Soulcleaver Read online

  “I’m one hundred and forty-two and . . .” Adelle looked to her brother who gave a curt nod of consent. “Marshall is one hundred and thirty-seven. No one knows how old Jack is—he won’t tell us.” She flicked a mischievous glance at Jack then faux-whispered, “Personally, I think it’s an affectation. He’s probably only seventy.”

  “Ha! You’ve known me for longer than that. How could I be born after I met you?” Jack grabbed a shirt from the floor that Marshall had missed and tossed it at Adelle, who caught it and began folding it. Then he sat next to his mostly repaired basket and attempted to weave the last tattered bits together.

  Nova watched the exchange with a frown, and Marshall realized the old joke between Jack and Adelle was one she’d never witnessed before. The dawning expression of hurt on her face told him she was feeling left out.

  Nova blinked, as if coming back to herself. “I need to get some water.”

  “I’ll get it for you.” Jack jumped up.

  “No, I . . . just need a minute to myself. I’ll get it,” Nova said

  Like Adelle had earlier, Jack looked to Marshall, who nodded his consent.

  As smart as ever, Nova caught the exchange. “Mars is the leader, isn’t he? Of your team, I mean.”

  “He’s our captain, for better or for worse,” Jack said. “Don’t look like that, Nova. We’re the same people you knew ten minutes ago. We just also come with a job title.

  She blinked several times. “Water. Now.” She croaked and fled from the room.

  “That could have gone much worse. She didn’t even throw anything.” As usual, Jack tried to put a positive spin on the situation.

  “Yet,” said Marshall.

  “She’s not going to throw anything, Mars. You’re her favorite and the one she has the most reason to be mad at. If she was going to throw something, she would have done it by now.” Adelle picked at a nail, seemingly bored with the situation.

  He smoothed a hand over his curls, taking comfort in the fact that they were impeccable, as usual. “Her favorite? What makes you think so?”

  “Please, like I need to waste my time inflating your ego.” Adelle brushed him off. “Just be extra nice to her for a few days, and she’ll get used to the situation.

  “She’s not a puppy. She’s our friend.”

  “She’s our charge, captain. And if our intel on Noah is correct, we might be done with all of this soon.” She sighed. “I like her too, okay? But this has gone on for far longer than we planned, and we’re all more attached than we should be. Let’s just get through this vacation, and who knows? Maybe this will all be done when we get home. Then, if you really want to, we can be her friends.”

  “Or anything else either of you might be thinking of.” Jack piped in as he stood from the floor, brandishing his newly repaired basket.

  Marshall gave Jack a dirty look. “Let’s get everything loaded into the car. I’m sure she’ll have more questions. We can fill her in on our way north. Adelle—”

  An explosion flung them all to the floor.

  The whole team was scattered around the room like ragdolls. Marshall managed to pull himself to his feet, but before he could do anything, the wall behind him let out a horrific creak and broke off from the rest of the house, taking most of the room with it. He had just enough time to activate his shield before the floor collapsed underneath them. He latched onto his sister as they fell but couldn’t see Jack. He flung his shield out as far as he could and hoped for the best. The shimmering, blue forcefield caused them to bounce once they hit the floor, flattening everything underneath them into rubble.

  “Jack! Status!” His voice was clear and efficient as he went into survival mode.

  “Undamaged, boss. Mostly.” Jack was lying on the floor looking up at the support beam that had come down with them. It was pressing against Marshall’s shield, inches from Jack’s head.

  Marshall unwrapped himself from Adelle and checked her over. Once he was sure she was okay, he pulled them both to standing. A small part of his mind noticed that the basket Jack had mended had escaped the chaos completely unscathed.

  Another fireball announced itself by blowing out what was left of the living room windows, sending glass raining against his shield.

  “Get out there and stop whatever the hell that is from bringing down the rest of the house. I’ll get Nova.” He ran toward the kitchen, dreading what he might find, but once he got there, he discovered it was empty.

  Marshall turned on his heel and raced back through the house to sift through the destruction, hoping he wouldn’t find her crushed body. Once he ascertained the house was empty, his stomach twisted as dread settled in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t lose her now, not after all this time. Not now that they were so close to the end of the mission.

  He sent out his senses to find her, that soft pulse of black light that was so familiar to his mind. She had been a gentle constant in his head for so long he thought he’d always be able to find her anywhere.

  But not now. It was gone—she was gone.

  He expanded his search past the streets and houses of their neighborhood, farther out into the city, but he felt nothing, not even Jack and Adelle. He couldn’t sense anyone at all. In a panic, he ran toward the front of the house, fearful that his friends had been killed, that all of their neighbors had somehow been killed, but as he burst out the front door he saw them facing off against living fire.

  “What the hell are ifrit doing in a populated area?” Adelle shouted to Jack after her shield absorbed a fireball. She was surrounded by a wall of fire, completely pinned down and shouldering a constant barrage from half a dozen of the small winged horrors.

  “Making an awkward situation awesome?” Jack shouted as he moved around the battle scene like a dancer, scooping random items from the ground to charge with raw energy then chucking each one at his flaming targets. For him, this was all just a game. Marshall shook his head.

