Wildblood

Chapter 47

47

Everything smelled like stale sandalwood and wet earth. Miya flexed her fingers, dirt sinking beneath her nails. With a ragged gasp, she sat up, breath fogging the thick air. A gray mist moved like smoke in the wind, gradually parting to reveal an open field. It was empty save for a leviathan tree—an ancient elm with a wide, gnarled trunk and a crown of jagged boughs. Its roots pulsed beneath the earth, drawing life from the fey soil. As Miya’s gaze skimmed upward, she saw the hanging star cresting the tips of the elm’s branches. She was in the dreamscape.

She plowed through her memory, retracing each step. After Caelan left the apartment, Ama followed her like an expert huntress. Caelan had ambled clumsily over the grass after they’d reached Boston Common, arm hanging limp as she clutched her swollen elbow. She’d been tranquil, homing in on the felled tree’s memorial plaque—a suture between realms. The one she’d ripped through to get to the material plane three years ago. Now, Miya found herself on the other side of reality, wondering how the hell she’d gotten there.

The elm was eternal on this side, needless of a memorial. As Miya re-oriented, her eyes snagged on Ann Glover’s swaying corpse. She still dangled from a thick branch, her neck bent where the rope drew taut. A gangly figure in a ratty coat and a tattered fishing hat stood at her feet, staring up at her.

The leshy.

He looked over his shoulder, his head clicking along like a rusty clock hand. As he moved, another figure appeared. A person—no, two people—obscured by the patchy brown garment clinging to the leshy’s angular frame like a sheet on a hanger.

A man Miya didn’t recognize, and a girl she did.

They were blurs in the haze, but she knew the shape of the girl—her coppery hair and elfish form. Caelan but not, the original to the imitation, the one who gave the fetch her moniker: the forgery.

The human double, Alina. She jerked away from the man, but he held her by the elbow—the same one that Caelan had injured. She appeared unharmed, but the mirroring between her and Caelan left spider legs crawling up Miya’s spine.

Miya shambled forward until the elm’s shade swallowed her, and she could make out the fraying threads of the leshy’s clothes, the runnels of his craggy face. She stopped beneath the tree’s limbs. “Let me out.”

The spirit shook his head, the movement stilted. “I cannot.”

Denial and confirmation in a single reply. The leshy must’ve foisted her into the dreamscape after she’d caught up to Caelan. She dreaded to think about Ama, bones snapping as her body twisted into the contours of a wolf. Whatever happened on the other side, Miya had no power. But Alina was there, trapped as Caelan hemmed her in.

“Please,” Miya implored, “don’t force her to kill.”

The leshy tilted his head with a quick jerk, the angle too severe. “This is the only way.”

“Aren’t you her friend?” she challenged. “You’re stripping her of her free will.”

“I’m stripping her of a fallacy,” his voice rumbled, something discordant warbling between each note. “Peeling away a false skin, like a tree shedding frail bark.”

“You’re damning her.”

“I’m freeing her.”

“No,” came a familiar drawl, “you’re a fool.”

Miya whirled, heart nearly crushing her windpipe. A small figure stood at her back, a mantle of dark feathers cloaking the wan body beneath. A corpse worn by a raven. “Gavran.”

Lips skinned back from serrated teeth, inky eyes shifting from the Dreamwalker to the leshy. “Deep roots don’t always find water, and age is no promise of wisdom.”

The leshy was unmoved, attention fixed on the raven donning the boy. “You think I am so foolish that I cannot understand your riddles, bird?”

The boy clasped both hands behind his back, marching forward in an exaggerated fashion. “Youth brings peculiar insight. Unadulterated truths. The wisdom of children, so often overlooked by those courted by their own irrelevance. A pathetic grab for control.” His gaze slid over the leshy. “That is the skin you wear, nature spirit. The fallacy which you refuse to shed.”

“Speak plainly,” the leshy hissed—wind through rustling leaves.

Another slithering smile, iridescent hair ruffling like plumage. “Do you not know what a fetch is, nature spirit? It does not kill for pleasure or to find solace. It kills to fill the space which it has made empty.”

“That’s right,” Miya mused aloud. “The fetch replaces its human double.”

“You see,” Gavran went on in delighted singsong, “your fetch is never returning home. You could compel her to kill a thousand just like her, and she will remain trapped not only to her instinct, but to the grief it has sown.”

Miya glimpsed the waver in the leshy’s eyes, echoed by the elm’s mournful creak. The spirit shuddered, his edges distorted in the gauzy air. “She cannot return until the mortal is dead. If she tries, she will be called back here again and again. There is no end to it. Only suffering.”

