Demon's Cradle (Devany Miller Book 3) (7 page)

“I will. I wanted to, but I didn’t want them thinking I was crazy.”

“You aren’t crazy. Call them.” I made my own plans to talk to Tytan about it too. “Take care of yourself.”

“I will.”

We talked for a little bit longer about my dad dropping in and the shock of him being a published author. I promised to let her read the book when I was done with it and we made plans to have a girls’ night out with Naomi as soon as Harrison was back in jail—

Dead.

—and life was normal once more.

***

After washing my face and brushing my teeth, I set a circle—not one of the hasty bubbles that I could throw down in seconds, but a carefully constructed protection circle. I wanted to hunt for the thing that had slimed my control room and left Kroshtuka in a coma.

Of course, the protection bubble was only the start. I’d always been led by Krosh into the Dreamscape we created, anchored by the ring around my neck. I was on my own this time and wasn’t sure I’d even find it, let alone get out with my brain intact if I met the nightmare-thing again.

“Come on, Devany,” I said aloud. “You figured out how to unmake Ravana. You got out of the Swamp with your life and the head of the fleshcrawler king. Surely you can figure this out.”

Surely.

I shut my eyes and pictured the pathway that I walked down to get to the Dreamscape. It was part of a guided meditation Krosh had taught me, and the path was as real to me as the road that led to work, or the hallways in my home.

Gravel crunched under my feet and fireflies lit up the night, dancing in the cypress trees. Things plopped in the water out of sight and frogs sang. It was noisy and the further I walked, the swampier things got, which worried me. When I’d done my first bit of magic on Midia, Arsinua had warned me, “Don’t add anything extra, ever.” I wasn’t sure where all this atmosphere had come from, but I didn’t think I’d added it.

I stopped and clutched the ring, picturing myself back in my bed at home. It didn’t work. I wasn’t in my bed anymore, I was in a swamp in the Dreamscape, though I didn’t think it was the swamp of the fleshcrawlers. Something to feel grateful for. Maybe. Real swamps had gators and snakes. It wasn’t exactly a trade up to paradise.

Heart pounding, I concentrated on Kroshtuka. Pictured his copper-skinned face and beautiful yellow eyes. His dark hair and easy way with a smile. Pictured reaching out and taking his hand.

A loud squawk made me jump, and I lost the image. “Damn it.”

A laugh to my left. In the darkness, shadows raced. The fireflies were winking out, one by one.

Silence roared in my ears.

Then another laugh, this one to my right. I kept myself from spinning on my heel. Instead, I made a second protection bubble, built it in my mind as a tight sphere around my body, rather than the large one that encompassed my bed in the Real. I got it up just in time; black goo spattered against my bubble. Whatever it was sizzled and popped against my magical shield. Though I feared it would eat its way through my barrier, it instead slid along the surface to the gravel. I shrieked when a frog hit the shield, then another. Soon, all I could see and hear were tiny bodies slamming against the barrier like bugs on a windshield. I shut my eyes. Concentrated on my bed. Please let me get back to my bed—

—the noise stopped.

I opened my eyes. A dark shape loomed at the path’s head. I reached down into my control room and put my hands on the imaginary joystick, fingers curled around the triggers, ready to blast my unwanted visitor with magic.

“Hold.” Many voices speaking as one. It was an eerie effect, that sent a creeper-chill down my spine.

“What are you?”

“That does not matter. I’ve come only to warn you because a part of me likes you.” The chorus of voices rose. “Leave the Dreamscape and do not return. It is too dangerous, both for you and those you love.”

I squinted into the darkness, wishing I could see something that looked even vaguely human. “What’s happened? What is that thing I saw in the Dream?”

“The thing you seek is a parasite. A Rider. It leaves its potential in those that hear its words. If the Rider is not killed within a full moon cycle, the potential will become a seed, and more hosts will be infected in turn.”

Shit. So the black gunk in my control room was the parasite, or at least the potential for one. I wanted to take a scrub brush and scour my brain. That meant Krosh was infected too. He’d heard it. Why was he in a coma but not me?

My heart stuttered. Liam. He’d heard the voice in the Dream he’d shared with Sharps. “No. No fucking way. My baby does not have that crap inside him!” Darkness throbbed around me. “Thirty days? That’s all?”

“A full moon cycle in Midia. You have more time, but still a clock is ticking. Find the Rider’s host and kill it. Then the potential is lost and those you love are safe. You, are safe.”

The thing in front of me, the shadow without shape seemed to nod. Maybe I was going crazy. Maybe I was already there. “Find the host. Kill it. Before the full moon cycle.”

“Kill it. Right. So, who’s the host?”

“Someone that hates you very much.”

And I was back in bed, the covers wrapped tight around my legs, my nightgown wrenched halfway around my body. My heart hammered hard in my chest as I dipped down into the control room to glare at the slime that still lurked within.

***

This time I made a list of things I needed to do. On the very top was: ‘Find out what a Rider is and where they like to hide,’ and next, ‘Get the black slime out of me and Liam’—oh lord, Liam. Panic made me shut my eyes tight while I breathed through the terror that threatened to overwhelm me. It wasn’t until I realized I was making keening noises, that I got a handle on myself. Heaven forbid someone heard me and came in.

Back to the list. The list would organize my thoughts and keep me sane, surely. I wrote, ‘Save Kroshtuka,’ and ‘Keep Danni safe,’ though that might fall heavier on Zech’s shoulders than mine. One of my kids was in danger—again—and I wasn’t sure how well I would function until he was safe once more.

Shit. “No. Stop,” I whispered.

I will kill the black thing. Destroy it forever.

I sat up straighter. “You could do that?”

I sense it, like prey in the shadows. I will find it and kill it.

“Yes!” Then, “Wait.” My mind flew over possibilities. “Wait. Can you smell it?”

