The Dreamwalker's Path

4/ Ybor City, Florida

Lia’s house was a small, off-white bungalow with a blue trim that needed to be repainted, and a porch that went almost all the way around the house. Like most of the houses in the area, it was a little cramped and a little out of date, but it had withstood the test of time well, and Lia had fallen in love with it the moment her mother and father had told her that it was hers.

Well, all right, technically the deed was in her father’s name, but her parents had gone out of their way to assure her that each monthly check she signed to her father, went toward a final bill of sale. So while the roof of the porch leaked a bit and the pipes complained during the winter when she tried to run the hot water without running cold water for a few minutes before hand, the house had wormed a way into her heart and made a place for itself there.

Perhaps that’s why seeing him on the front porch, plucking the strings of a beat up acoustic guitar, put such a big bug in her bra.

She kept her face as expressionless as she felt she could manage as she walked up the front porch steps. He didn’t acknowledge her when she dropped her dance bag by the front door, nor when she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him as he plucked out something that sounded a bit like Greensleeves.

Finally realizing that he was purposefully ignoring her, she spoke: “Mr. Jaeger.”

Yep, she sounded pissed, even to her own ears. “What are you doing on my front porch?”

The vampire spared her a glance, “I would think that was obvious.” He lifted his guitar slightly by way of explanation.

Lia pursed her lips. It wasn’t the first time that she’d come home to find Cavan at her house, in fact, she’d almost gotten used to it; but the fact that he’d gone behind her back and lied to her sister—her hyper-aware, worry wart of an older sister—and said that he was her boyfriend, of all things, did not make her feel particularly inclined to entertain him. In fact, it made her want to snatch that beat-up, old guitar that he was puttering around with, and beat him over the head with it.

His head snapped up and he stopped plucking at the guitar strings. “Is there a special reason you’re angry with me today?”

Oh sure, he’d caught on to that thought, she noticed bitterly as she picked up her bag and fished her keys out of her pocket. Within a few moments she’d pulled the screen door and the front door open with loud creaks. “Oh I don’t know, Mr. Jaeger, you’re my boyfriend. You tell me.”

She stomped through the door and slammed it shut, feeling some satisfaction as the vampire yelped and scrambled out of his seat.

She slid the deadbolt into place and leaned against the door so she could listen to him scuttle around the front porch. After a few moments, the door jiggled. “I can explain that,” he said through the door. “Let me in.”

“Mr. Jaeger, you have absolutely no sense of boundaries, I’m not letting you in my house again so that you can exploit knowledge about me or my house the next time that you meet another of my family members in the grocery store.”

“I thought you heard me say it, you were standing right there—”

“You’ve obviously never actually had a girlfriend or you’d have realized I was very pointedly tuning you out so I could finish my grocery shopping.”

“Okay, Lia, I’m not talking to you about this through the door—”

“I guess we’re just not going to talk to each other at all then, are we? Such a shame. Good-bye Mr. Jaeger, do refrain from coming back again.”

She shrieked in surprise when he suddenly appeared on her side of the door, leaning against it in the exact same way that she was, a mere few inches from where she stood.

“You know, calling me Mr. Jaeger seems painfully formal considering the fact that we’re supposedly dating.”

She smacked him across the face. In retrospect, she realized that smacking a vampire probably wasn’t the smartest thing in the world that she could have done, but he’d startled her so completely that she didn’t really think about him being a vampire so much as she did about him being a man who was suddenly way too close to her, despite the fact that moments before he was securely behind a locked door.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” her voice broke as she pressed her hand firmly to her chest.

He’d pressed one of his own hands gently against his cheek where she’d smacked him. “All right, I deserved that.”

“You’re damn right you do; why the hell would you think that it’s okay to randomly poof your ass into a woman’s house after she’s locked you out? Who the hell raised you, a turkey?”

“Yes,” the vampire heaved a sigh and gave her a highly unamused look. “I was raised on Frontierland by the collection of turkeys that were presidentially pardoned from Thanksgiving.”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic,” she muttered sourly, pushing off of the door and heading into the living room. She flopped onto her couch with a groan and glowered at the vampire as he slowly followed, settling himself in a chair on the other side of the room.

“Where’s your guitar?” she asked sourly.

“I put it away; I didn’t want you beating me over the head with it.”

Great, so he did actually hear that thought.

Lia rubbed her hands over her face. “You need to stop coming around here.”

“I’m sorry I told your sister that I was your boyfriend; it was the first thing I could think of on the fly that wouldn’t trigger the memories I erased. Especially with Beatrice standing next to her.”

