Infernal Father of Mine (23 page)

"Holy socks," I said, unable to come up with a
proper Shelton expression.

I lacked a psychology degree and wasn't a
religious expert, but my theory just felt right to me. Even if I
was right, the knowledge didn't bring me any closer to making a
decision. I had to make a choice.

I stared at the molten ultraviolet energy.
Nightliss had always been there for me. She was a good person, and
I loved her as a friend. On the other hand, my mother was a
Brightling. Since rescuing her from the Conroys, I'd gotten to know
her and learned a lot about her past. She'd made some poor
decisions over the centuries, but she definitely wasn't an evil
person. Daelissa, on the other hand, was crazy and evil. My mind
returned to Mr. Gray. He seemed amoral to the point that he would
do anything to maintain the balance no matter if it required murder
or mayhem.

I didn't know any evil Darklings, but Nightliss
had told me about plenty of her kind who'd joined forces with the
Brightlings. Maybe that didn't make them evil, but it certainly
didn't make them good.

I shouted in frustration and threw up my
hands.

How could I make a decision when all sides seem
to have their faults? In light of my wonderful vision of that awful
park, none of them seemed the way to go.

Mr. Gray once told me the two primal forces in
the universe were the Brilliance, destruction, and the Murk,
creation. But if his theory of a middle place held true, it also
meant there was a primal anti-force—stasis.

Thinking in terms of destruction, creation, and
stasis removed the good-evil element from the equation. Each had
their merits. Sometimes it was necessary to tear down something old
and to create something new. A new creation could be used to tear
down an old one.

I'm overthinking this, as
usual.

My inner ramblings were only making a decision
that much harder. It was so much easier to take a black-and-white
approach, declare something evil, the other thing good, and make
the decision based on absolute morals. Unfortunately, this wasn't a
long time ago in a galaxy far away, and things weren't so clear
cut.

Staring at the three possibilities, at the
tornadoes of energy cycling the aether around and around and
around, the correct decision suddenly hit me in the chest. It felt
so right, I knew I had to make it immediately.

"Justin?"

Something stung my face. I jerked awake.
David's concerned eyes hovered a few inches from my own.

"Ouch," I said, rubbing my cheek. I felt woozy
and disoriented. Looking around, I saw the plain gray walls of our
prison.

"Where were you?" my father asked.

"Wasn't I here?" I said.

He tapped a finger on my forehead. "Not
exactly. Your mind went somewhere far away."

I told him about the vision.

"Sounds a lot like the other ones you told me
about."

"It started the minute I entered the Gloom." I
told him about the time Shelton and I had nearly been sucked into a
Gloom rift. "It felt like something was calling me to come here." I
shrugged off an uneasy feeling. "It's like I'm supposed to be
here."

"Talk about lousy accommodations," he
said.

"After looking at everything from all angles, I
realized that maybe there's a fourth alternative."

His eyebrows pinched. "Really? What is
that?"

I met his gaze. "I want to have my cake and eat
it too."

His eyes brightened. "A man after my own heart.
Must be your demon heritage."

I shrugged. "Why can't I choose all three? I
feel like if I don't do something soon, I'll go crazy."

"Let me tell you a little secret," he said,
looking at the snoring Arcane for a moment as if making sure the
man wouldn't overhear. "As your mother may have explained to you,
Seraphim naturally side with the light or the dark once they near a
certain age. Your mother told me she often dreamed of diving into a
lake of pure milky white, a clear indication her affinity was with
the Brilliance."

"Mom had these dreams too?"

"From what she told me, all Seraphim dream
about their affinity when the time is closing in and are driven to
it."

I stared blankly for a moment. "In other words,
they don't have a choice about which side they want to
choose."

"Exactly."

"Then, why do I have a choice?"

"Here's another secret you might find
interesting," David said. "Demons also have an affinity for either
side."

"What?"

He nodded. "It's true. Our affinities are far
more complex, however. Where the Seraphim see white, black, and
gray, we see all levels."

"So color matters?"

He snorted. "Hell, no. Color is a way of
translating a very complex subject into very simple
terms."

"What other levels of creation and destruction
are there?"

"How much power someone has."

I raised an eyebrow. "Like a level ten warlock
versus a level one troll."

"Exactly. There are those who can create life
itself. Those who can destroy worlds. And then, there's the vast
majority of us in between who can do little things." He steepled
his fingers. "Let's just pray the ones at either end of the
spectrum don't ever come knocking on our door."

My stomach clenched at the thought. "Do you
think I'm making the right decision?"

"I can't answer that. What I can say is you
need to make a decision or your Seraphim abilities won't properly
manifest."

"Is that why I can't channel?"

"You might want to ask your mother."

I blew out a breath. "Get me out of here and I
will."

"If you'll remember, we were working on your
dreamcasting skills when you decided to wander off into la-la
land." He pursed his lips. "Ready to give it another
go?"

"Yeah." I ran a hand down my face and made
myself comfortable. "Let's do this."

It took some time to quiet my mind because I
had trouble not thinking about my vision and the choice. When I
finally got past those thoughts, I found the void again and
pretended I was drifting weightless in space. It seemed like an
instant later Elyssa came to me in my dreams—her warm skin, her
lips, the way she smelled when I pressed my nose to her neck and
drew in her scent.

I'm dreaming.

I looked at Elyssa and sighed. Just a normal
dream.

Open your eyes
, my conscious mind
commanded.

