Shattered (25 page)

It didn't make
any sense to head back to the shooting range again, so once I was
dressed I passed the next few minutes stripping down my weapon and
cleaning it. It didn't take as long as I would have liked it to, but
it took long enough.

When I left my
room to go get some food I was back in control of myself. My control
wasn't perfect, but it was good enough to pretend that I didn't see
the pitying looks from the shape shifters I passed in the hall on the
way to the kitchen.

The usual noise
I'd come to expect from the dining area was noticeably absent.
Dominic was waiting for me at the door, and after taking me by the
elbow, conducted me to the front of the line.

I tried to eat
there with everyone else, but I could feel the weight of all their
eyes on my back the entire time I was there, so after a couple of
minutes I stood up and carried my shiny metal tray back to my room. I
stuffed myself as full as I could—cleaning off my tray in the
process—and then left again, this time headed up to the gas
station above us.

Apparently
Isaac and Taggart had decided that the current circumstances
warranted going back to the original hours of operation from before
we'd taken things over from the vampires who'd been running
everything.

That was good
because I wasn't a very good liar even at the best of times. When I
was up against a shape shifter my chances of getting away with
anything were basically non-existent and I was pretty sure that
nobody would be very happy about what I was planning on doing.

Working by the
light of my phone's touch screen, I found the sleeping pills that I'd
noticed a few days before and pocketed two of the little boxes before
grabbing another candy bar and two bags of chips. The sleeping pills
went into my pocket where they were less likely to be found, but I
left the rest of my haul out in plain sight. Successful lying when
you were around a bunch of shape shifters mostly relied on
misdirection. This way there was at least a chance that anyone I
passed on my way back to my room would think that my trip had just
been so that I could get something to tide me over between whenever I
woke up and breakfast.

Back in my room
I debated on how much to take before finally deciding to look up the
active ingredient, online in an effort to figure out how big of a
dose was likely to be fatal. It turns out that there is a lot of
information about illegal drugs online, but there isn't as much
information about the legal ones, at least not information that makes
sense to someone without an advanced degree of some kind.

In the end I
settled on one and a half times the dose on the box and slammed back
three pills with a glass of water from my bathroom. I didn't want to
die from a drug overdose, but I also couldn't afford to miss out on
sleep tonight. Best-case scenario I had a total of three or four
nights to do what needed to be done. Worst-case scenario was that I
had only two. Two might be enough to get done what I was planning on
doing, but one certainly wasn't.

I needed to
sleep and I needed to sleep soon or I was going to get out of sync
with the rest of the country.

I almost just
collapsed into bed in the clothes I was wearing, but I figured that
keeping as close as possible to my normal routine was important, so I
changed into my normal tank top and shorts first. Ten minutes after I
swallowed the pills I was in bed with the lights out.

The pills
didn't put me out immediately, and I started to worry that I wasn't
going to be able to sleep. I considered getting up to take another
pill despite the fact that I was already on the edge of recklessness,
but then the pills kicked in and I drifted off.

Apparently I'd
already internalized Taggart's advice against going home in my
dreams. Instead I found myself along the side of a familiar-looking
road. It took me a second to realize why the road looked familiar.

I'd returned to
the site where we'd ambushed the caravan that had been carrying
Agony. The trees and the stream were all there exactly where I'd been
expecting to see them, but there was something not quite right still.
I needed to be on my way—there was no telling how long I had
before I would wake up, but this difference felt important.

I'd been
walking along the side of the road for nearly two minutes before I
finally figured out what was different. My surroundings all looked
more vivid than I'd ever managed before inside of one of my dreams.
Even more than that, everything looked somehow more real than it had
when I'd actually been there. There was a hard edge, a razor-sharp
vividness to everything that was almost painful to look at.

I'd remembered
the rocks along this stretch of road as being weathered, which they
were, but they also looked like they would cut me if I reached out
and touched them. I'd known even before I took the pills that they
might have side effects.

Apart from—you
know—death, I'd been most worried about the possibility that
they would block me from entering the dream world altogether. It had
still been worth the risk though because it would mean that I was
back on a normal schedule, but this was far better. I could deal with
squinting a little and the possibility of a headache if it meant that
I wouldn't lose the chance to talk to my parents tonight.

It wasn't even
a debate as to who I would try to see first. I pictured my dad's
face, and let all of the love I felt for him bubble up to the surface
of my mind. Dad had always made me feel safe. Even when I'd gotten
older and realized that there were things Dad couldn't protect me
from, he'd still made me feel safe. There was just something about
knowing that you had someone who was going to be in your corner no
matter what, someone who would do absolutely everything they could to
protect you and provide for you.

The experience
of sending out the impossibly thin threads was different this time.
It was easy, more than just easy actually. The filaments sped out of
me at a rate I wouldn't have believed possible. Even better, there
wasn't the instant wave of weakness that usually accompanied the
process.

I was still
burning up strength, but at a much slower rate than normal. It was a
godlike feeling, but the euphoria was tempered, at least slightly, by
a growing sense of pressure inside of my head, almost like the
feeling of having pushed a muscle past the point of failure.

My seeking
strands found Dad in record time and I successfully resisted the urge
to pull him to me. I might feel strong and in control of things right
now, but there was only so much energy packed onto my tiny frame. I
needed to conserve those calories. Even if I didn't end up needing
them for tonight, I was going to need them for the fight that I knew
was coming.

