Page 82 of Daemon Master

Spirits below, what happened?

He took a step toward Ghosttear, and a voice cried out, “Wait!” Turning, he saw a group of villagers clustered a safe distance away. One of them—he thought her name was Charlotte—held out her palm in warning. “Stay back! If you get too close, it’ll claim you, too!”

Charlotte gestured ahead of her. There, splayed out on the ground a half-dozen paces away, lay Freya. She’d thrown her arms protectively around Metamire. Not that it seemed to have done any good—both appeared unconscious.

Fear shivered down his spine when he spied Lockrod on the ground beside her. His daemon must’ve been accompanying her as usual while he was busy. Spirits below, how had he not sensed anything through their bond?

“Report,” Seymour barked, skidding to a halt beside him. Thank the spirits someone had thought to fetch him from the forest. His comforting presence helped soothe Adrian’s rising panic.

“I…” He swallowed. “I don’t know. I just got here and found them like this.”

“It reminds me of Souleater,” the watcher said, his voice grim.

Adrian hesitantly quested out with his aethersense and saw what Seymour meant. Aether roiled in a rough circle about Ghosttear. Though Ghosttear didn’t appear to be consuming it, if the effect was anything like what Souleater had done, Freya and the daemons were in grave danger.

Taking the scene in, he realized something else. “I can’t feel Lockrod through our bond!” No wonder he hadn’t noticed Lockrod’s distress sooner.

Seymour’s eyes fastened on a nearby villager. “You there! What happened?”

The man stared at him a moment before answering in a quaking voice, “Didn’t see the start of it—just Freya running in and collapsing like all the rest.”

“It was that daemon of yours,” another villager said, glaring at Adrian. “It leaped on Ghosttear’s back. Everything went crazy after that. The nearby daemons started dropping, yours included. Freya tried to help, but she didn’t get more than a few steps before she went down.”

Adrian shuddered, able to picture it all too well. That soundedexactlylike what Lockrod would do if he was trying to play. And during their journey to the Enclave and in the weeks since, Ghosttear had recoiled at even the suggestion of being touched.

“Think we can knock it out from here?” Seymour asked as he studied Ghosttear.

Adrian shook his head. “Anything we try might make things worse. Besides, I don’t think Ghosttear’s doing this on purpose. I think it’s scared.”

“Scared?” Seymour’s brow shot up. “That thing’s panic attack could cost Freya and those daemons their lives! Who cares how it feels?”

Adrian stifled his frustration. For all Seymour and he had grown closer, sometimes the watcher’s ruthlessness still caught him off-guard. “What I mean,” he said with as much patience as he could muster, “is that we should try to calm it down first.”

“Oh? And how exactly do you intend to do that?”

“I don’t know! Maybe we can—”

“Look out!” someone shouted right as aether erupted from Ghosttear in an expanding wave.

Seymour reacted in an instant, dodging nimbly back, but Adrian’s reflexes weren’t as honed. The wave of aether crashed into him. He collapsed to the ground, twitching as his own aether went haywire. The sensation wasn’t painful, exactly, but it was still far from comfortable.

I can’t feel Heartrender anymore either, he realized numbly.

In fact, he couldn’t feel or do much of anything.

“Oh, for the love of the spirits,” Seymour grunted. Rough hands seized Adrian, then quickly retracted. From somewhere nearby, the watcher cursed. “Spirits below, just reaching in there is enough to disrupt my aether!”

“Let me try,” Xander said, his voice determined.

“Don’t be an idiot, kid. You’ll end up as helpless as the rest of them.”

“I have to dosomething!”

Hands gripped Adrian on either side, slowly dragging him back. When his trembling head rolled to the side, he got his first good glimpse of Xander. Sweat dripped down the boy’s brow and he had his teeth clenched in a grimace. Yet, somehow, he resisted Ghosttear’s magic.

Adrian felt the moment he passed beyond Ghosttear’s influence, his churning aether all at once returning to normal. He groaned and sat up, flexing his stiff fingers.

“Are you okay?” Xander asked.