Page 154 of The Seeker
You didn’t protect me. Why didn’t you protect me?
“No!” he screamed in rage. “Meera!”
Rhys.
He wept and clutched her to his chest, soaking his shirt with blood.
Rhys.
Her gentle voice accused him.
“I’m sorry,” he cried. “Meera, I’m sorry.”
Look up, my love.
He looked up and he was not on an empty field. It was not raining. No lifeless body was in his arms.
He lies.
Rhys narrowed his eyes on Bozidar who was whirling around, trying to swat Ata off his back as if she were an annoying bug. Through all that, he’d still managed to send all the singers and scribes around him into wailing horrors.
“Wake up!” he screamed. “It’s not real.It’s not real!”
“I have him,”Meera said. “The field is in chaos. Bozidar is sending visions to everyone.”
“That’s different than Nalu’s power,” the Koconah warrior said. “Can we use that?”
Of course they could. “We throw it back on him. They need to let it take them over,” Meera said. “Tell Damien and Rhys they need to lower their guard. Let Bozidar bring their fears to life.”
“No.” Sari’s face was pale. “Damien will go mad.”
“Not if we pull them out in time,” Meera said.
“You don’t understand what he’s seen,” Sari said with a protective snarl. “He will go mad.”
Meera turned to her mother. “Then it has to be Rhys.”
Patiala turned and ran out the door.
Rhys thoughthe was imagining Patiala running through the smoke. He’d just banished the vision of Meera dying in his arms and was forcing himself to focus on the fight in front of him. The last remaining Grigori had reached the oak alley and gone after the scribes and singers Bozidar held in his grasp. The youngest members of the haven seemed the most immune to the horrors and were doing their best to fight them off. Ata and Damien were attacking the angel, striking each time they were able, only to be thrown off, batted back, or otherwise neutralized.
He’s playing with them.
The giant had a smirk on his face watching the writhing Irin around him, but he scanned the grounds, still looking for the memory keeper.
“Rhys!” Patiala ran to him, her bow still clutched in her hand. “You have to give in to the visions.”
He thought he was hearing things. “Are you a vision?” He reached out and grabbed her shoulder. She felt solid enough. “What lie is this?”
“No lie.” Patiala grasped his hand. “Meera says you have to give in. Let the nightmare take you. She’ll pull you out in time. You have to trust her.”
Nausea spread in his belly. “No.” It was one thing to have a vision of horrors attacking him. It was quite another to walk into it.
“It’s the only way,” she said. “If we can let the horrors build, then they can fling Bozidar’s visions back on him. Turn the nightmares against him.”
It was completely logical. Of course it was. It was a good plan.
All it needed was Rhys’s complete surrender to a monster.
