Chapter 21 Baz #2
Some of them gone because of Baz himself.
“This started with you, Timespinner,” Artem said as if he’d had the same thought.
“When your own Collapsing robbed Keiran, Lizaveta, and me of our families. Oh yes, I know,” he added at Baz’s bewildered expression.
“I know it was you. Keiran had started to piece it together, and after I saw you open the Hourglass back there, I knew for certain.”
A half-formed apology died in Baz’s throat as Artem added, “If the Reanimator’s magic can’t bring him back, then yours will.” His gaze slid to the Eclipse sigil on Baz’s hand, lip curling in distaste. “At least you Shadow-cursed filth have your uses.”
“You’re pathetic,” Kai said with a laugh. “No wonder you lost everyone around you. Lizaveta, Keiran, Far—”
“How dare you speak their names?” Artem was in Kai’s face, looking like he wanted to throttle him. “I could argue this started with you, too, Salonga. The way you poisoned Farran’s mind with this ‘Tides and Shadow being equal’ nonsense…”
“What are you talking about?”
Farran Caine—the boy Kai used to date when he was at Trevelyan Prep. Baz had only ever heard Kai utter the name once, but he remembered it acutely. And judging from the fury on Kai’s face, it was still a sore spot for him.
“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Artem spat.
“All I know is he chose you depraved lot over me, and look where that got him.”
Artem’s hand grabbed a fistful of Kai’s shirt, the veins at his temple bulging out.
“Stop it,” Baz said. “Please.”
With a sneer, Artem let go of Kai. “At least I won’t have lost everyone. Not once Keiran returns.”
“Don’t make me do this,” Freyia pleaded.
But Artem looked at her and spoke in that voice laced with compulsion again: “Bring him back.”
Powerless against his Glamour magic, Freyia knelt beside Keiran’s corpse.
Tears fell in earnest down her cheeks now, even as her expression became glazed.
She was a puppet whose strings were being pulled against her will.
They all were, forced to watch without being able to do anything to stop this perversion.
Baz half expected silver light to flood the sleepscape. But no silver shone beneath Freyia’s skin, her Collapsing long since over. The only sign of her magic was the faint ripple between her and Keiran’s corpse.
And then, impossibly, Keiran took a gasping breath, eyes shooting open to stare at the dark expanse above him. Life was returning to his pallid features. He looked like he was waking from a nap, alive, alive, alive, and Baz thought Freyia might have actually succeeded this time.
He felt Kai’s sharp intake at his side. “Something’s wrong,” the Nightmare Weaver said.
Baz saw it with his own eyes: darkness gathering above Keiran, hovering there as if in wait, becoming denser until it formed into claw-tipped hands that reached down to Keiran’s face.
Horror lined Freyia’s features, and though she tried to wrench back from Keiran, from this creature of darkness, she couldn’t do so under Artem’s spell.
“What is this?” Artem barked, a note of fear disguised as annoyance in his voice. “What are you doing to him?” he yelled at Freyia.
“It’s not me,” Freyia gritted out. “I can’t—”
“Stop!” Artem yelled.
Freyia wrenched away, falling backward as she was released from the Glamour, just as the clawed, shadowy hands gripped the sides of Keiran’s head.
The darkness spilled inside him. Keiran convulsed, and then—the darkness was gone, and it was just him.
He sat up and stared at them, eyes unnaturally dark and sharp with starlight, rings of gold and silver around his pupils.
And though it was Keiran, there was nothing of the golden boy of Aldryn in his expression, none of that carefully contained arrogance, that air of superiority disguised in charm.
There was something old and bloodthirsty in the curve of his mouth. A promise of death in the look he swept over them.
“Keiran?” Artem croaked. “Is it you, brother?”
Keiran craned his neck toward him in an unnatural motion.
The golds and silvers in his eyes seemed to flare like dancing flames.
Before Artem could utter another word, Keiran was upon him, moving with a kind of preternatural speed that no one should possess.
He grabbed Artem by the neck, lifting him off his feet with a strength that couldn’t possibly belong to Keiran.
Baz felt the compulsion’s hold on him vanish.
Artem must have lost his grasp on it as he fought against Keiran’s choke hold, feet kicking wildly beneath him.
Kai grabbed Baz’s wrist with such ferocity it had him snapping his head toward Kai.
He had never seen Kai look so afraid—other than earlier, when he’d been fighting his invisible demon.
“Tell me this is real,” Kai said tightly. “Tell me I’m not seeing things.”
“This is real.” As fucked-up as it was, it was real—had to be.
“Okay.” Kai blinked rapidly as if coming out of a trance. “Okay, then I suggest we run before that thing is finished with Artem.”
Nightmares erupted out of the gloom between stars.
The umbrae were here.
They milled around Keiran and Artem, as if called by the darkness within Keiran or perhaps by Artem’s fear as he screamed and sputtered, whimpering broken pleas to Keiran. If there was anything of Keiran left, he did not seem to recognize his friend as he squeezed the life out of him.
More umbrae manifested from the darkness, setting their sightless eyes on the rest of them, swiping for Virgil and Freyia first since they were closest to them.
“Run!” yelled Baz.
A few things happened all at once then.
Freyia blinked wildly past the tears in her eyes, a look of utter bewilderment on her face as she took in the horrors around her.
She glanced at the darkness beyond the bridge of stars, ignoring Baz’s plea to move.
She simply stood there at the edge of the path, and though her face was stained with tears, there was something serene there, a sense of peace with herself as she looked up at them.