My eyelids felt heavy and unresponsive. They
trembled and finally opened. Gray aether formed a ghostly figure in
front of me. The shape took the hourglass form of my girlfriend.
The gray paled until it resembled her fair skin. Smoky tendrils
darkened to form black hair while her face and other features
molded themselves. I maintained a crystal clear image of Elyssa
until her doppelganger stood in front of me, every detail exactly
as imagined.

"How do you feel, Justin?" David
asked.

I looked at him, my sense of detached calm
giving the scene a surreal quality to it. I wondered if that was a
side-effect of the meditation, or of the concentration required to
maintain a semi-dream state. "Weird," I said. My voice sounded
hollow.

"It's natural to feel out of sorts the first
few times." He examined Elyssa. "Can you make something besides
your girlfriend?"

My head nodded, seemingly of its own accord.
Aether fog gathered next to Elyssa, forming another figure. I felt
my lips curl back in a snarl as the details took shape. Within
minutes, Maximus stood next to Elyssa. He wore wraparound
sunglasses. A close-cropped goatee hugged his chin. He smiled,
revealing long fangs.

Another shape formed next to him, that of a
tall thin man with unruly black hair.

"Vadaemos?" David said, stepping
back.

Yet another form, and another, and another took
shape until the cell was crowded with people. Shelton, Elyssa,
Bella, Stacey, Maximus, Vadaemos, Maulin Kassus and more stared at
each other from either side of the cell.

"Justin, you can stop now," David said,
squeezing between the opposing forces and standing by my side. "In
fact, you need to stop, or your imagination is going to kill us
all."

I gazed dully at my father. His words made
sense, but there were more people to create. Where was Underborn,
the notorious assassin? Where was Daelissa?

"You son of a bitch!" The replica of my friend,
Adam Nosti, gripped Maximus by the collar of his leather jacket.
"You tried to turn my sister into a vampling. I'm going to kill
you!"

Maximus shoved Adam. Adam whipped out a compact
rod and flicked it into a full staff.

Maximus snarled. "How about I kill you next,
Arcane?"

Adam shouted a word. Searing heat rippled from
the end of his staff and charred Maximus's face.

All hell broke loose.

Vadaemos roared. His body rippled, growing into
a demonic beast. Cold steel flashed in Elyssa's hands as she met a
thrust from the towering demon spawn. Bella took out her staff and
blasted Maulin Kassus before he could throw a first strike at Harry
Shelton who was busy combating Mr. Bigglesworth, the shape-shifter
who'd killed his father.

"Justin, stop!" David slapped me so hard I
staggered back and tripped over the unconscious Arcane on the
floor. My dream state vanished. The replicas of my friends and
enemies went still as statues. A beam of white light from the end
of Shelton's staff hung in mid-air, inches from the face of Maulin
Kassus.

"What—huh?" I said, feeling my eyes go wide at
the bizarre sight in front of me.

"I knew you had an overactive imagination, but
this is ridiculous." David walked around the clones. He peered at
the beam of light coming from Shelton's staff. "For a minute there,
I thought he was really casting magic." He reached a tentative
finger toward the light, seemed to reconsider, and spit on it. It
sizzled.

"Wow," I said. "It's real?"

"As real as it needs to be," David said. He
whistled. "You are something else, son."

I couldn't stop a grin from reaching my face.
"You mean that in a good way?"

"Heck yeah." He touched Maximus's sunglasses.
"You need to learn control." A grimace crossed his face as the
sunglasses began to dissolve into goop.

It was hard to watch my friends melt away even
though I knew they were imaginary constructs. Maximus and the
others could rot in hell for all I cared.

"Do you remember how you controlled them all at
once?" David asked.

I tried to remember. "Everything kind of
happened on its own. I didn't consciously control
anything."

"Your dream took over." He walked away from the
melting figures. "Still, it's a good start. You just need to
practice switching into that lucid dream state and you're
set."

"I'll keep practicing."

David nodded. "Good idea. No telling how long
we'll be waiting in here, and you might as well keep
trying."

Pushing back my excitement, I sat back down and
went back through the exercise. It took longer this time thanks to
my mind reliving the battle I'd started. Thinking of the fake
spells I'd made the clones cast led to another train of thought. If
I could make them do that, what kept me from using a similar method
to cast my own spells?

After a time, I managed to slip back into the
lucid dream state. This time, I maintained a firmer hold on my
imagination to prevent the previous chaos. The detached, surreal
feeling came over me. I forced my eyes open, and stood. This time,
I imagined a fireball. An orange sphere formed in my hand. I let it
grow to about the size of my head and directed it to fly across the
room.

It streaked across the small space and poofed
against the wall, leaving a black mark where it hit, though it
didn't otherwise damage the surface. A small voice in the back of
my head told me it wasn't powerful enough to break through. My
conscious voice tried to override my subconscious, explaining that
a fireball could indeed damage the wall. Concentrating, I imagined
another fireball. This one
would
destroy the wall. It
would
leave a huge hole in it.

My subconscious slipped from my grasp, and with
it, my lucid dream state. I let out a frustrated grunt.

"What happened?" David asked.

"If I try to control my dream state too much,
it fades."

He nodded. "Just like a typical lucid dream.
The subconscious mind is sometimes more powerful than we give it
credit for."

"Then I'll have to convince it."

He chuckled. "Good luck with that. It's a
primal force all of its own." He examined the stain on the wall.
"That was still very impressive."

I yawned. Grogginess weighed down my brain.
Putting a part of myself to sleep and waking it back up sure was
tiring. I paced around the room in an attempt to stay awake. I
heard a snort of surprise and looked back to see the Arcane waking
up. His eyes filled with fear when he saw us.