Dreamseeker's Road (6 page)

“Cool,” Aikin said. “I'm game.”

“It won't make you happy,” David countered. “It never does.”

“I still wanta see.”

“Tough.”

Aikin regarded him steadily, a cold glint in his eyes. “What about that jewel in the pot you think I don't know Alec brought along,” he whispered, with a smug grin. “What's it called? An
ulunsuti
?”

“Christ!” Alec grumbled. “What
don't
you know?”

“Tell him,” David snapped. “Hell,
show
him. I don't care.” He sat down again and stared at the recalcitrant mountain.

Alec puffed his cheeks and likewise sat, motioning Aikin down beside him. “If I'm gonna
talk
about it, I might as well show you,” he agreed. Whereupon he reached around to snare his backpack. He held it in his lap while he rummaged inside, finally producing three objects. One was the Thermos of deer blood that had caused so much angst already; the second was an unglazed bowl the size of a big man's brainpan; and the last was a plain clay jar, simply shaped, and closed with a thick bark stopper. The Thermos he set to his right, the bowl in the center of the rough triangle they'd somehow formed, while he pried the lid off the jar and reached inside. An instant later, he drew out a hand-sized pouch of white-bleached buckskin, soft as suede and delicately nappy. Carefully unlacing it, he tipped the contents into his palm.

Aikin's breath hissed as Alec held it there, bright in the sun, its glitter less hard than diamond, sharper than oil on water. Like amber, perhaps, or some types of plastic. Hand-sized it was, and roughly oval, milky-clear, with a red septum bisecting the center, perhaps to separate its two parts: real and unreal; animal and mineral; comprehensible and insane.

“The ulunsuti,” David whispered, for Aikin's benefit—and probably for dramatic effect. “The jewel from the head of the great uktena.”

“Which is a giant serpent that lives in Galunlati,” Alec explained. “That's the Overworld of the Cherokee, if you don't already know. A shaman-type guy we know over there gave it to me—only I don't want it. It has assorted oracular powers, but you have to prime it with blood to effect anything useful. And once a year you have to feed it the blood of a large animal or it'll go mad—which so far, I'm pleased to say, has not occurred.”

“Thus the reason for beggin' along on this trip?”

Alec nodded sheepishly. “Basically. See, I've been feeding it beef blood, but that's…not quite working anymore. I can't say how I know, but I feel like it needs the real thing: hot from the body of something wild.”

“So could we maybe try something wild?” Aikin asked carefully. “I mean, given that you've gotta feed it anyway?”

Alec exchanged glances with David.

“I think we oughta cut your ears off,” David growled.

“Let's do it,” Alec sighed. “You know we're gonna have to sooner or later.”

“We'll have to hurry then,” David grunted. “We've
still
gotta lug Bambi's mom down the mountain, 'fore the meat goes bad.”

In spite of himself, Alec hated what came next. He was a computer nerd—a protoscientist (lodged between chemistry and geology, at the moment). His world of preference was facts and formulae, cause and effect, predictable results, and logical rules—world without end, amen. It wasn't fair that
he,
of all unlikely folks, was saddled with the onus of such preposterous irrationalities as physical places with grounds, skies, and geological features that suddenly ended in
nothing.
Never mind endless tubes paved with golden light and walled with such unlikely entities as vast tangled hedges of thorn, a yard beyond which lay utter void. Never mind trying to figure out how the complex of chemicals that was blood, gleaned from a creature of this World, could prompt a clump of quasi crystal from another to peer into other times and places. There was no connection there: blood to crystal to vision; not like acid to base to alkaline. Not like E = mc
2
. Not even like chaos theory and fractal geometry and fuzzy logic. And
absolutely
never mind how the damned crystal—the goddamned ulunsuti—knew the difference between domestic Guernsey and wild whitetail hot off the cloven hoof.

Yet here he was, still suffering the figurative ripples of his friends' near-confrontation; sitting half-naked on a mountainside, with his knees touching David's and Aikin's; pretending he was a shaman presiding at a rite he neither approved of nor understood.

David, to his left, looked nonplussed and bored. Aikin, by contrast, seemed anxious and apprehensive—and was trying very hard to hide both. “Pass the grue,” he told the latter, and with that, he set the ulunsuti in the bowl.

