Pray for Dawn

“I won’t do it,” Lily said in a trembling voice. “You’re the one that’s lying. You’re the reason they’re in trouble. You’re the trouble.” She lifted her chin slightly, though her whole body seemed to shake as she faced the creature that had haunted her for the past several days.

“This is your last chance, child,” Gaizka warned. The bori’s voice hardened, growing deeper and more ominous in its tone.

“Lily, no!” Mira screamed.

“No,” Lily said in a strong voice, looking the monster dead in the eye.

“Very well,” Gaizka said, shrugging the old woman’s shoulders. “I have no use for you.” The creature floated a couple feet away and waved his hand. Tristan tightened his grip on Lily’s neck just before he picked her up and flung her small body into the wall that lined Factors Walk. There was no mistaking the sound of snapping bones and breaking rock. Her limp body fell to the ground in an awkward fashion, while a smear of blood coated the stones from where her head had slammed into the wall. She had died on impact.

“No!” Mira screamed, falling to her knees beside me. Neither one of us had had time to react. We hadn’t had time to even move. In a flash of violence, Lily was dead.

Rage pumped through my veins as I lifted my hand, pointing it directly at Tristan, who had yet to show a flicker of emotion. Mira suddenly shoved to her feet as I summoned up my powers, grabbing my arm and forcing me to lower it. “Don’t kill him! You can’t kill him! Please! It’s not his fault!” she begged. At the same time, she plunged her own energy into my body, forcing her way into my brain so that her pleading echoed there as well. She was heartbroken and desperate. She had already lost her surrogate daughter. It would shatter what was left of her to lose the creature she saw as both a brother and a son. “Please,” she cried, tears streaming down her face.

In the instant that I hesitated, Gaizka flowed completely into Tristan and the nightwalker seemed to finally come to life. “You were warned!” the creature shouted, taking a step closer to us.

“And we won’t cave,” I snarled. Shaking off Mira, I picked up the pair of blades that Mira had dropped on the ground and charged the nightwalker. Tristan simply smiled at me as I plunged both blades through his stomach with enough force to pin him to the stone wall. The creature couldn’t move. Blood poured from Tristan’s body, but he just laughed. Behind me, Mira screamed. I had potentially killed Tristan as well. Gaizka had nowhere else to go. I pulled a third blade from my side and prepared to plunge it into Tristan’s heart when the red glow faded from his eyes. He looked up at me with a haunted gaze. He was fully aware that he had been Lily’s killer.

“Please,” he whispered in a pained voice. “Please, kill me.”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to kill Tristan. As a nightwalker, he was harmless and I knew it. He was Mira’s only true family and her staunch protector. He never meant to harm Lily. It wasn’t his fault and he didn’t deserve the death that now lingered on his horizon because of me.

“Leave the boy be,” LaVina suddenly interjected, staying the final blow. “You’ve weakened the creature. It can no longer jump from body to body.”

“Are you sure—” I started to say, but the rest of my sentence was cut off as something tightly grasped my ankles and pulled me. It slammed me into the hard ballast-stone road on my side, sending a shock wave of pain rippling through my body as I was dragged across the alley to where Emma Rose had been standing only moments ago. Her ashes still danced in the wind near me, but I was more concerned with what was holding on to me. I looked down at my ankles but saw nothing but the darkness of the night.

Twisting around on my back, I reached out toward Mira, reopening the wound on my stomach that was still trying to heal. “Mira! LaVina!” I shouted, pleading for the nightwalker and the witch to help me. Gaizka had me now and I feared it would take only a little effort on his part to make me his next and permanent host.

LaVina walked over to Mira with more ease and grace than I had ever seen her exhibit. As Mira ran toward me, the old witch grabbed a chunk of the nightwalker’s hair and pulled her to a sharp halt, forcing her to kneel on the stones. LaVina bent over the nightwalker, wrapping one hand around her neck while she whispered something in Mira’s ear. The nightwalker jerked and pulled against the witch, but surprisingly she couldn’t break free.

I grabbed the large, smooth stones that made up the road and tried to pull myself free of Gaizka’s grip, but I couldn’t budge from where I now lay on my stomach, staring over at the nightwalker who was reaching for me.

“Mira!” I shouted. Muscles straining to the point that my arms began to shake while a cold sweat broke out on my brow, I found a sense of panic rising within me. I wouldn’t be used like Emma Rose had been. I wouldn’t be a puppet like Mira. “Mira!”

“Shout and scream all you want,” snarled a dark voice in my right ear. A cold, bitter wind swept around me, biting at my limbs, causing my fingertips to go numb. “You’ll not be free of me. I’ve waited too long. I want out of my cage and I will be out tonight.”

“I’ll not set you free,” I bit out between clenched teeth and tightened my grip around one large stone in the road, trying to inch closer to Mira and LaVina. “I won’t be your next host.”

“Soon, my boy. Soon,” it hissed, sending another blast of cold air over my frame so that my teeth began to chatter.

The hand on my shoulder tightened, sending what felt like sharpened nails digging into my flesh. “Join with me now. Set me free, or I will grab the nightwalker again and set this town on fire.”

“You can’t!” I growled. “I forced you out once, I’ll do it again. You’re not as strong as you were. You’re losing your powers.”

“And you’re useless if you’re unconscious,” Gaizka laughed.

Fear gripped me, clenching its fist around my heart. “Mira! Run!” I shouted, praying that she’d be able to escape Gaizka, knowing that it was unlikely. If I wasn’t awake to push the bori out of Mira again, he would have no problem burning the city to the ground with Mira under his control.

Looking up, I found LaVina staring at me, a beautiful smile on her wrinkled face. Her whole body seemed to glow in the darkness, shining against Mira’s black leather and deep red hair. The nightwalker had gone silent, but her hand was still outstretched toward me, her fingers noticeably trembling as they seemed to draw symbols in the air.

LaVina bent and whispered something in Mira’s ear. The nightwalker flinched and then spoke a smattering of words that I neither recognized nor understood. But Gaizka did.

“No!” the bori screamed, tightening its grip on me until I cried out in pain. My whole right side was riddled with shooting pains and biting cold until I finally wished for my body to go numb.

On my left, a shaft of white light appeared, as if the very fabric of the open air had been torn. The opening remained just a slim slit in the night, but it was enough. I could feel a great pull in the air as if everything was being sucked into the opening. Gaizka screamed again and its nails scratched across my back as it searched for some kind of purchase against the gaping void it was being drawn into.

A hollow scream echoed through the night as the bori was drawn into the opening and finally trapped once again, back in its cage.

Mira uttered another set of words in a language I didn’t recognize and the opening drew closed, mending perfectly as if it had never existed.

I exhaled a heavy breath, pushing all of the air out of my lungs, as I relaxed against the cold stones in the road. The bori was gone and Sava