  “Awesome? We’re going to need a new house!” Her hair was smoking a little, which was a bad sign. If the ifrit were powerful enough to wear down her shield so quickly, they were in trouble.

  “The Guard can get us a new house. They can’t get us a new Nova. Well, they could, but there are laws against that kind of thing.” Jack threw a charged trashcan lid at an ifrit—narrowly missing Adelle—and scored a direct hit on its flank. Unfortunately, it only served to make it angry, but not angry enough to break away from Adelle. “She looked pretty mad back there, didn’t she? Hopefully fending off these little nasties will change her mind about us.”

  Marshall didn’t pause as he took in the scene. Instead he plowed into the wall of fire penning in his sister. He purposefully didn’t think about how much damage his shield had taken in the fall as he entered the hellish inferno. The flames surged, doubling in size and wrapping around him, trying to prevent his escape. He sent more of his essence into his shield and struggled to reach the other side, feeling as though he was swimming through taffy. As he ran for the other side, he thought he could hear Jack swearing loudly over the deafening roar of the flames.

  The smell of burning hair told him the heat was overwhelming his shield’s ability to ward it off, which was a problem—dreamwalkers had some of the strongest shielding among the Other. If the ifrit’s fire could defeat them so easily, his team was in trouble.

  He didn’t understand why the ifrit were even coming after them. Of all the benighted—creatures of the Other who couldn’t blend in easily with norms—ifrit tended to keep to themselves. Barely venturing even into Other society, they usually preferred to live inside active volcanoes.

  Marshall had never even seen one before. He only knew them from his studies to become a guardian. Ifrit were created when a clan of Nightmares born from the fear of fire had preyed on a remote village on an isolated chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean. For years they had made merry in the bodies of the villagers, nearly achieving demon status, until a chance visit from a lone dreamwalker guardian named Hala had ruined their plans.

  Once she had torn through the village and freed the people from the possessing Nightmares, the guardian left, not realizing that a small number of the children born during the years of possession had been born with strange abilities. Nearly a hundred years later when she’d come back through the area, the island had been empty of all human life—every man-made structure had been destroyed.

  She would have left, but a final, desperate scry showed her that a cluster of nonhuman creatures had nested inside the island’s resident volcano. Hala had been prepared to unmake them, but when she discovered their nest, they acted more like frightened children then monsters.

  Hala had chosen to scan them and learned that the villagers had fled out of fear, leaving their horribly misshapen children behind. Further probing also showed her they had inherited none of the inherent evil of their Nightmare parents, only an odd, scaly- winged appearance and an affinity to fire.

  So why were they attacking the Guard like it was their job?

  Marshall joined his sister where she’d taken shelter by the concrete steps and touched her arm in a silent greeting. She returned the touch and gave him a wry smile.

  The fire wall was now so high it was impossible to see their other teammate.

  “Jack!” He shouted but could hear nothing over the roaring inferno. He set up a quick mental link with his team, so they could hear one another over the sound of the noise. Any sign of Nova?

  Negative, but we’ve been busy with these guys. Adelle’s mental voice was clipped. Marshall wasn’t surprised. She hated when someone got the drop on her. Being forced to hide and wait for backup would ensure that she was livid.

  Sorry, Mars. Jack’s voice wasn’t angry. Jack was never angry, but Marshall could sense a
thread of worry behind the man’s words.

  Marshall’s mind raced. He wanted to go after Nova, but he couldn’t sense her. Even if he knew where she was, he couldn’t leave his team behind to deal with this mess. As it was, they’d be lucky to get out of here alive with all three of them working together.

  He hadn’t even known hiding people from his senses was possible. Even if Nova was dead, she’d give off some residual essence for Marshall to sense. Someone must be blocking him. He briefly closed his eyes, trusting his sister to keep him safe and imagined being wrapped in cotton wool. He flared his essence and burned it to ash. His sense of his teammates and a few cowering neighbors returned to him all at once. But still no Nova. Shit.

  A barrage of fireballs pounded against their cover, reducing the steps to burning slag. As his shield took up the slack, Marshall’s essence told him he would soon be in danger of needing to choose between his shield or his ability to fight.

  Marshall’s shielding ability was considered the strongest out of all his fellow dreamwalkers, so the ifrit must be packing some serious power if they were able to take it down so easily.

  His team was going to have to finish this quickly.

  Who knows something helpful about ifrit? All I know is their origin, I’ve never dealt with them before.

  Unsurprisingly, it was Jack who answered. He was always sharing random bits of knowledge, usually whether the listener was interested in hearing it or not. This time Marshall was very interested in anything Jack had to say on the matter. These guys are super nonconfrontational. The only time they fight is to defend themselves. If they’re coming after us, either they think we’re a threat, or someone has something over them and is using it to force them into attacking us.

  Shit. If that was true, it meant Marshall couldn’t kill them. Which would have been quicker and safer for his team. We’ve got to trap them then.

  Marshall wasn’t looking forward to this. With failing shields and little magic, he and his team were going to have to figure out a way to capture six incredibly powerful creatures.

