Page 11 of Skalterra By Nightmare (The Skalterra Duology #1)

The only light was that of the escaping steam. It highlighted the contours of the rotsbane’s skull-like face in shades of red and shimmered through the gossamer shadows that hung off its frame. The monster howled as it sucked steam into its gaping maw, and the sound was less animal and more like a screaming gale.

My knees shook, but I couldn’t run. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I was trapped in my own body as I watched the ghoulish beast rip at the pipes and suck down the steam.

A flash of green to my right accompanied Ferrin’s warning shout. The flame in his hands solidified into a massive hammer that he brought swinging through the open kitchen door. It rang out as it crunched against the connection between our cart and the monster. A second swing of the hammer finished the job.

Metal groaned as the pipe connections burst and broke. The engine continued full-steam ahead with the monster still on board, while our cart, as well as the rest of the train behind us, rumbled to a stop. Ferrin let his hammer evaporate, and he pushed his goggles up his forehead to watch the monster get farther away.

“What was that?”

I dared to whisper.

“Rotsbane,”

Ferrin growled.

“Soulless monsters that feed on Skal. They’re getting bolder if they’re attacking steamcarts now, but it shouldn’t come back as long as we don’t ignite anymore Skal.”

The engine was just getting far enough ahead to put me at ease when the rotsbane lifted its head from where it feasted on the pipes. Shadows hung off it like liquid cloaks, from which its four, skeletal arms extended. Even at this distance, I could see its eyes, deepset behind a hollow black skull and bright with the embers of ruby Skal, lock with mine.

“Wren.”

Ferrin’s voice was a shaky breath.

“Wren, run. It’s done with the engine, but you and the cooks are made of Skal.”

“But they can’t die,”

Orla said.

“If the rotsbane catches her, it’ll devour more than her Skal, but her consciousness too.”

Ferrin cast a panicked glance between me and the two cooks.

“Wren, why aren’t you running?”

The rotsbane cocked its head, still getting farther and farther, but then it pounced, bounding at us from down the tracks.

“Wren!”

Ferrin yelled.

My legs still didn’t want to work. I stumbled back on them, feeling like I was trying to walk through mud while on stilts. I hadn’t replaced my boots after they’d turned to dust in Fana’s passenger cabin, and my wool socks slipped on the kitchen floor. I fell, and the rotsbane descended upon our cart. It ripped the wall away, and it took one of the cooks first.

It dug long claws into her sides, and its jaw unhinged. A dull red light emanated from the cook’s chest, and she blinked, as if coming to, but before she could scream, her eyelids fluttered and she dissolved into ash as the rotsbane sucked down the last bit of red Skal from the air between them.

“Wren!”

Ferrin’s scream somehow made it through the buzzing in my ears. He reignited his sword of blazing green, and ran it through the remaining cook. The cook disintegrated, but he would at least wake up, unlike his counterpart. To my horror, Ferrin turned the blade towards me next. He was going to kill me, to spare me a more certain death in the mouth of the rotsbane, but just as the blade came arcing down, it evaporated, sucked into the rotsbane. Its empty eyes flashed green, and then the monster fixed its gaze on me.

Its four sets of claws reached forward, but a metallic clang rang out as Orla attacked the monster, armed with nothing but a stove pot and a kitchen knife that she drove into its back.

“Find Galahad!”

Ferrin yelled, pulling Orla away just as the rotsbane swiped at her with its claws.

My legs finally found their bearing, and I staggered to my feet and slid into the dining cart. It was empty, but screams echoed from the next cart over.

“It’s a rotsbane!”

someone shrieked, and chaos greeted me on the other side of the door. People fought against each other to find the exit, and in the light of the skalflames held aloft by passengers to light the way, I saw a silver-bearded face fighting against the tide of bodies.

“Galahad!”

I screamed just as the sound of ripping metal echoed behind me. I pushed against the bodies at the back of the crowd, trying to reach the Magician. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to disappear in a cloud of dust and light like the cook had. I hadn’t gotten into Von Leer yet. I hadn’t done anything yet.

“Galahad, please!”

Four sets of claws sank into my flank, but they felt cold instead of sharp. The rotsbane lifted me and turned me around so we were eye-to-eye. I fought against its grip, but it was no use. The rotsbane’s jaw unhinged, so that all I could see was the dizzying nothingness of its insides.

This was it. This was how I died.

The cold nothing of rotsbane sucked at my warmth, my energy, my everything, and—

“Wren Warrender!”

A voice, deep, desperate and, for once, welcome, boomed over the clamor behind me.

“I release you from my service!”

And the rotsbane disappeared.

The summer heat of my bedroom was too warm and too disorienting after being inside the rotsbane’s mouth. I stumbled out of bed, sweating profusely, and staggered to my window. A single moon hung over the quiet harbor.

I was still in my hoodie from earlier in the day, and Riley’s missing flyer from the first marina crinkled in the front pocket. I pulled it out, trying to orient myself, trying to remember where I was and how I’d gotten here.

