“I am impressed.”
Locke’s muffled voice startled Valenthor, who had all but forgotten the masked stranger. He relaxed his grip on the hammer and turned to Locke for an explanation.
“Whoever veiled this place was a true master.” Locke moved past Valenthor to join Destiny at the base of a sheer wall of rock.
Valenthor followed, straining to see what had captured his companions’ attention. He saw nothing amiss. In fact, if they had not stopped, Valenthor likely would have pulled himself up and over the ledge without a second thought.
The hole seemed to appear only after Destiny pulled back the brown and barren branches of a shrub. He couldn’t decide if the camouflage had been magical or merely a trick accomplished through angles and strategic placements of brush. Before he could ask about opening, Destiny ducked her head and disappeared inside the side of the small cliff.
“After you,” Locke said, gesturing at the hole with his staff.
The old injury in his side, caught in a state between scab and scar, protested as Valenthor hunched down. The smell of earth clung to the chilly air. At first, the blackness of the cave’s interior was absolute, and he was forced to feel his way along one hard, jagged wall. Then he hit something soft—Destiny, he realized, as soon as he heard her voice. The words, spoken in a near whisper, were impossible to decipher.
Another spell!
No sooner had he come to the realization than a blue-white light enveloped the cave. Locke’s eyes must have acclimated to the sudden illumination an instant before his because he was the first to speak.
“A hiding place such as this is worthy of the world’s most precious treasures. One should hope to find an enchanted sword, mayhap, or gold and gems enough to acquire an army or two. Methinks the corpse of a small girl is a poor substitution.”
If Destiny deigned to reply, Valenthor did not hear her. There was no sound in the entire world. Nothing existed except for the motionless form sprawled out at the back the surprisingly spacious cave. Numbly, he approached his daughter and fell to his knees. His arms reached for the girl. His calloused hands combed through her curly black hair.
Tears spilled down his trembling jaw.
“Valentine!” he sobbed.
A hand on his shoulder. “She has not departed for the afterworld, Valenthor,” Destiny said softly, soothingly. “Neither does her spirit dwell in this world.”
There was no heartbeat but no stench of rot either. Valentine’s shift, stained here and there with dirt and blood, did not cover her chubby arms and legs, which were painfully cold to touch. In the uncanny azure glow, her skin looked like that of someone who had suffered exposure to the elements.
After the Jötunn raid on the Three Rivers, Valenthor had discovered the remains of his wife strewn about the path approaching their home. He had not found any trace of Valentine. His final prayer to the gods was that her body had been among those cast on the communal pyre he and the rest of the returning hunting party had built. Better that she died quickly than be carried away by the giants, he had always believed.
Valenthor had never thought to see his daughter again, alive or dead.
Let alone somewhere in between.
“How is this possible?” he asked, his voice cracking.
“I know not,” Destiny said. “The Ancestors showed me this place as I slept. In the dream, I first witnessed the battle that destroyed your home, Valenthor. Then I was soaring far above the world, and I saw the entrance to this cave. I believe the Ancestors brought her here.”
If the Ancestors have the power to steal Valentine from the Three Rivers, why did they not do so before the Jötunn attack?
Valenthor wanted to confront the owner of that calm, gentle voice, but he couldn’t bear to look away from his daughter. “Why bring me here? Did you believe that seeing her in this state would provoke me to swear vengeance upon the Jötunn? Is this how you would coerce me into fighting your enemies and fulfilling the prophecy?”
“I brought you here because it was the will of the Ancestors,” she said.
“Damn your Ancestors!” he roared, shrugging off her hand and turning to face her at last.
Destiny’s eyes widened in alarm, but she did not back away.
Locke cleared his throat. Perhaps it was another scoff. “The girl is cursed, Valenthor. Either she was the target of a baleful spell, or the gods interceded so that the Jötunn would ignore her while she feigned death. If the former is true, then your daughter might still be saved.”
