Stormbringer dreamwalker.., p.22
Stormbringer (Dreamwalker Book 1), page 22
“What the hell are you doing?” I groaned. I could barely lift my head off the gurney, but when I did, I was shocked to find both the towel and my exposed abdomen stained with blood and ink.
Morys dabbed at the fluids with a corner of the towel. “Taking samples,” he answered. “Tissues and blood, mostly. We haven’t had many chances to secure samples from a living subject in control of the catalyst.” He said all of this conversationally, as though over lunch. “With them, we might better understand how chaos magic impacts a living host at the cellular level. In turn, we’ll be able to provide you more comprehensive care.”
I dropped my head back down, feeling queasy. “This can’t be why you set me up.”
“Set you up? I don’t know what you mean.”
Beads of sweat crept down my temples. I couldn’t tear my awareness away from the sensation of sharp and invasive instruments digging around in my flesh. I briefly contemplated the idea of Stormcasting—a discreet test confirmed my magic was still intact—but realized it’d be pointless so long as I was restrained to this table. I needed to bide my time and wait for a more opportune moment.
“Olivia,” I spat at him. “Did you send her to lower my guard? Make me feel at ease here?” I was holding myself so rigidly against the pain that my muscles were screeching in protest. “If you wanted samples so badly, why didn’t you take them when you first brought me in?”
“As much as I wanted to, it was not safe for me to attempt,” Morys lamented. “Your condition was delicate and wildly unstable. I knew better than to tax your body beyond its limits. If you were to die from overexertion…well, it would be regrettable indeed.”
“So you sent Olivia to distract me.”
He exhaled a soft, amused breath. “No, Nikkeah. I sent her because I wanted to know who you’d contact first, given the opportunity. I can’t have anyone else knowing you’re here.”
My heart thrashed like a dying animal. Micah. He was going to send people after Micah. Maybe he had already, I thought with rising panic. I had no idea how many hours had passed since Morys had dropped me on Olivia’s bedroom floor. It could have been days, for all I knew.
Morys regarded me serenely. “Just relax,” he murmured, swabbing away more blood from my skin. “Everything will be fine, I promise.”
Static sparked to life from my chest down to my fingertips. Morys glanced at me sharply and waved a gloved hand toward my face, the translucent material coated in deep crimson and inky black. His Bloodcasting threatened to pull me back under—until an urgent knock sounded at the door.
“What?” Morys called irritably. His hand hovered near my face, threads of his magic feeding into me.
The door cracked open, admitting a harried Millan. “We have a problem,” he stressed quietly. “JDV is here. He’s asking to see Taranis.”
“Is Serai with him?”
“Doesn’t look like it.”
Morys bared his teeth, a brief flash of chalk white beneath the bright glare of the work lamp. My vision was swimming, trapped as I was beneath Morys’s power. I groped for my own magic but found it slipping away beyond my grasp.
“Tell him I’ll see him in ten minutes,” Morys said, aligning both his hands over the site of his tampering. I felt the tug of his magic as it began to knit my flesh closed. I hissed with discomfort, drawing a dirty look from Morys.
“He seemed pretty adamant about seeing Taranis now,” Millan said uncertainly.
“Are you afraid of him?” Morys jeered. “JDV is toothless. Tell him ten minutes.”
Millan wordlessly retreated from the room. I watched in dim fascination as Morys hastily tidied up his work, his demeanor going from calm and composed to stiff and agitated in a matter of minutes. He swabbed up the mess on my skin and was halfway through wiping me down with disinfectant when the door swung open, and two figures came storming into the room.
Morys whirled to face the intruders, nearly upending the bottle of disinfectant, which burned my flesh and nostrils alike. For a prolonged moment, all I saw was the unforgiving eye of the work lamp delineating Morys’s nervous profile.
“Jacovaea,” he greeted calmly. “I’m sorry, I need a bit more time to make him presentable.”
“Presentable?” echoed a low voice. “What the hell’s going on in here? What have you done to him?”
