Message Bearer (The Auran Chronicles Book 1) (30 page)

They emerged into an abandoned warehouse.
Several crates stood nearby, stacked on top of each other, easily a few men
high. Tarpaulin was draped loosely over some of them, but most were left
uncovered, the wood rotten and crumbling. Beyond the crates lurked a wide open
area scattered with debris of various shapes and size. The warehouse terminated
at one end with a set of two massive doors that were pulled to. Dusty windows
allowed fragments of moonlight into the warehouse.

‘We have to move quickly,
we’re out in the open now, and Marek will have people out looking for us,’
Sylph scurried over to the nearest of the crates, vanishing into the shadows.
Seb followed, his eyes blind to her location but her aura glowing fiercely in
the darkness.

‘Do you have a phone?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘I can call someone.
He’ll get us.’

Sylph took out her
mobile. She paused, just for a second, before handing it over. Seb tapped in
Cade’s number, Avatari helping draw it from memory. Seconds later Cade answered,
but did not speak.

‘Cade, it’s me, Seb.’

‘Where are you?’

Seb mouthed the question
to Sylph.

‘The harbour. Warehouse
near the Waterside Inn.’

‘Did you get that?’ Seb
said.

‘Yes. We’re on our way.
Don’t go anywhere.’

‘What’s happened?’ Seb
said. Something about Cade’s voice didn’t seem right. The warrior had an edge,
almost anxious.

‘Can’t talk now.
Something’s happened. Just stay put.’

The line went dead. Seb
handed over the phone.

‘Everything okay?’

‘I’m not sure. We have to
wait here.’

Sylph sat down on the
edge of a crate. ‘We have no choice anyway. He just better hurry. There are
fiends outside of Marek’s control that can sense the use of Ways like a shark
sniffs blood.’

They sat in silence for a
few moments before Seb suddenly looked up.

‘How did you find us? In
the Nexus I mean?’ he said, voicing a question that had bothered him for hours.

‘Marek knew. I don’t know
how. He just knew you’d be there.’

‘I don’t get it. We
didn’t tell anyone. How could he know? And how could he know that I would be there,
too?’

Silence.

‘Sylph?’

He felt her tense, her
senses straining. He felt it then too, another presence, growing nearer.
Something familiar ate at his gut, conjuring memories that he’d sought to suppress.

Then the whistling
started.

‘Clementine.’

He couldn’t see him with
his eyes, but when he
channelled
, a humanoid shaped aura glowed from the
other side of the warehouse doors. Clementine was walking in that twisted,
sickening jerky style that he remembered from the chapel. The monster slowed to
a stop. Slender fingers, pencil thin, grey as ash, slipped through the narrow
cracks between the doors. The massive barriers creaked and groaned as they
started to drift apart.

 ‘That’s the one that
killed Sarah. He’s also the one who gutted me.’

‘He is one of those I
warned you about. He’s what they call a hound. They hunt those who get lost
between shards. They exist outside of Marek’s – or anyone’s – control. I can’t
sense anything else. Is he on his own?’

Seb
sensed
out, ‘As
far as I can see.’

‘What’s he after?’

‘Probably after what he
missed the first time.’

Seb stood and stepped out
from the shadows. Clementine’s head cocked to one side.

‘What the hell are you
doing?’ Sylph said, trying but failing to grab Seb’s sleeve as he walked past.

‘He knows we’re here.’ He
stopped a few feet from the crates and began to channel. ‘Besides. We have
unfinished business.’

‘Seb, this isn’t the time
to deal with some grudge you have. We have to get out of here!’

He could hear the fear in
her voice, but it fell on a shell of calm. He wasn’t afraid, not this time. At
first the fear that flared to life at that familiar whistle had nearly
swallowed him, but he’d nipped it before it grew into anything of harm. Instead
he took it, channelled it, and added it to his own potential. Clementine was a
bully, and when they met the first time he was blind, weak.

Defenceless.

Not this time.

‘No. You stay there. This
won’t take long.’

He started walking
forwards as Clementine’s silhouette filled the gap between the doors. The full
moon loomed behind him, casting a long, distended shadow across the floor,
ending just before Seb’s feet.

‘Ah, my little whelp, it
is good to see you again,’ Clementine’s musical lilt, magically amplified,
carried to his ears. ‘Tell me, how is the stomach?’

‘Healed,’ Seb amplified
his own voice and sent it back with a jab. He felt a sense of satisfaction as
he struck Clementine’s core, the daemon not even bothering to raise a shield.
He sensed a brief jolt of surprise before Clementine’s own defences came up.

‘Someone’s been busy,’ the
musicality dropped like a brick. Instead the fiend’s voice was coarse, almost
angry.

‘You have no idea.’

‘I see you have brought
yourself a friend. Marek’s little project.’

Sylph edged out from the
shadow in a fighting stance. Her eyes darted between him and Clementine. Seb
could sense her fear of the daemon, but she layered it over with a veneer of
ice. Clementine’s eyes narrowed at the sight, the crooked smile vanishing.

‘Apparently Marek wants
you to be brought in alive. I should obey, but it would be a shame if you
forced my hand by…resisting.’

‘Looks like you’re going
to get your wish.’

Clementine smiled. ‘Come
then, mageling, show me what you’ve brought today.’

Seb surged forwards,
anger fuelling his channelling. His legs shook with pent up energy, devouring the
distance between them as he dashed towards Clementine, who remained impossibly
still, not moving to avoid the attack. He sensed Sylph moving too, cumbersome
compared to him. Still Clementine didn’t move.

He reached Clementine in
what he knew was at most a couple of seconds. He raised the staff and swung it
down, the weapon arching towards Clementine’s pale head.

The blade
struck...nothing.

