The Dreamwalker's Path

2/Hall of the Hours, Sanctuary

“You completed your task then, Eight?”

Time did not look away from the cluster of white climbing roses that clung to the wooden lattice archway of her garden. The gentle warmth of Sanctuary’s night drew out the thick perfume of the roses. Their scent alone might have been overpowering, but coupled with the night blooming jasmine and the gardenias, it was just one more strong scent too many.

Settling into his resolve, Eight breathed through his mouth as inconspicuously as possible. “I did, Time. Several weeks ago the four links between the child-gangs and the Alchemist were destroyed.”

In the form of an old crone, Time clipped one of the roses and added it to the basket on her arm. With the same reverence, she cut several dead sprigs away from the plant and let them fall to the ground by her bare, aged feet. “That’s good.”

A child stood where the crone had been. Anyone who was unfamiliar with time would be disconcerted by the way the old body had melted, shrank itself down and reformed into the pretty little girl with baby’s breath sprigs sticking out of the wild locks of her hair. Eight just rose an eyebrow at Time and wondered a little idly if Time thought it was cute to compliment him while wearing a child’s face.

Before he could wonder too hard, the girl asked, “Did you do it the way I instructed?”

“Yes, Time, I did exactly as you asked.”

“And where, as well?”

Now Eight shook his head, “I don’t think that anyone is going to look too closely at the deaths; it was known that each of the victims had been possessed by the Alchemist, so I’m sure it wi—”

“They might not, but there’s always a chance, so I will ask you again: did you perform the spell where I asked you to perform it or didn’t you, Eight?” The child’s voice was hard and angry, and she glared up at him with the intensity of someone who had lived life times.

Eight conceded with a nod, “Yes, Time. I did as you asked me to do, where you asked me to do it. Everything went exactly according to your plan, and no one will suspect that you gave the order for the Alchemist’s last links to be destroyed.”

This seemed to satisfy Time. She was once again a maiden, moving casually between the flower beds of her garden. “That’s good,” she said again, and then, “I thank you. It wouldn’t have been acceptable if one those four humans had managed to call the Alchemist back from the grave.”

Eight looked up at the sky. There were no stars in Sanctuary’s night, just a vast emptiness that surrounded all of Sanctuary. Eight supposed that the emptiness eventually lead to some other dimension or plain of existence, if you could jump high enough or walk long enough. There were rumors that it was possible to walk through the thick darkness and visit the worlds of linear time as a shade. One could neither eat, nor sleep, no feel fatigue, nor interact with the world, but one could observe and learn, if one wished it.

They were only legends though, he was certain. He had never known anyone who was brave enough to wander into the emptiness which lay beyond even Time’s jurisdiction. “I don’t believe,” Eight said suddenly, turning his mind back to the conversation, “that they could have summoned the Alchemist even by accident, but I am glad that you came to me to put your heart at ease.”

“I don’t have a heart,” Time reminded her Hour, dissolving entirely and whispering around him in a formless mass of something that looked as though it could be sand. “I have no need of a heart.”

A moment later, the maiden was standing toe-to-toe with him, large brown eyes searching his. Uneasiness passed over Eight, tugging at the strings that connected his heart and belly. If Time suspected...

But a moment later, those eyes were alight with an unmistakable satisfaction. “But your dedication pleases me,” she said to him. She turned back to her plants and added, almost as an afterthought, “I will have to find some way to reward you.”

Eight took a step back. He was glad that she didn’t seem to notice the sudden tug of nervousness, or that, if she did, she attributed it to some product of the awe he felt for her.

“There is one way that you could reward me,” he broached carefully.

Time paused, shears hovering around the stem of another white rose. “Yes, Eight? Speak and tell me what I can do to repay my debt to you.”

Offering his best smile, and flipping his dark hair out of the way of his patch covered eye-socket, Eight said, “The other Hours and I have been waiting patiently for you to name a Twelfth Hour; an opening among our ranks has never lasted this long, we wondered if you were considering one of us to take the place of your favorite and asking a lesser being to fulfill the empty position.”

Time arched a pale blond eyebrow. “And I suspect that you fancy exchanging your green surcoat for the black?”

“Can you blame me?”

Now Time smiled. “No, of course not. It is no secret that the Twelfth Hour has always been my favorite. Though I wonder often if any of you know why.”

The Eighth Hour had not considered the reason for Time’s favoritism before; he had only accepted it as fact. “I don’t,” he admitted, “though I would hear the reason, if you wouldn’t mind sharing it.”

Eight couldn’t recall a moment when Time looked more loving and tender than she did now, and he felt as though it would give him no greater pleasure than to know that he was the object of her attention.

