unfocused, hazy sort of way—that I had been found by authorities searching the premises. I caught only glimpses of my surroundings as I was moved: the low, looming garage ceiling, the back of a headrest, a masculine profile with rust-red hair. I sensed the gentle exhalation of warm air conditioning against my bare face. The lurch of the vehicle as it pulled away.
And, before unconsciousness yanked me back down, I heard the driver speak.
“Serai’s gonna have a field day with this.”
***
I woke again with a deep chill in my bones and light scalding the backs of my eyelids.
For several moments, all I could see when I cracked open my eyes was white, vengeful and blinding. Silhouettes congregated behind it, three heads, maybe four, each melding into the shadows that devoured the remainder of the room. I drew up a hand to shield my face but found it caught in a fetter.
It was this small detail and its accompanying jolt of confusion that brought my surroundings into abrupt focus. I was pinned, quite literally, beneath a spotlight, restrained at the wrists like a rowdy hospital patient on a cold, merciless gurney. While I felt the touch of sheets covering my bottom half, I recognized instantly that I had been stripped of all my clothes. Panic spiked my pulse, so much that I felt sick.
“Easy, Nikkeah, easy,” murmured a smooth, masculine voice. Someone circled around behind me and cupped a hand over the crown of my head. “You’re alive. You’re safe.”
“What is this?” I asked hoarsely. “What’s going on?”
“Heart rate climbing,” came a mutter from the shadows.
“Nikkeah, it’s all right,” the first voice insisted. “You need to rest. You have injuries we must attend to.”
I couldn’t see much past the dome of light flooding my vision, but I was aware of the leads in my arms and the dull but noticeable sting of punctures in the crooks of my elbows and on the backs of my hands. A medical facility, then. But the room felt too small, more like a storage closet than an operating theater. Anxiety bled profusely through my system. I began to shiver.
“Put him back under,” someone else snapped quietly. “He’s not ready.”
The hand at the top of my head relocated over my eyes, shielding them from the light.
“Rest, Nikkeah. There’ll be time for answers later.”
I tried to protest, but someone tugged gently on the blood in my skull so that I tipped once more into blackness.
***
I opened my eyes upon a large, glittering chandelier, the bulbs flickering like embers against a coffered, ruby-red ceiling.
The fixture was so incongruous with my last waking memory that it gave me a start. I batted away the cobwebs of torpor clinging to my senses and tried to place myself in my new surroundings. No longer was I contained to that cold, sterile medical room; instead, I lay sprawled upon a wide, elegant four-poster bed with crimson tulle strung between each post and silken sheets cradling my battered body. Most profound of all was the lighting, for clever fixtures in the floors cast the whole room in a heavy, seductive shade of red, the kind of hue reserved for intimate assignations at sleazy hotels.
It was the last place I expected to find myself after waking up tied down to a gurney. Uneasily, I flexed my limbs, relieved to find that they were no longer restrained. Stiff, certainly, but unfettered. I allowed myself the luxury of a catlike stretch and then further self-assessed.
My first observation? I had clothes again. Another relief, although I worried about where my Invocation gear had ended up. I only hoped my ‘rescuers’ didn’t slice through it in their effort to expose and mend my injuries. The second thing I noticed was pain, angry and electric, fuming like a storm cloud along my left side. Third was a demoralizing motley of various symptoms: lethargy, light-headedness, headache—the frailties of illness and convalescence wrapped up in one neat and inconvenient package.
Still, I was alive. I marveled at that. I did not trust that I was out of the woods just yet, however. For all I knew, death was stalking me at every corner, ready to ambush me with any number of complications. Brain hemorrhage. Heart failure. Organ dysfunction. Each seemed as likely as the next. My spontaneous jaunt into the Echoes surely hadn’t improved my chances of survival.
The Echoes. I still couldn’t wrap my head around that one.
Gingerly, I pulled myself upright, propping myself momentarily against half a dozen pillows of various shapes and sizes. I had been dressed in a clean white shirt with sweatpants to match. The thought of anyone other than a medical professional undressing me sent chills up my spine.
When I was sure I wasn’t about to tip over, I scooted to the edge of the bed, wondering how the hell I ended up in what essentially looked like a love hotel for affluent patrons. Using the nightstand for support, I rose carefully to my feet. My legs threatened to buckle beneath my weight, so I spent a few minutes performing simple exercises to improve my circulation and warm up the rigid muscles.
From there, I began a thorough search of the room. I checked the door first and found it locked, a measure certainly intended to keep me from wandering. It was not yet clear whether I was a prisoner in this place or simply a convalescent with a fall risk. I swallowed down my apprehension and regarded the room again. An unsettling number of unlit candles occupied almost every available surface. Built-in bookshelves lined the walls, punctuated by dark curtains and terminating at a decorative fireplace, the mantel of which was adorned with candles and dried rose petals. I examined the titles on the shelves. Many of them appeared to be vintage classics and romance novels with ornamental covers—the sort of thing one might find in secondhand bookshops. Gahera would surely love to get her hands on these, I thought, and then felt a pang of worry on her behalf. She must have thought me missing or dead. I would have to find a way to contact her and Micah.
