Chapter Thirty
Dylan
‘OH, HEY.’ REMI PULLED A THIN, SILKY SCARF FROM AROUND her throat as she came back into the dining room in Kyan’s townhouse.
Dylan shifted in his chair. It creaked beneath him. Sweat had begun to mist down his back. He told himself it was the heat of the city – despite the cool in the townhouse – rather than the tapping dread at what he’d have to do.
Again.
They’d been about to begin another memory session. Bells was standing in front of him and tried to immediately dispel any tension.
‘Hi,’ she said with an uncertain smile.
‘What’s this?’ Remi asked, gesturing to their tense trio.
‘They’re memory mining,’ Callum said from where he leaned against the wall, his long legs crossed at the ankles, watchful and infuriating.
‘Right, to find out about your mum,’ Remi said, coming further inside.
‘Where’s Nicole?’ Dylan asked. ‘How’d it go?’
Remi sighed. ‘Oh, it was interesting. Full of riddles, so Nicole went to the gallery. You know what she’s like when she gets stuck. Don’t worry, Kyan’s tailing her from a distance. So, how does this work?’
Bells glanced at him warily. ‘Er – well, Dylan tries to remember that night and I touch his temples to See what he’s seeing. But we’ve had … some trouble.’
Dylan shifted. His jeans suddenly felt too tight around his thighs, as if his body was getting ready to run. ‘If by trouble you mean it isn’t working, then yeah.’
Their father re-entered with a tray from Biróg – a calming tea she said might help. ‘Remi, your mum said she went to check in on the Speakeasy location. She’ll be back later.’
‘You can take the mum out of security …’ Remi’s full lips pulled into a thoughtful moue. ‘Do you want me to help?’
Dylan tried to focus on her and not his sticking pulse. ‘How?’
‘A kind of hypnotism, I suppose. If part of your body’s in fight-or-flight and rebelling against the memory, my voice can help you relax. Then Bells can See easier.’
Remi held the back of a dining chair, eyes gentle.
Callum watched silently.
Dylan hated that there was an audience to the worst memory of his life.
Remembering the face of their mother’s killer could be key to keeping them all safe. He knew that, even if the most vulnerable part of him never wanted to see or experience it again.
But the Wake knew about Nicole. He had to push. For her. For all of them.
‘All right. Okay.’
They settled into position: Bells behind him and Remi across. His father stood to the left which meant Dylan was gazing at Remi as Bells’ cool fingers touched his temples.
He tried not to flinch.
‘Show us what you remember,’ Remi said.
She must have been practising in her time away, because her Siren tone was low and smooth and it was—
Bliss.
His body immediately relaxed, putty to her command. Her words spiralled him down deep into that guarded memory and the nursery painted itself in his mind.
‘It’s just a memory,’ Callum said softly from the other side of the room. And for a moment, Dylan’s pulse slowed.
But as the darkness faded, the nursery came into view.
Pale wallpaper, a lovely soft colour. The sloped roof like an attic room with a single window that he knew somehow was open.
A dresser to the left, white. A cot across from him, empty.
And a rocking chair to the right where the two figures were, the chair knocked back in the fight. Rocking back and forth.
He could see it through the slats in the wardrobe door. Their mother had put them in here when she’d heard the noise downstairs, then fought until their attacker was out of the room and down the stairs.
Dylan followed.
His mother must have thrown herself down them because she had the huge intruder in a sleeper hold but he careened backwards to slam her into the dresser.
Dylan couldn’t see the details still – it blurred and reformed as they tore apart the cosy bottom floor of the cottage. He tried to see the assassin’s face, focusing on that and not the emotion he usually felt, each strike or block nearly unblurring it.
Then, his mother spotted him. He didn’t know when, but a shimmer of her Influence went up between them like a shield.
The figure of the Empyreal was now behind her. Tall, heavily muscled. The face nearly cleared, sharpened—
Until a crack cut through it.
His mother slumped.
Her neck.
Gods above, that must have been the sound of his mother’s neck snapping. He’d never heard that before.
The memory began to shudder. He could hear baby Bells crying in the nursery and Nicole’s distressed shushing, her whispering for him to come back.
He could feel himself shaking in both lifetimes, his body rebelling—
‘Pull him out,’ he heard someone order.
Callum.
Then the Empyreal in the vision threw his mother over his shoulder and went to carry her away.
‘No! Mummy! Mummy!’ Dylan screamed, scampering for the stairs, getting on his belly to reach his foot down the step, gripping the spindles of the balustrade to see the intruder stalking to the open door and taking her away—
The shaking made him cry out, stole his breath. He couldn’t breathe—
‘Dylan—’ he heard his father shout.
‘I said, pull him out,’ snarled Callum.
A flash of white and a sharp pain in his temple had Dylan sucking in a breath and ripping from the memory.
There was something here.
Something that pushed and dug its talons into his mind.
Until it stopped, and air stopped, and his world stopped.
Dylan barely restrained himself from diving away until he knew Bells was detached, but it cost him his fraying emotions, and he found himself out on the street before he could process it.
He wasn’t sure how he was moving, he couldn’t quite feel his legs, yet the world was rushing past. He distantly realised people were moving out of his way, including supernaturals, the unfamiliar brush of their scents stuffing up his nose.
He veered past colourful graffiti that shimmered with inhuman images and fading posters.
Could vaguely feel the air on his face. God, he needed it.
He sucked in a breath that rattled in his chest. Right through that hidden, vulnerable place he guarded by keeping his distance from every potential partner or promise of connection.
Every reason he might feel like this again if someone was taken.
How could he, when the Wake could come and kill anyone?
