by Allison Pang
And then we were there.
The Heart of Maurice’s Dreaming loomed before us. Honestly, I didn’t know what I was expecting. A midnight dark castle with evil spires, perhaps? A gloomy basement filled with butcher knives? At least something straight out of a horror movie, or Stepford-wife perfect.
But I sure as hell wasn’t prepared for an obsidian wall of glass and rock, beaming with tiny green thorns made of colored jewels. Eerie and beautiful all at once. And wickedly sharp.
And I certainly wasn’t expecting our host to greet us out in the open, calm and relaxed.
“Hello, Abby,” Maurice purred from where he stood, leaning against the wall as though he had nothing to fear from it. The Key to the Crossroads gleamed from where it mockingly hung around his neck. “Fancy meeting you here . . .”
Twenty
I froze, his words cutting through me with an electric jolt. The weight of the world dropped away, my vision narrowing until it was just the two of us.
Me and my murderer.
Fear gave way to anger and my fists trembled with the need to beat his face into the floor, to make him admit he was a royal douche bag of epic proportions . . . to do something.
“I believe you have something that belongs to me,” I said coldly, trying to keep my voice from shaking. My nails bit into my palms and I took a step toward him, ignoring Brystion’s cough of warning. This was a trap. It had to be.
And yet, I couldn’t seem to stop.
“I might,” he said mildly, touching the Key. “But it’s not like I can give it back, now is it?”
His face barely flickered as I approached him, but his eyes narrowed, the reaction gone so quickly I couldn’t have said if it really happened.
“You seem awfully fond of those pet daemons of yours,” he observed. Maurice had a habit of talking too much. It was his way of disabling his foes. I got that now. And there was no point in allowing it to happen again.
“Go,” Brystion murmured to me. “Keep him from reentering his Heart.”
The two of them slid away, their forms shimmering into something else entirely. I didn’t spare a glance at either, locked on Maurice. Like a swaying cobra, I had to keep his attention on me.
“You know, I never quite understood why you hated me so much,” I said. “Sure, I took your place, but why everything else? What did I ever do to you? Or maybe that’s it—all these connections that I have just by accident of birth.”
My upper lips curled at him even as I pointed to the amulet. “Everything you’ve ever had . . . any power you’ve managed to acquire . . . all of it’s stolen.” I let the power of my shield drop slightly. “Even here . . . I have more than you.”
“How are you doing that?” he snapped. “I’m dreaming. I control what happens here.”
I chuckled. “I’m a DreamWalker. Dreams are my specialty.”
Okay, I was completely talking out of my ass, and I suspected he knew that, but this was going to play out one way or another.
“You’re bluffing. You’re a goddamned figment of my imagination.”
I blinked and realized that for all his charisma, the man looked like shit. The dark circles under his eyes spoke of personal demons that probably weren’t anything I wanted to investigate. Odd, though. And easy enough to press upon.
I took another step closer. I had no idea where Sonja or Ion had gone, but I had to trust they knew what they were doing.
“I think you’ve been cornered, Maurice,” I said softly. “And you know it. How’s life in the Shadow Realm treating you?”
He scowled at me. “I don’t have time for this.” Abruptly the wall of obsidian broke apart to reveal a small passage.
“Ion!” I shouted the name before I could stop myself. Maurice sneered at me and melted into the metallic shield of his Heart.
“Shit.” Brystion materialized beside Maurice and snatched at his arm as Sonja attempted to keep the door from shutting. A flood of dark power erupted from the obsidian shield. Unconscious defenses, I realized. I doubted if Maurice really understood this part of himself, but I hoped that would be to my advantage.
Maurice disappeared through the door. I barely managed to get a sideways glance at Brystion before he jerked his head at me, his dark face contorted with the strain of keeping the passage open.
Neither incubus nor succubus made a move to follow me and I realized they couldn’t. OtherFolk would need an invitation or a TouchStone bond for that level of intimacy . . . but I was mortal.
