“China—” He gave me a frank look, his blonde brows low. “I remember there being a scarecrow, but no china dolls.”
I chuckled. My chest ached with the movement, like my ribs didn’t want to bend that way. “Oh, that’s right. You’re older than movies.”
He twisted around to glare, pointing a finger at me. “I’ll have you know, I took my mother to go see that movie when it first came out.”
I smiled, staring up at the concave ceiling. The banter felt good.
He leaned on his elbow and planted one foot flat on the floor behind his other knee. “How are you feeling? Really.”
Like it was time to sit up.
“Careful.” He reached out a hand.
I groaned and got myself sitting. “What happened? Is Zoe safe? Harper?”
Bo nodded. “We got to this place. You were really sick. Olive found us.”
I slumped forward, the back of my hands lying almost flat on the rags between my sprawled legs.
He cleared his throat and focused on the opening to the outside. “That girl knows how to take care of her own. She travels the graveyard.”
“How?”
“Through the tunnels.”
“But the tunnels are dangerous. They’re torn, ripped.”
He shrugged. “She knows how to talk to the tree, or whatever. Same as you.” He smiled wryly. “Only I think she might be better at it.”
I rolled my eyes and picked at a rag. “What does she know about the dreamweb?”
“Didn’t seem to know what we were talking about.” He stood. “You ready to walk?”
Yeah. I was. I pushed myself to my feet. Dizziness smashed into me. My feet tangled in the uneven terrain of the rag-covered floor.
He gripped my upper arm.
I blinked the dizziness away as he guided me down the hill of cloth.
He let me go when we cleared the tea pot, and guided me around the spout of the tea kettle. Before us spanned an entire field of pots and tea cups. Most of them were in good condition. Some were dainty. Others blocky. Some plain. Others quite colorful.
“Glad to see ya on a walkabout.”
I turned to Olivia as she approached from behind.
She exuded confidence, her fingers caressing the hilt of the knife on her belt. I knew she couldn’t be much older than me, however old that was, but she carried herself with an air of experience I hadn’t obtained or even come close to yet. Her black tunic hugged her slim form, and seemed to be made out of some sort of hide, along with her short pants that ended half-way above her bare feet.
I met her smile with one of my own. She intrigued me.
A boy a couple of inches taller than her, but nearly identical materialized beside her.
I frowned at him. His appearance hadn’t come with the tell-tale pop of Place, so how had he arrived?
His pale eyes held a mischievous twinkle as he stuck out his fist. “Kole.”
I pounded it with my own. “How’d you . . . ”
“Appear outta thin air like that?”
“He didn’t.” Olivia walked away at a slow pace.
“Got me a chamelyon a few years back. Took his hide to make m’ clothes out of.” Kole tugged at the front, the corners of his lips drawn down, a cocky air added to his step. “Keeps me out of sight when I don’t want to be seen.”
“What’s a chamelyon?”
He grinned. “Half chameleon, half lion, all mean.”
“So you two are twins?”
“Ah, sis, he’s not the fruit loop you said he was.”
She leveled a look at him. “I nevah said he was.”
“So the pretty, but old one then.”
Bo closed his eyes, his jaw lowered as he smiled through the pain. He mouthed the world, “old” but didn’t voice anything.
I bit my lips to keep from laughing out loud.
The light shifted from red to violet and back to red again. I looked up to see what was happening. A red, warped dreamplane flipped in a slow circle when it came too close to the pale purple one still overhead. The red one raced like a turtle on a different path.
Fascinating.
She stopped and crossed her arms over her chest. “My job’s to keep these kids safe until some’n figures out how to get us all home. You—” She jammed her pointer finger in Bo’s chest. “—don’t take nothin’ that don’t belong to ya.”
I held up a hand to show her we meant no harm. “But you have a unicorn horn.”
“I do. I killed that unicorn to save m’ life and the life of m’ brothah.” She turned back to Bo. “Once we take or kill a thin’, we can’t never go back to that plane.”
