The Waking Dreamer (17 page)

Ellie’s crying grew softer as her lithe form hunched over Sebastian. Keiran stepped in front of Emmett and inched closer to Ellie with his open palm held before him.

She suddenly lunged up and swung with a fierce slash, her hand drawing the knife out of Sebastian’s body with a spray of blood. She snarled, jabbing at Keiran. He began to form a melody, but she kicked dirt and pitch at him, his concentration broken as he shielded his head with his hands.

She slashed the knife and caught the edge of Keiran’s shoulder. Hissing through clenched teeth, Keiran brought his other leg around in a wide kick that met her other arm, pushing her back several paces.

Screams rang out near the front of the train. Gurgling sounds assaulted the night, followed by people begging for mercy from some unknown attacker.

A wide grin snaked across Ellie’s face. “Silvan Dea falls tonight,” she said knowingly. More frantic screams erupted, and Emmett strained in the darkness to see figures chasing other figures. Grotesque cheers called into the night as Revenant worshippers fell onto their victims, bludgeoning, slashing, or hacking at fallen passengers in a mass of flailing limbs and helpless, unanswered pleas.

“Flesh given for power!” she cried, bringing her knife down directly toward Keiran’s heart. “For Bezal—”

Emmett swung his recovered pipe directly at her face, connecting with bone before she could drive her knife into Keiran’s chest. She obviously had never considered Emmett as he struggled to position himself, never saw him as any threat to her. His vicious blow wrenched her petite frame backward with all the righteous anger he did not know he could possess.

Her head unnaturally snapped to the side, Ellie crumpled motionless in the grass. Her glossy, unfocused eyes stared blankly with her mouth slightly open. With the knife lying at her side, her body resembled a rag doll tossed unused into the corner of a child’s room, her legs folded awkwardly underneath her.

Emmett dropped the pipe, collapsing onto his knees with the shudder of the blow. His arms vibrated as the feeling of broken bone traveled up the length of his arms and throughout his body. The rage burning in him was suddenly extinguished, and the cold night assaulted his lungs as he struggled to heave air into a nauseated stomach. Fighting lightheadedness that blurred his vision, he focused on Keiran’s face.

“Emmett?” Keiran asked tentatively, reaching one hand out toward him.

Continued screams demanded the focusing of his consciousness, and Emmett willed himself to concentrate. He nodded at Keiran, standing upright as Keiran did so.

“I’m … I’m okay,” he stumbled. He knew he wasn’t. He had never hit another person. Never
hurt
someone. Never
death
.

I may never be okay again.

But there was no time for it.

Keiran watched him for a moment and seemed to recognize the shift in him before examining his own shoulder. Satisfied that the cut was not too deep, he scanned the area for others converging on them. Dark, cloaked figures ran about the area chasing passengers, but none seemed to be moving toward them.

“I can’t fight all of them. We can use the cover of darkness to run.”

“You knew, didn’t you?” Emmett stared down at Ellie’s limp form.

“I didn’t know for certain,” Keiran said as he knelt down and held a pair of fingers to Sebastian’s neck. “His pulse is nearly gone.” Keiran lowered his head over Sebastian and whispered something into his ear. Standing quickly just as another great howl sounded again in the distance, he grabbed Emmett’s arm with an urgency that communicated more than any words could hope to.

“Do exactly as I say; in a moment, things are going to get much, much worse.”

How worse could things get?

“What about Sebastian? We can’t leave him!”

“He’d only slow us down,” Keiran said unemotionally.

They hurried past the rear car and out into the empty fields beyond. They had run several hundred yards as another howl sounded. It was so close that Emmett felt the edges of his skin clamber, and he recoiled from something hot breathing against his neck.

Keiran abruptly stopped, holding Emmett fast to him in the darkness.

“Show yourself,” Keiran commanded firmly to the unresponsive night.

When nothing happened, Keiran tensed his shoulders and pushed his chest out. When he spoke again, it was with a voice filled with both courage and terror.

“I name you, Baraqiel. Reveal yourself.”

From coalescing shadows directly before them, the outline of a stooped figure suddenly appeared. Keiran whispered something soft and a halo of fireflies rose from the surrounding grasses, their dancing lights casting the figure in an ambient glow.