‘Why, pray tell,’ came a darkly familiar voice. ‘Did you think it wise to go wandering around in a city crawling with Empyreals?’
Dylan zoned back into his body, finding himself gazing sightlessly at the docks.
He turned to find Callum leaning against a post on the same side street.
‘Not now,’ Dylan managed, his mouth dry. He swerved back around to walk some more, forcing the muscles in his legs to move. But as he scanned the surrounding buildings – restaurants, museums – he could feel Callum’s eyes narrowing on his back.
‘And here I thought I was the dramatic one.’
Dylan could feel him then, as sense came rushing back.
Getting closer. It shivered through his already wired senses and it struck him: just how much Callum didn’t have the same feel as Kyan.
He was completely silent unless he wanted to be; he felt dangerous and mysterious. One aspect hiding the other.
‘Listen to me,’ Callum said.
Dylan spun as they came to a quiet side street. ‘I hate you for making me do that.’
A flash of regret went through Callum’s eyes before they hardened. ‘Did you see anything?’
‘Nothing I couldn’t have lived without,’ Dylan snarled.
‘You need to wrap your head around a few things,’ Callum said.
‘I get that. I never said this would be easy, I said it would be crucial. But I think we both know that you need to face this as much for yourself as you do for the rest of us, and possibly for the fate of supernatural society. I don’t do this to be cruel,’ he added, an earnest flicker drawing his brows together.
‘I don’t know why you do what you do,’ Dylan said, the fight drained out of him by the little boy in that memory. ‘I don’t know anything about you. So how about this: you want me to keep doing this, you give me something in return.’
This – the mystery of Callum – felt so much more discoverable than the claws of trauma in his mind. Focusing more on this magnetic, secretive Empyreal was a lifeline when the world was trying to drown him in memories.
With Callum he felt sharp and stimulated; challenged and alive.
He didn’t feel like a boy screaming for a mother that would never come back.
Callum’s charming grin was gone, his eyes simmering with challenge. ‘Oh?’
‘Yeah—’
The Empyreal stilled, gaze shooting to the drain at the edge of the alley. ‘Run.’
‘I’m not going to let this go just because you don’t want to share something—’
Callum grabbed him by the shirt, his knuckles grazing the muscle of Dylan’s chest and searing his body with instinct. ‘I said, run.’ Callum’s eyes were alarmed and brilliant as he shoved Dylan back several steps.
Then a Varian slipped through the grates like a wraith.
Drawn to arguments or blood, a human would probably mistake one as a Demon, but Varians were darker mutations of supernaturals, or the more dark-dwelling creatures with wilder hungers.
Thanks to the advent of electric light, they were rare. It was even rarer that they’d be drawn out during the day where they could be spotted by humans or other creatures would notify the Wake and an Empyreal.
But Callum wasn’t fazed. Instead, he moved with a mind-bending, graceful violence.
The humanoid creature shrieked, spittle flying from its mouth, mottled skin a dark grey colour with a body thin and bent from all the time spent scrabbling in cramped spaces. Its face was one pane of skin, like a mannequin’s; its slitted nose and razor-like teeth feral slices in its uncanny face.
Any second now the kill scent would hit Dylan and he’d transform. This creature was feral, launching to kill.
Dylan tensed for it, teeth gritting—
The next moment, Callum pulled a sword out of his coat.
It flashed silver against the shadows of the alley as if it was magicked.
He held his other hand out towards Dylan, which threw him backwards, further from the creature as a rush of deep tremors nearly overtook him, his slumbering Empyrean power stirring and struggling to wake against the suppression of his father’s tonics.
Wind rushed down the other end of the alley, blasting any scent away from him.
Then, as the creature dived, Callum beheaded it in a single scything arc.
A moment later, its head hit the pavement with a wet smack.
It had been so swift the adrenaline still rushed in Dylan’s ears, near muting the sound of the ballet flats slapping on stone as someone ran their way.
He stared. ‘What the hell just—’
Bells staggered into the alley, their father jogging to a stop a moment later.
‘Dylan!’ she cried.
‘What happened?’ their father snarled, his eyes whipping over the body, the gore, then pinning on Dylan, a flash of fear in his stormy eyes. He charged past Callum.
‘Varian,’ Callum said, nudging the head with his otherwise pristine shoe. ‘Nasty little fuckers. Unusual.’
Dylan barely felt his father’s grip as he propped him up while the last of the tremors echoed out in hot ripples. He focused on the spike and grit of the asphalt beneath his hands, the slip of a discarded train ticket stuck to his thumb.
‘Did you scent it?’ his father demanded, ripping out another tonic and getting it into Dylan’s shaking hand.
‘Nearly.’ Dylan forced his arm to move, his throat to swallow the mixture. His body relaxed instantly as the balm of the tonic spread through him.
‘All in hand,’ Callum said, the blade archaic and magnificent against the urban background.
The image was cut into by Bells edging deeper into the alley. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked him, eyes wide and worried.
Dylan managed a nod and watched her take a shaky breath. ‘Good, because I have news. I sat with the memory a few more moments.’ She wasn’t quite breathless, they’d been trained too well for that, but the light in her eyes gave away her excitement. ‘I know what it means.’
Dylan shook his head. ‘I don’t. What are you talking about?’
‘Someone else was there the night Mum was killed.’
In every theory as to what information they could glean from Dylan’s memories, that was not one of them.
‘Who was it?’ Callum demanded.
‘I don’t know. All I saw was a flash of long white hair. Don’t you know what this means?’ Bells asked, eyes wild. ‘If someone else was there that night, someone who tried to help her and survived, they’ll know everything.’