William Wilde and the Stolen Life Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Other books by Davis Ashura

  Dedication

  Acknowledgment

  Chapter 1: Unreal Normality

  Chapter 2: Mysterious Strangers

  Chapter 3: Truths and Fears

  Chapter 4: Who to Mistrust

  Chapter 5: Prized Needs

  Chapter 6: Abandoning the Far Aboard

  Chapter 7: The Servitor

  Chapter 8: Schemes and Death

  Chapter 9: Necessary Decisions

  Chapter 10: A Torturous Fight

  Chapter 11: Works and Healing

  Chapter 12: Instructions and Challenges

  Chapter 13: Sister, Truths, and Selene

  Chapter 14: Past Mysteries

  Chapter 15: Schemes Put into Play

  Chapter 16: Skills and Nightmares

  Chapter 17: Torture and Dreams

  Chapter 18: Seminal

  Chapter 19: Flight

  Chapter 20: Pursuit

  Chapter 21: Reunions and New Challenges

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Thank You!

  William Wilde and Unusual Suspects

  Chapter 1: Nightmares

  Chapter 2: Truths and Fears

  Chapter 3: Memories

  Other Books by Davis Ashura:

  The Castes and the OutCastes

  A Warrior’s Path

  A Warrior’s Knowledge

  A Warrior’s Penance

  Omnibus edition (available as ebook only)

  Stories of Arisa — Volume One

  The Chronicles of William Wilde

  William Wilde and the Necrosed

  William Wilde and the Stolen Life

  William Wilde and the Unusual Suspects (available November 2018)

  William Wilde and the Sons of Deceit (available spring 2019)

  William Wilde and the Lord of Mourning (available summer 2019)

  Dedication

  To my lovely wife who still lets me hide in my cave and write.

  I couldn’t do this without her patience.

  Acknowledgment

  As before, none of this could have been done without the support of so many others. This book is no different. I’ve once more had fabulous editors, but especially Tom Burkhalter, the Master of Modern Aviation Fiction, and a tremendously gifted writer and a better friend. He accepted my whiny complaints (What do you mean it’s not perfect?!) without punching me in the nose like I deserved and pushed me to address flaws I didn’t want to see.

  January 1987

  Other than the Bangles singing “Walk Like an Egyptian” on the radio, the T-bird remained silent as a funeral while William drove everyone to school on their first day back after Christmas break. Serena sat in the passenger seat, her beautiful face frozen in a look of longing. Her dark hair shrouded her eyes. Seated in the back, Jason stared morosely at the dull winter landscape: gray concrete and gray skies. His ever-present California surfer tan and good looks remained, but his ready smile was absent. Meanwhile Daniel’s dark features and gray eyes—aspects inherited from his east African mother and Scandinavian father—appeared troubled. Even Lien, the normally vivacious, Chinese foreign exchange student staying with Daniel’s family, seemed pensive.

  The quiet was fine by William. He didn’t feel like talking anyway. The events of the Christmas holidays continued to swirl in his head like a repeating movie loop, and try as he might, William had yet to come to terms with them. Kohl Obsidian was dead, but there remained times when William felt certain he could sense the necrosed leering at him from some dark place, biding his time and waiting to attack. Then there was the fact that his brother, Landon—who William thought had died in a car accident a year ago—still lived but had few memories of who he had once been. He wondered if he would ever see Landon again.

  William drove on with his thoughts in a knot, not paying much attention to where he was going. Muscle memory, though, took him and the others safely to St. Francis. He pulled into the full parking lot and killed the engine, but no one exited the T-bird.

  Envy stirred within William as he watched other students greet each other with whistles and joyous calls. A few tossed around a football, and all of them laughed and joked like their vacation hadn’t ended. None of them seemed to have a single care in the world.

  Lucky bastards.

  William wondered again how the rest of the world could be so oblivious to his troubles when everything about his life had changed so profoundly. He knew the answer even before he finished the thought.

