Second Skin (Skinned)

by Graves, Judith

  But now that I’d begun, I fired with both guns blazing. “Why help me when you know what I’m capable of? Why haven’t you kicked me off your property? Or insisted that Alec stay as far away from me as possible?”

  Matt rubbed his hands together. “Here we go.”

  Marie pursed her lips. “Alec knows the danger and is young enough to still be drawn to the fire. But what will be, will be. Nothing I do can will change your destiny. Only you can do that.” She adjusted her wire-rimmed glasses. “In this situation I see no other way. Your skills are needed to keep my town and my family safe.” She quirked a brow. “So let’s get on with it.”

  My skin tingled. I looked up. Alec leveled his attention on me for several pounding heartbeats, long enough for my breath to catch at the expression on his face. Part fear, part desire. And entirely irresistible. I pressed my heels into the floor to keep from walking across the room. How easy it would be to stand beside him, to clutch his hand, or forget we had witnesses and just slide into his arms.

  To seek shelter there.

  I pushed the breath from my lungs in a curse, trying to shock the need for him from my system. Keeping my distance was going to be harder than I thought.

  Releasing me from the heat of his gaze, Alec faced his mother. “Eryn has shown courage, coming here when she knows you don’t trust her. She’s willing to try. Can’t you show her some tricks, anything that might throw the night mare off when she challenges it?”

  “If we’re lucky, yes.” Marie straightened her shoulders and then went around the kitchen, opening cupboards. She gathered a few bundles of herbs, a clay bowl, and several white candles. “We’ll set up in the guest room. Eryn’s been there before, spent time at rest, so it should be comforting.”

  A chill crept up my spine and pressed a cold hand on the back of my neck. Like the night mare had settled in for the ride. “Why would I need comforting?”

  Marie paused. Her grip on the candles tightened. They scraped together, jutting at odd angles in her hand. “Dreamwalking is a skill that takes years to master, and you want me to throw you in the deep end. This is dangerous, Eryn. In that realm you’ll learn things about yourself that your waking mind seeks to hide. You can travel to the past, the future, and every time in between. Without some sense of peace to ground you, you could be lost in the dream world, with no way to get back to your body.” She brushed by me and proceeded into the hall.

  The rest of the crew fell silent as Marie’s footsteps creaked on the wooden stairs to the second floor.

  Alec rocked on his heels, waiting for me to make a decision. “I’m going, I’m going,” I said. I pointed a finger at him, then

  at the rest of the crew. “But I don’t want an audience.”

  Alec smiled. “You won’t have one. Matt and Brit are taking Paige to visit Kate. Hopefully she can fix the spell before we drop you guys off at home.”

  Matt eyed Paige, looking doubtful. “Yeah, or you’ll have to explain why she’s got old-timers disease about fifty years early.”

  Paige didn’t even glance up from her cell. She was definitely texting now, her thumbs moved swiftly over the keyboard.

  “What about you?” I asked Alec. “Where are you going to be?”

  He was all smiles. “I’ll hang out down here. Yell if you need me.”

  “I won’t.” I whirled to follow Marie up the stairs.

  I lay down on the same brass bed I’d woken up in a few weeks ago. I kept my eyes shut tightly. The strike of a match. The sharp scent of phosphorus followed by melted candle wax.

  “Just relax, Eryn,” Marie said, moving quietly about the darkened room. “There’s nothing to be scared of. We’re just going to do a little test of your dreamwalking skills.”

  I gave a low laugh. “I never do well on tests.” Well, that wasn’t exactly true. I’d rocked one physics test, but I’d had a little help from Wade.

  “Just breath, slowly and steadily. Listen to my voice. It will guide you back to your body once you fall asleep.”

  My body was stiff with tension. Sleep seemed impossible. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “What we think and what we do are sometimes very different things.” Marie sounded unconcerned. “Dreamwalking has benefits. If you develop your awareness, you can learn many useful skills. You can even gain the knowledge of your ancestors.”

  A flash of canine fangs. The tear of flesh under my teeth. I shifted on the bed. My heart rate increased. Maybe I didn’t want to know the things my ancestors did. From the little bit of information my mother had told me, wolven history was a bloody mess.

