Dweller on the Threshold (37 page)

“I guess some things are so traumatic they make some remember. And some forget.”

“I have a sister,” I blurted out. “Not by blood but love. She’s the best friend I have. I came here because of her. To help her.”

He nodded. “You’re here because her soul has been taken. I don’t know what’s doing this. I only know my presence keeps it physically here even though it has been able to reach other cities with its power. I believe it’s a part of me—like my soul or something.”

“Can you call it?” If he could call the Dweller, maybe I wouldn’t need to drag anyone else into this. Maybe I wouldn’t have to kill the person who was keeping the souls. Kill Nikolos. Kill my fucking brother. I held back another sob.

“No.” He came close and touched my hat. “Can I see your hair?”

I took the hat off and pulled out the pins, letting my hair fall to the ground around me.

He touched it. Smiled again and this one was full of genuine warmth and amusement. No wonder the people in town hid him—protected him.

“I know why you came here,” he said, his voice low.

I couldn’t look away. A masculine version of me—and one who looked more feminine. That should have bothered me, but sometime in the last few days I’d quit thinking of myself as an Amazon. Might have had something to do with making love to Nikolos. “I told you why I was here,” I said. “My sister.”

He stepped back and crossed his arms. The sun chose that moment to break through the canopy of trees overhead and he was bathed in pure, sparkling light. I squinted, worked at the dimensional layers and let myself see his army of guides. All six stared back at me then looked over my shoulder. I followed them to find Fred, his face lowered and hidden from me.

If Castor and I were twins—and I still wasn’t able to wrap my mind around that fact—what was with the very different protectors? If he was a being of light—and had been given what looked like gods and goddesses as guides—what did that make me?

My mind flashed back to a moment from my past. The one that had made me run hiding to the beach. Me, standing over what was left of a black wizard. I looked at my palms now—clean—and remembered them covered in his blood, remembered the grinning fire elemental who had done something to my mind. Taken over my very soul.

At the time I’d thought the fire elemental had made me kill that wizard. Now I could only wonder. I focused on my brother, standing in that stream of sunlight—looking like perfection realized. He’d been brought to life for one reason and one reason only. Love. I could see it in his face. He was happy to meet me, happy to know me.

“Why do you think I’m really here?” I whispered.

His expression didn’t change. He looked serene and untouchable. “You came into this swamp to kill me.”

Chapter Eighteen

What could I say? I sat there on the ground, my hair hanging like a shroud around my head. The swamp was no longer silent—the buzzing of the thousands of bees pretty much muffling the other sounds of wildlife. I could hear birds—which kinds I couldn’t have said since I was trying too hard to figure out a way to solve this without killing anyone.

We had come to find the host—to possibly kill the host. Yeah, we were hoping the spell would keep that from being a necessity but it was the truth. I offered him a weak smile, knowing there wasn’t a thing on this earth that would make me take his life. And it had little to do with the fact that he was my brother. No, it had more to do with the kind of person he obviously was. “One look at you was all it took, Castor. That’s no longer on the agenda.” I didn’t say anything about the only other way I had to free my sister. Instead, I let myself go numb inside.

His hair—short, the color of a freshly polished penny—turned rusty and bright in the sunlight. He sat on the ground next to me and crossed his legs. We were the same age yet he seemed so much younger, as if his lack of experience had slowed the aging process. He didn’t smile, though there was an acceptance in his eyes that drove a chill into my numb heart.

“I’m prepared for that, should it turn out to be our only choice. I’ve been attached to this place my entire life and in the months before people started falling with this illness, I felt something in the earth stirring.”

“There are many things stirring here,” I said, my voice low. I was speaking of VonBrahm’s victims.

He gazed toward the trees over my head. “I know. I’ve never understood why they’re trapped. Yet so am I.” Sadness etched his face as his gaze returned to me. “There is a creature gathering power here.”

“We’ve been calling it the Dweller. The Dweller on the Threshold.”

“That’s the name?” He shuddered. “Terrible. Tell me what you know about it.”

I sat up straight and started to reply when my attention was snagged by dots of movement around me. I say dots because they started out that way as they came from everywhere. Came from the trees.

The bees were gathering. And they were agitated.

Handfuls hovered around us in a kind of circle. Dried leaves rustled and shifted as the lower, slithery creatures came to investigate. I could hear bigger things moving farther out. I looked into the foliage as I spoke. “I came here with a man who faced this thing down before.”

His copper-colored brows met in the middle of his forehead. “Wait, you mean it isn’t
from
part of me?”

Something big crashed out there. I scrambled to my feet, fist clenched near my knife.
Was that a deer?
I shielded my eyes from the sun as the world went still. Swallowing to ease my dry throat, I kept my voice low and told Castor about the karma—the reincarnation and all the other crazy stuff I’d learned over the past few days. Hard to believe it had been less than a week.

The whole time, I never once took my eyes from the woods. Every hair on my body was standing on end—my stomach twisting, my back stiff.

The rumble of an engine broke through the heavy silence that fell between us when I stopped talking. Another swamp buggy, this one filled with Blythe, Dooby, Nikolos, and Elsa bumped over the ground toward us, stopping about thirty yards away. Or getting stuck in the mud thirty yards away. Good thing Sally had told me about the last part of the trip.

I could see the fury emanating from Nikolos from here. I curled my lip and pulled out my knife and the one I’d taken from him, gripping them in both fists. Squinting, I separated the dimensional layers, noticing as I did that I was getting good at doing it. Better than ever before.

The black mass around him was spinning—thick and ominous—the cries of those trapped flying across the air to hurt my ears and nearly masking the sound of him splashing through swamp water. He and the others had come from another direction and parked closer than I had. But that side of the clearing was surrounded by thigh-deep, tannin-stained liquid.