Jacovaea. I found myself sampling the name, committing its soft consonants and velvety vowels to memory. Definitely not a name I’d ever heard before. It sounded distinctly Volcaic, perhaps even historical.
“Nothing intensive,” Morys assured him. “Blood and tissue samples only.”
“Did any of his blood make it into a test tube?” Jacovaea asked dryly. He had stepped into my line of sight, a tattooed twenty-something done up in a style I could only describe as ‘dapper grunge’ in quintessential Volcaic black. His eyes, as dark as the ink staining my towel, swept over me, sharp and critical.
“It looks worse than it actually is,” Morys replied with a touch of impatience. “That’s why I wanted some time to clean him up. I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
Jacovaea’s gaze lingered on my face. “I already have the wrong idea. You were asked to keep his condition stable, not collect samples from him.”
“His condition is stable,” Morys protested. “It’s been stable for the last few days. We’d be remiss not to collect samples now. How else can we chart his progression?”
Behind him, Millan stood frozen against the wall, staring helplessly at his mentor. He looked torn between fleeing and eavesdropping.
Jacovaea scowled at Morys. “How long have you been keeping him like this?” He tugged on my steel restraints.
“Since we first acquired him, more or less. Once he was stable, I relocated him to his own room for a time. He tried to contact his coach earlier this afternoon, so I subdued him and brought him here.” Morys spoke with clinical detachment, as though reciting this to a patient or fellow colleague.
“His coach? Micah Evans?”
“Correct. I sent people out to handle the situation.”
“No one asked you to ‘handle’ Evans. Keep Taranis alive and stable—that was your only order. What were your people instructed to do?”
Morys gave me a cursory glance. “Eliminate him. It was the right move, and you know it. The last thing we need is Taranis’s people snooping around the building.”
“You’re starting to be more trouble than you’re worth, Kemble,” Jacovaea said quietly.
“I recognized an opportunity,” Morys shot back. “I know what Serai wants, and I know exactly how to get it for him. You won’t be so quick to criticize me when I come back with usable results—not that you would know about such things.”
It happened so fast I barely registered it. One moment, the two were glaring at each other across the gurney; the next, Morys was staggering back, twin daggers circling the column of his throat. The blades winked menacingly in the stark light of the room.
My gaze flitted over to Jacovaea. It was a rare thing to encounter a Spiritcaster. Rarer still to witness one in action. They were perhaps the most elusive of all caster breeds, commanding the power to move and manipulate objects, a feat performed by infusing the target item with their own vital energy—their spirit, some believed. Many of them utilized weapons in a technique known as spirit weaponry.
“You’ve done enough here,” Jacovaea snapped. “Call off your dogs. Get Taranis cleaned up and bring him to the VIP lounge. Don’t keep me waiting this time.”
The daggers briefly punctured Morys’s neck before flashing over the gurney and vanishing somewhere beneath Jacovaea’s coat sleeves. Morys grimaced; tiny rubies of blood welled on his skin. With the slightest curl of his finger, Jacovaea dismantled my restraints. They clattered noisily to the floor.
Jacovaea was out of the room for only ten seconds when Morys slammed his foot into the rolling supply cart next to him, sending it careening into the wall with a rattling crash. Millan and I both startled at the abrupt sound.
“Toothless, huh?” Millan prompted curtly.
“That bastard’s going to get a knife in his back one day,” Morys snarled, clearing the blood from his neck with a vague gesture. “Strutting around Sofia like he owns the damn place. Let’s see how smug he is when I show him up in front of Serai.”
They spoke as if I was simply an object in the room, though Morys’s gaze, when it settled upon me, smoldered with a vengeful glint. I feigned disorientation to avoid provoking his wrath further and endured his ministrations for as long as it took to clean me up.
The mutual hostility between Morys and Jacovaea had appeared genuine to my eyes. For all of Morys’s bluster about alliances and caster welfare, it seemed the Dread Initiative suffered from its fair share of internal friction. I filed this morsel away for later reference; perhaps I could use it to my advantage.
