"Should I apologize?"
"Do you feel bad about it?"
He shook his head. "I feel bad that the knowledge hurts you."
Fair enough. I sighed and shook my head. "Well, not going to lie, it bugs me. But you've got two things working in your favor."
He eyed me. "Oh?"
"The first is that we got this out before anything really happened between us. If you'd told me after, I'd be a lot more upset."
"And the second," he asked when I went quiet.
I slapped my fingers over the seat belt. "The second thing going for you is that killer Superman smile you've got going on."
The grin he flashed me was worthy of the Man of Steel himself.
"That's the one." I opened my door and slid out of the car. "Come on, let's go make me a responsible adult."
Being with Zane wasn't hard, even with the knowledge of him drinking on my half-sister's neck. We wandered through all the aisles of the grocery supercenter and stocked up as if the apocalypse was coming. We didn't talk about anymore hard topics for the most part. But somewhere around the frozen food section, I had to ask.
"Do you still care about her?"
He hooked his thumbs in the loops of his slacks. The shining buckle at his belt shimmered. "It's hard to care about someone who tried to bleed you dry."
"That's not a ‘no.’"
He blew out a deep breath. "Honesty?"
I hesitated. "Yeah, honesty."
"When a being, any being, who lives a long time grows to care for a person, it is very hard for them to stop."
Damn. He still liked my sister. Gross. I couldn't have any fuzzy feelings for a guy, vampire or otherwise, who was into my sister. So, what if they weren't dating anymore? At least, I assumed they weren't dating. There were a lot of ways to say that a relationship was over; attempting to completely exsanguinate someone was definitely on that list.
"Okay. I appreciate your honesty."
"But you don't like what I said," he asked as I piled a bunch of frozen pizzas into the cart. He eyed them but smartly didn't say anything.
"No, I don't. But...well...it's better than you saying it's over when it isn't. How long?"
He gave me a look. "How long what?"
"How long were you and her a thing?"
He thought it over. I wondered how long was too long or not long enough. "A year."
I knitted my brows. "Wait, she's only known for like...three months. Not even."
He nodded, and it was then that I saw the raw pain in his eyes. "I know."
Shoot. There was love there, real love, and real pain. It was going to take him a long time to get over that. Did it take vampires longer to get over their feelings? I would have to assume so. Wei flashed into my mind, and his confusion of feelings. Double shoot.
When we drove back home, the silence was heavy and sour.
CHAPTER NINE
In this dream, I was lying on a table that was familiar and nightmarish. It was the table that I had found Zane on all those weeks ago at the compound. Tubes were hooked into my skin, and the floor beneath me was covered in blood. I didn't like this table. I didn't like this place. I tried to tug myself free, but nothing would move.
Connie's face peered down at me. That perfect Irish cream color bedecked with freckles. Were we really sisters? Here I was with dark hair and sallow skin, thanks to the tubes, and hazel eyes; she was looking like the pin-up child for the freckled red-head.
"What do you want?" I asked, feeling sick to my stomach.
"I want your destiny."
No. She couldn't have that. She could have pretty much anything but that. I knew what she'd do with my destiny; she'd screw it all up. Magic would be saved for the hands of the chosen few. And, as far as I was concerned, that pretty much sucked.
"You can't have it."
She sneered down at me. "You will use my castoff to create a world I loathe?"
Who the heck talked like that? And seriously, when did Connie talk at all? I had always known her to be quiet. Then again, maybe I had never known her. I hadn't thought that she'd had much in the way of romantic relationships; even Jenny had said she'd never seen Connie with anyone. Apparently, my half-sister had been carrying on an illicit relationship under everyone's nose. Had my mother been involved? Had she pushed it to happen?
"Wow," I said with a hint of snappiness, "sounding kind of bitter there, little sister. You mad that your ex is taking me out?"
She gave me a look that told me she was pissed, but nothing else. "I never cared about him."
I shrugged and laid back against the seriously uncomfortable bed. "Sure. Whatever you say."
“I am not you. I don't drool over the dead.”
A thought snapped into my unconscious mind. “That's weird, because apparently you were drooling over him before I was part of the picture.”
Her eyes went bright. It wasn't the kind of brightness that a vampire could get, but there was magic there, wild and angry and brimming behind her eyes. "I will kill you. I will take your destiny."
I yawned. I added in what little stretch the tubes attached to me, slowly draining my life, could offer. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever. You keep breaking into my dreams and making these crappy promises, and I will just lay here and wait for that to happen. Sound good?"
She howled, and it was the sound of a wolf. The large, sharp-toothed dog that followed her about joined her. The sound of their mingled voices was, in a word, creepy.
"Don't make light of what I could do to you."
I sighed. "I'm not making light of it. I promise. I'm just a little over this constant melodrama. "You don't like what the prophecy says I'll do with magic, and I don't like how you keep trying to kill me. It's all very hum-drum."
