Fuck.
Not that I want anyone to see me in these juvenile pants, but losing the crew before we’ve even started this journey is a bad fucking omen.
Doing my best to orient myself, I reach out for a connection with earth, hoping my magick works the same way here as it does in the material realm. It’s tenuous, but it’s there—the slight buzz in my veins as I make the connection.
It’s quiet—a gut feeling more than anything else—but it’s the first real sign I’ve gotten since my painful awakening. I cling to it, heading off in the direction I hope will bring me to the standing stones. To Kirin and Stevie.
Lightning arcs overhead, making the misty landscape flicker like a disco. The moment it passes, a dark shadow takes shape on my path. Human. Hulking.
Terrifyingly familiar, and in that moment, I realize my fatal mistake.
Hope.
Shoulda known better than to have any in a place like this.
“You look like day-old dog shit, kid.” His voice slithers out like a serpent from the basement of my memory, coiling around my chest and squeezing the salt-stained air from my lungs.
“Ford?” I croak out, which is bullshit, because here in the realm of nightmares, who the fuck else would it be?
“I don’t know,” the shadow calls back. “Is it?”
“Show your face, you dickless wonder.”
Lightning flickers again. The shadow vanishes.
“Ford?”
No response but the echo of wind through the spires.
Maybe it’s all in my head.
I close my eyes, try to shake off the ghosts. Remember why I’m even here.
Stevie. I need to find Stevie and Kirin, get that cursed sword, and wake the hell up out of this forsaken realm…
Forcing myself to keep walking, I peer through the flashing mist, hoping for a glimpse of my girl. Willing her to step out from behind the stone spires, grab my hand, and plant one right on my lips.
One step in front of the other. Don’t look up. Don’t stop. Just keep walking. I just have to get to that stone cathedral. They’ll be waiting for me there. They have to be—I can feel it in my gut.
“Forget about me already?” comes the voice. The shadow darkens my path, then vanishes behind a thick spire.
“Trying to.” I bark out a laugh, but I can’t pretend this shit doesn’t affect me. I feel it all the way to my bones. That cold, icy dread, fresh and familiar, as if my big brother never left my side.
Fucking Ford.
I was so sure I was finished with him. So sure I’d never have to see his terrifying face again, and that even if Ididsee it, it wouldn’t faze me. It’s been what—a decade and a half since they locked him up? And I managed to survive more than a few shitstorms since then. Hell, before I met Stevie, Shitstorm Survival Mode was my default setting.
Thissonofabitch? He shouldn’t even be a blip on the emotional fucking radar.
But then, like a damn apparition, my big brother steps out from behind the rock, and my house of cards blows away in the wind, leaving me holding my dick in one hand and a pocketful of lies in the other.
“Ah, so youdoremember me,” he says, and the moment I see that torturous grin, I realize how much power he still has over me. How much I wish things could be different. How much I wish we could go back to a better time—a time when he was still my brother.
“Been a few, Baz,” he says. “Been a few.” He walks with a limp, no doubt courtesy of the daily prison beatings—abuse Janelle’s money can’t seem to prevent.
Guilt churns inside me.
I’m the one who put him there. I may as well be beating him with my own bare hands.