I raised my gaze to the graveyard. “There are a lot of dreamplanes out there.”
She raised her face to the sky. “There’s a lot fewah than you’d suspect.”
A light burst in the darkness of the sky like—like, I don’t know. A pulsar? A supernova?
“What was that?”
Olivia lowered her gaze and continued to walk. “That is another plane joinin’ us in the ‘graveyard,’ as you call it. Kole.” She flicked her hand. “I’m goin’ to the tunnels, see if I can’t get the tree to tell me how to get to ‘em.”
“Butchya know it’s not safe,” Kole said, his voice rising a notch. “She’ll be a wreck, like always. And that was a big’n.”
The light grew like a hurtling disc in the sky. Screams reached my ears. Fear pounded through me, slamming me in the chest. I let out an explosive breath and buckled over. As soon as my view of the dying dreamplane broke, the screams stopped. The fear dissipated.
Kole reached for me. “You al’ight, mate?”
I nodded and leaned against the tea pot next to me.
Electricity shot through my body, making every muscle rigid. My head jerked back. My eyes caught sight of the dreamplane.
The slice of light was gone. The dreamplane drifted. The screams reached my ears again. So many. So many. Names came, too. Mary and John and Richard and Samantha and Tommy and—
No. I couldn’t go down this road again. No. I had to—
The electricity let go of me.
I fell to the ground, the swirling ice pressed against my cheek. Aether stared at me from the other side.
Olivia yelled. “Rivah!”
“Oy!” Kole scrambled away. “What the—”
Bo stood over me his arms wide. “I took nothing.”
I looked up in disbelief.
The tea pot bumbled toward us, the china tink-clink-tinking on the ice. How had it moved so far away? It should have trampled us by now. “Save them!” it said in a deep, tinny voice.
“Save who?” I yelled back. My muscles continued to spasm from the electric shock. “Save who?”
The tea pot didn’t stop. Each clinking step vibrated closer and closer. “Save them! Save them!”
I COULDN’T SAVE anyone if I died.
I closed my eyes, taking big, gulping breaths. I had to stop this.
The tea pot pushed Bo out of the way with its long, blue snout, the hooked handle swinging in to finish the job.
I scrambled to a kneeling position and raised my hands. I’d met Dreamland. I knew what she was, how she worked. These creations existed to funnel hope out of children. All I had to do was to retune it.
I reached out with my mind.
“Save them.” Tink. Clink. The tea pot careened unevenly on the slippery terrain.
The ice vibrated under my foot and knee.
Tink. Clink.
The kettle didn’t feel emotions. It was, however, programmed to elicit them. I searched the porcelain for any signs of a program, something that would tell me what needed to be tweaked so it would stop trying to push fear into—
Something clicked inside my mind.
A tiny crack sounded.
Silence.
I opened my eyes.
The blue and white kettle loomed large over me, tipped on one side in mid-step. The lid stood half-opened.
But it remained quiet.
“How’d you do that?” Olivia helped me up.
I got to my feet a lot less gracefully than I would have liked. “I don’t know exactly.”
Bo stood before me. “That had something to do with that—” He pointed his thumb to the sky. “—didn’t it?”
I didn’t glance at the drifting dreamplane. I wanted to, but I couldn’t risk setting off the tea pot again. “I think so.”
Olivia pushed Bo out of the way. She folded her arms over her chest. “I have kids to protect. We stay on the planes that don’t have anythin’ livin’ for a reason. That’s how we remain uneaten. What dangeh are ya to us?”
I held up my hands, my mouth open. I had no idea. Before yesterday, I hadn’t realized I could talk to Grandmother Willow, or to tea pots, or feel dreamplanes as they died.
She shoved me, turning me around. “Tell your guardian we’re just fine up here on ou’ own. We don’t need new ways ta die.”
“My lady.” Wadji pushed his way into our circle, his long dragon tail sweeping around the base of a bright pink tea cup. He towered over us. His blue and white beard streamed in a wind I couldn’t feel as his clawed paws scratched the icy floor with an ear-singeing shriek. “I am the guardian that brought him here.”
