by Dean Murray
I took a deep breath and then launched two more short slashes at the creature that triggered the same kind of brutal blocks that I'd come to expect so far, but this time I was ready for the force behind the counters and I got my sword back into position each time before the creature could get into striking range of me.
Based on the way that it was batting at the air in front of it in an effort to knock the point of my sword away, it was getting frustrated. I pulled my sword in closer, still keeping it angled so the creature couldn't see it, and then as it stepped closer to me, I also stepped forward and rammed the point of my sword towards the creature's head.
Once again it saw my sword coming towards it at the last second, but this time I was moving too fast for it to dodge to one side. Under other circumstances the feeling as the sword went home in the creature's flesh would have made me sick, but this time all I felt was relief that I'd managed to survive.
I was shaking as I tried to pull my sword out of the creature's head, but I wasn't sure if that was because of the blood loss or if it was just the result of coming down from all of the adrenaline. Either way, I'd already lost too much blood.
Somewhere along the way I'd ripped holes in the bottom of my tank top. Based on the scratches on my stomach and back, I must have rubbed up against some of the nearby thorns during the fighting. In a way it was a good thing. The damage to my clothing was the only reason that I was able to rip a section of material off of the bottom of my tank top so that I could tie something around the gashes in my left arm. I never could have done it using only one hand otherwise—the material was just too strong.
The whole process took less than two minutes, but I could hear other things moving around in the jungle the entire time and my nerves were stretched to the breaking point by the time I finally finished up and pulled myself to my feet.
I worked my sword loose of the creature's corpse and was debating what to do next when a massive monster came crashing through the jungle. I reflexively raised my sword before I realized that this monster was glowing in much the same way that I was, and he was a spitting image for Alec's hybrid form.
"Alec, is that you?"
I started to drop the point of my sword, but was forced to dodge to one side as the hybrid before me took a swipe at my head. In its own way that was as jarring as anything else I'd seen so far in this place. Even in a dream it shouldn't have been possible for me to dodge a hybrid's attack.
"You won't be able to trick me that easily, Dream Stealer."
It was Alec's voice. It was rusty-sounding as though he hadn't used it in a dreadfully long time—or maybe as though he'd spent dozens of hours screaming—but it was definitely Alec's voice.
He slashed at me again with his claws and I was forced to turn them aside with the flat of my blade, but once again he was too slow. The real Alec, if he really believed I was his enemy, would have killed me with the first exchange.
As he started to circle me I realized that while he was glowing with the light I'd come to expect from all living things, he wasn't glowing like me. His glow was dimmer except for two brightly-glowing spots—one in his chest and one on his shoulder. He looked like a guttering candle, like he was just one stray whisper of breeze from being extinguished forever.
It was his voice that decided me. Either he was the real Alec and he suspected I actually wasn't one of Dream Stealer's twisted constructs, or he was the real Alec and he was truly that close to the end of his reserves. Either way I wasn't going to fight him.
I dropped my sword and watched as he stopped in mid attack.
"Is that really you, Adri?"
"Yes. I guess my ability must have kicked in again. You have no idea how good it is to see you."
He'd shifted back to human form and wrapped his arms around me before I'd even gotten two words out, but as I finished he went tense.
"You can't be here, it's not safe. Dream Stealer will be back soon."
I tried to prolong our embrace, but he gently tore himself free of me and picked up my sword.
"This way. We need to hide you. I know a place. I used it once before. I've been saving it for a later time, for a time when I couldn't take any more of this, but it's more important that you be safe. He can't have you, I won't let him."
"Alec, you're not making sense. Isn't Dream Stealer here now? Doesn't he have to be here in order to trap you like this? Hasn't he been here the whole time?"
Alec grabbed my uninjured arm and began pulling me deeper into the jungle. "I'll try to explain, but we have to move. If we stay motionless for too long the shadows will attack."
We crashed through the underbrush as though Alec was completely unconcerned about leaving a trail or attracting the attention of whatever I could hear moving around still just out of sight.
"I initially thought the same as you. I thought that Dream Stealer had to be here in order to keep me locked inside of the dream. He'd been torturing me for days even before I got shot, but I could never remember it when I woke up. Something changed though when I was injured. Before then I could usually control my surroundings at least to a limited extent."
Alec turned back to make sure I wasn't having any problems keeping up with him and I wanted to cry over the mess the leaves and thorns were making of his poor body. His shoulders, stomach and chest were all deeply lacerated, but he hardly seemed to notice.
"After I was shot, he pulled me into this place. It's different. I can't control any of it, and the shadows—the creatures like the one you just killed—are always here, even when he's gone. He leaves them to make sure that I don't get any rest here, that I'm always worn down when he arrives."
I pulled on Alec's arm, trying to force him to stop and talk to me. "I don't understand, Alec. How is any of this possible? How can you hide from Dream Stealer?"
He stopped for just a second, and the look on his face was the scariest thing I'd ever seen. He was starting to wonder if he'd been wrong, if I actually wasn't me, if I was just another of Dream Stealer's tricks. Even worse, I could see a touch of madness skittering around in the backs of his eyes.
