Wakeworld (8 page)

Z
ee opened his eyes to stars.

They were not stars he had ever seen before: too bright, too close, too obviously balls of burning gas rather than the familiar pinpoints of cold white light. The constellations were also complex and strange—no friendly Big Dipper, no Orion striding across the horizon.

It didn’t help that the light blurred in and out of focus, and it took a minute for him to realize that his vision was at fault, likely connected to the pounding of his head. He lay flat on his back with his hands folded across his bare chest. A line of fire ran the length of his right bicep, another along his left side. Every breath felt like a stiletto between his ribs. Thirst constricted his throat and papered his tongue.

A cool breeze flowed over him and he shivered. Whatever it was he was lying on was cold. Stone, if he judged by the hardness of it, probably a dungeon floor with not so much as a heap of straw beneath his naked shoulders.

Only if it was a dungeon, then why the stars? A hallucination maybe, a product of a severe concussion. He thought about moving his hands to feel what was beneath him, about sitting up to look around, but the act of even wiggling his fingers took an exorbitant amount of energy.

He’d lost a lot of blood, he guessed, and his body felt dry, dry, dry. He would need to find water soon.

Where was Vivian? She could doctor him up and they could get on with things.

Vivian.
At the thought of her his heart beat faster, loss twisting in his gut. The last memory he had was of shouting at her to run, just before one of those gray bastards clobbered him over the head with the flat of a sword. Cowards, all. He had to find her. Would find her.

Just as soon as he could move. Tentatively he tested his muscles. It took a few trials before the brain signals got through to their targets, and the movements he could manage were sluggish and weak. His injured right arm moved at his command, but the pain made his breath hiss between his teeth. The left was stiff, but not seriously damaged, and his legs seemed okay.

Something rested on his chest, cold and narrow, long enough to run the length of his naked belly. He ran questing fingertips along its length. A sword. His sword. He wrapped his hand around the familiar hilt and instantly felt stronger.

Slow and careful, he eased himself up to sitting, taking the sword in his left hand since the right hung nearly useless. As he came upright his vision went dark and blood roared like ocean waves in his head. Little by little his vision cleared and he was able to take in his surroundings.

The giant stars lit the night as brightly as a full moon. He sat on a flat granite slab, one of seven set in a circle. On each lay the unmoving figure of a man. Each was naked to the waist, clothed only in white cotton breeches. Their feet were bare. Their hands were crossed over an unsheathed sword. No movement. No breath or other indication of life. All were scarred; some bore unhealed wounds. And their faces, one and all, were grotesquely twisted with agony.

Zee felt the prickle of fear on his skin.

His own wounds didn’t seem to be life threatening. His right arm was caked with dried blood from a deep laceration that he knew needed cleaning and stitches. It was still oozing a little, but most of the bleeding had stopped so if it didn’t get infected it would probably heal all right. Another jagged cut scored his ribs. This one was shallower but had also bled profusely. There was enough bruising to explain why it hurt so much to breathe, and the blood loss would account for his weakness. As for the blinding headache, he’d had enough concussions in his younger, fighting years to recognize that particular pain.

He was still alive and planned to stay that way, which meant putting distance between himself and the dead warriors with all possible speed. It would have been nice to know where he was in space and time, but a circle of rough standing stones blocked a wider view. They reminded him of the Finger Stone, all with that same sense of foreboding power, only these had been set in place by a conscious intelligence.

Zee didn’t want to be here when the author and creator of this place showed up. This was either a Dreamworld or the Between—had to be, judging by the stars—so the body housing the devious serial-killer mind that had dreamed up a place like this could be literally anything. He was not strong enough to fight right now, which meant fleeing as far and as fast as his body would tolerate.

When he tried to stand, it seemed at first that he wouldn’t be going anywhere at all. The earth under his feet wobbled and swayed and threatened to swing up to meet him, but he braced himself on the stone slab until he got his balance.

Gripping the sword in his left hand, he managed to get his feet moving and made his way out of the circle of the tombs, past the monoliths, and out into a wider space on top of a hill.

