Page 32 of The Unweaver (Unwoven Fates #1)
T he Realmwalker’s gang, cloaked in the Umbramancer’s shadows and parked in a lorry across the street, looked out at Mother’s sprawling, mismatched boarding house. The windows were dark, the house quiet. The midnight sky was clear as if the clouds too had gone to bed.
“All right, boss,” Anita said. “What now?”
“Stealth plan. Get in, keep quiet, get the Oneiromancer. Kill everyone who gets in the way.” Bane tossed an arm over the driver’s seat and glanced back into the cold, cavernous cargo bed. His gaze pierced Cora through the gloom. “Are the upper floors bedrooms?”
“A decade ago, yes.”
“I sense at least a dozen heartbeats up there,” Anita said, her eyes closed in concentration. “Younger, stronger. Steady, like they’re asleep. There are at least two slower heartbeats on the bottom floor, near the back. Maybe more, but very faint.”
“We can’t keep sitting here,” Sloane said. She had taken the farthest possible seat away from Cora, watching her every twitch. Ravi had followed suit, wrenching Cora’s guts as he flinched and shied away.
“Sitting ducks,” Dimitri grumbled. Peeling back the lorry’s canvas, he scanned the dark street, illuminated only by the moon creeping across the sky.
“I can dampen sound, but the Bestiamancers are bound to hear us,” Ravi said. “Should we just knock?”
“Blow up door,” Dimitri suggested, tossing a grenade like an apple.
“You oughta be a genius, Dimitri,” Cora said with growing appreciation for the Hydromancer.
“Are any of those upper windows unlatched?” Sloane peered through binoculars. “With the grappling hooks and Ravi’s Aeromancy, we could sneak in through one and hope we don’t set off any wards.”
Cora pointed to a small window in the attic. “My old bedroom window never fully latched.”
“Sloane’s the only one small enough to fit through that,” Anita said. “How are the rest of us supposed to get in?”
The gang was so engrossed in squabbling they didn’t notice Bane had vanished until Sloane caught movement on the house. She pulled out her binoculars, and every head turned when she said, “Mal’s in.”
Across the street, Bane’s shadowy form hauled himself through Cora’s old bedroom window.
Several tense, breathless minutes later, the front door cracked open. Bane waved them inside. The Realmwalker had slipped past Mother’s wards. The gang scrambled for gear and, under the cover of Sloane’s shadows and Ravi’s sound-dampening bubble, slinked through the door. Thick silence and thicker darkness greeted them.
Apprehension constricted Cora’s lungs. Memories assailed her as she led them silently through the winding halls. Unpleasantness was imbued in each crooked floorboard and misaligned doorway. Every sound was an alarm call in her ears.
With timid steps, they made it to the stairs when a gasp drew their attention upward. A teenage boy stared down at them from the landing, his wide eyes flashing amber.
Everyone froze.
“Well?” Bane motioned at the boy. “Take us to your master.”
He wrenched out of his shocked stupor and cried, “Help!”
The boy’s body contorted. Limbs snapping into a four-legged stance. Face elongating into a fanged snout. Nails bursting into claws and skin into fur. A ferocious Rottweiler bounded down the stairs with a snarl.
Dimitri shot ropes of water vapor around the beast, binding its legs and maw. The Rottweiler stumbled at their feet with a thud. Anita grabbed its haunches, and it snapped and thrashed until Ravi stole the air from its lungs.
The beast’s eyes bugged, then drooped shut as the Sanguimancer drained blood from its head. It spasmed until a teenager, nude and colorless, laid in its place.
While one beast fell, more surrounded them. Bodies twisting, bones popping, fur sprouting, the Bestiamancers attacked with fangs and claws.
“Oi” Anita cocked her rifle. “Twelve-o-clock!”
Sloane pulled a low blanket of shadows around them. In the pitch blackness erupted a cacophony of shouts and shots. Growls and heavy footfalls and magically curving bullets came from all directions. The coppery tang of blood and iron filled the air.
Blasts of wind and water rushed past Cora. She stumbled through darkness, feeling for the stair railing and crawling up, step by shaking step. The heady scent of violence chased her as she pulled herself out of the shadows and onto the second floor.
Panting, her eyes darted at the dark corners and shifting shadows. The gang, their clothes ripped and bloodstained, barreled up the stairs after her.
“Stealth plan is fucked,” Bane said, impossibly calm. “Split up. Find the girl. Bring her out alive.”
Three directions. Three teams. Dimitri and Anita took the right hallway. Ravi and Sloane took the left. Bane and Cora dashed upstairs.