At the last moment,
Clementine
rippled
. The staff sliced through, but it was like striking
water, and Clementine’s image broke up into several shifting images that
fluttered into the air. Seb skidded and rolled, diving through the disintegrating
shape, coming up in a defensive stance a few feet beyond.

‘So predictable. So
lacking
in imagination.’

The voice echoed from all
around with no visible source. Seb and Sylph exchanged glances as they scanned
the area. Seb cast out a sense, but it seemed like parts of Clementine were
everywhere, tiny shards that absorbed and reflected his own sensing, making identifying
a location impossible.

‘Ah, the little whelp
tries. He tries! He tries!’ The voice sang from the roof. ‘Fool! You don’t
think I’ve survived this long by being bested by a clumsy oaf such as you?’

Seb yelped and stumbled
as the voice screeched in his ears. The staff clattered to the ground and he
rolled forwards, anticipating Clementine’s dagger-nails in his back.

‘You too afraid to face
me?’ Seb shouted. ‘Show yourself!’ He picked up the staff and met Sylph in an
open area away from the crates. They took position back to back, circling
clockwise.

‘You show your
inexperience, whelp!’

Clementine’s face formed
in front of Seb from a mass of shadow. Black eyes glinted. Teeth bared in the
dark. He struck out on instinct. The staff sliced through the phantom, but the
image simply rippled and reformed. A wide grin broke out on Clementine’s face.

‘See, I
am
showing
myself, you simply lack the nous to recognise the fact.’

Seb’s mind exploded into
a relentless barrage of horrors. Poisoned claws raked him. Horns impaled
imaginary flesh. Teeth sank into muscle, ripping sinew and crunching bone. He
collapsed to the floor. Somewhere he heard Sylph screaming too, her own weapons
clattering to the ground. The attack was purely mental, but what did that mean
anymore? The world was nothing but a mental construct imagined by the
observers. He knew that if he looked at himself from above he would see nothing
but his own body, writhing in agony on the floor with not a visible sign of
injury on him. But that didn’t matter.

The images twisted. Other
thoughts came through, Clementine’s attack probing his mind, an ice finger that
impaled memories and plucked them from their sanctuary, forcing them to the
fore. He knew what Clementine was looking for, he could almost sense the
sickening delight on the creature’s mind. He tried to erect a barrier, but it
was feeble, his concentration swayed by the barrage, and Clementine batted it
away like a fly.

He felt Clementine’s
delight before he saw the image. Sarah appeared before him.

‘Don’t let him kill me!’

Sarah lay on the floor,
eyes pleading with him.

‘I can’t help you,’ they
were his words, but a younger him, a weaker him. He couldn’t move, frozen into immobility
once again, forced to watch this scene play out to its fruition.

‘Sarah, Sarah, you just
won’t die, will you?’ Clementine stooped over, impossibly long arms extending
up and around in a twisted embrace.

Seb watched frozen by
fear. He knew what was coming; he’d played it over and over in his head many
times over. He tried to close his eyes and look away, but an unknown force held
his stare, compelling him to see this through to its inevitable end.

‘No one here to protect
you, Sarah?’ Clementine leaned closer to her, pressing his ear close to her
mouth where failing breaths puffed from blueing lips. ‘Not even dear Seb over
here?’

Clementine looked his way.
His heart felt like it’d been drenched in ice. His world turned to darkness,
the last thing he saw being Clementine glaring down at him. He retreated into
himself, a room of darkness, closing off from the outside world. He hunched
into a ball, feeling but not fearing the juddering beat of his heart, the
deadening of his limbs. He knew he was dying, that it was the mind attack from
Clementine that was convincing his own body to give up, to let loose its own
unique hold on reality, yet he simply didn’t care. A sweet release beckoned,
and even though he could hear Sylph’s frantic shouts from some distance away,
he simply didn’t care.

‘Let it come, mageling,
let the void welcome you...’

Something flickered in
the darkness. A faint, amber glow that shone through his eyelids. It compelled
him to look, and he gasped when he saw the small fire there, flickering in the
void.

You do not die like this,
I have too much resting on you!
The voice raged at him
across the ether. An image came to mind. A serpentine warrior. A tower in the
clouds.

Leave me. I’m not who you
want me to be. I’m afraid.

Afraid? Of what? This
fiend, this meddler of minds?

He has bested me.

Boy, you do not succumb
to fear. Remember where you come from. You ARE fear!

I don’t understand.

Grow some stones, and
then perhaps one day you will.

Help me! Don’t leave me!

He knew the voice had
gone. That serpentine lilt nothing more than a whisper on the breeze. Yet it
awoke something in him, a hot ember that he found, burning away under layers of
fear and doubt. He reached out, touching it, feeling the warmth it offered. At
once the darkness fell away, and he was back in the warehouse again, a sea of
daemons frothing around him, still assailing him, the many shards of Clementine
still ubiquitous, everywhere and nowhere.

‘Sylph?’

He found her cowering
behind a crate. Her weapons lay by her side. Her hands were clamped over her
ears. Tears streamed down her face and she’d bitten down so hard on her lower lip
that blood trickled down over her lip.

‘Sylph!’

He called upon his Sentio
and formed a bubble in her mind. He expanded it, forcing away the nightmares
that assaulted her. He entered her mind and found her hiding in a small shack. She’d
taken the form of a small girl, secreted inside a crumbling wardrobe under
oil-covered rags.

‘Sylph?’

The little girl looked
up. She was still a child, maybe not even ten, but he could recognise the woman
she would become. Those azure eyes shone at him, the anger he knew today a paralysing
fear back then. What had happened to her to make her this way?

‘Who are you?’

‘It’s me, Seb,’ he said,
reaching out a hand.