An old, haggard woman covered in a tattered robe leaned with great effort against a gnarled wooden staff nearly twice her height. She took a labored step toward them, and as she did so, the prairie grasses wilted in a wide swath before her.

Keiran held his open palm outstretched as his other arm pushed Emmett behind him. “I have named you. Do not approach us.”

The heavy folds underneath her swollen, pupil-less eyes contorted as a wicked, toothless smile spread across her pockmarked face. A dry wheeze followed a rasping chuckle that passed with effort over her cracked lips.

“The sad, sad boy who cried atop the snowy mountain,” she rasped in a high, keening voice. “He knows the name the Elders fear to share with the Children.”

Keiran released a tempered note from his lips, which the old woman laughed at, waving a crooked hand at him. “Children fumbling in the dark, make-believe and feeble art,” she dismissed in a singsong tone.

“Who is that?” Emmett whispered.

“Not a
who
but a
what
. An Old One known as the Hag. She minds the Black Hounds,” Keiran said, motioning toward Emmett’s left. Emmett’s eyes followed, and he recoiled. A pack of large black mastiffs the size of horses appeared seemingly out of the darkness, their fierce, glowing red eyes staring at him. Their deep panting exhaled a thick, rolling mist in the night’s cold air.

“Mother’s beauties,” she rasped, her haggard stare lovingly draped over the waiting hounds. “They are hungry for a hunt.”

“We are warded,” Keiran said confidently, holding his exposed forearm up. “I command you to leave.”

The Hag raised a crooked finger and wagged it at Keiran with mock consternation. “Perhaps you, weeping Bard. But this one,” she said, indicating Emmett with her finger, “this one has not yet been Born to the Song. Even now, Death pursues him. My babies smell it. Salty pores drawn down-down-down to the lowest moors.”

The hounds took a collective step forward, the grass before them wilting beneath their massive paws. Keiran maneuvered himself between them and Emmett just as the Hag looked at Emmett. “You are familiar to me, little orphan.”

“Do not look at her,” Keiran snapped. “Close your eyes, Emmett! Now!”

Emmett shut his eyes as he cowered behind Keiran.

“He is under the protection of the Archivist!”

The Hag released a throaty laugh that chilled Emmett’s soul. “You presume to speak for her, false witness? You who lied to your Elders through tears for your lost love? Weep and wail, cry to the storm’s northern gale.”

“The Archivist has called him to her!” Keiran defiantly proclaimed with pride that bolstered Emmett’s frightened spirit.

“Her Grove has fallen. All the way down the mountain, tumble-tumble and rumble all the way,” she cack
led.

Emmett wanted to believe that Keiran could command the Hag away, that his authority was greater than whatever power she commanded. So hopeful was he that he opened his eyes and looked to Keiran.

“Born under the Light of Arthur, yes? An only child? Did you know what your mommy endured for you? What awaited her in the corner’s shadows long after the meddler stole you away?” the Hag intoned as her pupil-less eyes found Emmett’s.

“Damn it, Emmett! Close your eyes!”

Emmett nearly tore away in his own terror, closing his eyes tight and pulling his hands over them, as if to keep anything from entering them. There was silence but for his own breathing, Keiran’s labored breathing, and the heavy panting of the Black Hounds.

The Hag finally spoke. “The Old Ones do not suffer the little Children, weeping liar. Give me Emmett Jonathan Brennan, and I will leave. Let me spare you the suffering that awaits those who harbor him. You who have already seen so much of Death and found you had not the taste to endure it.”

She knows my name!

Emmett felt Keiran’s grip tighten as if he were steeling his resolve.

“Buildings may burn or crumble, but we survive. If no other Druids or Bards live, I still do! The Archivist’s Grove survives because Silvan Dea lives in me! Emmett belongs to us! I have named you, Baraqiel, and commanded you leave!” he shouted.

Emmett felt the palpable silence as the Hag apparently considered her response. Finally he heard something rustle in the grasses and, hearing Keiran release a long-held breath, chanced an open eye to see that the Black Hounds had bounded off for the train.

“Cower in fear all you wish, only child. But I
know
you now. The meddler may hide you, but I will see you again.”

The howling called again in the distance, and the echoing screams quickly died out, replaced by the baying of the Hounds. Where once there had been audible chaos, now only the crackling flames could be heard. The Hag pushed her staff forward, taking a step seemingly into shadow and vanishing into the cold night.