That had her biting her tongue. It wasn’t an excuse for his actions, but it was at least something she could appreciate. Even if she wished the bastard had just erased the whole situation from Camille’s and Beatrice’s mind, knowing that he was actively attempting to keep the trauma of Bee being kidnapped and beaten by a psycho made it almost forgiveable.

Not really, but almost.

At the very least, it made her feel less inclined to try to smack him again.

“What exactly does my sister remember?” Lia asked.

A smile flickered across his face.

“She remembers you’ve found your powers and that you had been making a new friend in the supernatural community.”

“So, obviously, she now thinks that friend was you all this time.”

Instead of Sebastian.

The thought brought a frown to her face, but she rubbed her fingers over her lips and brushed the expression, and the thoughts that brought it, away.

“Well yes, I expect that’s the impression she’s got, and Sebastian and I looked enough alike at first glance.”

So much for not thinking about that.

Taking a deep breath to steady herself, Lia said, “Yeah, well, I told her you were not my boyfriend. Then she panicked because she thought you were creeping on me, so I told her you a witch that knew something about Dreamwalking and you were helping me out.”

Cavan snorted. “So you didn’t lie entirely, then.”

“Mr. Jaeger—Cavan,” She rolled her eyes when he smiled, “I get that you want to help me. I don’t know why the hell you want to help me, but I get that you do;. What you seem to have a hard time realizing is that I really am not interested in learning about this shit, though. I want to go back to my normal life, where things don’t jump out at me in the dark, and people that I know don’t die right in front of me because they’re saving me from being stabbed to death myself.”

“Ah,” Cavan slumped a bit in his chair, not in defeat, Lia noted, but to make himself more comfortable, “well, you’re going to have to learn eventually, darling. From what I’ve gathered through the grape vine, I’m guessing that the Alchemist had a good hold on your abilities for a long while because he was trying to pull you toward him. Now that he doesn’t have that hold…” he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders as he determined the best way to word the rest of his thoughts, “You may find that if you don’t learn to use them while you still have minimal access, your abilities will get completely out of hand when they start filtering back to you.”

“That sounds a bit like shit.”

Cavan looked up at the ceiling. It looked like he was debating on how to take her words.

She didn’t give him a chance to make a decision. “I’m really not interested. Not even a tiny bit.”

“That’s stupid.”

“No, it’s less complicated. The last thing I want to deal with right now is the supernatural world as a whole when I barely know how to interact with my family right now—”

“Well actually spending time with more of your family than your sist—”

“Whoa buddy,” Lia sprang forward and sliced the air with her hands. “Stop,” she commanded, “Stop right there. I don’t want to know how you know half of what you know or what you think you know. I’m really not in the mood to shout at you or smack you again,” she ignored his muttered ‘as if I’d let you hit me again,’ “so would you please just go away and preferably not come back?”

He looked very grumpy. “I’ll leave for now, but I’m definitely not agreeing to not come back. You’re going to be really screwed over when your brain starts acting up on you, and eventually you’re going to want some help figuring out how your powers work.”

She offered him a sarcastic smirk. “Yeah, probably not, though, and certainly not from you.”

He threw his hands in the air at that. “All right, fine, you’re an expert of all things supernatural, and you clearly don’t need my help.”

“Well no, I’m not saying that, but I am saying that if I do ask for help from anyone, it won’t be from the King of Spooks.”

“That’s fine, I don’t want to sit here and listen to you wail about how it sucks to be you anyway, I’ve got other more important shit to do.”

Somehow Lia doubted that. “I can’t imagine you doing anything much more than creep, Mr. Jaeger.”

“Cavan,” he corrected distractedly, fishing in his pocket for a moment before pulling out a piece of hard candy. He unwrapped it and popped the candy into his mouth before making a face. “God damn it,” he muttered, eyeballing the wrapper again before muttering something under his breath that Lia couldn’t quite hear.

“I thought you were leaving,” she noted in exasperation.

Cavan cast a sideways glance at her. “I am now. I have to go talk to someone about doing shit to stuff that doesn’t belong to him.”

She would have suspected that he was trying to drag her back in to a conversation. The irony of his statement certainly seemed to be lost on him as he continued to mutter to himself. And then, a moment later, he’d flickered out of her living room like he’d never been there at all.

Lia rested her head on the back of her couch and groaned softly. “Damned vampires.”