They peeked through doors and poked through rooms, each more eerily empty than the last, as if the occupants had disappeared from their beds mid-slumber. Her sweat-slickened palm trembled on the hilt of her sharpest knife.
The silence between them was fraught for more than one reason. Her gaze kept latching on Bane as they searched, angry and hurt at his secrets. Amidst the more pressing concerns of imminent death, her temper flared.
“You heartless bastard,” she hissed when she could handle the silence no longer. “Koschei’s. Egg. Your little loophole to immortality.”
Bane stilled and slowly faced her. He held her accusatory stare for an endless moment, the truth lurking in his black eyes. His demon black eyes. Expelling a breath, he brushed back his hair and glanced away. “I wondered how long it would take you.”
“That’s all you have to say?” She batted away Bane’s motion for her to quiet. “How old are you?”
With an exasperated sound, he searched the dark hallway before responding. “Thirty-five.”
“How long have you been thirty-five?”
His gaze cut to her. “We do not have time for this—”
“It would appear you have an abundance of time. Why—”
A snarl cleaved the air. Close by and getting closer. A feral creature leapt through the air, claws and fangs and flashing amber eyes honed on her. A wolf. Cora screamed. Dropping to the floor, she braced for evisceration.
Bane fired and the rifle’s curving bullet found its target between the ribs. The wolf thumped sideways with a keeling cry. Blood dripped from its fur, then from its bruised flesh as it deformed back into a young woman, jerking and groaning. Death was a heartbeat away.
They didn’t wait for it. Bane helped Cora to her feet, and they sprinted down the hallway. By the screams and gunshots and crackling magic, the others had run into their own trouble. They slammed open every door they passed, chased by the sounds of battle.
Heart straining to escape her ribs and head whirling around, Cora could scarcely concentrate on finding the girl. Each sound and scent and shadow were a new threat. Only empty rooms and cupboards greeted them. Sloane had been right. The Oneiromancer was long—
A beast burst out of the room and lunged at them. Cora flung her knife, embedding it into the thick fur of the beast’s neck. It kept running. Bane aimed his rifle.
At the end of the hallway, a flash of white-blonde hair streaked around the corner. Cora hurled another knife at the beast and pursued the blonde, her hands ripe with death’s awful energy. Even with her longer strides, the girl was quicker. Her laughter goaded Cora as she careened around another corner.
“You little bitch—”
The girl stood at the hallway’s end, her hands folded primly over her sailor dress. Her Mary Janes gleamed in the moonlight spilling through a window. Tilting her head, she watched Cora run at her with silver eyes and a teasing smile. At her throat winked a bloodred ruby. The Oracle Ruby. Teddy’s prison.
Cora launched herself at the girl, who slid into the door at her back. Moments later, Cora plowed through after her.
“Cora, no!” Bane traversed behind her, reaching for her coat. “Don’t—”
A blunt object struck her temple. Stars exploded across her vision. Cora dropped to the floor, breath and wits knocked out of her. Hands like iron manacles clamped onto her arms and dragged her. Dimly, she saw a blur of darkness pursuing her. Darkness that was shot with a single bullet and crashed down beside her.
“Fuck’s sake,” she heard a deep voice gasp. “Fuckin’ Sephrinium bullet.”
The world dimmed.
* * *
Skull pounding, Cora blinked her eyes open. Through her cloudy vision she struggled to take everything in. Her back was propped against something solid, her arms bound to her torso with restraints that tightened when she tugged. Chains, made of metal that irritated her skin like a thousand mosquito bites. Groggily, she reached for her magic to rust the chains off, but the harder she channeled, the more drained she felt.
Sephrinium.
Her startled eyes swept Mother’s ballroom where she’d once been lashed into a clumsy waltz. A fitting place as any to be tortured in again. The blonde girl was gone. A half dozen people lined the far wall, slouched like puppets dangling from limp strings. Faces haggard, their eyes moved from side to side beneath closed lids.
“Grand,” a lilting voice rumbled at her back. “Just fuckin’ grand.”
She jerked her head and immediately regretted it at the burst of pain. When she shifted, he shifted along with her. They were chained together, back-to-back. “Bane?” Words dripped from her mouth like molasses. “Is that you?”
“Who else would it be?” His voice was faint and strained. “Your idiotic stunt got me shot. Again.”
Shot with another magic-absorbing bullet, he couldn’t traverse them away, and she couldn’t decay their restraints without draining herself. With the rest of the gang nowhere in sight, they were fucked.
Mother swept into the ballroom.
They were very fucked.
