Sleepless (Curse of the Blood Fox Trilogy, Book #1) (32 page)

He spun around, grabbing Valentina and
pulling her out of my reach.

“No, no, little thing, that isn’t for
you.” He chuckled, standing up and wagging her glittering crimson blade in my
face. “It isn’t terrible for last ditch attempts, but what were you expecting
to do with this, hands still chained?”

I coughed, blood dripping down my
chin, but smiled at him. “You’re right… your hands will work better than mine.
Guess you’re not smarter than Traken in some things.”

He stared at me for a moment, a moment
that quickly became too long. I could tell what was at work as his veins bulged
and redness seeped into the whites of his eyes. His muscles trembled.

“Cursed swords?” he sputtered, skin
growing red as well, as if he were holding in a great deal of air. “My arms are
trying to move.”

“Why don’t you just let them?” I asked
softly. “You must be tired of standing still. You must want to kill me.”

I could see that he did want to kill
me. My sword was drawing bloodlust into his veins, and when his body finally
did come to life it was like the jerky movements of a puppet on strings. His
arm swung, and Valentina’s blade flew straight at me… then missed, and struck
right through the chain holding one of my arms to the wall. Free, I yanked the
spear from my own stomach, fighting back nausea as it ripped through skin, and
flung it as far away as I could with one shaky arm.

“Stop!” Derk shouted, and it must have
been at himself, because Valentina’s blade had twisted through the air and
carved a chunk of flesh out of his own leg. Derk howled, but it wasn’t enough
to allow him to drop Valentina. She had dug her thorns deep into his soul by
now, and her hatred and fury was suffocating. A force of pure destruction, he
was now holding his bewitched arm with one hand, furiously trying to hold back
the death that was aiming for his own throat.

“No, Valentina, my other arm,” I called.
“Free my other arm first!”

“Who are you talking to?” Derk cried,
spit flying from his mouth.

That’s when the distant thunder of
power became not-so-distant, and with a sound like the walls might be falling
in around us, the air suddenly disappeared from my lungs. It was no longer breathable;
it only burned and throbbed, becoming a living thing against my skin.

Then Traken was there, as if he had
been there all along, appearing behind Derk’s struggling outline. Maybe Derk
couldn’t feel the power as I could, so dark and violent compared to even his
own, but he felt the hands that suddenly lifted him up into the air and used
the sickening power churning around us to throw him face first into the wall to
my left.

Stone cracked and crumbled, bits
breaking off. It was a staggering impact that sent Valentina crashing to the
floor and should have broken every bone in Derk’s body, but I saw a flash of
power slide through the air as he hit, and knew that he had protected himself
from much of the damage. Traken was on top of his crumpled form before he could
react, long ringed fingers digging into the skin of the other man’s face, his
eyes wide and violent.

“I will kill you,” he hissed, soft
voice burning like poison. “I will remove your soul from your body, tear it
into a hundred pieces, and make sure it burns in the pit of every hell that
exists.”

“What for?” Derk asked, his voice
quivering even as he mocked him. “For a death that hasn’t happened yet? Your
little master is still alive.”

And then Traken’s head snapped to the
side, and wild eyes stared straight at me. My numb limbs suddenly felt all the
more unreliable as a wicked laugh bubbled up out of Derk’s throat.

“See?” he choked, pinned hard against
the floor. “He looked at you, little thing.
He
knows the truth, even if
you won’t accept it. He is now a weight chained to your existence, ready to
drag you down the moment the whim strikes to turn on you, it seems. Ask his
last
master.”

For a moment the suffocating energy in
the room wavered, Traken’s wide eyes still fastened to mine, and I thought I
saw fear flash across his face. Energy swelled from a whole different source,
and I yanked against my remaining chain again, slipping and sliding in my own
blood.

“Traken, pay attention!”

Suddenly energy exploded from Derk’s
body, sending Traken flying towards the ceiling and me flapping against the
wall, held up only by my chain. A surreal dizziness washed through me as the
large hole in my side squeezed and bled more.

Traken didn’t quite hit the ceiling;
out of the corner of my dazed vision I saw him disappear midair, and reappear
on the other side of the small room. Power curled around him and formed flames,
and they rushed across the floor towards Derk’s collapsed form.

Derk did not stay still, however; he
displaced as well, vanishing from the one position and reappearing behind
Traken. He wobbled, his leg a mauled mess thanks to my sword, but placed one
burning hand on Traken’s back. Whatever spell was on his fingers sent Dogboy
flying into the opposite wall again, the threads of his robe smoldering with
the hissing power.

