Soulcleaver, page 31
part #2 of Dreamwalker Chronicles Series
Matt pulled his swing and caused his backpack to slam against the brick wall next to them instead. The loud crack it made had Marshall incredibly glad he hadn’t been hit. What was in that thing?
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” Despite the fear in his eyes, Matt looked more together than Marshall would have expected for someone in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.
“I’m assuming from the look on your face that you’ve seen some pretty weird shit in the past half hour, yes?”
“That’s an understatement, man.” Matt’s eyes were round and showing off every bit of white they could.
“Okay, I’m going to need you to suspend your disbelief for a little bit longer. Everything you’ve seen is happening. This isn’t a dream.” Marshall had learned his lesson with Claire. “I’m part of a group of people who are supposed to stop things like this.”
Matt didn’t look like he was about to run screaming any second, so Marshall continued.
“We’ve taken care of the zombies, and now we’re going after the person responsible. But I need your help.”
Matt frowned. “I don’t know how much help I can be, I’m a poetry major.”
That explained the insanely heavy backpack.
“I don’t need you to fight. I need you to stay with a girl who just lost her best friend. She shouldn’t be alone right now.”
The boy’s brow smoothed, and he straightened his shoulders. “I can do that.”
“Good. Follow me.”
Marshall guided Matt back to where Adelle was comforting Claire. She had settled her on the bench and was stroking the girl’s hair while she sobbed into Adelle’s shoulder.
“I’ve brought a friend.”
Claire gave no sign she’d heard, but Adelle glanced up and smiled in approval when she saw who Marshall had brought.
“Claire, sweetie.” Adelle nudged Claire’s cheek. “We need to go to stop the guy who did this.”
Claire jerked her head up. “Yes. Let’s go do that.” Her voice was shaky, but resolved.
Adelle smoothed Claire’s hair back from her face. “I’m sorry, but if you come you’ll only give him another weapon to use against us.”
Marshall nodded in agreement. If Claire came, they might not be able to stop Noah from stealing her essence. They didn’t even know what spell he was using to do it. If it was sealed magic, they would be helpless to stop it unless they could overpower it. Right now Noah had the stolen essence of hundreds of students at his disposal. They would be lucky if Noah didn’t kill them the moment they walked through the door.
“But . . .” Claire looked like she was going to cry again.
Marshall wanted to remove Noah’s spleen for taking the spark of joyful mischief out of her eyes. It took every ounce of his resolve not to charge straight to Nova’s beckoning essence so he could confront her father. Waiting for backup felt completely unimportant at the moment.
“I’ll wait with you.” Matt spoke up. “We can sit here and you can tell me about your friend. You can even cry on my T-shirt.”
Claire gave a cry of surprise. “Matt?”
“Do I know you?” Matt’s face scrunched up in confusion. “I do know you, don’t I?” He turned to Marshall, questioning.
“Just go with it. I’ll fill you in later if I can.”
Matt nodded slowly and sat down beside Claire. “I have an apple if you’re hungry?”
Claire let out a half laugh, half sob. “I thought you were a dream.”
“Well, this whole day seems fairly dreamworthy, so who knows?”
“Seriously.” Claire sniffled, and Matt offered her a tissue.
I don’t know how this fight is going to go. Marshall admitted to Adelle as they watched Matt and Claire become thoroughly absorbed in one another.
Sadness touched Adelle’s eyes. We should send them somewhere safe.
“Guys, we need to go. You two should go to the cafeteria across the street. We fortified it already, you just need to barricade the door, and you’ll be safe from any zombies we might have missed.” They hadn’t missed any, but it was a good excuse to get the norms out of harm’s way.
Claire nodded and stood up. She looked like a week-old puppy could knock her over, but she had a quiet resolve that told Marshall she would be okay.
Matt put a tentative arm around her shoulder that became more firm when Claire didn’t shrug him off.
As they watched the two norms trudge up the hill to the road, Adelle said, “So about Aeyli . . .”