On the opposite end of the room, recessed into the floor, was a large, square bath, its surface as dark as fresh blood and as still as glass. It reminded me of the public baths down in the Burial Pit, except far more luxurious, with little samples of fancy soaps and salts and shampoos parked around the edge. After everything I had been through, nothing was more enticing in that moment than a soak in that bath, and I was seconds away from tearing my clothes off when the door unlocked and swung open in a fluid motion.
Deer in headlights, I froze, staring down my visitors. Millan de Cora gazed steadily back at me, flanked by a man I immediately recognized as Millan’s guest from the Champions’ Gala.
“What the fuck?” I blurted.
The pair of them edged into the room, closing the door behind them. Millan’s acquaintance—early thirties, smartly dressed, rust-red hair combed and gelled to one side of his head—beamed at me, immensely satisfied.
“Look at that, Millan,” he purred. “On his feet already. His resilience is remarkable.”
I backed away from them—and from the bath since I was standing right on its edge. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said the unfamiliar man. “My name is Morys Kemble, grandmaster of Bloodthorn Coven. You’re already acquainted with my protégé, Millan. We found you just outside of Spectrum in extremely poor condition. Do you remember that?”
I did remember, but I was far too fixated on the detail that was his coven. Overseen by a leading grandmaster, covens were illegal caster organizations that congregated in secret to provide training and instruction for budding casters. The Volcaic Council of Houses had, for decades, stubbornly refused to fund schools and programs that would offer safe training spaces for casters, likely believing that the lack of available instruction would winnow out all but the most distinguished of casters, who would then be funneled into one of three government-approved licensure programs. In the absence of reliable training, the caster community took it upon itself to craft its own inclusive spaces. This so-called ‘Bloodthorn Coven’ was one among hundreds of covens in Eth Nalore.
“I remember,” I answered warily, “but why spare me? Why not leave me to die like Zak or Lidia?”
“Honestly? It would’ve been a waste of immense potential. You’ve achieved something that few people in this city have,” Morys explained, strolling idly around the room. He had the sense to give me a wide berth, at least. “To extinguish your life would’ve been a huge mistake.”
I knew then that my safety was an illusion, my survival a bargaining chip. “What are you talking about?” I asked sharply.
An exhilarated smile split Morys’s face. “You, Nikkeah, are a prodigy,” he said. “A pioneer of a school of magic we are only just beginning to understand. That steroid you were given? It should’ve killed you days ago. Instead, you’ve not only endured its trial, but you’ve begun to master its magic as your own.”
Foreboding rimed my insides with frost. “So you admit it. You two tried to kill me. You and Reva and gods know who else.”
“All Reva did was present an opportunity,” Millan interjected quietly. “Your publicist was the one champing at the bit to screw you over.”
Silence fell like a curtain over the room. So Darren had been the one to ambush me at the gala. I should’ve known. I had underestimated him and all his bluster, believing him too gutless to retaliate against me. And yet he had acted without hesitation or mercy once offered the opportunity to ruin me—no, to murder me.
Static crackled in my fists. “And Reva?” I prompted. “She’s one of yours?”
“She’s not of Bloodthorn, if that’s what you mean,” Morys replied, his gaze flicking between my face and my hands. “She’s an ally. She and Millan were planted in the tournament to secure its prize.”
I’d have laughed if I wasn’t already so pissed. “Let me get this straight: you people thought yourselves so incapable of winning the Invocation that you felt the need to kill off your competition?”
Morys grew still; the pleasure in his expression evaporated. “Nikkeah, how many casters in this city have been shunned by their loved ones for daring to utilize their gifts? How many face daily prejudice in their workplaces? Think of all the teenagers without access to guidance or mentorship. All the adults imprisoned for the smallest offenses. All the caster businesses suffering from mundane backlash for simply trying to create inclusive spaces for our kin. These are the issues that our initiative—the Dread Initiative—seeks to remedy. But we can’t alleviate any of those issues without resources, and money is the best resource we can get. Sacrifices are to be expected in our line of work; we try to keep them minimal.”
“That’s not your fucking call to make!” I argued, my face hot with fury. “Not only have you killed these people, you’ve forever tarnished their reputations as honorable athletes. I didn’t know Zak Sirin, but Lidia Merante was as sparkling as Spectrum champions come, and now the world is going to remember her as a fucking user when all she wanted was a chance to prove herself in the arena. And me? Assuming I survive all this, I’ll have nothing to come back to. Nothing. I’ll be in CEA custody, stripped of magic and everything else I worked my ass off to attain. All thanks to you, you grade-A assholes.”