Nothing moved. There was no sound other than the harshness of his own breath. The stars shed just enough light for him to see a new pair of standing stones that towered over him, each carved into the shape of a dragon. A wide road sloped away down the left side of the hill. It was paved by outsized cobblestones, each as big as a small car. Walls barricaded it on either side, higher than his head.

He didn’t like it, he’d be trapped if anything came after him, but unless he wanted to walk back through the circle of tombs it was the only option. The thought of going back made his skin crawl, so he staggered off down the road, about as in control of his body as if he’d been thoroughly drunk.

Dim shapes arose out of the shadows ahead, huge, menacing, and he stopped his erratic footsteps to be still and pay attention. Another set of dragons. Only stone, but still his hand tightened on the sword hilt, ready for battle in case the things turned out not to be stone after all. Dragons had magic he didn’t understand, and it wouldn’t have surprised him at all if they came to life and followed behind him. Weak and injured as he was, his blood heated at the thought of dragons, but he knew there was no hope that he could win such a fight and he kept walking.

The road curved, and then curved again, spiraling ever tighter, marked at intervals by the stone dragons. At last an archway loomed out of the darkness, twice Zee’s height and wide enough for the largest of dragons to pass through with ease. Through the arch a soft glow illuminated a spacious pavement, revealing vibrant jewel tones. At the center of the expanse was a bench, made from the same jewel-colored stones.

Zee’s muscles quivered with weakness. He was parched with thirst; the pain of his wounds had grown intense. It would be good to sit and rest. As he passed beneath the arch, a bell toned one deep-throated peal. He paused, looking about him in wonder and alarm. There was no bell to be seen. He could not identify the source of the light, soft and gentle to his eyes, but it provided full illumination. The stones beneath his feet were truly cut from gems—slabs of ruby and jade and other stones he didn’t know, with lines of beaten gold to seal them together.

He became conscious of his feet, muddy and bloodstained. If there had been water, he would have stopped to wash them, despite weakness and pain. As he neared the bench he noticed a bucket and rope, and realized that within the circle of the bench there was a well.

One more step, and he could smell the water. Not as one smells a river or a lake, nor yet the salt tang of the sea; this carried the scent of rain falling on green grass, of an iced glass at the end of a long, hot day.

Thirst grew into obsession. He laid the sword down on the stone bench, grateful to be free of its weight, and dropped the wooden bucket into the well. For what seemed to him an eternity he watched the rope uncoil, marking the bucket’s progress downward. At last the rope stopped moving and he heard a small splash. A moment to let the bucket fill, and then he began pulling it up, hand over hand. The motion opened the wound in his right arm and it began to bleed again. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but that he slake his thirst.

Somewhere in the back of his mind his own voice clamored objections, but still he drew up the rope, hand over hand, until he held the dripping bucket. The liquid that filled it made water as he knew it a pale shadow of the real thing. Never had he desired anything with this level of intensity. Even his love for Vivian seemed a small thing in comparison.

And that made him hesitate.

He needed water and soon, or he would die. But this craving was beyond any thirst he had ever experienced. It had a compulsion about it; the bucket was halfway to his lips already and he hadn’t made the choice to drink.

An image of the six men lying dead on the stone slabs flashed across his mind. They had not died in battle, or of wounds unhealed, or of loss of blood. The blackening of their skin, the agony etched into their faces even in death—that spoke of poison.

His hands began to shake with the realization of what he held.

If he was going to die, it wouldn’t be because he had given in to an enchantment. He would set the bucket down and walk away.

And yet it remained in his hands, and the drive to bury his face in the icy water was almost overpowering.

A sweet voice behind him said, “Why do you tarry? It is permitted for you to drink.”

She came around to face him, a woman with eyes like the mist when the sun shines through. He saw no evil in her lovely face, no lines of cruelty or secrecy, and his heart leaped with hope at her words.

Between the demands of his pain and the energy required to resist the water, it was difficult to speak. “I fear it is enchanted,” he managed to say.

The maiden laughed, a liquid trill that reminded him of birdsong. “Of course it is enchanted. It will heal you. After you drink, you may bathe your wounds and it will ease your pain. Let me help you.”