“Hey!”
He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Jack, Fourteen, and Aeyli running toward them at a decent clip. Adelle wouldn’t dare continue their awkward conversation, and they now had reinforcements. Two birds, one stone.
Now all they had to do was get Nova back, take down Noah, and get out of there. Something easier said than done.
He held out a hand to Jack and winced when he realized it was dripping with blood, but Jack took it and squeezed it, showing no sign he even noticed. “Any trouble?” He gave Jack the once over, checking him for injuries until he was satisfied his teammate was unharmed.
“Nah, nothing the killbot and I couldn’t handle.” Jack jerked a thumb back at Fourteen, who was hovering protectively over Aeyli. She was a lovely shade of pink and smiling awkwardly at the grass in front of her.
“So Fourteen didn’t give you two any trouble?”
Jack suddenly refused to meet his eyes. “Actually, Aeyli and I got separated. She managed to flip him all on her own. From the way she tells it, he was protecting her even before she was able to help him.”
“And he’s okay now?” Marshall sensed Jack was hiding something from him, which was a first.
“He took out a ton of the zombie students before Aeyli even touched him. I have a feeling he wanted out as badly as she wanted him back. I don’t think he’s going to freak out and turn on us.” Jack looked him in the eye when he said it, so he was positive Fourteen being unstable wasn’t what Jack was hiding.
Marshall gave him a long, appraising look before making his way over to Aeyli, who was standing as close to Fourteen as she could without treading on his feet.
When he reached her, he took her hand and did a quick diagnostic. For a moment he was lying in a meadow lying under Fourteen and—
Marshall dropped Aeyli’s hand like it had caught fire. Now he knew what Jack wasn’t telling him.
“Are you okay?” He asked to give himself a few seconds to process what he’d just seen and felt.
“I’m fine. We both are.” Aeyli’s eyes were bright like he’d never seen them. It was as if getting Fourteen back brought her back to life. She was even more beautiful to Marshall’s eyes.
“Good.” He turned to Fourteen, who was eyeing Marshall with suspicion. That was a step up from the first time they’d met, so Marshall decided to call it a win. “What about you, how much do you remember?”
“Enough.”
“So you remember the Blaike compound two weeks ago?” Marshall sensed Fourteen was feeling out of his element and didn’t want to be questioned about his fitness for battle, but Marshall wasn’t taking an unknown with him into the upcoming fight.
“I remember everything that happened two weeks ago. I remember how bad you are at ducking.” Fourteen quirked a miniscule smile when Adelle snorted in laughter behind them. “And I remember how you and Aeyli saved our asses there at the end.”
That was good enough for Marshall. He decided to put the conflicting feelings he had about Aeyli on the backburner for now. It wasn’t that he was unhappy she’d found Fourteen safe and sound of mind, but he hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since they’d met. After seeing her dream of kissing him last night, it had only gotten worse. Marshall was willing to share, but as Adelle pointed out, Aeyli might not want that.
So he tucked the entire situation into a room in his mind and promised himself to revisit it later when he had the time. For now, he needed to follow the persistent tug on his soul, and he needed all of his wits to get himself and his team out of this in one piece. If Noah had been siphoning the essence from all of these people, he was a force to be reckoned with.
Fortunately for Marshall, so was Team Fire.
Chapter 36
Nova
She couldn’t move, which was quite annoying. Aside from the obvious, her nose was being tickled by a single flyaway hair, and it was driving her mad to not be able to do anything about it.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could just make out her brother standing in the same awkward pose Noah had left them in—standing behind him, arms crossed over their chests, just a bit too high to be comfortable.
“For Vis’ sake, Noah, they’re your children. How can you treat them like this?” Fumiko was on the floor where Noah had had Niko toss her. She’d tried to stand up earlier, but her ankle had given out. She was crying, but Nova could tell they were angry tears. She may not remember much about her mother, but she knew this was her worst nightmare come to pass. She wasn’t going to go down quietly.
