Wakeworld (25 page)

Zee had the sword in his hand. “Take whatever form you wish—I will kill you.”

But he hesitated.

“Would you take the life of an unborn baby then? Your own child, Zee.” One of the woman’s hands went protectively to her belly.

“It’s not possible.”

“Blood of your blood, Warrior. Flesh of your flesh.”

Zee’s arm dropped to his side. “It’s an illusion. It has only been a matter of days—”

“Time passes according to its own whims in the dark realms. And there are Dreamworlds where time passes even faster, if one has earned such passage. You’re not going to kill your own child, no matter how you might hate the flesh that carries him.”

Vivian looked up into Zee’s stricken face and knew that it was true. He had made love to this
thing
and it was pregnant with his child. She shuddered in revulsion, pushing away the inevitable heartbreak for later.

“Stop this,” Weston said. “Enough. This is cruel, Gracie. There’s no need to hurt anybody—there’s been too much of that already. You of all people know this. What do you want?”

“You are wrong,” she said, and the voice was cold as ice, neither Vivian’s nor that of the old hag. “There can never be enough pain to make up for what I have suffered.”

Silence hung absolute. Even the wind died away and a darkness seemed to hang over the sun. But then she shrugged her Vivian-shaped shoulders and held out a black cylinder, carved all around with symbols. Vivian felt herself step forward in response to an invisible pull from the Key, only to be pushed back again by the woman’s power.

“What happens next is that the Chosen One is going to open the Gates.”

“You’ve got the Key. What do you need me for?” The ongoing push and pull of both brain and body and emotion was beginning to produce a blessed numbness that was beyond pain. A little piece of Vivian’s brain wormed itself free and began putting together one piece after another of the puzzle.

There were flaws in the image the woman wore. The shape of the face wasn’t quite right. The eyes were a little too close together, the nose a shade too aquiline.

“It turns out that it’s not only the Key that’s needed. It wouldn’t work for me, even in this body. So you are going to open the Gates for me.”

“No,” Vivian said. “I am not.”

“Oh, I think you will.”

Again the pain overwhelmed her. When she was able to focus her eyes, the woman’s body was shifting again, this time to that of a child just on the edge of womanhood. Dark hair braided in two pigtails; an innocent face with knowing eyes. Worst of all, a rail-thin child body and the abomination of a pregnant belly. Vivian had seen that face before on the dream construct back at the Cave of Dreams. But again, it was subtly wrong.

Tears streaked Weston’s cheeks. He didn’t move, didn’t speak.

“A lot of people are dead on account of you, Weston,” the girl said. “Help me now, and you can make it right.”

Vivian wanted to warn him, but she didn’t yet know of what. Zee’s knuckles on the hilt of the sword were white.

Weston gasped, as though he’d been struck. His face set in lines of determination. He took a step in her direction. “I owe you,” he said.

Grace smiled. It should have been a sweet child smile, but it was too knowing, too calculating. “Kill the Warrior. Then we’ll talk. Don’t look at me like that—you have a gun.”

In slow motion, as though he were sleepwalking, Weston bent and picked up the shotgun from where it lay beside him. He chambered a shell. Vivian stepped sideways to put herself between him and Zee, and Zee shoved her out of the way, hard enough that she fell to hands and knees.

The muzzle of the gun came up. Zee hefted the sword and launched himself toward Weston.

Vivian watched, helpless.

And then both trajectories changed just before they met at the middle.

Poe stepped directly into Zee’s path and tripped him. A sharp curse, a tangle of legs and feet and feathers and Zee went down.

Weston swung the gun to the right and pulled the trigger. A shot rang out and blood blossomed on Grace’s breast.

“You’re not Grace,” he said. And pulled the trigger again. The child staggered backward, her eyes huge with shock and pain. An inarticulate cry burst from her throat, outraged and inhuman. Her skin rippled and expanded as her mouth elongated into jaws and her nose into a snout. A long, serpentine neck grew to support the massive horned head, Vivian’s pendant dangling incongruously from a chain that had expanded to accommodate the new bulk. Talons sprang out of what had once been hands but were now feet on the ends of legs as thick as tree trunks.

