Grey Haven (Book 1: The Dreamer Chronicles)

The world around me was cut off by a thick fog that rolled across the ground in endless waves of grey. The only light in the darkness was from the flashlight that was mounted to my crossbow. It barely cut through the dark. Sound was deadened by thick storm clouds that rolled violently close overhead. An occasional raindrop fell from the sky as the storm prepared to let go its moisture; the icy rain splattering on the stone was the loudest thing in the night.

There was stillness to the mixture, but there wasn’t peace.

A large graveyard, which was perched on an uneven hillside, was the only thing that stood out from the clouds and fog. Broken headstones marked the rows of the dead. There were no names on the stones, only a cracked reminder of the people who had once lived.

A white crypt, with a large, metal gate in front of the entrance, stood at the bottom of the graveyard. The white was an intense contradiction to the darkness. It was a beacon, a waypoint in the dark. Though it was the brightest part of the graveyard, the feeling around it was wrong. Anger and lust emanated from it; evil had merged with the rows of the silent dead. My focus was there.

I paced toward the crypt quickly, eager to find the source of evil and purge it from the graveyard. I got two steps down the hill when a sharp stench hit my nose. It was the smell of rotted flesh and burnt hair, and it was pushed along by the rolling fog like a battering ram. Clicking and hissing followed on the heels of the odor. Low shrieks and sharp claws on stone also filled the air. The clouds deadened the sound, but they didn’t stop the chills that erupted over my body.

Crawlers were near.

I held my crossbow tighter and stopped walking. I peered into the darkness, my body focused on the fight that was coming. Even with my light, I couldn’t see the crawlers. They were chameleons in the dark; it was in their DNA to blend in. The sounds died down as I hunted for them high and low, light darting around the stones. The silence was more alarming than the shrieking. It was proof they had noticed me.

A rock shifted to my right. The sound of sharp claws on hard stone came from the opposite direction. There was more than one, and they were closing in fast.

My crossbow searched for an enemy, though my feet remained still. It was better to move when I knew where they were. Another rock shifted. I turned my crossbow to the left and a flicker of dark caught my attention.

At first glance, the crawler looked like a hairless child crawling on all fours. At second glance, it was even more disturbing. It had a stocky, muscular body and long, graceful legs that reminded me of a spider. Each of its spindly legs ended in a three-fingered claw. The crawler’s dark eyes had no eyelids, and its black skin was covered in a thick slime that shifted with dull color as it skittered across the ground. Its lips peeled back to reveal two rows of razor-sharp teeth.

A second crawler was slinking over a tall headstone. It paused on the headstone when we connected eyes, and it let out a rumble of expectant violence and need. Drool dropped to the earth and blackened the grass that grew around the broken headstones. The crawler was eager to start a fight. I was happy to oblige it.

I stepped back, so that both crawlers were in view, and focused my crossbow on the closer of the two. I pulled the trigger. The crawler dodged the arrow with a skittering sideways movement. It hissed at me and leapt at my face, its long legs giving it power and unerring direction. As it flew, I released another arrow. This one found its mark. The crawler dropped to the earth with an arrow between its eyes.

The second crawler let out a cry like an injured cat as it watched the first die. Still crying out, it jumped off the headstone and skulked along the ground toward me. It wasn’t foolish enough to jump at me; it had learned its lesson. I took aim and fired quickly. It dodged two arrows without slowing.

I was down to my last arrow before I had to reload. The crawler shifted closer. There was a subtle shift in its muscles, a clue that it was about to attack. I waited patiently, and I held my breath to make my shot steady. The crawler shifted again. I released the arrow and it landed in its chest. It toppled over with a low whimper and died. I exhaled sharply.

Satisfied with the kills, I refocused on the crypt. The evil I detected from it was beyond any I had ever sensed before. It was unsettling. Something wasn’t right. Despite the feeling, my body was prepared for the looming fight. I knew what had to be done.

Before I could continue my path down the hill, sharp claws dug into my shirt and back. Pain and fear came just as instantly. There was a third crawler I had failed to notice. And it was pissed.