Loophole, my inner voice crowed as a plan started to form. I had the succubus blood, and though I didn’t know if I actually had the power to kill Maurice in the Dreaming, I had broken through the Dreaming once and onto the CrossRoads. It could be done.
And if I ended up in the Shadow Realm with him?
I could maybe get him to leave . . . and go straight into Talivar’s hands.
“Find me,” I murmured to Brystion. Without hesitation, I slipped in after Maurice.
Black. All of it was black. Not the comforting black of night, but the dark, rotting underbelly of a fetid pumpkin. Behind me, the door to the Dreaming disappeared, leaving me completely enclosed, surrounded by whatever demons Maurice housed in his psyche.
I smiled grimly. If it was a battle of nightmares he wanted, I had more than enough to work with. Would my sharks be able to find their way in here?
I patted the vial of succubus blood in my pocket, its weight solid. One of these days I’d have to ask Sonja how physical objects could make their way in and out of the Dreaming, but I supposed it was a form of magic unique to her kind.
“Woolgathering,” I chastised myself, glancing up to see . . . nothing.
The blackness spun out in an infinite plane, without even the silver glow of the CrossRoads to relieve it. What sort of monster was he that he didn’t even have dreams?
A hollow wind blew around me and I instinctively tightened my shields before pushing them out to give me a little space between me and the darkness. It was like being in a tomb, and even though the distance didn’t really have an effect on me, there was something about the way it pressed down.
Getting the fuck out of here was a tremendously appealing idea.
“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here,” Maurice said, his voice oddly accentuated to seem deeper.
I steeled myself and turned around, but there was nothing there except . . . Maurice himself. Nothing bowed or broken about his stance, but the gleam of madness roved thick in his eyes . . . matched by the shining blue of the amulet around his neck.
“And here I half expected to see just a giant head,” I murmured. “ ‘Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain’?”
“I remember that movie. Saw it when it first came out—took Moira to see it. She couldn’t stop laughing at the fairy in the bubble thing. Glinda.”
I blinked, unsure of where this conversation was about to go. I’d nearly forgotten he’d been Moira’s TouchStone for at least seventy years or so. “She must remember it fondly, because she certainly seems to be rather keen on dressing like her sometimes,” was all I could think to add.
“Fae arrogance, to mimic what they cannot create.” He shook his head, his hair paling as though the color were draining out of him. “I would assume you’ve seen that by now. For all their arrogance, the OtherFolk are helpless without us.”
I had nothing to say to this. On a number of levels, he was correct. Our souls were the anchor to the mortal realm. But still.
“So why this destruction? I understand you had your beef with Moira . . . with me, even. But why the hell would you break the Tree?” I didn’t expect him to answer, and he didn’t. I was sure the CliffsNotes version would indicate he only did it so no one else could have it, but in the end it didn’t really matter.
“I didn’t destroy it all. There’s a branch or two still around.” He gave me a wan smile. “I keep one in a little pot. Doesn’t seem to be doing particularly well, though.”
&nbs
p; The realization of what he meant snapped through me. That was what Eildon Tree had been trying to tell me. Not the Key at all, but that Maurice had a part of her . . .
“A Tree like that needs tending outside any mortal hands. Does she sing to you?” The thought sickened me, though it made a fair amount of sense.
“It hasn’t, not for a very long time now.”
If there was sadness in his tone, I couldn’t hear it, and I had the distinct feeling his indifference wasn’t feigned. He genuinely didn’t care anymore.
We stood there, staring at each other for another few minutes. He sighed. “Well, I suppose we should get this started.” He winked, a malicious twinkle shining from beneath his brows. “I’ve never fought a Dreamer directly. I imagine it ought to be rather . . . enlightening. Besides, I know what you’re afraid of.”
Before I could comment, Maurice disappeared, the flickering of the Key swallowed up into the darkness.
He might not have been a Dreamer or had a Dreamer’s powers, but I was in his Heart, and he would definitely have the high ground. It had been hard enough for me to manage in Melanie’s Heart—and I was her friend and buoyed by Ion’s incubus power.
But here?
