Message Bearer (The Auran Chronicles Book 1) (21 page)

They crashed into the side
of the vehicle. Caleb collapsed but Seb caught him on the way down. His muscles
screamed, his lungs burned, but he did not let up, he would not give up. He
hefted Caleb up and threw him onto the passenger seat.

A cry from behind made
him turn. The two remaining sheol were bounding across the gravel towards the
van. Behind, another one, teeth bared, scrambled out through the remains of the
french doors.

Dismay rattled through
Seb. The distance between the van and the sheol had decreased dramatically. He
wasn’t going to make it. He couldn’t jump across Caleb to the driver’s seat,
and he didn’t have time to run across the front of the van to get in from the
other side without exposing Caleb.

He had only one option.

Seb reached for the glove
box. The clatter of displaced stone was terrifyingly near now. He pressed the
button. The handle of the phosphorous gun dropped into view.

A growl behind. The
spine-tingling sound of razor-teeth behind gnashed together.

Seb whipped round, gun in
hand. The sheol nearest him skidded to a halt, it’s black eyes widening in
fear. The other carried on, barrelling into the back of its comrade. Behind, the
sheol-leader, arisen again and staggering forwards, slowed to a halt, a puzzled
expression slowly turning to panic as Seb levelled the weapon in their
direction.

‘No! We w-’ The
sheol-leader began.

‘Burn you bastards,’ Seb
replied, pulling the trigger.

The world exploded into
white fire.

‘This is an insult. This is beyond
reckoning!’ Cian paced across the carpet again, repeating the action he’d done
for the past hour. He pointed at the closed door, his hand shaking, drool on
his lips. ‘If he dies I will hold the Brotherhood responsible. I will have
Silas’ head!’

Seb stared at the ground,
his head resting in his hands. He hadn’t changed since he got back, since he’d
carried Caleb’s barely breathing form back into the mansion, where he’d finally
collapsed on the floor as Cian swept Caleb away. The rest of his memories since
then were a haze of panicked shouts and orders being barked. His tunic smelled
of burned flesh and dried blood, and for the first hour he’d just wretched,
emptying his stomach into the open drain.

‘Master Cian, if you will
be calm, we need level heads at a time like this,’ the Magister said then. She
was sat on a stone bench opposite the chamber where Caleb was currently
receiving urgent ministrations from the Magistry’s healer.

‘Calm? Calm?’ Cian
bawled. ‘This is one of us! Our kin! We have been attacked by what? Sheol? And
where were the Brotherhood, where were our
brothers
, eh?’

‘They would say the same
thing,’ Seb said.

‘What?’ Cian was in his
face then, but Seb didn’t care. He stared at his blood-stained hands. The faded
red a mix of Caleb’s and sheol blood. He had taken a life, perhaps several. He
didn’t try and rationalise it away by pretending it was a sheol that he had
fired at. The person had been a human once, a person with family, friends. Even
children. He had taken them away from this world, and he couldn’t take it back.

Screw the magi.

‘Seb, I believe you’d
better explain yourself,’ the Magister said, a tenseness to her voice.

Seb raised his eyes,
meeting, and matching, the fire-filled stare from Cian. ‘I said,’ he continued,
‘that they would say the same thing. They’ve been facing this for months, and
you’ve not listened. They’ve lost countless brothers, all of them in the name
of the oath, and yet you still let them die. Now, it’s our turn, and you blame
them? Give me strength.’

Seb
sensed
the
fist moving before his eyes registered the movement. He brought his forearm up just
in time to deflect the attack, Cian hitting the brick next to his head. The strike
crackled with energy, cracks exploding out from the impact point.

Seb didn’t waver. His arm
burned from the block. He’d thrown what energy he could into the parry, and it
probably saved him from breaking his arm. His heart thumped, partly from fear -
Cian was easily capable of ripping his head clean from his shoulders - but also
from something else. Part of him was itching to strike back, just to see how
long he lasted.

