The Hollow Gods (The Chaos Cycle #1)

Chapter 51

Chapter

Fifty-One

Mason

Miya was engulfed in violet and black flames. She remained unburnt as the fire flickered around her sleeping form. It licked her skin and haloed her hair, caressing her body in a loving embrace. Above her, a woman floated through the air—her face hidden behind a mask and her body cloaked in shining, iridescent feathers.

The Dreamwalker.

She was humming quietly to herself as she peered down at the comatose girl, then reached out to stroke her face.

Mason recognized her from his dream, and from the vision at the willow tree. She was the girl who had been driven out of the village by that shadow. She was different now—her face and figure obscured by her unusual garments, but he could still see the flow of her dark brown hair, identical to that of both previous apparitions.

She hovered over Miya, then leaned her face close to the unconscious girl and tilted her head like a curious magpie. She seemed at peace—yet the flames surrounding both women grew more ferocious with every passing moment.

Unable to tolerate the vision any longer, Mason turned away, scanning the room to see the bloody state of the battle. Kai too was enveloped by a dark mist. His eyes were red, his movements blurred as though he were amid a dream-like fog. In front of him were several of the townspeople, their faces distorted and their eyes blank as dark shadows sprang from their spines like tentacles, each one attached to something malevolent drifting around the entrance of the cabin. The villagers were all being controlled by the same entity.

Most of the guns were lost in the scuffle, broken or damaged by Kai and Ama. But there always seemed to be a weapon nearby. Jake, the man who Ama first confronted at the door, stumbled to his feet, his face swollen and bruised from the fight as he grabbed the last remaining rifle and swooned forward, pointing it straight at Kai.

“I’ll kill you!” he raged in a voice that didn’t sound human.

Mason felt like he was in a nightmare, the faces around him grotesque, twisted and misshapen—completely unrecognizable from the citizens of Black Hollow who had gathered in the church only days prior. Black, tarry blood oozed from their orifices as strangled, beast-like moans emanated from their throats. These were not ordinary people any longer. On the contrary, they looked like the monsters they believed themselves to be hunting.

And they weren’t alone.

Dark shapes flickered across the wall—shadows cast by no object. They were frighteningly lifelike, undulating and rippling over the villagers’ heads. It was as though they’d gathered from the other realm to spectate the battle with gratified sneers and thunderous laughter.

Mason squeezed his eyes shut. This can’t be real , he thought. It just can’t be .

From somewhere deep within, the little boy who stood by Aunt Lisa’s bed as she took her last breath spoke up for the first time in decades.

But it is real , he whispered, at first meekly, then with urgency. This is all real .

You’re just going to have to find your place in it.

When Mason opened his eyes again, the shadows were still there. Perhaps they’d always been there, and he’d only failed to notice.

Ama and a snarling Kai barricaded Miya’s unconscious form.

“I won’t huff, or fucking puff,” Kai muttered through clenched teeth as he took a threatening step towards the throng of villagers. “I’ll just burn you all to the ground.”

The question of whether Kai Donovan was a man or a wolf struck Mason as foolish then. It was clearer than anything happening in the cabin; Kai was neither one nor the other. He was both man and wolf.

But Kai’s advance was cut short by the deafening sound of a gunshot and the smell of burnt powder smoking from the barrel of Jake’s rifle. Mason expected Kai to fall, but he gave them nothing but a throaty growl as he clutched his arm. The bullet had struck his shoulder, the force of the blow pushing him back as blood trickled down his arm and dripped from his fingers.

The villagers froze, the ringing from the gunshot fading into deafening silence. The wind outside howled until the walls sheltering them began to creak, the entire structure teetering.

Kai looked up with a menacing, blood-stained grin. “Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

Mason’s heart seized in his chest. Kai wasn’t bluffing. The phantoms and the villagers, the wolf and the man—these were not two realities colliding; they were already a coherent whole.

Mason heard a sharp, disembodied laugh from behind him. It sounded like Miya—but when he spun around, he came face-to-face with the Dreamwalker, still hovering over the girl’s body. Her lips stretched back as she brought a finger to her lips and silenced the young doctor with a single hush.

Everything grew calm and still before the storm struck. The door of the cabin tore open from outside, the Dreamwalker’s laugh answered by a high-pitched caw that Mason recognized as a raven’s. Was it the old man? Or the boy? He could only imagine that it was Gavran—and Gavran appeared to be many things. Mason swore he could hear the rustle of the willow tree’s branches, its tiny emerald blades blowing inside with an ethereal glow. The villagers watched, hypnotized. Their arms went limp, and their weapons hit the ground in a series of hollow thuds. One of them gasped, about to release a blood-curdling scream when a black mass darted into the cabin. It was indeed a raven, slicing past the crowd towards Miya. The bird slowed before the Dreamwalker, beating its wings and landing on the phantom’s outstretched arm.

Mason was dumbfounded. How could this animal perch on a spirit? The raven had always appeared so life-like, but perhaps it too was from another realm. Or at least, someplace in between. The raven’s beak yawned open as its wings spread wide, and it chortled joyously, as though happy to be reunited with an old friend.

When one of the villagers regained his bearings and stepped towards them, the raven thrust out its head and released a low, threatening death rattle. It seemed to be protecting Miya, challenging anyone who dared approach.

Mason’s eyes drifted back to the Dreamwalker. As though feeling his gaze, she turned to him and smiled like she was passing a secret. Her mischief had given way to something else—something gentle, perhaps even compassionate.

Mason’s heart filled with grief. He finally understood. All this time he’d spent trying to prove the stories false only further cemented them in reality. If he was so confident they were fiction, why did he need proof? He had undertaken his own witch hunt; he was no different from the villagers he’d accused of destroying what they tried to protect. He wanted to shield his simple world, and in his efforts, he’d smashed it to pieces, leaving a vacuum for everything he thought impossible to take its place.

How had he not seen it? The truth was in front of him all along. It was the same as with any cancer treatment.

The poison was the cure.

Yet Mason had no time to dwell; the battle was not yet over. Shaking off their stupor, the villagers turned their attention back to Kai. As though smelling the blood from his wounds, they lunged like starved animals.

Kai brushed off their careless swings with ease, tearing his knife through bone and flesh alike. As he did, the shadows lifted from the villagers, erupting into murals of blood that licked the walls. The townsfolk went limp and fell to the floor as the remaining darkness bled out and whisked towards the Dreamwalker. Mason followed it with his eyes, watching as the rapidly dissipating blackness lashed out at her in what appeared to be one final attack. Yet having lost its substance, the shadow struck her like mist on a rock. It shattered into a thousand tiny particles, vanishing into the air.

Who are you , Mason found himself thinking, his lips barely moving to form the words.

With her free hand, the Dreamwalker reached up and traced the outline of her bone mask. Gripping the tip of the beak, she slowly pulled it aside.

Mason’s vision clouded over, and the woman’s face faded into darkness as he fell towards the ground.

“Did I not tell you...” echoed the voice of the old man and the boy in unison.

“...that everything beats in cycles.”