BREAK THE SKY: Prologue|1
Chapter 2
One God sleeps beneath the ground
Put there by Six who walk unbound
In Mankind's dreams they found their tool,
To gather the power they need, to rule.
Vespasian Barclay,
Esoterica, Vol III
Sebastian remembered:
They'd left the house when Sebastian was nine.
It had been late; very late. Sebastian, nine years old, pale and skinny with years spent indoors, remembered a pounding on the door of his tiny attic room.
Sebastian was very tired; just that evening his father had tried to teach him how to turn off a lamp from the other side of the room, but electricity wasn't simple like fire, so he'd failed, and he'd gone to bed hungry and bruised and bleeding, but only a little, from his mouth.
The door slammed as it opened, and a very tall man who Sebastian thought he dimly remembered as one of his father's friends and a woman he was very sure he'd never seen before stomped into the room. The man was tall and jagged-faced and scowling as he seized Sebastian and dumped him on the floor.
“Get up, you stupid boy, and get dressed. We're leaving.”
“But Father-”
“Your father has already fled,” the woman said with an enormous grin “so much for family ties, eh?”
“Be quiet,” snapped the thin man, yanking open the drawers to Sebastian's tiny dressed and throwing clothes on him.
The women squatted down and pinched Sebastian, hard, on the fleshy part of his cheek. Her fingers were hot, and her eyes were a shifting amalgam of red and purple.
“Hurry now, get dressed.” she winked “don't worry, I won't peek.”
She covered both of her eyes with brown-skinned hands that ended in things too long, black, and sharp to be fingernails. Behind them, she giggled.
“Cease your blandishments,” the thin man said, sternly.
“Step off, Aodhan, you're not the boss of me.”
Aodhan; the name was slotted into his head somewhere. Oh. Right.
“Uncle?” Sebastian murmured sleepily as he pulled a sweater over his head.
“Aww, how sweet, a family reunion,” the woman said, surveying the portrait of Vespasian Barclay on the ceiling with avid interest “sour-faced old bastard, wasn't he?”
Aodhan was already shoving him out the door “hurry up, you little shit, I can't fucking well carry you. I need my hands free.”
“As do I, pumpkin, as do I,” the woman said, trailing behind them, her nightmare eyes darting from corner to corner “otherwise it would be such a pleasure,” she was wearing the shredded remains of what had probably once been a beautiful sari; it was too dark to be sure, but the color might have been green or it might have been blue.
“Where's my father?”
“Did a runner, abandoned his dear, fluffy-headed son. Isn't paternal love a picture?”
“Quiet, harlot. Your father is drawing them away from the house, Sebastian. He's buying us time,” Aodhan said as walked slowly down the stairs. The lights were off, but a single mote of smoldering green light perched on the tip of Aodhan's index finger. The radiance made everyone look sickly and ghoulish; the woman hardly needed the help. But even without the light, Sebastian thought his uncle looking pale.
“Who are 'them'?” Sebastian whispered.
“The black hats,” the woman replied “or I suppose red hats would be more appropriate,” she giggled.
They had reached the first-floor landing when Sebastian heard the sound of breaking glass; Aodhan muttered “shit,” succinctly.
“Looks like your father didn't by us very much,” the woman whispered in Sebastian's ear, and her breath smelled like rotten meat and old perfume.
“Stay here,” Aodhan said, shoving Sebastian back; he snapped, and both of his hands suddenly blazed into white-hot flame that singed Sebastian's face from five feet away.
Three of them burst into the hallway; they were wearing black body armor and carrying rifles, faces hidden by shiny black goggles. Aodhan raised his burning hands, but a fourth man entered the hallway, carrying a long, thin willow-wood staff, and Aodhan cried out and slammed against the wall.
“Pussy,” the woman said succinctly. The man with the staff raised it at her; quick as a flash, she seized one of the armored men and hurled him like a doll at the spellcaster. One of the two remaining soldiers came at her; he managed one shot that went wild before she closed the distance between them without seeming to move. She swept her hand gracefully across his throat with a languid gesture, like she was trailing silken scarves.
The blood was burning hot as it splashed against Sebastian's face; he whimpered, clutching handfuls of his hair and trying to disappear.
The last soldier smashed the strange woman across the back of the head with the butt of the rifle; she turned, snarling, and the soldier shot her in the stomach once, twice, three times. She hissed out a few words in a harsh, glottal language, then fell to the ground and was still.
