Chapter Twenty-Four
L ife and death are some of the least judgemental forces in the universe.
Little Taryn had his life snuffed out before he had truly gotten a chance to live.
While that vile piece of shit, Husdon Coakley lives on.
Sort of.
I mean, he has become a corrupt being and is no longer merfolk at all, but he is still walking and talking and doing things Taryn can’t.
When I finally see him, I plan to rip his still-beating decrepit little heart right out of his chest and shove it straight down his throat. Let him choke on the thing.
Dark? Maybe.
That’s what happens when I get all ragey about kids getting murdered.
Lucian didn’t say anything about what he saw in the building he left Taryn’s body in, but based on the haunted look when he returned, it wasn’t pretty. Normally I would be upset about ebing shielded from things, but for this one time, I’m so fucking grateful I didn’t see what was in there.
My imagination is horrible on it’s own.
I pick up the pace, and we come around the side of a home just as a really pitiful water ball whooshes past my face and plops on the ground like an incredibly fat raindrop.
Well, that’s a good sign of life, at least.
“We come in peace!” I yell and immediately facepalm myself internally. Maybe I did sneak into a few too many human movies.
When no more water balls are lobbed at us, I take the chance and peek around the side of the building. There is a man, but he is in very bad shape. He clearly has several broken bones and is bleeding from–I guess, everywhere? With how bad his condition is, there is no way I would be able to tell who–
“Father!” Blake yells as he rushes past me.
Oh fuck!
That is Dagon?
Half of his face is covered in burns and… I’m pretty sure he is missing an entire ear! There are claw marks covering most of his torso, and blood is flowing freely from a few very deep ones. All three guys converge on him while I just stand around like an idiot with my thumb shoved up my ass.
Shock can be a real inconvenient bitch.
To be fair, I want to help, I just don’t know what to do. Healing magicks have never been my strong suit before. Dagon hasn’t spoken, and his breathing is growing increasingly labored.
I can feel his essence with my magick. He’s dying. I know it, and when Lucian looks at me, I realize that he knows it too.
Well, I guess if there was ever a time to test drive some of these Noctifer Witch abilities I haven’t gotten to use yet, this is definitely one of them. It’s not like I can really make it much worse than it is at this point.
I walk over to him and dropped to my knees at his side. The guys back up a little but stay close.
Lucian places a hand on my shoulder and whispers in my ear, “Use your aura sense first.”
Aura sense? What does that mean? Unless…
Well, that would explain why my trisense was always so much different than everyone else’s. I let my eyes unfocus and hover my hands above his body. Letting all of my little golden tendrils unfurl from me to inspect his body. I find a nasty gash on his side and decide to start there.
Moving on instinct, I gently touch the tendril to the wound. Dagon responds with a scream, and I jump. Determined to do this, I push the tendril forward again, and this time when he screams out, the guys converge to hold him down.
This time, instead of jabbing at the wound when I have made contact, I try weaving the tendril back and forth in a zig-zag motion across the wound. Almost as if I’m magickally sewing it shut. The skin responds and slowly knits together. Pleased with myself and confident in the action, I move across his whole body, patching everything larger than a paper cut. I feel his blood pressure regulating and know that the bleeding has stopped.
I’m unsure how to handle the broken ribs and am a little terrified of puncturing a lung or something. So I leave that for now. I run a cooling tendril in small circles all over the portion of his face and neck that have been badly burnt. He grunts, but I see the dead skin slowly peeling off and revealing bright pink skin. He looks sunburnt, but that’s a definite improvement.
The only thing left is the ear. It looks chewed off, and I can’t see it anywhere when I look around him. I glance at Lucian. He was able to give Blake a new hand, but he did need the old one to do that. Lucian shakes his head, and I resign myself to healing the skin there as much as possible.
Once I am done, I blink my eyes a few times and let them adjust to the scene around me. Blake is consumed by his concern, and I can’t blame him. Orobas is looking at me like I’m some kind of freak.
It makes me think of how the kids treated me when I was growing up, so I immediately pull my gaze away from him. I don’t want to go back there. That’s the past. I don’t live there anymore.
When my gaze meets Lucian’s, his look conveys pure pride. I find myself blushing a little and looking away. He takes the opportunity to stand up and lift Dagon with him.
When I first met Dagon, I thought he was a huge man. Now seeing him dangling in my drys’s arms, he looks so tiny.
Lucian sets him down on the shore so that the water can lap across most of his body. After a few moments, he inhales sharply and opens his eyes. Blake is there in an instant.
“Father. Don’t move. Forsythia saved you, but you are still healing.”
He says nothing in response to his son. Only nods before turning his head in my direction.
“Thank you. Are there any others?”
I’m not afraid to admit that I’m too weak to say the words, so instead, I simply avert my gaze. How can I possibly swallow my grief long enough to tell him they are all dead?
“I see.” He looks back at Blake and actually talks to him, although his words are as haggard as his breathing while his body works to sort out the broken ribs.
“I gathered as many of the children… gave them to Ronan since he sees more than the rest of us… I was a distraction so that he could get them away from here... I don’t think they were followed…. The beings aren’t merfolk… if they ever were one… so they did not follow… Didn’t get too close to the water… The creature also seems to have an aversion to water…” He lets out a dry, humorless laugh, but no one joins him.
Apparently, it was an inside joke.
He sobers again and takes a few minutes to catch his breath before he continues on.
“One of the beings… was Uncle Hudson… or what he used to be… He and three others escaped… leaving the creature to finish off the rest of us… It was horrible.” He chokes on the words and simply breaths for a little while before continuing on, forcing out the rest of it.
“It pulled the life essence from some… Others? It just– toyed with them… Never tried to feed from me… My connection to my essence is too strong for that… When my injuries got too severe, it acted bored and just… left.“ It seems even near death can’t squash this man’s ego.
“We will take care of the creature, Father,” Blake says.
Dagon nods but grunts when a small popping noise sounds from his chest. He grunts and closes his eyes for a few minutes, but his breathing evens out and he seems to have more of a handle on his breathing now that his ribs have mostly knit themselves back into proper working order.
His eyes snap open, and his next words come out in a hurry.
“Yes, but first, you have to get to Husdon! He has Cordelia... She passed me a bubble and was able to get the message ‘Creatori birthplace’ passed to me before they were gone. Although, I am afraid, that none of us really know where the Crearoti was birthed.”
“I do.” My father’s voice is quiet, but he draws the attention of us all.
“You! No, do not trust him. That’s the king of the demons! They brought this creature into being, and they even corrupted some of the weaker people of other factions.” Dagon is clearly agitated, but Blake is able to get him to calm down.
“No!” Blake practically yells in his father’s face, and although he looks far from happy about it, Dagon quiets. “You know who created the creature. Deep down, you know it.”
He sounds so dejected, and I want to comfort him, but this feels like something that he should be working through with his father, and I don’t want to intrude.
“I showed you the ritual page I found in my mother’s drawer. You took it from me and told me to never speak of it again.”
Dagon keeps shaking his head as if that will make Blake’s words false.
“I was young, but I remember the basics. The Creatori is not a creature summoned . It is a creature transformed .“ I try to follow Blake’s words, but they aren’t making sense to me.
Orobas speaks up next. “I knew I recognized you. Your name isn’t Blake Coakley. You are Nox Tynnan, and your mother was Euriyale Tynnan.”
“Yes,’ Blake answers him.
He looks straight into my eyes, and I swear he pleads for me to understand. Before I can tell him that I don’t care what his name used to be and that I understand why his father changed it, he opens his mouth, and the words sit like a boulder in my stomach.
“And my mother is the Creatori.”