The young woman had cycled through the crone and back into a child’s form when she said in with wistful passion, “Twelve is my favorite because it was in that hour, after the second cycle of the first divided day had taken place, that I was named.”

Eight realized, then, that the fervid love which had passed over her features wasn’t caused by his interest in her at all. It was, just as it always was, the Hour of Twelve that received her adoration. The black Hour. The Hour that wasn’t even occupied.

The new information soothed the jealousy that spiked in his belly, and with a slight start, Eight realized that Time was still speaking to him.

“You are a loyal Hour, Eight, but I do not believe that you will be my Twelve. I am, in fact, in the process of attaining a new Twelfth Hour. I anticipate that she will join the rest of you in Sanctuary soon.”

“Ah.” It was all that he could say—the only thing that he could think of that didn’t sound childish or ungrateful. The only thing that didn’t give away the second wave of jealous that collided and mingled with a burst of annoyance that he felt at the news.

“May I ask who she is?”

Time seemed to contemplate this for a moment. “I suppose I could tell you my hope,” the young woman said carefully. “But you must remember that until she has taken her vows, anything could happen at a moment’s notice. And it isn’t an ideal resolution.”

Eight raised his eyebrow and attempted to keep his curiosity in check. He knew that Time could be picky, but her self-contradictions left a good deal to be desired of this future Hour already.

A breeze carried with it the heavy scents of the garden and caused a slight headache to form behind the Hour’s eyes.

When Time didn’t continue on her own, Eight prompted “Who is she?”

Time pursed her lips, the lines of a middle aged woman forming on her face as she adopted the expression. “Well, unless I can find someone else suitably compatible with Twelve’s districts, then I was hoping that the Dreamwalker might be able to step in as a substitute—Just,” she raised her hand suddenly and Eight realized that his expression must have shown the shock he felt at her words, “Just until I can find someone else.”

Eight wiped a hand over his face in an attempt to keep the increasing pressure in his head from turning into a fully formed headache. With the gesture, he wiped away the sneer he’d been wearing. “You would choose her,” he said, trying hard to keep his voice level, “That girl, that human, whom you hate, to take the place of your favorite rather than one of us? Any of us?”

“You are each already bound to your specific pieces of Sanctuary and have been for years now. I could not remove that bond without making Sanctuary even more unstable.”

“You’ve done it before! When the Alchemist murdered one of the Hours before he was placed in the Clock Tower, you shuffled the order of the Hours to fill the gap.”

“No,” Time’s voice was firm, even in her old age, “No, that was different. It was a case of family taking over for family, and the Hour in question had not served half as long as even Sebastian Jaeger, as the youngest of you, had served. No, Eight, this is different, and as Seven has pointed out, Sanctuary is unstable and will continue to be so at least until I fill the gap, even temporarily.”

“With the woman who caused all of this trouble to begin with!” He could not keep his voice in check, now. He couldn’t bare the turn his conversation had taken. “It is a necessary evil, and not one that I am particularly happy about, Eight.”

Time turned her back on Eight, and clipped a few healthy branches of rosebush before she realized what she was doing. Breathing so sharply that Eight could hear her inhale, Time dropped the clippers into her basket and stared pointedly in the opposite direction.

Eight breathed hard as well. His anger burned hot in the pit of his belly and the heat pricked that part of him that he had worked to bank down since he’d killed the Alchemist’s four links. The creature that he used to be was beating restlessly somewhere between his heart and his ribs, Eight knew without a doubt that giving in to it would be the most satisfying thing he had ever done.

But he couldn’t. Not now, despite the way his instincts pushed at him. Not yet.

Struggling to bring some measure of control over himself once more, Eight drew himself up to his full height. “As you say.” The words felt stiff, awkward, and Eight hated himself for saying them.

But not quite as much as he hated himself for adding: “I look forward to meeting her again, when the time is right.” Time nodded and said something that Eight didn’t catch; his headache was forming at an alarming rate and her voice sounded a little muffled.

At a loss, he said bowed. “I’m sorry, Time, I think I should return to my apartment. My head...” he let his voice trail away and gestured to his suddenly pounding temples.

Without sparing him a glance—something that, he was ashamed to admit, pricked at his already stirred emotions— Time dismissed him.

As he left the garden and headed toward the stairs that would lead to the landing of his hallway within the Hall of the Hours, Eight refused to think about what he had done in the hopes that Time would recognize his loyalty.

But despite his resolve, the memory of Seven’s words came swimming back through his head.

“Not for the eternal favor of Time.”

Perhaps he had not been Time’s first choice after all. Had Time asked Seven? Had Seven refused? Seven, who owed Time his very livelihood. If she did ask, and he did refuse, what did it say about Time’s orders?