Light and graceful as a leaf on the wind she approached him. A slim white hand dipped a cup into the bucket and held it up to his lips. “Drink.”

A drop spilled over the rim of the cup and rolled down his chin. He was vividly conscious of its path along his jaw; it was icy cold and held an unexpected weight. When it dripped from his skin, he followed its course with his eyes, watching it fall, jewel bright, and strike the stone pavement. It bounced and came to rest on top of a disc, perfectly round, mirror smooth. It was black, yet it refracted the light into a rainbow brightness. In it he saw his own face, and that of the woman.

“Drink,” she said again.

His breath caught in his throat and he became deeply aware that he had set aside his sword and stood weakened and weaponless, at her mercy.

With an effort of will, he turned his head away from the tempting cup. “No. Thank you for the offer.”

“There will be no help for you if you do not drink. No shelter. No water. No remedy for your hurts.”

“And if I do drink, I will die.”

“Perhaps,” she murmured, “perhaps not. There are things worse than death.”

“I do not choose this death.”

“If you drink and live, I promise rest, shelter, and healing.”

His whole body shook with weakness. The water continued to summon him. But what he had seen mirrored in the reflecting disc, and something about the disc itself, held him back. The maiden turned her face up to his, and as the light shifted something on her cheek shone diamond bright.

It was perfectly round, reflecting rainbows of light. Just like the large disc on the pavement.

Zee put out his hand and caught the shining thing on his fingertip.

A tiny dragon scale.

It all came together in an upswell of hate—the stone dragons, the precious stones, the shining black disc at his feet.

Summoning all of his strength he swung the bucket at her head, letting the momentum carry his body forward and then down onto the pavement, rolling away from her and the tide of water that hissed as it touched the stone.

He bumped up against the bench and was able to grasp the sword in his left hand. It felt too heavy to lift and there was no room to swing, but he would at least die fighting.

As the water struck the woman she seemed to melt, like wax in an oven. And then she began to grow and shift, as though giant sculptor hands were at work on a piece of malleable clay. An elongated body, four legs, an armored tail, a long serpentine neck. Deepest black she was, an absence of color so intense that all light seemed to be sucked into her and absorbed, creating a pool of shadow all around her nearly as dark as she.

Zee’s hate was enough to get him onto his feet, even though the world spun around him. He locked his knees, gripped the sword, and prayed that he could kill the beast, even if it cost him his life.

But the dragon spread her wings and beat them over her back three times, creating a thunder and a mighty wind that knocked him off his fragile footing. He lay on the pavement of precious stones and watched as she took flight, until she was lost to him in the darkness and the fiery light of the stars.

T
he Krebston Library was a square, one-story brick building occupying the street corner across from the county jail. It wasn’t much to speak of in terms of either size or inventory, but Vivian had discovered that the librarian was a fervent lover of books, and possessed an almost magical ability to procure requested reading material.

She paused in the doorway, breathing in the distinctive smell of books, old carpet, and people, a comfortable musty funk that some people might find unpleasant. To her, it was comforting, a reminder of the local library that had provided her with a safe refuge during her chaotic childhood. In books she had found world after world where she could walk freely and without risk. During the year she’d been in Krebston, she had frequented the library about as often as the grocery store.

The librarian waved her over. “Hey there! I haven’t seen you in a couple of weeks. That new fantasy you were asking about came in, only I think somebody already signed it out. Want me to check if it’s back?”

“That’s okay, Deb—I’m actually after town history today. Can you point me in the right direction?”

“Depends on what you’re looking for.”

“Well—do we have any old newspapers on file? On microfiche or whatever?”

Deb snorted. “We’re not totally backwater. No microfiche, but we’re getting some scanned in and online. How old were you looking for?”

“Old. Early nineteen hundreds and on.”

“Um—Krebston’s not even that old, let alone newspapers.”

“I was afraid of that—”

“Hold on, hold on. We have access to Spokane’s stuff. They had a rag that might have included Krebston news.”

Vivian didn’t argue. The population had been smaller back then. Something that would be captioned as a massacre might well have made news in Spokane. For all she knew, the Jennings family might well have lived and died in Spokane. Or anywhere in the country, for that matter.

