48. Going Down in Flames – 3 Doors Down

Flames and burning and hot, too hot, hothothottoohot – but got to get through anyway. Got to reach her. Got to … the screaming. Oh God, the screaming is so loud. She's screaming for … for help! But I can't … I can't reach … Sister Mary Catherine, I'm here! I'm here, but I can't reach you! Please, God, no! No!

"Valon, you idiot, wake up!"

Valon came to with a start "Whu?" He was bathed in sweat but felt icy cold. Blinking in the grey pre-dawn light, his eyes slid to the face frowning into his over the back of the couch. "Mai?"

"You woke me up," she said tersely.

Valon glanced around, taking in his surroundings and feeling the knot of tension in his stomach ease a little. They were in a motel; a cheap place they'd fallen into when tiredness made them both start weaving across the road. He'd taken the couch without question, but apparently even the closed door of the bedroom hadn't been enough to stop him disturbing Mai's rest.

"Sorry," he mumbled, swinging his legs to touch the floor.

He was still wearing his boots, too tired to remove them those few hours earlier when they'd arrived. They clumped loudly, the carpet pile thinner than a shadow. He'd been in some nasty dumps before when on the road for Doma, but this was the first time he'd ever crashed anyplace with Mai in tow. She hadn't been sent on many missions so far, and none on her own yet. Still, she struck him as the kind of woman who was used to more than crummy places like this. He wondered what she thought of it.

Mai, straightening up behind the couch, frowned at the back of his head. Valon could feel it burning a bald spot. "You were screaming," she said without preamble.

Valon froze. Neither Raphael nor Amelda had ever told him that when they were forced to share lodgings. Perhaps it was because they just didn't care what his nightmares were about, since they had plenty of their own, but he doubted that. On the road sleep was a valuable commodity, and both Amelda and Raphael had short fuses. No way would they have let him carry on sleeping if he was waking them the way he'd apparently woken Mai.

Damn it.

The Oricalchos wasn't a complete fix-all. It dulled pain, made it easier to work through and fenced you off from it with other emotions like anger and bitterness, but it couldn't take that pain away. It could hoist you above it, where pain could jump but never reach you, but eventually your cable would snap and you'd plunge right back into the thick of your own personal demons. Valon had borne Doma's mark since he was fifteen. Now, in his twenties and faced with something he never anticipated when he allowed Dartz to touch his forehead and inflict that mark upon him, its effectiveness was finally beginning to wear off.

Valon wouldn't look at Mai; didn't respond to what she'd said. He couldn't. He'd hinted and been obvious about his feelings for her, and she'd been blunt that she didn't reciprocate. He'd be damned if he finished off the last of his pride by announcing that those feelings were eroding the hold the Oricalchos had over him. Things like love and affection couldn't survive in the soup of emotions favoured by dark magic. It was either submerge in it or overpower it.

And guess which way mine went?

"Valon?" Mai said brusquely.

"It was nothing," he relied, equally brusque – far more so than he would usually be with her.

He felt her flinch. It was okay for her to dish out snappishness like it was going out of style, but not him. He was supposed to keep coming back for more punishment, and him straying from the rulebook had thrown her. "Uh … well fine. You're welcome." She pushed herself off the couch and stomped back to the bedroom, slamming the door hard enough to make the paper-thin walls sway.

Valon sat with his face in his hands, trying to force away mages of burning churches and all too familiar screams as the sun came up and a new day got underway without them.