She let out a sigh. “I know how to get out of this room, but the other ones are worse.”
What part of Dreamland was she stuck in? “How do we get to a different room, then?”
She shrugged. “Don’t forget, I warned you. Just concentrate on the mirror and try to remember where you want to go.”
I needed to go back to where I belonged, back to the people who cared for me.
Bo’s and Zoe’s faces shown in the mirrors, blotting Lillian and I out for brief, flickering moments. Bo’s blue pirate coat was ripped and tattered, his blonde hair lank. He scrubbed at his red-rimmed eyes and set his hands on his knees, looking up.
My ears buzzed and my neck rolled with heat as my gut twisted with longing and homesickness. I never thought I’d feel that. I waved my arms. “Bo! Bo!”
Zoe clamped her dark fingers on top of her head, mashing down her afro. Her big, brown eyes searched the area around her as tears fell from down her round cheeks.
Bo leaned over something and shook it. “River!”
“Bo!” I grabbed the frame of the glass. “Zoe!”
“You don’t want to—”
I have no idea what else Lillian was trying to tell me. The glass lost all solidity and I fell, tumbling head over heels, twisting from one side to the other. I lost the sense of up and down, or right and left. I had no idea where I was going or how to get to where I needed to be. Wind roared. Pieces of debris shot through the air in every direction.
I corked the scream wedged deep in my throat. I jerked to the side, dodging a jagged piece of a fence post, and arched my back to miss hitting a shiny bumper.
Tornado?
None of this made sense.
I dug into my heart and reached for the sense of who Bo was. I closed my eyes and pulled, drawing myself closer to him, dragging myself out of this maelstrom. The air grabbed me, hauling me back, keeping me tightly leashed to the inside of the wind tunnel.
No. I had to get back. I had to get out.
I clenched my fists and roared back at the wind with every ounce of will I had.
The wind disappeared.
My ears rang with the silence. Something wet clung to my back. Someone gripped my arm with an iron force that hurt.
I swallowed and opened my burning eyes. My body shook uncontrollably. I couldn’t find any warmth.
Bo’s square face filled my vision, blurry at first, but then came into focus. Worry-lines etched his mouth. He was the one threatening to break my arm. His other rose to grip the top of my head. “River.”
Knees dug into my other side and thin arms wrapped around my arms and chest. Zoe’s springy, dark hair tickled my nose with the scent of wood and growing things.
I raised my shaking arm and hugged her back. “Where—” My voice came out as a croak. I swallowed and tried again. “Where are we?”
“We’re safe. For now.” Bo released his grip in order to take off his coat. He moved Zoe off my chest and draped the coat over me. “We’re safe.”
Zoe latched onto my hand.
“Your ship?” I fought to remain conscious. I had to, but I was so tired and I couldn’t stop shivering. My eyes drooped closed.
“We’ll get her back. Don’t you worry. Harper, did you find a place for us to—”
I raised my heavy eyelids. “Bo, what’s wrong?”
He raised a single blond brow and raised both hands in the air. “We come in peace.”
I TIPPED MY head up. The jet black sky dominated my line of sight, drifting patches of dreamplanes floating by. One green and oblong. One pink and rectangle. All flat and twisted with the dangling remains of Grandmother Willow’s roots swaying along the bottoms. I craned my head a little further. Pressure built inside my skull, pounding with the beat of my heart in my right eye.
I saw the tip of an ebony knife.
“We come in peace,” Bo repeated. He flicked the fingers of his raised right hand toward me. “My friend is very sick.”
“Ya don’t look so flash ye’self.”
Flash? Dreamlanders didn’t know dreamer slang, and that accent. I couldn’t quite place it. I shifted, digging deeper into the sand so I could see the invading force.
Kids. Lots of them, all wearing clothes that seen much better days.
The leader held a black unicorn’s horn in her forward hand, twisted and gleaming. It had been carved into a knife, but the folds of a unicorn’s horn went deep and were still visible along the short blade, blending into the natural horn of the handle. She tightened her grip on it, and the blade shot sparks of electricity.
My neck protested and my right eyelid drooped under the growing pressure in my head.
Her pale blue gaze met mine, startling and exotic against her brown skin. A tight braid of black hair fell over her shoulder. She stood taller than the other kids and looked older. “A pira’ in Dreamland.” She chuckled and glanced at the others before turning back. “And an eldeh. Two eldehs.”
“He’s still a kid,” Bo said.
“Don’t be a whacker. He’s got a beard.”
“He’s still pretty young. Are you going to kill us?”
She dropped to my side, shoving Zoe out of the way. Her knife hovered over my face almost.
Bo grabbed her wrist, his expression dark.
She met his intensity.
He narrowed his eyes and lowered an eyebrow.
“Rack off.” She jerked her arm out of his grasp, and continued to run the horn inches from me. “Wha’ happened?”
“We—”
“Grandmother Willow,” I said, interrupting, though I didn’t know why I felt it was so important. “She showed me how to get out of the tunnel. It led to the web.”
The girl nodded. “You touched the string, din’ya?”
