Page 124 of The Unweaver

Ear-splitting screams ricocheted. Claws and fangs dug into Cora’s flesh. Her lungs were filling with viscous night, but her aim stayed true. Grasping the flaps of the demon’s ripped chest, she channeled every drop of death into the remains of her black heart, unweaving the dreams woven into Ikelas’s life, thread by unspooling thread.

Mirror eyes flashed, then dimmed. The shifting images of her body slowed, then stopped. The final reflection on her silhouette was of Cora, monstrous with her rolled back eyes and necrotic veins.

Cora snatched the Oracle Ruby from her gurgling throat as Ikelas staggered back. The ruby was warm in her shaking hand. Teddy’s spirit fit her palm. Her only light, returned at last. She clutched it tight with one hand while the other reached for the black veil.

“Rot in hell,” Cora gritted out and kicked the demon in her ruined chest.

Ikelas fell through the rippling black veil, out of dreams and into the void. Her inhuman cries pierced through the twisting blackness that consumed her.

Awful energy filled and overflowed from Cora, a wave of rancid euphoria that she poured into Malachy, waiting on death’s threshold, until she was drained. His fading spirit snapped into sharp focus.

“Hurry!” she cried, empty and sinking into the velvety darkness.

“I can’t! Something is blocking me from returning.”

A single claw appeared in the veil between Dreams and Death, followed by a hand, an arm, a formless head. Ikelas, hauling herself out of her deathly prison.

Cora was too drained to fight back. Claws bit into her face, arms, chest as she tried to force the demon back. Blinded by the blood streaming into her eyes, Cora summoned every scrap of power and threw herself headfirst into Ikelas.

The dream demon crashed through the black veil, ensnaring Cora with her claws. Together they fell into Death.

The void formed hands, cradling Cora, imprisoning Ikelas. The dream demon’s cry dissipated into a faint echo as she unwove into shimmering threads as delicate as spider silk, disappearing into nothingness.

There was a ripple in the void. Vaporous energy emanated from Cora’s palm. The Oracle Ruby was dissolving into threads humming in concert with the unweaving threads of her own life. Tendrils of spirit drifted into their corner of the Death Realm.

Teddy. His spirit, reunited in death at last.

Despair struck like a lethal blow, and with it a realization. Could she resurrect Teddy if she died? If she had a choice between her twin and herself, it was no choice at all. Her death for Teddy’s life was a foregone conclusion. And her last chance to save him was drifting away.

“Teddy, come back!” She grasped the vanishing threads, but they only slipped further away.

No, Teddy wasn’t slipping away, he was tugging away. The dead had to be obliging to return. Teddy didn’t want to come back.

She watched his spirit depart, and hers along with it.

Over. It was all over. The darkness encroaching would devour her whole.

“You were my favorite part of us,” she whispered. Tears fell into the void. A drop of water from one lifeless vessel into another.

“His spirit is whole now,” echoed a distant voice. Cora turned and saw the Realmwalker straddling the boundary between Death and Dreams. He reached for her. “When it’s all over you can commune with him. But first, we need to seal the veil and stop the demons.”

Gloom spread through her like poison. She tried to stifle it. Later, she vowed she would find Teddy in death and make it right. Now, she took Malachy’s hand, a solid weight in hers, and crossed the veil.

The Dreamverse was collapsing around them. Without Ikelas, it was destabilizing, tearing apart at the seams as the sea warped and drained. The sluggish waves churned with waking dreamers and fading stars.

On the periphery, the dark London skyline appeared through the rifts. How many demons had escaped along with Ghose?

Malachy fought through waves of bodies towards the veil shadowed by towering demonic figures, clicking their claws and fangs, snarling and hissing. The rift had widened, spider silk and black ropes wavering.

Gripping the shorn edges, the Realmwalker’s magic rewove the threads of the veil between Realms.

Just before the Dreamverse crashed down around them, Cora thought she saw a faint phosphorescence still leaking from the veil.

They dropped back into the wreckage of Mother’s house, littered with rubble and unmoving bodies. Whether their eyes were shut from sleep or death, Cora couldn’t tell.

Her body was covered in wounds, flayed by the Oneiromancer’s claws and crushed by the weight of the ballroom that had fallen along with them.

She turned her pounding head and spat blood, struggling to shift a heavy beam off her thigh. A bone jutted from her shin at a sickening angle. Beside her, Malachy groaned, clutching his chest.

---