Dream Wars_Domination

by Leia Stone

  She chewed her lip. “Good news is, there doesn’t seem to be any torn arteries. The wounds are all pretty superficial. Once I can get you home and on an IV of antibiotics, I’ll feel better though.”

  Brisk looked at his lover. “Once you pump me full of painkillers, I’ll feel better.”

  She chuckled. “Come on, let’s get you up and see if anything leaks.”

  Oh God, is that the technical term?

  With Nox’s help, she hoisted the huge Marine into a standing position. A hole on the back of his thigh started to drip blood and Ronnie stapled it, making Brisk flinch.

  “A little warning?” he growled.

  She winced. “Sorry, I forgot you weren’t medicated.”

  “Brisk, I’m sorry. The lake idea was stupid,” I apologized as I came up next to him.

  He waved an arm. “I’m still alive. And it was a good idea, because I don’t hear that thing after us anymore.”

  He was right. We’d been there a while and the giant seemed to be stationary. Maybe it was a good idea.

  “Take the thing,” I told Ronnie, handing the kitten sack off to her.

  She rolled her eyes. “Lucy. Cats live twelve to eighteen years, so you better start calling her by her name.” she warned.

  Damn. I’ll have to put up with this furball for eighteen years? That’s a sobering statistic. Maybe Ronnie was right and I should try to make friends with it.

  I put my hand near her head, about to pet her when she full-on attacked me, leaping out of her sack and clinging to my hand with every single claw outstretched.

  “Mother fu—” I shook her off and Ronnie caught her.

  “Kit! Stop scaring her!” Ronnie looked at me incredulously.

  My jaw was slack. “Are you serious right now?”

  Ronnie just kissed the top of Lucy’s head and tucked her back into her pouch, turning away from me.

  It was official, I’d lost my best friend to a one-pound, psychotic furball hopped up on too much coffee.

  Awesome.

  Ten

  “All right, let’s hunker down,” I told the group, then made my way to the rock cave. There were tons of these little ghoul-made caves all over the Dream Wars, three large flat rocks propped up to make shelter. The ghouls had always astounded me. They were one part barbaric, and one part highly advanced. It wasn’t what I thought an alien race would be like.

  I helped get Brisk into the cave, where he sat and watched Jeremy play tic-tac-toe over and over again with Josephine, who had the patience of a saint. By my twentieth game, I would’ve lost my mind, but I knew the repetition brought Jeremy comfort, soothed his mind enough to let him cope with the situation.

  All in all, we had two plasma bricks, so we positioned them at the entrance of the cave where I was crouched with Damien, keeping watch.

  Over the next few hours, we heard those ground-shaking footsteps but nothing that felt too close. Then I heard something weird, like a scratching noise.

  “Shh,” I told my crew.

  It could’ve been footsteps or it could’ve been nothing.

  “Did that heat seeker thing make it through?” I whispered to Damien. The device would come in handy right about now.

  He shook his head.

  Frick.

  If it was a bunch of sentries, we might be hosed. Only half of us had our plasma bands on, and the rocks holding up the back of our cave could be pulled down by someone motivated enough.

  Suddenly, I heard a thump from behind and above me. I spun, gun locked and loaded, and saw a female breeder had pounced on top of the cave, and was looking down on me, and our little plasma dome covering the entrance.

  “Kit Steele,” she said with a grin. Her mouth was much more humanlike, smaller with only a few rows of teeth, but I knew she could tear into me if she wanted too.

  What the hell? Females didn’t leave their eggs. Like ever. Now she was off on some solo mission?

  I froze. I couldn’t shoot or it would hit the plasma dome and probably ricochet into my face. We were safe… for now, but this bitch was crazy, and I didn’t like her just standing up there staring at me. Not after I’d learned what they were capable of.

  I decided to flip her off. I didn’t know what I was thinking or why that came to me—it wasn’t like she would know what it meant—but it made me feel better.

  I was wrong. She did know what it meant, because the second my middle finger came up, she hissed and made a fist with her hand, causing an ear-splitting headache to rip through my skull.

