Blurred Memories (26 page)

Daniel gave quick orders and
stood in the front as they advanced in a triangle formation. Blake
was only two steps behind him and to the side. Kate soon didn’t
have much time to worry about what was going on in his head
anymore: the demons Simon had mentioned were right there, blocking
the way forward. They were all armed and seemed restless, sniffing
the air like they were searching for something. The glamour had to
be still holding, but clearly they could tell something was
up.

“
Glamour’s about to crash
down,” Simon warned, out of breath.

Daniel’s sword slashed at
the closest demon; it fell in a gurgle of blood. Its companions
roared in surprise and outrage, but before they could react any
further, the rest of the squad rushed at them. The glamour must
have come down at that point because a few demons managed to block
the swords and axes that were swung at them, and the sounds of
battle erupted all around Kate. She managed to kill her first
opponent in one blow and immediately went to help Blake. They had
fought side by side so many times in the past that it felt like
falling back into the well-known steps of a favorite dance. Kate
caught a glimpse of his face as they fought an unusually large
demon; she could only read determination on his features. There
wasn’t even any anger that she could see. Somehow, it made her feel
better to know that he had his emotions under control.

It took only minutes for the
squad to eliminate the group of demons. They suffered their first
loss, and a couple of superficial wounds. While a medic tended to
those, Kate stood beside Blake as he watched the road ahead of
them.

“
He’s there,” he
murmured.

Kate wasn’t sure if he was
talking to her or himself. “Marc?” she asked quietly. “How do you…
Oh. The bloodline? You can feel him?”

Blake nodded absently before
tearing his eyes from the horizon and looking at her. “He’s alive,”
he said simply.

Kate gave him a brief but
tight hug before turning to Simon. He knelt on the ground, a
flashlight balanced on his knee as he filled small plastic bags
with supplies from his magic stash. She had been about to ask
whether to follow the road to the prison, but she found herself
frowning down at him instead. “What are you doing? Do you think
now’s the time to play with magic?”

He glanced up at her with an
offended look. Before he could reply, Daniel was by Kate’s
side.

“
We’re ready,” he said
curtly. “Which way, Simon?”

“
Do you really need to
ask?” Blake asked, a derisive laugh in his voice. He pointed to the
road with his sword. “That way. Straight ahead.”

Daniel rolled his eyes, and
Kate felt such a pang at how familiar this all seemed that she
almost choked up. She only wished Marc had been there, but he would
soon be with them again; she was sure of it.

* * * *

Blake led the way for the
squad along the dirt road toward the prison. When Blake had first
made this journey with his two captors, he had been coming from a
different direction, and it had been full daytime. Still,
everything seemed familiar, from how stale the air tasted in his
lungs to the dusty road under his feet.

For a little while, he
remained tense, expecting the memories to surge forward and take
him over. However, they remained at the back of his mind, present
but unthreatening—at least for now. It helped that he had sensed
the bloodline as soon as he had stepped through the breach. It was
a reassurance that Marc was still alive on the other end of that
link; Blake hoped it would help Marc, too, when he realized they
were coming for him. How much time had passed since he had been
taken? It hadn’t been more than a couple of hours in the human
world, but time passed much faster here. Had it been days?
Weeks?

The thought caused Blake to
speed up until Daniel hissed at him to slow down for the rest of
them. Blake gritted his teeth and obeyed. Simon had warned them
that another larger group of demons was guarding the entrance.
Blake remembered passing that group, shoved forward by his guards
while the rest of the demons laughed and talked to him in their
harsh-sounding language. He was looking forward to walking through
them again, this time with a sword to spill their blood.

Daniel had suggested that
they approach this fight like they had the first, under the cloak
of a short-timed glamour, but it soon became obvious that the
demons knew they were coming. Fires lit up the night ahead of them,
projecting the demons’ shadows onto the walls of the
prison.

“
All right,” Daniel called
out, his voice steady and calm. “They’re waiting for us, and they
outnumber us, but that’s okay. We’ve done this before. Simon, do
you have any trick in your bag that might distract them a
little?”

Simon muttered under his
breath and rummaged inside his bag. He stopped to kneel on the
ground and the rest of the squad stopped as well, forming a loose
circle around him without ever turning their backs on the demons.
The squad was only a hundred yards or so from the prison now, and
they could hear the demons growling and rattling their weapons.
Simon crushed a few herbs together before throwing a lit match in
his mixing bowl. A flash of light enveloped the squad, ruining
everyone’s night vision and raising complains from several
soldiers.

“
There,” Simon looked
around with self-satisfaction.

Blake looked around as well
and was startled to see three Kates standing near him, all
identical, all wearing the same frown—then the same smile—as she
figured out what Simon had done.

“
I won’t be able to hold
the illusion for long,” Simon warned. His voice was already
strained. “Hurry up.”

Daniel gave the signal, and
the squad spread out, their doppelgangers filling in the voids in
between them so that they appeared to be a solid wall of fighters
rather than less than two dozen. Blake caught Kate’s gaze and gave
her a nod. He had her back, he said with that small gesture. She
replied in kind, and he knew she’d be next to him the entire
time.

The fight was brutal. The
demons had not only an advantage in numbers, they were also on
their own terrain. But they seemed unsettled, maybe taken aback
that humans had come to fight them in their own world where they
should have been safe. That gave each of Blake’s blows an extra
ounce of strength and speed. There was something exhilarating about
taking the fight to the enemy rather than waiting for an attack.
Judging by how fiercely the fight around him was progressing, Blake
wasn’t the only one to feel that way.