  Because the world doesn’t revolve around you.

  William sighed. “Let’s go in.”

  “Hard to believe we’re back,” Lien said as she climbed out of the vehicle.

  “It doesn’t feel real, does it?” Jason noted.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Serena agreed.

  Her mocking half-smile, that sense of private amusement at the world’s foibles, had faltered and faded during the flight from Kohl Obsidian and had yet to return. Too often nowadays, her countenance held a sense of unfocused worry, with only occasional subtle hints of her prior humor.

  They walked as a quiet group toward the school’s back entrance, sharing ‘hellos’ with a few other students.

  “There’s Jake,” William said, bobbing his head in his one-time nemesis’ direction. Jake must have sensed his regard because he glanced William’s way and gave him a brief nod of acknowledgment. “What do you think he’ll do?”

  “About what?” Jason asked.

  “You know. About Kohl,” William said. “He saw him that night in Winton Woods. A whole bunch of his friends did, too. They’re bound to talk.”

  “They won’t say anything,” Serena said, her tone certain.

  “Why?” William asked.

  “Think about it,” Serena said. “They’re going to be scared to death to talk to us after what they saw. And they won’t tell anyone else because their story would sound insane.”

  William had his doubts. “You really think they’ll keep it to themselves?”

  “They’ll have to,” Jason said.

  “Why?” William asked.

  “Mr. Zeus visited all of them,” Jason answered, “and he made sure they wouldn’t remember anything about Kohl Obsidian or even seeing him.”

  William turned to Jason in confusion. “Are you serious?”

  “Of course I’m serious,” Jason answered.

  William eyed him in rising horror.

  “What? It wasn’t like Mr. Zeus hurt them,” Jason said with a shrug. “Besides which, it needed doing.”

  William gaped, dumbfounded.

  “Why is this a problem?” Lien asked, sounding annoyed. “So what if a bunch of normals forget something horrible?”

  “You don’t think there’s anything wrong with messing around with someone’s mind like that?” William demanded. “Stealing their memories? You don’t think it’s like mind-rape?”

  Lien rolled her eyes, and William gazed at her in disgust. How could she not care whether something as private as a person’s thoughts were stolen? It was wrong, and Lien’s indifference was even worse.

  “Like Jason said, it’s not like Mr. Zeus hurt them,” Daniel said in a tone meant to smooth over the situation. “He only kept people from learning about us. Too many questions mean we—or worse, Arylyn—might be discovered.”

  “I don’t care,” William said. “Some things shouldn’t be done without asking first.”

  “You don’t have to like it or approve of it,” Lien said. “It’s done.”

  “You’re not helping,” Daniel reproved.

  “There’s nothing to help,” Lien said.

/>   William glared at Lien. “I hope you remember this conversation if someone more powerful than you ever does something like that to you.”

  “If Mr. Zeus wiped all their memories, then why do I remember?” Serena asked. “Why didn’t he do that to me?”

  “Because you experienced too much,” Jason explained. “There would be too much to erase.”

  “Hi, William,” Sonya Bowyer said.

  William glanced at Sonya in surprise. He also flicked his gaze at Jake Ridley, Sonya’s boyfriend, and Steve Aldo, both of whom had accompanied her. He’d been so focused on his argument with Lien that he hadn’t seen their approach. Strange. Not so long ago, his radar would have captured the slightest motions of Sonya Bowyer’s celestial movements. Now he had other things on his mind, and her classical, blonde beauty didn’t even rate in the top ten of his concerns.

  “Hey, William,” Jake said in his typical gruff, football player tone. “How was your break?”

  “Quiet and boring,” William said, mustering a sigh of disappointment.

  “Too bad,” Steve said with a grin of commiseration. Steve grinned a lot, and the girls loved his dark good looks almost as much as they liked Jake’s all-American handsomeness.

  “What did you guys do?” Serena asked.