Mother stopped before Cora, eyes flashing amber in the chandelier light. She rested her hands on her mustard jumper-clad hips and smiled a pernicious smile. She took in her disobedient pet chained on the floor with unfettered delight. “Owens,” she said, eyes not leaving Cora. “Be a dear and fetch Theodora her medicine. You, my pet, have been most rude. But you shall incommode me no longer.”
The old crow flocked to her. Owens’s dour shadow sneered down his beak of a nose at Cora as he pried her mouth open and forced an effervescent potion down her throat. She choked on the taste of bitter almonds. The Sleepwalker’s Draught drowned her cries.
Frantically, Cora spit it into his face. Mother’s backhand stopped her. Cheek burning and ears ringing, her heavy eyelids began to sink. She tried to unweave the draught’s magic before a thick fog encroached her mind, but she was so very tired. Drooping forward, the chains dug into her gut.
Behind her, Bane thrashed. He gargled a shout, then grew slack.
“Stay awake…” came Bane’s fading voice through the fog. “Veil thinnest... between dreams and… death.”
The chains pulled tight across her chest, jolting her out of the blanketing sedation. Bane was a leaden weight dragging them both to the floor. She stifled a groan, desperate to stay awake.
She kept her eyes shut and her face blank in the hope no one realized her precarious wakefulness. The chains pricked her flesh like a swarm of mosquitoes sucking her dry when she tried to rust them off. But if she could loosen them enough to shimmy out of, they might have a chance.
Drugged and drained, the going was slow. Metal scoured skin and exhaustion smothered thought. A faint smell of rust emanated from her hands. She prayed to an unknown deity that it wouldn't draw attention.
“...the others?” Mother’s voice flitted through the fog.
“Escaped,” Owens replied.
“What a bother. And my pets?”
“Alice is tallying the dead now. We have suffered heavy casualties, Mother. Percy may not survive the night.”
“Double bother. I was rather fond of this brood. Have you summoned darling Marcel to heal my pets?”
Owens cleared his throat. “I fear Durbec has joined our expanding list of casualties. He was found in his shop this morning with his, ah, heart removed.”
Mother gasped. “Was it Cecelia? I told that girl not to perform the ritual without my explicit approval again. After poor Teddy, I cannot believe the impertinence of that little— It is simply too much to bear. Marcel has been so very useful.”
Was Cecelia the blonde girl? Cora needed out of there before she learned the answer. Abandoning the chains and fighting the overpowering sleepiness, she pressed her palms to the floor and coaxed the wood to decay. After the trod of countless waltzing steps, it complied readily.
By degrees, she and Bane sank through the bowing floorboards. What they might encounter below—while still bound in magic-absorbing chains—she didn’t care to ponder.
“Make particular note, Owens, that we shall need another Sanguimancer for the Sleepwalker’s Draught. A more competent Sanguimancer. Marcel’s attempt to keep the blood flowing after we removed Mr. Horace’s heart was a messy failure, and we cannot afford another. However… Marcel’s demise does present an opportunity. Owens, I fear we have no choice but to take what he can no longer appreciate. Send my surviving pets to divest the deceased of his wares.”
“A thousand pardons, Mother. Durbec’s shop was already divested of wares when his body was discovered.”
Ah, Cora thought in the last functional part of her dimming mind, so that’s what Bane was up to last night . Raiding a dead man’s worldly possessions.
“This is not to be borne, Owens! Marcel’s access to Profane relics shall be irksome to replace. Though the relics he supplied were all without success. I was sure the Oracle Ruby would be a sufficient vessel.” Mother tutted. “Poor Teddy. If Cecelia hadn’t misbehaved so dreadfully, his vile sister’s spirit could be in that ruby. Though, if Teddy hadn’t become more sloppy and less useful, Mr. Moriarty would still be alive and my plans unspoiled. Alas. My darling pet was a necessary sacrifice, yes, but a devastating loss. I daresay, I shall never find another Animancer quite as proficient.”
The bottom of Cora’s heart dropped out. Mother, through her pet Cecelia, had desecrated Teddy. And for what? Because he’d been late to interrogating a Chronomancer in the tunnels by the Thames? Because a dead man had told Cora she might one day be the Realmwalker’s weakness?
“It shall work this time, Mother,” Owens assured. “Once we have Koschei’s Egg. Then, both your body and spirit shall be preserved.”
“And where is dear Cecelia?” Mother asked. Then louder, “Where is Cecelia?”
From the far wall, the rasping groan of the haggard-faced puppets answered. “She… comes…”
Bane twitched at her back. Cora drew in a surprised breath and felt two heads spin to look at her.
“Could she be awake?” Mother hissed.
“She couldn’t possibly be. Durbec ensured this was a potent draught and the creature swallowed more than enough. ‘Tis merely the Realmwalker dreaming.”