His already slanted dark eyes were so narrow only a glimmer of the fury was visible, but his steady, intent movements said plenty about how he felt about my defection during the night. Mud spattered his clothes, face and hair—he must have driven like a maniac to get here.

 
“Uh, Beri.” I glanced at Castor to find him staring at Nikolos, face gone pale. “What is that around him? And do you hear that?”

The spirits whimpered, some growing into a vibrating howl. Wincing, I stepped in front of my newfound brother and lifted the knives. I felt Phro’s comforting presence beside me without even seeing her. I briefly wondered if Castor could see her, then had my attention snagged on the furious giant coming my way.

 
On the drive here, I’d tried to formulate the words—thought about what I’d say to Nikolos—and it had come out articulate and polite and all kinds of adult. Instead, here I stood holding knives and feeling as if someone had used them to carve out my heart. When he was about five feet away, I slowly shook my head. “You’d better stop there, Nikolos.”

The man was smart. He halted. I was a little surprised, actually.

“Why did you come without us?”

I tightened my grip on the knives until pain spiked through my knuckles. “Why do you keep a ward about yourself?”

He nodded slowly as understanding erased some of the anger from his expression. “You felt it last night? The magic?” He closed his eyes as a wave of anguish swept over his frame. My heart lodged in my throat. He lowered his voice. “Do you not hear them crying, Bergdis?”

“I hear them,” I whispered, trying to swallow my matching agony as it rose, powerful and crushing. “Castor hears them. Nikolos… I
see
them. I have from the beginning.”

He opened his eyes—darkly bleak—then loosened his fists to let his hands fall to his sides. “And what did you think they were? Did you realize that they’re souls?”

Nodding, I glanced over his shoulder at the vehicle where Blythe and Dooby watched us. Blythe had both hands raised to her mouth.

Meeting the desperately tortured gaze of this big man nearly killed me. “I assumed they were victims from all the wars you’ve been in. But slowly I began to realize what they might be—that they might be what keeps you alive. And you know what, Nikolos? I didn’t think you knew. You said you don’t know how you swam through that labyrinth. You said you don’t know how you’re still alive.” The last part was so low and came through such clenched teeth, I didn’t know if he could hear it.

He took a step.

I lifted the knives. “I saw the ward leak last night. I saw a new soul sucked into that mass.”

A faint smile twisted his mouth, and before my eyes he seemed to shrink. Not his body but his presence. There were darker splotches spreading on his T-shirt and dismay still crept into my chest when I realized it was blood from that damned chest wound. His smile was sucked up by the grimace he couldn’t quite disguise. His shoulders fell slightly—his tanned skin turning yellow.

He was dropping all his magic
.

And as it dissipated, the howls of the souls grew in volume until I wanted to scream myself. I sensed movement and caught Castor’s moan as he came around me.

“What can we do? Can you let them go?” He crossed the ground to Nikolos in a long, agitated stride. “How can we help them?”

I lowered my knives when I saw that Nikolos had no intention of hurting my brother. He was also in no shape to fight me. I didn’t want to fucking fight him anyway.
Damn the man
. I couldn’t handle seeing his pain anymore than I could really hurt him.

I was in love with him. Truly—deeply.

Movement behind Nikolos told me Blythe and the necromancer were getting out of the vehicle. Guess they’d realized the situation had diffused.

Nikolos stared at my brother, then lifted an eyebrow at me.

I shrugged. “Seems I’m not the only freak of nature around here.”

Blythe, who had been creeping up behind Nikolos, piped up. “We’re all freaks of nature here, Beri.”

“Speak for yourself,” Dooby said. He had a hold of one side of the heavy spell book. Blythe the other. The water, thigh-high on Nikolos, had soaked Blythe’s jeans and most of her pink T-shirt. Dooby was wet to the waist. They must have held the book over their heads. Impressive. That damn thing weighed a ton.

I looked for my sister and saw that they’d left her in the buggy—a blanket propped a couple of feet over her face for a makeshift shelter. I saw Castor looking in the same direction.

“Is that your sister?”

My heart was in my throat as I nodded. I watched him walk downhill to the buggy. He didn’t hesitate at the water—just slugged through. He leaned over the side of the vehicle and draped the blanket over his shoulder. He then slid his hands under my sister and lifted her into his arms with ease.

Seems he had the same kind of strength I did. I still hadn’t fully swallowed the idea of family—an actual blood relation.

He carried her toward the cabin.

“No,” I called out. The thought of her in that house sent panic skittering through my veins. “Not inside. Not in there.” All I could think about was who had once lived in this place. What he’d done here.

Castor understood. “The people in town helped me tear his home down. This cabin was not here then.”

“I don’t care. I want her out here. With us. Where I can see her.” I put the knives away and rubbed my hands over the goose bumps popping up all over my arms.

Nikolos pulled the blanket from Castor’s shoulder and spread it on the ground.

My brother laid Elsa gently on top of it. “She’s pretty.”

I knelt beside her and brushed blonde hair off her face. Then I held my hand an inch over her mouth to feel the reassuring warmth of her breath on my palm. “She’s wonderful. When this is all over, I’ll tell you about her.”

“I’ll learn for myself.” He smiled.

I still didn’t know what to say to Nikolos so I stood and trudged through the water to heft the wrapped mirrors from the buggy. Snagging the dried mullein leaves, I grimaced at the mud splattered over their fuzzy surface. I swung Blythe’s satchel around my shoulder and took my time going back to the others, but stopped halfway there.

 
Something had joined us. Evil, murky and soulless, it pricked at my skin. I looked into the forest while I listened to the others.

“You’re not afraid to use black magic?” Castor was asking Dooby.