  “Kit!” Damien moved closer to my side.

  Suddenly, Jeremy was there, hovering over me, and pressing down on the sensors under my hat. “Talk to her. Make her hurt,” Jeremy whispered in my ear. Well he sure is Mr. Talkative all of a sudden.

  His words barely made it through the pain in my head, but when they did, I stilled for a second. Master Aki was always saying that my mental gift was my best asset, yet I never wanted to use it. The only time I’d tried to use it on the ghouls, it had nearly taken me over. But could I use it on one female?

  Pushing a communication was one thing. But if I wanted her to hurt like she was hurting me, I was going to have to push a feeling, to try to control her mind like she was controlling mine. Which might have been my only defense at that point.

  I sent out my awareness, brushing past Damien and even Jeremy until I felt her. She had one of the most powerful signatures I’d ever encountered. It was like she was… connected to the Dream Wars. This planet, parallel reality, or whatever, was being controlled by her and the other females. I didn’t know how I knew that but I did, just as sure as I knew anything else at that point.

  ‘Pain,’ I thought and pushed that at her, imagining transferring all the agony I was feeling right then into her energy signature.

  She hissed and leapt off the cave roof, landing at the mouth, just in front of our plasma shield. She wore no armor, though I doubted that she needed it, and she was more limber than the males. She had ropelike hair, like the giants, but with a swollen belly.

  Her eggs.

  I wanted to turn off the shield and pump her full of bullets, but I didn’t want to risk her getting to Jeremy or anyone else.

  She held her hand in the air and waved it around, grinning ear to ear, showcasing her gnarly teeth.

  “Oh shit,” Damien said beside me.

  “What?” Was she hurting him? My headache had gone away, but had she managed to transfer it to him somehow? Something even worse?

  “I’m waking up,” Damien replied, eyes wide.

  “Me too!” Ronnie cried out.

  “Kit!” Nox yelled as his hands started to disappear.

  My chest started to heave as I started at the bitch. She was waking us up? That was her evil plan?

  Everyone threw their guns in the middle of the cave as they disappeared. I waited for that familiar nauseous feeling… but it never came.

  “Kit Steele is mine.” The woman grinned.

  Oh no. She’s waking everyone but me. How is that possible?

  I looked around the cave and started grabbing all of the weapons my friends had left behind, piling them on top of me. She wanted to kill me. I could see it in her eyes as she just stood there, strategizing.

  I reached forward and flipped on the data dump from the plasma brick, and the female shot backward five feet, crouching down and hissing.

  ‘Dawn. Kit needs help. Female sentry trying to kill me,’ I sent to my only Dream Wars ally.

  I waited a minute and then heard her reply. ‘Kit, Roger is nearby.’

  The female slammed against the plasma shield and it wavered a little. Could she take down the shield? My heart rate elevated as adrenaline rushed through me.

  I bent down and toggled the little switch that turned on the data dump. She flinched for a moment, but stood there and took it. She was just standing there, staring at me as the invisible data lashed into her, seemingly causing pain, yet she was somehow resisting it.

  A
thump sounded on the roof, and I had my gun pointing overhead just in time to see a male sentry peeking down over top of me.

  Terror gripped me. I was all alone. I was in the Dream Wars all alone. This had never happened before. Master Aki’s training came to mind and I took a deep breath, calming my mind. I was a badass, ghoul-killing machine. I could find a way out of this.

  Another thump on the roof. I looked up to see another sentry standing next to the first one. I knew females took multiple male partners in their lifetime, so these were probably members of her harem. Come to slay me and make her happy, so they could get laid or something.

  ‘Roger needs to be careful. There are at least two sentries and one female,’ I told Dawn.

  There was a pause. ‘Okay, Roger will bring friends. Will take longer. Is Kit okay?’

  The sentry above me started to jump and pound the top of the cave. Bits of dust and rock shards fell down, and the very real fear that it might crumble on me and hit me.

  ‘Yeah… just hurry.’ I didn’t want to lead Roger to his death. But if he could bring friends and get there quickly, it might end up okay.