“All the same, do we have another special bullet for our pests?”
“Alas, Mother, that was the last one. We shall need to contact the Baron to reequip ourselves.”
“Triple bother. I suppose the metal has proven worth its exorbitant expense. Is it not delectable to see the Realmwalker in his proper place at last, hm?” Her laugh rang high through the cavernous ballroom. “I shall relish pecking holes in his black heart when Cecelia fetches it.”
“She… comes…” the puppets groaned in an overlapping hum like a swarm of wasps. “ She … comes …”
Through the thickening fog of the Sleepwalker’s Draught, Cora sensed the girl’s entrance before she heard it. Her Mary Janes were silent, but her magic felt like walking through an unexpected spiderweb. It took all of Cora’s willpower not to squirm at the sticky threads of dream magic.
“Cecelia. My dearest pet.” Cora could all but see Mother’s lips thinning in displeasure. “How good of you to arrive. Finally.”
“The Intentions Lock proved more challenging than the Necromancer’s dream made it out to be. Only my most guileless puppet could get past it.” The childish voice was laced with the same subtle venom as her adoptive mother. “Fortunately, the tracking device you planted on the Realmwalker’s house made finding it swift work.”
Guilt speared Cora. She had led Mother straight to Bane’s house and practically held the door open for her pets to plunder.
“Did you get it?” Mother was breathless with excitement. “Did you fetch it for me?”
“Yes. Come, puppet.” Shuffling steps approached at the snap of Cecelia’s fingers.
A rhythmic thumping grew louder. Cora would know the sound anywhere. Malachy Bane’s heart, beating inside its cage of Koschei’s Egg. Begging her, as always, for release.
The temptation was too great. Cora slitted her heavy eyes open. Cradled in the girl’s arms like a baby was an egg made of smooth metal bars pulsing with Bane’s heart, and on her velvet choker flashed the Oracle Ruby. Cecelia held Bane’s spirit in her hands and Teddy’s at her throat.
Mother’s tittering laugh iced Cora’s veins. She waved for the girl to hand over Koschei’s Egg, but her hold only tightened. “Do not be insolent, Cecelia. Give it here. Now. Everything is prepared for the ritual. Your dallying is delaying my eternal life.”
The girl laughed, but it was not a girl’s laugh. Chilling and ancient, the sound curled at the base of Cora’s spine and spread like a spider’s web across her ribs.
“ Grab her ,” Cecelia said in an inhuman voice. The voice that had haunted Cora.
The sleepwalking puppets, eyes closed and faces serene, pounced on Mother. Her mouth widened in astonishment, as if her Pomeranian had gone for her jugular.
Owens surged to defend Mother and was knocked down by a clotheslining arm. A puppet strangled him with indifferent lethality. Owens burst into a flurry of black feathers and flew away.
Two puppets tossed a chainmail net around the crow before he could escape. Desperately cawing and flapping, Owens was trapped. The puppets dragged the net down and beat him until the crow turned back into a man that no longer moved.
“How dare you!” Mother struggled against the puppets imprisoning her. “You mannerless, discourteous— How could you do this to your Mother? I took you in, Cecelia! You were a baby bird with broken wings when I found you. Weak! Powerless . I took you to my nest and nursed you back to health. I have given you everything. And this is how you repay me?”
Cecelia stroked Koschei’s Egg and watched Mother with unblinking silver eyes. Mother might have orchestrated the war and infiltrated Verek’s gang, but her prized weapon was turning against her. Empowered by dream feeding, the Oneiromancer had grown stronger than her leash. And Mother knew it.
“My pet,” she pleaded. “H-have I not been a good mother to you?”
“You are not my mother,” the girl snarled, her face contorting in rage. “I have lived lifetimes before you crawled out of the swamp of your slattern mother’s womb. Puppets, kill her.”
Mother disappeared and a magpie emerged from the heap of ugly clothes. With harsh squawks, the magpie battered itself against the walls, the locked door, the closed windows. There was no escape from the ballroom. No escape from the net that ensnared her. Beak and talons were no match for chainmail. Frantic caws echoed as the magpie crashed to the floor.
Cecelia beckoned her puppets to bring her their catch. Young face devoid of emotion, she raised her foot and stomped on the magpie. Blood and feathers flew. Again and again, her Mary Janes came down until the beating wings stopped and the squawking silenced.
Mother reappeared inside the net. Plump, nude, destroyed. “I…” she gasped, cupping her spilling guts in her hands. “Find your… m-manners… lacking.”
Death claimed the only mother Cora had ever known.
The girl’s head swiveled. She looked directly at Cora, too startled by Mother’s corpse to feign sleeping. “Have you been enjoying the show, Necromancer?”