I held up my free hand beseechingly. "I'm sorry, Alec. I don't mean to ask anything that would make you doubt me, but maybe there's something that you're missing, something I'll notice that we can use to get you out of here."
"Everything has rules, Adri. Sometimes the rules seem inconsistent, but they are always there. This place isn't any different. It's been hard to learn them though because they are built on a combination of things from my mind and some things from Dream Stealer's mind."
"So once you understand the rules then you can use them to your advantage…"
"Yes, exactly. My hiding place only works because I understand at least part of how his mind works. It's…"
I stopped him with a shake of my head. "Don't say it out loud. I don't want to know where it is—it's not worth the risk that he'll somehow find out about it. Instead tell me about these rules. How do you know when Dream Stealer has returned?"
"Everything around me changes subtly. It's hard to explain, but when he's gone this world feels like something I could have almost imagined on my own if I'd accessed the deepest part of my subconscious. When he comes back it's different. It's crueler somehow and it feels more alien because it molds itself more to his will than mine.
"The shadows, the creatures you fought, they are faster and stronger than anything that size should be, but their compound eyes struggle when it comes to seeing detail. They can see us because we are so bright, so there isn't any way to hide from them, and they are great with registering movement, but I've killed several of them with improvised spears and if an attack starts out with my hands close to my body they lose track of my hand until it's too late for them to dodge it."
I shook my head in astonishment. "I did something similar with my sword. I didn't know the reason why, but it seemed to have more difficulty with straight thrusts, so I used that."
Alec nodded. "I don't even remember where I
heard that bit of trivia about compound eyes, but it's been the only thing that has allowed me to make it this long. I've been hunting them each time Dream Stealer leaves and dispatching them as quickly as possible. New shadows don't arrive until Dream Stealer returns and creates them again, so I've been getting more of a break than he realizes."
"Aren't you worried he'll figure out what you're doing?"
"Yes. I'm certain he would if he returned to find a host of dead, cold shadow corpses, but I don't kill them immediately. I cripple them, wound them and then leave them there to die over the next few hours. I figure that will throw him off as to what's going on."
It was all I could do not to pull away from Alec's hand. I told myself that the shadows weren't real, that Alec was merely doing what he needed to do in order to survive, but it was still surprisingly hard to push the image of him maiming something that felt alive and then leaving it to suffer.
"What else can you tell me about this place, Alec? How far does it stretch? Is it all just jungle? Is it ever day?"
"It's always dark, there's a stone pyramid in the center of the jungle where Dream Stealer takes me once he's defeated me each night. He straps me down to a stone table and…"
Alec swayed a little on his feet and closed his eyes. "Sorry, you don't need to know the details there and it's better if I don't think about those times."
I wrapped my arms around Alec, hugging him from the side. It wasn't much in the face of everything he'd gone through, but it was all that I could offer him in that moment.
"I'm sorry to keep asking, Alec, but what else can you tell me? We have to get you out of here and so far nobody knows how to find Dream Stealer in the real world."
"What about Jaclyn? Has she found the Ghost Pack yet?"
"I…well, the truth is that I don't know. That's partially because our communications equipment was damaged at the same time that you were shot, but mostly it's because I've been spectacularly useless since Dominic tried to heal you and nearly killed herself in the process."
That got Alec's attention. "When did that happen and what do you mean she almost killed herself?"
"I'm not sure. I've lost track of time since then. Maybe three or four days ago she tried to heal you. She sat there for a long time and then I felt this sense of pressure and heard a hum in the air right before she stopped breathing and collapsed."
"It shouldn't be possible, but it's too much to think it's just a coincidence…"
He was staring off into space and mumbling to himself in a very un-Alec manner. I shook him, trying to get him to snap out of it.
"What shouldn't be possible?"
"Time is hard to track here too, but about the same time you're talking about I felt this place change. It was the oddest thing. I felt stronger, like maybe there was still a chance for me to outlast Dream Stealer, but at the same time the jungle moved closer to Dream Stealer's vision of it than my version. The next time I went to the edge of the cage the bars were thicker. I think that might have been because of Dom."
"What bars?"
"You're sure that you don't want me to hide you?"
"Is there room for both of us? Will we be able to talk so you can tell me more about what's going on?"
Alec paused for a second and then shook his head. "No. It would just be you there and you'd have to be completely still or he would hear you."
"Then show me these bars. I'm not going to hide away here while you suffer."
"Okay, step back—we don't have time to walk there. I'll shift and then carry you."
I stepped back and watched Alec shift into the same tired, battered hybrid that I'd almost not recognized from before, and then l climbed up and put one arm around his neck. He cradled me with his left arm while carrying my sword in his right hand.
He set out in a course nearly one hundred and eighty degrees opposite from the direction we'd been traveling in before then. We made good time. In fact, Alec pushed so hard that he couldn't carry on a conversation and still maintain the punishing pace he seemed to feel was merited.
