Page 96 of Runaway Magic
“You know its name? That’s helpful. I wasn’t able to get that far.” Marshall looked impressed. “What are you doing here anyway? You should be long gone by now. What happened?”
“I don’t know what your plan was, but things have gone sideways out there. Nightmares are using my family as puppets and are letting demons and nightmares through portals as fast as they can. Our friends aren’t going to be able to hold them off much longer.” Cym couldn’t understand why Marshall was wasting time quizzing him when they should be doing something, anything, to get out of this place.
The scene around them switched to a street lined with houses. In the distance, he could make out a group of people battling strange, flying creatures in front of a house that had been torn in two.
Rather than responding to the urgency in Cym’s voice, Marshall frowned and said, “That doesn’t explain whyyouarehere. The job was to get you out and then come back for me.” Irritation laced his words.
“Adelle mentioned that I might be able to help you?” What Cym intended to present as a confident statement of fact ended up sounding more like a meek question.
Marshall’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “There is no way she told you to come here; you’re an untrained civilian. I don’t care what you’re packing in there, you don’t belong here.” He tapped Cym’s chest lightly, belying his angry tone.
“She may have been distracted and mentioned that I would be an asset under different conditions,” Cym admitted grudgingly. “Listen, we don’t have time to stand around chatting about who sent who where. We’re being attacked right now. For all I know we could be dying!”
“We probably are dying,” Marshall agreed mildly, like dying was a simple, everyday occurrence for him. “But we have time to figure this out. Time works differently in here. Outside of this trap, you’ve only just gotten between the demon and me, and it’s only been a few seconds since I grabbed your hand. You’re right though. We should work on finding a way out of here.”
Instead of doing anything, Marshall stood and stared dispiritedly at the fighting figures down the street and then shook his head. The scene switched to a cemetery, where a man holding a baby stood with a young girl with honey-colored hair next to a headstone.
Cym was all but vibrating out of his skin when Marshall sighed and said, “To defeat this thing, I need to find out what I did wrong the first time. In order to defeat a demon, a dreamwalker has to unmake it. This demon is incredibly old, but it shouldn’t have taken me out without so much as a whimper. I don’t want to brag?—”
Cym was unable to suppress a snort of disbelief. “That’s exactly how a bragger begins his sentences.”
Ignoring him, Marshall continued, “But I am fairly powerful as dreamwalkers go. Once I’ve identified how a demon or nightmare came to be, I can unmake them. This guy surprised me. It took no effort at all to see that he was born from xenophobia. He all but slapped me in the face with it, but when I went to unmake him, I landed here.”
Cym’s memory poked at him. “Can a demon have more than one origin?” He had no idea if it was a stupid question or not, but now wasn’t the time to be getting squeamish about sounding ignorant. The extreme isolation of his formative years left him feeling constantly out of the loop, and the only way to learn more was to ask questions.
“Why do you ask?” Rather than being irritated by his question, Marshall’s eyebrows drew together as he pondered Cym’s words.
“Well, earlier I accidentally went into one of Hester’s memories—Sekt’s original host—and I learned a lot of things, one being that he and my great-great-whatever-grandmother have been possessing Blaikes for generations.”
Marshall raised his eyebrows at this but motioned for Cym to continue.
“The other thing they talked about was that his favorite thing to feed off was guilt. It sounded like he found survivor guilt to be especially desirable. Does that mean anything to you?” Cym cringed internally, preparing to be told—probably kindly if he was any judge of character—that he was completely off base.
Marshall’s hand went back to his hair, tidying his already-perfect mop of curls as a myriad of expressions crossed his face. Confusion warred with suspicion as he ruffled his hair and then smoothed it back down again.
On impulse, Cym grabbed his hand. “You’re going to make yourself go bald if you keep that up.”
Marshall grinned. “Habit. I’ve been doing it for more than a century, so I think my hair will survive. Okay, from what you said, it sounds to me like Sekt might have learned a new trick. Instead of hiding his origin like most demons and nightmares, he threw his out into the open. Like an idiot, I grabbed it and tried to unmake him, no questions asked. If I had just slowed down for a minute…” He caught himself, waving away his self-recrimination. “It doesn’t matter.”
Cym found himself being dragged along behind Marshall as he began to pace. It looked as though Marshall wasn’t planning on letting him go any time soon, so Cym forced his short legs to work double time to keep up with Marshall.
“He must have created a fake origin to trick me into attacking prematurely—and once I went for the bait, I was no longer as focused on defense, which left him free to swoop in and feed on me. And what a bounty he found…” he murmured the last part to himself.
He stopped abruptly, and Cym smacked awkwardly into his back. Marshall looked at Cym as if he’d forgotten he was there.
“So what do we do?” Cym may not know much about his world, but he did know guardians were supposed to be a tenacious group of people. He was willing to bet Marshall already had a plan.
Marshall let out a short bark of a laugh. “So much confidence in me after such a short acquaintance, Stillbringer? I hope your faith in me is warranted, but it’s going to take both of us to get us out of here.”
Stillbringer. Cym heard that word when he’d fallen into his nightmare. It sounded like a title, but he’d never heard of it.
“What do you need me to do? Whatever you need, I’ll give it. Just…” Cym paused, embarrassed at exposing his feelings for other people to a stranger, but he pushed on, needing for it to besaid. “Just promise me you’ll get my brother and Fourteen out of here alive.”
Marshall’s hazel eyes met his, and he cradled both of Cym’s hands gently, dwarfing them inside his. “I promise I will get you back to your soldier, and together, we’ll save what’s left of your family.”
Marshall’s gaze promised Cym a level of safety he’d only felt with Fourteen—which made sense if he thought about it. Both men were warriors, and both of them were clearly hardwired to protect.
“First things first, let’s get out of here.” Marshall blew out a deep breath and shook himself like a boxer readying himself for a fight. “This is going to suck.”