“Then you’re the one endangerin’ the lives of m’ kids. Ya big show pony.”
Bo stepped forward. “The tea pot wasn’t trying to kill any of you. It was trying to get River to save someone.”
Wadji lowered his head almost even with mine. “Who was the pot talking about?”
“Them.” I lifted my gaze to the stars. I couldn’t see the dreamplane that had just been jettisoned from Dreamland. But I felt it. I could still hear the whispered names of all the dreamers trapped there. “There are kids stuck, though, a lot of them. We need to get up there.”
Olivia held up a hand to stop me. “ We’ll gathah a team to retrieve ‘em.”
“We could do that,” I said.
“I don’t want you anywhere near them right now. I can save them, an’ I will. Do you know where we can get food?”
I sighed. “Maybe?”
“Good. If you really want to be a hero, get us somethin’ ta eat. We haven’t had anything more’n grass and watah in days.”
She just wanted me off her dreamplane. “Should we come back?”
She spun away. “You wouldn’t be much of a big damn hero if you couldn’t find us some way home. Now would ya?”
I hid my smile. “Wadji, can you take us to Bo’s ship?”
“I brought his ship here.”
Someone was thinking.
Bo and Wadji talked on the way to the edge of the plane. You couldn’t call it a shore. Okay. I couldn’t. There was barely any sand. The “beach” was perhaps a few yards wide. The ship wasn’t that far off either. I walked toward the sea.
Bo stopped me, his gaze on the water. “Why don’t we let Wadji take us across?”
I looked between the two of them. Bo’s crow’s feet deepened.
Thick lines of worry marred Wadji’s face.
“What happened?”
Bo grabbed a fistful of blue fur and made his way onto the dragon man’s back. “After the web, you don’t handle the sea as well.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked down at me. “It means I just got you back, Riv,” he said harshly. “Now, stop arguing and just do as I say. Please.”
I took in a deep breath, but settled behind Bo.
Wadji shifted into full dragon. Your men are a bit spooked. I would recommend you let them take a leave.
“I was just thinking the same thing, old man,” Bo shouted.
Wadji’s rubbery wings snapped as he launched us into the air.
I grabbed a hold of his fur, but to be honest, riding between his wings was a much smoother ride than sitting at the base of his neck.
Do you have a place in mind?
“I do. There’s a bay we sometimes winter at. It’s a lovely loca—”
I tried to peek around him to see why he’d stopped talking, but couldn’t see anything more than a blue dragon head and Bo’s shoulder.
“Where did my ship go?”
You gave me Place. I simply assisted. The dragon’s tone was firm. Now, young River, can I get a Who?
We needed food and I needed a mechanic. Yes. It seemed as though I was healed, but something seemed wrong still. I wanted a doctor, but in Dreamland, we called them mechanics. They were a lot better at fixing people.
I called up all the things that made Mech who he was. Tall, red and beefy. Short snout. A snorter. Loved to flirt, but only when no one was looking, and that meant the women he was wooing as well. He was shy for all he was intimidating. I’d been there when Rulak had saved him from the runners. I’d been there through the sleepless nights as he discovered the “mechanic’s sleep.”
Wadji flicked his body and shifted course.
“We can’t arrive like this. There are no dragons in the Burbs.”
I’m aware.
The sea rolled away. My eardrums popped. The night sky was chased away by the eternal light of Dreamland. Wadji dropped onto the surface of the sea, and his body morphed until I sat on blue planks of wood. His wings bent at right angles and went up, cascading in fluttering, blue sails.
Bo got to his feet and observed his surroundings. “This is amazing. Wadji. You’re amazing.” Bo offered me his hand.
I grasped it and pulled myself up.
“Where are we headed?”
“Back to Rulak. We have information he’ll—”
Gray tentacles appeared over Wadji’s left rail.
