Wakeworld (21 page)

H
er body was made of glass, fragile and transparent. Surely she would shatter at a touch. Her fragmented heart must be visible through the wall of her chest to anyone who cared to see. And yet she was breathing. Alive.

“Vivian?”

A vague memory came to her of winging above a forest fire, a fire she’d started by tormenting a man for fun, and she opened her eyes and looked up into Weston’s face. His skin was reddened, hair and beard frizzed; he smelled of wood smoke. But he, too, was alive.

“Oh, God. You’re singed. I—didn’t mean to start that fire—”

“Shhh. I know. How do you feel?”

“How transparent am I?”

“What?”

She raised her hand to her face, surprised that the joints bent where they were supposed to, relieved to see flesh and blood and skin. “I dreamed—so many things. I thought I was made of glass . . .”

Something in his face stopped her. “What is it? Tell me.”

He held something up for her to see. A large stone, bloodred but crystalline clear. “It’s beautiful, Weston. What is it?”

“Your blood.”

“My blood.”

The stone stirred a frail strand of knowledge, of dream, just a hint and then gone. No matter—there were more important things. “Weston—something killed the Guardian. The dreamspheres were all dying. I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t think, but I had this instinct to eat them. It seemed right, but they made me feel so strange, all the dreams at once . . .”

Zee had tried to kill her.
Surely that part had been a dream.

“That would explain the hallucinations.”

“So I was hallucinating?” That was a relief. Zee would never, ever hurt her. But then how had she come by this injury in her chest? She raised her hand to explore the burning place, but Weston clasped it and held it aside.

“What happened, Wes? Tell me.”

His sharp eyes glistened with unexpected moisture, and he hesitated, which told her what she needed to know.

“It’s true then? It happened? Zee . . .” She broke off, unable to say the words aloud.

“I’m afraid that part is true. He had a dragonstone knife.”

Vivian felt like the knife was in her heart, twisting, twisting. “Dragonstone? But I’m alive, still—”

“Yes, thank God. Because you were able to shift to human, I think. But, because of the shift to human, your body didn’t know what to do with all of the dream material, and thus the hallucinations.”

“Is this real, now?”

“Yes. Your body solved the problem—it made these.”

He put the stones in her hand. They were heavier than they ought to have been. She held one up to the light, wincing as the movement pulled at her breast. “It’s beautiful. And terrible.”

“That it is.”

Weston rubbed a sleeve across his eyes.

She tried to smile for him, past all of the pain and the fear. “You saved me.”

And then, remembering. Jaws snapping in anger and hunger at the small figure with the sword. Flame.

“Oh, God. Zee. No wonder he tried to kill me. I was going to flame him, Weston. Tell me I didn’t hurt him.” She tried to sit up and he pressed her back. Had she roasted Zee, burned him?

“What do you care? He damn near killed you.”

“Please tell me I didn’t. Tell me I didn’t hurt him.”

“He’s hurt some, but you didn’t do it. Now rest, will you?”

“Let me up, I’m all right. Please, I can’t breathe lying flat like this. I’m in my right mind, truly. Where’s Poe? Tell me he didn’t burn up too—”

“He’s here, he’s fine, he’s keeping an eye on Zee. You’ve lost a lot of blood. Seems like you’d be best to just lie still a bit.”

“Well, let me get dressed at least. Oh, shit. I don’t have any clothes.”

“You do. I’ve got a change for you in my pack.”

“Wait—how did you get here, anyway? With your pack and a change of clothes. There was that horrible fire, I saw it . . .”

“As it happens, I’m a Dreamshifter, like it or no. I ran from the fire, made a door, landed in a Dreamworld that just happened to have everything we needed.”

“But you’re here—at the Cave of Dreams—”

“Only place I know in this maze, Vivian. I thought I’d start here. It was a lucky guess.”

“Sounds like a freaking fairy tale, doesn’t it? I’m sorry about almost roasting you.” Gently she shoved away his hands, held the blanket to her chest, and sat up. Pain lanced through her body at the movement but eased as soon as she was upright.

