Souldancer (Soul Cycle Book 2) (10 page)

His stout body hit the water with a massive splash that deposited him on a bed of submerged detritus. Xander’s arms flailed wildly as he struggled to the surface for air.

Wracked by heaving coughs that dredged bitter muck from his lungs, Xander fought to regain his senses. Awareness dawned of sheer encircling walls caked with green and black slime. Erratic light poured down through vents hidden far above. The reek and clamor of a dozen drainage pipes echoed in the dim heights. Their filthy cataracts mingled in a turbid pool broken by heaps of dead brush, small animal carcasses, and God knew what else.

Xander caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of his eye and rounded to see Damus and Nahel struggling onto rubbish piles at the pool’s edge. A prayer of thanks welled up in his heart.

A hideous shape erupted from the center of the pool. Xander stared at the gangling apparition in morbid wonder. It would've stood tall as a man but for its bent posture. Bare except for ragged strands of cloth interwoven with weeds and bone, the thing’s skin was almost translucent.

We are the same,
Xander sensed with the surety of faith, just before he screamed.

The creature answered with a cry of its own—a silent hunting call thundering from its twisted soul. Xander’s vision blurred, and the room seemed to peel away at the edges of his sight. A terrible alien will pushed him to the brink of consciousness.

The creature’s withered lips parted, revealing a pair of sharp bony plates instead of teeth. It circled Xander, its beak gnashing the air that its rancid scent further polluted. It was searching for something; not with its milky eyes, but with some preternatural sense.

Xander saw a streak of movement and thought he heard a ripe melon splitting. The creature reeled backward, hissing in pain. Another impact whipped it around with a dark spray of blood; revealing two feathered shafts in its back.

His mind clearing, Xander traced the missiles’ path and saw Nahel standing atop a pile of refuse against the wall’s farthest curve. The malakh gripped his longbow in one hand while the other reached into the quiver at his side to draw another arrow.

The wounded creature loosed a gurgling shriek, but its silent cry was worse. Xander’s joints buckled under the assault. He fell as the monster sprang onto the wall above Nahel. The last sight Xander saw before the filthy pool swallowed him was the monster scuttling into the upper shadows like a startled spider.

Nahel strained to see where the creature had fled, but even his eyes couldn’t pierce the darkness that shrouded the chamber’s heights. He lowered his eyes but kept his bow ready.

Scanning the room for his missing swords turned up nothing. Nahel was relieved to see Damus doubled over with coughing atop a rotting heap on the right.

But someone was missing.

“Xander!” Nahel cried. The only sound was the constant rush of water from the drainage pipes. Worry gnawed at Nahel’s mind as he cast about for his human friend. Xander was far tougher in body and spirit than his size and youth implied. But he couldn’t breathe underwater.

The creature plummeted out of the shadows directly overhead. Nahel fired but missed his mark. He raised his bow to fend off the monster’s claws but mistook its intent. The creature grabbed the bow with surprising strength, twisted it aside, and locked Nahel in a vicious embrace from behind. Nahel’s hackles rose as the monster’s gnashing beak hovered over his neck. He doubled his resistance, but the creature held firm. Its breath reeked like a drowned corpse.

Nahel was on the verge of panic when Damus’ melodious voice sounded from the center of the pool. The water churned as a horde of large grey rats poured out of the pipes. Thanks to Damus’ Mystery, the chisel-toothed vermin ignored Nahel and swarmed his foe.

The creature sprang into the air once again, hurtling over the chattering plague like a bubble rising through water. Nahel's arm darted out and caught the creature’s ankle. His foe writhed and hissed, but the malakh held fast.

“I found Xander!” Damus yelled, his desperate tone deflating Nahel’s pride. “He’s not breathing!”

Adrift in a deep and tumultuous sea, Xander clung to his fading sense of self. He struggled to stay afloat against towering, froth-capped waves that battered his will. Several times he almost gave in, only to catch a glimpse of something dark and absolute that loomed serenely above the storm-racked sky. Desperate, he prayed that the distant monolith would affirm his existence.

The monster’s thoughts—most too alien and vile to comprehend—echoed in Xander’s mind. It told him he was nothing; his life was folly. At last, he saw that it was telling the truth.