She knew me. She knows me.

Emmett could not bring himself to utter another word. The shocking, icy air blew through limbs that were engorged with adrenaline, and his body was trembling, too, with a fear of new, unimagined horrors that would be forever burned into his mind.

Keiran shook him by his arm as he forced his face directly into Emmett’s field of vision. “I need you to focus, mate. You trust me, yes?”

Emmett nodded dumbly, unblinking.

“Then run!”

They abandoned any semblance of cover and broke into a long, unending run out into the empty plains, hundreds of miles from help and lost in the wintry darkness.

CHAPTER 16

They ran for hours through waving prairie grasses before reaching a farm just before dawn. Keiran said nothing as they ran and Emmett dared not speak for fear he would have to slow down to do so. When Emmett could run no longer, Keiran hummed a melody that suffused his limbs with an uncomfortable urgency that helped him continue.

Collapsing underneath an oak tree behind the farm’s home, the effects of Keiran’s melody melted from Emmett’s limbs. They wobbled as if feeling had only just returned to them after years of disuse, and he quickly floundered as he tried to hold himself upright.

“Careful. Just keep rubbing them. Keep the blood moving down there.”

Keiran looked exhausted. His head seemed to sag under its own weight, and when he spoke, it was devoid of his usual cadence.

“Normally, my Bardic hearing would allow me to know if we had been followed on foot. But I am so drained that all I hear is a distant ringing. The Revenant worshippers need only follow our trail through the grass to find us.”

“How long do you think we have?”

“Hours. They’ll need to dispose of any evidence. Bold though their move against us was, I can’t believe they’ve surrendered their need for secrecy.”

“So what now?” Emmett coughed.

“We’ll change into these clothes,” Keiran said, motioning to a clothesline near them. “I’ve enough in me to
persuade
whoever lives here to drive us to the nearest town.”

As Keiran stood, Emmett readied to ask the hundreds of questions tumbling through his mind: Sebastian, Ellie, the passengers, the Hag and her Black Hounds …

Keiran seemed to sense this and held his hand up. “Not now, Emmett. Please, I need to get us away from here first,” he said, turning away and walking to the home.

As Keiran was knocking on the door, Emmett struggled to stand. He headed for the hanging clothesline just as a solitary light over the front door turned on above Keiran’s head.

Keiran returned as Emmett was changing, having procured for them a ride from the farmer and his wife to a larger town thirty miles away. Riding in the backseat of their pickup truck, Emmett collapsed from the strain of the journey. Keiran, too, surrendered to his own exhaustion, his eyes closed and head tilted forward with his neck against his chin. Emmett jumped each time he thought he heard an animal in the distance, hoping that Amala had finally come for them.

When they reached the larger town, Keiran used his remaining few hundred dollars to pay the farmer and purchase a pair of bus tickets. The previous hours had passed in silence, Emmett holding himself upright and trying to appear as calm and centered as Keiran had always been for his sake. If Keiran noticed this, he gave no indication, though he rarely looked at Emmett directly. Keiran never stopped looking around them, no longer bothering to hide his suspicions from Emmett. If a person stared too long in their direction or walked too close to them, Keiran would move them somewhere else with a constant glance over his own shoulder for any signs of pursuit.

Waiting for their departing bus, Keiran produced a whistle that caused the vending machine to short-circuit. He appeared with various snacks as he led Emmett to a secluded area of the bus depot, leaving the other passengers at a comfortable distance.

“Eat as much sugar as you can,” Keiran said as he pushed a pair of candy bars and a fruit juice can into his hands. “Your body will go into shock soon if you don’t eat enough. It’s not proper nutrition, but in extreme situations, survival is our first priority.”

When Emmett began eating, he found his greedy appetite could not be sated. He tore open the can and drank with loud gulps, ignoring an obnoxious belch that he pushed through so he could continue drinking the sweet, sugary carbonation.

“That’s not a song we often use given the resulting hunger and thirst … and belching,” Keiran offered with a half-grin, though over his candy bar Emmett did not see the usual Cheshire cat twinkle in his eyes.

Both ate ravenously. Keiran grinned sheepishly over his own burp.