“Give me something to wear, Weston. Please.”

He sighed heavily but didn’t argue. Sitting on the ground behind her, he supported her from behind, helping her get her arms into a warm flannel shirt. It was fully three sizes too large, but she wasn’t about to complain. While she fumbled with the buttons, she looked around for Zee.

He was propped up against the stone wall beside the mouth of a cave. Her heart turned over at the sight of his face, so changed from that first glimpse of him, sitting in a ray of golden sunlight in A to Zee Books. All of the artist had been beaten out of him, nothing but the warrior remaining. His head leaned back against the stone, eyes closed, but his face was tight and hard even in repose. The scars left by the bear were healing into long red welts. Both eyes had been blackened, and a greenish swelling marred his jaw. His right arm was bloody. A laceration ran along his rib cage; his belly and chest were marked with vivid purple bruises.

The strong hands were bound together, resting in his lap.

Vivian’s eyes blurred with sudden tears. “His wounds need tending. Help me up.”

“You are not getting up. Especially to tend to a madman who tried to kill you. Tell me what to do, I’ll take care of it.”

She shook her head, no, grateful that this small movement didn’t make the world spin. “I have to see.”

“I don’t see that there’s anything else to be done, and you need to lie down and rest.”

“There’s no time for rest, Weston. Look—my pulse is a little bit rapid but not too bad. I’m not feeling short of breath. We need to be moving soon, anyway. It’s not safe here.”

Zee’s eyes opened, those beautiful agate eyes, once light filled and now so dark. No smile at the sight of her, no softening of his face. “Rest,” he said. “I’m all right. We’ll try to move tomorrow.”

But he wasn’t all right, not at all. She could hear it in his voice. And she couldn’t bear the sight of his hands, tied together as though he were a criminal. She tried to push herself onto her feet, but her legs felt like rubber.

“I’ll not help with this madness,” Weston said, but when she started to crawl he picked her up like a child and carried her, setting her down in front of Zee.

She reached out to touch his cheek but he flinched away, avoiding her gaze, his eyes and face unreadable.

He was so very hurt. It was more than the wounds, all of which looked painful but not life threatening. The cut on his side was healing. The bruises didn’t indicate broken bones. But his arm was a mess. She kept her voice matter-of-fact and professional. “Looks like every time it starts to heal, you tear it open.”

“That’s been about the way of it.”

When she laid her hand on the taut skin of his bicep, his flesh quivered beneath her touch. She began fumbling with the knots in the rope that bound him, but they were tight and stubborn and her fingers kept slipping off.

Weston put a hand over hers to stop her. “He’s a dangerous brute, Vivian. He tried to kill you.”

“He tried to kill a dragon,” she said, her voice level. “Any man could make such a mistake.”

“And threatened the woman who replaced the dragon. Don’t you forget it.”

Vivian looked up into Zee’s eyes, guarded and watchful, as though she were a stranger, an enemy. She knew full well how lethal Zee could be. If he had turned against her, if he thought there was reason to kill her, he would do that if she freed him. And she could not afford to die—there was too much riding on her success. She must find the Gates, the Key, stop the sorceress.

There was no room for love or mercy in this equation.

“Give me the knife, Weston,” she said, never once breaking the gaze that bound her and the dragon slayer together.

“Vivian, it’s dragonstone.”

“I’m aware of what it is. Give it to me.” At the touch of stone against her hand she curled her fingers around the carven bone hilt, feeling the dragonstone respond to her blood. For the first time, emotion stirred in Zee’s eyes. Stricken, she recognized it as hope. With a long, shuddering breath he closed his eyes and leaned his head back, baring his neck, his breast, asking for a death.

Vivian’s breath came ragged and harsh as she shifted her position for a better angle. It was essential that she not slip or make a mistake. The blade was honed to a killing edge, and it sliced through the rope as if it were butter.

Zee’s eyes flew open. He sucked in a breath as though he were drowning. She was near enough for a kiss, to reach up and press her lips against his, but he might as well have been on the other side of one of the forever-locked doors.

“Why?” he asked her, and his mask had melted now, his face, his eyes, nothing but pain.