Or at least a half-truth.

All his life, Xander had suffered the recurring fear that he was not himself. Such episodes most often came when he looked too long into his father’s mirrors or when he pondered his own being too deeply. At the brink of oblivion, he saw the false choice set before him—self-deception or annihilation.

Xander chose a third alternative. He let go. Throwing down the walls of denial he'd built over a lifetime, he saw the truth of his nature. The drowning boy escaped within and above himself, leaving the stormy sea for soothing darkness.

The soul once bound to the name of Xander Sykes saw again the black prismatic walls that seemed to hold all being. He raced toward union with the infinite.

But the fleeing spirit hadn’t escaped after all. A thread of silver still tethered him to the world.
Did it briefly glint with reflected fire?
Drawn like a fish on a line, he fell back toward the Middle Stratum.

Xander woke to a sour taste, a vile stench, and the squealing of rodents. He lay on a rough bed of pulpy vegetation.

Damus hovered over him. The Gen’s mud-streaked face wore a worried look that turned to amazement. “You’re alive.”

Looking past his rescuer, Xander fixed his eyes on the wretched creature fighting to climb the wall ahead of a mounting swarm of rats. Nahel had hold of its foot, but the monster pulled free with another voiceless scream.

Xander rose to his feet. His place in life had always been unsure. Now he found the place in his soul that touched the transcendent, and through it he willed his enemy destroyed.

“You really should lie down,” said Damus.

A roar of thunder turned the chamber into the shell of a drum. A powerful force knocked Nahel off his feet and dashed his foe against the wall. The creature crumpled into a heap, leaving a viscous blood trail.

I did that,
Xander thought. He came back to himself and realized that he was shaking. A jolt of fear ran down his spine when he noticed Damus staring at him.

Xander!” Nahel cried from across the chamber. The malakh was down on one knee, clutching his head.

Xander turned to see the wounded monster crawling toward him through the mire, glaring with blind hatred as it loosed a silent roar. Damus fell supine, and the rats scattered, seeking shelter under the sodden filth. Xander stumbled but remained standing.

The broken monster rose and staggered forward, snapping its cruel beak. Xander fumbled for the power he’d unleashed a moment before, but panic shackled his will.

Nahel sprang with a visceral cry and drove his dagger into the creature’s back. The monster turned its debilitating will on the malakh, who faltered long enough for his foe’s bony arms to seize him. Their thrashing churned the murky water white.

Xander forced himself to concentrate. He gathered his will to crush the monster like a paper effigy, but a vast shadow blocked the light that seeped through the vents. His head buzzed like a wasp nest, shattering his focus.

Damus struggled to his feet. Muck stained his silver hair and fine clothes. The shadow passed as he waded into the mire, and his rapier reflected the fickle light slanting in from above.

With meticulous lethality, Damus thrust his blade into the gaunt creature’s side. The monster’s hiss became a gurgle as Nahel pried himself free of its weakening grasp and cast it into the putrid water. The creature flailed sluggishly, but Damus planted his boot on its chest. Bubbles broke the surface as its lungs filled.

“Need a hand?” asked Nahel.

“I'm fine,” said Damus. “See to the boy.”

The malakh dutifully complied. “You all right, kid?”

Xander gave a curt nod and looked at their foe’s pale twisted corpse. “What was it?”

“I don't know,” said Nahel.

Damus withdrew his foot from the motionless corpse. “Pranaphage,” he spat.

Nahel’s canine brow furrowed. “Translation please.”

“A creature that consumes other beings' prana.” Damus stirred a jumble of small bones with his sword. “It must’ve thought us a feast after years of living on rats.”

“Any more of them?” asked Nahel.

Damus washed his sword in the relatively clean outflow and sheathed it. “Don’t ask me. Until now, I didn’t think they existed.”

It was not alone.
Xander had seen a shadow haunting the creature’s thoughts—a being it feared as its elder…master…god? The fleeting image faded.

A strange sense of connectedness drew Xander toward the drowned monster. Its face lay beneath the water, wreathed with scraggly yellowed hair that floated on the surface. The pranaphage was no less revolting in death, yet Xander thought he saw something familiar in its warped features. “My God. Was it human once?”