Deb led her to a back corner desk with a sign that said
Reference Librarian. Please feel free to ask for assistance.
“Here, you can use the computer at my desk. Quieter, without all those kids talking and messing around. I miss libraries when they were for books, but don’t tell anybody I said so.”

“And if somebody asks for help?”

“Nobody ever does. Just wave me over if you need me.” She pulled up a screen. “There you go. Old Spokane newspapers here. May I ask what you’re researching?”

“Family history.” The lie came easy, along with the rationalization that it wasn’t really a lie. It just wasn’t her family she was looking at.

“Okay. Newspapers might not be your best source for that, unless they were gunslingers or politicians. Here—try these. GenWeb will give you names and dates of death, with weird and fascinating causes. And then of course there’s genealogy.com—standby for genealogy nuts. Ooops, gotta go, there’s a line up at the checkout desk. Let me know if you need me.”

The line consisted of a young mother with a baby in arms and a toddler twining himself in circles around her legs, but Vivian was glad to see Deb go. She didn’t need anybody looking over her shoulder and asking questions.

GenWeb seemed like a logical choice, and she started there. It brought up a rough map of the state, by county. She tried Seattle first, looking at death records between 1900 and 1926. No Jennings. Nothing in Spokane County, or Stevens. Without much hope she clicked on Pend Oreille County and selected
F–J
from the alphabetical list.

Holding her breath, she scanned down and found:

Jennings, Edward C. Death Date 6/7/1925, Age Unknown. Birth place, Unknown. Cause of Death, gunshot.

The sweat on her body felt like it had turned to individual ice pellets. This name had also been written on the scroll.
Edward Jennings, murdered in 1925.
And now here that name was again in official death records accessed through a word processor. In the library. Reality was strange. She shivered, and moved on.

Jennings, Ellie M. Death Date 6/7/1925, Age 21. Birth place, Fort Spokane. Cause of Death, gunshot.

Jennings, William J. Death Date 6/7/1925, Age 17. Birth place, Krebston. Cause of Death, gunshot.

Jennings, Jack S. Death Date 6/7/1925, Age 19. Birth place, Krebston. Cause of Death, gunshot.

The next name was Kenton, Mary, who apparently died in her sleep, and Vivian was grateful.

Something very ugly had gone down on June 7, 1925, which also happened to be the year that one Weston Jennings, Dreamshifter, went missing. Four family members shot to death on one day. One gone missing.

Not sure she wanted to know any more, Vivian clicked over to genealogy.com and looked up Edward Jennings. He had been married to Evelyn, née Harper, in January 1903. She died of a fall on ice on December 18, 1918. Before her death she provided Edward with five children—the three who had been shot to death on the same day he died, plus a son, Weston M., born in 1909, and a daughter, Grace D., who was born three years later. Edward, his eldest daughter, and his two elder sons were found shot to death in their home. Two members of the family, Weston and Grace, had escaped the shooting.

Vivian went to the newspapers, searching for the date of June 7, 1925. Sure enough, the
Spokane Times
sported a garish headline—
Four Dead in Krebston Massacre!!
—along with a grainy black-and-white photograph of a tangle of bodies that she wished she could unsee.

All blame pointed at sixteen-year-old Weston. Grace was on the scene, bloodstained and mute, while Weston was nowhere to be found. The girl revealed no information about the events.

Vivian went back into GenWeb. Grace Jennings died in 1977 and was buried with her family in the Old Krebston Cemetery. As for Weston, there was no date of death. It was as if he had vanished off the face of the earth.

Leaning back in the chair she rubbed the muscles in her shoulders. A rogue Dreamshifter who was accused of the mass murder of his own family. Maybe he was dead. But Dreamshifters lived well beyond the usual life span and he could easily be running around creating havoc in Dreamworld or the Between. If there was another Dreamshifter still alive somewhere on the planet, maybe he had information. Maybe he could get her back into Dreamworld; maybe he knew about the Key.

Maybe, just maybe, he had access to dreamspheres. If there was even a hope of that, she had to try to find him. Even if he was a deranged killer, which seemed likely.

She needed more information, and she thought she might just know where to find it.