Valenthor eyed Locke warily and waited for the man to continue.
“You must find the fiend who did this and kill him.”
***
Vincent opened his eyes and groaned. A sliver of yellow light pierced the blessed darkness of his room through the gap between his door and the floor. He heard a woman’s voice. He heard his name.
I’m not ready to be Vincent again…just five more minutes, Mom…
He rolled over. Whiskey splashed onto his neck, spilling from the bottle he forgot he was holding. Confident that the bottle had ended up in a more-or-less upright position, he buried his face into his pillow and tried to pass out again.
The three knocks battered Vincent’s brain like shotgun blasts.
“Go away,” he said, but the pillow swallowed the words. He turned his head, belched, and repeated, “Go away!”
“Dude, I think you should hear this message,” Jerry called through the door.
Half rolling, half stumbling out of bed, Vincent gave the f-word more syllables than it had any right to. He kept one hand on the wall to steady himself as he dragged himself to the door. The other hand still clutched the whiskey bottle.
Vincent opened the door and swore again when the searing light from the living forced him to squint. “What’s going on?”
“Sorry to bug you, but this sounded like it might be serious.” Jerry went to the answering machine and pressed a button.
A mechanical voice said, “Message one, 5:37 p.m., Saturday…”
What time is it now? How long was I out?
“Hey, Vincent. It’s Leah. I wanted to check in…again…and, well, I’m probably overreacting, but I just had a very strange conversation. I was trying to reach a professor who has done research on various sleep phenomena, but a man named Boden called back. He was fishing for information. I didn’t tell him anything about you, but…I don’t know…he gave me the creeps. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about…just…be careful, I guess. Anyway, I’m on my way to this family thing, but I’ll have my phone. Please give me a call when you get this.”
The answering machine beeped and went silent.
Leah’s words bounced around inside Vincent’s head, but he couldn’t concentrate on any of them long enough to come up with any kind of meaning.
“Is everything OK, man?”
Vincent saw Jerry look at the whiskey bottle and took a long, defiant gulp. The gesture was undermined, however, by the fury of coughs that followed.
“Just peachy, Jerry.” Cough. “Never better.”
Jerry frowned. Vincent smiled.
“Dude, I’m getting kind of worried about you.”
“Heh, join the club,” Vincent laughed. “My mom can be president, and Bella is the vice—”
Bella!
Vincent lurched forward and would have fallen if he hadn’t caught himself on the desk. Jerry stepped forward to help him, but something in Vincent’s expression must have made him change his mind because he quickly backed off.
“You son of a bitch,” Vincent spat. “You left the door open again. Today. This morning. And Bella came in. I came home, and my goddamned wife was lying on the couch because you don’t know how to use a fucking key!”
Jerry wore a look of absolute astonishment on his stupid face.
“Don’t you have enough brain cells left in that hippy-dippy head of yours to remember to lock the door? Now Bella thinks I’m cheating on her because Leah was here. And I’m not sleeping
with Leah. I mean, Leah was there when I was sleeping, but it’s because she’s a sleep doctor, and I might not have been sleeping anyway. Only Bella doesn’t know I’m losing my mind, and you sure as shit better not tell her!”
Jerry backed up until he bumped into his recliner. He maneuvered around it so that the ugly yellow chair stood between the two of them.
“Hey, take it easy. It was just an accident!”
“Where the hell were you anyway?” Vincent demanded. “You’re never up before noon on a Saturday. If you had been here, you could have warned me she was her or, better yet, sent her on her way.”
“I drove up to Oshkosh for my sister’s birthday. We met for lunch.” The wrinkles on Jerry’s forehead made a rare appearance. “You’re pretty wasted. Maybe you should sleep it off.”
Vincent’s laugh ricocheted off the empty walls of the apartment. “That means a lot coming from a junky like you.”
Jerry sighed and walked into his bedroom. “Whatever, man.”
“Yeah, go light up another joint, Son of Chong!”