In all the worlds there were no words for this; she laid the back of her hand against his scarred cheek, and he trembled at her touch. “Please,” he said. “Don’t. I can’t bear it.”

One long moment they remained thus, Vivian knowing that her touch caused more pain to him than any of the wounds that marked him.

“Weston, give him his sword,” she said.

“Vivian, surely—”

“If he’s going to kill us, he can do it without a sword. It belongs to him.”

“No,” Zee said. He moved away from her, putting distance between them. “I swore an oath to protect you. I broke it. If you ask, I will go with you, but I will not carry a blade.”

Vivian closed her eyes. In his voice she could hear all of the places where he was broken, and knew it was beyond her ability to heal him.

F
or three long days they rested.

Weston built fires and went on short forays seeking water and food. A rabbit one night, split between the three of them. Some sort of creature that looked too much like a giant squirrel the next.

The time lay heavy on Vivian’s shoulders. She was not strong enough to travel; she knew this but chafed at her own restrictions. By the end of the third day, as the sun completed its arc across the sky and hung like a ball of flame just over the horizon, she could no longer endure the screaming of her nerves and the need to do something.

Despair gnawed at her courage. They would never catch up with the enemy. She would use the Key, if she hadn’t already, and whatever evil was going to be unleashed would be unstoppable; but still Vivian would have to fight it. She would spend the rest of her life—if she survived this adventure—pursuing one hopeless quest or another.

Zee was yet another heartbreak, and the proximity to him was tearing her apart. He had shared his adventures in clipped, military tones—a soldier reporting necessary information back to the unit. He talked about waking up among the dead warriors, his encounter at the well with the dragon, the hermit, what he had learned from Jared and from Isobel in Surmise. Other than that, he remained silent and closed. He rebuffed her attempts to check his arm and rebandage it, saying only, “I’m fine, let it be.”

“I can’t take another minute,” she said, finally, feeling like she was going to start tearing off her skin with her own fingernails if they didn’t do something. “It’s time. Let’s get moving.”

Weston looked up from the fire he was building. “It would be wise to wait until morning.” But his face had sharpened into eagerness. Zee was already on his feet.

“I don’t think so,” Vivian said. “We need to move now. I feel it. Morning will be too late.”

“Where?” Weston asked, his hands stilled in the act of striking flint to tinder.

“How do we get to the Black Gates? Any ideas? And if you don’t know, maybe we can find Surmise. My mother might know. We can’t just sit here.”

The two men exchanged a look that shut her out.

“What is it? Tell me. I’m not ten years old.”

After a long moment Weston shrugged and turned back to his fire.

“Isobel drew the map for me,” Zee said, sounding as though the words were being dragged out of him.

“And?”

“Through the cave. The only way lies through the Cave of Dreams.”

“We can’t go in there,” Weston said.

She looked from one to the other, confused. Zee’s face pale and set. Weston’s frightened. She had reason to know he was no coward.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

Weston avoided her eyes, blowing onto his pile of shavings and waking a tiny flame. It edged its way upward, growing brighter and stronger as it fed.

“Weston! Talk to me.”

He looked up then. “Have you thought about what happens to the dreamspheres that die?”

“Some sort of imbalance in Dreamworld, I’d expect. Is this really important now?”

“Deadly.”

The tone of his voice caught her attention. “Dead dreamspheres. I guess—if you were in the dream when it died, it would be bad.”

“To say the least. That’s the good news.”

Vivian followed his gaze to the mouth of the cave, felt the hairs on the back of her own neck rise with a sense of something lurking in the dark.

“Only the shape of the dream dies. It reverts back to raw dream material.”

She still didn’t understand, but Zee did.

“So that’s what I saw, then,” he said. “Somehow the stuff reflected what I have in my head.”

“Sort of. It’s more like—it reads the energy signature of what comes into contact with it. Not what’s in your head, so much as the deepest fear or desire or love—”

“Or hate.”

“What happened in the cave?” Vivian knelt down by the old Dreamshifter and put her hand on his shoulder. “What did you see?”