I was dressed and lifted from the gurney in short order, then escorted from the room, sandwiched between a simmering Morys and reticent Millan. A cold, dark corridor guided the way from my room to a lonely elevator. This, I soon learned, was the basement level, where Bloodthorn Coven buried away all the obscure and unsightly aspects of their work, including, evidently, invasive medical procedures. It did not take me long to acknowledge Scarlet Sofia as the coven’s headquarters.
We disembarked on the second floor, which served as the lounge. Tables dressed in crimson skirts clustered before a modest but vacant stage. Matching curtains smothered the walls, thick enough to block out all external light. Below them were additional booths, all of which were occupied by patrons obfuscated by the undiluted wash of intimate red. Sensual club beats whispered from the speakers overhead. I caught the mixed scents of booze and perfume and roasting food as I was led to what I presumed was the VIP lounge, tucked away in the back corner of the second floor. Curious heads craned in my direction. Were these all Bloodthorn covenites? I couldn’t imagine they were mundanes.
Morys gave the VIP door a perfunctory knock and presented me to the room with little fanfare. Jacovaea, seated in the middle of the room upon a tufted sofa, dragged his gaze across all three of us and said to the phone at his ear, “I’ll call you back.”
A swipe of his thumb, and the phone vanished into an inner pocket. “Leave us,” Jacovaea added, and both of my escorts ducked wordlessly out of the room, shutting the door behind them. I didn’t need to see Morys’s face to know he was fuming.
Jacovaea gestured to one of the many chairs and sofas surrounding him. I took a moment to absorb the room’s aesthetic, which was clearly designed by someone with a bondage kink, and trudged over to the sofa opposite Jacovaea’s, sinking gingerly into the cushions. My side, while hastily patched by Bloodcasting, was raw and tender, the nerves throbbing with every heartbeat.
“You look like hell,” Jacovaea remarked. “What has Kemble done to you?”
I leaned my head back wearily against the sofa. Straight to business, then. “Hell if I know,” I said to the ceiling. “I haven’t been conscious for a lot of it.”
“How long has he been taking samples from you?”
“He claimed that was the first time.”
“Has he told you what it is?”
I lifted my head a fraction to meet his gaze. “The Rock Candy?”
“The stain on your skin.” Jacovaea’s eyes slid downward to rest upon my left side. “We call it Dreamblight. It’s the body’s immune response to chaos magic exposure. Quite similar to the body’s response to radiation exposure, as I understand it.”
My fingers grazed the outer edges of the bruise. “You people have a name for this?”
“We’ve encountered it enough times for it to warrant a name. Chaos magic doesn’t occur naturally in our world; that is, it originates from a source beyond the normal reach of humankind.”
“The Echoes.”
He nodded. “So you’ve been informed after all.”
“Barely. What I’d like to know is how a substance like chaos magic came to be processed and circulated as a lethal steroid—and why it was weaponized against Spectrum champions.”
Jacovaea spread his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I’m not an authority on the subject, unfortunately, but I do know there are places where chaos magic has…percolated into our world, for lack of a better term. All it took was one reckless pioneer and a hell of a lot of repeated exposure to ascertain the effects of chaos magic on casters. You can imagine, then, what came next.”
Indeed, I could. “And Spectrum?” I pressed.
“Spectrum…was an opportunity. One that our organization couldn’t pass up. The full story is not mine to tell, but it was lucrative in many ways. Planting our own champions led to massive funding for our Initiative, which in turn allowed us to develop the tools we needed to expand and build our resistance.”
I had not expected Jacovaea to speak so openly and directly about these matters. I straightened in my seat, cradling my injured side—my blighted side. “So you’ve orchestrated all of this to oppose the mundanes,” I surmised.
“Not just oppose them,” Jacovaea corrected me. “We’re changing the narrative. Why do you think the Council made covens illegal? They don’t want us congregating. Mundanes might outnumber us, but the Council knows an organized caster community is a threat to the city’s status quo.”
“And now your people want me involved. As what, a weapon?”