Before Weston could reload, the dragon pinned him to the ground with one foot and held him there.

“Let him go!” Vivian shouted, moving toward the fallen Dreamshifter, but a warning jet of smoke from the dragon’s nostrils stopped her in her tracks. The wound in the creature’s breast was a small thing now, not even bleeding. She towered over Vivian, as black as the Gates themselves, sucking up all of the light.

It was all Vivian could do to stay on her feet.

Words formed, soundless, in her mind.

You will take the Key. We will fly to the Gates, and you will open them for me.

“And if I don’t?”

All of your companions die.

Weston wasn’t moving, and Vivian couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. Zee inched forward, flat on his belly. His arm was bleeding again. If he took on a sword battle with this dragon at this time, he would die. He simply wasn’t strong enough. She also knew that he was planning to try.

Somewhere there was dragonstone. In Weston’s pack, probably, and she felt a flare of anger that he’d chosen the familiar gun over much more effective magic. Still, they might find the dragonstone, get a chance to use it, if she could buy some time. Her mind was still putting together pieces to try to get to the only acceptable outcome. Nobody dying. Getting her hands on the Key. Stopping the disintegration of the dreamspheres and finding her way to the water from the river so she could free all of the trapped undead Dreamshifters.

It took time to solve a puzzle like that, and maybe there was a way to bargain.

“If I open the Gates for you, will you carry us all? And promise our safety after?”

That depends on what you will promise me in return.

“To do my best to open the Gates.”

But I have told you—if you do not open the Gates, they will die. And I will continue to cause you pain.

“No matter how much you hurt me, I will not open the Gates for you. And if they all die, you might as well kill me.”

Oh, very well. And my safety? Where is the dragonstone?

“I don’t know.” True enough, although she hoped it wasn’t true for long.

Can you control your minions?

The idea of either Weston or Zee as minion almost made her laugh, despite the desperate straits they were in. “I don’t seek to control them, and I cannot speak for them. But if you want me to open the Gates of my own voluntary will, then you must carry me there and guarantee their safety.”

You strike a hard bargain. I will not seek to hurt them. Or you. Until the Gates are opened.

“And we will also hold our hands until the Gates are opened.”

“Vivian—”

She silenced Zee with a look. His eyes smoldered in an unminionlike way, but he nodded, keeping the sword unsheathed while she bent over and picked up the Key that lay by the dragon’s great foot. As before, it surprised her with its weight. Only now it felt alive in her hand, as though it were made of pure energy and not just stone.

The energy fed her. She felt her shoulders straighten, felt herself draw a deeper breath. “Another thing,” she said, looking way up and into the huge golden eyes. “I want my pendant.”

I do not wish to give it to you.

“Doesn’t matter. It isn’t yours, and if you’re planning to leave me alive, as you promised, you won’t be needing it and I will.”

She knew full well what she was asking. It meant the dragon was giving up control. No more ability to inflict that mind-numbing pain.

The black dragon shot flame out of her nostrils. Vivian waited. At last the great head bent toward her and the pendant was in reach. Surprised at the steadiness of her own hands, Vivian unfastened the clasp of the chain and hung the pendant around her own neck. When the chain automatically shortened to fit, she didn’t even feel surprise. Her hand closed around the familiar little penguin.

“All right then,” she said. “If you would move your foot so we can retrieve our comrade, we’re ready.”

I will carry him.

It took a minute for Vivian to realize that the dragon meant to carry Weston in her talons. She shook her head. “No. He rides with me.”

He tried to kill me.

“He tried to kill the sister you were pretending to be. Let me have him.”

No.

“Fine.” Vivian dropped the Key. “All of us, or none of us. That’s the bargain.”

A cry of rage, a puff of flame. Great wings clapped together in the air above the dragon’s back.

Vivian stood her ground, one arm shielding her face from the dust storm kicked up by the dragon’s wings. Zee was on his feet beside her now, steadying her with his warm presence, helping her stand braced against the onslaught.

At last the great wings stilled and the dragon quieted.

You may pick up your comrade.

