“Um… You’re welcome?” Cym flexed his hands and feet. The injured parts still felt tender, but completely usable. Even the persistent throbbing of his head had calmed. “I mean, thank you, too. Now I might actually make it out of here alive. And Cymbeline is a stupid name. Please call me Cym.”
Adelle caught and held his eyes, searching for something. “If only I had time to train you, Cym, this fight would be over in minutes. You are a gift to us all, you know?”
Cym snorted. “A gift? Lady, that’s the first time anyone has ever considered me a gift.”
Adelle’s eyes went to the chasm behind Cym. “I wouldn’t be so certain of that if I were you.”
Cym followed her gaze, wondering if she’d been referring to Fourteen. He’d mentioned meeting some guardians earlier. Maybe this woman was one of them.
“If it wouldn’t be breaking all the rules and going against my better judgment, I’d take you straight to Marshall. He could use someone like you right now. In fact, he’s going to need all the help he can get against the demon that was inside your aunt.”
“Demon? I thought it was a nightmare.” Cym felt woefully uneducated about Other society.
“No, it’s definitely a demon, but I can see how someone untrained would make that mistake. Traditionally, nightmares can’t survive for long in the Real outside of a host. Once they’re strong enough to take form and survive alone, we consider them demons, but for some reason, this demon has continued to live in a host. I’ve never seen anything like it.” Adelle tapped her chin thoughtfully and murmured, “I wish I knew what its end game was.”
“I know what it is. I had some kind of vision when I grabbed a hold of Hester—um, my mother, I mean. This lady looks like Elanor, but she’s not. My great-great-great-grandmother Hester and this demon have been possessing the matriarchs of my family for hundreds of years. They use their souls to hide the presence of the demon. It—Hester called it Sekt—is planning on entering the Demon Realm as some kind of super power.”
Adelle’s lovely face twisted with horror. “We have to stop this thing right now. If it succeeds, and other nightmares hear of it, they’ll follow in Sekt’s footsteps. The demon population can’t be allowed to gain in numbers. We’re having a hard time holding them back as it is.”
“I can help,” Cym said before he could stop himself.
Until now, all Cym wanted out of his evening was to get to safety with Fourteen and his brother, but he couldn’t take off if there was a possibility he could actually be useful. He’d never been useful before, and the idea that he might be needed for something important was like catnip for his soul. “I think when I grabbed Hester, it forced Sekt to run away.” That had to mean something, right?
Adelle shook her head. “I’m sorry, little one. As much as it pains me to say no, I cannot accept your help.” She placed a warm hand on Cym’s cheek. “It really is too bad. Help from one such as yourself would be invaluable right now.”
Cym had had enough cryptic statements, and he knocked the hand away with an angry jerk of his chin. “Plain English, lady. What exactly am I supposed to be?”
Cym could hear the smile in Adelle’s voice when she said, “I promise I’ll tell you once we’re out of this.” Then she cocked her head as if hearing something no one else could. “Please excuse me. Jack needs one of my trinkets to get your friend out of that hole. Once we’re out, we can all go.”
Cym watched Adelle drop into the hole and blinked. She’d made escaping sound like an afterthought. Like it wasn’t something Cym and Fourteen had nearly died attempting. But what did Cym know about guardians? It was possible they wandered blithely in and out of battles rescuing random people for fun.
He gave a weary sigh.
“Them being here is a good thing, Cym. I promise.”
Cym looked at where Sterling sat next to their traitorous grandmother, his body language announcing his readiness to pounce if she moved wrong. “How long can you keep this shield up? It isn’t going to hurt you, is it?”
“No way. With what Guardian Adelle just gave me, I could do this all day. It’s freaking awesome.” Sterling’s eyes burned with excitement. “I wonder if the Guard accepts sixteen-year-olds?”
“I’m the wrong person to ask.” Cym watched nervously as the rim above them filled with more people. Some of them shone with a wrongness similar to Sekt’s, though none of them were as terrible as the thing that had set up shop inside generations of Blaike women. “Are you sure they can’t get through?”
“They’d be down here already if they could. They can’t touch us,” Sterling said with all the bravado of a teenage boy.
The earth underneath them began to tremble, giving lie to his words. As a single unit, the crowd above them stepped away from the ledge when the sides of the crater began to collapse. Massive boulders began to pound against Sterling’s shield, causing him to wince as more and more struck. Cym barely noticed their own predicament, instead watching horror-struck as the hole Fourteen and the guardians were in filled with tons of rock and dirt.
“Can they get out of that? Do guardians have shields as good as yours?” Cym’s voice sounded far away.
Shaken, Sterling’s voice was just as faint. “They must have. They must…”
Witches began to pour over the edges of the newly widened crater.
“They know you’re down here with us, right?” Sterling yelled at Hester, panic lacing his words.
“He’ll come back for me. He always does. He always does…” Hester rocked back and forth as she mumbled to her hands, but when spells began crashing against Sterling’s shield with a renewed frenzy, she flinched and shrank in further, hiding behind the fall of her once-pristine hair.
“What do we do?” Cym shouted over the sound of spellfire.
“Do what you did in the cemetery!”
“I can’t! You saw what happened there. The gods only know what would happen if I did it on top of our friends!” More than half of the oncoming horde was running over the rubble covering Fourteen and the guardians. In order to be effective, Cym’s attack would put his people in danger.
Were the guardians Cym’s people? They were certainly something.
He’d deal with it later.
“Then point it that way!” Sterling gestured toward the dozen or so people climbing down the walls on the other side of them.
“Can you keep up the shield if I manage an attack?”
“I doubt it. The rock fall seriously weakened me.” Sterling had begun to look sweaty and pale again. So much for him being able to do it all day.
“Then I’ll save it as a last resort.” Cym fully intended to take out the entire base if anything happened to Fourteen or Sterling. “Can you make it smaller? It could give us more time.”
Cym eyed the advancing horde and realized several horrifying creatures were mixed in among the witches clambering toward them. It looked as though everyone from the compound had called a friend and invited them to bring a pet monster along just for fun.
Sterling looked pained. “It would buy us more time, but you and I would have to get a lot closer than we are now.” The shame on his face was devastating. “I’m sorry, but I still remember how it felt the last time I got hit by your power. I’ll be useless to you if it takes me over again.”
“Oh.” Cym had forgotten for a tiny, blissful minute, the terrible burden of his gift. It had taken less than two days with Fourteen to make Cym forget that he was a monster. “Don’t be sorry, Sterling. I’m the fuck-up. This stupid power of mine… I’m sorry I can’t control it. You’re too young to have to put up with any of this, and I’m so sorry you’re stuck here with me.” Hot tears began to roll down his face.