I gasped for air, blood drowning me
inside and out, and I knew I wasn’t going to last much longer. The problem was,
I needed to get out of the spot I was in. The horrific pools of my lifeblood
had spread out and into each other, and were touching the symbols that Derk had
drawn into the floor. I didn’t know how far along he had gotten into the
ritual, but it was a safe bet that the sacrifice was me if he activated it.
Flesh magic always had a price, and most spells weren’t as gentle as
Semine
.

“Traken,” I tried, though my mouth
felt like it wasn’t moving and my words barely came out. I clung to the chain
holding me to the wall, wishing Phernado was closer but knowing I didn’t have
the power to free myself even if he was. “Traken, the chain.”

Energy zinged through the air, and the
walls shook with the imperceptible power exploding onto them. They were
throwing spells back and forth, and even if they couldn’t hear the roaring of
their own power, I knew that they couldn’t hear me.

“You can’t even touch me, boy,” Derk
shouted, his booming presence obscuring my struggle. “Did you really think you
ever could? There was a reason our master didn’t depend on you for security.”

“Your words are bigger than your power,”
Traken growled back, and his voice was raw and violent. I thought I saw a hint
of the madness spark in his face; a grin appeared, not his normal one and not
his bloodthirsty one. It was a desperate, cracked one that showed more teeth
than smile.

“At least I am not tied to a puny
little thing that would rather throw me away than accept what I am. Did you
really think things through when you broke allegiance to our master, or were
you riding a wave of sniveling emotions and pathetic dreams?”

The cracked smile grew with the
madness in his eyes, and bile rose in my throat. It wasn’t just his face or his
eyes; Traken was falling apart inside. The thing that had broken in him when he
saved me still wasn’t fixed, and with horror I realized that Derk might be
right.

Maybe he really couldn’t survive on
his own. Maybe he literally, really couldn’t live. If my Dream was a curse,
maybe there was likewise something in Traken’s mind, implanted in him, that
made it impossible for him to exist without his master.

So how could he betray him, then? How
could he physically do it?

“Traken,” I said again, but my voice
was too weak. Derk’s laughter drowned me out.

“What a pathetic little fool.”

They were both standing in the pools
of my far-reaching blood now, the little cell we were in fogging up with raised
dust and powdered stone from their battle. Traken’s fists were shaking, the
violence in him breaking free of whatever self-control he usually contained it
in. I was watching something that I had seen happen in myself before, and it
was horrible to see. The wildness was taking over.

I took in a deep breath as the
build-up of their combined ominous power tried to suck it away from me again.
They were constructing defenses and attacks in their minds, and I only had a
small window of opportunity. I couldn’t very well move, but my mind was still
working at the moment. I cleared it, emptied it out as only the Restful Monks
knew how to do, and forced the tightly shut doors of my thoughts open.

It took a lot of effort to keep my
thoughts open; I wasn’t even trying to think anything in particular, I was so
focused on just letting things through. I stared hard at Traken, hoping he
would hear them, praying silently that he was listening at all, though I knew
it was a long shot in this situation. Why would he spend energy listening when
he was in a room with two people he couldn’t usually “hear”? It was all I had
left.

And then my blood did the strangest
thing. Spread out around me, on the floor and walls, at their feet and on
almost all of the weapons, it took on a different color. It glittered, and
snapped, and glowed with a strange crystal light all its own. Both sorcerers
paused, their attention jerking to the ground where the blood moved and curled
around their feet. I was watching Traken, and he went rigid. Every single bit
of energy disappeared in our cell, and all that remained was my pulsating
lifeblood.

If I had to explain my thoughts, I
couldn’t in words. Images and emotions were all I had left in my flustered,
dying brain. I tried to show Traken what I wanted, if he was listening, if it
was working. The chain I needed to be free from, the symbols on the floor in my
blood, my swords, his own twisted expression that burned in my chest. I wanted
to protect him, to comfort him, to do something for him even if I didn’t know
exactly what was wrong. Everything ran through me all at once, and out of me
just as fast, and I let it.

“What… what is this?” I heard Derk
say, and I looked at him finally. Tears were leaking out of his unpleasant,
hardened eyes.

“Oh gods,” Traken whispered, his
gritty voice cracking as well, and I realized tears were sliding down his
cheeks too. Neither of them sobbed aloud, but they were breathing deep, taking
in air slowly as if it were a new concept to them to actually do so.

I wondered if I was hurting them, if
whatever strangeness had taken over my spilled blood was somehow attacking. The
moment that thought crossed my mind, Traken finally looked at me.