The ground opened up beneath me, sweeping me away so that I fell. I let out an involuntary cry, but I was done being a victim.
“Oh no you don’t.” I pulled the Dreaming around me and shifted. Feathers and pinions, tail and talons, I shimmered into the silent shape of a great horned owl.
Gravity wasn’t quite what I had expected here, but I could still manage to arc my way so I wasn’t simply plummeting downward. I glided forward as best as I could, and my owlish vision scanned the mist.
My beak clicked in frustration. Why was I even playing this game? I just needed to break through to the other side, right?
I hit the wall. A transparent wall, in fact, but I slammed into whatever it was hard enough to break my neck, and the irony of that made me want to laugh. Pain lanced through my skull, and I dropped the owl form, my concentration broken. I slid down the force field, my ears ringing as I tried to retain my equilibrium . . .
. . . and straight into a deep pool of water.
I had to hand it to the fucker. He certainly did his homework concerning the nightmarish aspects of my dreams. When he’d had me painted into an oceanic Shadow Realm before, he’d undoubtedly watched as I’d fled from my sharks.
On the other hand, he didn’t really know me. He only knew what he’d seen. And afraid of the things or not, I now had a modicum of control over them. Still . . . could my sharks find their way here?
The waves slid over my head, saltwater pouring into my mouth, my lungs, compressing and compressing until I was silently screaming. I closed my eyes and forced myself to calm.
Shift. Shift. Fins, scales . . . gills. If we were going to play this out, I was gonna do it right. A moment later and I was breathing normally, the water filtering through the gill slits at my neck. Surely Sonja would scoff at me if she saw this—after all, she’d gotten on my case more than once for my limiting adherence to physics while inside the Dreaming, but no point in fighting what my instincts told me to do.
I slipped off into the inky depths, my hair streaming behind me. But I was still going to need light. I concentrated again, conjuring a tiny iridescent ball. Nothing too bright. No sense in blinding myself when all I wanted was my bearings.
My head rushed with the power, making me dizzy. I had to pace myself. Last time I’d tried to break through the Dreaming to the CrossRoads, I swam through it, trying to escape my nightmares.
Which were strangely absent. I didn’t get it. What the hell was he trying to do?
Oh.
Teeth emerged out of the darkness with a monstrous alacrity and I skimmed out of their way, the skin of a shark grazing my tail with a sharpness that cut to the bone.
Blood in the water.
But the animal lacked something vital. Without the driving force of my own mental issues behind it . . . it was only a shark, in the end.
Which meant Maurice was slipping.
Enough of this. I pushed down and down and down. The shark followed me, making halfhearted attempts at bites, but I found the more I ignored it, the less it made itself known. The wrongness of this inability grew stronger, but I focused on the task at hand. If I could make it to the Shadow Realm . . .
Deeper and deeper. Down and down and down . . . and there was no end to it. Pity filled me. How empty and awful his life must be to have a Dreaming Heart so empty.
And then I heard it. A ripple in the Dreaming. A song in the darkness.
EarthSong . . .
. . . but so very faint.
I blinked. Maurice’s dreams weren’t empty because he was dying. They were empty because he’d been feeding them to that offshoot of Eildon Tree. My brain recoiled at the thought. He’d been purposefully distracting me, buying himself time. It all snapped into place—by destroying Eildon Tree and saving a small bit of it, he’d been hoping to create one of his own . . . fueled by his own personal dreams and corruption.
The CrossRoads would be at his mercy, skewed beyond measure. Even if he died, his legacy would live on . . . as the very foundation of the CrossRoads itself.
Fury flitted through me and I stopped short, the shark almost slamming into me.
“Bullshit,” I hissed at it, shunting out a white-hot line of anger. It exploded into pieces, shattering in a pink mist of teeth and bits of skin.
I sent out my shield as far as it would go, shoving the water back and lighting up the whole damn place, even as I shifted into my normal form. My teeth cracked together audibly. I’d been in one small room the entire time.
I laid my hands on the obsidian walls, my fingers digging into the glassy rock. “Open.”
