Chapter 14 Productive Brooding
Productive Brooding
Just before dawn, Nigel’s nerves were very nearly raw. The Dreamer was restless, tossing and murmuring on a frankly substandard bed, and he hoped she was finding some solace in unconsciousness.
Edward had settled in the single, rather spindly chair near the window, his boots propped on the likewise rickety table and his eyes half-lidded as he took refuge in the trancelike state Sons could use as a substitute for sleep.
While a lirai’s presence purged fatigue and the energy released from killing shadowbeasts could stand in for nourishment, regular old rest and actual food were still optimal.
Their fragile new responsibility sighed, a shapeless mutter on her lips as she rolled over, one leg pistoning briefly as if to kick away a grasping hand.
She’d nearly wrecked the linens, quite the active sleeper.
Nigel hovered a few steps from the bed’s foot, watching.
Her hair was tangled over the coverlet since she hadn’t bothered to slip between the sheets, but tucking her in might have been…
misconstrued, so he had abstained. A feverish flush rose in her hollow cheeks, and since she hadn’t taken her shoes off, the trainers moved restlessly against mauve polyester.
The color scheme in this place was simply awful. No matter, she would be awash in every possible luxury the moment they brought her over the Divide. Finding the nearest frontier temple would be comparatively easy once that rock-wall was surmounted.
Before then, a single miscalculation could kill both him and Edward. More importantly, it might rob the world of a Dreamer.
The exact route of their escape depended on far too many variables at the moment. The most he could do was build a skeleton to be altered as circumstances required. They needed supplies, fresh transport, whatever comfort could be found for the lirai—the list was near endless.
He didn’t even know her name. He could rack his brains, attempting to remember what the martinet called her, or he could spend time on more productive brooding.
The first order of business was attempting to achieve some tenuous trust, then trying to call in.
The Mad God would be waiting for his once-soldiers to contact the rest of their kind.
No doubt the erasure of the trios sent to clear and hold Boise had been noted, but it would be assumed the god was simply keeping his house in clean order.
Reinforcements would eventually arrive when they could be spared—but who knew when that would be?
New arrivals would not guess that the previous survivors had been pushed and herded for hundreds of miles, used to find a Dreamer.
The overwhelming priority for those back east was protecting the lirai they already had, along with bringing newly found potentials to the Flame—now that those capable of surviving that event weren’t being hunted even in territories the Sons held, that was.
Retreading recent revelations was less than efficient.
A thin thread of unease worked down Nigel’s back, itched in his palms. He had finally flicked the light in the loo off, once it was apparent she was asleep.
The television was still live, casting a blue glow through the room; its display would ripple or waver if certain types of shadowbeast approached, as well as providing more mundane warning if local authorities began spreading pictures of the god’s quarry.
Her breathing quickened. Another spate of restless movement, turning over, one pale hand flung out, nearly striking the nightstand.
Nigel almost twitched—the urge to move closer, to shield her from impact and possibly a bruise, was startling in its intensity.
A feverish drench of power spread in concentric rings; their new lirai tensed, inhaling sharply as if slapped.
No doubt her military-minded friends had trained her, since she was off the bed almost before she could be fully awake, landing in a defensive crouch, her elbow just missing the nightstand’s edge.
Shaking her head, hair moving in a soft wave, and for a bare moment he thought she meant to attempt some kind of escape despite the odds against such a maneuver.
Edward gained his feet in a lunge, the chair teetering dangerously behind him.
Orient her. “Ma’am?” Dreamers were often uncertain of the boundaries between the waking world and other places, other planes. If she began to scream or struggle—
“Incoming,” she gasped, holding the bed’s side as if clinging to flotsam. “Gotta move, pack up, incoming!”
“Sir?” Edward was barely a half-step from the window; he peered out, tweaking the stiff, dusty curtain aside. “You think maybe she—”
Glass shattered, fabric snap-popping and freeing a cloud of small particles.
The lirai’s scream, lost in a rising snarl, was also accompanied by a surge of that wonderful warm power, just this side of boiling.
A flagrant use of force, hitting both Sons and spreading in overlapping rings; a gout of foul steam exploded and the nthlei did as well, gobbets of flesh and spatters of ichor propelled in every direction.
At least she was between bed and wall, relatively protected for the moment. The Dreamer cowered, slim arms folding over her head, and Nigel threw himself down next to her, attempting to stem the flow of invisible force.
Amazing that she had enough wherewithal to broadcast so strongly, especially while so terribly disoriented.
Lirai were deep wells, though not infinite; as exhaustion set in the effect and its radius would wane.
She would lose consciousness, which might make her biddable but also ran the risk of great physical or mental damage.
Burnout.
“Up,” he said in her ear, his arm around her, roaring liquid heat along his skin. He knew how to handle pain; its antithesis was distracting at best. He managed to get his other arm under her knees. “Edward! Sideways.”
Nigel’s Elder had already decided against bursting out the front door with guns blazing, so to speak, and needed no further urging.
He flung himself past the steaming mess of a too-eager, now-dead nthlei—both it and the god’s human hands had attacked too soon—and straight through the interior wall next to the door.
Even hitting the lumber providing a skeleton for drywall and paneling wouldn’t sting very hard.
Nigel uncoiled, carrying the lirai with him, and she surprised him.
In fact, she clung to him with near-hysterical strength as they flew, and it was proof he was in plain terms a right bastard, for the sensation was deeply pleasant.
