Chapter 47
Graysen
The dreamworld was insubstantial, like clouds changing shape as they drifted across the sky. Until the nightmare arose, as it always did when I finally succumbed to sleep. The dream dimmed and darkened, and a country road materialized.
My heart palpitated against my ribs as I relived the horror of that night so long ago, the sound of my baby sister’s terrified wails tearing apart the desolate night.
Death and fear surrounded the crumpled limousine.
I hurtled across the road strewn with the rubble of steel and glass, the acrid stench of burning rubber assailing my nostrils.
Wrath burned a righteous path of bloodshed through my veins.
How dare she threaten my family. The knotted hilt of my wyrmbone blade, warm in my grip, sang a violent song of death.
A loud buzzing noise made the sky sound as if it were blanketed with bees. The Horned God, formed from shadowy wind, struck out with force.
But I’d been born a storm. As swift as a gale. As unpredictable as a squall.
I dodged, twisting midair, a spinning whirlwind. The razor-sharp sword in my hand carved through the dark magic right to the buzzing humanoid figure at its center.
A bellow of outrage, of howling pain, as the wyrmblade sank into unnatural flesh.
But I wasn’t facing one Horned God—I was facing three.
Mistress Lyressa advanced, her fingers lengthening and thinning, becoming like long, vicious sewing needles.
In my periphery, I realized my mother had risen. She punched out with both arms toward the Frankenstein monster, and golden filaments of magic wove around her outstretched fingers. But she looked confused, as if struggling to understand the why of it all.
All it took was a split-second distraction.
For the Horned God with the vibrant red hair and moonlit skin to fling a lasso of might around my forearm. She flicked the cord of power like a whip.
And I was hurled backward through the air, far, fast, crashing bodily like a fragile insect against the armored limousine.
My spine snapped. Fiery pain erupted, and the world turned black as I screamed in pain.
My mother’s petrified shriek joined mine.
It didn’t stop.
The Horned God slammed me against the wall of unforgiving steel. Until almost every single bone fractured, then shattered, my body pummeled until I was a mess of bruised, bloodied flesh.
Released, I fell with one last blood-gurgled gasp, thudding onto the road in a tangle of broken limbs. The mind-splitting agony so excruciating I wavered in and out of consciousness.
My vision swam with black dots edging my sight, and I dazedly came to with my mother’s voice spearing through the savage pounding in my head as she frantically begged the Horned Gods to spare my life. The lives of my entire family.
She bowed low, her upper body curved across mine to protect me.
Blood splattered all over her face, and tears thinned the bright red flecks, washing them down her cheeks in watery streaks.
“Draxxon! Hamon! They sacrificed their lives to save yours. Without Great House Crowther, all would have been lost. Please, I beg you for mercy. For Draxxon’s Covenant.
I’ll do anything you ask. Spare my son. Spare my family! ”
“MOM! NO!”
I was distantly aware that I muttered in my sleep, that my clammy body was shivering and twitchy.
A soft voice pierced through the shroud of the nightmare.
“I’m here…I’m here…” A delicate hand ran soothing strokes gently up and down my arm, and warm lips nuzzled into my throat.
“It’s okay…I’ve got you…” My arms tightened around Nelle’s willowy body as I shifted in my sleep to rest my cheek on the crown of her tangled hair, the satiny strands tickling beneath my chin.
Her calming presence eased my erratic breathing and stifled the trembling. With comforting words and soft touches, she banished the nightmare, and it faded away to settle like sand into a new dreamworld painted in rich, opulent colors.
No, not quite a dream, but rather a recently unearthed memory that expanded until it was fully realized and I fell back in time.
Fell back to when I was five years old, standing inside a strange lair with fabrics lining the walls and vibrant rugs underfoot.
A hand with talon-tipped fingers clapped heavily on my shoulder. “Caught you, Sticky Fingers,” a deep voice rumbled.
I gulped and whipped my hand from the enormous glass jar I’d been dipping my fingers into, trying to reach the dried willwips at the bottom of the container.
They were tiny, otherworldly creatures that came out at night to dance across the sky in a rainbow of light, and I was eager to see them better.
Even dried, they looked like colorful, cottony clouds.
I craned my head back and stared into a pair of narrowed, blood-red eyes glaring down at me. Fine wisps of smoke roiled off Florin’s feathered figure.
“I’ll handle this, Florin,” I heard my mother call out sharply as she marched from the back of the lair toward me.
