Seeker

It was too late to jump. The yawning hole hovering in midair below the barn roof was collapsing. John watched as its edges lost shape. Like threads sticking out of torn cloth, thin arms of black and white were growing across the center, vibrating with energy as they stitched themselves back together. After a few moments the hole was gone.

Quin had left him again, just as she had that night on the estate, when she’d taken Yellen through another dark doorway. She’d looked back at John then, but she’d been calling for Shinobu, not him. It might be she would never choose him. This realization sat heavily in his chest as he stared down the cliff to the river.

His mind went through her last moments on the roof, before she’d jumped. She had hit the athame against that other blade. It was clearly the athame’s mate, equally important for traveling There. Why had his mother never mentioned that second object to him? The answer was simple: She’d been bleeding to death in the middle of the living room. There had been no time for details.

John walked away from the roof’s edge, bringing the Young Dread into sight on the ground below.

“You helped her. I thought you would help me.”Property of Nô)(velDr(a)ma.Org.

The girl had been watching Quin’s escape, but now she turned her eyes to meet his own. She said nothing.

“Where is the justice of the Dreads?” he asked her, his anger rising again. “You could have killed me in the woods, but you didn’t. You know I’m in the right, and yet you let her take the athame that should be mine. Why?”

There was a look of uncertainty on the Young Dread’s face, but still she didn’t speak. She was staring up at him as if deciding her next move.

From its hiding place inside his jacket, he pulled out the other athame, the one he’d removed from the cloak of the Big Dread. This dagger was different than the one Quin had taken. It was smaller, for one thing, perhaps ten inches long, and looked delicate in comparison. There was something dissimilar about the dials as well, wasn’t there? There seemed to be more of them, each slender and interlocking perfectly with the others. And at the very base of the dagger, instead of a carving of an animal, there was a pattern of three ovals.

John moved the dials in turn, tracing the outline of the symbols carved upon each face. Each symbol was a place, perhaps, or a possibility, and together the possibilities were nearly infinite.

The sound of twigs snapping jolted him from his reverie. Two figures were walking among the trees, just now emerging into the clearing. The first was the Big Dread. He moved with long, awkward strides, a hitch at the beginning and end of each, as though the joints of his body might grind to a halt at any moment.

The second figure was the old man, who must, John thought, be a third Dread, the Old Dread. As John watched, this man took a very slow step, the entire motion occurring at glacial speed, then this was followed by several steps so rapid that he momentarily outpaced the other Dread. Then the process repeated, and he fell behind again as he took another slow step.

Together the two men gave the impression of a cinema reel running at inconsistent speeds. Once they had cleared the trees and seen John on the roof, however, they shifted simultaneously to a new and almost blinding pace and were, all at once, right beneath the barn.

“No nearer,” John called down to them, holding their athame in clear view. “Or I will break it.”

The Old Dread was closest to him, examining John with eyes that seemed to look straight through him at the distant clouds beyond.

There was a long pause as the man gathered his voice. Then the words came out of him in a steady stream, like a chant: “That would be bad for everyone.”

“Mostly it would be bad for you,” John said. “Please back away.”

The Dreads did not move.

The Young Dread spoke up now. “An athame is difficult to destroy,” she told him.

“It’s stone, isn’t it?” He looked around, moving nearer to the roof edge overhanging the drop to the river below. “Even stone will break if thrown far enough.”

John now noticed the Big Dread had a wound across his chest that was dripping blood, but the man was ignoring it. The Big Dread’s face, as he stared up at John, looked like a statue carved to illustrate the emotion of hatred.

“Perhaps,” the Old Dread agreed. “Or perhaps not. You would be foolish to try. The object you hold is the only one of its kind.”

John waved the athame above the drop. “Not the only. Quin has another one.”

“No,” the Old Dread said. “Similar, but not the same. The one you hold is special.”

As John looked again at the stone dagger in his hand, he noticed a separate piece, a long, slender blade of stone. Cleverly designed, it was fitted along the athame’s blade so perfectly they seemed at first glance to be one. Yet when he pressed downward on it with his thumb, the slender piece slid free.

The Middle Dread made a jerking motion, and all at once, there was a knife in his hand. Even in his half-woken and injured state, the man, John understood, could kill him quite easily. Yet the Old Dread signaled the Middle to stop.

“Do you value your life?” the Young Dread asked him.

“Do you value my life?” he asked her. “First you help me, and then you work against me. Aren’t you allowed to make up your own mind?”

“If you value your life,” she said, ignoring his words, “you will not use the tools in your hands. Without training, they will end you quickly, and when they do, you will lose the athame and lightning rod somewhere under the ocean or in the fiery heart of a mountain. We will never recover them.”

John tapped the athame and the other object—the lightning rod, she’d called it—together gently, still holding them both above the drop to the river. Immediately, a low vibration began. He could feel it running through his lungs and heart, altering his breathing and heartbeat. It was in his ears as well, distorting other sounds. He pulled the athame and rod apart and waited for the vibration to die out. It took nearly a minute to do so, unsettling him the whole while. And this was from a gentle tap. What was it like when you struck them together for real?

The Young Dread was right—even with an athame in his hands, he could do nothing without training.

Quin had refused him. She didn’t want to help, and he didn’t want to force her. And yet there were only a few people in the world who could show him how to use the tools of a Seeker. Briac Kincaid was one, but he would die before helping John. The Young Dread should help him, but she had just shown that she would not. So, Quin. It always came back to Quin.

Carefully he slid the lightning rod back into its slot on the athame’s blade until he heard it click into place. Then he drew his whipsword and cracked it out into solid form.

“You would fight the Dreads?” the Middle asked him, finally breaking his silence.

“Do I have a choice?” John responded.

The Old Dread made a tiny motion with his hands again, which seemed to say, Leave this to me. He brought his eyes back to John. “Return our athame and we will not harm you,” the old man said.

John could almost believe that the Old Dread meant it. He glanced toward the Young Dread. She was impossible to read, but he sensed she would follow the old one. Then he looked again at the Middle. In that man’s face, he saw nothing but his own death. He was quite sure that this Dread, and others like him, were the ones who had all but eradicated his house. John made up his mind.

“Thank you for your kind words,” he said.

With that, he threw the athame as hard as he could over the cliff. The dagger flew end over end through the air, then began a downward arc out of sight.

The Old Dread’s arms whipped up, pointing toward the falling athame in a gesture that ordered the other two to follow it. He needn’t have bothered—the Young and the Middle were already racing toward the edge of the cliff, searching for a path to the river below.

The Old Dread turned his eyes back to John, but he moved no closer. John didn’t wait to see what else the old man might do. He ran to the edge of the roof farthest from the cliff. From there, he lowered himself and dropped to the ground. It was a long way down, but he landed well. Scrambling to his feet, he sprinted toward the woods without looking back.