Borderlands (The Dreams of Reality Book 5)

by Gareth Otton

  She felt another stab of pain at her loss, but this time, rather than evoke tears, it just pushed her to be angry with herself. She knew she would have heard from Tad by now if he was okay, which meant there was something wrong and he was relying on her to come help. She didn’t have time for her own problems right now, and she needed to think clearly.

  She forced herself to explore those memories of Tad’s that she could still remember, and try to get inside his head. She knew that since Jen started living with him, he wasn’t one to mope about his own problems because he always put her first, so she didn’t know what he would do now that…

  Her thoughts trailed off and she swore. Of course she knew where he was right now. She was so angry that she didn’t even flinch as she thought of calling for Freckles to take her somewhere and was reminded anew of his absence. Instead, she just concentrated on her anger at herself before focusing on the tattoo on her back. She hadn’t done this much, but she recognised the warmth as Dream flooded the lines and the electric power that came with it.

  The world shifted around her.

  One moment she stood in the living room of her safe house, the next she was standing under the porch of a large Tudor style home with a Porche in the driveway. Stella pressed the button beside the heavy oak door and was rewarded with the ringing of the doorbell.

  A light flicked on in the hallway but it felt like an age before the door was thrown open and Dr Burman looked out, back lit by the electric yellow light. He didn’t seem surprised in the least to see her and ushered her inside.

  “Is he here?” she asked, knowing full well that he had to be. It had been hours since Jen had gone into Dream with Ryan. Whatever moping Tad would have been doing would long since have given out to worry about his daughter. He’d have found out about Ryan by now and he would, of course, come straight here.

  “He’s up in her bedroom with her,” Dr Burman answered, not needing to ask who she was talking about.

  “How are they?” she asked with a touch of hesitation, as she wasn’t sure she was prepared for the answer.

  “Physically they’re both fine. Mentally though…” He sighed and shook his head. “I am not sure what’s wrong with Tad, but Jen is blaming herself for Ryan. I’ve tried telling her it wasn’t her fault, but she’s not having any of it.”

  “What happened?” Stella asked, and the doctor filled her in on his trip into Dream and the experiment they tried. “You think he would have survived if you hadn’t tried that experiment?”

  “Not for a second,” Dr Burman said. “He had lost a lot of blood and his injuries were beyond severe. We lost nothing by trying that experiment, and it almost worked.”

  “Almost?”

  “It’s more my fault than Jen’s,” the doctor admitted, sounding pained. “I forgot the very rules I have been drilling her on for the last few weeks. I’ve been telling her that her only job is to make sure that the patient lives to receive more help later. But in my excitement, I tried to do too much and put too much on her shoulders. Rather than just concentrate on the wounds that would kill him, I tried to heal every wound he had and then get Jen to fix them all in place. It was too much for her and she slipped up on a crucial detail that caused massive internal bleeding that killed him before we could fix it. It was a detail she wouldn’t have missed if we had spent the hour we had going over just the most crucial injury, rather than all the others Ryan received. However, Jen won’t hear that.”

  “Of course not. She’s too much like her dad. If there’s blame to be had, she wants to hog it all to herself,” Stella said bitterly.

  “I don’t think they’re the only people guilty of that. It’s the curse of being a good person. At least I like to think that’s the case.” He nodded back towards the living room and asked, “Can I interest you in a drink?”

  “No, I’d rather go straight up and see them if that’s okay?”

  “Of course. It’s up the stairs and she’s the third door on the right.”

  Stella thanked him before rushing up the stairs. Any other time she might stop to admire how nice the doctor’s home was, but right now the exposed ancient wood, plush carpets and ornate fixings all blurred into the background as Stella reached the landing and started counting off the doors until she found the right room. There she paused and made sure her head was clear, as she had to be strong for this conversation.

  She knocked and opened the door.

  Despite her attempts to be strong, she almost lost control of her emotions as soon as the door opened and she heard the rhythmic thumping of tails against carpet. Growler and Hawk both looked up as she entered, excited to see her and reminding her of the third dog who should be here. It was all she could do to keep her emotions in check as she greeted them both before looking further into the room.

  She realised that the Burmans had been generous with Jen. Her room was twice the size of the one she had lived in at Tad’s home. An expensive, ultrawide monitor was perched beside an expensive laptop on the large desk in the corner. The wardrobe and dresser were made from heavy oak, and the king size bed was tall and looked soft. Stella could see that softness as the two figures sat side by side on the bed had sunk down into the mattress like they were sitting on a cloud.

  Tad leaned back against the headboard with Jen curled up against him, her head on his chest. There were dark circles around the girl’s eyes and tear-stains on her cheeks, but she looked peaceful now as her eyes were closed and she was asleep. Tad, on the other hand, looked anything but peaceful. Sure, he might have smiled when he saw it was her, but she hardly needed her eidolon senses to put the lie to that smile.

  “Sorry, I should have called,” Tad said in way of greeting.

  “Yes, you should,” Stella replied, stepping past the dogs and deeper into the room. Despite her words, she didn’t have it in her to be angry. She was just glad she had found them. She struggled to think of how to start the conversation and killed a little time walking to Jen’s desk to grab her chair and wheel it over to the bed.