“It’s not just seeing, you have to understand. It manifests. It can kill you.”

“So how did you get out, then?”

“I knocked Zee out. You were unconscious. It couldn’t read either of you, so it was just me. And . . .” He swallowed hard. “I don’t want to talk about it. But if we go in there, what are we going to manifest? Either one of you care to tell me what is going to come up?”

All of them were silent. Vivian knew full well that she didn’t want to face her own demons, and she suspected that Zee had already seen something in the cave and knew what his was going to be.

“A dragon might be immune to that sort of magic.” Weston fed twigs into the hungry little flames. “Able to pass through the cave without triggering the dream matter.”

Vivian shook her head. “I can’t. It takes energy to shift. There’s nothing there.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t think of another way.”

She rubbed her face with both hands and explored, tentatively, the place at her core where the dragon heat had been. Cold, empty. “I don’t know, Weston. Maybe after I eat something. I’m so tired—”

“No.” Zee was on his feet, eyes blazing. “Have either of you considered the condition the dragon was in before she shifted back to human? Have you forgotten the dragonstone?”

Vivian’s gut clenched around his words as though she’d been struck, and she saw Weston’s face drain of color.

“Correct me if I’m wrong—but if she shifts, she dies. Yes?”

“Oh, gods,” Weston whispered.

“I did that. It can’t be undone. But I won’t stand by and see her do something
on purpose
that is going to get her killed. Are we all clear on that?”

For an instant Zee’s eyes met hers, and Vivian read the depths of the guilt and grief that marked him.

Oh Zee. Oh, my love.

She would have gone to him then, would have made him see that she knew, that she understood, that she still trusted him with everything that she was. But before she could act or say another word, Zee stiffened. His nostrils flared as though he had caught the scent of something that disturbed him. In the same instant Weston was on his feet, pumping a shell into the shotgun.

Only then did she hear the rattling at the mouth of the cave. She tried to pick up Zee’s sword, but it weighed too much for her strength. She couldn’t get the tip of it up off the ground. Panic loosened her muscles, weakened her knees.

But it wasn’t the embodiment of her own fear that emerged first from the cave.

They shuffled out four abreast, despite all the laws of health and physics that decreed they shouldn’t be able to move at all. Vivian had seen such mutilations in the ER—declared dead on arrival, covered with a sheet, and sent off to the morgue with all due haste.

These bodies were different. Despite horrific wounds, their eyes were open and all of them pointed the index fingers of their right hands at Weston, all of their eyes turned in his direction. “You owe us our lives,” they said in chorus, even the one who was missing a jaw. “You owe us our lives.”

Weston aimed the shotgun in their direction, but his hands shook so hard he would never hit what he aimed at. Vivian’s brain froze in blank horror. Surely there was something she should do, could do, but she continued to stand there as the things shuffled closer, still chanting.

And then Zee was at her side. “I’ll take that,” he said, and the sword was out of her hands. He strode forward, already swinging, and struck the head off the closest figure. It sailed through the air and landed close to Vivian’s feet, eyes wide open, the same dark brown as Weston’s.

“Ellie,” Weston moaned. “I’m so sorry.”

At last Vivian recovered the ability to move and speak. “Weston!” She made her voice sharp to get his attention. “It’s not Ellie. You know this. Only the dream things.”

Zee’s second stroke took off the legs of the boy with the missing jaw. Vivian shuddered. They were so young. And if these were what walked in Weston’s memory, it was no wonder he had tried to kill himself.

She took a step toward him, but a movement from the decapitated head at her feet held her back. The eyes blinked. The mouth moved, soundlessly repeating the mantra. “You owe us our lives.” And then the neck began to elongate, formed a chest. Arms sprouted, and grasping fingers reached out toward the old Dreamshifter, grazing his knees. Meanwhile, a new head had grown on the body and now there were two Ellies, both crying, “You owe us our lives.”

“Zee!” Vivian shouted. “Stop! It makes it worse!”

But he had seen, was even now evading the second jawless boy that had grown from the body of the other.