Soon enough she would be carried through whatever city was blessed enough to warrant her attention, sending delicious, invisible force through Sons as they fought, clearing away the Mad God’s filth.
No doubt tonight would eventually become a dim, unpleasant memory for her; she wouldn’t even remember his name.
He hit the hole Edward had torn in the wall with flesh and sorcery both, cradling her as gently as possible. In all his years fighting the unclean, he had never run with a woman’s face pressed into his shoulder, and he hoped the straps of his weapons-rig wouldn’t mash her pretty aristocratic nose.
His Elder blinked across the empty room next door, crashing through the wall on the opposite side.
Each rent was widened by Nigel’s passage, and the amount of power pouring through both of them was volcanic.
She had to be terrified; Dreamers could see only with inner, sorcerous Sight during this type of combat—the lirai fight blind, as the saying went.
Well, it was more like running away than a proper battle, but the principle still held.
Edward burst through another wall and veered, turning on a dime.
Bright electric light flooded over Nigel in a wave, sparkling on flying drywall dust; the room was a copy of the others but one of the twin beds was clearly slept in, an open suitcase stood on the other, the television was blaring pay-per-view of a particularly naughty sort, and the sound of running water drifted through the half-open door to the loo.
A terrific shattering impact was Edward bursting through the window and across the breezeway, Nigel hot on his heels with the lirai clutched close, outpacing glass shrapnel as he called on every iota of speed the mark on his forearm—and her swirling, rocketing force—could grant.
The parking lot was alive with the unclean.
* * *
Edward did not have to shoot repeatedly at the trio of sarnaki—the instant he fired, each bullet wedded to lethal force and placed for maximum effectiveness, the pale blue-eyed excrescences were down and rotting.
A swollen hunting-pack of nthlei nearly exploded, jana-spiders wither-writhed as they died, and red gems from the collars of rabid venomous moondogs pattered on cracked concrete with oddly sweet chiming sounds as the hulking things desiccated in fast-forward, ichor bursting in torrents from cracked, steaming hides.
Yet Nigel could feel her fading. The lirai huddled against him, possibly too terrified to tremble, and the tsunami of dappled, wonderful force staggered, became intermittent. The night revolved, dark earth spinning underfoot; a Son could run swiftly for a very long while.
Finally Edward plunged into a stand of fragrant cedars, skidding to a halt.
A small stream nearby chuckled to itself, breathing up good clean waterscent into the darkness.
Nigel was relieved to plant his own near-smoking boots on springy dry soil, and as soon as he was certain of no pursuit he tucked his chin, attempting to look down at his lirai.
All that gained him was a nose buried in her hair and the consciousness of just how desperately she gripped his shoulder, her other hand curled around his neck. Frail, feverish fingers pressed into his nape with surprising strength.
“All’s well,” he found himself saying softly. Vast starlit quiet swallowed the words, perhaps before they reached her. “You’re safe, it’s all right.”
Edward rested one spread hand against a tree trunk. “Can’t sense them,” he muttered, between deep gasping breaths. “Is she hurt?”
“Not that I can tell.” Nigel had to free his mouth from her hair to speak clearly, and his own ribs were heaving as well. “But drained, certainly. It seems we must steal another vehicle.”
“Always a pleasure. We had to anyway, the other one pulled a little to the right.” Edward paused. A Son’s night-vision was far better than an ordinary’s, though largely devoid of color; even so, Nigel could only define his Elder’s expression as peculiar. “Sir? Are you…”
“I am worried for our Dreamer.” Was his own face speaking too loudly? He hoped not. “She’s untrained.”
As always, Edward arrived swiftly at the correct question. “How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps she will tell us, in time.
” He had to assume she was listening, despite the fear.
Gaining her trust—or at the very least compliance—required some manner of predictability on the part of her captors, not to mention overt calm.
“The town is likely overrun. Shall we double back or forge onward?”
“Either’s bad at this point.” Edward exhaled hard, and when he stepped away from the tree he did so cautiously, balanced all through the movement, head cocked as he listened for pursuit. “But we might as well try to make some progress, I’m thinking.”
“I concur.” At least Nigel had arrived at some approximation of a plan while watching her toss restlessly for hours.
“East—and south. We’ll head for Laramie.
” It was a mere outpost, the closest they could possibly reach—not as the crow flies, certainly, but there were considerations other than sheer speed at the moment.
Their lirai’s physical and mental state, for example, and the need to be canny as hunted creatures who intended to survive.
It was not enough to fight with savagery. Strategy was also necessary, and cool calculation of certain risks.
“Not Billings?” Edward had clearly been mulling routes as well. “And that’ll take us right through—”
“We can discuss my reasoning later.” It was the darkest, quietest time of predawn, and Nigel wanted to keep moving. The urge was an itch in his bones, not at all soothed by a lirai’s closeness or the countryside’s perhaps-false tranquility. “Right now, our Dreamer needs care.”
“Yessir.” Still, Edward hesitated. “How did they find us? What’d we miss?”
“I can’t tell,” Nigel had to admit. The dull consciousness of a failure could hardly be the god’s voice; no, it was all his own. “But I am determined we shall overlook nothing else.” He shifted slightly, attempting to see if the lirai would let go.
She didn’t. If anything, her arms tightened, and it was just as well.
He wasn’t entirely certain he could loosen his own grip upon salvation.