  He vowed to never let his team get caught so defenseless again. If they hadn’t gotten so complacent over the years, they would have been prepared for this.

  We need to form up. If we combine our shields, we’ll stop bleeding away essence so quickly. I’ll distract them. Hopefully that will break the firewall, and Jack can get to us without burning up too much essence.

  Copy.

  Copy, boss.

  Marshall charged a small rock and aimed for a young tree in the neighbor’s yard across the street. It exploded on impact, and the crown of the tree fell, scattering the flying ifrit clustered above the street. Two of them were pinned under the tree, and as Marshall had hoped, it had been enough to break the groups’ concentration enough to dampen the intensity of the fire wall.

  Jack darted through the smoke and flames to join them, and Marshall held out a hand to draw him into the connection he was already beginning to form with his sister.

  They weren’t used to bonding like this. Marshall’s team wasn’t one of the heavy hitters, so they didn’t often get called into cases that led to battles. Before Nova—before the death of his father—his team was a simple patrol team. Jack had only been teasing Nova when he claimed they were the coolest guardian team. Usually, they spent their nights roaming their section of the ’Scape making sure their dreamers weren’t preyed on by Nightmares. It was simple, boring, and safe—a lifestyle Marshall worked very hard to achieve.

  Until the death of Marshall’s father, the worst thing he’d ever had to face was a baby Nightmare, puffed up on false bravado. He’d find a personal dreamscape radiating distress, swoop in, find some horror perched on top of a terrified dreamer, and unmake the thing.

  Marshall would get to feel like a hero, and the dreamer would usually forget the whole thing. And if they did remember it, the norms had a simple rationalization for the experience—they called it sleep paralysis.

  At the moment, Marshall didn’t feel much like a hero. He felt like a child who desperately wished his father weren’t dead and would come and take care of the problem for him. He allowed himself to wallow in the thought for a split second, and then he banished it. His dad wasn’t here. Marshall was the one in charge, and his teammates were looking to him for leadership. So he pulled on his big boy pants, centered himself, and allowed acceptance of the situation to flow through him.

  On either side, he could sense Jack and Adelle doing the same. As each teammate allowed the chaos around them to be and settled deeply into the moment, they drew closer together.

  He felt Adelle’s comforting, warm orange wrap around him. Loving and protective as always. It was followed closely by Jack’s brilliant nebula of colors, as whimsical and complex as his best friend. He cherished them and blended with them until they were all one.

  One mind, three bodies.

  Together they spun a shield around themselves that shimmered with all the colors of the universe.

  “Wow.” The word came from Jack, but all three of their bodies uttered the word.

  Marshall agreed. They’d never done anything quite like this before. They’d combined their essences, sure, but never so closely and never with such a sense of urgency. When this was all over, he fully intended on exploring this new ability of theirs further. It was pretty neat.

  The ifrit had collected themselves and managed to reform the firewall, but they didn’t renew their assault. Was it Marshall’s imagination? Or did they seem more hesitant than before?

  We need something to corral them. Adelle’s voice brought him back to the matter at hand.

  True. But what? We’re weaponless.

  He was ashamed to realize they’d grown lax enough to allow themselves to be taken so unaware, and he felt an echo of shame in his teammates.

  This could never be allowed to happen again.

  This would be so much easier if we could simply kill them. Jack groused, though Marshall knew he wasn’t advocating for the death of the pawns arrayed against them, only venting his frustration. We have the power now to finish this.

  It was true. They were brimming with enough power to unmake every single one of the creatures before them. Or at the very least bend them to their will, but doing so would violate everything the three guardians stood for. Changing the fundamental nature of a sentient creature was strictly forbidden.

  Maybe not change them irrevocably. Perhaps they could simply confuse them?

  Marshall took command of the power of his team, and they allowed it, trusting in their leader to make the right decision.

  He scooped up the fire-colored lights of the ifrit’s essences in his mind’s eye and held them still, causing the firewall to dim slightly.

  He seeped into their minds and saw a chaotic haze of fear and rage. The rage wasn’t pointed toward Marshall’s team, but instead it was aimed at the image of a dark-haired man. Marshall rifled through the creature’s minds and saw that their children were being held hostage. If the ifrit didn’t do as the dark-haired man said, they would be tortured to death.

  We can help you. Marshall tried to penetrate the wall of violent emotion ensnaring the creatures’ minds.

  As one they let out a horrible, frenzied wail that knocked Marshall and his team back out of the ifrit’s collective consciousness.

  Reeling from the burst, Marshall, Jack, and Adelle all fought to stay centered enough to remain connected to each other.

  Well, that was a bust. What now? Jack asked mildly, as though they made an error in calculating the tip for a meal.

  Marshall marveled at the man’s confidence in him and was determined to live up to it.

  If only they could trap the creatures, like Adelle suggested. If his team could hold them long enough, the ifrit might calm down enough to be reasoned with. The Guard would find and protect the ifrit’s children, and he knew if he could convey that, they could come to an understanding.

  But without changing the fundamental nature of their protective parental response, they wouldn’t be able to mentally calm them. And that was out of the question.