The monstrous foot lifted, and Zee dragged Weston as far away as the limited space allowed. Vivian ran to join him. The old Dreamshifter’s chest barely rose and fell in rapid, shallow breaths. His skin was hot with fever. When Vivian’s hand touched his forehead his eyes opened, unfocused at first but clearing.

“Spiked me,” he whispered.

Oh no. No, no, no. Tearing away his shirt she found the marks on his shoulder where the talons had pierced his skin.

“What is it, Viv? What’s wrong with him?”

“Dragon venom.”

“It’s all right,” Weston said. His lips twisted into a smile. “Looks like I’m gonna burn one way or another. Funny how it all works out.”

“Shhh,” Vivian murmured, smoothing his forehead. “Don’t try to talk.”

Weston tossed his head side to side, restless with the fever and the pain. “Damned dragon reached right inside my head and picked up on my memories of Grace. Smart enough to age her to look like me . . .”

“How did you know?” Zee asked. “That it wasn’t your sister, I mean?”

“Grace always called me Morgan. She—” His words cut off as his body jerked in a sudden spasm and then went limp.

“Weston, wake up, stay with me!”

But his head lolled on his shoulders and his eyes didn’t open.

“Can’t you do something?” Zee asked.

Vivian shook her head, fighting back the sobs. She’d dragged Weston here, put him through so much heartbreak. This was so wrong, so unjust, that he should die, in the end, for nothing. And she couldn’t even pretend he was going to a better place. Her chest felt so tight she couldn’t catch her breath. Tears traced a cold path down her cheeks as she bent and pressed her lips against his hot forehead. “Say hello to my grandfather. And tell him I’m coming.”

Enough of this wailing,
the Black Dragon said.
Leave him or bring him, I care not. But if you don’t wish your Warrior to join him, we go now.

Without another word, Vivian picked up Poe, Zee dragged Weston up over his shoulder, and they climbed onto the dragon’s back for the flight to the Black Gates.

S
entient stone just wasn’t possible, but Vivian felt the Gates respond to her approach with what felt like watchful consciousness. The Key in her hand began to hum and the Gates responded, producing a chord that ran across her skin in waves of sheer pleasure. Her heart leaped in exultation and the word
home
chimed in her heart.

Behind her, the thudding steps of approaching giants shook the earth in a regular rhythm. Above, the sun was blocked out by dragons flying in formation. Wind created by their wings buffeted her face and hair. So strange, and yet so familiar.

Maybe she had dreamed this moment or maybe it was truly what it seemed—her destiny. Her body moved without volition, drawn toward the singing Gates by an invisible attraction. Metal to magnet. Moth to flame. It didn’t matter which.

Poe planted himself in front of her at a complete standstill, and she nearly tripped over him. When she tried to sidestep, he moved with her. Zee called her name, but his voice was no more than a faint tug. Even the thought of Weston, burning up from the inside out, held little meaning.

Vivian moved around the penguin and kept walking. The Gates were almost within reach now. A narrow beam of blue light shone through the keyhole—an octagonal shape that was a perfect match for the carved end of the cylindrical Key. It was that light that made her pause. Weston’s face flashed through her mind—night, a campfire, a cup of something bitter.

Dragons fighting over a woman who stood quiet and self-possessed among them, holding a baby in her arms. The wailing of a child. A dragon, black as night with eyes of flame, snuffing out all living things.

Vivian could feel the impatience of the Black Dragon, an irrefutable force, like gravity or light.

Open the Gates.

“Not yet.” Resistance was difficult. Her tongue felt heavy and thick, but she was the Chosen and the Key in her hand gave her power. Besides, she had her pendant back, and whatever spell had been cast over her seemed to be broken. No more crushing pain when she thought her own thoughts.

The Black Dragon roared, a spine-chilling sound.
Open the Gates. Keep your promise.

In that moment, Vivian felt all the parts of her coalesce—sorceress, Dreamshifter, a tiny remaining spark of dragon. And above and beyond all, her own consciousness, Vivian, binding them all into one. She could open the Gates if she chose, or leave them closed, but it would be a decision made freely.