Millan shot Morys a warning glance. Morys, his hands raised to forestall an attack, dared to take a few steps toward me, slowly, as though he were approaching a rabid animal. “Nikkeah,” he said mildly, “we can protect you. The Dread Coven and its network of allies can shield you from the CEA’s dogs. Additionally, we can help you come to terms with your magic while patching any potential damage to your body—within reason, of course. We can’t remove the steroid or its side effects.”
I briefly regarded the violet static tangled around my fingertips. “You’re saying this shit is permanent? What the hell did you people inject me with?”
Hesitation. “Most know it as Rock Candy,” Morys replied, lowering his hands. “In its raw, unprocessed state, it looks rather like its namesake. But what differentiates Rock Candy from every other steroid on the market is its composition.” Morys’s dark eyes glittered. “It’s raw magic. Chaos magic.”
A terrible chill snap froze every organ in my body. Chaos magic: the very substance Vision claimed shaped and powered the Echoes. Clearly, this school of magic was not as esoteric as Vision had originally thought. How did Bloodthorn Coven and its allies—this so-called Dread Initiative—get their oily hands on magic sourced from the dream world? And how did that magic evolve into a steroid?
Dazed, I backed away and found the sturdy edge of a dresser to steady myself on. Morys and Millan followed me step for step.
“You needn’t spend the rest of your life on the run, Nikkeah,” Morys stressed to me. “Your future is not a dead end. Work with us. Help us help our kin.”
“You’re out of your damn minds if you think I’m going to cozy up to my would-be murderers,” I spat.
Morys’s expression darkened. “Would you prefer we hand you over to the CEA? Because we can arrange for that, too. I’m sure they’d appreciate locking down the city’s latest terrorist.”
“Terrorist? I’m not a fucking terrorist.”
“Really?” Slight amusement. “It might interest you to know, then, that the city’s in a state of crisis following a ‘high-risk exposure incident’ down at Spectrum. An incident which, according to every news station in the country, was prompted by Invocation champion Nikkeah Taranis when he conjured a micro-storm that tore apart the stadium.”
My blood ran cold through my veins.
Morys’s smile took on an unctuous quality. He continued, “Authorities were baffled by what they witnessed at ground zero: A rift of foreign magic had formed above the arena, exposing hundreds of innocent patrons to the very substance that, ironically, you applied to power that nasty storm.” He let those words soak in like blood into a carpet, his hands folded behind his back. “It’s been a few days since the incident, but they’re still tallying up the deaths. We’re at well over a couple hundred now.”
“You’re lying,” I snapped. “You’re just trying to keep me here. Blackmail me.”
“Shall we prepare transport to the nearest CEA station, then?”
I bit back my retort. My knees were about to give out; the dresser was taking most of my weight. The more I probed Morys’s description, the more I was convinced he was speaking the truth. I knew my micro-storm had torn open a rift. Vision had confirmed that. What I hadn’t realized was that in all the time I was groping my way around the Echoes, that rift was spilling magic across the stadium. How long had it been dousing the audience in volatile magic before patrons could evacuate? Could chaos magic kill people instantly?
Morys composed himself, projecting sympathy upon me. “Be reasonable, Nikkeah,” he said. “You have to realize the predicament you’re in. The CEA has made you a priority target, and you’re far from unrecognizable in this city. Sooner or later, you will be found, and when you’re carted off to a detention center, you’ll be permanently Silenced and thrown into prison to rot. Is that the life you want?”
I sank to my knees, leaning my head against the dresser. A cavernous hollow had opened in my chest. A dam was close to breaking. I couldn’t fathom this turn of events. Couldn’t accept them. What had I done to deserve this? Any of this?
“The Dread Initiative, led by the Dread Coven, can offer you a far more rewarding life,” Morys informed me quietly. “You needn’t fear imprisonment or Silencing. You’ll be free to use your magic for the good of all casters in Eth Nalore. You’ll have the full protection of the Initiative at your back.”
Millan grasped Morys’s arm, drawing his attention. A flicker of understanding seemed to pass between them. Morys regarded me again and added, “You’ve been through much, and this is a lot to process. We’ll give you time to think it over.” He swept a hand toward the bath. “If you feel fit enough, please partake of the room’s amenities. We’ll bring food up for you shortly.”
I said nothing—merely watched as the two retreated from the room, locking the door behind them.
20
VESSEL, VICTIM
Despite the desperate need to scrub the filth from my skin and hair, I found myself hesitating at the bath’s edge, unwilling to strip down in what might as well have been hostile territory. The room was uncomfortably intimate, owned by people who appeared to have no boundaries, and locked from the outside. Never before had I felt so vulnerable.
I tried not to think about what might have been done to me while I had been unconscious. It wasn’t assault that I feared; rather, I worried about what other substances had been put into my body without my consent or knowledge. I recalled the drips that had been feeding me unknown fluids, evidenced by the visible puncture marks on my arms and the backs of my hands. These Bloodthorn covenites might have saved my life, but that didn’t mean they lacked ill or questionable intent. Morys’s obsessive interest in me was certainly proof of that.