Jacovaea leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “A catalyst. Let me ask you something: If you walked out of here right now, what would you do? What does your future look like now that our organization has blown such a monstrous hole into your life?”
Unease oozed from my solar plexus. I hadn’t given my future much thought beyond finding Micah, as I was certain Micah would have a plan for how I might salvage what was left of my life. Maybe we’d pack our bags and leave the country—head deep into Hadria or even across the sea to Skaara. I could learn to love the sun and swelter if it meant living outside of a prison cell with my magic intact.
But everything I owned—everything I cared about—was here in Eth Nalore. Gahera. Diana. All my possessions. My apartment and wealth. Was my freedom worth abandoning all ties to the city I loved?
“Apologies,” Jacovaea said when I didn’t immediately answer. “That’s a loaded question, I know. You probably haven’t had much time to dwell on that, given everything else that’s happened. Tell you what: Take a day to think about it. Consider your options. I’ll return tomorrow evening to check up on you, and whatever you decide, that’s what we’ll do. If you’d like to take your chances out in the city, then we’ll cut you loose. But if you decide you could use a change of career—one that directly benefits your caster kin—then we’ll start talking business. Does that sound fair?”
“I appreciate your candor,” I replied quietly, “but you haven’t even told me who you are.”
“Jacovaea del Vellar. I’m an associate of the Dread Coven.”
“And Serai? Who is he?”
“Dread’s grandmaster. He would’ve come to meet you personally, but he’s currently occupied with the aftermath of the Spectrum incident. The fallout was immense, and the Dread Coven is the foremost authority on all things chaos magic. We’ve still got a lot to learn, though, such as how the magic affects a living host.”
My hand still rested protectively over my blighted side. I could feel the suggestion in his words, the inquisitive probing. We could use your help. It made me wonder just how far the Dread Coven and its network of alliances would go to secure me.
I had a lot to consider. I conveyed this to Jacovaea, adding, “I accept your terms for now. But I have a request before you go.”
“Name it.”
“I want to speak with my coach. No interruptions this time.”
It was foolish of me—reckless, even—to make such a request of a man clearly in league with my captors, but I could foresee no greater opportunity to inform Micah of my whereabouts.
Jacovaea’s expression was carefully composed, as it had been throughout our conversation. “I can’t guarantee he’ll answer,” he said.
“I don’t care. I’ll leave a message. I didn’t get to finish it last time.”
Nodding slowly, Jacovaea retrieved his phone, thumbed at it, and then, with little more than a glance, floated it over the coffee table and into my open palm. I snorted quietly at his little parlor trick and dialed Micah’s number.
Once again, he did not answer. There was little I could do to suppress the rising panic freezing my insides. Had Morys’s people already reached Micah? I envisioned all the gruesome ways he might have been killed—gunshots, knife wounds, drugs—until I remembered that Morys’s people, being Bloodcasters, would have orchestrated a more discreet attempt on Micah’s life. A heart attack while driving, maybe. Organ failure. Something an autopsy wouldn’t immediately identify as the work of a murderer.
The message tone chimed in my ear. My mouth had gone dry, but I recited my message anyway, all too aware of the tremor in my voice. “It’s me again. I don’t know if my other message got through, but I’m at Scarlet Sofia, some luxury hotel in the arts district. Micah, you need to watch your ass. The coven that found me—Bloodthorn Coven—they’re sending people out to kill you. They don’t want you sniffing around here looking for me.” I shut my eyes, measuring each breath. “Gods, I hope you get this. If you’re still alive, stay put. I should be out of here soon.”
I hung up. Reluctantly, I offered the phone back to Jacovaea; it floated back to its owner’s hand.
“I’ve sent people out to verify his status,” Jacovaea informed me, “in case Kemble gets any ideas. I’ll let you know what I hear when I return tomorrow.”
I didn’t bother thanking him. Nobody here deserved my thanks.
Jacovaea rose to his feet. “Is there anything else I can do for you before I head out?”
He was too neat, too amicable. But he was still far more palatable than Morys. “No,” I answered. “I’ve got a lot to think about.”