“My crazy fox,” he said in such a way
that my heart wrenched. “This isn’t pain.”

“It’s like I’m looking into the face
of the gods themselves,” Derk whispered hoarsely, thick body trembling. “The
sources are everywhere. They’re
singing
.”

Singing? Why couldn’t I hear any
singing?

“Because you are the instrument,”
Traken said. His eyes fluttered closed, shoulders sagging. It was as if every
bit of anger and hate had washed away in an instant. Even my swords, bathed in
the crystalline light, were silent. Traken was speaking as if in a daze. “If
the Week of Colors is the celebration of the gods, then this is the music. Your
blood sings life. It is the most amazing thing I have ever heard.”

“Imagine if there had been a whole
village of us,” I said, but with no real anger behind it. I was too near-death
for that. I felt sad and empty, hearing this miracle that only I possessed now.
What could we have been, my people and I?

Traken’s mouth opened as if he were
going to say something, but suddenly the walls of my mind slammed shut on their
own as a wracking cough shook my body. I coughed out blood, normal once again,
as was the rest that puddled in the room. Both men stood still for a moment,
shaken out of whatever sensation they had jointly experienced. My body heaved,
struggling to stay alive, and Derk’s tear-stained face came to life at the
sharp rattling of my chain.

“Unnatural,” he cried, voice shaking
as he whipped around on me. “I told you that you can’t warp my mind like you’ve
done to this pup. Whatever powers you possess won’t bewitch me.”

It wasn’t hate I heard trembling in
his voice, but fear. I had frightened him. The air thundered as his energy
swept in around us again, and I slumped against my wall with too little
strength to do much else. Traken reacted as well, his own power slamming in to
my skin like a wall of flames.

“Don’t you dare,” he growled, voice
shaking with the backlash of whatever emotions had come over them. He lunged
forward, drawing out his sword from its sheath, but Derk threw him back with a
sudden burst of power, slamming his body against the wall with a resounding
crack
.

Then Derk quickly hurled himself on
the symbols he had drawn with my blood, muttering words under his breath I
couldn’t hear. There was no time to react. My last breath shook in my lungs,
and white fire flashed in front of my eyes as the symbols sparked and exploded
outwards.

I couldn’t feel, or breathe, or move.
There was no pain, but there wasn’t anything else either. For several long
moments, I was sure I was dead.

I didn’t think otherwise until I
suddenly felt my numb, shackled hand released from its imprisonment. The action
finally allowed my body to fall, welcomingly, to the floor. Pain ripped through
me, burning in slow motion, and I felt weightless like a bird, a phoenix. The
heat converged around me, kissed my skin, and I felt free and alive even as my brain
told me I was dying. The other shackle disappeared off my wrist, and I imagined
I was floating.

The fire didn’t stop, but didn’t get
worse. I opened my eyes. I was on my back, twisted slightly, staring up into a
dingy, dark ceiling. A light floating far above my head reminded me of a large
firefly, even though I knew it had to be a magi-globe. My brain swam; was I
falling backwards? But no, the floor was still. A strange, peaceful giddiness
welled up inside. I felt light, light in the air and light in my head.

Traken was crouching over me, his cold
hands chilling the hot skin on my shoulders as he shook them. He had a
beautiful face, so alive and intense, and blond hair darkened with sweat that
stuck against his clammy skin. His robe, open and torn, billowed with energy
that peeled off him in soft, wispy purple fragments. Those dark eyes scanned
over me intensely, and I wanted to touch them, quiet them. They looked like
they hurt.  

The ceiling seemed to be spinning,
growing big and then small. I stared dumbly up at it on my back, and didn't
move. Moving felt like a bad idea. I didn't want to lose this freedom... I
didn't want to feel the pain.

I closed my eyes, but opened them
again when I felt a pinch against my skin. Traken's face was over mine. His cheeks
were ruddy, but I could see that his skin was ashen underneath.

“Santo?” he whispered. The whisper
felt like a thousand pleasant tickles against my ears.

“Hello Dogboy,” I said in a voice that
came out very slow. “I just wanted to rest a bit, you know.” I relished the
fascinating way his brow crinkled and his eyes sparked, but I yearned for that
unique heat. Its warmth was fading fast, and I could feel the dull pain
emerging in my center.

“You’re still alive,” he said, eyes on
my stomach. They were wide, stricken. “I think the spell backfired, but you’ve
already lost so much blood.”

“I tend to lose a lot of blood,” I
said agreeably, closing my eyes again. “Why do people want to kill me so much?
And you… you’d better stop looking at me like that. Trakens aren't supposed to
care, remember?” I laughed more, feeling my chest move as if it were a beast
all its own. “Trakens aren't even supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to be
here.”