“This sentimental garbage is why we broke up, you know.” Noah paced between the twins and Fumiko. “You could never see the big picture.”
“Big picture? They were our babies. What you did to them was a crime against nature.” Fumiko spat bitterly.
“Crime against nature? There you go, being a drama queen again. Are you blind? I made them better. I did something no one of my race has ever been able to do before. I took a single soul and split it. But rather than diminishing the essence of it, I more than doubled it.” Noah looked as though he actually thought if he could convince Fumiko of the validity of his argument, they could all be one big happy family again.
Nova’s stomach rolled. If this was what the rest of her life was going to look like, she preferred the gods just take her now. She was so done with this particular family-bonding exercise. In her opinion, everyone could go straight to hell. Well, maybe Niko was okay. She couldn’t help but want to have him by her side—which made sense. If he was half of her, it explained why she felt such an intense bond with him.
Noah’s face turned sly. “You of all people should know that.”
Fumiko stopped looking angry and flashed a glance at Nova. “I had to. You left me no choice.”
“No choice but to leach magic off your own child? Something I believe you accused me of doing shortly before you stole my daughter and ran?” Noah didn’t sound angry. No, his voice was all but dripping with vindication.
“She was just a baby. I had to use her magic to keep us safe.” She turned to Nova, eyes beseeching. “He would have found us. And then when I finally went to the Guard for help, I kept siphoning it off because I didn’t want them to know what you were. They would have destroyed you.”
Fine, Fumiko was worth keeping around too. Nova wanted to say something to reassure her mother, but she still couldn’t move. After everything that had happened, being angry at her mom for stealing her own daughter’s magic in order to keep her safe rated pretty low on the list of things to resent a parent for.
“Save it.” Noah boomed. He turned his head, as though talking to an invisible person standing at his side. “Can you believe the nerve of her? I know, right? It’s the exact same thing only she can’t see it.”
Nova was used to Noah making small asides to pretend people. She’d always thought he’d done it for dramatic flair. Now that she had some of her memories about the Other back, she wondered if there might not be something more to it.
Either that, or he’d come completely unhinged and was just really good at hiding it. Looking back at his explosive temper and the random requests he’d often sent them on, it was possible Noah was completely certifiable.
His disheveled appearance certainly lent credence to that theory. His usually immaculate black hair was standing on end, and his suit was rumpled. For the first time in her memory, Noah was actually in public without a tie. If that wasn’t a warning sign, she didn’t know what was.
Whatever the case may be, Nova was done being the man’s puppet. She tried to look at her brother to see if he had any idea of how to get free, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t move.
She was about to abandon trying to get her brother’s attention, when she got an idea. If they were the same person, could she find a way to use that to her advantage? She hadn’t tried to use her magic since Marshall and his friends had convinced her she had it. But it couldn’t hurt to try. Especially since she had no other ideas at the moment.
She turned her attention inward, trying to find something different, something that seemed like magic to her. She rooted around feeling blindly until she found something that felt soft and warm, like she’d closed her fingers over a bunny.
It felt so right, Nova didn’t doubt for a moment that this was her magic. As she felt her way through it, she tried to see what she could discover about it. Was there anything about it that felt like Niko to her? What did her brother feel like?
She thought about warm hugs on rainy days and lazing by the pool in the sunshine. Warm, Niko felt warm to her. Was he the warm part of her magic? She concentrated on the warmth and let the soft fall to the back of her mind.
Niko. Hear me.
She thought she saw her brother start out of the corner of her eye and took that as a good sign. She tried again.
NIKO.
That time nothing happened. She gave an internal sigh. Of course it wouldn’t be easy. What about life was?
Before she had a chance to try again, she heard a commotion in the hallway.
“Seriously, Jack, a little louder.” She heard Adelle complain. “I don’t think the next building heard us.”
“He already knows we’re coming.” Marshall said as he came around the corner. “Don’t you?”