“I won’t tell anyone,” Emmett said groggily. Having eaten his fourth candy bar, he could feel the resulting sluggishness as the sugar coursed through his blood and submersed his aching muscles.

“Want to talk about it?” Keiran asked.

Emmett stared out over Keiran’s shoulder at the long stretch of highway beyond the bus terminal. He wanted to be anywhere but here where the mundane elements of a lost life surrounded him: scattered people texting, children playing with each other, and piles of candy bar wrappers. In another place and time for any other person, these would have been simpler things.

Never again.

“I had to see a social worker once when I was fourteen. Lucy Janus was her name. Her office had this black and white photo of some urban skyline with a lemon-yellow sunrise overhead. I don’t know why I remember that—I couldn’t even tell you what the woman looked like now. Except that she had a stack of folders and my life was in one of them. She never made eye contact with me, just flipped through my folder while talking. And I kept my eyes fixed on that sunrise, wanting to be anywhere else but there.”

Keiran only nodded as he looked down at the table, not making eye contact with Emmett, who stared blankly at his own hands.

“She asked me all these questions. What I do for fun, what do I think of my teachers, do I hurt small animals, blah, blah, blah. And on and on she drones about movies—do I prefer them violent, do I know they aren’t real, do I think I’m a character
in
a movie. Anyway, I play along and answer her questions. After about ten minutes, she tells me we’re done, that I suffer from derealization, and to start taking the cocktail of pills she was recommending the nurse prescribe.”

“What’s derealization?”

“It basically means you’re disconnected from the world. You look out and see things and they don’t seem real to you. Perception is altered and everything feels separated from you.”

“What did you say?”

Emmett laughed bitterly and shook his head. “I should have just walked out. But I don’t know why—maybe it was just wanting to stay a while longer and stare at that lemon-yellow sun—but I told her she was wrong. So wrong. I told her that Jean-Luc Godard was right: truth really
is
found at twenty-four frames per second. Characters act according to their archetypes, and there’s always some kind of resolution in the end through which the protagonist finds meaning and experiences growth. Just because I preferred the consistency in film didn’t mean that I didn’t know the difference between make-believe and the real world.”

“You said all of this at fourteen?”

“It probably wasn’t worded as eloquently, and I may have said ‘like’ every four words. I can’t complain too much, because three years of selling those pills bought me my car. So, whatever,” Emmett snarked.

He felt the bitterness of grief in the back of his throat, somewhere between his tongue and soul. “You know, Keiran, everyone who’s ever taken care of me has died. My birth mom. My foster parents. Every group home I’ve lived in was run by someone too sick or too old not to suffer a heart attack or die of an overdose. My life began with death, and it’s been death ever since. So this idiot social worker says it’s not healthy for me to relate so closely with movies. And all I thought was, either everyone dies and nothing means anything, or everything’s a lie and there’s meaning in the farce.”

Keiran kept his eyes down, continuing to offer a quiet nod every so often.

“So you ask if I want to talk about it, and I appreciate it. But I don’t know what to say, man. Everyone always seems to die around me. I don’t know why when I met you and Amala I thought it would somehow be different.”

Keiran cupped his head with his hands. He cradled himself for a moment with a heavy sigh, pushing his hair back and stretching his arms in a fluid motion.

“The first time I killed someone, I told myself the feeling would go away. That the face would stop haunting me whenever I closed my eyes. That I would reconcile what I’d done and find a way to settle the matter within myself.”

“How long did it take?” Emmett asked.

“It hasn’t,” Keiran answered

“Well shit, thanks, K.”

“I see his face every time I close my eyes to sleep. It never recedes, Emmett. It always hurts. And it bloody well
should
. That’s why we’re the good guys. When you finally feel it, it remains with you forever. That’s how you know that you’re still human … and not a monster.”

Emmett felt a pinprick of emotion within him as Keiran said this, but he shook his head as if to will any thought of it from his mind.
Not now
.
Not yet
.
It’s too soon
.

“So what about all of those people on the train?” Emmett asked, quickly finding something to change the subject to. “Do you think any of them made it out alive?”

“Unlikely. I would suspect that the Revenants boarded at some point, overwhelmed the train’s crew, and when we were far from any major areas and it was dark enough to provide them sufficient cover, began their rampage. Chasing passengers into fires or slowly cutting people reaps the suffering they covet and use to appease their Underdweller masters.”