“Check the woman,” the spellcaster said from the end of the hallway. The voice was gargled by the mask, but it was definitely a woman's voice. The remaining soldier went down on one knee, but before his fingers could reach the dead woman's throat, her taloned fingers latched onto his throat and jerked his head sharply to the left; he gurgled and screamed as his body went limp.
“Asshole,” the strange woman said as she smiled a bloody, toothy smile. Then with horrible, insectile speed, her mouth opened wide and darted towards the face of the paralyzed soldier. Sebastian looked away, but he couldn't block his ears; the screams of the soldier and the guttural, ecstatic moans of the woman as she fed.
He heard the spellcaster curse; but as she walked forward, staff upraised, a blast of white flame caught her full in the face; she fell to the floor boneslessly, collapsing in a heap. Clearly she'd been dead before she fell.
Aodhan groaned as he hauled himself to his feet, his right hand still smoking.
“Come on, we've wasted enough time,” he said curtly, stepping gingerly over the woman and her feed and hauling Sebastian up and marching him towards the door.
“Almost done,” the woman said, her voice hoarse and choked with pleasure.
“We're in something of a hurry,” Aodhan snapped.
“Oh fine,” she said, getting up with a languorous stretch “buzz-kill.”
She was drenched in blood; and the front of her body was blown open and exposed, her chest a butchered nightmare, but it didn't seem to be slowing her down any.
“You okay, Sebastian?” she asked, brushing his face tenderly with sticky fingers “the bad men didn't hurt you?”
Sebastian didn't say anything, just jerked his head away from her and vomited, profusely. For the first time he was glad that he hadn't eaten since breakfast the previous day.
“Christ,” Aodhan said, disgusted “like we have time for this.”
“Such a delicate one,” she sighed “let's get him out of here before he pukes on your shoes again, hmm?”
She knelt down, though, and gave Sebastian a look that was frankly appraising.
“You won't always be this young, or this delicate,” she mused, tapping his nose with a bloody claw and smiling her empty, nightmare smile “when things change, when you need some help, give me a call won't you?”
“Get out of here, and make safe the path,” Aodhan said.
“My name's Zaszael,” she said as she walked towards the back door, seeming to fade into shadows as she walked “you should remember it.”
Aodhan and Sebastian left the ruined hallway as they trailed after Zaszael, the paralyzed soldier still making indistinct cries, it being hard to make cogent sounds without a tongue.
<><><>
The memory seized him without warning, like so many of his memories did; the instant he flipped the switch on his small bedside lamp, the instant he was in darkness, the memory came and smashed him to the ground with its power.
He threw up, like he had all those years ago, and once he was done dry-heaving he muffled his already quiet sobs with a handful of blanket. He lay on the bare wooden floor, shuddering, his teeth clenched together so tightly he thought they might crack, silent tears running down his twisted face.
It was always slow, putting himself back together again. He feared one day he would shatter and not be able to pick up the pieces afterward. His breathing slowed. He unclenched each of his fingers slowly and deliberately, each one adorned with a little crescent moon of blood from where they'd dug into his skin.
Like her claws that night, each one trailing shredded flesh-
No. No, no, no.
He shut his eyes; felt his heartbeat slow. Felt his limbs unclench, felt the exhaustion wash over him as he dragged himself, shaking, to his feet. He switched on the light.
He got himself cleaned up, businesslike and efficient, not allowing any thoughts to intrude on the icy blank that protected him most of the time. The room was equipped with a tiny sink and a tiny stove. He stripped off his faded blue sweater and rinsed it in the sink, scrubbing it with the detergent he kept on the little formica counter. He hung it up to dry over the radiator, on the line he'd hung himself. In the warm glow of the single bulb he was chalky-pale, and as he hugged himself to stop the shivering he could feel ribs under his fingers, sticking up sharply out of his skin. He got the floor cleaned up. It wasn't hard. He hadn't eaten much.
There was a knock on his door “everything okay in there?” someone called, voice sleepy and blurred. A woman. Probably his landlady. What was her name? A something. Amanda? Amelia?
“I'm fine,” he called, voice a little rough around the edges “I ate something bad this afternoon.”
“Alright,” she called, concerned “you need anything?”