Vincent raised the bottle in mock toast to his roommate and brought it to his lips again. But the liquor didn’t want to stay down. He made a mad dash for the bathroom and emptied his stomach into the toilet.
When he was certain there was nothing left to purge, he eased back onto his butt, resting his back against the sink cupboard. He wiped his slick forehead with a shirtsleeve while the radiator, toilet, and tub circle him like unrelenting predators. He closed his eyes, but that only made the world spin faster.
Going to be a long night. Better stay close to the toilet.
He crawled over to the bathtub and climbed in. None of positions he tried stopped the incessant storm from rocking his porcelain boat. He cringed at every twist of his guts. He moaned. He shivered.
He prayed for death.
That’d be fitting. She died in the tub too…
***
The fading light inside the cave made the eyeholes of Locke’s mask seem endless. The gods only knew what expression was hidden beneath. Valenthor turned to Destiny. Her eyes shimmered with unspent tears. Her soft lips sank into a solemn frown.
“We must trust the Ancestors to guide us,” she whispered.
Valenthor’s scoff was even louder than Locke’s.
“Bravo, milady. Well played,” Locke said. “Prithee forget the phantoms for a moment. You told Master Valenthor from the start that you wanted him to be your Chosen One, to save your homeland. All along, you sought the aid of the living to further your scheme, not the dearly departed. I fail to comprehend why a host of dead elves would care about the soul of one human girl.”
Destiny flinched, her customarily wide eyes narrowing into slits. “Still your tongue, scoundrel. This is a holy place!”
Scoff. “One thousand pardons.” To Valenthor, Locke said, “We can surmise that the one who cursed your daughter is a friend of the giants. The spell was cast during the Jötunn raid on the Three Rivers. If we can find that band of giants, mayhap we will find your sorcerer.”
Valenthor glanced back at Valentine. “What choice do I have?”
“She will be safe here,” Destiny insisted.
She took his arm, but he pulled away.
“Have your Ancestors revealed where we might find the Jötunn’s war camp?” he asked. “Or shall we wander the wilds slaying giants until we happen upon this sorcerer by chance?”
She closed her eyes—in suffering or supplication, he couldn’t say—and wordlessly left the cave.
“Why so morose, milady?” Locke called after her. “Regardless of differing beliefs, your champion has answered your call to battle.”
Locke’s long coat stirred up the dust as he spun around and ducked under the low arch of the cave’s opening. Over his shoulder he said to Valenthor, “This might prove interesting, provided we don’t all perish.”
Valenthor hesitated, sparing one final look at his daughter, and then followed his companions out of the cave. Silently, he swore to the gods, the Ancestors, and any other unseen power that the next time he looked upon his daughter, she would look back.
***
The ringing of the phone proved such a stark contrast to the stillness of the cave that Vincent scrambled out of the bathtub, instantly alert and reaching for a weapon that wasn’t there. At first, he didn’t recognize his apartment, but another shrill chime propelled him through the kitchen and over to the phone.
“Hello?” he asked anxiously.
Silence.
“Hello?” His heart pounded.
“Is this Vincent Cruz?”
“Yeah…Christ, what time is it?”
Pause. “Are you a patient of Dr. Leah Chedid?”
“Yeah. Who is this?”
Pause. “My name is Boden.”
The name sounded familiar. He struggled to bring the fragments of memory into focus, but whatever he might have known about the man had been swept away by an undertow of booze. Out of nowhere, he suddenly remembered shouting at Jerry.
Did that really happen? Why were we arguing?
“Are you seeing Dr. Chedid because you are experiencing unexplained dream phenomena?”
“What? Who are you?
Pause. “Have you ever entered someone else’s dream?”
“Huh?”
“Has someone else entered your dream?” Boden pressed.
Vincent rubbed at his temples with his free hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What does that even mean, ‘enter someone else’s dream’? I have narcolepsy and nightmares because my daughter died.”
“Nightmares?”