I shivered. I just wanted to close my eyes. I just wanted to sleep.
“Whachya ask the willow to discovah this place?”
My eyelids fluttered closed, losing the battle. “Safe. I wanted to find a place to keep my dreamers safe.”
I didn’t see her expression. I fell into blissful sleep.
My fingers felt like sausages, my tongue like a leather strap.
Everything blurred. Something white and smooth rose like a dome over me.
Silence.
I tried to get up.
Someone pushed me back down onto something soft. “River.” Bo. “Just lay back. Sleep.”
Beep-beep-beep.
Cold shot through my veins.
I tried to shudder.
My jaw locked.
My neck tightened.
My fists clenched.
A roar ripped from my chest.
“These are amazing.”
I awoke in a room similar to the reel room in a movie theater, feeling perfectly fine. This room had several screens of movies rolling in front of me, one on top of the other, on top of the other, all on mute. I watched their mouths work, but heard nothing.
The blonde woman from earlier stepped next to me, a smile on her lips. The light from the screens reflected on her pale face. “You see this all the time?”
I looked from Lillian to the lives playing before me. “No.”
But there. Bob scoured the Internet to learn how to speak like a real Aussie to impress his date.
And there. Jack worked on his car, and all the information I could ever need on carburetors swept through me.
Torrie worked her way through the last few levels of the latest Halo.
Jessie taught her son how to drive a car. On ice.
Abcidee devoured episodes of Buffy to learn the lingo.
Phillip experienced Doctor Who for the first time, and couldn’t believe how his life could have been complete without Donna Noble in his life.
I tore my eyes off the screens. “Can you feel them? Hear them?”
“Hear them? It was very loud for a while. We couldn’t hear each other talk.”
“You and I were talking?”
She giggled and continued watchin
g. “You’re the one who brought us here. You said you’d found my answer.”
I had? “What was the question?”
She frowned up at me. “You’re very strange. We were just discussing it.”
“I’m sorry.” Everything was a bit fuzzy. “I don’t remember.”
Pain ripped through my chest.
My lungs were about to shred themselves.
“You’re helping me figure out how to wake up.”
“Oh, right.” I vaguely . . . I mean, I thought I remembered? Kind of.
I struggled. To remain alive, awake, breathing.
My body fought back.
I dug my heels into the soft ground. My body rose. My shoulders pressed into something hard and poky.
“I’m in a hospital. Remember? The doctors are drugging me.”
Right. Yes. I did. Lillian was in a coma and she—
“River!”
Bo’s voice sounded so far away.
My ears rang. My head filled with a muck I couldn’t see through. Something wet slid down the sides of my face from my eyes.
My head. I clenched my fists and gritted my teeth. My head.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The hospital.
Lillian.
I couldn’t keep this up. I lacked the strength. Something had to give.
My body relaxed.
“River?” Lillian touched my shoulder. She looked up, a dimming light shining on the soft angles of her cheekbones. “Something’s wrong.”
The screens darkened.
“River, are you okay?”
I frowned.
My fingers released.
My lungs filled with air.
I opened my eyes.
Bo’s craggy face swam into piercingly clear view. I saw every pore, every wrinkle and worry line. A tear hung at the tip of his nose. He opened his mouth, baring his teeth, and yelled wordlessly. His hand gripped my head.
“I think I’m dying, Lillian.”
Her eyes widened. She latched onto my hand. “You can’t. River, no. You have to stay. You have to help me. The answer is in here somewhere.” She twisted to gesture at the darkened screens. “You have to heeeeeeellllllpppp . . . ”
She drifted away.
Or dispersed.
Or disappeared.
I couldn’t tell.
I couldn’t remember.
Bo slapped me. He yelled. Punched me in the chest.
“River.”
That woman again—the blue one with the soft, soothing voice.
I turned. I could make out nothing in the twisting, rolling shadows.
“River. Don’t let go.”
But I was dying. I was dead.
“Not yet. Just hold on a few more moments.”
How?
Pain shot from my chest, down every artery, vein and capillary.
“Stay with your Bo.” Warmth oozed through me at the sound of her voice, love lifting my heart, removing it’s weight. I could almost feel her arms around me, comforting me.
My throat constricted. Sound erupted, deep and guttural.
My fingers flexed.
Something sharp bit into one hand.
Something cold touched the other.
“Stay with your Zoe.”
I felt the woman’s whisper on my ear, felt her softly scaled lips brush my forehead.
A small cry reached my ear and the smell of wood and greenery met my nose.
“Stay with your Bess.”
Ghost hands latched onto my soul. Courage unlike anything I’d ever needed empowered me. This courage belonged to another.
Someone who had met her demons.
And lost.
Someone who had loved with all her heart.
And lost.
Someone who had fulfilled her every dream.
And lost.
This courage was honed and sharpened, backed by steel. Unrelenting. Fierce.
Bess had courage because she had Reason. What was my Reason for existing?
A blue hand landed on my chest.
My eyes widened, my body relaxing. Eyes of lightning. I sank into the shadows I lay on.