She thought about Jared, twisted and ruined by forces beyond his ability to resist. About Zee, so deeply wounded in body and in spirit, and Weston dying from the dragon poison. She pondered the child the dragon carried—Zee’s child—and all of the things that might mean. She thought about the dying dreamspheres in the cave, and the undead Dreamshifters caught in some sort of special hell.

So many things that might happen if she opened this Gate, so many things that might happen if she didn’t, two paths, both shrouded in mist and uncertainty. But one thing shifted the balance—the destruction and darkness and nothingness that followed the path of the dragon—and she understood at last what she must do.

She turned toward the Gates and lifted the Key. It was drawn to the keyhole, as though that ray of blue light had magnetic properties, and clicked into the lock with a sensation of completion that ran through Vivian from head to toe.

Home.

An odd euphoria, unlike any emotion she had ever felt before. A crack grew and widened between the two halves, and they swung slowly inward. Tendrils of mist swirled out through the opening, wreathing around her with a living touch, preventing even a glimpse of what lay beyond.

The desire to enter was intense, testing her resolve, and she would never be sure what she might have done if the rest was not decided for her. A gust of wind knocked her flat on her back, in time to see the Black Dragon fly low over her head and through the Gates. Hundreds of dragons followed, their wings creating a gale-force wind that dropped everybody, even the giants, to their knees. Vivian covered her eyes, blinded in part by dust and even more by the intensity of rainbow light refracting off millions of mirror-bright scales.

When the last dragon passed through the Gates, for a moment the plain fell silent. Then the voices of the giants rang out in a shout that shook the earth. They got to their feet and began to march—not toward the Gates, but away, back across the valley.

All except for one.

A female giant separated from the others and approached the Gates. Zee moved to intercept, but she ignored him, bending over Weston’s body.

“Leave him in peace!” Vivian said, turning away from the Gates and her deep desire. “Enough harm has been done today.”

The giant woman looked up, surprised. “Do you want him to die?”

Vivian could sense the dragons flying away into the Forever, and the lure of following was a driving physical need. It was difficult to pay attention, to find words, but this was Weston’s life at stake.

“Of course I don’t want him to die. There’s nothing to be done.”

“I can help him, if you will allow,” the giant said.

Vivian’s eyes met Zee’s. She knew nothing useful about the giants, wasn’t at all certain if they were to be trusted.

“Why would you do this?”

“I am a healer, and there is no need for his death. Besides, his sister has lived among us now for years and I owe her a blood debt. Before we marched, she said to me that I should watch for her brother, lest his fate had brought him here at last.”

“Please,” Vivian said. “If you can. But he is very far gone.”

The giant reached into a pocket and brought out a small vial of black fluid. She opened Weston’s mouth with one hand and tapped a single drop onto his tongue.

“So Grace isn’t angry with him?”

“She is deeply remorseful about something of which she will not speak. She has said nothing of anger.”

Weston drew a deep breath and sighed. Already his color was better, his breath regular and even. His forehead cooled beneath Vivian’s hand.

She turned from him then and focused all of her will on the Black Gates. They responded to her thoughts, to her need, and began to swing together. There was no sound, no ceremonial clang as they closed, not so much as a whisper, but she felt the moment reverberate through her body with inalterable finality.

“The Gates have closed!” Zee said. “We need to follow that dragon. How do we open them again? Where is the Key?”

“Gone.” Vivian’s voice echoed inside her head, empty of all of the dragons, all of them gone where she could not follow.

“What do you mean, gone?”

“It was absorbed when I unlocked them. They are sealed tight now.”

“The Key was made to be used but once,” the giant said. “It would not work again, even should you find it.”

“There has to be another way,” Zee said, and then he caught sight of her face. “Vivian? You did this on purpose?”

She managed to get to her feet. “She had to be contained, Zee. She wants to destroy everything. This way, at least her damage is limited.”

The giant’s broad face had gone pale, if such a thing were possible, and she shook her head. “Truly, you do not know about the Forever.”

“No, truly I do not. So tell me.”

“All things begin and end there. If she destroys all things in the Forever, the Dreamworlds will follow, and then the waking worlds because all must dream or they will die.”