  Why isn’t Damien waking me up? It occurred to me then that Damien might not know where my body was. This female bitch might have somehow moved it, or woken Damien and the group up in Papua, New Guinea, while my body was still in Vancouver. That was one of the most terrifying feelings I’d ever had.

  The female walked closer to the plasma shield, pinning me with a sharp-toothed grin. “Kit Steele will die,” she said in her foreign, deep-throated voice. It was raspy and not feminine at all. If not for her breasts, I wouldn’t know she was female.

  Screw this freaking flesh eater.

  ‘Pain,’ I thought and reached out with my senses, brushing against her dark and ferocious energy. This woman was evil. When I felt her signature, I pushed the pain at her as I channeled the feeling of a thousand pins pricking my skin.

  Her eyes widened and she hissed, stumbling backward.

  Oh hell yeah. Kit is a weapon. Bring it on.

  Some crazy shit happened then. It was like slow motion. The female peeled her lips back and roared, like an honest-to-God battle cry, and then clapped her hands together. A wave of power flew from her hands and knocked my plasma shield out. Just like that, she’d brought all of my protections down.

  Why did I poke the bear?

  I pulled up my guns, one in each hand, and started shooting. That’s when I realized I’d underestimated the females. We all had. We had no idea what they were capable of. She went all Matrix on me, moving ten times faster than the sentries, dodging most of the bullets I fired. She weaved in and out of the space at a blistering pace, and the two sentries on top of the bolder dropped down in front of me.

  Fuckity fuck. If I don’t wake up in the next ten seconds, I’m dead.

  Reaching behind me, I pulled one of my samurai blades and kept my gun in the other hand. I didn’t even have time to search the ground for an RPG launcher, not daring to take my eyes off the two sentries before me.

  The sentry to the left lunged forward and at the same time, a burst of fire exploded behind him. I heard the female hiss, but I couldn’t see her or focus on anything but the threat before me. The sentry was already on top of me, mouth open. My one knife hand was pinned between us, but I was able to pop off a shot into his mouth, that forced him to move back a few inches. Then I brought my sword down and then up into his crotch, slicing the meat there.

  He roared, lunging forward undeterred with his razor-sharp teeth, and tried to take a chunk out of my shoulder. Doing an awkward pivot, I was able to move just out of his grasp. My samurai sword was trapped between our bodies, so I dropped it and reached into my thigh holster, ripping out my smaller blade. Just as he was coming for my head, I brought my knife up hard and fast, slamming it into the lower part of his jaw.

  The knife went in all the way to the hilt, and black oily blood spurted over the top of my hand. The sentry reeled back in pain, and that’s when he was doused with fire.

  Roger had arrived.

  I backed deeper into the cave until I hit the back wall. Fire rained down at the opening, but I kept my head down, tucking into my elbows for protection. Heat danced across my skin but didn’t burn.

  When the brightness of the fire died down, I looked up, gun still in hand. The two dead sentries were on the ground, but the female was gone.

  ‘Hi, Roger. Is it safe to come out?’ I asked.

  ‘Hi, Kit. Yes, tall ones are dead. Breeder ran off,’ he confirmed.

  I sighed. That female was still alive. Breeder. The Galadrias’ term for her made me shiver.

  Before any more of them could come out of hiding, I ran out to the entrance of the cave and nearly tripped over the plasma bricks. Jumping over them, I spun and saw that Roger and two friends were on the ground, heads craned toward me.

  I waved awkwardly, and Roger lowered his head in greeting.

  ‘Get on and we will fly,’ he told me.

  I didn’t need to be told twice. With the sound of giant stomping feet in the distance and the threat of that female breeder coming back, I was so out of there. I would be waking up soon anyway, so flying the skies until that happened seemed best.

  As I threw a leg over him, he turned his head back unnaturally far. ‘Why is Kit covered in Galadria food?’ he asked, sniffing my leg.

  My eyes widened, and it took me a second to get his meaning. The green stuff.

  ‘Oh. I was trying to mask my scent so the giants wouldn’t eat me.’

  Roger nodded. ‘Kit is smart.’