“She’s suffering because of you,” said Miya, her voice coated in steel. “You, who think you know best—exploiting one orphan to kill another. You’re supposed to be her ally, not her puppeteer.”

“I only want her to come home.” To think ancient voices could sound so small. Another tremble, a quake in the earth where the elm’s veins snaked beneath the dreamscape’s skin.

Miya recognized this feeling—this heaviness that weighed on body and soul. Sorrow like a net of thorns, clinching around the leshy’s heart, his realization chased by anguish. No matter what he did, Caelan was lost, enslaved to a nightmarish call or doomed to enact the very horror she fled from: murdering an innocent.

“Let me go,” Miya pleaded a second time. “Let me find a way to fix this.”

Another shake of the head. “I cannot.”

“Why?” Frustration graveled Miya’s reply.

“I…cannot,” he repeated. “This is my nature, as yours is to dream. We cannot defy what we are.”

Gavran’s pitch black eyes narrowed, tracing an invisible line to Alina’s shadow where she twisted from her captor in a futile dance. He purred in contemplation, then cocked his head with an eerie grin. “I see.”

Miya frowned at him. “See what?”

“You must kill it.” Gavran’s head righted itself, and his expression mellowed. “The nature spirit does not mean to trap you, but he cannot release you either. You must free yourself by force.”

Skepticism fluttered in Miya’s chest. She looked past the leshy to the spot that had Gavran so rapt—where a shade in Alina’s likeness stood as her effigy in the dreamscape. He’d seen something. Miya just didn’t know what. “I don’t want to kill him.”

“You must.” Cold certainty, bereft of pity or care.

The leshy lowered his gaze, his broad shoulders flinching into a slouch. “Your familiar speaks the truth.”

Miya hesitated, unaccustomed to being beseeched as an executioner. She only ended spirits when she had to—when it was her life or theirs. They never went peacefully, and it helped allay her disquiet. “How can you just accept this?” she questioned. “Don’t you want to survive? If you give up now, you’ll never see Caelan again. She’ll be heartbroken ? —”

“We each have our individual nature,” he interrupted, and Miya could’ve sworn she saw a smile crack his lips open. “Yet the nature of all things is to die. It is the singular truth shared among everyone in existence. But as you know, Dreamwalker…”

“Everything beats in cycles,” Gavran supplied.

The leshy’s head jerked down—an uncanny facsimile of a nod. “All that comes apart is remade anew. If my end heralds a new beginning for Caelan, and if you are the catalyst for that beginning, then so be it.”

Miya would have to free herself with the leshy’s death. Her fingers twitched at her side, her stomach a sunken pit. A chill coiled around her spine, though she felt hot with nausea. This didn’t sit right. Her hand flew to the dream stone, its warmth a comfort. It hummed with power, eager to be liberated of its chain around her neck.

Miya tore away the fang-shaped stone. Purple, meadow green, and sunset gold gleamed as the point elongated into a curved blade, and she adjusted her grip around the haft, feeling the carvings scrape against her skin.

The leshy slowly raised his head, his gaze fixed on the harbinger of his end. “Show me your true form, Dreamwalker.”

And so, she did.

A shroud of iridescent feathers enveloped Miya whole. Violet and midnight tendrils swirled up her back and over her skull, the shadows coalescing into the bone-beak mask, its ivory point curving over her lip. A mane of plumage billowed out from her dark brown hair in a chaotic dance, irreverent of the windless air.

Surprise widened the leshy’s eyes. His chin lifted as he beheld the woman cradling his ruin. “God of chaos,” he murmured. “A truly natureless thing.”

“Chaos has a nature.” She drew close, then smiled, stopping in front of him. “It’s change.”

A touch to make the spirit flesh, a swipe of the blade to sever life from its container. The leshy’s lips parted, shadows spilling from every cavity and the slash along his barked neck.

“I’m sorry,” Miya whispered, her throat tight.

“Keep her safe.” The request left him as a tattered sound. His eyes dimmed, and wooden flesh flaked away mote by mote until all that remained was dust.

Miya stood beneath the elm, the dreamscape still as the pile of ash at her feet. How strange—that moment of transition from existence to non-existence. How horrible to be the cause of it. Her hand shook, fingers clasped painfully around the haft of her blade. The leshy had truly loved Caelan, and in the end, love had fashioned his demise. Miya glanced at Gavran, and he offered a solemn nod. He spread his feathered cloak and beat his arms—no longer arms, but wings—his human costume shrinking into the shape of a raven that burst into a charcoal sky.

