Wakeworld (7 page)

Y
ou’ve killed him.”

Aidan felt the rage building. Her awkward human form, vulnerable and inadequate to contain so much power, threatened to disintegrate.

“It was kill or be killed. He fought well.” The captain of her shadowmen, either very brave or foolhardy, dared to stand before her and say the words.

She smiled, letting all of her teeth show. “Do you think I care if you lose some of your worthless men? There were more than enough of them to take him down without a death wound.”

“We lost seven, to his one.” He too was wounded. A gash in the thigh, one in his side. The blood scent filled Aidan’s mouth with saliva, pushed her toward the shift. The captain was a creature of the Dreamworld, far from human, but he could still bleed and be killed.

Step back, if you value your life.

Like humans, the shadowmen never heard her when she spoke into their minds, but still she considered it fair warning. And while the captain may not have heard the words, her face and toothy smile must have told him something. He stepped back one pace, and then another. Not far enough, if she let herself shift. Still within easy reach of jaws and teeth. It was to his credit that he was able to contain the fear, keeping face and body under harsh control.

Aidan surveyed what had once been a neat little garden, now broken and trampled. Seven bodies lay in a row, no red spark in the empty sockets, limbs folded, given the respect of a death well won. One man lay crumpled next to the fence, green eyes wide and staring, his throat cut from ear to ear.

He would serve as dinner, once she was done here. The body was still warm. Not so good as a fresh kill, but it would do. It would also serve as a reminder to the remaining shadowmen of the tenuous balance of their service without inciting a rebellion by disrespecting one of their own.

One other body lay untended, the earth around him stained crimson with his blood and the blood of others. His right hand remained clamped in a death grip around the hilt of his sword.

This was the death that should not have happened. The man had fought well, well enough that it was possible that he might be the Warrior, but the years lay heavy on that old hope. So long had Aidan been seeking that she hardly remembered the reason she had begun.

“A Warrior is born in every age,” her mother had said. “Find him. Make him your ally. He will help to put the old wrong right. Only remember this: Once you find him, never, ever let him know that you are descended from the dragons.”

Ages had come and gone, one after the other, and the Warrior had never come. Aidan had seen men who were brave, men who could fight. A few of them had been put to the test, but not one of them had survived.

Of late she had begun to wonder if the Warrior was of any importance. She was used to a lone existence—the dragons of the Between were too uncouth and degenerate to be company for her. Humans were too soft, and so easily turned into prey. Trust and companionship had ended with her mother’s death, at least a thousand years gone.

But the Key in her hand sang to her now, bringing back all of the dusty old stories from her mother’s tales and making them shine like a ruby fresh from the river of gold. Funny how that image rested in her mind, solid and bright, as though she had seen the river with her own eyes and not only through childhood tales.

From the dream matter I made him, the first of the Warriors, fit to be a companion for me. But it was not safe for him in the Land—the King would have been jealous and one man, no matter how mighty, cannot fight against all the dragons at once. And so I sent him away into a Dreamworld.

When you find the Warrior, do not let him slip away. From the River he comes, as surely as do you, and there he is able to return.

The number of the years Aidan had been seeking this Key had been lost so long ago that she could not begin to count them. She had watched her mother, human, even though she could move between the Dreamworlds, fade and die. Had bided her time, watching the Sorceress Jehenna spin the web that was Surmise. Had been standing by, watching and ready for the moment Jehenna unlocked the Forever, but that attempt had failed and the Key lost once again.

Now she had to wonder. What if this man lying dead before her was the one, at last? What if his help was needed and she must wait another age before another warrior would come to help her meet her long desire? Fury flowed through her veins and she felt herself begin to shift. She would kill the ones who had done this, one by one. And when she had slaked her thirst for blood she would take the Key and find her way to the Gates, Warrior or no.

A shout from one of the men barely reached her.

“He lives.”

She was nearly too far gone to care, but her vision, already transforming the world into a thing of sharply defined lines and colors, saw the man’s chest rise and fall. She pulled herself back from dragon to fully human, clenching the Key in her hand.

“Barely,” she said. The man’s face was bruised and swollen. A deep gash ran down his side, and another, still bleeding, ran the length of his sword arm. But he was breathing. Strong enough to kill seven of her best men and live. If he could survive this, there was a chance he could survive the other.

“Let him be put to the test.”

The captain looked at her, as though he wished to speak but did not dare.

“What?” she demanded. “Say it.”

“He is already very weak. It is a harsh death you decree.”