  “It’s my fault that he’s dead,” Tad whispered as he read her face and knew what she wanted to talk about. “Right there at the end, Ryan begged me to kill them… And I could have. I could have killed Kuruk and every man there, and Ryan would still be alive. But I chickened out and now Ryan is dead while Kuruk is still out there.”

  Stella frowned, sure she was missing something. She wanted to tell Tad he was blowing things out of proportion, but she also saw how seriously he was taking this and knew he wouldn’t react well to her shrugging off his concerns. So instead, she gave him a simple command.

  “Tell me what happened, right from the start.”

  After hesitating only a moment, Tad started speaking. He described how Kuruk was taking longer than expected to get there, how he had seen through their trap and started killing innocent people to lure Tad out. Tad took the bait and went to help the people who were caught in the explosions, taking them to hospitals and saving lives that only he could save. Stella knew anyone else would be proud that they could have helped so many, but Tad was concentrating too hard on what was coming next.

  He finally described how he was helping people out of one house when he heard Kuruk’s voice raised in anger. It was unnaturally loud as it was amplified by Dream, and Tad knew it was coming from the safe house. Remembering he had left Mitena alone, Tad rushed back and finally encountered Kuruk.

  Stella started to see where things went wrong, and she wasn’t just thinking about this incident. Over the past year, more and more weight had been put on Tad’s shoulders, and every time he had risen to the occasion. His powers made him a force to be reckoned with, and it was hard to think of any obstacle he couldn’t overcome. But Tad was not a force of nature, he was just a man who had never been in a fight a year before. He wasn’t a soldier, wasn’t prepared to fight a war, nor take actions that might kill countless people. She knew he wasn’t afraid to take a life to save his own or someone he loved, but to kill a man in
cold blood or to kill in groups, that was a step too far.

  This was something she and the Prime Minister should have realised. While their war plans did not rely only on Tad, it was always assumed he would be there to deal with the largest of the supernatural threats. But when that supernatural threat was an army of five thousand men and women who might have families of their own, then Tad’s limitations became all too clear.

  “If I had just done as Ryan said and killed those people, Kuruk would be dead now, those poor people who died in that attack would be avenged, Ryan would be here with us, and Jen would never have been put in the position where she had to save him.”

  “You can’t think like that,” Stella said. “This isn’t on you. It’s Kuruk’s fault for doing something so sadistic.”

  “You can’t deny Ryan would still be here if it wasn’t for me,” Tad hissed.

  “You’re not a god, Tad. You can’t control everything.”

  “I could have killed those men,” Tad said, his tone bitter. “I didn’t have to be a god to do that. I had all three ghosts in me Stella, I could have thought of something to wipe them from the face of this planet once and for all. Think of all the lives I could have saved. Now every single person who dies at their hands is because of me.”

  “We’ve spoken about this before,” Stella said. “Back when you were trying to take the blame for what Joshua King did.”

  “This is different. Then I was taking the blame for something I couldn’t have changed. This time it was something that was one hundred percent my fault. I could have killed those people… No. Killed those monsters. Ryan would still be here and—”

  “No, you couldn’t,” Stella interrupted. “That was never an option for you. Sure, you have the power to shoot them all with lightning like you did with those metal pigeons, or you could have sucked them all into a tornado, or burnt them all to death. But you could never have done it, you know why? Because you’re a good man who knows better. I’m glad you didn’t kill those people.”

  “Come off it,” Tad snapped, loud enough to disturb Jen who grunted in her sleep, a frown creasing her brow before she settled again, never quite coming fully awake. “Don’t lie to me, Stella.”

  “Do you see me being sick right now?” she asked, letting a touch of anger taint her voice. “You know I can’t lie. I’m glad you didn’t kill those people. That doesn’t mean that I am glad Ryan is dead, but I am glad that you aren’t dead, which is what you would be if you killed those people. The man I know and love doesn’t have it in him to slaughter people, even if they deserve that, and you’d have to kill that man if you were going to kill those people. I wouldn’t want anything to do with the Tad Holcroft who could do something like that.”

  Tad opened his mouth to answer, but no words slipped out. Instead, he closed his eyes and banged his head against the headboard. When he opened them again, those eyes were watery and instead of anger, Stella saw only desperation. When he found his voice, he sounded like he would break at any moment.

  “Then what am I supposed to do, Stella? These arseholes keep coming, and they keep killing, and its like it never ends. I’m not just talking about this war either, I’m talking about everything since Joshua King. They keep coming back for more, always testing me, pushing me, punishing me for every little failure. I keep trying to help, but I just keep making things worse. Everything I touch turns to ash.”

  Stella’s heart broke for the pain she heard in his voice, but she knew she couldn’t show that right now, so she forced it down inside and leaned forward in her chair to look him in the eye and make sure he heard what she had to say.