Open! my inner voice snarled at it.
“You will fucking open to me. You will open.” I said it again and again, like an odd little mantra. My fingers sliced open on the rock, the blood billowing around the pale skin of my wrists.
An odd little tweak shunted through me like the chiming of bells.
The TouchStone bond. Where was Brystion? I couldn’t bring him here . . . but could I tap into his power? I tried to send some sort of reassurance down the line, but I couldn’t tell if he got it. And there was no time to really experiment.
I tried again, pouring every last bit of anger I had into it, the rock cracking open with a last creak before exploding before me. There! I jumped into the hole, the familiar webbing of the Dreaming wrapping around me as I pushed and pushed, the hollow remains of his Heart leaking like water running down a drain.
Another shark wriggled by me, a mere figment. I grabbed the dorsal fin, punching it in the nose. “Your maker—take me there.”
It wriggled away, but I didn’t let go, and we hurtled downward. In the distance I caught the hazy, fuzzy cobblestones of the CrossRoads far below us, stretched out like spiderwebs. If I let go and headed toward them I could escape the Dreaming . . . but I needed to find that Shadow Realm.
The shark slowed. My limbs moved as though they were encapsulated in Jell-O, the Dreaming growing thick around us. The shark shivered, its body slipping from my fingers as it faded away.
On my own, then.
I wriggled forward, a tiny opening emerging beneath me. I dug my hands into it, scrabbling at to make it larger. And then I fell, floating down and down and down, the last of the shadows parting as I sank . . .
Putrid flesh and rotten eggs. The stench filled my mouth and I gagged. The hum of the EarthSong thrummed in my head, its tone seductive, but with an underlying sadness, as though it were resigned to its fate.
I rolled over, blinking in the dimness of the candlelight. A body lay on its side nearby and I recoiled, recognizing the half-eaten form of a daemon, blood and ashes all around.
“Should I offer you some? I could maybe even heat it up for you,” Maurice coughed. My stomach roiled and I dry heaved against my palm.
I staggered away from the body, gingerly avoiding a still-damp puddle of . . . something. Maurice crouched around a small flowerpot that contained a sickly sprout poking through the dry soil. He sneered at me, moving his hand from his side.
“Little bitch, you gave me a mortal wound.”
“I stabbed you . . . but not hard enough to kill you.”
“Well, it got infected. And so here I am.”
The death odor grew stronger. Necrotic tissue. Corpse flesh. Something wriggled through his fingers and dropped onto the floor, pale and white. This time I did vomit, though how the hell a Shadow Self had anything in its stomach was beyond me.
He let out an amused chuckle. “You are so pathetic, Abby. All this power at your fingertips and you waste your time coming after me.”
“I need that plant,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“Take it,” he retorted. “But you won’t be getting through the Door anytime soon. It only works for the bearer of the Key.”
“You’re going to die anyway. Why do you care?”
“That’s not what I meant.” He snorted. “Even if you get the Key . . . you’re not really here. You’re a shadow. A piece of a dream. And a fool . . . in a place where your DreamWalker powers don’t work. How could you possibly take it? Wear it? And when I die . . . the way to the Dreaming will be shut as well.”
Technically he was right. I wasn’t an incubus who could just pop in and out of the Dreaming at will. But I wasn’t alone.
“I’ve never been one to let technicalities stop me,” I said dryly, pulling the vial of succubus blood from my pocket and rolling it around in my hands. “As you ought to know by now. And quite frankly, I’m tired of your bullshit.”
He cocked his head at me, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “What are you up to?”
“You really ought to tie your threads up better than this.” I hurled the vial at the floor, the glass shattering, the blood spilling out . . . and time slowed down.
This Shadow Realm wasn’t quite like the ones that had comprised the paintings before. Those had been contrived and planned out, each work of art specific to each of its captured souls, but the power of the blood filled me with a heady rush. Maurice’s face paled and he hunched over the dimly singing plant. The blood kept coming and coming, spreading to fill every dark corner with its shimmer.