  “I’m going to cleanse your spirit, prepare you for the journey.” Though my eyes were closed, I could picture Marie in the room. I was outside my body and looking down on us. Me looking peaceful, rested, and Marie holding the pointed end of a bundle of sweetgrass to the candle’s solid flame. The herbs began to smolder. She guided the smoke over my body in slow, sweeping motions.

  “Imagine the smoke passing through you, cleansing, removing the negative energy trapped in your body.”

  All this talk of energy and spirits had me biting my tongue. The last thing I needed was a dream-walking, pissed-off Marie, because I told her she sounded like a flake.

  The fragrant aroma filled my nostrils, my lungs. I exhaled slowly as if I’d just dodged a silver bullet and couldn’t believe I was still alive. I was in the presence of grace. Pretty heady stuff.

  “Let my voice guide you. For this test I want you to do one simple thing. The moment you realize you’re in a dream, wake yourself up. If you see something impossible, something unreal, wake up. But for now, sleep, Eryn, sleep.”

  My heart resumed its normal beat, then slowed. The bed beneath me spun. I was slipping away, losing control. Fading.

  Lovely. Alec’s mom had just gotten me stoned.

  I gasped, fighting the pull to that other place. I sat upright. My eyes flashed open.

  The room was aglow in candlelight. Marie was sitting in a wooden chair beside my bed. Her lips twisted with disappointment, when I slid my legs off the mattress, a direct indication I was done with lying around.

  “I guess it didn’t work,” I said. “But at least we tried, right?” I walked to the window and stretched, my muscles knotted with tension. My athame’s leather holster rubbed against my skin. I pushed back the lace curtains. The moon was high in the starry sky. “At least I got in a snooze. I haven’t been sleeping much lately. What time is it?” I turned to face Marie, expecting her to be still seated in the chair. But she stood a few feet away.

  Cheeks hollow, mouth gaping. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Really not a great look.

  She groaned and lurched forward. A billow of sour gas hit me as her breath struck my face. Her arms raised, floating in front of her, reaching for me.

  “Or,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “Maybe it worked after all.”

  I dove under Marie’s arm and unsheathed my athame, moonlight glinting on the jagged silver blade. Marie whirled, bones snapping in her face as fangs filled her mouth, her nose and upper lip elongated. She was shifting.

  Like a werewolf.

  Like wolven.

  Like me.

  “Get it together, Eryn,” I said, swallowing back fear. “She’s not real.” I stabbed my athame in the air, inches from Marie’s bestial visage. “You’re not real, you hear me? This is just a dream.”

  But I was supposed to do something.

  A cool wind swirled up from the wooden floorboards. The candle’s flame dipped, and then rose steady once more.

  Eryn, wake up. Mint tinged the air.

  My vision darkened. I blinked hard to refocus. Marie was no longer a mass of flesh and fur. She was herself again. Fully human. About to take me down.

  “My son dies because of you.” Marie’s voice was clipped, none of the Zen shaman about her now. She was point-blank and terrifying. “How many other deaths are on your hands? You know you’re a monster.
” She became transparent one second—the door behind her clearly visible through her body—and solid the next. “You know I’m doing the world a favor.”

  I sidestepped her flickering form, moving for the exit.

  She tracked my steps, shotgun in hand. I knew it was loaded with the silver bullets she’d fashioned just for me.

  “Time to die, my dear,” Marie said. “There’s no other option.” She cocked the gun and stared down the barrel.

  My wolf howled. The sound ripped from my throat even as I dropped to all fours. Pain exploded through my bones. I couldn’t suck in enough oxygen. I was suffocating in my own skin. I clawed at my back, my chest, my arms, shredding my human flesh, revealing the black fur of my wolf.

  I stared down at fur, claw, and trembling muscles. Ready to kill.

  Wake up. Now. Eryn, RISE! The bedroom window burst open. A roaring wind thundered across the room, knocking me backward.

  When I opened my eyes, Alec stood over me, his face pale, his chest heaving. The bedroom door was splintered in half and dangled by the top hinge.