The moment lingered. The
boy and man held their stance. Then the door next to Seb opened and the healer
stepped out. The energy in the corridor immediately evaporated as all attention
was drawn to the pale, blood spattered man.

‘Doctor Morgan, you have
news?’ The Magister said, her voice still that annoying mix of condescension
and
I-don’t-give-a-fuck.

‘I have done all I can,’ Doctor
Morgan said. ‘His wounds are very serious.’

A flicker in Seb’s mind. ‘
Are
?
He’s alive?’

‘He is, but only just. In
all honesty I’m surprised he made it this far.’

‘Will he live?’ Cian
growled.

‘He will,’ Doctor Morgan
said, rubbing his bloodied hands on a cloth that had once seen white, ‘I have
stopped the bleeding and accelerated the healing process. I am hopeful for a
full recovery.’

‘What of the sheol
poison? He was bitten, several times. I saw it.’

All eyes turned to Seb.
It wasn’t a dumb question, he knew that. Plus he didn’t give a shit right then,
anger at the apathy that had led to this moment suppressed any fear he might’ve
had in speaking up.

‘Caleb’s Avatari will
have overridden the toxin before any serious harm could be done.’ Doctor Morgan
said, his tone as if talking to a child, which only riled Seb even further.

‘Are you sure? I saw what
it did to Cade. I’ve read about -’

‘It is
purged
, boy.
Do not tell me how to do my job.’

Seb’s cheeks burned. He
opened his mouth but was intercepted by Cian. The giant stepped into the
doorway.

‘I will see him. I need
information regarding this attack on our kin,’ Cian said.

‘Of course, but go easy
on him, he is very tired.’

Morgan moved past the two
men then and made as if to go down the corridor. He stopped then, just past the
Magister, and turned back to them. Tired eyes looked at Seb.

‘I am sorry for my
outburst. You should be proud young man. I know what you did; I saw it in his
memories. Bravery doesn’t do it justice. Without you Caleb wouldn’t be here at
all. Others - he glanced at Cian as he said that - would do well to remember
that.’

‘He is my friend,’ Seb
croaked, a hot coal in his throat.

Morgan gave a curt nod
before leaving the three of them.

‘Cian, get what you can
from Caleb. I must go and attend to our
guests,
’ the Magister said. She
didn’t wait for an acknowledgement and left the two of them there. Cian looked
back at Seb. The anger still simmered there, Seb could see it bright as day,
but it had dimmed from what he’d seen moments earlier.

‘You. Stay here until I’m
done.’

Seb didn’t respond. He
simply sat, and waited.

Alone in the corridor, Seb
replayed the scene from Kollmorgen’s mansion over and over. He tried to use the
anger, anger at the Magistry and their apathy. He wanted to blame them for what
happened, but could he? He’d ran in there without a thought, so cocksure that
he could handle himself. Caleb had seen the truth. He’d been shouting all the
way. But Seb, no, he’d gone in blind. Now Caleb lay near death.

Because of him.

Hot tears erupted from
nowhere. He stifled a sob, wiping his face with the back of a bloodied sleeve.
That wouldn’t do. Caleb wouldn’t stand for self-pity. Not now. Focus.
Focus
.

He cast his mind back to
Kollmorgen’s. What had they missed? How had they walked straight into a trap like
that without any kind of warning? He shoved the fear aside at the lack of
Brotherhood support. They’d been out countless times before without complaint
so it was no use getting frustrated now. But the sheol, they knew him. How? How
did they know who he was? What he had? He shook his head, frustration bubbling
to the fore along with a persistent gnawing sensation that they’d been played,
that they were still being played.

At least Caleb had
survived.

Cian emerged an hour later. His face was
pale, his eyes almost vacant. He stopped in front of Seb, blinking when he saw
him there as if he’d just appeared out of thin air. For a moment Seb’s heart
seemed to stop. Hot tears welled up in his eyes.

‘Caleb?’

