AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My foot hooked on a power cord and I fell forward, flailing.
No!
The world exploded.
Val shot past.
A surreal light blasted the room.
Silhouetted, Chester shuddered, teetering but upright, with his arm falling to his side. Val shouldered the door. The metal swung ponderously, and the door opened more as Chester staggered backward for yards.
Ignoring the pain in my foot, I ran for him only to come to an abrupt stop.
Seemingly out of nowhere, a dream creature appeared—the flare of light coalesced into a discrete figure that had one hand stuck inside Chester’s head.
Not an angel or faery, but it was a dream. Val saw it too; he pulled himself up but tumbled to one knee and slid along the floor, almost to Chester’s flip-flop clad feet.
Climbing to his feet, Val flexed his fists and backed away.
All we could both do was watch as the dream creature entered Chester, pouring itself into his skull and melting into his flesh.
Chester was dying. Once a creature took him like this, he’d be dead when we left. Even now, the Chester I knew was gone.
My puppet-master had become a puppet.
It was done. The SK was dead. Finito.
Not so easy. Fuck, this event robbed me. I’d wanted to kill this fucker for so long. Maybe in there, in his brain, a tiny part of him still knew and saw what was happening to him, andunderstoodthe horror. That I could treasure—the vile ending of his personality, snuffed out evil brain cell by evil brain cell, popping like bubble wrap. Whatever memories remained, Chester, the realhim,would be gone.
I’d play that back for days, though a screenshot and video of him writhing, mouth agape, with that hand spiked into his head would’ve been nicer. I could make myself a snow globe with a doll of Chester inside, his brain melted into an eggcup shape, and bloody snowflakes raining on him when I shook it.
Yeahhh. Vengeance is mine.
The last of the dream-creature light sucked inside him. Now, there was no way to see Chester was a host. Unless you had the eyeglasses...
Oh, bingo...
Was this the creature that had been bending and connecting the clues? Bringing us to this moment? Was the creature on our side? Why had it saved us?
Wide-eyed and somewhat less jittery, Chester bowed to me, and that wasn’t fucking creepy at all...and then the front door burst in.
More bright light, dream creatures gathered like the entourage of royalty.
A woman stalked in. The knowledge in those eyes... Her white blond hair made me blink. How appropriate a color. This was no mere human.
An immortal occupied the human. The smart black dress and heels, the asymmetric bobbed hairstyle, the perfect makeup—these made me wonder if the hosting was recent.
The woman stopped before me, with her feet planted in a male stance. The dream creatures milled in the background. Three or four of those were...unicorn? Large elf thing? Maybe something Greek goddess? And Chester. All so brilliant it hurt to look at them.
“I’m the one you know as The Soldier, or the Cucitrice did.” The Soldier frowned. “We have urgent business. There is some information I must give you and a decision you need to make.”
“What? Wait.” I held up my palm, and I felt Val back me up as he moved in behind me. “I am...completely off balance here. I don’t recall you.”
Thereweremurmurs of a soldier, buried a long way, deep in my head. Good or bad? I couldn’t tell. A male, but when it came to hosts, gender didn’t matter.
“I don’t have to do anything. First, we need our weapons.”
“Of course.” The Soldier clicked her fingers and Chester headed around the end of the little entry hall to fetch them from the deposit tray.