  “Day after Christmas, my dad surprised us with a Colorado ski-trip,” Sonya answered. “You?”

  “Not much,” Serena answered. “I spent most of my time with these losers—” she gestured to William and Jason “—and we ate too much and did too little.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Jason said. “I’m not a loser.”

  “Sure you aren’t.” William smirked.

  “Then maybe I should have hung out with you guys,” Jake said. “After Sonya left—and Steve’s family went down to the Caribbean—I was stuck around Cincinnati with absolutely nothing to do.”

  “Nothing?” William asked.

  “Nothing,” Jake affirmed. “I mean, before Steve left, he and I hung out, but otherwise nothing.” His gaze seemed to sharpen. “I hiked some in Winton Woods.”

  William stiffened, and he hoped no one noticed. “Winton Woods? Why there?”

  “I know it’s spooky at night, but it’s pretty during the day,” Jake explained.

  “You’re such a girl,” Steve chortled.

  “Says the guy who likes to paint watercolors.”

  Steve’s grin faded, and William chuckled.

  The tardy bell rang.

  “Catch you guys later,” Jake called over his shoulder as he, Sonya, and Steve departed for their lockers.

  Serena, Daniel, and Lien left, too.

  “That was weird,” William said to Jason.

  “What?”

  “Jake’s crack about Winton Woods being spooky at night.”

  Jason shrugged. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  Jake reached his locker and tried to fold himself back into the normal routine of St. Francis. He pretended a senior’s disdain for the concerns of tardiness while lower classmen rushed about in a mad dash, grabbing books, shouting final words to one another, and hustling to their homerooms. Jake, though, took his time. As a senior, a certain calm decorum was expected.

  More importantly, he hoped the normality of life at St. Francis would settle his mind, and he’d discover a way to make peace with what he’d seen.

  Because what he’d seen defied reason, and what he’d seen still had him trembling at night. All through Christmas break, a worm of fear had lodged itself in his stomach. What if that creature came back? And what had really happened to William, Jason, and Serena afterward? Jake had been sure they’d been killed by that thing. Then two days before the end of Christmas holidays, they’d shown up again, haggard and worn, but acting as if nothing had changed.

  But everything had changed.

  Jake knew it. He recalled everything that had happened but wished he could forget. He hid a shudder as he again remembered the hideous creature, remembered it looming in front of him, remembered its metal-grinding voice and long apelike arms that ended in foot-long claws.

  “You okay?” Sonya asked, coming up to his locker. Her heart-shaped face was filled with concern.

  Jake did his best to hide his troubled thoughts. “What do you mean?”

  “You looked worried.”

  Jake offered her what he hoped was a confident smile, the heart-melting grin that effected girls of all ages, from freshmen to seniors. “It’s nothing,” he lied. “I was thinking about homework and hoping we won’t have any today.”

  Sonya snorted. “Like that’s going to happen.” She gave him a quick peck on the lips. “We better hurry or we’ll be late.”

  As always, they strutted down the hall, arm-in-arm, and as they entered their homeroom, Jake tried not to react when he noticed William. Seeing Wilde had him off-center. For so long, he’d always thought of William as a rabbit, and now he half-expected to see a dragon.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Sonya asked.

  “I’m fine,” Jake reassured her, trying not to stare at William.

  The utter normalcy of school—the classes, the teachers, the students—helped calm William’s mind. By the time school let out, he managed to settle back into his regular routine . . . at least for the most part.

  His friends must have felt the same way, because the drive home was far livelier than the drive to school had been. The weather even reflected their brighter mood with the sun breaching the ceiling of gray clouds and beaming down a happy, yellow light. Daniel and Jason argued about something nerd-related, something about which ship would win in a battle between the Battlestar Galactica and the Starship Enterprise. William figured the Enterprise. Serena hummed along to the song currently playing on the radio, “Neutron Dance” by the Pointer Sisters; and as always, Lien sang. She belted out the tune as only she could, and William smiled when she missed a note. Lien was a terrible singer, but during the Christmas break, he’d missed her off-key caterwauling.