  Marie’s body was sprawled on the floor by her chair. She looked dead.

  It's all fun and games until

  someone loses an eye

  Alec rushed to his mother’s side. She lay unmoving, her head tilted at an awkward angle.He put a trembling hand to her neck, checking for a pulse.

  I covered my mouth, keenly aware of the claws, fur, and the odd shape of my jaw. In the dream I’d become my wolf, in reality only my hands and face had shifted. My features crept back into their human form. Like popping a blister, the pressure on my skin eased as my wolf drained away.The room appeared larger, my human form taking up less space in the world than my wolf—like I’d returned to myself less than I had been. I struggled to shake off the sense of loss.

  “Is she—?” I asked, my voice ragged.

  His shoulders sagged. “She’s breathing,” he said, not bothering to glance in my direction.

  I held back a sob, my tongue feeling odd in my mouth, teeth aching. What had he seen when he’d burst through the door? What kind of monstrous thing had I become?

  What had I done to Marie?

  “Mom.” He cupped her shoulders and gave a gentle shake. “Come on, snap out of it.”

  Marie groaned, struggling to sit up. Alec helped her to her feet and guided her to the bed. She sat, clutching the spiral bedpost for support.

  “I’m fine,” she said. She waved Alec’s hands away and lifted tired eyes to mine. Alec and Marie stared me down. They didn’t say anything. Didn’t need to. Disappointment radiated off their skin.

  I backed up against the wall and slid down its smooth surface. “I’m sorry. I never meant to…” I pulled my knees into my chest, buried my face in my arms, hiding. I let their words flow to me from across the room.

  “The girl packs quite the punch,” Marie said.

  “She hit you?” Thankfully, Alec’s tone was incredulous.

  “No. She blocked me. The purpose of this test was to see if she could lucid dream, could recognize she was in the dream realm, and then use that knowledge to wake up. Eventually a lucid dreamer can control elements of the dream. Location, time of day, fashion weapons. But the moment she sensed me, she shut me out.”

  “So, Eryn does have some skill.” “Not Eryn,” Marie said. “Her wolf.”

  I lifted my head. “My wolf just about killed you. I can’t control it here, but in the dream, it took over. I wasn’t even there. So, if you don’t mind. I think we need another plan.”

  Marie pursed her lips. “No. The plan is sound. I felt the presence of the night mare. What did you see before your wolf attacked?”

  “One minute you were normal, and I was telling you the dream walk didn’t work and the next you looked”—I shuddered— “demonic. Possessed. And the smell, that sour gas smell oozed off of you.”

  Alec wiped a hand over his face. “You’ve mentioned that before. You picked it up from Kate’s dream creatures, but the rest of us couldn’t detect it.”

  “Wolven have thirty times the sniffers of humans. I have a nose for trouble,” I said.

  “But if you only pick up that scent when the night mare is at work, then I think we have one problem solved.”

  I scrambled to my feet, dusting off my jeans. “Which one?” “The bounty hunters. Didn’t you tell us they reeked of sour gas?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then it was another attack like at the café. It was the night mare, playing up on your fear that the bounty hunters were coming.”

  I crossed my arms. “I’m not scared of some two-bit head hunters.”

  Alec and Marie just stared back.

  “Okay,” I let my arms drop to my sides. “Maybe a little.” Thinking back to that morning, the smell, the weight of the iron pan, I decided Alec had a good point. “You’re right. I swung that iron frying pan, and they exited the building. Or Marcus and Sammi anyway. Other demons would have stayed to fight, but Kate wove her protection spell around iron. Makes the night mare vulnerable.”

  Marie cleared her throat. “You fought off the night mare with a frying pan?”

  “You had to be there,” I said, hearing demonic Marcus spew his lies. Not everyone back at home believes you’re so innocent, Eryn. Did you really think they’d let you go after what you did to your parents? Those had to be lies.

  “What?” Alec said.

  I shook my head. “Just the night mare messing with me. Making me doubt myself.”

  Marie nodded. “That’s what they do, Eryn. They use your deepest fears against you.”

