Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (ebook audio reader .txt) 📖

walls. It was a cave.

“Hey! I said don’t feed him!” Yadis snapped. He reached for the bowl Ben was carrying.

Lesar yanked Yadis’s hand away from Ben. “We have to return him in one piece and healthy-like, or they won’t trust us.”

“They won’t trust you anyway,” Key murmured.

All the glowing blue eyes turned toward him.

“What was that?” Gregor asked. Key noticed that this one had light freckles on his face. He could tell them all apart now.

Lesar leaned in. Key looked to him, deciding that he was the least likely to suck him dry.

“I said, they won’t trust you anyway. You ran off with me,” Key said, trying to keep his voice from shaking.

Chuckling painfully, Lesar nodded. “Yeah. But we got to try.”

“What do you need humans for anyway?” Key asked, straining to sit up. Ben reached out and lifted him so he could, mostly to feed him, though Key jerked in voluntarily away when the demon touched him “You can just suck a person dry and take his place. That’s what the Sky Children did.”

The Cordrils glanced at one another in silent deliberation. They nodded to Lesar to speak.

Lesar looked Key right in the eye and said, “There is a difference between them and us. We don’t know why it is, but we don’t work in the exact same way as they do.”

Key just stared at them. His eyes narrowed on their glowing blue eyes from their death-white faces.

“You really have been around them a lot, haven’t you?” asked Gregor.

Pausing for a moment, Key then nodded.

The group looked at each other, touching hands in their silent chat, something the blue-eyed Sky Children did often. Lesar seemed to be bickering with Yadis who really was the main brawn of the group, though Gregor was stockier than tall, built somewhat like an icebox. The others were lanky and lean with shrewd angular faces—except for Donal whose face was chubbier than the others’. Lesar turned again and spoke for the group.

“We think we snatched the right kid,” Lesar said. “We don’t seem to intimidate you half as much as the other humans. But at the same time, you clearly understand what we can do to you if you try to cross us.”

“Cause, if you cross us, I’ll kill you,” Yadis said.

Key glared back at him.

Lesar shoved Yadis behind him with a chastening grunt.

Taking in a breath again, Lesar said, “We got a peek into your head, so we know you know we aren’t after your blood. So, I’m asking you to speak with your leader for us.”

With a blink, Key’s face contorted with all the doubt he held in him.

Nodding, Lesar smiled. “I know. I know. You aren’t convinced that we’re not after ruling you humans any more than Camus’s kids or the Red warriors of Kitai, but just hear me out as I explain what we want and why.”

“I don’t care why,” Key said, scooting back.

“Well you need to hear it anyway,” Lesar snapped, casting him an irritated look. It was obvious he didn’t like vocal communication and preferred the direct conversation through touch. However, he also seemed the one most talented at speaking to humans as the others looked to him to deliver the message. He really wasn’t their leader after all. Just their spokesman.

“As I said, there is a difference between the, what-do-you-call-it, Sky Children and us. Both our kind and theirs can absorb and…well, steal the shape of the beings we absorb. But Camuses can take their forms perfectly without any evidence that they are what they are,” Lesar said. He shifted to get more comfortable. “But we don’t have as much control as they do. When we consume a living energy from a…well, human…we take on their shape and all their memories, but our blue eyes always show. They’ll always be able to know what we are. So what we need from you is a way to sneak past their guards into the town that Camus’s kids won’t suspect.”

Key blinked, looking at the Cordrils more, wondering if that was really true. “What are you talking about? You don’t need us. Just steal the life of one of their soldiers and you can walk in.”

Gregor smirked. “It is not that easy.”

“Why not?” Key glared him. “You do it to humans.”

Ben and Donal whistled together as if they were measuring how much Key hated them from his words. Even Lesar leaned back as if to search Key’s face for a secret he could not steal by touch. Gregor just gaped at him. Only Yadis looked like the boy had confirmed exactly what he thought about him.

“We only absorb humans,” Lesar said with bite, “In emergencies.”

“I don’t care!” Key shouted at him. “Have you ever had anyone suck out your strength? Have you ever seen the face of death? Ever hear him beckoning you to edge of existence because some demon found it convenient to suck the life out of you?”

They blinked at him, even Yadis who tried to avert his eyes. All of them except for Ben who nudged Lesar aside.

“I have,” Ben said.

Their eyes met. Indeed, in Ben’s liquid gaze Key could see the demon had experienced the terror that he had, if even for a slight moment.

“So then why do that to others if you know what it feels like?” Key asked after a while, clenching his teeth.

Titling his head to the side, Ben sighed. “I try not to.”

“But you do it, don’t you?” Key repeated now looking down.

“Look. Most of us don’t like to use our gift against the humans,” Ben said. “We actually want peace with the humans.”

“I have a human wife,” Donal added trying to meet Key’s gaze.

But Key just made a face, turning away. “That doesn’t mean anything to me. General Winstrong preferred human mistresses for his bed.”

The Cordrils growled together as if they wished to find that general and kill him right then.

Key lifted his head with a look. He bit his lip and thought for a second as the Cordrils exchanged touches in another of their silent debates. Then he said, “Why don’t you just absorb the Sky Children then, if you hate them so much?”

