Hunted (35 page)

The
smile, absent for the few seconds when I'd been resisting her more or
less effectively, was back now and she moved one hand to my shoulder
and pushed. The glass beneath me had already been cutting into every
part of my back, but she applied pressure in just the right way to
slide my flesh across the ground and shred it even more.

"Normally
bleeding someone out like this is much more work."

I
was out of ideas. At least here inside of her own dream she was
faster and stronger than me. I was completely at her mercy. In the
real world I could hope for Tristan to come help me, or maybe for a
nosier-than-average neighbor to see her skulking in the bushes and
call the cops, but here there wasn't anyone who could help me.

Even
as I thought it, I realized that it wasn't exactly the truth. I'd
encountered exactly three other people while dream walking who had
been supernatural in some way or another. I was pretty sure that
Jackson was the old man and that he was working for her somehow, but
the Native American had demonstrated as much control over the dream as either
of the other two and he'd been the only one actually willing to teach
me anything about how to survive here.

Alec's
words rang through my mind, but at the end of the day he didn't know
whether the Native American—Dream Stealer—could be trusted any more
than I did. There was a chance that I'd simply be exchanging one
devil for another, but I knew deep down in my bones that I wasn't
going to get away from the wax lady on my own. I was going to try to
escape via fleeing to my own dream, but if that didn't work then I
was going to do whatever I could to bring Dream Stealer to me.

Fire
raced up my right leg as she rubbed it against the ground, but I
closed my eyes and told myself once again that it wasn't real pain,
that I was going to wake up with nothing more than some faint aches
from all of this.

I
struggled to assemble a coherent vision of the real world. I imagined
the feel of the couch cushions on my back, I remembered the slight
smell of stale beer that Cindi had never come home to clean up, and
most of all I tried to bask in the feeling of being home, of being
safe and secure. I wrapped my mental arms around all of those
feelings and sensations in an attempt to hold them steady, and
pushed
with all of my might.

The
harder I pushed the more my anchors seemed to flicker and
disintegrate. I might have been able to make it work without smell
and touch, but it was the feeling of security that disappeared the
quickest. Deep down I knew that I wasn't any safer in my home than I
was here and that was robbing me of the certainty I needed to make an
escape work.

The
wax lady wasn't holding me here with metaphysical mojo that I
couldn't counter, but it turned out that she didn't need to. She'd
created a reality inside this dream that harmonized with my
circumstances in the real world in a way that made it impossible for
me to escape.

"Don't
try to retreat back into yourself; I need you to fully experience
this."

The
pain, which had faded to a dull but persistent roar, suddenly surged
back up to the top of my mind. Even worse, it was joined by fresh
agony as something sliced into my stomach. I opened my eyes to find
that she'd grown claws on the end of each of her fingers and was
using them to make a red ruin of my midsection.

My
body tried to curl up in an involuntary motion meant to protect me
from further damage, but she simply stabbed me in the shoulders as
she pinned me back to the ground.

The
world around me flickered as I fought to hold onto consciousness. I
couldn't afford to delay anymore. I'd done it once before, but even
so, the odds of me being able to replicate what I'd done the last
time I'd seen Dream Stealer were slim.

I
remembered how he'd made me feel, the mixed fear and hope that he'd
represented almost from the first time I'd seen him. I remembered how
sure of himself he'd seemed, and I willed him to appear behind the
wax lady.

Even
if I was capable of reproducing my earlier feat, everything still all
depended on him being asleep in the first place. I knew I was
probably doomed, but I reached for him and strength drained from my
body in a torrent that I couldn't sustain for more than a second or
two. It was like a million tiny, invisible threads had sprouted from
every square inch of my body and gone streaking away at impossible
speeds. I could feel them lengthening, unspooling from my body and
taking something vital with them, but as terrifying as that was, now
that the process had started I wasn't sure I could stop it even if I
was willing to give up my last chance at survival.

One
of the threads found something or someone and more strength poured
into it as the thread thickened, turning from something no thicker
than spider silk into a massive steel cable that was impossibly
strong.

My
heart was fluttering now, as if my body couldn't sustain everything I
was trying to do, but the other threads were dissolving back into my
body and I felt my pulse stabilize somewhat as I reabsorbed some of
the strength they'd robbed me of earlier.

The
tiny threads were all gone, leaving just the massive cable and
whatever it had made contact with across a distance that was
simultaneously nothing at all and the most impossible distance
imaginable. The cable jerked in my mental hands as whoever I had
caught started to struggle in an attempt to free themselves.

I
almost lost my grip on it, but I managed to hold onto it by the
slimmest of margins and then I
pulled
with every ounce of
strength remaining to me. What I was doing was impossible and I could
feel the universe itself fighting my efforts, but I'd done it once
before and I refused to give up and accept the fate the wax lady had
planned for me.

The
far end of my cable whipped through space at speeds I couldn't really
comprehend, but the distance it had to cross was likewise
immeasurable and the journey seemed to take hours inside of my own
mind. Now that the cable was moving, its speed started to accelerate
at an exponential rate as I greedily sucked the slack back into my
center and reclaimed yet more of the strength that I'd expended to
get this far.

I'd
built an incredible amount of momentum up by this point. It wasn't
real momentum, but on the metaphysical realm it felt like a
thousand-ton wrecking ball moving towards me at millions of miles per
second. I would have said that nothing could stop my efforts now, but
just before my cable had returned completely to me I felt it hit
something that I couldn't explain.

I'd
just pulled the irresistible force into the immovable object and I
knew in that instant that I'd failed, only somehow the object I'd
captured and pulled all of this distance had just enough momentum.
The immovable object lost.

It
seemed as though a bleeding hole was ripped into the universe. I
tried to close my eyes against the sudden flare of light, but they
were already closed, it was just so bright that the light was shining
through my eyelids.

