Chapter 12 Behaving Admirably
Behaving Admirably
“You may indeed think of us as a priestly order, Miss Stellack.” Father kept his tone deliberately neutral, and much softer than Erik had ever heard the old man speak before.
“We are sworn to certain ideals, and to the protection and defense of the lirai.” He paused, his gaze steadily and studiously sunk in a mug of black coffee he would probably not even sip. “The Dreamers.”
“Like a secret society?” Huge-eyed, she huddled in the largest chair in the room, clutching at a similar heavy white ceramic cup holding a tolerable hazelnut latte. Jake used too much syrup for Erik’s taste, but maybe she enjoyed that.
“Exactly.” Ignatius tried a smile, except it was more like a grimace than an expression of amusement. “We are the Sons of Ymre.”
“Okay.” Amazingly, a ghost of a smile touched her pale lips. She was almost transparent, but Erik had never thought a civilian would hold up this well after facing down two shadowbeasts at once. “Sounds like a biker gang.”
“Ah. Well.” Father cleared his throat. “Ymre is a nonsense word, because we do not speak his name aloud.”
“His… name?” A line appeared between her eyebrows, and she glanced at Erik as if seeking confirmation. “Like, your founder or something?”
It wasn’t a bad assumption, but Erik’s stomach still made an unhappy motion. He dropped his gaze, staring at the mug in her slim, pretty hands.
Her nails were bitten all the way down.
“In a way.” Ignatius didn’t flinch. “He is a god, of course, a terrible one. He almost had the entire world, but we betrayed him. So he cursed us.”
At least she didn’t shut down at the mention of gods. “Cursed you?”
“Yes.” Father tapped at the sleeve over his left wrist with one bloodless fingertip. “You have seen Erik’s, I believe. Would you like to see mine?”
“Uh, no thanks.” The wheels were visibly turning inside her head. Disheveled, ashen, her hair a wildly curling mop, she was still… well, Erik was glad Father had suggested they wrap a blue woolen blanket around her shoulders, and also glad the liraim was well heated.
She just looked so damn small. The Dreamers were power incarnate—but not physically. For endurance, speed, and sheer mayhem, you wanted a Son.
“So when you say a god and he had the world, what exactly do you mean?” Their potential squeezed the mug, her knuckles whitening a little, and glanced again at Erik, who tried to look encouraging.
His own plain latte was rapidly cooling and he had little desire to taste it, but he took a sip anyway to remind her that he was human.
Or whatever passed for human once you received your mark.
Before the great betrayal, the red glyph burned into a Son’s flesh was a sign of being chosen.
Nowadays it was simply a penultimate step just before a lirai sealed the wound and stopped the corruption from spreading.
The agony of burning was a relief from the god’s attention. Or at least, it had been for Erik.
Even with the training, sometimes a heart stopped or sanity broke under the double assault.
“All creatures dream.” Ignatius chose his words with slow, finicky care.
His eyes lit with a strange gleam, as usual when he had to grant important instruction.
He’d been closeted in the comms room all morning, probably arguing with Control over moving their potential.
“Dreaming is, in fact, an entire world in and of itself. A whole ecosystem, and there are predators within it. Think of him as one of the biggest, a creature quite beyond human understanding but nevertheless capable of granting, at its whim, certain favors upon those who bring it… offerings.”
“Right. Okay.” Their potential absorbed this, blinking slowly. “An actual god? Like, as in, Zeus or Yahweh or…”
“A cruel and horrific deity, yes. One far worse than anything human beings could create, one they were all too ready to worship.” Ignatius’s shaven lip curled, and he suppressed the grimace with what had to be a painful effort.
“The offerings he liked best, of course, were humans with a certain capacity for sensitivity, a certain talent for what you might almost call magic. We name them the lirai.”
“Larry. Okay.” She mangled the word, glanced again at Erik, and he took another sip. Just for appearance’s sake.
The fact that his chest got tight when she looked in his direction, only easing when she seemed to find some comfort there, was beside the point.
“The Sons were once priests and servants of Ymre.” Ignatius passed over centuries of terrible history in a single sentence, then distilled a war humanity barely remembered into another. “But we betrayed him, and he cursed us.”
“Cursed. Okay. And the larry—the lirai—” She caught herself, checking her pronunciation. Her fingers twitched, and she looked at the table as if surprised to find it empty except for Ignatius’s drink. “Do they break this, uh, the curse?”
Father glanced at Jake, who perked immediately, lowering his own cup of hot cocoa.
“No, of course not.” Their Younger usual good humor was muted, at least. Jake, like Erik, had never explained this to a potential before.
They should be taking notes on Ignatius’s delivery.
“He’s a god. But we decided to do something good anyway. ”
Father’s attention settled on Erik, who found the next part of the catechism without much trouble.
“We waged war upon our own kind,” he said, heavily.
How long had they been attempting to hold back the tide in this city, only finding one potential?