5/ Main Street Market, Sanctuary

No one looked at the rubble that covered the center of the main square. Looking would be an acknowledgement that Sanctuary had changed, and that the change was not necessarily for the better. The clock tower and its never-ending lullaby had become such an integral part of Sanctuary’s main market that its absence, and the proof of its collapse sprawling before them, was enough to drive shoppers and venders to other, smaller markets that were scattered across Sanctuary. Even Carter Street’s market, which was still suffering from the aftermath of the violence between the Eastlings and the Westies, was more crowded these days than the Main Street market.

A few vendors had tried to linger, hoping, perhaps a little foolishly, that things would go back to the way that they had always been, and that people would return to Main Street, but even they did not look at the collapsed tower or acknowledge the debris scattered across the courtyard.

They did, however, nod to the man in the tall man in the forest green surcoat as he passed.

“Evenin’ Eight,” a dumpy humanoid with slick, pale skin and thick, dark green braids greeted from behind his wares. “Bit early for you yet, isn’t it? It’s not half-Seven’s Second, yet.” He carefully draped the first of several white sheets, which he kept bundled under his arm, over one of his tables, hiding a display of enough glitter and shine to give a greedy magpie an excitement-induced aneurism.

The man in the surcoat slowed as he approached the vendor’s booth. Brushing dark hair from a pale face, he offered the creature that was not a man a kindly smile.

“Hello, Paolo. The Seventh Hour was held up at the end of Seventh’s Second. A child was born at Holbrook’s Place this evening, and the Seventh Hour was kind enough to offer to stay with the family through the night to guard the child from evil; he is now on the way to the Temple with the family to discover the child’s name.”

The news pleased Paolo so much that he raised damp hands high as he could with the sheets under one arm and said, “Glorious are the days when our stagnant world is blessed with new life!”

Lowering his hands, the man added in a more somber tone, “I am not a creature which accepts change lightly, as you well know, Eight; life in Sanctuary suits me fine just for that purpose, but it’s hard to be unhappy about as glorious a thing as a new child.”

Eight nodded, a wry smile tugging the corner of his mouth. There were a great many glorious things about newborns, according to the general populace, but Eight saw exactly one use for a baby, and it was not something generally celebrated.

As though reading his thoughts (or perhaps just his expression), Paolo’s cheerful grin faltered and he added, “Of course, Honorable Hour, I imagine that you would, well...I imagine you feel differently.”

Now Eight’s smile bloomed, “On the contrary, I am very fond of babies, though they are a little...Overcooked for my own taste.”

For a moment it seemed that Paolo the Vendor couldn’t decide whether or not he should find the remark humorous; he settled for looking relieved as he lifted the sheet that he had only recently placed over his glittering wares. “Might I interest you in an amulet, Hour?” He gestured with obvious hope at changing the subject. “I spun the alloy myself, just last week—the strength of silk, the delicate appearance of silver, weaved around any precious stone of your choice; if I don’t have what you’re looking for, I can make it for you, at no extra cost, of course.”

In a marginal effort not to appear rude, the Eighth Hour paused to lean over the table and study the delicate tendrils of the jewelry on display. He had no doubt that the man had utilized his own natural talents to spin the strange non-metal from his own finger tips, and to be honest, the silver-like sheen did have a sort of appeal as the metal it replicated was beyond his tolerance.

But while he was not lying about the whereabouts of the Seventh Hour, he knew that his time was running short, and there were things he needed to accomplish before Seven appeared.

“Your wares are beautiful and tempting as always, friend, but I do not have time to shop today. Today I must circle around what is left of the market and make sure everything is in order.” He stepped away from the table and bowed marginally to the vendor who, in turn, bowed deeper still.

“Another day, Hour.”

Nodding in agreement, the Eighth Hour continued along his route. Paolo was not a bad creature, all in all. He was little squeamish for an Arrakh, perhaps, but he was a useful member of Sanctuary; the perfect example of a criminal who had turned his life around because Time had given him a second chance.

One of the few examples.

Most of the occupants of Sanctuary had been dumped in the city because they had displeased Time, but they hadn’t been provided with much of an explanation. Those occupants wandered aimlessly, vying for their homes and families, willing to commit other, more heinous crimes for the chance of going back. Others still found the eclectic, almost lawless nature of the city the perfect place to continue doing exactly what they’d done before in a brand new, blissfully unaware location.

There were enough people living in Sanctuary to easily occupy some of the largest cities in linear time, and somehow twelve slightly-more-than-human creatures and one deified concept were supposed to keep every single person in check.

