The Summoning (Custodes Noctis) (5 page)

His room was quiet, this late at night there was very little traffic on Sixth Avenue and their bedrooms faced the parking area behind the shop rather than the street. Rob made sure the window was open enough for Dor to get in if he wanted to and laid down. He focused on his breathing trying to enter an “aware” dream state, as Billy had suggested, but he’d been up too long and before he managed to take his third breath he was asleep.

He was trapped in the dark, silent tomb, unable to breathe, every nerve in his body was screaming in terror, but he couldn’t fight free of the place. It was death, but unlike the other death he’d known, instead of fighting it, he tried to sink into it. And suddenly he was through.

A dark landscape opened in front of him, rolling hills, and the scent of dust and dried grass was all around. The sweep of land had a dark path running through it, Rob stopped in shock when he realized that the path was bathed in an odd shine. He was seeing with his Gift, and the trail with its oily dark shine led along the hills towards a deep slash in the land. Bending down, he laid a hand on the ground. The path was pulsing, a slow, slow beat and as he stepped onto it, the entire world around him shivered. At the edge of his awareness, he thought he could hear a sound grating through the air. For an instant he thought he could hear his name being called. After waiting for a moment, he continued on.

“Rob!” He was physically yanked back and slammed against something hard. “Rob!” This time the word was accompanied by a hard shake.

“What?” Rob muttered, opening his eyes to glare at his brother, then feeling his breath catch in surprise. He was in the main room of the apartment at the top of the stairs. “How’d I get here?”

“You tell me,” Galen said, stepping back. His dark green eyes were flashing with a combination of anger and fear. “You damn near went down the stairs. I caught you just in time.”

“Huh?” Rob was completely disoriented, still caught partially on that path. When he looked down, he could see it shimmering at his feet, black oil running down the stairs.

“You almost went down the stairs,” Galen repeated and pulled him, none too gently, across the living room and shoved him into a chair. “Want to tell me why?”

“Why?” Rob felt lost.

Galen frowned, his eyes narrowing. “What has you?” he asked, more to himself than Rob. He laid a hand over Rob’s heart and one on his head in the Traditional healer’s touch and the next moment Rob was flooded with the white light of the healing. It blasted the dream and confusion away. “Are you with me now?” Galen peered into his eyes.

“You don’t sleepwalk either, but you were, and those are stairs.” Galen emphasized his point with a sweeping hand gesture towards the other side of the room. “Falling down them would kill him,” he said firmly, as if he were talking to something else.

“Who are you talking to?”

“Whoever the hell it is who is messing with your dreams. I thought they should know!” Galen paced away.

Rob watched him. His brother wasn’t usually quick to anger, so this reaction seemed a little off. He wasn’t sure why, but something was worrying. There was a line of tension in Galen’s back that spoke of a man going into battle, not someone standing in his home. That’s what it was. His brother was already preparing for battle. He knew Galen was worried, the ravens were too. The four of them had talked during dinner, and Dera and Dor had passed along the concerns of the Hunt.
That
was worrying. Considering most things ran in fear from the Hunt, and they had defeated the armies of the
feorhbealu
, the fact they were worried was more than a little scary.

Without realizing it, Rob drifted back into sleep. One minute he was in the living room, watching Galen pace, the next he was back in that landscape, the dark path in front of him.

“
Is someone here?”
he asked, trying to take control of the dream.

“
Come to me.”

Rob wasn’t sure if he heard the voice or if it was more a compulsion, something tugging at him, pulling him along the path. There were other sounds, now that he paused to listen—sounds of the night, the rustle of some creature through the grass, the cry of an owl, a shrill sound that he was unsure of, some night predator, maybe one that didn’t walk his world but only this one.

“
Where are you?”
He tried again.

“
Come to me.”

Were they words? He still wasn’t sure. The message was clear, he understood it, but he wasn’t quite sure how. The path seemed to stretch forever, idly he wondered how long the journey would take. Dream time was different than waking time, and what seemed like hours in one could be an instant in the other. The oily black glow of the path bothered him, it shone with power, but it wasn’t the quicksilver light he remembered surrounding Galen, or the supernova of color around Stephen Blake, a member of the fae. This black glow was that of Darkness.

“
Come to me.”

Rob tried to hurry, tried to follow that call, when suddenly, in a brief instant of shining pain, everything went black.

There was a weight on his chest when Rob woke. He stared up at the slow sweep of the ceiling fan for several minutes, trying to figure out what had happened. The voice had called him, then what? The weight on his chest moved and the next moment, Dor was peering into his eyes, one foot resting gently on his chin.

“
How do you feel?”
Dor asked softly, concern in his deep bass voice.

“I’m… not sure.” He shifted to indicate he wanted to sit up and the raven hopped off him and sat on the table beside the bed, still focused on him. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be destroying Flash’s car or something?”

“
I serve My King,”
Dor chided.

“Oh.” Rob felt a blush creep up his cheeks. “Sorry.”

“
Yes, Galen called, we have watched since his call.”

“I’m going to take a shower.” Rob stood, still trying to piece together what had happened. He’d been dreaming, then nothing.

“
Good.”

When Rob went to close the door to the bathroom, Dor hopped in and sat on the sink. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

“
We disagree.”