  His wings snapped open then and he boosted off the ground, taking to the sky.

  I petted the side of his rib cage. ‘Thank you, Roger Marshmallow. I am forever in your debt.’

  Roger nodded. ‘Dawn has asked Galadria council for permission to bring Kit to sky home. Permission granted.’

  I froze. Sky home? The elusive place where Galadrias birthed, and raised their young until they were old enough to fly the Dream Wars, and find their own food and shelter? And I was invited there?

  ‘I… I’m honored, Roger. Thank Dawn and the council for me,’ I told him.

  He was quiet a moment. ‘You just did,’ he said.

  Wow. It was that easy?

  I laid my head on the spot between his shoulder blades, staring out into the dark green phosphorescent sky, and wondered what sky home would be like. Would I wake up before I’d arrived there? For once in my life, I didn’t want to wake up. I’d been talking with Dawn since I was a young kid. For ten years I’d been curious about sky home, about how the Galadrias lived their lives. Now I was finally going to see it.

  We flew for over an hour, up and up and up, my ears popping a few times as we moved through thick green and grey clouds. I was just wondering if we were going to fly too high, to a point where my human body couldn’t take it, when we broke through the clouds and a brilliant golden white light washed over me. I sat up slowly, holding on to Roger’s sides, and stared at that light.

  It was the sun.

  Looking down so I wouldn’t hurt my eyes, I started to weep. I didn’t know why—maybe I was about to get my period or something— but for the past ten years I’d come to the dark, depressing Dream Wars, and knowing that somehow, the entire time our sun was being hidden made me cry.

  ‘Is Kit hurt?’ Roger asked, worry filling his words.

  I laughed. ‘No, Kit is happy. Kit likes the sun.’

  ‘The warm light?’

  I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. ‘Yes, Kit likes the warm light. It reminds me of home.’

  Roger nodded. ‘Every planet we go to has a warm light.’

  That wasn’t a surprise to me. You needed the sun for humanlike life to exist.

  ‘The warm light kills the hatchlings, so the breeders hide it.’

  Now that did surprise me. I tucked it away for possible future use.

  I was about to ask him more about the breeders when a large floating
island came into view. It was literally a floating hunk of dirt in the sky, filled with lush hyper-colored plants and hundreds of Galadrias of all sizes. I just stared, my mouth hanging open as we flew closer and started to descend over the top of it. It was about the size of a large shopping mall, big enough that I could walk the perimeter in a couple hours but too small for the entire Galadria race to live up here full time. As we landed, I saw a huge clear jelly-like lake, something I’d never seen there before, and off to the side a smaller green pond where a few medium-sized teenage Galadrias were drinking.

  ‘Roger. It’s incredible,’ I said breathlessly.

  Dawn was waiting for me with four extremely large Galadrias behind her.

  ‘Roger loves sky home,’ he told me.

  I could see why. It was like a calming oasis in the middle of the evil shit storm of the dark Dream Wars.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ I dismounted and ran to Dawn.

  She stepped forward, eyes half-lidded and a slight smile on her lips. ‘Kit is safe,’ she said as I crashed into her neck and hugged her tightly.

  ‘Because of you.’ When I pulled back, I saw concern in her eyes.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her.

  Dawn looked back at one of the big Galadrias. She was a stunning purple color, with wise pearl-colored eyes and large bushy feathers. The Galadria nodded, and Dawn looked back to me. ‘Kit, Dawn must tell you something now. Something that will scare you.’

  I swallowed hard. How much more scary shit could I take? Honestly.

  ‘What is it?’ I was never prepared for Dawn’s eerie proclamations.

  ‘Kit is stuck in the Dream Wars. Kit energy has been pulled into the grid. Breeders will not let Kit go back home.’

  I nearly swallowed my tongue.

  Swaying on my feet, I fought down the panic that threatened to consume me.

  I’m stuck here? Alone?

  It was my worst nightmare come to life.

  Eleven

  I was still trying to comprehend Dawn’s words, that I was stuck there.

  ‘What? Who? How do you know that?’ I asked in a rush.