It was no wonder that parents of newborns stayed up willingly with their babes to guard them from evil, no wonder that the arrival of an innocent life was often celebrated by an entire district, not just the parents of the child. It was all that the people trapped here could do to console themselves about their fate. And with the most innocent of the innocent mingling with the guiltiest of the guilty through the churning, tumbling, twining, twist of time that knew no order, how could anyone be surprised that most of the men and women brought into Sanctuary for committing crimes against the natural order of the world simply carried on being criminals?

Heaving a long suppressed sigh of frustration, the Hour made his way slowly around the market, watching the vendors and the few people who were brave enough to filter through the Main Market after the clock tower fell.

He gave the vendors a sort of casual attention—a raised hand and a smile here, a slightly distracted nod there, and very occasionally a brief greeting. But after speaking to Paolo, he did not allow himself to be dragged into a second conversation. His presence in the Main Market was, indeed, early by certain standards, and he was well aware that his being there would continue to push along an already off- kilter day at a rate that even the most un-timely denizens would notice.

Besides, he was here for a specific purpose, and if he didn’t get a chance to do what he hoped to do now, it might be a long, long time before he got another chance. Children weren’t born in Sanctuary every day, after all, and there was no predicting when another momentous thing would call an Hour away from his duty.

The Eighth Hour had nearly made a full circle around the market before he found what he was looking for: where once the door to the tower had stood, there was a pile of coquina and concrete block. Just to the right of that was a gap between what was left of the tower’s base that was large enough for a man of his stature to squeeze through.

Careful not to dirty the stiff fabric of his surcoat, the Eighth Hour pushed through the stones and carefully looked around. Whatever spell Time had put on the place to keep it in a separate dimension from the rest of Sanctuary had crumbled along with the majority of the tower. Looking up, he could see the pale grey, cloudless sky of a Sanctuary evening, blotted out only by the last remaining section of the tower. It had held this long, Eight suspected, because of the well kempt ladder that climbed all the way to what would have been the top of the tower. Now it stopped short a meager hundred or so feet above the market-barely half the distance it had been.

He was surprised that it remained standing at all, but as it suited his purpose, he wouldn’t question it. Instead, the Hour removed from his surcoat four vials, each the size of his thumb, each filled with a dark brownish red sort of jelly.

Making a face of general disgust, the Hour took a deep breath and held as he arranged all four vials side by side on the ground under the ladder. Normally, the smell of blood would be an appealing invitation, but coagulated as it was...

The thought turned his stomach a little. Dead blood wasn’t his idea of a snack. In fact, as far as he knew, dead blood had exactly one use, and it was not for eating.

Pulling a white handkerchief from his other pocket, the Hour cast a look about the remains to make sure he was still alone; then he placed the kerchief over the vials and took a step back to pull in a breath. Upon exhale, Eight began a low, rough incantation that started in the depths of his belly. Short, guttural syllables fell from his lips, forming one simple command. Carefully, he placed the hard heel of his boot on the covered vials and bore his weight down on the set with steadily building pressure.

In his mind’s eye, he imagined each of the people to whom the blood belonged: the wizard, the doctor, the seer, and the mercenary. Each of them from one of the four child- gangs that had torn Sanctuary apart those months ago, each of them slowly recovering from the Alchemist’s possession, each of them tied to the vials that began to click and creak under the weight of his boot.

Pop!—the Southbit seer’s vial must have been the first to burst; the part of Eight’s mind that had stretched out to that particular creature recoiled as the Southbit’s heart burst with the snapping of the glass—

Pop!—went the Norther’s vial, and this time Eight watched as the tall Viking of a man clutched at his chest, blood seeping through the rough fabric of his surcoat—

Pop!—the Eastling wizard crumpled against the blonde witch embracing him, and his blood spattered over her horrified face—

And finally Pop!—the Westie doctor’s legs buckled under her, and she fell, face down, as her heart gave out, just as the hearts of the others had.

Eight pulled away, closing off his mind as several Westies ran to the doctor’s aid. He wasn’t bothered by the sight of death, or the shrill cries of the ones that had witnessed the quartet’s deaths in the flesh, but the amount of magic that it took to accomplish once what he had done four times was incredible, and his mind felt heavy under the pressure of the aftermath.

So, leaning heavily against the ladder, Eight withdrew, and pulled in one ragged breath after another. His heart beat heavily against his ribs, so heavily that he thought that it, too, might burst at any moment, now that his task was said and done.

With one last, shuddering sigh, the Eighth Hour let the tension ease from his body and he rested heavily against the wall.

The moments passed in silence, eerie, unnatural silence, and then gradually, the Hour felt his strength return to him, and he turned to face the rest of the clock tower’s remains.