Rob sighed. He wasn’t going to win that argument, so he turned on the shower to let the steam heat the small room, then stepped under the spray, hissing when the water hit a sore spot. Looking down, he noticed a bruise on his thigh that hadn’t been there the day before. What had happened? He closed his eyes, recalling the dream, and its abrupt end. Galen. It had to be Galen.
Custodes Noctis
could ease people into sleep to prevent shock on the battlefield, and healers’ abilities were even more finely tuned. Galen’s Gifts were a step above that, among other things he could use the healing like a weapon, and Rob suspected it was something like that which had happened to him. That would explain the faintly nagging headache.

The scent of coffee was filling the apartment when he opened the door, and he could hear Galen singing, his baritone pure and strong. Rob stopped to listen, easily translating the Latin, so when he walked into the room, he wasn’t surprised to see candles burning on one of the shelves or several bags with small charms hanging from them on the windowsills, marking the boundary of a protective wall. He slipped past his brother, poured himself a cup of coffee and looked in the refrigerator. There was a container of leftovers from Flash, he pulled them out and set them on the counter for Dor, then leaned back and waited for Galen to finish.

Listening to the words of the spell, he wondered what prompted it. From what he could tell, it was a Bolting spell, creating a protective wall—but the apartment and shop were already protected. Generations of Emrys
Custodes Noctis
had been building on the wall. When Rob had returned home. he’d added a few less common protections and Galen had added his own stamp, which was more than all the others combined. His brother denied it regularly, but Rob knew—had even seen—that his brother had power. Galen had torn down the Veil between the worlds and allowed their motley army through to help the Hunt fight the
feorhbealu
on the fields of the Between World.

When he finished, Galen went and got himself a cup of coffee, silent for a moment. “How do you feel?” he asked, turning to Rob.

“I have a headache.”

“You deserve a headache,” Galen growled. Dor coughed an agreement and from the top of the bookshelf Dera added a croak of his own.

“We put you back to bed, more than once. I couldn’t sleep, so I was in the kitchen when you showed up again. You were bound and determined to get out of here!” Galen got up and paced over to the large plate glass window that overlooked the parking lot and garden. He stood with his back to Rob, leaning his forehead against the window for a long moment before turning back and sitting at the table again. “I decided I had to put you out before something happened.” There was something in the way he said it that led Rob to believe it was closer than his brother was letting on.

“I guessed that.”

“It was harder keeping you out than it should have been.” Galen stared into his cup. “I want to know what we’re dealing with, Rob.”

“I do too, I have no idea, Galen. I think it called me. I think it said ‘come to me’, only it was less words and more like a compulsion, like I was being summoned and had no choice.”

“
We don’t like this,”
Dor said.

“No, we don’t,” Galen agreed. “I asked Dad for help last night, because I was having such a hard time keeping you down, I thought a boost would help.”

“Yeah?” Rob took a drink of coffee. He hadn’t sensed his father’s presence and usually he did. The elder Keepers had been killed years before, but Galen had called them back into service to face the Old One, and since then, his father and uncle “hung around haunting the place” as his uncle was fond of saying.

“Yeah. There was a little problem, when I called Dad to help, and he tried to get here , he couldn’t. Whatever is messing with you is also blocking him from getting to us. The First Emrys couldn’t even come through. I tried. I was desperate enough to try the formal ritual of Calling, and they
still
couldn’t get here. Whatever we are dealing with can stop that.”

“
Which is a very bad thing,”
Dera said softly.

“
Very,”
Dor agreed.
“We are concerned.”

“I’m not concerned, I’m terrified,” Galen said firmly. “I’ve done my best to cast something stronger around our home, but honestly, I don’t think it’s enough.”

“No,” Rob said hesitantly. “I guess I don’t get to go to Becci’s?”

“You don’t get to leave the apartment. Not until we know what this thing is. Flash is coming over to play shopkeeper.”

“
We’ll help!”
Dera chuckled.

“Help destroy his car?” Rob asked, taking the hint and trying to dispel the tension in the room.

Rob could tell Galen was worried to the point of frantic, and he rarely got that way. One of the things he admired most about his brother was the focus that he brought into any situation. It wasn’t really calm, though it might read that way to some people, it was more an intense focus. People often made the mistake that the soft-spoken shopkeeper and guitarist was not a fighter. It was a mistake they only made once. Galen’s abilities were remarkable, and since Rob had lost his Gifts and their bond had become muted, they had worked on their fighting technique until they were smoother than many more seasoned Keepers. Rob tried to bring his Gift to bear—sometimes he could get a glimmer from it—and just for a moment he could see the dark wash of worry bordering on fear around Galen. The bond hummed, for an instant that reassuring comfort was there. Rob caught the edges of the exhaustion from his brother—the effort it took to keep even the small spark of the bond alive.

“
Come to me.”
The words were suddenly there, blotting out everything else. Rob could still see Galen sitting across the table, but it was like he was seeing him through a dirty window or curtain. The landscape of his dream was slowly filling up the waking world.
“Come to me.”

“Rob!” Galen said, getting up.

A sharp nip on his neck brought Rob back to the apartment. He blinked and turned to look accusingly at Dor. “Did you bite me?”

“
No.”

“So that’s not blood I feel running down my neck?”

Galen had disappeared, he was back with a towel and bandages. “It’s nothing serious,’” he said, swiping it with alcohol. “It shut down the bond, I couldn’t reach you at all.”