Had I died? Ferrin had said the rotsbane would kill me for real if it ate me. I flicked my bedroom lights on, much to Jonquil’s ire, but I ignored the cat as I inspected my palm.

There were still only two slashes through th.

“T”. I still had three lives left.

Then that must’ve been Galahad’s voice there at the dream’s end, releasing me from my Nightmare form to avoid being devoured.

I shoved the flyer into my nearby backpack and pulled the hoodie off, still breathing hard, still mentally replaying the rotsbane unhinging its humanoid jaw as it descended on me.

Taking the hoodie off wasn’t enough. I needed air. Or water. Or anything.

I slipped into the apartment hall, passing the stairwell that led to the shop and tip-toeing to the tiny kitchen and living room.

The full moon lit the space through the open curtains, and I kept the lights off as I fumbled for a drinking glass in the kitchen cupboards. A row of ceramic chickens, painted all different colors, stared at me from the windowsill, and I stared back as I filled my cup at the sink. Jonquil must’ve been on the counters again, because one of them had a crack along its wing.

“What’s happening?”

a groggy voice asked behind me.

I jumped, and my cup fell from my hand, shattering in the sink.

“What the hell?!”

I spun around, ignoring the broken glass, to see a shape pushing itself into a sitting position on Gams’s old couch. The moonlight tinged Liam’s dirty-blond hair, and his mouth drew downwards in a confused frown.

“What are you doing here?”

He extricated himself from the sagging cushions with a groan, and tried to stretch out a kink in his neck by pushing on his chin.

“Trying to sleep,”

he mumbled.

“Unsuccessfully. Maybe you have some pointers for me. Not only do you drop dead asleep without warning, but you’re impossible to wake up.”

I groaned and leaned against the counter, running a hand over my face. I’d fallen asleep in Sabrina’s car but had woken up in my own bed. Gams definitely wasn’t strong enough to carry me up the rickety flight of steps to our apartment.

“You…”

I pointed at Liam, and he blushed in the moonlight.

“Because I was…”

“Asleep.”

He nodded in confirmation.

“I should thank you. It was a real ego-boost learning I could carry an entire person up a flight of stairs.”

My cheeks warmed, and I turned around so he wouldn’t see the heat rising in my face. I tried to busy myself with pulling the chunks of broken glass from the sink, but he came up behind me.

“Let me.”

He pulled an empty cup down from the cupboard and filled it before handing it to me. I stepped to the side, drinking the water, as he cleaned the glass from the sink.

I watched him work for a moment, letting the cool water calm the last of my nerves after my encounter with the rotsbane. I finally spoke as he rinsed the sink out.

“Why are you so nice to me? Did Gams put you up to it?”

He laughed softly, throwing away the last of the larger glass chunks.

“What if she did?”

“It would make sense.”

His brown eyes looked black in the dim light as he turned to study me in the dark.

“Why’s that?”

“She thinks I can’t make friends.”

“You told me you had friends, but they sucked.”

“Fine. She thinks I can’t make good friends. Is she paying you extra to be nice?”

“Is that an option? I should ask her about that in the morning.”

His smile was playful, but his eyes sad. He pulled another glass down to fill for himself. He treated the apartment with more familiarity than I felt with it, even after two weeks. Jonquil waltzed from my room to twist around Liam’s ankles.

The pang of jealousy came back, accompanied with a new feeling—bitter resentment, not towards Liam, but towards Mom. I could’ve grown up here too, if not for her book career.

The thought wasn’t fair, and I shook it away.

“You said you couldn’t sleep,”

I said, trying to turn the conversation away from myself.

“Is it because of Riley?”

The last remnants of Liam’s brave attempt at smiling slipped away, and he sighed.

“I hate being home without him, not knowing where he is. I thought I might sleep better here. It works for you, anyways.”

The smile returned.

I gave a half-hearted shrug as I finished my water.

“I sleep hard, but not well.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Nightmares.”

I smirked at my own double meaning.

“Is that why you’re out here at one in the morning?”

I crossed to the living room window so he couldn’t read my face. Sure, he was annoying, but he was proving better than Jonquil at calming my nerves after another misadventure in Skalterra.

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He followed me to the window, staring out at the single moon with me.

“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s not real.”

I felt bad about the words as soon as they left my mouth. Even though my nightmare had been all too real, Liam didn’t know that. He’d probably give anything to have his biggest worries be not real too. He’d love it if Riley’s disappearance was just a bad dream.

“It was a monster.”

“Spooky.”

He leaned his head against the window to look sideways at me.

“You laugh, but it was.”

“I’m not laughing.”

I studied him an extra moment, waiting for his mirth to give itself away. When he stayed deadly serious, I continued.

“It felt real. I thought I was dying.”

“I’m sorry.”

He frowned, then gave a tentative smile.