"Being flippant won’t get you anywhere."
"Neither will be putting your word-a-day dictionary to use, but here we are."
She began to change. I had seen Dmitri shift when he was losing control; this was both the same and different. With Dmitri, the transition was terrifying but smooth, as if watching someone stretch clay. With Connie, everything snapped and broke. I heard the popping of bones and tendons crackling. Her teeth, as normal and human as mine, fell out of her head as sharper ones burst through her gums, leaving them bloody.
Her skin, pale as a spring morning, began to turn dark. Not human dark, not a pleasant shade of brown, but the dark of shadows between burnt trees. It ate up the creamy flesh and the freckles with it, turning her into the color of coal smudges. Fur burst forth, as dark and shadowy as the rest of her, and her eyes went from their normal human shade to brilliant red.
Fear danced down my spine, and I squirmed against the table. I was suddenly aware of the cold needles stuck into my flesh. The lightness, the flippancy went away.
"You take what's mine?" she snarled, snapping her sharp teeth as she leaned over me. Her breath was terrible, like rotten meat. "I'll take what's yours."
She lowered those sharp teeth to my exposed belly, and opened her mouth wide. I waited to feel the pricking of them against my skin. It was going to hurt. I was sure of it.
The yowl of a cat tore me out of the nightmare.
Maahes was sitting on my chest, his familiar weight a great comfort as he stared down into my eyes. He bent and thumped his head against my face, making me aware of tears streaming down my cheeks.
"Hey," I said, my voice shaking. "How are you doing that?"
He licked at the tear trail. I could feel the roughness of his tongue, but the water remained behind. I wrapped my arms around him as I sat up, holding him against me.
"That was a weird one, buddy."
He struggled against my grip for a moment before curling in on himself and making a ball in my lap. He started to purr, and I gave him a few shaky-handed pets. I ached. It wasn't as bad as the last time, not by a long shot, but I still felt terrible, like I had the world's worst cold. A glance at my clock told me that I had only been asleep for four hours. I wouldn't even have gotten tha
t if I hadn't been so exhausted that I'd broken down and taken one of the sleeping pills that I found in the cabinet. Who would have thought that a witch would have sleeping pills?
I took a deep breath and shook my head hard enough to clear the cobwebs. "Okay," I said, sliding out of the bed. "It's time to look through the grimoire."
My grandmother's book of shadows, or magical grimoire, was chock full of information about all kinds of magical things. I'd nearly forgotten it since I had Jenny and her grandmother teaching me witchcraft and Reikah teaching me wizardry. Then, I had been pouring over my grandmother's journals. But it was well past time for me to learn something about dreams.
The book was large and heavy, and I kept it in the second drawer of my grandmother's dresser. My clothes didn't even take up half the drawers, so it fit nicely enough. I dragged it out and plopped it on the bed along with myself. Maahes sat next to me, eyeing the pages with feline curiosity.
"What do you think, Maahes?" I asked, as I began flipping through the pages. There was no index, and the book must have had three or four hundred pages, making it hard to navigate. It was made out of hand-stitched leather, with a large five-pointed star on the front. Each point of the star, which sat inside of a circle, was marked with a particular triangle symbol. I knew now that each triangle was associated with one of the major elements; Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. It didn't help that the inside of the book was put together in a whimsical fashion, as if my grandmother had just written things down as she had learned them. "Anything on dreams in here?"
The cat eyed me and then the book. He bumped his nose against it and, by magic, the pages began to turn. They moved fast enough to have my hair fluttering out of my face.
When the pages stopped, it was about two thirds of the way through the book on a page labeled Somniamancy.
"Holy crap," I whispered, looking at Maahes, "how did you do that?"
He looked at me with all the intensity of the feline gaze, and then he sat back, shot one foot in the air, and began cleaning the inside of his thigh.
"Helpful," I said with a roll of my eyes.
While Maahes bathed himself, I turned my attention back to the book, reading aloud to myself. "Somniamancy, or the magic of dreams, is split into several schools of magic. The first is Dream Walking, or the ability to insert oneself into the dreams of others in order to manipulate them or discern something about the target.
This can be done by many witches, and used for good or ill. The next is Dream Prophecy, where your dreams are glimpses into the future or warnings for things to come. Dreams of Prophecy are often naturally occurring in a small percentage of witches. Those who have the gift of Prophecy can cause prophetic dreams by utilizing dream teas. The last, and most uncommon, is the ability to craft a Dreamscape.
"A Dreamscape is another dimension, accessible only by the unconscious mind. A Dreamscape is created by a Somniamancer, and is, in its own way, as real as the world we live in. The scape itself is malleable, as most dreams are, but the pain inflicted in these dreams is real, up to and including death. To die in a dreamscape is to be cut from one corporeal body and thus die here in the terra realm.