Miya shot upright, heaving as she took in her surroundings. She was back in the waking world, the cold, wet ground chilling her through her clothes. Boston Common was as dark as the space between stars. The lights were all out, smoke wafting from the glass bulbs—some of them shattered, others stained black. Something had overheated them. The moon, at least, was a silver beacon, promising just enough visibility for Miya to make do.

A canine growl turned her head. Ama, aglow with her snowy coat, barred the path between Miya and the two figures ahead. Her hackles were like lashes, her body coiled, ready to strike. Yet she didn’t. Her back leg was curled against her belly, blood matting the fur on her haunch.

Scrambling to her feet, Miya found Caelan sitting in the grass, eyes wide and glassy, a red nick on her arm. A knife wound? A passing bullet? The teen was dazed, and as Miya followed the path of her gaze, she found the scene’s architect.

The leshy’s fading form tainted the air, but he wasn’t alone. Standing over the elm’s memorial, Alina fought a man struggling to restrain her, the spirit’s spindly hand barely visible on his shoulder. His collar was soaked in sweat, his slicked-back hair mussed from the tussle as he wrestled the teen with one hand and flailed a pistol in the other.

Pyotr and his adoptive daughter. The leshy had ensnared him—a mobster whose impulse was to achieve results at any cost. The spirit must’ve amplified his Machiavellian nature, spurring him to drag his own daughter out as bait so he could shoot Caelan himself. And Alina…Simply being near the nature spirit would amplify the call.

The last of the leshy dispersed, leaving only a brown smudge on Pyotr’s once pristine shirt. Confusion mellowed his contorted face. His eyes darted around the field, then landed on Caelan.

In the blink of an eye, rage overtook bewilderment. With a vicious jerk, he subdued his disobedient child, then pointed the gun at the forgery.

Miya lunged toward Caelan. Ama shadowed her, slowed by her injury. She wouldn’t make it. Neither of them would. It took less than a second to pull a trigger, and as powerful as Miya was in the dreamscape, here, she was only human. All she had was a body she could throw in harm’s way and hope that nothing vital got hit.

She tensed in anticipation of pain, either her own or Caelan’s. Instead, a feral snarl punctuated by Pyotr’s cry and Alina’s shriek sent Miya’s heart stuttering up her throat. She tumbled onto the grass next to Caelan and grabbed the girl by the shoulders, fragments of the scene battering her awareness.

A dark maw clamped around Pyotr’s shoulder. Soft ears flattened against a lupine skull. A deep rumble, vibrating through bared fangs. Crimson eyes like lifeblood blossoming over white silk. A midnight coat, sleek against the lightless backdrop.

Kai had launched himself at Pyotr like a starved marauder, heedless of danger. He’d soared high enough to clear Alina’s head, a hundred and forty pounds of claws and teeth. It was awkward, reckless, a frantic bid to save a life. The angle was a bad one, sparing Pyotr his jugular.

He twisted, gun in tow, and fired. Kai’s growl hitched as the bullet struck his side, but he refused to let go. With a violent shake, he tore at the muscle around Pytor’s neck, blunt claws digging into flesh as the wolf fought to topple his prey. Mad with desperation, Pyotr fired again, this time higher, closer to the heart.

A whimper pierced the air, and Kai fell to the ground with a thud. The blood was invisible on his soot-colored fur, but Miya knew it was there, soaking in. A sharp cry forced its way from her mouth as Kai pushed himself halfway up only to collapse with a ragged wheeze. Ama darted forward, limping, but she wasn’t quick enough. Pyotr pulled the trigger a third time.

The gun clicked. An empty round.

With a frustrated shout, Pyotr brought the butt of his pistol down on Kai’s head. The wolf roared, wrenching toward his assailant, fangs snapping. Barely evading him, Pyotr snatched his stunned daughter and hauled her away. Ama stumbled as she closed in, the wound in her leg bad enough to prevent pursuit. She planted herself between Kai and the retreating Pyotr, guarding her kin.

Miya hardly noticed how tightly she held Caelan until the teen shifted. Frigid shock filled her veins, slowing her blood. She began to quake, her body refusing to move even as she willed it. She’d been unconscious the whole time, leaving Ama to protect them, forcing Kai to throw himself at a sociopath—to take bullets meant for someone else.

Caelan squeezed Miya’s hand, and the trembling ceased. Roused to a nightmare, the Dreamwalker locked an unbidden sob behind her teeth, clenching until the rage grew too monstrous to hold.

Then, she screamed.