And jerked reflexively. It was almost as though the jewel had shocked him, had reached for him in some hungry way, and nipped away an invisible piece of his flesh. Setting his jaw, he accepted the Thermos, unscrewed the cap, and tipped it over both crystal and bowl.

The blood was darker than he remembered, which surprised him, given how much of it he'd seen that day.

It also stank (he thought of it as a stench, at any rate; David and Aik rather liked it). And to his surprise, it gave off a faint warmth: subtle, but noticeable, where it flowed past his fingertips. Already the ulunsuti was filmed with crimson; already it was half-drowned in a sanguine pool.

He could almost feel its pleasure, too, almost hear a soundless purr of contentment, as the jewel drank its fill of whatever empowered it. He squinted at it, saw it slowly begin to glow; and as he did, an idea came to him: a chance for subtle revenge. Aik wanted magic, huh? Well, he'd give him magic. But Aik would also pay the price for being a dweeb.

“Dave,” Alec muttered, “give Hunterman your knife. We've primed this thing already, but if
it's gonna do its thing for him,
he
oughta provide the fuse.”

Aikin eyed him dubiously. And took the weapon.

“Cut yourself,” Alec told him. “Enough to draw blood that'll drip. Otherwise, you'd have to touch the crystal with the wound, and that might not be cool. Shoot, it
could
suck you dry, blood and…life force both. Right now it's both sated and hungry, so feed it, but don't risk yourself. And when you're done, stare at the septum and try to imagine—I dunno—imagine Bloody Bald with a veil over it, and then imagine that veil lifting. It's kinda hard to say, really; Liz usually does that kind of thing. Mostly it works best when you just sort of worry at it. But this close—”

“I get the message,” Aikin broke in, as he drew the gleaming blade along his thumb. “Let's do it.”

Though Aikin's attitude pissed him a little, Alec could think of no useful reply. Instead, he nodded at David and likewise stared at the septum, following the instructions he'd just passed on: to visualize the mountain a few miles away, and what lay unseen upon it.

For an instant, he saw nothing. But then the septum pulsed with ruby light—and reality ripped asunder as the whole world became a mass of faceted towers, flying arches, and extravagant gardens rushing at him at alarming speed.

Too fast!
Far too fast! He resisted instinctively, tore his gaze away—

“Shit!” David gasped, as Alec met his eyes, neither of them daring to look directly at the crystal that pulsed like a strobe between them, making their skin seem to shift 'twixt dead and flayed.

“Double shit,” Alec echoed, as the effect slowly faded. “
That's
never happened before.”

“What?” From Aikin, who had likewise wrenched his attention from the stone and was staring at Alec with a mix of joy, awe, and terror.

“That sort of intense reaction,” Alec gulped. “Not remote observation, but headlong rush!”

“Probably 'cause we used that kind of blood,” David mused. “Or of us bein' so close to the target at what's still pretty near a magical time of day.”

“Let's hope,” Alec yawned. “And, dammit, I've got a mother-effer of a headache. Stuff like this always gives me one, but this is a real banger—and only from that little time!”

“I've got one too,” David admitted. “Seems like I always forget about the side effects.” And then he, too, was yawning.

Aikin rolled his eyes. “I wish you'd warned me about that—'cause I've
also
got one.”

“The price of knowledge is pain,” David chuckled—and yawned again.

“So now you know,” Alec agreed. “It gives you a headache and puts you to sleep.”

Aikin checked his watch. “Actually, I wouldn't mind a nap. We did get up early, and then we had to lug Bambi's mom—”

“And we've nowhere to be until supper,” David finished, rising. “I just wish we'd fixed up the lean-to.”

“See you in the Dreamtime,” Alec murmured lazily, stretching out where he sat.

“Not if I see you first,” David grinned, and sprawled beside him.

Aikin said nothing at all—because he was snoring.