"Somniamancers are rare, and their gifts can be used for either good or ill. When used for good, the Somniamancer can help a person suffering from trauma or insomnia get a good night’s sleep and work through their difficulties. It is said that a good night's sleep in the lap of a Dream Mage is the greatest sleep that a person can have.
"However, when used for ill, a Somniamancer's gift can be terrifying. They can trap a victim in a world of nightmares, using a person's fears against them. It is important to note that the longer one is in a dreamscape crafted at their hands, the harder it is to break free of what they have created. It also becomes easier and easier for a Somniamancer to touch one's dreams the more often the unconscious contact happens."
I paused, keeping my finger on the page. Somniamancer, a dream mage…it wasn't something I had ever heard of, not even in all of the video games that I had played. There were some fantasy books I could think of that had a wizard who could mess with dreams, but that was about it.
Was that what was happening to me? Was some dream mage messing with my head? I scanned ahead a few pages, most which had to do with dream prophecy, no surprise considering my grandmother's gift.
"When a Somniamancer with ill intent turns their attentions on a particular person, the victim may begin to experience bouts of insomnia followed by a deep sleep with strange dreams that leave them feeling more exhausted when they wake up."
Well, I thought to myself, that solved that problem. Someone with dream magic was screwing around with my head. But who? And why? I could make a couple of educated guesses about why. They were part of the Order, and they didn't want me to fulfill the prophecy. Or they weren't part of the Order, but they still didn't want me to fulfill the prophecy.
"Okay, how do I fight it?" I asked the book, using my finger to scroll over the pages, careful not to smudge the long-since-dry ink. "In the early stages, a Somniamancer can be fought via the use of sigils and herbal magic. Drawing protective sigils on your brow, wrists, and across the chest will offer a first line of defense, and stuffing sachets of protective herbs beneath your pillow and body before going to sleep will offer a second line."
"Well, guess what I'm going to learn to do today, Maahes?"
Finished with his bath, Maahes stretched out next to me, rolling over to offer his stomach for a rub. I gave it.
Then, his ears pricked forward and he rolled over.
"What?" I asked, following the line of his gaze.
It was still dark outside, being that it was winter and not even four thirty in the morning, but I could see the shape of a man standing across the street. I remembered, months ago, seeing another man standing out there, the first night that I had moved in.
But, once my imagination stopped running wild, I realized that I knew this shape.
I opened the window. "Wei? What are you doing here?"
He turned, looking at me.
He was so damn pretty, I thought. Why did he have to be so pretty? His rounded face, dark hair, and darker eyes just seemed to call to me, though I'd be lying to myself if I thought my attraction was purely physical. I liked his control and his discipline, two things that I didn't have even on the best of days. I liked that, even after all this time, he still cared about something that happened in his past. I liked how he made me feel safe, and I liked how he made me feel...good.
I sighed. "You know hanging outside sleeping girls’ windows in the middle of the night is a vampire novel trope, right? I mean, that's pretty terrible, even for an angsty vampire like you."
He frowned at me. "I'm not angsty."
I snorted. "You are the angstiest guy I have ever met, and I was in high school while the scene kids were there."
He frowned. "I worried."
"Come inside; it's too cold out there for this conversation."
I stepped away from the window, and, as a mist of smoky brown, he spilled into my grandmother's bedroom.
"Handy," I said once he had formed again. "Can you hear when you are made of mist? Or do you need ears?"
"I can hear just fine."
"So why not stay mist? Unless you wanted me to see you haunting my road."
He shook his head. "It takes a great deal of concentration to stay incorporeal."
"Ah." I crossed my arms and sat on the corner of the bed. Maahes was nowhere to be seen. "So what are you doing being an undead stalker?"
"I wasn't stalking. I was...wandering..."
I raised my brow. "And you just happened to wander my way?"
He shrugged his shoulders. He wore green tonight. He looked amazing in green. Heck, he looked amazing in all the colors that he liked to wear: green, blue, black, or red. Heck, he'd probably look fine in a burlap sack. "It was not intentional." He turned away from me as if he didn't want to look at me anymore.
"Okay."
I sig
hed and stood up. I surprised us both by wrapping my arms around his middle and laying my head on his back. He went vampire still beneath my cheek, and I held him closer.
"I'm sorry for yelling at you."
He relaxed just a little. "I deserved it."
I smiled, but it was a sad smile. "I wish you were okay with being mine."
He breathed out. "I do too."
We stayed like that for a long while. Then, I stepped back. "Okay, time for a lesson."
"A what?"
"A martial arts lesson. You don't think I've given up, do you? There are creepy people after my butt. I gotta be ready for them."
House Of Vampires 2 (The Lorena Quinn Trilogy) Page 11