With a steady gaze, the Hour studied what appeared to have been something of a workshop when the Alchemist had occupied the tower. Things had fallen from their shelves, had broken or been knocked down, but even with his psychic senses honed on the room, he could not detect any recent disturbances. Nothing, it appeared, had been touched since the tower fell. No scavengers, it seemed, had been brave enough to venture into the home of the fearsome Alchemist. And no one, he hoped, would notice just a little more broken glass.

“Good,” he said to himself, nodding to confirm that everything would indeed remain untouched and unnoticed. “Good, good...”

He had almost convinced himself when movement caught his eye. Warily, the Hour peered through the quickly settling dim of Sanctuary’s evening and waited, senses prone, for another sign of life.

This, he thought, was exactly what he needed. Someone to have witnessed an Hour acting suspicious in the ruins of the Alchemist’s workshop.

When the movement came again, it was such a tiny thing that Eight could have sworn it to be a trick of the light.

But there, wedged between the remains of a shelf and the work table was round, decanter with a frosted bottom and a crystal orb stopper laying on its side. Stepping forward he could see something flutter restlessly in the belly of the bottle.

There was a slight tug on the outside of his mind, weak and timid, and curious, Eight closed the distance between himself and the table.

Carefully, so that he didn’t upset the rest of the debris, the Hour lifted the shelf from the decanter and rightened it, making sure that the orb stopper didn’t come out.

He raised the decanter to the light, squinting slightly, and then pulled back in surprise when a butterfly, of all things, settled itself against one side of the decanter.

“And what might he have been doing with you, I wonder?”

Before he could answer his own question, a voice from the outskirts of the nearly deserted market called out, “Eight, are you here?”

Damn. He’d better get a move on. He didn’t have an explanation for why he was lurking around the Alchemist’s old things.

Setting the decanter on the work table, he turned to leave, only to have the hem of his long sleeve catch a bare nail on the edge of the table. The table jerked slightly when he pulled away unknowingly, and the sudden motion caused the decanter to fall.

In a panic, he reached for the container to stop it from falling, but he was too late.

To his surprise, however, although the orb stopper flew from the container and shattered on impact, the container itself did not break. He had barely enough time to wonder why the container hadn’t broken before the voice called again, this time tensely alert:

“Eight? Are you all right? Where are you?”

Cursing under his breath, the Eighth Hour pulled his sleeve from the nail he’d caught it on and squeezed quickly through the opening.

“I’m here, Seven.” He raised a hand at the quickly approaching figure. Seven’s umber surcoat was a dull brown in the darkness, but his eyes gave off their jack o’ lantern’s light.

“What the hell are you doing over there?”

Brash and to the point as always, thought Eight as he stepped away from the clock tower and strode forward to meet his companion. “I thought I heard someone lurking around in the ruins. I was checking.”

Seven shuddered. “You’re braver than me. I wouldn’t go in there for the eternal favor of Time; it’s probably haunted as fuck.”

For a moment, Eight wondered at Seven’s resolve, and his pride in his recently completed task faltered. But only for a moment. The next heartbeat, he was smiling again, and he gestured toward the lighted end of the Main Market- the end closest to Carter Street.

“Well I don’t know that it’s haunted, per say, but I would love to hear your theories over a coffee. I’m exhausted and my shift hasn’t even started yet.”

Seven offered an apologetic smile. “Of course you are; you’ve been covering for me. Yes, let me thank you by treating you to coffee and, if you aren’t too faint of heart, a ghost story of my people.”

Eight laughed. “Faint of heart? Over a ghost story? Trite, my friend,” familiarity slipped into their conversation as Eight addressed Seven by name, “Where I come from, I am a ghost story.”

Without looking over his shoulder, Eight ushered Seven toward the lights of an open coffee shop on the corner of Carter Street.

Seven laughed boisterously and then immediately launched into a variety of reasons why the ghosts of his people were far scarier than the monster that Eight was often described as. But Eight’s mind was clouded with the residue of the magic that he had used to perform Time’s favor. It had been a long time since he had used the baser magic of his people, and between the lingering feelings of power and Seven’s emphatic explanation of the ghosts of his people, Eight realized that he was hungry to perform such magic again.

No matter, he thought. What he had done for now was more than enough.

Arm-in-arm, the Hours left behind only darkness and the crumbling clock tower. With their backs turned neither Hour noticed the white butterfly, no larger than a child’s palm, tentatively clamber from the dark crevices of the tower’s workshop and lift itself into the air with delicate wings.