Sandman (Ceasefire #6) - Claire Marta
Prologue
The scream tears through me like jagged glass. It rips agonizingly at my insides, the way the claws slice through my side. At my feet, one of my brothers lays broken. Eyes wide in death, his body split open in a red spreading mess across the grass.
For all our power, he never stood a chance. He’d been cut down like the freshly picked blooms we gather for our mother. The horror of what’s happening has my limbs frozen. My quick mind stuttering with the unthinkable that is unfolding.
A laugh reverberates from the thing’s chest before me. Once a man now a monster. There’s nothing left of him. All I see is darkness, thick and malevolent. The hatred pulsing off him an armor that drives him on in his madness. A dark mirror of the being he used to be.
“And one by one, they all come tumbling down.” The taunt is a sneer. His enjoyment at my suffering clear in his eyes so consumed with insanity. A brawny muscled arm swings my way, his claws ready to finish the job they’ve started.
Realization thawing my shock, I don’t have time to move. Instead of the pain I’m expecting, a hand catches it before it can connect.
“Go warn father.” My last living brother orders, voice guttural and low. Shoving me aside with a pawed hand, he attacks our assailant with a roar that shakes the ground of the very island itself.
I have to find father. He can stop this. Clutching my bleeding side, my legs pound furiously toward the track. In one thought, I leave the open field behind materializing before the mouth of a cave. The red sea of poppies surrounding it sway gently in the warm summer breeze. Their beauty lost on me in my haste.
“Father…” I call, stumbling across the threshold into a place neither sunlight nor moonlight dare to touch. They fear him just as others of our kind do.
Somber blue eyes meet mine. “I sense him.”
Rising from his bed of furs, he moves with all the grace of a dancer. Already clothed in grey robes, his usual relaxed air is absent today. Lips pursed, the dark locks of his unruly, black hair tumble into his slender face.
“Where’s Uncle?” I question, searching for the familiar menacing presence in the shadows but coming up empty.
My father’s steps float across the room, weightless, like they’re made of the silk that adorns his mattress. “Away on business.”
“Phantasus is dead…. Phobetor is holding him off… He’s gone insane…how can this be happening? Where are the others? Why haven’t they come?”
“You must protect your mother,” he cuts me off. “She’s down in the orchard. Take her from the island and keep her safe. Find sanctuary with others if you must. I’ll deal with him.”
Pressing my flattened palm tighter to my bleeding wound, my side aches with the effort. “Can you stop him?”
Without a backward glance he hurries toward the mouth of the cave in a flurry of grey. “Yes. Quickly now, he’s almost upon us. We don’t have much time left.”
I don’t want to leave my father to battle alone, but I know I must obey. Mother cannot be left unprotected. With one thought, I’m knee deep in the thick grass still kissed with early morning dew, the green hues lightening and deepening in the rays of the sun shining overhead. My body shifting to solid, I’m met with a dizzying rush.
Sucking in a breath, I keep my eyes closed focusing on my heartbeat. I’m not sure how much blood I’ve lost. Everything’s happening so quickly I don’t have time to process everything.
“Morpheus?”
The soft call of my mother’s voice is like summer rain to my ears.
Eyes snapping open, I find her sitting beneath an apple tree a look of concern etched on her youthful face. Golden curls flow down her slim shoulders. Skin ivory and flawless, beauty radiating out from within. From her expression, she’s oblivious to what’s happening. That even now one of her children lay dead.
Sorrow squeezes through my chest, but I lock it away. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
“What’s happening?” she questions, rising to hurry to my side the skirts of her yellow gossamer dress bunched up in one graceful hand.
I sense my father’s magic. Woven into the fabric of our home, it shimmers like gold around us. It pulses, rippling, vibrating beneath my feet, up through my bones to synchronize with the organ beating in my chest.
“No time for questions,” I when as she delicately probes the wound in