Cora stared up at the girl, and something else stared back through her eyes. Eyes like the mercury of a mirror, bright and empty.
I have lived lifetimes … Was Ikelas the dream mage pulling the strings? Had she somehow transferred her demonic spirit into this girl’s body?
“Pity you won’t live long enough to retell it.” The Oneiromancer floated closer and cocked her head. “Unless you’d care to make a deal? We have been watching you closely, Necromancer. You can do what the Queen of Rot could not. Koschei’s Egg will be superfluous when we actualize your potential.”
Cora jostled to wake Bane and winced at the bite of chains. Only his blood stirred as it dripped from his bullet wound into the growing puddle.
“You care for him.” The girl studied Cora as if her concern for Bane was an oddity in a curio shop. “Don’t bother denying it. I’ve walked through both your dreams. You dream of death. He dreams of you, death incarnate. I entangled your dreams; you entangled your bodies. Puzzling. Revolting . The Realmwalker I knew decades ago did not debase himself thus. Yet the stronger he grows, the more pestilent he becomes.”
She planted a bloody Mary Jane into Bane’s gut and Cora bore the brunt of her kick. “A buzzing gnat, swatted down with ruination.”
Cora’s drugged, frenzied mind took stock of her imminent demise. It had to be Ikelas, the former Master Oneiromancer Bane had watched die, now a demon wearing a girl’s body. She was surrounded by sleepwalking puppets, weakened by magic-draining chains and potions, and on her own.
Helpless and hopeless, she pulsed her weakening death magic into the floorboards. The wood fibers relaxed, bending but not breaking. It wasn’t enough.
“Wh-what deal?”
“I wonder, Necromancer. Whom do you care for more? The Realmwalker?” She caressed Bane’s heart pulsing within Koschei’s Egg. “Or your twin?” She touched the Oracle Ruby and considered Cora for an endless moment. “This is the deal, Necromancer. Join us, and I will release either your twin or the Realmwalker. You may only choose one. Refuse, and you die along with them.”
Her heart seized. Now Cora held their spirits—their fates—in her hands. Weary and on the verge of succumbing to the Sleepwalker’s Draught, she closed her eyes. “We have a deal,” she whispered. “Teddy. Save... Teddy.”
The girl gave an enigmatic smile. Pulling a blade from the pocket of her sailor dress, she knelt beside Cora and sliced her palm deep. “You will join us, and I will release Teddy’s spirit.”
Cora repeated the words in a feeble voice. Palms clasped wound to wound, magic crackled between them, sealing their Binding Agreement.
“It is done. Puppets, unchain her. Kill the Realmwalker.”
“No!”
“He was not part of our deal. He has outlasted us all no longer. I shall cheat death in his stead.” Her head swiveled to her puppets. “Drain him.”
The sleepwalkers surrounded Bane’s prone form and yanked his head back, blade poised to slit his throat. Instinct kicked in over alarm. Channeling her remaining magic, Cora reached for the threads of Mother’s life. Freshly severed and easily rewoven. Mother’s spirit had not yet passed into the Death Realm. Her corpse reanimated greedily.
She pulled Mother by the strings of her death to sit up. Her sunken torso oozed organs. Spires of bone poked through the torn canvas of flabby flesh. Head twisted at a grotesque angle and gore-caked hair curtaining her slack features, the corpse smiled a little smile.
The Oneiromancer was frozen in disbelief as the mangled corpse rose in her chainmail shroud and staggered to her feet. Mother didn’t make it far before the sleepwalkers descended on her. She tackled a puppet, snapping its neck with beringed hands. The puppet fell, limp.
Cora drank deep of death’s awful energy, dissipating some of the thick fog in her mind. She reanimated the killed puppet with the slightest stitch of reweaving and launched it forward, its head lolling on exposed tendons. The Oneiromancer cried out, tugging her living puppets to defend her. Corpses and sleepwalkers fought in a tangle of limbs and chorus of smacking blows, death and dream feeding empowering their unconscious violence.
Cora tapped into her diminishing energy and rotted through the ballroom floor. Then they were sinking, her and Bane and the chains binding them. Corpses crashed to the ground with her broken concentration and drained magic. Mother’s glazed eyes stared unseeing as Cora fell through the decayed wood into darkness.
A scream tore out of her throat and a flash of metal caught her eye. The girl was also falling into the sinkhole, Koschei’s Egg and the Oracle Ruby along with her. In a suspended moment, the Egg slipped from her fingers and Bane’s heart plummeted.
The moment after Cora lost consciousness, a heartbeat before they hit the floor below, the world was plunged into a nightmare.