  “You do what you always do. Stand up, dust yourself off, and do what’s right. I’m not going to lie, Tad. Some things you have done have got people killed. But let’s not forget that if it weren’t for you, Joshua King would be an unstoppable source of evil on this planet, nightmares would have torn the Borderlands apart, and Jacob would have started a war between Dreamwalkers and normal people. You have saved countless people from ghosts, you’ve raised a little girl to be a literal miracle worker, and you’ve saved my life in more ways than one. And let’s not get started on years of extra life you have given your ghosts because you’ve been willing to sacrifice your privacy for almost your whole life.

  “You’ve made mistakes, you’ve gotten people hurt, and you’ll do both of those things again because you’re not a god, you’re just a good man trying to do what’s right. That’s the cost this world has to pay to be lucky enough to have you on our side, and unfortunately it’s the cost you have to pay to do the right thing.”

  Tears were flowing freely down Tad’s face as he absorbed her words, and once or twice he tried to argue back, but his voice failed him. Finally, he whispered, “I don’t know if I can keep going any longer. It’s too much, Stella. They’re taking everything. Charles, Miriam, Kate, Freckles, Ryan, Trevors, the Dream Team, my house, my daughter’s legs, my hand… I don’t have much else left and I can’t bear...” His words trailed off as his voice broke and he struggled with the next sentence. “I can’t lose you, I can’t lose Jen. And I will. I know that. If I can’t do what needs to be done, they’ll keep coming, and they’ll keep killing and—”

  “We’ll find another way,” Stella interrupted. “There’s always another way, Tad. How many times have you told me that in Dream, the only thing that holds people back is their imagination? You can do anything if you can imagine it, but even dreamwalkers fail to think outside of reality and therefore they don’t live up to their potential. Well, it’s the same here. You’re not thinking outside the box and—”

  “It’s not the same,” Tad argued. “This isn’t Dream. Possibility isn’t endless here.”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean you’re not still falling into the same trap. You’re hung up on how you can’t fight this war traditionally, where one side has to kill the other. Okay, we know that now, so lets think of another way. We don’t have to play their game.”

  “What other way?”

  “I don’t know… Maybe the answers lie in the animancy side of your powers. You said that Ashley hinted that there was a lot more than he was letting on.”

  “That’s no good. He won’t speak to us about that. Every time I try to talk to him he clams up and won’t say a word.”

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t there any of those times, was I? You’re still too caught up in the same patterns of trying the same thing over and over, but expecting different results. Let’s think of this differently. Ashley won’t talk to you because he hates you, but he made the original deal with me and I have a history of getting stubborn men to see reason.”

  She threw the last part out as a joke and was pleased that Tad snorted, even if he didn’t laugh.

  “And if that’s not enough, we’ll bring Norman as well,” Stella continued. “We come at him with everything we have until he breaks and tells us what we need to know.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  Stella sighed. “Then we dust ourselves off and try something else. Ashley can’t be the only animancer in the world. Maybe we can find someone else. Either way, the point is we keep trying.”

  “And if Kuruk and his people attack someone else?”

  “Then we do what we always do and try to stop them. That doesn’t mean you have to kill people.” She thought she had been getting through to him, but the mention of killing people was getting him worked up again, so she spoke over his response. “Do you trust me, Tad?”

  He frowned at her and said, “You know I do.”

  “Then stop overthinking this. Let me worry about the big picture, and you just worry about doing one thing at a time. Don’t think about what happens if we can’t get Ashely on our side, or whatever Kuruk might do, or anything else. I’ll deal with all that. Put all of your focus on getting one job done, and then if that doesn’t work, I’ll point you at something else, and you focus on that.”

  “That’s asking too much of you,” T
ad argued.

  “No, it’s what I was doing anyway, but you were just too stubborn to see it. I’m better at this big picture stuff than you, Holcroft. It’s why I don’t run into dangerous situations blindly—” Tad snorted and Stella laughed. “Okay, maybe I’m guilty of that too, but don’t pretend I’m the hothead in this situation. Besides, just like you’ll be relying on me, I’m relying on Norman for the same thing.

  “The point I am making is that you’re just one man and you’re trying to do everyone’s jobs for them when you should focus on your own. You are amazing at what you do, but there are people better suited to dealing with the bigger picture. You just focus on one thing at a time, and right now that is figuring out your animancy powers and seeing if there’s a solution that might help us stop this war with no more bloodshed.”

  “But what about—”

  “Nope,” Stella interrupted. “You’re overthinking it again. Just trust me. Focus on that one thing, and let me worry about the rest.”

  Tad struggled not to answer back, but he also knew that Stella wasn’t going to let him talk, so he bit off whatever he was about to say and fell into silence, waiting her out. However, he would never outlast her because she had much more experience waiting than he did, and she knew how to use silence to her advantage. She just focused on him, making it clear she would not speak and wouldn’t let him speak until he had thought about this.

  It might have taken one minute or ten, but slowly she saw his expression shift. It wouldn’t be much to most people, but Stella’s eidolon senses had a year of practice at reading Tad Holcroft, and she knew he was past his stubborn thoughts and was considering her words. It was another minute before he broke the silence though, and this time she didn’t interrupt.