‘He is badly injured, but
he is strong,’ Cian said.

‘Can I see him?’ Seb
said, rising.

Cian nodded absently. Seb
made to move past before a muscled arm blocked him.

‘Tomorrow. Five am. Don’t
be late.’

It was Seb’s turn to
blink then.
Tomorrow
? Cian wanted to train after this, after what had
happened between them? He wasn’t sure but there was something different about
Cian at that moment. Whatever had transpired between him and Caleb had altered
something in the warrior. Seb didn’t know what it was and he didn’t care. He’d
lost the will to fight that had nearly cost him a broken arm in their last
exchange. All he wanted was to get inside and see the only friend he had at
this place.

‘I’ll be there.’

Seb stepped inside the
room. It was dark inside, the only light coming from a dimly burning lantern
that stood on a dresser by Caleb’s bed. He felt a pain in his chest when he saw
his friend. Caleb had aged over the past few hours. Sure he was old, Seb knew
that, but there was always a vitality about him, as if the weathered exterior
was just a skin worn over a man not much older than himself. Now though his skin
was pale, his lips grey. A wide white gauze covered his chest.

‘Caleb?’

Caleb’s eyes flickered.
His head turned to one side. The eyes opened again, seeing Seb this time. A
pained smile appeared.

‘Seb? Is that you? Come
closer boy, I can barely see over there in the dark.’

Seb edged closer, ashamed
of the fear that dragged his feet. He moved into the ambient glow of the
lantern, noting then the pleasant warmth that emanated from the burner.

‘It’s nice isn’t it?’
Caleb wheezed, noticing Seb’s shift in attention.

‘What is it?’

‘Just a normal lantern,
but the Doctor has put a Permanency on it. It transmits waves that we can’t
see, but provide some kind of healing property.’

‘Like some kind of
magical life support?’

Caleb smiled, ‘something
like that.’

‘How do you feel?’

‘Like someone took a
chunk out of me.’

Seb tried to smile, but
it wouldn’t come. Wetness filled his eyes again, Caleb becoming a blur in his
vision. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

‘Sorry, what the hell
for?’

He waved a shaking hand
over the bandage on Caleb’s chest. ‘This,’ he said, ‘I screwed up. And then,
after…I was just so scared.’

‘Seb, I will tell you
this, and tell you this once. Pay attention as you need to get it in that thick
head of yours. Bravery is not the absence of fear. Bravery is being able to act
when
you are afraid. I would never have expected an acolyte to have to
deal with what you did today. Yet you did. You were terrified, I know that, I
was too. Yet you
acted
, my lad. And it’s because of that that I am here
now.’

‘But if I hadn’t run in
like that.’ He let the question hang in the air.

‘You are young, Seb. You
sensed Kollmorgen in distress and you went in after him.’

‘If I’d just stopped and
sensed more.’

‘Sheol are harder to spot
when they’ve possessed someone. It took me a while, and by then, you were
already in. You’re too quick for your own good.’

Seb dropped his head. ‘I
don’t know what to say.’

‘There’s nothing to say,
maybe perhaps,
I’ll try not to give you a heart attack by running off next
time, Caleb.
Maybe you can say that?’

They looked at each other
for a second, before both broke out into laughter. It was short, but served to
lift Seb’s spirit. Caleb coughed and groaned, but the smile didn’t leave his
face.

‘What did happen, Caleb?
It was a trap wasn’t it? A trap for us?’

Caleb shook his head, the
smile gone. ‘A trap? I don’t think so. I don’t think they knew we were going to
be there. The scary thing being that never in my forty years of doing this have
I ever seen something like that. The sheol, so brazen in daylight, attacking us
like that.’

‘They knew me. How?’

‘I don’t know, lad, I
just don’t know,’ Caleb’s voice began to drift, his eyes seeing something far
away.

‘It’s okay, I’ll come
back later. You just get better, okay?’

Caleb nodded, his eyes
already closed as fatigue took him.