And what, he thought weakly, what does that say about me for following them?

Bah! So what if Time didn’t reward him the way he’d wanted? He would get what he was after. One way or another.

3/ New York City, New York

May, 2013

Central Park was always busy with some sort of grand activity for the masses, but today it seemed exceptionally populated. Sebastian suspected that the good weather had drawn a number of the people who occupied it today. It was sunny, and there was a breeze that kept the heat from settling for too long. The vampire supposed that it was the perfect day to play hooky, if you happened to have responsibilities that needed neglecting.

From where Sebastian sat on a park bench, it was easy to imagine that with every light breeze, someone who was lingering a little too long was suddenly reminded that they belonged someplace else. There would be a slight fluttering of guilt in the back of that person’s mind and, for a brief moment, she would debate about going back to her classes, her job, back to her apartment to clean it out the way she’d been meaning to do, or whatever else it was that she’d been avoiding. Then she would carry on, carefree and light hearted—at least until the next breeze.

Sebastian had no such responsibilities. For the first time since he was very young, he’d been left to his own devices by his family. There were no errands to run, no reports to look over, nothing to finish up for the good of the law firm that he was supposed to be a part of. They had given him the last few months and the next few months to be, more or less, himself—or as much himself as he could be when his soul was still shifting restlessly inside of a body it hadn’t quite manage to change to its liking.

He had come a long way since he first entered the body. Appearance-wise, he was, as his mother would say, practically perfect. Psychically there were a few tricks of the vampire trade that he would need to re-learn in order to accommodate the fact that he no longer possessed the abilities of one of Time’s Hours.

Thank the gods for that. He loved Sanctuary and he loved the power that had come with being an Hour, but he was glad that he was no longer forced to juggle the responsibilities that both Time and his family had put upon him.

Unfortunately…

Well, unfortunately, the lack of responsibility made him feel a bit listless.

His consolation was that, despite what Daliah Temperance and Cavan had said about his eye sight, it seemed to remain mostly intact. Occasionally there were times when he would look at someone and swear that he could see that person’s aura, but those moments were just that: moments, brief and uncertain.

The threat of becoming blind again, nevertheless, loomed over his head each day, and his thoughts turned sour at the memory of Cavan telling him that he shouldn’t get his hopes up.

“It’s the way the gods work, kiddo. They do whatever amuses them most. Frankly, I’m surprised that your sight has lasted as long as it has; it’s normally the first thing that returns to normal.”

Fucking Cavan. Leave it to a vampire over two thousand years old to cling to religious beliefs that should be long forgotten, and to blame them for something that he probably just didn’t want to look into.

Not that his own research had yielded any fruitful results. Snorting in disgust—with Cavan, with himself— Sebastian picked up his paper bag of groceries and pushed himself to his feet. He paused long enough to make sure that he had all of his personal belongings before heading toward the apartment complex on the edge of the park that he was currently sharing with Cavan.

It was a short walk to the building, then up five flights of stairs before he’d dulled his temper enough that he realized that the smoker’s lungs he was still trying to dispel were struggling. He paused on the landing of the sixth floor and rubbed his chest lightly. Damned human lungs; he’d managed to keep himself from smoking for a little over a month now, but according to Cavan it would take the better portion of another three months before his own genetics began to restore them. Then, according to Cavan, he could smoke to his heart’s content and not be bothered.

Sebastian decided he would take Cavan’s word for it. He’d never been particularly fond of cigarettes, and although he knew that Cavan fell in and out of the habit of smoking as it had fallen in and out of style with no particular side effects to his person, it wasn’t a habit that Sebastian particularly relished.

In the end, he’d told Cavan that they would both be much happier if he wasn’t a smoker; they wouldn’t argue about who stole who’s lighter and wondering which of them bought what pack of cigarettes.

When he caught his breath, he swiped a keycard through the reader by the stairwell door and stepped into the cool air of the apartment building. Then, having had more than enough of stairs, he took the elevator to the eighth floor.

Cavan owned the entire building, but his strange displeasure for handling anything that had to deal with the day-to-day life of the real world kept him from taking one of the better apartments closer to the top of the building. The apartment that he had, subsequently, was fairly dinky in comparison to the suite that Cavan had on the uppermost floor of the law firm, but it was much larger than the small studio flat that Sebastian kept for himself in Albany.

Sebastian fumbled with his bag of groceries and his wallet so that he could replace the keycard that he used to get into the building, and then fished for the brass key to the apartment.

And then he paused when he realized that the doorknob to the front door was not the same knob that had been there when he left the apartment that morning.

Pursing his lips, Sebastian tested the key against the lock, just to make sure, and found with dismay that, in fact, the locks had been changed.

Again.

“That son of a bitch.”