  I straightened. “Then, goody, there’s nothing to worry about.” My stomach clenched, belying my words. Oh, I was worried all right.A girl like me, with secrets aplenty, couldn’t afford to have a demon like the night mare digging around in my subconscious. Who knew what beasties besides my wolf would surface?

  “We need to try again,” Marie said. “Facing the night mare in the dream realm is the only way to take it down. We need someone else to enter your mind.”

  The hairs on my neck quivered. “Someone with a bit of magic.”

  Alec took a step forward,his shoulders stiff with determination. Like a knight stepping forward to do battle for his queen. But this wasn’t about being a hero. This was about staying alive.

  “Someone you trust.” Marie’s gaze flickered between us, her brows drawn.

  My heart thumped in my chest. I knew exactly who fit this job description.

  “More importantly, someone your wolf won’t reject.” And he wasn’t in this room.

  Alec held out his hand. His eyes locked on mine.

  “We need Wade,” I said, looking away. I couldn’t stand to see the impact of my words. I had no way to soften the blow. I continued to speak though my throat burned raw. “He’s already been in my mind. Many times.”

  Alec and Marie froze.

  I stymied their objections before they could utter them. “He hasn’t fed off me. It’s not vamp thrall. It’s not anything you’d understand. It’s not anything I understand.”

  In my peripheral vision, Alec’s hand clenched.

  “If this is how we beat the night mare, Wade’s the one I want.” Veins popped out on the back of Alec’s hand. His knuckles whitened.

  With nothing more to say, I fled the room.

  The next morning, Paige still wasn’t…Paige.

  Thankfully, she had the sense to follow my lead and played along with our happy, shiny family act during breakfast. We got out before Sammi and Marcus could generate much conversation beyond the usual, What are you up to today, girls? Have a great day at school.

  Yeah, right.

  After meeting with Matt, Brit, and Paige, a.k.a. the Girl Who Forgot Too Much, Kate was working on a damage-control counter spell, but it would take time for her to gather the required supplies. Which meant my day at school would be beyond ridiculous. I’d have to keep one eye on Paige and one on the lookout for anymore of the night mare’s she
nanigans.

  We’d had an event-free night. No attacks. No dreams. But I knew the calm-before-the-storm feeling and was prepared to hunker down and wait the night mare out.

  A power-hungry beastie like that wouldn’t lay low for long. My thoughts were interrupted by bony, vise-like arms trapping me in a death grip.

  “Ugh, Paige, please stop with the hugging,” I said when my cousin released me and latched onto a stunned Brit. “You’re not a hugger.”

  Paige’s arms dropped. She pouted. “You know, I’m really not much fun, am I?” She gave us an expectant look, brows raised as if waiting for a denial.

  We were saved by the bell.

  “Showtime. Stick to the class schedule I gave you, and you should be fine,” I told Paige. I gave her clothes a quick once over. I’d helped her to choose her outfit. While not up to Paige’s normal standards, at least today she wouldn’t be the laughingstock of Redgrave High. “Meet us at the cafeteria at lunch.”

  Brit and I watched her meander down the hall. She was like one of Sammi’s kindergarten kids on the first day of school, pausing to stare at posters on the wall, pointing up at flickering florescent lights.

  “You really think she’ll be okay?” Brit flinched as Paige spun around to give us a whole body wave and then slipped into a classroom. The door closed ominously behind her.

  “No, but we can pick up the pieces at lunch,” I said as we walked to class.

  “How did it go with the dream thing last night?” Brit asked. A bit too casually. I had a flash of Marie telling Matt what I’d said about Wade and then Matt texting every nasty detail to Brit.

  Ugh. No wonder I hadn’t bothered with friends before moving to Redgrave. They expected answers I didn’t want to give.

  “How long before Kate can do the counter spell?” I said, putting the pressure on Brit instead.

  She held the classroom door open, turned to me, and shrugged. “She said a while. But you know Kate and time.”

  Kate had magical skills to spare, and she could control time. We’d spent hours at the café only to discover minutes had passed. Who knew how long a while really meant?