“You're going into hysterics. You
really have lost a lot of blood.”

Hysterics? Was that really the right
word? That brought panic to mind, and I certainly didn't feel panicked. Oh, for
that warm bath again, that feeling of fire. Maybe I could find it still. I
pushed my rubbery arms against the hard ground and tried to raise myself up. 

Something hit my cheek sharply and I
fell back down as the crack rang through the empty room and out into the
blackness. I blinked, stunned by the slap, and looked up at Traken. His eyes
were narrowed.

“Don't move.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” I felt the
heaviness sink in more and more, the burdens force their way back into my
flesh. “I’ve got to go find that guy… what a jerk.”

“You need to shut up and come back to
your senses,” he growled. His voice was thick. “You don’t even know how lucky
you are.”

I sobered, and my voice came out soft.
“It hurts.”

“Your eyes are pitch-black,” he
affirmed, and his fingers hovered near my brow. I felt a slight tingle rush
through my skin. It felt so good that I closed my eyes again.

“You have to want to live,” he said.
“You have to stay awake.”

Awake? Was I falling asleep? I nodded
my head as Traken carefully, gently removed what was left of my robe and
wrapped it up to place underneath my head. His cold hands trailed along my
skin, around the sore part of my stomach. It felt good, reassuring, and my head
nodded again. I couldn't see him, but I could still feel him...

A crack split my ears and stinging
pain opened my eyes for me. Traken had his hand raised, ready to whack me
across the face again. I felt my arm muscles react, and sent him a solid punch
to the jaw. It wasn't as strong as it could have been, under the circumstances,
but it made him fall backwards and groan.

“Respect the dying a little,” I said,
fist unclenching and falling back. My stomach immediately began throbbing. “Argh…
I will pound your face in with a rock if you do that one more time.”

Traken sat back up at my side, and his
face was no longer somber. There was a twinkle in those dark eyes. “Well,
you’re starting to sound normal again. I’m just trying to keep you awake,
kitten. I want to make sure you stay alive.”

“Very determined, aren't we?” I asked.
A small, small smile spread his lips.

“You have no idea.”

Traken held out his hands above me,
and they filled with a golden aura. I watched him, and noticed what I had still
yet to before. The edges of Traken's eyes were tired, and there was a droop to
his shoulders. As his aura worked, tickling my damaged skin, I saw that
weariness grow stronger. Every limb seemed to shake.

“I'm sorry, Traken,” I whispered.

“What nonsense are you going on about
now?” he asked, aura wavering and then steadying. I blinked, and had to force
my eyes back open again.

“You’re going through a lot of
trouble. I’m sorry.”

“Again, you’re acting conscientious
when you shouldn’t. What’s trouble is having a master who is also your father
who wants absolute power over the world, which is a decided impossibility,
along with complete immortality, which also isn’t doable. You have caused me
very little trouble if we’re going to compare.”

His breathing was a little rough, but
he seemed livelier when he spoke. I wanted to keep him talking.

“Don’t you have a mother too?” I
asked. I remembered those renewed visions of my own family and it warmed me to
think I still had them, even if I hadn’t known my mother. The unicorn had given
those to me. In retrospect, she had given me a lot of things.

“Not really, not in the nurturing
sense,” Traken murmured. “She was a witch from a village my master had under
his power at the time. She gave birth to me, and I spent my first ten years
with her. It was a long time ago, but I can remember her face a little, I
think.” There was a ghost of a smile on his lips. “She taught me how to heal,
and how to shape the healing aura gold like this. That was her personal
signature.”

“It's a good color,” I agreed. “You
had to leave her at ten?”

“He came to collect me once she had
taught me a sufficient amount of witchcraft. They got in a fight, and he killed
her.”

My heart, sluggish as it was, sunk.
“Oh. I... suppose I should have seen that coming.”

Traken continued, perhaps trying to
keep himself distracted from his own weariness as well. “He shuffled me around
through different teachers, though I studied a lot on my own as well. He had me
learn the killing arts, the deadliest spells that a sorcerer could learn. He
was so cold and proud, it made me want to impress him. I worked hard to earn
his favor.”

His voice was firm, impenetrable, and
it made me sad. I lifted a hand and placed it on his arm, just a thoughtless
comforting gesture, but then groaned and let go as the golden aura brightened
on my stomach and power surged sharply at me. He jerked backwards.

“Sorry,” he said, sounding shaken. “I
don't think you should do that at the moment.”