  They arrived home at their little cul-de-sac, and everyone went their separate ways with promises to check in later in the evening.

  “Time for your first lesson,” Mr. Zeus said when William and Jason entered their home. With his chest-length white beard, tall, slim build, and unlit pipe held between his lips, Jason’s grandfather could have been Gandalf the White. “Your training begins now.”

  “My first lesson?” William asked, hoping he hadn’t misheard. “You mean with magic?” He scowled an instant later. “As long as you don’t do something to my memory.”

  “He’s mad because you erased all the normals’ memories about Kohl Obsidian,” Jason explained.

  Mr. Zeus’ face tightened. “I can understand why you might feel that way,” he said, “but it was required.”

  “But it’s not right,” William said.

  “It’s done,” Mr. Zeus replied with a frown.

  William glared, not satisfied by the old man’s words or everyone’s nonchalance about the matter.

  Mr. Zeus face sagged into a sigh. “It’s not something we do without great forethought,” he said, “but we must maintain Arylyn’s secrecy. No one can ever know of our existence. It’s one of our cardinal laws.”

  “Why?” William asked.

  “There’s a long list of reasons,” Mr. Zeus said. “For now, you’ll have to trust me.”

  William held a scowl for a moment longer before sighing acceptance. “It doesn’t mean I’ll ever like it.”

  “And you shouldn’t,” Mr. Zeus said, “which is a credit to who you are.”

  “A doofus?” Jason asked, obviously trying to break the tension.

  “Isn’t that what you call your private parts?” William asked.

  Mr. Zeus smiled, and his blue eyes crinkled. The expression took years off his seamed, ancient face—he’d been born before the Civil War. “Right. Why don’t we start with instruction on the basics. For instance, what is truly meant when we say ‘asra’? Right now, all you know are the words. Yo
u need to know more.”

  “I’m getting something to eat,” Jason said. “You want anything?” he asked William.

  “Sure,” William replied. “Whatever you’re having.”

  “Teenage boys and their endless appetites,” Mr. Zeus said in a tone of disgust. “At any rate, the inner aspect—lorethasra—is made of five Elements: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Spirit. However, not all are equal. Spirit is the most important of the Elements, and control of all the others flows through its use.”

  “We’ll be able to use all the others if we can use Spirit?” William guessed.

  “Up to a point,” Mr. Zeus said. “All asrasins can bend the Elements to their will, but most are adept with only two or three. For instance, my talents involve Earth, Air, and Spirit while Jason’s are Fire and Earth. It is the rare and very powerful asrasin who is a master of all the Elements. Even rarer is the poor soul who isn’t adept at anything other than Spirit.” Mr. Zeus shrugged. “Then there are those like you.”

  Jason returned and passed William a plate with a couple of PB&J sandwiches and a glass of milk.

  William nodded his thanks. “What’s different about me?” he asked Mr. Zeus.

  “From what I can tell, you’re one of the special cases,” Mr. Zeus said.

  “He’s special all right,” Jason said. He twisted his limbs and face into a cretin-like countenance and posture.

  William might have flipped him the bird, but Mr. Zeus wouldn’t have liked it. He settled for telling Jason to shut up.

  “You’re a raha’asra,” Mr. Zeus explained. “Raha’asras, if properly motivated and instructed, can become quite skilled in the use of all the Elements.”

  “Then I’m one of those super-powerful asrasins,” William said, his mind quickening with visions of glory.

  “No,” Mr. Zeus replied, dashing his burgeoning dreams. “You’ll be skilled in all five Elements, but you’ll be a master of none.”

  William’s excitement faded. “Jack of all trades.”

  “The very definition of a raha’asra,” Mr. Zeus said.

  “But what does a raha’asra actually do?” William asked. “What do any of you do?”