Emmett sighed under the weight of the unknown world he was now part of. He considered the middle-aged couple seated on the other side of the terminal, watching them talk. What would they say to the nightmares Emmett had witnessed? Even if Emmett told them everything, given them proof, could they even believe their world was more illusion than reality?

That Emmett still found himself in moments of wishing it were all fantasy told him otherwise. Watching how the husband doted on his wife while she smiled at him made Emmett think of the other helpless passengers aboard the train, running on instinct from an unseen attacker, pleading for mercy they would never find at the end of a cruel blade. They could never know the darkness that stalked the world.

The darkness that seemed to breathe; shadows that concealed unimagined cruelties. Ellie’s dead, listless face melted away in his mind, replaced by a face so burdened by heavy wrinkles that it looked like an expression had been carved into a candle and then a flame lit atop its wick, sending melting wax down all sides. The Hag formed in his mind, and Emmett shuddered so visibly that Keiran noticed it, too.

Perhaps understanding Emmett’s disquieted expression, Keiran shook his head quite suddenly. “No, Emmett. Don’t speak of her, lest you invite her attention to you.”

“Can I even ask questions?”

“You’re wanting to know what she is, I suspect,” Keiran said.

“Death? You know, with a capital D.”

Keiran shook his head. “No. Death isn’t a person; it’s the inevitable end of life. Personifying death gives you the ability to negotiate with it. But you can’t bargain with death. It is the end of your existence. It’s neither good nor evil. It just
is
.”

“So what is
she
?”

“Every culture has stories about her. Some say she greets the dead; others believe she’s a harbinger of disease; others that she’s a wandering spirit visiting places of great battle. But she is none of those things. She and her Black Hounds feast on the despair of the dying.”

“An Old One,” Emmett said.

“Yes. The normal conveyances of existence hold no interest for them. They are so old that creation holds little fascination for them. Immortal and thus removed from the moralities and ethics that bind all life, their motives are alien to us. They cannot be destroyed, and their powers are beyond ours. We avoid them at all costs.”

Checking around him to be certain no one was watching in their direction, Keiran pulled his plaid sleeve back and leaned forward across the bench. “The Children are warded,” he said. Revealing his tattooed arm, he turned it around so Emmett could see the back of his tricep. Tracing one finger along the unusual markings running its length, he settled on a particular ring of swirling lines that entwined several runes Emmett did not recognize.

“I am all but invisible to the Black Hounds, and only because I confronted and named her did the Hag deign to take notice of me.” He pulled his sleeve back down and settled back. “Naming an Old One is a matter for another time, Emmett. Trust me when I ask you to forget you heard it and never tell anyone that I spoke it.”

“Keiran, what she said about me—”

“Old Ones speak in unintelligible riddles, and they do so for reasons known only to them. Perhaps they have lived so long that what some would call prophecies are simply patterns to them. Who can say?”

“She knew things about me,” Emmett pressed. “When I opened my eyes, she knew I was an only child. Hell, she knew my full name!”

“The eyes are a conduit for many beings. She knows you now, and whatever that should mean for your life, we will simply have to face it as it occurs. But talking of her more than necessary is just an invitation for her renewed attention, and I daresay you would benefit from less of it,” Keiran said with finality.

Emmett understood Keiran’s gentle admonishment, and though he wanted to ask more, he stopped when he saw the bus pulling up to the terminal.

Keiran motioned to Emmett. “Time can offer us distance. Let us hope for a quiet journey to the Lighthouse, yes?”

Emmett stood from the bench. “Hey, just one more question, okay?”

Keiran nodded. “Of course.”

“These Old Ones … you said that they couldn’t see you. But one of them knows me now. If she comes back for me, can I be warded, too?”

Keiran did not respond with words but a firm grasp of Emmett’s shoulder, nudging him toward the line forming to get onto their bus. “Pay no mind to what she said, mate. Not to deflate your ego, but the Old Ones have no interest in people, Emmett. Why expect that it would ever happen to you again?”

Emmett did not respond to Keiran’s smile as they boarded the train, though something in his statement tugged at the back of his memory, leaving him feeling disquieted and apprehensive. For some reason, Emmett felt like that was not the case.