I wanted to beg him to slow down so that we could talk. There were things that I still needed to know about this place, but that wasn't the only reason. I wanted to talk to him just because talking to Alec was helping to re-center me. I could now see just how stupid I'd been. I'd spent the last few days pretending that I was getting by, that I was doing what had to be done to keep the wheels from falling off, but the truth was that I'd completely lost sight of the larger picture.
Survival wasn't enough, not if I wanted to save Alec. I had to do more than just keep the rebellion from falling apart. I needed to kill Dream Stealer, which meant that I needed Jaclyn Annikov to find the Ghost Pack. Failing that I needed some other plan. I needed a double agent inside of the Coun'hij or some hacker to find a way to track the Coun'hij down. It was all stuff that I'd known before, but I'd let grief over what had almost happened to Dom blind me to what had to be done.
As much as I needed to talk to Alec and tell him about the rest of my mistakes, I wasn't going to question his judgment about the speed required to get us to the 'bars' before Dream Stealer returned. He might be starting to come apart around the edges, but he was still Alec and I would continue to trust him until I had positive proof that he couldn't be trusted anymore.
It felt like we ran forever. Alec went beyond anything I thought even a shape shifter was capable of. By the time we finally came to a faltering, stumbling stop, he was gasping and his fur was soaked in sweat. He set me down on the ground and then collapsed into a panting heap, but when I made as if to stay by his side he waved me forward.
I almost refused, but after a couple of seconds I picked up my sword and walked towards the rock face he'd pointed to. After so long being surrounded by the brutal thorns and cutting leaves of the jungle, it felt odd to leave all of the black vegetation behind me, but the plants all melted away as I got closer and closer to the cliff that had originally been all but hidden in the darkness.
The stone that made up the rock face was different than anything else I'd ever seen. It wasn't black, not compared to the living black of the plants, but it was close enough. It was cold to the touch and had a glassy texture similar to obsidian.
I knew without having to ask Alec that this cliff couldn't be scaled, not even by a hybrid. The smooth surface was unmarked by seams or cracks that could be used as finger holds and when I experimentally tried to chip the stone with the point of my sword I nearly cut off my left arm. The black rock didn't just resist chipping, it deflected my sword away with as much or more force than I'd used to drive the sword forward at the wall.
"It circles the jungle for as far as I've been able to explore so far and all the rest of it is just as featureless and unclimbable as this."
Alec still looked exhausted, but he was back on his feet and his breathing was nearly back to normal. I would have rushed over and given him another hug, but he was still in hybrid form and with the way he was shaking his claws were even more dangerous than they were normally.
"There aren't any openings?"
"Only one that I've found so far. Here, it's this way."
We traveled less than twenty feet before coming to a cave entrance. If I'd been by myself I probably would have been too scared to go inside, but I followed Alec into the darkness without hesitating.
A few steps later we came around a corner and I found myself looking at a set of pewter-gray metal bars. Just on the other side of the bars was a barren, mist-filled landscape that made me want to cry for joy. Barren and gloomy was an infinite step up from the nightmarish existence we'd been subject to up until now.
I took an involuntary step towards the bars and shifted my sword so it was leaning against me. My fingers were only inches away from the dull metal when I realized that Alec hadn't moved forward with me.
I looked back and was confronted with a vision of the future. I was still looking at Alec, but now he looked like he'd aged two hundred years over the last few steps. H
is fur was a patchy white and he was hunched over as though bearing the weight of the world across his shaking shoulders.
"What is this place, Alec?"
"It's the exit. Every place has to have a way out, and this is the way out of Dream Stealer's domain."
"How do you know this isn't just another trap, something designed to make you waste your time and effort here instead of spending it fighting back?"
"There isn't any other possible exit. The cliffs can't be climbed. I tried digging on my third day here, but I only made it down five feet before I hit the same kind of impenetrable rock the cliffs are made out of. This has to be the way out because there has to be a way out. That is a belief at the core of me, something that Dream Stealer couldn't have entirely subverted."
There was an element of madness to Alec's voice and I realized in that instant that this was part of what was keeping him going. Alec needed to believe there was a possibility of escape or he would simply give up and die. I couldn't take that away from him.
"I'm sorry, Alec, I didn't mean to second-guess you. You're the expert when it comes to this place. Honestly I'm surprised that it's this big. I would have thought that would make it harder for Dream Stealer to find you."
"Yeah, I would have thought so too, but he never seems to have any problem in that area. I tried to get lost in the jungle on the first two days I was here—that's actually how I found this cave—but simple distance never seems to matter. He finds me…and then we fight, and once he's beaten me nearly senseless he drags me back to the pyramid, but the trip back only takes a couple of minutes for him."
"Why are you staying so far back away from the bars, Alec?"
"They make me weak. It's like they suck the life out of me. From here it's bad enough, but if I get closer it gets worse and worse until eventually I pass out."
I moved my hand a little closer to the bars and left it there just a couple of inches away from the metal that was apparently Alec's own personal brand of kryptonite.