The emphasis they gave to this sort of explanation in training seemed inefficient, but then again, Erik’s lot wasn’t to question why.
His job was to keep Jake and Ignatius stable, and now to ensure their potential’s survival.
“Humanity was this close to dying out completely, because once he’d eaten them, he was going to start on us.
Some of us realized as much, almost too late.
” Good old human self-interest had once more saved the day.
“We fought, and won.” Father took up the thread again, apparently satisfied with his boys’ recital. “Barely, and because of the lirai. We owe them everything.”
“Okay.” A nervous shake of her dark curls, attempting to reassert some kind of normalcy. Another sliding, sipping little glance at Erik, and he hoped her extremely reasonable fear of the monsters outside wasn’t going to whiplash anger in his direction. “All right. Whew. This is a lot to take in.”
“Quite understandable.” Ignatius was trying to sound soothing, but even to Erik the flat, emotionless tone was a little jarring. “You’re still not completely ready for the truth, young lady, but you are behaving admirably.”
She inclined her head, a queenly movement. “Thank you. I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Ignatius, Miss Stellack. Please, do not hesitate to use it.” Even in dry schoolteacher mode, the old man had some smooth manners.
Erik tried not to catch Jake’s significant look and failed.
Their Younger was trying to keep the smirk down, and not doing too well.
“I will repeat, we do not mean you any harm. The boys came across you during a standard city-cleansing operation.”
“City cleansing?” At least she didn’t ask what boys? with an eyebrow-quirk. That would have been embarrassing, and Erik had enough on his mind already.
“Suffice to say the Mad God is one of the largest—if not the supreme—predator in the ecosystem of the real, half-real, and dream.” Now Ignatius was back on firmer ground; lecturing was a Father’s native state.
“Other things prey upon humanity, or intersect with us. The Sons are somewhat of a… police force, if you will.”
“Monster hunters.” She was doing a lot of nervous glancing at Erik. Did she think he was going to flip the table or something? Naturally her unease would fasten on him. He was a safe target for reaction, whatever it was going to be. “Right?”
A direct question, and she was staring at him, eyebrows up and her lips slightly parted.
Erik had to answer. “Right.”
“Okay. All right.” Another little shake of her head, trying to get all the ideas to settle. “So, you’re going to teach me to hunt monsters? I’m gonna have a funny mark too?”
“Good heavens, no.” Ignatius managed to look shocked but not quite disapproving.
He wouldn’t dare criticize a Dreamer, though more than once he waxed irritated with Control’s orders.
They have no idea what the front lines are like, my boys.
“There is no corruption in you, Miss Stellack. Suffice to say you are a source of power, and we are amplifiers. You make our work exponentially easier and more effective.”
It didn’t seem possible for her to shrink even further into the chair, but she somehow managed. “Like a battery?”
“Like an electric guitar,” Jake piped up. “You sing a song, we turn up the volume to eleven, monsters go poof.”
“Great.” Liv freed a hand long enough to rub at her temple.
“This is all really interesting, guys, but I think I want some time to process. Alone.” Her gaze darted to Erik again, as if asking permission, but he was already rising.
So was Father; a moment later Jake caught the telegram and hurriedly straightened, blinking, holding his mug cautiously.
“Of course.” Ignatius performed a very correct little half-bow. “Shall we bring you some lunch?”
“I’m okay. I, um…” She was still looking at Erik, who tried to hunch, as small and nonthreatening as possible. It wasn’t going to work; he was built to much heavier specifications than Jake, but still… he wanted to try. “Look, can you stay for a second? Just you.”
“Of course,” he mumbled, set his mug down on the heavy antique table, pushing his chair in and settling at parade rest. Jake followed Father out, casting a single indecipherable glance over his shoulder.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” their potential said, in a breathless rush. Her knuckles paled again; if she had a Son’s strength, she might shatter heavy ceramic just by clutching. “I just—can I ask you for something?”
“Of course,” he repeated. She was probably going to tell him she hated him and never wanted to see his face again. Her anger had to fasten somewhere, a perfectly normal reaction to getting a peek under the skin of the waking world.
“The socks. On my bed.” Her throat moved as she swallowed, and the pulse there was a hummingbird’s wings. “Can you… I don’t want them there.” Half shamefaced, half determined, she searched his expression, her dark-blue eyes very wide.
Is that all? “I’ll take care of it. Right now, if you want.” Was the a test of his willingness, or was she fixating on socks to get her through the interaction?
It didn’t matter. The important thing was that she’d made a request he could answer. A good way to build trust, and—oh, hell, he wanted to help her.
He longed to get that breathless, terrified look off her face.
“Please?” After all that, she was still polite. She watched him, but for the first time, not like he was a danger to be kept in view.
That didn’t matter either. If it made her happy, or even took a little of that devouring, paralyzing fear away, he’d break down the whole bed and cart it out piece by piece. He’d even do it with a smile and a whistle. “You don’t even have to ask,” he said. “Just tell me, lirai, and it’s done.”