“I was wondering when you’d finally decide to show up.” Noah must have found his calm again. Too bad his wild hair belied his smooth tone. “I appreciate you cleaning up my mess. But then, that’s what you do isn’t it? You’re janitors for the Guard.” He smiled at his own joke. He was the only one.
“Marshall, I swear to Vis, if you don’t get us out of here—” Fumiko started.
“For the love of . . . You’re half the reason we’re all in this mess. If you’d been honest with us in the first place we might have been able to stop this from happening.”
“Addy.” Marshall cautioned, and Adelle snapped her mouth shut on another retort, but she continued to shoot daggers at Fumiko with her eyes.
Fumiko wisely refrained from responding, but her furious glare could have cut through steel.
“Noah, you have something important to us, and we want it back.”
“You think I’m just going to let you waltz in here and take my daughter from me?” A hint of crazy had begun to edge back into Noah’s voice.
“No, I think that, regardless of what you do, I’m going to take both of your children from you. You don’t deserve them, and I’m not going to let you hurt them anymore.”
A rush of emotion came over her. This was the Marshall she remembered. He’d been the shining knight of her childhood, her biggest defender. There had never been anything he couldn’t defeat, and now he was taking on her monster of a father. Her heart swelled.
Noah had a different reaction. One minute he was laughing, and the next he’d pulled something small, round, and metallic from his front jacket pocket. He held it aloft, and something razor-sharp and wrong shot from it right at Marshall.
“I’ll enjoy having your team as my puppets, Marshall. After destroying my pocket realm, it’s the least you could do. And just think of what I can accomplish with you as my mole in the Guard.”
At first, it looked as though it had no effect on Marshall, but then his face twisted in effort. She realized she could feel something metallic and pure radiate off Marshall, but it was swiftly being twisted and warped by the beam.
Adelle and Jack raced to his side, and they each grabbed one of his hands. Something like fire and lightning joined with whatever was shielding Marshall. Noah frowned then cried out in surprise as the beam stopped entirely.
“You promised!” he shouted frantically at the air. “You said you’d back me!”
The air didn’t respond.
Noah deflated completely, and for a split second, Nova thought that was it. They’d done it. Noah had given up. Then his head snapped up, and Nova felt a sharp pull in her solar plexus.
Her body twitched involuntarily, dropping to the floor as she was inundated with pain and wrongness. The beam shot out of the sphere again only this time it was much stronger.
She could hear the mingled cries of anguish from Jack, Marshall, and Adelle as they fought against the onslaught. They were on their knees now, clutching one another, trying to stay upright. She saw Aeyli struggling against a dark-haired man in a leather jacket. It looked to her as though the man was trying to calm her down.
Nova realized she could sense Aeyli from across the room, but she didn’t feel like the joyful pink of before—she felt like a prickly, strangling vine. Nova pulled her attention back from the girl when she realized the thorns on the vine were getting sharper and beginning to overshadow the feeling of her soul being torn from her. She was drowning between the two sensations.
She was being ripped in two and had no outlet beyond screaming inside her head. She had halfway to succumbed to madness when Aeyli’s presence receded from her senses. She saw Aeyli and the man in leather staring intently at one another, his hand on her face as he spoke to her in low tones. It looked like he was trying to get her to leave. Nova hoped he succeeded. If their father could cause Aeyli to lose control like that, she wanted her a thousand miles from here.
Nearly everyone in the room was on the floor now. Marshall and his team were huddled together struggling to rise while her family lay scattered across the floor like ragdolls. Whatever had happened had affected both sides. The only ones undamaged were Aeyli and the man in leather.
Noah laughed from his place on the ground—a hyena-like sound—and there wasn’t a single ounce of sanity in it. He’d gone completely around the bend. He clutched the sphere in his hand, and the pain in Nova’s body went into overdrive. And Team Fire collapsed into a pile, once again overwhelmed by Noah’s attack.