“If he is the one I seek, it will heal him. If not, he will die anyway. See that it is done.”

“And the other?”

She barely even glanced at the hovel. The face that had watched through the open window had moved out of sight, but she knew the man was still in there. A coward. She detested cowards. Not worth the sword thrust it would take to kill him and of no use to her, now that she had the Key. “Throw him into the Between and leave him to wander.”

C
oming back to consciousness was a difficult thing.

Vivian’s heart pounded against her ribs as though her chest had grown too small to contain it. Breathing felt awkward and wrong. After several futile attempts she managed to get a full breath into her lungs. It hurt, but as she practiced the discipline of
breathe in, breathe out
, the pain eased and her body remembered the way of things and took over. Her hand sought the pendant and then she remembered, with a burst of panic, that it was gone. Stolen.

Fighting the inertia that pinned her, Vivian managed to roll over to her side, and from there up onto her knees.

She was just inside the front door of A to Zee Books. The store was dark and shadowy, the glow from the streetlamps outside illuminating the hanging sculptures that twisted and spun on invisible threads, the only moving things in the empty store.

Memory was tenuous, but she knew that she’d been hurt in some way; there had been terrible pain. The discipline of her training took over and she ran her hands over her head, checking for bumps and bruises and signs of injury, but her skull felt smooth and undamaged. No headache or nausea. Her vision was clear, no blurring, no distortion. No injuries other than a few minor bumps and bruises and the stiffness of long unused muscles. Nothing to worry about.

Except that she couldn’t remember what happened. There had been a dream door. She had walked through it with Poe and Zee and Jared. Flickering images came and went, bits of memory tied together with dream sequences.

Zee dreaming in the chair.
That was real. The book lay on the coffee table where she had left it. She picked it up, solid and heavy in her hands, the dust jacket smooth and cool to her touch.

Jared, unshaven, his shirt untucked and his shoes unshined.

They’d gone to his house. That was right. Looking for the Key. That’s where the dream door was, so what the hell was she doing here? Where were Zee and Poe, and for that matter, Jared?

And then memory turned into a battering ram and hit her all at once. Zee attacked, wounded, overcome by too many warriors. Her own failed attempts to save him. The woman’s voice and the debilitating pain.

“Zee!” she shouted. “Poe!” She ran up the stairs to the apartment above, driven by fear.

His bedroom and kitchen were untouched and empty. No sign of Zee anywhere, but she found Poe in the bathroom, standing in the empty tub. He looked up at her hopefully and she flung herself down on the cold tile floor and hugged his feathery body, pent-up tears pouring down her face. He was bony and stiff and not at all cuddly, despite the softness of feathers, and he wriggled out of her grasp with an expression that rivaled embarrassed teenager.

“Where is Zee?” she asked him.

He stared back out of obsidian eyes, ever silent, then waddled over to nudge the faucet with his beak.

Vivian scrubbed at her tears with the back of her arm. “Fine,” she said. “As you wish.” She ran the tub, watching Poe carefully for signs of injury as he immersed himself in the water, but he seemed unhurt and little by little she stopped worrying about him. Leaving him to his soak, she walked to the end of the hallway, hesitating in front of a closed door.

It was an ordinary wooden door, unlocked, and she opened it to reveal a large room with a hardwood floor. Natural light flooded in through windows in the three external walls. Whatever wall space wasn’t taken up with windows was hung with paintings strange and wonderful. Recognizable mythological creatures featured in many of them. A manticore snarled at a knight wielding a familiar sword. A phoenix plummeted from the sky in flames. There was a centaur and a cyclops. But most of the paintings followed two main themes.

The first was a faceless man with a sword, engaged in the art of dragon slaying: small dragons and huge, dragons old and young and in between, in good health and bad, wounded and full of vigor. All that remained the same was the knight who fought them.

The second theme was Vivian herself. Her face, her eyes, repeated over and over again on at least a score of canvases. In some of them she was her old self, in that time so far away now when she was not a Dreamshifter or a dragon woman, but only Vivian. In others, she was part woman, part reptile, her eyes golden, her flesh covered in scales.

How had Zee painted all of these pictures and not seen what she was? Her breath a tangled knot in her chest, Vivian selected two paintings and moved them to stand side by side against the wall. In one, her face, still gray-eyed, her hair blowing as though in an invisible wind. And beside it, a sinewy dragon in purple and gold, the warrior clinging to its neck and thrusting a triumphal sword into one of its golden eyes.