A too-wide smile, dozens of teeth like ivory blades”You won't always be this young, or this delicate-”
“I'm fine,” he managed to gasp “thank you, I'm fine.”
She didn't reply, but he heard her walking away, her footsteps creaking on the old wooden floors.
That hadn't been his last encounter with the Red Watch. As he'd gotten older, they'd happened more and more frequently, until barely a week went by without a fight, without some run to some seedy bolthole in another anonymous town. He didn't know if as time went on they got better at finding his Father, or if Father simply got worse at hiding, as things began to fall apart, unravel in his hands.
He wondered if they were still looking, if they still cared. With Father -memories clamored for his attention, a thousand cold and jagged memories, but he refused to acknowledge them- out of the picture, as the euphemism went, would they care? If the dragon was dead, did you go after every crawling salamander he may have spawned over the years?
The fact was he didn't know. He didn't know if the Red Watch was still looking, or if they cared. But he suspected the answer to both was yes. They would probably find him soon. Kill him, most likely, or ship him off to whatever anonymous gulag they kept American magic users. Maybe they'd test cosmetics on him.
He should leave. Keep moving, keep running. He knew enough of Father's old friends, and there was always Zee, who seemed to like him, or at least derived amusement from his continued existence. He shouldn't have rented a room, enrolled in a school. He should have kept on.
I'm tired, Sebastian thought, 18 years old, moving with the steady care of an 80-year-old I'm so damned tired. I want to be normal. Or as normal as I can be. I want to...
To have a friend, one part of his mind said. To know that out there is one person who didn't want to own him, who didn't see him in terms of the threat he represented or the uses he could be made of. To know one person who wouldn't say they cared for him, and lie as they said it. He found himself thinking, uselessly, of some red-haired twig with gigantic eyes. Who liked him, apparently, for some reason. It wasn't much, certainly it didn't mean anything. But it was, to his experience, unique.
It was useless. He was living on borrowed time. They would find him, and soon.
The other part of his mind said, I just want everything to end.
He wondered as he carefully laid down on his bed and closed his eyes, if he cared. Or more exactly, he knew that he didn't care, and wondered if he should.
You could say one thing for his childhood, he supposed. It had left him well equipped to deal with fear.
<><><>
Lashdale was asleep, or most of it. It was past 3 in the morning, and it was that kind of town.
Aaron was asleep in his cramped dorm room, sprawled across the narrow dorm bed as he always did, taking up a full ninety percent of it despite being nowhere near large enough for that to be possible. His roommate John was awake, squinting at a computer screen, killing digital representations of things that would barely make Sebastian twitch, if he saw them in the flesh.
John, of course, had been super supportive. When he'd realized that Aaron was actually going to socialize (laugh, guffaw, hearty chuckle, chortle) and that the person of all persons he was going to socialize with was Sebastian, John had giggled for the better part of two hours before telling him that dating a serial killer was going to be rough, but that love would find a way.
Aaron had a couple of older brothers, so he knew where to punch someone to make it hurt. Even a fist the size of a tangerine is unpleasant when applied directly to the kidneys.
Sebastian was awake, though, staring at the ceiling, with the light on. His mind was a careful blank, and it was almost as good as sleeping, really. Because he could keep his mind clear; he'd never been able to control his dreams.
Zee was awake, though, as was his habit. He was laying supine on a snarling plaster gargoyle atop Lashdale's finest hotel, an incongruously tall building with enough Gothic gingerbread on it to make him feel downright homesick.
He felt Sebastian, miles away, as he slid slowly to sleep. He tasted the tranquility of the boy's vast and unique mind for those few peaceful minutes before the nightmares began. Then he tasted those, taking the barest sip of the roiling storm of agony and fear the boy grappled with, every night, all night. He found it, as always, exquisite.
Smiling his bladed smile in the dark, he stared up at the stars. The clouds had cleared sometime before midnight; the night sky was clear and glorious.
Sitting up on his gargoyle (which he'd named Sonneillon, after an old acquaintance whom he remembered fondly) he looked out across the sleeping town and to the dark, snowy forest beyond.
Zee's eyes were like his mind; they were holes in Creation.
“Don't worry, my Lord,” he whispered to himself and to Soneillon, gazing out to the one place on the green earth he couldn't go “I'll be with you, soon.”
(...DUN DUN DAHHHHHH)
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