Oh, crap! I’d forgotten. We were on the Sea of Dreams and we weren’t protected by Night’s Cruelty.
“What is that?” Bo asked quietly.
“The woman-ish-thing-person who wants to kill you,” I whispered back.
“Oh. Great.”
Candi slithered over the rail with each rolling advance of her dark, violet tentacles. She grabbed hold of the railing, her black claws biting into the soft wood.
I frowned as I put by back to Bo, my arms out. She hadn’t realized this was Wadji?
Her bright pink hair hung in wet tendrils over her back and chest, covering the leather armor protecting her breasts. I realized I should have found that—I don’t know, alluring, perhaps. The only thing I felt was my insides trying to curl in on themselves.
She stopped, her tentacles finding purchase on the planks. The light from above glinted off the red scales of her cheek and brow ridges as she raised her chin. “River.”
“Candi.”
Her dark gills folded in and warped outward as she breathed. “Is this the dream killer?”
I didn’t answer.
A smile slithered across her glistening pink lips, revealing razor sharp teeth. “I told you I would find him.”
“Candi.” I shook my head.
She advanced, her tentacles shifting one on top of the other to bring her toward us. “I’ve been looking forward to this day for so long.”
“Candi, stop it.” Why wasn’t Wadji helping?
His mind voice didn’t answer.
“I’ve gathered the dead dreams for so long, taking their memories, cherishing them.” Her opaque eyelids blinked sideways across her large, turquoise colored eyes. “And now I get to end you.”
I swallowed.
She peered at Bo. “What will your end look like?”
What could I do to deter her? I wasn’t even close to full strength and she was a trained warrior. “Probably a hat.”
She stopped and gave me a startled expression.
I ran my tongue along my molars. “He loved his hat.”
Her large eyes darted to the man. “I don’t see one.”
“That’s because he lost it.” I shook out my hands behind my back to calm their shaking. “But when his soul dies, when his dreams die, he’ll end up in your collection. Then you will know he’s not a bad man.”
“He’s a dream killer, River.”
She only knew one song, didn’t she? “And I told him about it and he’s promised not to kill anymore.”
“Am I supposed to forget about all the dreams he’s murdered already?”
Why was she so unreasonable? “He didn’t know!”
“How could he not have known?” She flexed her black claws. “He put those dreams in his net and destroyed them.”
I ran my knuckles against my brow, my jaw clenched. Was it the fact that she was part squid that made her so unreasonable?
Her big blue orbs danced with barely bridled fury.
“Look, Candi. We have a plan to stop dream killing.”
“I just collected three dreams today.”
“There are more people like him out there.”
“And I will find them all.”
I laughed. “The only reason you found him was because you tracked me. Without him, we can’t get to the others.”
“Three dreams, River!”
“I can’t stop the others without Bo, Candilandra!”
She gnashed her teeth together, and took in a deep breath. “Fine.” She whipped out a tentacle, the claws in her suckers biting into my wrist. “But when you fail, know he is the one I will seek first.”
“You don’t have his Who.”
“No. I have yours.” She let go of me and slipped over the rail.
I rubbed my temple. My Who was going to be the death of me.
“DID SHE JUST threaten you?”
I nodded. My wrist hurt. Blood dripped slowly from a cut. I hadn’t realized she’d gotten me with one of her claws.
Bo took my arm to examine it.
Red, irritated skin surrounded the small puncture wound. I didn’t remember reacting that way the first time she’d grabbed me.
He met my gaze. “What the hell is she?”
I ripped off a strip of my shirt sleeve, which was already in bad shape, and began twisting it around my wrist.
He slapped my hand away, and took the material from me. “Wadji, do you have fresh water we could use to dress this wound with?”
A bucket appeared on a stool beside us.
You were awful quiet, I thought to the dragon man.
He didn’t answer immediately. Her mother is the leader of the guard.
So? You’re a man of dreams.
Dream Killers - Complete Season 1 (The Dream Killers Book 3) Page 15