Fourteen wasn’t an expert on those, but he knew enough to know that they were only a danger if the wielder allowed it.
Instead of backing down, Fourteen allowed the cold inside him to show through his eyes. The fewer Blaikes he had to deal with, the better. Hadn’t he just proved that in the alley? If something inside him writhed at the thought, he chose to ignore it.
Adelle met his gaze head on, and her anger vanished. A mask of calm settled over her face, and Fourteen wondered if she had a similar cold place inside her to help control her emotions like he did.
Sterling straightened and pulled himself away from Adelle’s protective embrace. “You’re right.” He wiped his eyes on a sleeve. “Let’s get Cym and get out of here.”
“Can you find him?” Fourteen asked Adelle, holding back an I told you so and feeling virtuous. Even a killer needed a few manners to fall back on from time to time.
Adelle nodded and tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I’ll see what I can find.” She closed her eyes and went still.
Fourteen saw the orange around her pull in tight against her body, condensing and growing still, echoing her body language. Fourteen accessed levels of restraint he usually didn’t need to keep from bouncing impatiently.
The orange around Adelle flared out like quills on a porcupine, and her eyes flew open. There was horror in their hazel depths. “Sweet Vis, he’s with Marshall.”
Chapter 24Cym
:Stillbringer:
Cym thought he’d just heard someone whisper into his ear before the sounds of a baby’s cries and loud, stressed-out voices surrounded him.
When the world solidified around him, he was looking through the window of an old-fashioned, wooden house. Inside he could see people dressed like they were in a Regency romance novel, but there was nothing romantic about the dying woman on the bed. Next to the bed, a man was clutching a red, screaming infant to his chest as he sobbed.
Cym’s eyes burned in sympathy, and tears fell down his cheeks unchecked.
“That’s me he’s holding.” The young man Cym had been trying to rescue stood at his side. His ageless eyes were a calm oasis amid the chaos, and when he reached out and squeezed Cym’s hand, instinctively he squeezed back, comforted. “I was told that when I was born, it was like the life flowed right out of my mother as I was leaving her body. It happened too fast. Even with all the power he held, there was nothing my father could do to save her.”
The scene changed as the light and noise ended abruptly. The wind whipped at Cym’s hair, and for a moment, he thought he might be back at the compound in the growing snowstorm, but there was no fire and no buildings. A terrible roar assaulted him, and he tried to cover his ears, but the man held fast to his hand, so Cym only managed to cover one.
“What is that?” Cym whispered, not wanting to attract the thing’s attention. He decided to let the man keep his hand for now. It was absurd, but he felt more comfortable knowing he wasn’t here alone.
“That’s the thing that killed my father. He got it in the end, but it took him with it.” The stranger’s gentle voice sounded detached, as though it was an event that had happened to someone he had only heard about. “I’m Marshall, by the way. I’m guessing you’re Cymbeline?”
At least he found the right guy.
“Cym,” he corrected. “I’d rather be called Cym, if you don’t mind.”
A large, dark shape rolled over the dark countryside, and a yellow flash flared against its side, eliciting another ear-splitting roar.
“That useless lump by the tree is me,” Marshall stated blandly, like it had no effect on him. “I got taken out in the beginning of the fight. You should be able to make out a faint shimmer around my body. That’s the shield my father put over me to keep me safe. He might have survived if I hadn’t been there. He needed all of his magic to kill that demon, so throwing that shield around me is probably what finished him off.” Marshall’s eyes were unfocused as he spoke, and he played absently with a lock of his hair. “Thank you, by the way. If it wasn’t for you, I’d be in the middle of that, trapped and helpless. Instead you’ve given me a buffer. It’s a bit disorienting, but it’s better than experiencing all the horrible highlights of my life at once.”
Cym burned with embarrassment. He’d wanted to help Marshall, not roll him. Though on the plus side, at least Cym wasn’t driving him insane. “I’m sorry. I can’t really control how I affect people.” He started to pull his hand away from Marshall’s, hoping it might give him a chance to reorient himself.
Marshall squeezed Cym’s hand tighter, keeping it trapped in his. “No, I don’t think that would be a good idea right now,” Marshall said. “I just need to adjust to it, and then we can figure a way out of here.”
We.
Marshall included Cym in their escape without hesitation. Without even knowing him. Cym’s chest swelled with heat, and he noticed once again the pink glow of his magic filling his body. He could sense it flowing down his arm and into Marshall’s.
Cym’s full attention was drawn to the magic flowing between them, and he saw his pink mingling with Marshall’s cool blue. It reminded him of working with Adelle to heal himself. Except when his magic mixed with Adelle’s, their colors didn’t blend together; they stayed separate as they worked to fix his injuries. Right now, his pink bled right into Marshall’s blue, creating a vibrant purple that ran rampant through Marshall’s body.
He concentrated, trying to imagine the pink pulling back from the blue, but it felt like trying to push a dump truck up a hill.
It must have done something because Marshall’s eyes lost some of the dreamy expression they held, and he said, “Keep going. If you can pull your magic back a little more, I should be able to take it from there.”
Cym’s teeth bit into his lip as he fought to pull his magic back, millimeter by millimeter. He swayed, but Marshall held him up. They were like two drunks, bracing themselves against one another for the long walk home from a bar.
Cym’s mind began to fragment and lose focus, and he was certain he was about to pass out, when suddenly he was no longer in the driver’s seat. It felt as though his magic was a ball of yarn and someone was carefully winding it back up.
“There we go, that’s much better.” Marshall’s eyes had lost their dreamy quality and were now focused on Cym. “We don’t know one another nearly well enough to accidentally blend our magic without serious confusion. Now we can figure out what went wrong.”
“What do you mean? What went wrong was that Sekt and my aunt are trying to eat you, and we need to figure out how to stop them.” Cym could stand on his own now, so he pulled back but made sure to keep his hand in Marshall’s.
“You know its name? That’s helpful. I wasn’t able to get that far.” Marshall looked impressed. “What are you doing here anyway? You should be long gone by now. What happened?”
“I don’t know what your plan was, but things have gone sideways out there. Nightmares are using my family as puppets and are letting demons and nightmares through portals as fast as they can. Our friends aren’t going to be able to hold them off much longer.” Cym couldn’t understand why Marshall was wasting time quizzing him when they should be doing something, anything, to get out of this place.
The scene around them switched to a street lined with houses. In the distance, he could make out a group of people battling strange, flying creatures in front of a house that had been torn in two.
Rather than responding to the urgency in Cym’s voice, Marshall frowned and said, “That doesn’t explain why you are here. The job was to get you out and then come back for me.” Irritation laced his words.
“Adelle mentioned that I might be able to help you?” What Cym intended to present as a confident statement of fact ended up sounding more like a meek question.
Marshall’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “There is no way she told you to come here; you’re an untrained civilian. I don’t care what you’re packing in there, you don’t belong here.” He tapped Cym’s chest lightly, belying his angry tone.
“She may have been distracted and mentioned that I would be an asset under different conditions,” Cym admitted grudgingly. “Listen, we don’t have time to stand around chatting about who sent who where. We’re being attacked right now. For all I know we could be dying!”