The spider inside me quivered.

“Neutria?”

Yes. I can smell it. Oily black stink.

I swallowed. “Could you track it? I mean, if someone else smelled like that, would you know?”

More silence.
Perhaps.

If I could pay a visit to everyone who hated me, Neutria could smell them, taste them, and root out the one who wanted me dead bad enough to infect people with a parasite. I could kill them before it spread.

“Oh god.” My stomach cramped and I doubled over the book and paper in my lap. More deep breaths. “I didn’t want to do more killing. I don’t like it. Don’t like how it makes me feel.”

You are hard, a hunter. No shame in hunting, in killing.

A common theme with her. My bloodthirsty companion didn’t have any compunction about dealing death. It was survival. I’d done more of it than I’d ever wanted to do. And it had been, at times, very satisfying.

“Focus. List. Look at the list.” I studied it, adding details. ‘Ask Zech. Visit Midia and do research.’ I snorted. Last time shit hit the fan, I’d had the brilliant idea of going to Midia to look for answers, but the problems had come at me too fast to get the opportunity to do something as mundane as visit a library. Maybe I’d be luckier this time.

Then I thought of Vasili pouring over Skriven books and knew he would search for me. I laid the book and paper aside and crossed to my closet to dress, then made a hook and stepped through into the Slip.

FIVE

Vasili’s place was back to its original look; my accidental setting of an entire quadrant of the Slip had faded as other Originators and Skriven took back the controls. I raised my hand to knock, and something shifted inside me. I staggered and propped my hand on Vasili’s house. “Tom?” His soul was still inside me, but I hadn’t felt him lately. Of course, I hadn’t been in the Slip in a long while; my proximity to the place where the Originators purged their souls had probably woken him. The Originators told me that purging the souls meant returning to the Source from which they’d come in the first place. Since I didn’t trust them at all, I hadn’t been able to bring myself to purge Tom’s soul from my body. I didn’t want him to suffer in death any more than he had in life.

A shriek of sound jerked my head up. Something horrible was going on inside, based on the noise. “Vasili? Are you okay?” I couldn’t believe I was asking after the health of the freaky Skriven, but he’d grown on me as surely as Nex had, and Nex was only a head with a mouthful of teeth and trailing intestines. One could go crazy thinking of things like that as friends.

I blew down the door with a blast of magic. Inside, Vasili was in bed with something that looked vaguely like molded gelatin.

“Mistress!” Vasili grinned at me and rose, the gelatin quivering in his wake. His hair squirmed around his head, and the black holes where eyes would have been on a human, smoked and boiled. “My apologies. I was entertaining a guest.”

“I’m sorry I blew down your door. I thought you were in trouble.” The gelatin shimmied off the bed and oozed to the floor, making slurping, glurping noises as it coalesced into a humanoid form. “Hi?”

In my mind, it said, “Greetings,” then moved, snail-like, out the door.

“So.” Vasili clapped his hands together and rubbed them. “What brings you to my humble abode?”

I narrowed my eyes. “What’s up with the nicey nice?”

“I cannot be happy to see you?”

“No. It’s weird.”

He flicked his fingers at the door and it slapped itself back into place. Then, still grinning, he held out his hands to me. “Let’s create the protection circle together.”

I slowly put my hands in his, not sure what the hell was going on, but figuring something wasn’t right for him to be acting this way. As soon as our hands joined, a circle went up around the house. “I’ll create it if you fuel it.”

“Of course,” I said and sent power through our contact. In seconds, he was satisfied and dropped my hands.

“They are watching me.” He went to the bed, and set the whole thing on fire. It went up in a whoosh of sound and heat, and in seconds nothing remained but ash. “Sending me visitors.”

“Who?”

“Amara and those loyal to her. She’s pissed you’ve stolen her spawn.”

I scoffed. “Only you.”

“More than me. They are getting ideas. Wanting to pledge their fealty to you. She doesn’t like it. None of them like it. And I’m getting the brunt.” He sat down hard on a chair and buried his fingers in the tentacles on his head.

“What can I do to help out?”

He tipped his head. “See? Right there. You’re too nice.”

“Okay? So you want me to beat you and enslave you?”

A noise of frustration and anger came from under the tentacles. “No. I rather like having my own agency.”

“Then what, Vasili?”

“I don’t know!”

Figuring he needed some time to think, I studied his collection of oddities. There was a cloud in a bottle on one shelf and what looked like a still on a tabletop in the corner. The glass tubes were filled with thick, purple liquid that oozed out one end and plopped, sizzling, into a beaker. When I couldn’t stand the silence any longer, I asked, “Why don’t you get the spawn into a group? You know, form a union or something.”

“A what?”

“It’s a human thing. Basically you work together to create better conditions for yourselves.” I reached out a finger to a fluffy red puff of fur only to yank it back at Vasili’s sharp warning.

“Don’t! It will make your finger explode. Nasty little creature.”

I glared at the puff ball. “Then why have it?”

“For research.”

Why was it I still wanted to poke the damn thing? I moved away before I was tempted. “Speaking of research, I have something else I need you to look into. Have you heard of something called a Rider?” I watched him but he didn’t sit up and gasp in horror, which I took as a good sign.

“A what?”

“It’s a parasite. Takes a ride inside a host. It can drop potential into other hosts through Dreams and if it’s not killed, then that potential turns into the seed for a new parasite.”

“Doesn’t sound Skriven.”

“Well no, it’s not.”

He did turn this time. “Then how do you expect me to know anything about it?”

I gestured to the books all around. “Hello?”

“These are Skriven tomes on Skriven matters. What care we about the troubles of mere mortals?” He bent over to scoop up a black bound book, a silver clasp gleaming on its cover. “The Keeping of Souls.”