I dropped my crossbow and tried to pry the crawler off with my hands. It was no use – the crawler’s arms were too strong. I felt warm blood slide down my back from where it had latched on to me. Nausea churned in my gut. The crawler’s mouth inched toward my neck in relentless determination. There would be no surviving its bite. I would be dead before I hit the ground.

That thought made me desperate and angry. My hand shifted to the knife I always carried on my belt. I pulled it out and, as the crawler opened its mouth to bite, I jammed the knife into the roof of its mouth. The claws dropped away from my back with a sickening wet sound as the crawler fell to earth dead.

I stood over the crawler for a minute and waited with gasping breaths to see if there were more of them in the dark. The sticky feeling of the blood running down my back wasn’t as noticeable as the sharp pain that stabbed through my body as I waited. I cursed myself for not doublechecking for more crawlers. I was supposed to know better. I did know better.

After a tense minute of my heightened senses noticing every stray sound and shift of darkness, I bent down and picked up my crossbow. The crawler’s attack had made the fight ahead of me more dangerous and difficult. A part of me wanted to turn back, to call for a rescue, but I couldn’t. Too much was at stake. My mistake could not be undone, but it didn’t mean I had to give up on the person I had been sent to save. I had to try.

I took a deep breath to steady my fear and quiet the doubt plaguing me. The pain in my back increased at the breath, as if to tell me the odds. I ignored it stubbornly and purposefully reloaded my crossbow.

Feeling considerably more cautious, I edged toward the crypt. I was unwilling to lower my guard again. I wouldn’t get lucky a second time.

The feeling coming from the crypt had changed with the fight. There was awareness to the anger. The shade knew I had arrived; it had felt its crawlers die. It was waiting for me.

The gate to the crypt was locked by a heavy padlock, but I had come prepared. I knelt and pulled out a set of lock picking tools from my pocket. Fifteen seconds later, I pulled the padlock and chain away from the gate.

The crypt was larger than it had appeared on the outside. A marble floor stretched out in front of me for thirty yards. The room was empty, but a set of stairs led downward. I knew the shade was there.

As I crossed over to the steps, a shrill, human-like scream that promised violence and chaos pierced the dark. It pounded against my ears in unrelenting anger and pain. I had never heard anything like it. It grew more intense, more vicious, as I made my way down the marble steps.

At the bottom, there was another long room built out of white marble. The walls were lined with narrow alcoves that ran in rows up to the fifteen-foot tall ceiling. Dead bodies were stacked in ranks inside of the alcoves. Some of the bodies had turned to ash and bone, but others were fresh. It was the shade’s collection. It was a greater collection than I had been expecting.

In the middle of the room was a stone slab. Dried blood coated its cold exterior. Chains were bolted onto it and attached to the chains was a man. He struggled against the restraints, but it was useless. He would never work his way free. Not here, not in this place.

Behind the man, and directly opposite from me, was the shade. She was tall and wore a white dress. Her hands were pale, and her nails were as long as a crawler’s claws, twisted and sharper than any knife. Dirty, black hair hung limply in front of her pale face, obscuring her features, but what I saw of her face was unwelcoming. She had black eyes, thin lips, and a face so pale she could have been a ghost. Fitting.

When she saw me, she snarled, revealing sharp, pointed teeth. Blood dripped from the ends, as if she had just eaten a piece of raw meat. In her hand was a dagger. It too had blood on it. The shriek I had noticed at the top of the stairs wasn’t coming from her mouth. Instead, it came from the bodies stacked against the wall. It was the shriek of the dead. The woman had filled the room with anger her body could no longer contain. It was a warning for me to leave. I ignored it.

Instead, I shot an arrow at her face. My aim was perfect, but perfect wasn’t good enough. Just before the arrow hit her, the woman disappeared. I tensed, wary. This was wrong. I hadn’t been told she was such a powerful shade; I hadn’t prepared for her.

I scanned the room, my body pulsing in time to the questions circling my mind. Confusion wouldn’t help me win the fight, but the thought that I had been betrayed was pervasive. Someone had lied to me. I had walked into a trap.