“I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused,” she said softly.
As if he knew what she meant to do, Kai moved toward her, yelling, “Don’t!” just as Freyia threw herself into the void.
She plummeted into darkness and stars, to the death she had always defied, a few umbrae trailing eagerly after her.
At the same time, Keiran let go of Artem, who fell limply on the star-lined path, eyes turned unseeing toward the rest of them. Virgil came out of nowhere, throwing a punch at Keiran with a snarled, “You should have stayed dead!”
Keiran stopped Virgil’s fist inches from his face and shoved him back with the strength of a bull.
Virgil teetered toward the edge of the path, umbrae turning toward him gleefully.
Nisha was upon Virgil in a second, helping him up, just as Kai shrugged off the umbrae around them as if they were nothing.
“Head for the door!” Vera yelled, motioning in the direction Kai had heard the song.
They had to make it through the next door, leave this place behind before that thing that was Keiran followed them out.
“Kai, let’s go!” Baz pleaded.
But now Keiran had set his eyes on Kai, the gold and silver in them flaring ravenously again.
Kai seemed rooted to the spot. The blood leeched from his face.
Whatever he saw in Keiran clearly had him scared beyond all logic.
Keiran moved toward him, slowly, as if savoring the Nightmare Weaver’s fear.
Baz reached for the threads of time, willing Keiran to stop, and—
Oh.
The complicated tapestry of time burst into dazzling colors, as if the very fabric of time were changing, altered by this dark presence it was trying to reach for.
Threads came apart and wove together again in dizzying patterns, wrapping around Baz until he was all tangled up in them.
Baz tried to let go of his magic but found he couldn’t, not as the threads pulled him away from his friends like he was a fish on a hook.
Someone grabbed his hand then, wrenching him free of this pull that time had on him.
Baz blinked at Kai, who’d finally snapped out of whatever hold Keiran had on him.
The Nightmare Weaver clasped Baz’s hand tight as they both ran after the others down the star-lined path, toward a door none of them could yet see.
But there—the faint smell of earth and moss, so distinct that Baz nearly cried.
There is a world not far from our own where things grow wild and plenty.
The Wychwood. It was here, real, just out of reach.
Something wrapped around Baz and yanked him back, his hand tearing out of Kai’s grip.
It wasn’t the umbrae or Keiran or anyone.
Rather, it was time itself, pulling him toward its strange maelstrom of threadwork, as if whatever odd magic lived in this liminal space between worlds had other plans for him.
Like it would not let him go where he wished.
Baz flung a hand out to the others—to Kai, who turned to him as Baz screamed his name.
The Nightmare Weaver’s eyes widened, fear like Baz had never seen in him flooding his features.
Kai’s hand grabbed for his own again, fingers digging for purchase, gripping so tightly it hurt.
The world around them squeezed in, sucking them backward.
Baz and Kai held on to each other, their only tether to the here and now.
It felt to Baz like he was dying. Like his body was being splintered apart, pulled into a hundred different directions.
He wished then that Kai had not grabbed for him, that he would have stayed with the others so he could live.
“Let go!” Baz screamed, but Kai did no such thing. He only held on tighter.
They were going to die here together.
But then—the world expanded again as the strange tapestry of time crackled and burned and fizzled out.
Baz hit a body of water, the impact almost like he’d hit solid ground. He knew he was underwater only by how the force of it ripped him and Kai apart, and suddenly he inhaled a mouthful of salt water into his lungs, trying to scream out Kai’s name.
Everything went black. Baz fought to catch his bearing, to discern what was up and what was down. What was real and what was not.
He broke the surface with a great gasp.
Strong arms were wrapped around him, and for a horrible moment, Baz thought he was trapped in that Tides-damned nightmare of his, back at the printing press to relive his worst memory.
But upon opening his eyes he realized he was out at sea, great waves trying to pull him under again. There was moonlight overhead, and seawater in his nose and mouth, and the arms around him weren’t his father’s but Kai’s, holding him afloat.
“I’ve got you,” Kai breathed. “I’ve got you.”
Baz tried to turn around to face him, legs kicking wildly underwater. But an angry wave broke over them, and suddenly they were under again. When Baz emerged, he looked around frantically for the coastline, but it was all sea, all water everywhere, freezing and dark.
They were going to drown here.
“There,” Kai said, pointing to somewhere in the distance, where Baz could barely make out a light along the shore.
They swam with everything they had, aided by the swelling tide. When they finally reached the shore, Baz heaved among the weeds and shells and silt. Kai lay panting beside him.
Wiping his mouth, Baz gave a puzzled look at the cliffside. They were on Dovermere Cove.
“How in the Deep are we back here?”
It was as if the sleepscape didn’t want them to reach the next world, so it pulled them back to the one they had come from, depositing them on Dovermere Cove like all the bodies it had spat out before them.
The others were nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t think we’re on the same beach anymore,” Kai said, a strange quality to his voice.
Baz frowned at him where he sat staring at the top of the cliffs. “What are you—”
But as he tracked Kai’s gaze, the words died on his lips.
Kai was right. They weren’t on the same beach, not exactly.
It was Dovermere Cove, sure enough, but not the one they knew.
For at the top of the cliff where Aldryn College stood, the old lighthouse that had all but crumbled to dust and had been out of service for decades now stood tall and pristine, a great beacon of light shining from it.
Kai met his gaze and spoke words that made no sense at all.
“I think we’ve gone back in time.”