Something
ripped the wax lady off of my hips and I heard her hit the ground a
dozen feet away.

"It
seems that you've decided to trust me."

I
was still blinking away spots from my vision. An odd, person-shaped
cutout in my vision seemed to indicate that the wax lady's body had
shielded me from the worst of the light, but I could see just well
enough to make out the bestial wolf-man shape that Dream Stealer and
Alec both shared.

"I
didn't have any choice. She figured out who I was and tracked me back
to my home. She said that she's just outside of my window and that
she has tendrils of thought inside of my mind."

"
Vampire
."

I'd
never known that a single word could contain such loathing and
menace, but this time the rage wasn't directed at me. Dream Stealer
stalked towards the wax lady, towards the vampire, and I could feel
the same invisible wind blowing towards her that he'd used to trap me
inside of the dream the first time we'd run into each other.

She
couldn't leave, but that didn't mean that she couldn't fight. The
vampire jumped at Dream Stealer in a blur of motion that I couldn't
follow, but it seemed like he slid out of the way. One second they
were each in their respective corners and in the next they'd swapped
places and were both bleeding from slashes that hadn't been there
before they'd started moving.

The
vampire attacked again and once more all I saw was an unidentifiable
blur as the two of them clashed. I knew that there probably wasn't
much I could do to help in this particular fight, but I'd never be
sure given the fact that I was simply too slow to be able to even
tell what was going on.

I
needed to be able to follow the fight, needed it in a way that I'd
never needed anything else before. I looked around, hoping for some
kind of inspiration, and realized that the ground had lost some of
its definition. It was still an uneven plain of jagged black glass,
but it no longer had loose slivers of glass scattered across
everything.

It
was a definite sign that the wax lady was distracted and most of her
concentration was being spent on the fight. It was still a long shot,
but I fixed the idea of her being slower than me in my mind and threw
in a healthy dose of just how superior that would make me feel before
pushing to try and force my version of reality to manifest.

I
knew I needed confidence in my ability to make it happen if I was
going to be successful, but I didn't actually expect it to work. I
was weakest when trying to change another person. On some level I
knew my efforts were doomed from the start, but as I pushed my
version of reality I felt something catch and start pulling strength
from me.

I
opened my eyes, expecting to find that the vampire was moving more
slowly, but instead found myself face to face with her.

"Nice
try, Adri."

Even
as she said it her hand, claws already glistening with blood on them,
shot towards my chest.

I
seemed to have forever in which to respond, but it wasn't that my
efforts had worked, it was simply the natural side effect of so much
adrenaline hitting my system.

Dream
Stealer was headed towards us in a desperate bid to save me, but
she'd somehow managed to outmaneuver him enough that he was still a
couple of seconds away. I tried to throw myself to one side, but I
was moving even slower than she was.

Without
any other options, I grabbed hold of that strange catch I'd felt when
trying to slow her down a second ago and pushed even harder. I would
have said that I didn't have any significant reserves of strength
left, but somehow I found an extra store that I hadn't known existed
and poured it into my latest visualization.

I'd
never felt any kind of active resistance to this kind of thing
before. Previously my efforts had either been enough to enforce my
will or they hadn't been. There wasn't any middle ground and the
threshold, even when I hadn't been able to sense it, had always
seemed a fixed thing.

That
wasn't the case here. Instead I felt like I was pushing against a
large pane of glass that had a vast body of water behind it, pushing
from the other side to try and crush me. There wasn't any way I could
defeat the vast pool of power I felt opposing me, but somehow most of
its force was directed elsewhere.

I
hadn't closed my eyes. I wanted to, but I refused to give up while
there was even the slightest chance that I might survive. Because my
eyes were open I was able to see as the ground opened up in front of
Dream Stealer in a clear bid to trap him in a dark chasm.

Dream
Stealer leaped into the air with a speed and grace that no normal
person could have matched, but the chasm suddenly widened, growing at
a rate that made it obvious to me that there wouldn't be any kind of
safe landing for him by the time he landed. I felt what I could only
call a ripple and suddenly the chasm stopped growing as quickly. It
didn't stop, Dream Stealer apparently wasn't strong enough—at
least not inside of the wax lady's dream—to stop the ground
from moving altogether, but he'd slowed it enough that it seemed like
he might have a chance of landing safely on the other side.

It
was going to be a close thing and for a split second I considered
redirecting my efforts and trying to help slow the movement of the
ground, but I was too selfish to throw away my own chance of
survival. I pushed even harder, trying to slow the fist coming
towards me down to something I could dodge.

The
force pushing against me trembled slightly and then the ground sped
back up. It was obvious that Dream Stealer was going to die, but two
things happened in that instant that changed everything.

Dream
Stealer's arms suddenly grew impossibly long, so long that he was
able to reach down and stick his claws into crevices in the ground. I
realized that it no longer mattered how fast the ground moved now
because he'd be able to guide himself safely down, but only a
fraction of my attention was on him because the force pressing down
on me shattered.

I
wrapped my whole being into the push to create my own version of
reality inside of the dream as I felt the catch tear. Earlier I'd
torn a hole in the universe to bring Dream Stealer to me. This time
it was my own mind that was tearing.

A
red-hot icepick of fire stabbed deep inside of my mind at the same
time that the vampire screamed and grabbed her head with both hands.
The tips of her claws sank into her skull, but she didn't seem to
notice. I couldn't blame her. I shouldn't have been able to notice
myself, but a tiny sliver of consciousness had torn itself free of
the rest of my mind. Separate from the pain that had me on my knees
with tears streaming down my face, it was able to dispassionately
watch as the woman who had nearly killed me looked up with eyes that
looked like something out of a horror movie.