“What do we do?” he asked, retreating, using the flat of the sword to swat away the outstretched hands, careful not to sever any limbs.

“I don’t know. Stay back. Let me think.”

But there was no time. Another figure emerged from the cave—a creature mostly dragon, but with Vivian’s hair and eyes. A familiar sword hilt stuck out between the front leg and the belly. Blood poured out of the wound, turning the earth black where it fell.

She stared at the thing, transfixed. But it had eyes only for Zee. It opened its mouth, not a dragon’s jaws, but a woman’s,
hers
, and Vivian knew it was going to flame.

“Zee, look out!”

He dove to the ground and rolled, coming up barely out of reach of the grasping fingers of the dead girl. But the Vivian Thing didn’t flame. It stopped in its tracks, shuddered, and fell to the earth. Once, twice, the dragon ribs drew breath, and then it sighed and went small and still, shifting into the body of a woman who lay dead with a sword in her heart.

Zee made a broken sound, as though somebody had thrust a blade between his own ribs. Vivian reached for his hand, grazed and blistered now, the nails broken. She wanted to kiss it, but he pulled away from her.

“Only a dream thing,” she said, but they both knew it wasn’t quite true. The healing wound in her own breast was evidence enough.

And any minute now the other monster would come out of the cave. Already red eyes glared from the entrance, so big it was clear the thing could never fit through the existing space.

“We have to do something,” Vivian shouted at the others, her voice shaking and desperate.

“What’s coming through?” Zee asked her. Calmer now, the worst over for him and a worthy foe emerging.

“Like yours. Only bigger and meaner and full of rage. Also, not dead.” She could sense it now, feel the tie with her own body. All of the pent-up rage of her childhood; the little girl who played mother to the woman and the anger that bloomed dark and quiet inside her soul. The fury about the hospitals and the blood and the insatiable, unfilled need to be loved and cared for.

That was it, probably. The way to stop it was probably to love it.

Which was, she knew, beyond her power.

The three of them retreated, dodged, evaded, did whatever they could to avoid the touch of the dream creatures already pursuing them. Weston clobbered one of his brothers over the head with his shotgun, and the thing slowed but did not stop.

The man with the hole in his breast and a face that was like Weston’s, only so much harder and colder, grew bigger and stronger. His hands had been empty, but now he held a gun. He aimed it at Weston.

Meanwhile, back at the cave, rocks began to fall as an enormous head forced itself out through a too-small space. It opened a mouth full of teeth and roared, a sound that shook the earth beneath their feet.

Only minutes to act if they were going to survive.

No time to discuss plan B, as it had come to her. No idea of whether it would work. Because Weston’s father was about to start shooting, and when that other Thing emerged from the cave, there would be no mercy.

“Give me the bloodstones,” she said to Weston.

“Vivian, no—”

“Give them to me.” She used the Voice. There was no time to argue.

He pulled a sock from his pocket, tied off to make a carrying pouch. The stones felt strange in her hands. Heavier than she had expected. Not quite inert, not quite sentient. Between states. Waiting.

For what? What would wake them?

Always retreating, faster now, she fumbled to untie the knot.

A shot rang out, spraying up dirt and rock to the left of them. Weston’s family was gaining. A sound of grinding rock and another bellow echoed from behind them.

“Quick—behind that rock,” Zee shouted.

They followed his lead, bent over, racing for their lives toward a large stone formation about fifty feet away. Another shot rang out, this time striking closer. But so was the shelter of the rock. Vivian reached it and dove behind it, knowing it would grant only a moment’s reprieve, and hoping that would be enough.

Weston slid into place beside her.

She put her hand into the sock and drew out the largest stone. At its touch, memory came to her. A dream.

The bloodstone gleamed in a dim light, full of portent and power. A power waiting to be unleashed.

Zee’s voice. “This is dark magic, are you certain?”

And then . . .

Zee. He was not crouched beside her. She peered out, to see that he stood directly in front of the approaching nightmare. Weston’s father in the lead, giant-sized now, with the gun in his hands. The rest of his murdered family trailed behind him. The Vivian Dragon Thing still lay dead.