“Let’s blame Sabrina. She chose dinner last night. Maybe it was those burgers that gave you nightmares.”

I tried to smile at the joke, but was stuck staring out at the moon. Its reflection in the harbor made me think of Skalterra’s night sky.

I hoped the rotsbane had left after Galahad had released me for the night. If Skal weapons really were useless against it, my friends were defenseless.

Friends.

That wasn’t quite the word I meant, but I didn’t know how else to describe Orla, Ferrin, and Fana. Galahad and Tiernan I could do without, but I didn’t want any of them to be devoured by the rotsbane.

“You should go back to bed.”

Liam sighed.

“Jonquil and I will keep watch and make sure the monsters stay away. Won’t we, Jonky?”

He bent down to scoop the cat into his arms. Persians don’t smile, but I could’ve sworn I saw her flat cheeks inch upwards.

“Thanks.”

Hopefully, Galahad would leave me alone. Hopefully, I could enjoy the dark void of unconsciousness without being dragged into another fight. I tip-toed to the hall and looked back at Liam where he still stood at the window, cradling Jonquil.

I wanted to say something, anything, to make him feel better about Riley, but the thought of the crumpled flyers in my bedroom turned my empty placations to ash in my mouth.

While Galahad had given me a break for the rest of the night, Liam didn’t look like he’d slept at all by the time we were both up for work the next morning. He stumbled around the shop with a broom, sweeping up dirt that wasn’t there. When his uncle brought us bagel sandwiches, Liam avoided him. I wondered if he was afraid Teddy’s sadness might compound his own.

Gams missed Teddy’s visit, but when she shuffled out of her workshop with more trinkets to sell to tourists, she stopped by my station at the register to pick up the bagel I’d saved her.

“You were tired last night,”

she commented, unwrapping the bagel. She looked like a bug, as short as she was and with her magnified eyes behind her work glasses.

“Didn’t even wake up when Liam carried you upstairs.”

The shop was busier today. The weekend was approaching and more tourists were on the road. Liam was busy helping a family, and I took the opportunity to lean over the counter and whisper to Gams.

“Mom called yesterday while we were putting up posters.”

Gams nodded, but didn’t meet my eye.

“I told her to. I thought you might want to let her know about Von Leer.”

Her tone had gone flat and dismissive, as if she knew what I was about to say.

“Why did she tell me to take down Riley’s posters?”

Gams’s eyes darted up from her bagel to meet mine, and she frowned tightly.

“Did you?”

“Yes,”

I said, shame blooming hot in my cheeks, “but—”

“Good girl.”

She turned away, as if to escape back to her workshop.

“Gams!” I hissed.

“Wren!”

She mimicked my tone.

“Did you know she’d tell me to do that?”

When she didn’t respond, I continued.

“Is that why you sent me to help yesterday? To do your dirty work?”

“I knew you’d do what needed to be done.”

It wasn’t like my grandmother to sound so serious and callous.

“The posters will only bring the wrong sorts of people into town, and nothing good ever comes from outsiders poking around Keel Watch Harbor. Riley is a good boy, but if he’s missing, he’s not coming back. Liam and Teddy will move on. The town always moves on.”

She spun around with a finality I didn’t dare question, and she took the rest of her bagel with her to the workshop stairs, dropping a bit of salmon lox for Jonquil as she went.

Her words echoed what Mom had said on the phone, but neither seemed willing to explain themselves.

The Riley business should’ve been the least of my worries, especially after my run-in with the rotsbane. I still didn’t know why I was a lucid Nightmare, and as much as I wanted to believe it was simply because I was better than everyone else, I knew that couldn’t be it.

Ferrin’s theories on the matter bounced around my head as the day wore on, but one stood out among the others. He’d mentioned genetics might play a role, so between customers, I pulled out my phone to searc.

“Maxwell Brenton, PhD”.

Celebrated geophysicist, Von Leer University alumnus, and my estranged father.

Mom had shown me pictures of them together from when they were college, but I’d never met him. He wasn’t even on my birth certificate, and we’d never received a single penny from him. But I knew he was my father. Tall and willowy, just like me, while Gams and Mom were both short. I had his pointed chin, his passion for geophysics—though I would never dare admit that to Mom—and I saw a bit of me in his creased brow.

If the answer to my Nightmare question wasn’t hiding in a water supply, then maybe it was hiding in my genetics.

I stared at him on my little screen and memorized the dates listed under his picture on the Von Leer site.

His summer lecture circuit would take him through Von Leer in just over a month. All I had to do was nail my phone interview in two weeks, secure my spot at the school, and convince Gams to let me take the train to the campus.

I would tell her it was to get acquainted with the school, take a tour with the admissions team, decide which dorm to apply for.

And maybe while I was there, I would pay a visit to a certain lecturer. And maybe, just maybe, I would get the answers I needed about Nightmares and Skalterra and how I’d ended up at the crux of it all.