Florin gave a grunt of acknowledgment. The pressure of his taloned hand left my shoulder as he let me go and turned away.
Thick rugs muffled the clunk of his walking cane as he hobbled toward his office, where warmth rolled out from the fierce fire set in a huge hearth and brought with it a stinky smell from something simmering inside the blackened pot perched over the flames.
I twisted around to face my mother. She came to a standstill in front of a gigantic shelf lined with jars. Honeyed candlelight struck off the curved glass and made the fronds of the feather duster she held in her hand shimmer as if aflame.
My guilt-ridden gaze locked on hers, and she gave me the stern-mom eye. “Empty all your pockets, Gray.”
“Come on, Mom,” I grouched, toeing the ground and folding my arms over my chest. “I haven’t taken anything.” The lie burned my tongue. I didn’t even know why I’d bothered. My mother knew me far too well.
“Now,” she warned, stabbing a finger downward.
My shoulders sagged in defeat. There was no way out of this.
I reluctantly dug into my pockets and fished out a handful of oddities.
They were so weirdly cool, with strange names stamped on the labels of the jars I’d borrowed them from.
Things like the ‘Eyelashes of an Albino’ and ‘The Hunter’s Three-Headed Starburst’ and ‘Rustumple’s Golden Wheat of Death. ’
My mother tucked the feather duster under an arm and cupped her hands together. With a glare and a petulant poke of my bottom lip, I held my fists over Mom’s hands and let the bits and pieces fall into her palms.
Mom held my gaze, arching a brow, and said, “Alllllll your pockets, Gray. All the secret places on your suit.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake!
I’d stupidly thought I might get away with it.
Mom carefully put all the things I’d pinched on a shelf.
Today I’d been shoved into a stuffy black suit, and I dug a hand into a hidden pocket stitched into the lining of my blazer, reluctantly fishing out the slender sword forged from the silver toenail of a Bog Booghie.
It was as long as my pinky finger, and with my keen eyesight, I could make out the fine detailing, ornately carved into its blade.
Mom stretched out a hand with diamonds encircling her wrist. “Hand it over, Sticky Fingers.” She couldn’t help herself.
The moment she voiced the nickname the Horned God had given me, her elegant crimson dress shivered around her figure as she shuddered, snickering.
I scrunched my face into a dark scowl. Sticky Fingers!
Dropping the miniature weapon into her palm, I bent over and pulled out the line of teensy-tiny eyeballs strung together like a bracelet from the cuff of my pants.
I straightened, my fingers moving to the stiff collar of my white shirt and tugging free a crystal the color of my baby brother’s irises that was held in place by the black tie looped around my neck.
The crystal sparkled and seemed to hold an entire galaxy within its cloudy center.
As I passed it to my mother, my gaze hooked on a jar nearby, and I sighed with longing. I’d really wanted one of those creepy shrunken heads floating in a dirty-yellow liquid. Kenton would have screamed like a girl if he had woken up to find it sitting on his pillow.
As I handed them all to her, she tsked at me, shaking her head. Her nose wrinkled as she cut a glance over her shoulder with a wry smile. “I guess I can’t really blame him.”
A gritty, warm laugh floated from the Horned God’s office. “No, little thief.”
Mom brought her gaze back to mine and ordered, “Shoes too, Gray.”
I frowned, glancing downward at my feet. “My shoes?”
She untucked the feather duster from beneath her arm and used it to point toward our feet. “Shoes are perfect for hiding small things that can be concealed near your toes.”
“Ah…” came from Florin. “I always wondered how you managed to steal those stones from me all those years ago.”
My mother’s mouth twitched with a grin, and she clamped her teeth down on her lip to stifle it.
I gaped in astonishment. “She did?” Glancing over my shoulder into Florin’s office with its oversized furniture, the Horned God was partially obscured as he leaned over a worn workbench, digging around for something near the back of it.
I heard the rasp of wooden drawers opening and closing, and chinks of rattling metal before his voice rolled from its depth to reach where we stood amongst the rarities for sale.
“Yes. I met your mother when she was a few years older than you. She’d slunk into my home to thieve from me. ”
My attention sliced back to my mother. “You’re a thief?” I asked, completely taken aback.
She raised a finger to correct me. “I was a thief. I gave up that profession a long time ago.”
“Was?” A gruff laugh came from the office as if Florin disagreed with her.