Yadis leaned forward with that haughty expression of his. “Because of rebound, kid.”

“Rebound?” Key pulled back from that particular Cordril. He had already decided he didn’t like Yadis in the slightest. “What’s that?”

Nodding to the others, Lesar said, “Beings with the gift of touch absorption cannot suck out energy from another. We cause each other a shock, kind of like static-electricity.”

“He doesn’t know that static or electricity are,” Donal said, casting Key a look with a snort, and sat back. “Use simpler language.”

Key jerked upright. “I’m not stupid! I know what electricity is. It is what makes the lights in the cities work. It is like lightening, only smaller.”

“Do you know what static is?” Lesar asked, nodding at him.

With a shrug, Key said, “That scratchy noise the radio makes that the Sky Children were working on?”

Lesar laughed. He nodded to his friends. “This kid picks up a lot.”

Gregor rolled his eyes. “But the wrong stuff.”

“Ever rub your feet on a carpet and—” Lesar started.

“Human homes don’t have carpet,” Donal cut in.

Lesar jabbed a thumb towards Key and said, “But he was a slave under a high ranking general in a Sky Child home. He had carpet.”

The Cordrils hushed for moment, considering Key again.

“So, kid,” Yadis asked. “Have you ever walked on that carpet and gotten shocked?”

Key blinked and then nodded. “I…I touched uh…”

“Something metal.” Lesar nodded to him with a smile.

Nodding, Key blinked. “Is that what it’s like?”

The Cordrils sat back, grinning to each other, sharing another touch.

“Worse,” Lesar said, his eyes sparkling. “Rebound is much worse. Much more painful. Like eating nails. So we don’t dare try to take their forms.”

Lowering his head, Key nodded. Then he lifted his head after thinking about it and said, “Why not take the brown-eyed ones’. They don’t have the gift.”

The Cordrils glanced at one another.

Lesar sighed shifting his weight closer to Key.

“We tried that. It worked for a while, but they’ve caught on. Now the blue-eyed ones keep track of the brown-eyeds that come in their midst. They kill on sight if they see one suddenly with blue eyes.”

“Since they figured it out,” Yadis said. “We need another way in.”

Key frowned. He knew what they were asking of him. Obviously they were going to let him go back to camp to talk to the camp leader for them. However, Key wondered if it was worth talking to the leader of his camp about this. His own feelings in regard to working with these blue-eyed demons were still unsettled. They only wanted to use him, and he was sick of being a slave to a demon.

“We’ll let you think it over,” Lesar said as he gestured for Ben to feed the boy.

That Cordril gave Key a commiserating smirk then lifted up his spoon to show him he had some nice beans to eat. The others scooted back towards the fire for warmth, wrapping their leather coats around their bodies. Yadis took the furthest spot, still glaring at Key with another glance at the bloody cut mark in his side.

Key frowned then relented, letting Ben feed him. There was little else to do until his release.

*

“Here it is,” Captain Welsin said, gesturing to the dead Cordril they had shot just the day before.

General Winstrong peered at the white face and frowned. “And you say he got in by stealing a brown-eyed’s shape?”

“Yeah.” The captain shook his head. “We looked for his body, but there was none. Only his uniform, which this guy stole. Apparently they don’t leave a husk of their victim.”

Gailert lifted his eyes. “So, what does this make?”

“Four now,” the captain replied. “The captain at Wingsley said the Cordrils have been getting into their city this way. So general, I had a warning issued all over my area that the Cordrils are targeting brown-eyeds to use their bodies. I just thought I ought to personally warn you—though I think you are plenty cautious without a warning.”

“Thank you,” Gailert said.

He turned and walked out of the military office, nodding to the soldiers there. He went out the front entrance. His mind ran over and over all things that he had seen, most especially the glowing eyes of that Cordril he had killed at the Emergence celebration. It was bloodthirsty. It didn’t care about the age or gender of its victims. It was indiscriminate. But it also overlooked him as a target because of his eyes. To the Cordril, he was nothing more than a side product that could be used to kill its prime targets. That was how it got into Barnid. It had killed some hapless brown-eye and walked right up to the celebration unnoticed.

Climbing into his automobile, Gailert wished he were not retired. Out there he would have been able to strategize a way to eradicate the Cordril problem. But feeling his knees creak and his back ache, he knew he ought to pay attention to the signs of his age and accept that his time was over. He had to trust in the younger generation to pick up where he had left off. He only hoped they were up to it.

*

He didn’t feel up to it, but Key staggered into the hollow, giving the signs to the guard to let him pass. The guard stared at him, checking the boy’s body over before leading him to the next guard so he could tell his story of what happened after demons had taken him. Aching and cold, Key’s energy lagged despite being fed and allowed to rest.

“Key! You escaped!” the smith shouted the moment he spotted him. The man ran over to him the snow.

The boy shook his head. “No. They let me go.”

“I don’t believe it,” one of the other men murmured, taking a step back from Key. “You could be possessed.”

“Well, there is one way to find out,” said the voice of the magician