“No,” Damus said. “Pranaphages are descended from Gen.”

Xander fought the urge to retch. True, he’d seen corrupted Gen before, but the savagery of the
Isnashi
was worlds removed from the pranaphage’s depravity. He rounded on Damus. “How could your people birth something so loathsome?”

Damus shook his head sadly. “Rumors older than the Purges tell of secret Guild breeding experiments.”

Nahel’s ears flattened against his head. “Are they true?”

Damus raised a cautioning hand. “Bear in mind that until today I'd dismissed such tales as pseudo-historical propaganda. But most accounts held that speech and sight were bred out of the captive populations. Later generations could supposedly see silver cords and shear them with their beaks. Malakhs’ cords must be tougher than they’re used to.”

“So killing wasn’t enough for the Guild,” said Nahel. “They had to corrupt the Gen, too.”

“It wasn’t just malice,” Damus said. “Pranaphages gained other faculties that proved useful against the Guild’s rivals.”

Xander knew that asking questions might endanger his secret, but a deep need compelled him to understand his feeling of kinship with the pranaphage. “What kind of faculties?”

Damus gave him a knowing look. “We all have questions in need of answers. Some tremendous force bashed the pranaphage against the wall. Where did it come from?”

Xander’s heart was practically bursting with the need to confess, but fear of judgment warred with his conscience. At last, weariness won by attrition. “It came from me. It is my curse—though I’ve rarely turned it against something so large.”

Damus and Nahel exchanged unreadable looks. Xander’s dread returned tenfold. Would the malakh slay him outright? Would the Gen drag him down to his demon queen’s menagerie?

A smile cracked Nahel’s muzzle “Good job.”

“Indeed,” said Damus. “Strong work.”

For a moment, Xander stood dumbstruck. Had two otherworldly beings just given him the acceptance long denied by his own kind? “I am able to move things by will alone. Don’t you find that strange?”

Damus clapped a hand on Xander’s shoulder. “Extremely. Our royal mandate is cataloguing oddities, which now includes you.”

Xander had heard others liken admitting a long suppressed truth to casting off a heavy burden. Revealing his curse to Damus and Nahel had felt like exhumation from live burial. The underground sewers may as well have been gardens in the free air.

If such strange folk accept me, perhaps father was right about sending me into exile.

While Xander contemplated his liberation, the others searched the muck for equipment lost in the fall. Nahel had retrieved his swords, and was shaking the water from their blades, when he remarked, “Did anyone see what happened to Arcanadeus?”

“I noticed him missing right before the water pulled us down,” said Xander.

Damus’ face darkened. “Arcanadeus had a map of this place. It’s doubtful he lost his way.”

More strands of the pranaphage’s warped thoughts formed a pattern in Xander’s mind. “Arcanadeus knew what he sought. There is something worse here than the pranaphage, and he conspired with it to betray us.”

Nahel tied a rope to a Worked arrow and shot it into an overhead vent. The missile passed through the grate as smooth as a whisper and clattered back down the duct. He pulled, and the shaft held fast against the bars. “This should hold until we pry the grate off. We can climb out and circle back around to the front door.”

“Good,” Xander said. “There is much I’d like to discuss with the Steersman.”

The empty corridors echoed with the wrath of Xander’s steps. He’d been foolish to trust a guildsman, but the pranaphage had cured his folly.

Searching the dark subterrane seemed to take an eternity. At last Xander and his friends reached a door at the end of a long hexagonal passage. Nahel’s light revealed thick conduits covering the ceiling and walls. A faint scent of lightning hung in the air.

“He came this way,” said Nahel. “I can smell him, now that we’re out of the muck.”

Damus pointed to the white ceramic door. “That’s a high security vault.”

“What blasphemy did the Guild hide behind it?” asked Xander.

“One they hoped would stay hidden for good.”

“How do we open it?” asked Nahel.

“Very carefully,” said Damus. “Guild security measures weren’t known for gentleness. At best, they caught trespassers in impenetrable wards. At worst…”

Xander exhaled sharply. “I think I know a way in.”

Damus cocked an eyebrow. “How’s that?”

“I stole a look at the Steersman’s map. There was a drawing of this door and a series of numbers written beside it.”

“That sly bastard had the code,” said Damus.