“Long story. Leah’s my doctor. If you have any questions, you can talk to her.”
Pause. “I might be able to help you.”
Vincent chuckled. “Unless you know an evil wizard who hangs out with the Jötunn, I think you’re out of your league, pal.”
Silence.
“That’s what I thought,” Vincent said. “I’m hanging up now.”
“Wait, did you say, ‘Jötunn’?”
“Have yourself a good night, pal.”
Pause. “Do you know Milton Baerwald?”
“Never heard of him. Good night.”
“Do you know DJ?” the man asked, but Vincent was already dropping the phone back onto its cradle.
He looked at his wrist, but he wasn’t wearing a watch. It was pitch black outside. That didn’t mean much in the middle in the winter. Jerry’s light was off.
Vincent dragged himself over to the couch, stretched out, and considered turning on the TV.
He closed his eyes instead.
Chapter 21
Milton tripped and hit the pavement hard. He rolled onto his back, sucking in the bitter-cold air in great gulps. A few lonely snowflakes wafted down from the endless gloom above. Confetti blowing down from a celestial celebration. Litter from heaven.
There was no sign of the black helicopter, no sound whatsoever except for his own panting.
I am alone. Again.
Overcome by exhaustion and despair, Milton closed his eyes. He saw DJ aim his handgun at the tall man, fire, and miss—heard him say, “My, you’re a tall drink of water.”
The boy is probably dead. Thanks to me.
Shadows had concealed the tall man’s face, but Milton was certain he knew him. Was it the same agent who had been chasing him all along? And what name had he used to address Milton?
“Why can’t I remember?” Milton groaned, even though he was certain he knew the answer. His pursuers had locked away his memories so that he could not betray their secrets. But unless he could piece the clues together to come up with a working hypothesis before the tall man and his allies returned, Milton might as well surrender and be done with it.
He made a feeble attempt to pull himself up from the sidewalk but did not rise.
DJ was right about one thing. I can’t run forever. I have to catch my breath. I have to think.
Everything had happene
d so fast after the bus crashed, but he remembered the tall man calling him by a different name. It had seemed so important at the time, but the word was lost to him now, locked behind the same doors that hid the facts he so desperately needed.
Since he couldn’t recall what the tall man had called him, Milton focused instead on the van and its peculiar emblem.
That horse had eight legs. I’m sure of it. I recognized it. But from where? A cereal box? A movie? No…a book. A book about mythology! Yes, it was Sleipnir, the gray stallion Odin rides!
Milton’s breath caught in his throat. For a moment, he saw the laboratory and the man with the high forehead in the white coat. He stared into the gray-green eyes.
He saw the syringe, the sword.
From somewhere deep in his mind, Milton heard his own voice say, “Odin is chief god in the Norse pantheon. He is associated with wisdom, magic, prophecy—”
“And battle and death,” the man with gray-green eyes added.
“Yes, as well as poetry and the hunt,” Milton replied. “All of the Norse gods are complex creatures, not nearly as straightforward as their Greco-Roman counterparts.”
“And you think I should be Odin, rather than you?”
“It’s better this way,” Milton said. “Odin was never afraid to get his hands dirty, and before all of this is over, the waters are bound to become murky indeed.”
Pause. “Who will you be then, Milton?”
“Borr,” he answered. “Odin’s father.”
Sprawled out on the sidewalk, Milton gasped. The remembered conversation had moved the mental door, nudged it open a little. Desperately, he reached for his memories, eager to take hold of the revelations he had been denied for so long.
But something heaved the door shut once more, allowing only a single memory to escape.
***
Milton isn’t drifting tonight. He isn’t even lucid dreaming. Images wash over him, diluted and distant. Since discovering dream drifting so many years ago, he likens such ordinary dreams to subconscious TV shows that seldom keep his full attention. It’s not him in the dream, but rather an actor pretending to be him.
If Souls Can Sleep (The Soul Sleep Cycle Book 1) Page 16