Chapter IV: Dreamseekers

(Lookout Rock, Georgia—Saturday, October 24)

…a hand smooth as ivory, soft as silk brushing the hair from his brow. His head pillowed on a beautiful woman's lap, his eyes, half-closed, gazing upon a sky ablaze with the stars of Georgia summer…

“Alec,” she breathed, and his heart skipped to hear his name whispered with that voice, through those lips that had so lately kissed him. He blushed, sure she had seen some sign of this wild inner joy that possessed him. Certainly she could have noted any shift in his face at all, any change in the whole of his body—for he was naked, as he had never before been with a woman.
He had no secrets from her now; she knew the whole length of him: his curves and his planes, where he was soft
or
smooth, firm or rough—hard or hairy. What it felt like to have him inside her.

“Alec,
my Alec,” she murmured once
more.

He shifted as he smiled, and felt the woman's discarded skirt bunch beneath his buttocks, where he lay amid the ruins of a burned-out dwelling on the ridge above
the MacTyrie Athletic Field. She smiled back, though he could scarcely see her face, there in the soft summer dark. Only a cloud of hair, each strand backlit by moonlight; only the curve of her cheeks, the arch of her brow, the spark of magic in her eyes as she bent to kiss him once more, while her hands went roaming to places no woman
had ventured before that night…

“Eva,” he sighed, when she had finished, and closed his eyes.

“My Alec,” she answered, softly as an echo—but something had changed: he no
longer lay languid and sated in his first lover's lap, but crouched in the yard of an ancient farmhouse beneath
a
storm-torn midnight sky. Lightning flickered ominously, limning wind-whipped trees and the billowing cloaks of a host of Faery warriors, who sat coal-black steeds between writhing poplars, then crowded in respectfully to where one of their number lay crushed upon the ground while a blond-haired boy who instants before had been a raging serpent-monster huge enough to coil around a building sprawled dazed and senseless beside her.

Beside…Eva! For he had removed that fallen warrior's helm, revealing the face of she who had seduced him and loved him and betrayed him most brutally at last. Except that he was running a few emotions behind just now—which fact he realized bitterly as he stared down at one he now knew was a devious Faery woman with her own complex agenda, which surely did not include loving any mortal, much less skinny, naive Alec McLean.

He should have hated her, should have despised this wretch who had twisted his jealousy and caused such grief to older, more loyal friends. Yet as she lay there, her beauty awash with a pain she could only escape by death, he could not. “Farewell, my Alec,” she sighed, and spoke no more.

She was one of the Sidhe, Alec's dreamself reminded him. And the Sidhe could
not
die—not truly, not forever the way men did. Sooner or later she would return: sooner or later her spirit would build new flesh and Aife would once more walk the fields of Faerie.

They'd be waiting for her, too: Lugh's scouts and soldiers and spies would, they whose purpose it was to maintain balance and justice and order in Tir-Nan-Og. And since Aife had betrayed a king along with her mortal lover, that king would claim first vengeance, in whatever form revenge was enacted among the Tuatha de Danaan. Cursed to wear beast shape, she might be, as Ailill mac
Angus had been. Or exiled to some island far from comfort and joy. Perhaps the Death of Iron, even, that severed soul and body past reunion—though that was unlikely, for mere traitors.

Yes, all those were possible options. But what Alec knew far more certainly, felt more passionately, there in the heart of his
self,
was that he still loved her and wanted one last time to be with her honestly, with no deception on either side. She'd loved him, she'd told him once—and lied. She'd
come
to love him, she'd said again at the edge of death—and, he sensed, spoken true.

So where was Aife now? How could he, Alec
McLean, be with her again?

As if in answer, the ruby-septumed stone that lay less than a yard from his head, that had drunk deep of the blood of wild beasts and tame boys, pulsed with scarlet fire…

…
“My Alec!”

Alec
blinked in bewilderment, for though he knew that he still dreamed, something more subtle assured him he dreamed true. And what he saw was the answer to his desire. Not where Eva and he had made love, or where she had died, but where she presently resided.

“Come to me, my Alec, my dreaming boy-man-lover!”

But Alec could only stare—first at the face of his lady, then at her body, where she sat clothed in shadow-gray samite on a padded velvet seat beneath a high, arched window,
gazing out at
nothing.
And then at the larger room around her: rough stone walls and bare stone floor, across which splatters of furs and skins were strewn like storm wrack…