Memory's Wake Omnibus: The Complete Illustrated YA Fantasy Series (22 page)

High above, little more than a spot in the sky, the dragon sang a deep, mournful cry that would be heard throughout Avall. Then it fell like a stone. It took down three men before the others knew what had happened.

Memory pushed at the dead weight on her with one arm, her other twisted beneath her. She pushed her feet at the ground and they slid in the mud.

Bloodcurdling terror screamed out all around. Roen moved toward her. She cried out for him but it was lost amongst the wailing of the dragon and men.

Roen stopped before he reached her, bending down to something she couldn’t see. He bared his teeth, bent forward and scooped up Eloryn’s body. He almost fell as he lifted her with one arm, the other hanging limp. He turned, stumbling, running, through the chaos around him, away from Memory, into the surrounding trees.

“Roen? Roen, no, I’m here!” Memory screamed. Her sanity tearing away in strips, she writhed like the possessed. Her consciousness faded out then in. Her insides boiled. The knife kept in her corset scorched her chest, heated to burning. She found herself free, the dead body of the scarred hunter face down beside her.

She rolled onto all fours, panting. The dragon threw itself over and over at the men running through the square as they tried to find cover, help injured friends, make their escape. Blood covered the ground as though it were the rain that fell. A man in leather armor lay next to her, staring with dead, black-brown eyes. Perceval.

Illness overtook her like a knife in the stomach. Memory vomited wretchedly. She coughed it out, eyes and nose stinging raw. She wobbled and stood up on shaking feet, taking a step to follow Roen. A gust of wind from the dragon’s wings threw her back on the ground.

She tried to stand again, and as she reached her feet, there were arms around her. They lifted her, cradling her, wrapping her chest, pulling her off her feet. She wrestled against them but the arms were like a vice around her, pushing her against a wild, scarred body as it ran. Taking her away from the slaughter of the men. Away into the forest. Away from Roen and Eloryn.

Under the cover of the trees the light rain barely penetrated through. Only the odd, heavy drop fell between the changing leaves, hitting him as he ran.

Memory swore and screamed in his arms, blending with the tortured howls of the men behind them. He hadn’t been there to keep her safe. Mina had kept him away, kept him even though he wanted to go to Memory. He’d let her be hurt again.

Memory slammed her knee into his gut so suddenly he fell out of his run, dropping her.

She slipped forward, trying to run back toward the danger. He pounced, tackling her down. They skidded across slimy leaves. The ground opened up beneath them. He twisted around, pulling her on top of him, wrapping his body around hers. They tumbled down the slope of a gully in an avalanche of red and gold.

He landed hard on his back, and darkness took him.

Gasping, sobbing breaths woke him. His arms were still protectively wrapped around the small weight of her, her dark hair falling in his face.

She thrashed in his arms. “Let me go!” she squealed. “Don’t touch me!”

I broke the rules again. But I had to, to save you.
His arms went loose with guilt and she pushed out, bursting from their blanket of leaves and scrambling across the ground away from him. She hit the water-carved earth of the steep gully wall and clawed against it.

He pulled himself up slowly, shaky from the fall.

“I need to get back to Lory and Roen,” she said, not at all to him. She tried to climb the slope. Too weak. She tore her hands at the rocks and exposed roots, shrieking at them.

He reached out to her.

She beat his hand back, staring at him with ferocious red-rimmed eyes. “I said, don’t touch me!”

She forced her back into the dripping dirt wall, cowering from him. “Who are you? Why are you following me? Was it you who hurt me?”

She didn’t know him at all - he already knew this - but that she could think he was the one who hurt her like that opened him raw. He frowned, looking back toward the solace of the surrounding forest. Too hard to find the right words.

“What do you want from me?” she sobbed.

He knelt in front of her. What did he want? There’d only been one dream for so long.

“Hope,” he said, shrugging as he forced his words to work, “just to find you again. Keep you safe, like I couldn’t before.”

An angry fire spread in him to say it. He knew what that man on the children’s home staff did to her, and he could never do anything to stop it. He was too young, too weak back then. Perfect bully bait, a smaller than average boy who studied hard and had a talent for music. It was her that saved him from beatings from the older boys. He swore to her that he’d protect her one day. She had laughed at him in response. Kindly.

“How do you know me?” Tears still streamed down her face, but her sobbing lessened.

He nodded. “From the other world. You don’t remember.”

“Other world?” She buckled forward, clutching her stomach as though in pain. “I don’t remember anything. Thayl took everything from me, my memories, my... everything.”

“I know. I was there.”

It was after she’d come back with that knife, shoplifted from somewhere. She looked at it like it was a thing of salvation. But when the man at the children’s home had come for her again, the knife mustn’t have helped, just as he had never helped. He didn’t know what happened. She came back bloody, badly beaten, blind with panic. She’d never been beaten before.

“You ran away from the home. I followed you. When I caught up, that man, Thayl, had you. Don’t even know what he was doing to you, but it looked bad and I… just pushed him.”

“Oh God, I saw that in my dream. But it wasn’t you. It was just a kid, some little boy.”

He pulled his lips inward
. She does remember me. Just some little boy.
“It was me. Years ago, don’t know how many. I don’t get it how you look the same still, but things are different here, all magic and stuff. There was no magic there, only stories of it.”

She shook her head at him, “I don’t remember anything else before waking up here a few days ago. We were somewhere different? A different world? What does that even mean? It wasn’t... hell?”