Darkness crowded in, buzzing in Vivian’s brain. The choice had seemed so right.

“Still, she is, as you say, contained,” the giant went on. “It will take time for her to overpower the King in Forever. And there may be another way in. My people would have records.”

“Can you take us to your people then?”

The giant shook her head. “My life was forfeit the moment I broke ranks and came to you. If I go back, I die.”

“But we have to get in. Without letting her out.” Vivian walked over to the Gates and put her hand against the stone. No more vibration or hum, but the stone recognized her touch and responded like a living thing. It wanted her but was bound by the old spells.

“Perhaps it is time to pay a visit to the sorcieri,” the giant said.

“Could they open the Gates?”

“They were involved in the making of the Key. Nobody remembers how. If you can persuade them to help—”

“Vivian, no,” Zee said. “Think about it. Remember Jehenna. Like she would have been of help?”

“All dragons aren’t the same. Or all giants either, it appears. So maybe . . .” She realized what she was saying as the words left her mouth. Right. A kinder, gentler sorceress. Not very likely.

She felt drained and vulnerable and tired, and the problem was so much bigger than she was. Way back in medical school when things got overwhelming she’d invented a slogan for herself:
Just start somewhere, and take it from there. Do the first thing you can do, and then the next.
Time to follow her own advice.

“First thing, we’re taking Weston back to Wakeworld. He’s been through enough.”

“I have not ever been to Wakeworld, but I will go with him,” the giant said. “I owe a life debt to his sister.”

“He’ll love that,” Zee said. “And what will you do, Dreamshifter?” His agate eyes were unshuttered for once, and she saw all that lay behind the single question.

Vivian got to her feet and stood facing him, almost but not quite touching. So much between them, and she didn’t know how to bridge the chasm. But her inner dragon was dead, and that was one problem solved, a tenuous bridge on which to build.

Just start somewhere, and take it from there.

“Well, Warrior, I was thinking about this,” she said, and rose up on her tiptoes to kiss him. Their lips touched, clung, light as a feather caress. He did not pull away, or respond, but stood perfectly still, neither drawing back nor moving into an embrace.

But beneath her hands on his chest his heart beat fast. She deepened the kiss and felt the tension break as his arms came round her and lifted her off her feet, crushing her against him. His lips claimed hers, soul deep, then wandered to her hair, her eyelids, the curve of her chin.

“This isn’t really an answer to anything,” he murmured between kisses.

“But it’s an excellent question.”

The giant broke the moment. “If the two of you are quite done, you might wish to see this.”

Warm and sheltered in Zee’s arms and feeling like nothing could ever threaten her again, Vivian turned her head.

A solitary dragon had landed. He was small, not much bigger than a draft horse. His left wing drooped a little, as if something in it were broken, and black blood oozed from a tear in his side. He leaned his head against the stone of the closed Gates and gave a mournful cry that twisted Vivian’s heart.

All the softness left Zee’s body. She felt the change in his heartbeat, could feel the adrenaline burst harden his muscles. As his hand went to the hilt of his sword, she covered it with her own and looked up into his face, recoiling from the hate that shone in his eyes.

“He’s just a baby.”

“He’ll grow.”

The little dragon cried again, with a wail of absolute despair at being left behind. In response, Vivian felt a small spark of answering dragon in her belly and knew that her own dragon wasn’t quite dead after all.

“He’s hurt, Zee. And all alone.”

She saw the hatred in his eyes shift to loss and grief as he acknowledged once again all that she was. And then, as she was about to turn from him with a heart so heavy she feared it would break, he smiled. It was a flash of pure joy, utterly unexpected and all the more beautiful for that.

“You,” he said, and the love in his voice outweighed the pain in her heart. “If you found a wounded slime toad, you’d want to help it. I kill, you heal. Perhaps there is a balance after all.”

Once more she kissed him, then turned to what must be done.

The dragon hissed when she approached, but he was too young yet to flame. Reaching for the spark of dragon that had flickered briefly in response to his cry, she sent into his mind,
You are not alone, little brother. I am here.
She looked over her shoulder at the others and added,
We are all here. And all will yet be well.