When the last demon fell,
Kate was standing shoulder to shoulder with Blake. They looked
around together. Five soldiers were on the ground, still as the
grave. Three more, maybe four, were wounded to various degrees.
Blake was thankful for all of their help, but he couldn’t do
anything for them now. Marc was waiting.

As Blake started toward the
prison entrance, Kate was, like always, right by him. Predictably,
Daniel called for them to wait.

“
There could be more demons
inside. Let’s stay together.”

Blake didn’t bother to
reply, but Kate glanced back without stopping.

“
We’ll be fine,” she said.
“You get the prisoners; we’ll find Marc.”

Finding Marc was only a
matter of following the pull of the bloodline. Blake strode through
corridor after corridor without slowing down, not even when, twice,
they stumbled upon a demon. Blake killed one; Kate, the second.
Finally Blake stopped in front of a door, identical to a dozen
other doors he hadn’t looked at twice.

“
Is he there?” Kate asked.
She reached for the lock without waiting for his answer and pushed
the door open, already calling out Marc’s name.

Blake remained on the
threshold, frozen to the bones, looking in. From where he stood, he
couldn’t see much: stone floor and walls, no window other than the
narrow slits at the very top of the walls that let in the diffuse
light during the day. He finally moved forward with slow steps, as
if in a dream.

He tried not to let his
memories resurface, but he had spent hours upon hours—entire weeks,
even months—trying to devise a way to reach those slits. He had
been sure that, if he could simply look out, he would be able to
find relief from these four walls and the way they pressed on his
mind, the way they made his skin itch like it was one size too
small for his body. He would be able to breathe—and it didn’t
matter that he didn’t need air anymore, that he wouldn’t collapse
from lack of oxygen as he sometimes had when he had been human; the
claustrophobia rendered him just as useless now as it had then.
Only one person had ever managed to calm his body and mind, and
that person was the same one who was keeping him in that
cell.

He had never found a way to
look out. The slits had always remained as far out of reach as
freedom itself.

He wasn’t looking at those
slits now, or at the straw on the floor, or the blood stains on the
stones, or the steel manacles, so similar to the ones whose
unyielding hold had left a phantom touch on his wrists. Instead, he
was taking in the scents of the room and realizing that this pile
of damp straw was where he had slept for so long. The terror of
nightmares still clung to it. Those stains had been left by his
blood, and those manacles were the very ones that had cut into his
skin.

This wasn’t just any cell.
It was
his
cell.

His hand tightened over
Seneca’s hilt—he couldn’t have said whether in anger at everything
that had happened or for reassurance that he had a
weapon.

Someone said his name. He
turned, and when he saw Kate, words started to rise to his lips.
They had to get out of there. They had to run before their Master
returned, before…

But their Master was right
there, standing by Kate’s side, covered in blood—whose blood? Hers,
again? Blake’s vision blurred, and he roared. He would have slashed
with his sword if not for the fear that he might hurt Kate, too.
Instead, he sheathed the sword and threw himself at his Master. He
might die for this offense, but at least he would die fighting.
Fighting for Kate, but also, mostly, fighting for his own
freedom.

* * * *

The thirteen longest days of
Marc’s life ended when Kate entered his cell, took one look around
her, and dropped her sword to throw herself into his arms. Stunned,
Marc could only hold her to him, breathe in her scent, and hope
that this wasn’t just a dream.

But no, it couldn’t be a
dream. Blake had been pulling at the bloodline for close to an
hour, his presence growing stronger as he grew nearer. Marc hadn’t
imagined that.

“
Are you hurt?” Kate asked,
breathless, as she pulled away and took a good look at him. Her
hand rose to touch the bruises on his face, stopping when Marc
jerked back reflexively. “What happened?”

“
I’m all right,” Marc
replied, his voice rough from disuse. What had happened to him
didn’t need to be shared. Besides, he figured that the cuts,
bruises, and dried blood on his face and torso told enough of the
story already. “Where is Blake?”

Before Kate could reply,
Blake came through the door. His expression was blank, and when he
looked at them, his pupils were huge, darkening his gaze. The next
second, however, his eyes filled with a fiery glow. He slid his
sword into its scabbard and yelled as he threw himself at
Marc.

Startled, Marc only had time
to push Kate away so that she wouldn’t get hurt. The next instant,
Blake crashed into him and started to pummel him with his closed
fists. Marc raised his hands to defend himself, but when he saw the
wild look in Blake’s eyes, he froze.

He had seen that look
before.

He had seen it in Riverton,
when Simon had broken the spell on Blake’s mind. He had also seen
it in this very cell, before he had broken Blake’s
spirit.

It didn’t matter at that
moment that Marc himself had never set foot in this cell before
being taken prisoner. It didn’t matter that
he
hadn’t been
the one to break Blake. He remembered doing it, remembered every
second of it. More than that, though, he had allowed Blake to be
taken from him, had given up on finding a way to get him back. If
Blake found relief in inflicting pain on him or killing him, Marc
would let it happen.

He only wished Kate hadn’t
been there to see it.

Chapter 23

Kate’s world crumbled, and
seconds stretched into centuries as Blake hit Marc, over and
over—and Marc allowed him to. For a long time, she was too stunned
to react, until finally, with a curse, she shook herself into
motion.

“
Blake! What are you doing!
Stop!”

She grabbed his arm and
tried to pull him back, but he shook her off, and she fell back on
her ass.

“
Ow!”

Her muffled exclamation got
through him in a way her words hadn’t. He stilled and turned to
her, still kneeling over Marc, his fist raised. His eyes were
consumed by flames as he looked at her, frowning.