As suddenly as the woman had disappeared I felt a presence behind me. I spun to face the woman, crossbow raised, but she hit me in the chest before I could do more. I flew into one of the alcoves and bounced off the wall. Bones and ash fell on top of me as I hit the floor with a thud. I gasped and struggled to sit up, while the injury on my back seared with pain. My crossbow had flown out of my hands. Desperate, I scanned for it, and saw that it was by the stone slab, too far away for me to reach.

The woman blocked my path forward with unnatural speed. I flinched back, fear in my belly. Her lips raised in a bloody smile as she gazed down at me. The smile was lustful. In her mind, she had won two victims tonight. She may have been right.

She reached down and picked me up by the throat. Her grasp was firm and relentless. It was also impossibly strong.

My hands shot up to pry at hers instinctively. It was like clutching at steel. The crushing feel of her hand would be the last thing I felt. Her grip tightened gleefully, as if she had heard the thought. The world started to spin. She raised her other hand, to use her knife on me – to take my heart for her collection. The flashlight mounted on my crossbow reflected against the knife, accentuating the blood and rusted metal. The sight was like a lightning bolt to the brain. It urged me to do something, anything. To move.

Before her knife could connect, I kicked out. My foot hit her stomach. She dropped me more from surprise than pain, and I hit the floor for a second time. This time, I wasn’t stunned into inaction. I pulled out my knife and slashed out at the woman. The knife cut into her hand. Black blood welled to the surface of the cut. The angry shrieking of the dead grew louder. It threatened to drag me down with them. The shade spun away from me with a hiss and disappeared.

I hopped to my feet and raced to retrieve my crossbow. I had two shots left. I would have to make them count. There was no way the shade would give me enough time to reload. Once it was safely in my hands, I pushed away from the stone slab and the man, whose eyes were full of broken terror, and pressed my back against the wall of the dead. I waited for the woman to reappear. My heart raced with adrenaline that I purposefully ignored. I had to be focused – calm. It was the only way to survive.

When the shade materialized, she was next to the man. She raised her knife over the man’s heart, to finish what she had started. Her eyes locked on mine in dark satisfaction as she prepared the downward motion that would make him hers, would make him harder to save, would mean I had to fight him as well as her. I released an arrow. She dodged it with easy grace and it clattered to the floor behind her. She was too quick for arrows; she had too much time to dodge. I darted forward as she flashed back to the man. The stone slab was between us. I would have to go over the man to get close enough to finish the fight. My knees bent obligingly even as I doubted the likely success of my hail-Mary of a plan.

I pulled the trigger of my crossbow again. As soon as the arrow was free, I jumped up onto the slab and threw my crossbow away. I dove at the woman, my knife extended. She dodged the arrow easily, but she wasn’t expecting my foolish rush. Her black eyes widened as I fell against her. My momentum carried us to the floor, and I jammed my knife into her chest, directly into her heart. Her knife fell out of her hand and her eyes lost their dark shine. She was dead in a second.

Her pale skin changed to grey, and then it slowly dissolved away to reveal yellowish bones. The bones disintegrated, until nothing was left but dust. The shrieking died down, and there was finally peace inside the crypt.

I collected myself, relieved and proud I had won the fight, then approached the man slowly, gently, so I wouldn’t spook him.

He struggled against the chains that bound him. There was no gratefulness in his expression – merely worry I was another nightmare come to torment him.

“You’re safe now,” I told him.

I put a hand on his forehead and focused. The room changed around us obligingly.

We were a sunny park. Children ran circles around a wooden play set, and adults talked and watched their children from a safe distance. The man recognized the park and the terror gave way to comfortable familiarity. He didn’t register my presence next to him at the shift in scenery. I was another stranger in the dream he had created. He strolled away from me, his fear replaced by happiness in an instant as a woman appeared around the play set with a small boy. They smiled at the man and gave him warm hugs and smiles at the reunion. He took their hands in his and they meandered down a shaded path.

I watched them walk, pleased I had saved him. The peace was fleeting. The pain in my back was a forceful reminder of the fight I had lived through. It told me it was time to leave. It also told me there were questions I needed answered. I had to find out why I had been sent to that fight without the proper warnings.

There was a sharp pull in my gut and the park dropped away from me abruptly. For a moment, there was nothing beyond the grey, rushing color of the place between dreams.

Then, I woke up.