“Not hell. Just... our world.” He shifted his legs, moving back away from her into a crouch. His throat felt tight. She asked so many questions, and he struggled to make his words work. Mina wasn’t much for conversation. “I don’t know. We were there, then I was here. They’re different. The man grabbed me when I pushed him, pulled me back through his weird portal. You tried to catch me and we both fell. I lost my grip on you and you disappeared in the smoke.” He swallowed and licked his lips. Sometimes he used to worry that she had never come through at all, that he would never find her. “Then I was in that forest, with all these dead people all around. Thayl tried to use his hand on me, but some woman started yelling at him like he’d done something wrong and I ran off. Been in the forest since.”

“If you hadn’t followed me, hadn’t stopped Thayl…” Her voice broke.

“You ran off without your wallet. I was just taking it to you.” He reached into the folded leathers at the side of his hip and pulled the wallet out, worn and tattered, and handed it to her.

She peeled it open, running shivering fingers over the contents. “Oh. Is that my name?”

He nodded. “Sorry it’s dirty.”

“I- I don’t know yours.”

“Will.”

She reached out timidly for his arm and turned it over to show the wrist, holding hers up against it. Their wrists matched. Rough inked tattoos of the symbol for eternity with a swirl through the centre.

“Did them ourselves.”

“Weren’t you like, eight or something?”

“You were my best friend.” Will’s face heated. “And, kind of a bully.”

“I’m sorry I don’t remember you. I must be such a disappointment.”

Will shook his head, but couldn’t say what he wanted to; that she was the only thing from that world that he missed, after a while. Except maybe the internet. After he’d lost his parents, everything in that world seemed cruel except for her, no matter how tough she pretended to be. He knew she thought of him as a weedy younger brother, but he didn’t care as long as she let him hang out with her. He always figured he’d make it up to her one day.

“Was I happy there?” she asked.

A frown chilled his face, and he looked away with a vague shrug.

She pried herself off the muddy wall, rivulets of water streaming down into the space she left. “Will, I need to find Eloryn and Roen. Can you help me?”

Will stilled himself and listened. No more screams, no more gusting of dragon wings. The smell of blood still lingered, reaching them on a gentle wind.

Mina had left with the other sprites, back through the Veil to their homeland as they often did. There was no way to say how long they would be.

Until then, he could look after Memory.

He nodded, took her by the arms and swung her around onto his back. Memory’s muscles jumped and tensed when he took hold of her and he cursed internally. In his time spent with Mina and the fae, touching was so natural that he kept forgetting the rules of his and Memory’s once-upon-a-time friendship. He pursed his lips, waiting for retaliation, but she remained holding on.

He reached up for the strongest exposed tree roots, and began pulling himself up out of the gully with her holding tightly around his neck.

Roen slipped again. The increasing rain made the ground slick and his body burned.

His arm around Eloryn grew numb, his fingers locked in their grasp around her. His muscles screamed. He wasn’t strong enough to carry her, not like this, but he had to get farther away. The trees in the direction he’d taken were thin and leafless, not providing enough cover from the deadly creature if it flew above. His other arm was useless, dislocated, possibly with bones broken. He wished it was numb too.

He floundered further into the woods. Sweat mixed with the dripping rain, running down his hair into his eyes. It stung, blinding him. Barely able to move, he saw a darker shadow, a thicker trunk. He gritted his teeth and dropped down to his knees. Lowering his shoulder, he let Eloryn slip down onto a bed of fallen leaves. He looked the other way.

Roen half walked, half fell into the wide trunk of the oak that covered them, its leaves not yet dropped. His shoulder muscles spasmed and he held back a moan, pulling his knife from his belt and biting down on it. He placed his shoulder up against the lichen encrusted bark and breathed out through his teeth. Then he pushed.

He couldn’t believe it had been only a fortnight ago that he’d done this for the first time. He had become too complacent, too sure of his skills, too damn arrogant. The house guards at the estate he’d made a business call to heard him. They gathered secretly, silently, and surrounded him, cutting him off on the second floor. He’d jumped from a window, farther than he’d normally dare, before any of them could see his face. His shoulder tore then for the first time.

He’d relocated it himself before heading home. Somehow, his mother still knew, still saw the way he nursed it, and he had to lie to her even more. He remembered thinking that night that he could never live if anyone found out what he was, what he did. Now he knew there were worse things to lose.

If he’d never injured his shoulder, he would have picked a more challenging mark in Maerranton markets that day. He would never have met Eloryn. Lucky, his mother always told him; that was his blessing. If his
luck
hadn’t brought him to her, would she have fallen into the care of someone more capable? Someone who could have saved her from this?

Tears ran into his mouth, mixing with the taste of metal. He pushed harder, and heard the pop as his joint was forced back into place. His knees withered and he bit hard into the knife, knowing he couldn’t risk crying out, as much as he wanted to. He breathed through the pain.

Done, he pulled the knife from his mouth, absently noting the teeth marks, and forced himself to go back to Eloryn. He didn’t want to know, didn’t want to see, but some fool hope in him said there might still be time. Maybe he could save her.

Kneeling back beside her, Roen gently moved Eloryn’s limp arms off her chest. Seeing her now clearly, he choked.

He ran his fingers over her neck, feeling for a pulse. His hands hammered to the beat of his own heart: useless. He bent in close over her face. Her normally alabaster skin was icy white. The warmth of a weak breath met his cheek.