“Touch you?” I struggled to push
myself up onto my elbows, but Traken's hand caught me on the forehead and
pushed me down again.

“Lay back,” he ordered, this time an
astonishing gentleness in his voice. “I need to finish this or you’ll bleed to
death. No more shocks, I promise.”

He looked like he would fall down dead
himself if he kept up the healing, but something in his troubled, determined
expression hushed me. His hands cupped over me again, and the twisted sorcerer
went back to work. No doubt it was only the power of the colorful moon that
kept his golden aura steady even as his hands trembled. Was it night now? I
wondered what the last color would be, on this week that I might never
experience again. What did the colors mean?

Finally he stopped, and where the
tingling sensation ended, numbness quickly followed. I found that my stomach
still hurt, definitely hurt, but the wound was no longer open. Propping my top
half successfully up on my elbows this time, I met Traken’s weary gaze. The
lids of his eyes were low.

“You lost so much blood. I don't know
if this was enough. How do you feel?”

“Like a ghost,” I said, lips twitching
upwards. His own eyes crinkled a bit, and he poked me firmly in the shoulder.

“No, still here.”

So he said, but my vision was still
swimming. With one grunting breath Traken lurched back to his feet, and reached
down to grab my shoulders.

“We need to get out of here, try
standing up.”

Don’t be sick, don’t be sick.

My stomach cringed as he hefted me up
to my feet, and those same numb feet scrambled against the wet stone and didn’t
bear a single ounce of weight. Traken grunted, almost falling sideways with me.
He managed to keep us both standing, but my skin stretched and burned, and
spots appeared in the dim corners of my vision.

“Hey,” Traken said, a rough whisper in
my ear. “Hey, hey, hey… don’t sleep, Santo. You can’t sleep yet.”

Don’t sleep, don’t sleep.

It didn’t matter what he or I said. My
eyes rolled up into my head. 

When my eyes opened again, unpeeling
from thick layers of sleep, I didn’t at first realize where I was or what had
happened. There had been no Dream; there had been no awareness of being
anywhere at all. It didn’t feel blissful or restful, per se, and I had the
uncomfortable feeling that it had not been a
normal
sleep, but that was
soon followed by the groggy elation that it had not been
my
normal
sleep. Whatever that truly meant, it could only mean good things. 

Something had changed.

I blinked into the hollow light of a
magi-globe tucked into the corner of the stone ceiling above my head. I was on
my back, my head propped on Traken’s lap while he leaned against the murky dark
wall behind him. We were still in the same exact spot, in the dirty little cell
surrounded by a sea of my own sticky, dry blood.

One of Traken’s hands rested on the
ground next to my head, loose fingers curled through and into the long strands
of my hair, now mysteriously unbraided. A whisper of skin just barely touched
my neck. His other hand was moving, ringed fingers shifting like liquid in
tiny, intricate steps as he languidly tossed a tiny blue ball of flame across
the cell to hit the rusty metal bars on the other side. He watched it bounce
off in strange patterns around the room, and caught it with that same hand only
to throw it out into the open again. I watched his movements blearily, only
sliding my eyes to follow the arc of the small magic ball. I had not yet moved.

I studied his face. His skin was pale,
haggard, and his sharp eyes were dark and heavy, outlined by black circles and
caked blood. I realized his dry lips were moving as well, forming tiny,
vindictive sentences that I had to strain to hear. 

“...every step follows another. I will
follow you into the hells and pull you out kicking and screaming if I must.”
The next throw was more violent, and sparks of blue trailed his toy around the
small expanse of room. “Idiot, it’s ridiculous to cling. She’d probably laugh
at that… she’s always laughing at you.” His tone changed again, that tired
glower on his face remaining. “Laughter’s a nice change, though.”

One deep breath suddenly stirred up
what felt like a layer of dust in my throat, and gave away how awake I was by
throwing me into a sudden fit of thick coughs. I turned on my side away from
Traken, but my head was still on his lap and I felt him flinch violently.

The rags of what was left of my robe
had been lying on top of me, but slid off while I coughed. The skin of my
upper-body prickled, naked besides the under-cloth tied around my chest. The
chill stole my breath even more, and Traken’s hand, the one that had been in my
hair, suddenly dug fingers into my bare shoulder so hard I thought there would
be blood.

It took me a while to stop coughing
and speak. My throat was dry and tight, and I could feel just how weak each
limb was. My fingers could barely curl.

“How is talking to yourself any
different than talking to swords?” I finally said hoarsely.

The fingers on my shoulder loosened,
and a curt sigh of air escaped Traken’s lips.