I kicked off
against my dream and pulled myself towards my dad, moving even faster
than normal. Hitting the wall was both better and worse than usual.
It hardly seemed to slow me at all; I crashed through it with almost
no effort, which was lucky because of what happened while I tore
through the membrane that separated my dreams from my father's.

The impression
of light that I'd gotten the last time around was back, but this time
it felt like the light was a pair of icepicks stabbing deep into my
brain. The pain was excruciating. I tried to close my eyes against
the light, tried to get my hand up to block the worst of the glare,
but the light was everywhere and I wasn't actually sure in that place
if I had eyelids or hands.

The only thing
I was positive existed was my eyes and that was only because they
were the portal that the pain was using to pour into the rest of me.
The fraction of a second that it took me to cross through the wall
left me shaking and weak, but I survived and at that moment simple
survival was enough for me.

I'd shifted my
body and clothes to invisibility out of reflex, but once I stopped
shaking enough to look around and confirm that I was alone with my
dad, I let the invisibility lapse. My dad noticed me immediately and
came over and wrapped me in his arms.

"Adri,
that's really you, isn't it? Cindi told us that you had some
incredible ability to visit our dreams and that you were going to
come explain everything, but I almost couldn't bring myself to
believe her."

I managed a
shaky nod as I finished taking in my surroundings. We were in a quiet
forest meadow, some place I'd never been before, but a place that
felt oddly right in ways I couldn't explain.

There was a
slow breeze that was just strong enough to sway the trees above us
without actually making it down to us. Dappled patches of sunlight
drifted back and forth across the ground, perfect in their sheer
laziness, and I could hear a stream tumbling across rocks somewhere
nearby.

"Dad,
where are we?"

"It's
someplace I used to go when I was younger even than you are right
now."

"With
Grandpa?"

"Sort of.
Your grandfather had a friend many years ago when I was a boy; I used
to come here with both my father and his friend. His name was Tom, he
was Native American and used to tell me that I was part of a favored
bloodline, that your grandfather and I had incredible power locked
inside of us."

"What kind
of power?"

My dad smiled.
"I used to ask him the exact question, but he never gave me a
straight answer. He would always say that one never knew the shape
that power would take until the power decided what it wanted to be.
Your grandfather would always shake his head and say that the Paige
men didn't need superstitions and voodoo to get by in the world, not
seeing as how the good Lord had given us hands and a body that were
capable of putting in an honest day's work."

"I wish I
could have known Grandpa."

"Me too,
Adri, me too."

Dad looked
around the clearing again and then shook his head. "You know, I
haven't thought about this place in a long time, but this is where I
used to come inside the privacy of my own mind after your grandfather
died in that forest fire. He was actually with Tom when he died that
day. I was supposed to be with them too, but I ended up begging off
at the last second so I could study for a test. If there was one
thing your grandpa wanted for me, besides that I grow up learning how
to work, it was that I get an education.

"Tom tried
to convince him to let me come that day, but your grandfather
refused. It turned out to be a good thing. I'm not sure your
grandmother would have survived losing both of us at the same time.
After your grandfather died the life just sort of trickled out of
her. She made it until I finished up my first year of college, but it
wasn't the heart problems that killed her, it was missing your
grandfather."

"I'm so
sorry, Dad."

"Don't be,
it all happened a very long time ago. Really I'm just grateful for
the chances I had to come here back before your grandfather died.
I've never told anyone else this, but sometimes it was just Tom's
words that kept me going. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, a
part of me believed that Tom was right, that I had some special
potential inside of me, something that would make me unique."

"You never
came back here after the fire?"

"No. At
first your grandmother forbade it, and then later I was too busy with
everything else in my life to just pick up and go on a two-day hike."

"Well, I
think you're pretty special, Dad."

"Thanks,
sweetie. To be honest I'm not sure how I got so far from the kind of
life I lived growing up. My parents were simple blue-collar people
who were strong on common sense and who never forgot that it was us
against the rest of the world. With all of my learning, it seems
incredible that I never quite managed to learn that."

"Are you
disappointed with your life?"

"No, I'm
glad that I married your mom and that we got to have you and Cindi
come into our lives. I guess I wish I'd just picked a side of the
fence and really given it a shot. I spent all of that time before I
got married thinking there was more to life and never doing anything
about it. I should have either really followed my dreams or gotten my
head out of the clouds and buckled down in my studies. Either option
would have been okay, but I just kind of coasted along doing nothing.

"I wish
I'd found something to believe in sooner than I did, but in the end
it didn't really matter. You and Cindi were my guiding stars."

I could feel my
lip starting to tremble, but I refused to let myself cry. As things
stood right now, I wasn't the one whose life was in danger. If Dad
could face his situation without crying then I owed it to him to do
the same.

"I have
friends, Dad, people who want to help get you, Mom and Cindi out of
there. We just need to know where you are."

"I wish
I'd been thinking more clearly when they came for us, Adri. They took
our watches and our cell phones, but I could have been counting to
measure the time."

"You
couldn't see where you were going then?"

"No, they
tied us up and then put us inside the back of a big moving van. I'm
pretty sure it was yellow."

"So you
drove the whole way to wherever you are? They didn't put you on a
plane or a boat?"

"No, we
were in the van the entire time. I think we were driving for about
two hours, but I could be off a little one way or another there."

"What
about when you got to wherever you are now? Did you see anything
helpful? Signs, geographical features, unique sounds?"

"No,
nothing. I'm sorry, Adri. It was dark and I was more focused on Cindi
and your mother than I was on our surroundings. I never even
considered that you and your friends might be able to contact us via
our dreams and then come rescue us."