Those eyes became larger, wider, until I could see nothing else.
Wind whistled around me. Lightning laced the air, dancing in the sky like fuzz off the trees. One jagged, white finger of it touched my outstretched arms.
Information charged through me.
Before me stretched a world of storms and dreamers who lived in the clouds. A world of clouds and water and rain. Dreamers with wings.
Dreamers who lacked human form.
Dreamland had lightning once because it had been based off another world, a world much different than the one I knew. My version of Earth.
Eons stretched before me. Different iterations of Dreamland. Animal. Alien. Lightning and dragons. Human.
Dreamland was an infestation feeding and building hope. She fed off the desperation and chaos when she took her hope back.
What happened to the worlds once Dreamland was done with it?
War, a male voice said inside my mind that sounded oddly like my own.
They survived and lived on, the blue woman’s voice said. Stronger, more capable, more viable.
If Dreamland was changing again, then Earth was about to be abandoned.
Yes.
And if Earth was abandoned, where would their hope reside?
It will not die, River.
Why was I trapped to this version of Earth if I’d been born to destroy the hope of the dreamers I’d grown to cherish?
You were awakened too soon.
So, I’d been born to bring an end to Earth’s hope? Earth’s Dreamland? Forge on to another world, like the dream men before me? Like Wadji?
Yes.
A dragon, blue and serpentine in body, beat the air with his massive wings. The clouds billowed around him. The lightning skirted away. He pointed his head in my direction and altered course.
You want me to abandon my dreamers? You gave them hope, and now you’re going to take it away?
The blue woman walked toward me, her feet touching nothing but air. I have to feed, River. I offer so much and require so little.
I knew these dreamers, understood how vital hope was to them.
Most of them will maintain it. They always do. Her green-webbed hand cupped my cheek. You are my creation. You will change with me as I will it.
I shook my head.
Or you will die with me.
The blue dragon scooped me onto his back. His left wing hitting the image of Dreamland. She dispersed as if she’d been nothing more than a cloud.
I TOOK IN A big, deep breath. Thick crust glued my lashes together. I rubbed it off, wincing as the jagged edges dug into tender skin.
Bo leaned over from where he was sitting, his blue eyes piercing as he studied me.
I grunted. I felt like I’d been pounded. “Hey.”
“G’day, mate.”
I turned toward the girl who’d spoken, and wished I hadn’t. The movement made my stomach queasy.
The leader of the kids tipped her head to the side to meet my gaze more evenly. Light from a passing dreamplane shone indigo on her sharp, dark cheekbones.
I finally figured out her accent. “You’re from Australia, right?”
A corner of her mouth rose. “Wha’ gave me away?”
I rubbed my right eye. It still felt full of sand. Well, both of them did, but the one more than the other.
“Are ya plannin’ on sticking around?”
“Yeah.”
She narrowed her eyes as she looked straight ahead.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t see in that direction without sitting up, and I wasn’t quite ready for that yet. My uneasy stomach battled with my complete lack of energy. My muscles refused to even think of moving.
Bo squeezed my hand. “You scared us.”
I winced a smile at him. “Sorry. How long have I been out?”
“Days.”
<
br /> I rubbed my eyes, my arm shaking with the effort to hold it up. I looked toward the girl. “Hey.”
She dropped her pale blue gaze to mine, her eyebrows raised.
“What’s your name?”
“Olivia.” She rose, straightening her slight shoulders. “I’ll be back.”
Bo waited until she left to shift closer to me. “Are you sure you’re feeling better?”
“Yeah. I’m tired, but otherwise, yeah.”
“You—” His expression sagged with exhaustion. “You were hit bad with whatever was in that web. I’m pretty sure you died.”
“Pretty sure I did.” Though I felt half-way decent for a dead guy. I looked at the parts of me I could see. I seemed to be in one piece. Time to figure out where we were. A pile of scrap material made up the bed I lay on, and the ceiling seemed to be made of porcelain. “Where are we?
Bo scrunched his shoulders, rolling his head along the uppermost part of his back. “The kids call this place the Tea Party.”
“Why? Or should I ask?”
Bo put his hands on the pile of rags behind him and propped his chin against his shoulder. “You’ll see when you get your strength back.”
The domed walls were smooth and off-white—like the inside of a tea pot. To my right was a large opening, easily as tall as Bo and just as wide. Outside, cornflower blue ice bubbles glowed, the power of the black aether of space punching through the thinner spots.
I looked up. Through the hole in the top—where the lid to the tea kettle should have been?—a pale, purple dreamplane drifted, warped and oblong like a twisted moon. “Are we talking Mad Hatter tea party, or Wizard of Oz Chinatown?”
Bo frowned at me. “There was no Chinatown in the Wizard of Oz. Where are you getting your information from?”
I wasn’t for sure, but I knew it the same way I understood what Google was. “You obviously don’t remember it right. In the last movie, China Girl lived there. The Wicked Witch of the East destroyed it. The pretty one, not the prissy one.”
Dream Killers - Complete Season 1 (The Dream Killers Book 3) Page 14