To this grouping she added one more picture, this one of a creature part dragon, part human, with golden eyes and a reptilian face covered in iridescent scales.

Vivian stared at these paintings long and hard to imprint the message on her heart. Zee loved her. Zee was a dragon slayer. And the dragon inside her, wanting to come out, was ever present and growing stronger. This sort of conflict could destroy a man, his love set against his hate.

Sobs tore at her throat and she swallowed them back, her entire body shaking with the effort it took to contain the pain. She fled the room, checked in on Poe, went to the kitchen and ran a glass of cold water. Her hands shook so badly that water sloshed over the edges of the glass and she could barely get it to her mouth, but she managed to drink several long swallows.

The water steadied her, and the last bits of memory slid into place.
Jared, watching through the window of the cottage. The dead warriors. Zee falling beneath the onslaught. The box taken from her hands.

There was a chance that Zee was still alive and held as a prisoner somewhere. She couldn’t assume that he was dead, not as long as there was the tiniest hope. She had gotten him into this mess, and she must find her way back to him. The best place to start would be where she had left him. Surely she could find it again. Three doors—into the Between, into the fountain at Surmise, and on into the Chancellor’s dream.

The Chancellor was dead, but surely that wouldn’t matter. It hadn’t been his dream to start with; he’d used the dreamsphere. Which meant it was a stable dream that could be entered by any Dreamshifter.

Wrapped in a blanket, Vivian descended the stairs to the store and curled into one of the chairs to breathe and clear her mind. When she was calm, she created a door to the Between. It was so easy. Just a thought and an intention, and a green door materialized right in the middle of a shelf of books. She crossed to it, put her hand to the knob.

It wouldn’t open.

She twisted the knob harder.

There was no give.

“Open!” she commanded. And still the door remained locked. She rattled the knob, panic welling up inside her. Stepping back, she hit the stubborn thing with her shoulder at a run, rebounding with a pain that took her breath away and promised a colorful bruise.

She knew she could not afford the panic; too much depended on her. So she counted to ten. Walked into the bathroom and splashed cold water onto her face. Sat down in one of the chairs, closed her eyes, and breathed. Only yesterday she was able to create doors and walk through them. Now, for some reason, she was barred.

Why? She hadn’t had the pendant last night when she’d created the door at Jared’s house, so that wasn’t it. Maybe it had to do with the fact that she’d created a door to the same place at Jared’s. It was closed, but maybe if it was still there she couldn’t create another.

Closing her eyes she focused on a different area of the Between, and when she felt the door emerge she approached it with a heart full of hope. But again it was locked and would not allow her entrance.

Sinking back into the chair she confronted the possibility that she was locked into Wakeworld. Maybe the unknown source of power had broken her, rendered her incapable of opening doors.

This was not acceptable. She had to get to Zee, had to find that Key before somebody else put it to use. She was still not entirely clear what evil thing was going to come about if somebody did get the freaking thing. Jehenna had been after everlasting life. So what. Let somebody have that for all she cared. What would it hurt?

Well, maybe a lot of things, if that somebody had a lot of power. Enough power, say, to lock a Dreamshifter out of the Between. Enough power to hammer a brain into mush.

Her thoughts circled round and round like an amped-up hamster on a wheel. The series of events played themselves over and over. There must be a solution to this problem; she must be smart enough to figure it out. There was nobody to go to, nobody to ask.

Poe waddled across the floor and bellied up onto the coffee table, where he took up his watchful penguin stance, fixing her with a disconcerting stare.

“What? I suppose you know.”

She sighed and slumped down, stretching her legs out in front of her and letting her tired head rest against the back of the chair, her gaze drifting over the array of strange and wonderful hanging sculptures Zee had created. There was a flight of dragons, a waterfall made of silvery beads, a fleet of sailing ships.

And an intricate creation of tiny winged books, flying through a maze of stars.

Her eyes snagged on that one sculpture; the frenetic hamster came to a stop.

A fragment of poetry filled the calm space in her thoughts.

I have been a tear in the air,

I have been the dullest of stars.

I have been a word among letters,

I have been a book in the origin.

Poetry written by the enigmatic bard Taliesin, lost in battle at Camlann. Not dead, but missing.

There had been another name on the scroll reported as missing. Maybe, just maybe, Vivian wasn’t the only living Dreamshifter after all.

Sitting here was stupid and futile, and nothing would be accomplished by wishful thinking. If she was locked into Wakeworld, maybe it was time to do a little digging into what happened to the man named Weston Jennings.