Marked

by Dean Murray

  Just as I started looking down to check on Alec, I saw the first of the odd, blue flashes of light. At first I thought what I was seeing was the result of the red hybrid cutting loose with another massive charge of electricity, but the flashes went on and on. It was still possible that what I was seeing was the Taser-like power the hybrid had displayed when he'd incapacitated James, but I was having a hard time imagining a situation where any living being would be able to absorb those kinds of repeated shocks and still be able to go on fighting.

  Still, there was something almost electrical in the hue and cadence of the light pulses I was watching. It reminded me of the time in Minnesota when I'd been sent into the shop class with a question for one of the students from my English teacher. The flickering shadows dancing across the ground reminded me of watching someone use an arc welder.

  It was the feeling of blood pooling in my shoe that finally made me realize that I was fixating on stuff that wasn't important. James was still out of commission, Alec was quite possibly critically injured, there were police doubtlessly headed in our direction, and if I didn't force myself to focus, I was going to bleed to death before anything else could happen.

  I pushed myself back off of the dashboard and a scream tore itself free of my throat despite my best efforts. Somehow my shock had cushioned me from the pain of multiple broken ribs, but it wasn't up to the surge of agony that moving brought on.

  Screaming was an even bigger mistake than I'd expected it to be, it left me feeling even more light-headed than I'd been a second before and I suddenly realized that my breathing was shallow and fast. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't seem to get enough oxygen into my bloodstream.

  It was now a race to see whether blood loss or asphyxiation did me in first. It was funny in a bitter, macabre kind of way, but I didn't have the breath to laugh, so I tried to school myself to seriousness—it wasn't working until I saw another hybrid step out of the darkness and approach the truck. I didn't recognize him, but I knew he was another enforcer. None of our people would have been able to get there so quickly—even assuming they realized what was going on.

  The enforcer stepped over James, and headed directly towards Alec and me. He was less than three feet from the truck when something caused him to spin around and raise his claws. Despite the pain and the fact that my vision was starting to go fuzzy, I managed to turn my head far enough to the side to see what had made the hybrid so skittish.

  It was another human, but one who looked vaguely familiar. Some tiny part of me must have been hoping against hope for the appearance of another ally because when I looked back and saw that the enforcer was now relaxed I felt a surge of disappointment that couldn't be denied.

  "What are you doing here? Nobody told me to expect backup—especially not you. Don't tell me that you're here to steal the kill. I've worked hard for this and taking down Graves is the kind of thing that will make people sit up and take notice."

  The approaching figure, small and frail in comparison to the muscled bulk of the hybrid just outside of the truck's cab, shook his head.

  "Good. You can slit the girlfriend's throat if you want—that or their bodyguard is right over there. Plenty of killing still to be had if that's what you're here for."

  I couldn't feel my right hand anymore, couldn't feel much of anything from the neck down, but my approaching death had finally thrown everything into stark clarity. I was amazed at how sensitive my hearing had gotten. I could hear the fear in the enforcer's voice as easily as I could see the waning flashes of light still coming from inside the building.

  It seemed odd to me that the two latest arrivals would be more concerned with killing me than with helping their comrade in arms, but then again the Coun'hij's forces had always been more like a group of professional bullies than a real army.

  I could feel the moment of hesitation as the hybrid tried to come up with a way of getting to Alec without exposing his back to the man who had nearly arrived at the truck. Hunger for the kill finally won out over fear and self-preservation.

  The hybrid sank the tips of his claws in my leg and turned me towards him. It should have been excruciating, but I still seemed to be dead from the neck down. I expected him to toss me out of the truck, but just as his muscles tensed up, the new arrival put his hand on the hybrid's arm. There wasn't any crackle of electricity or rush of metaphysical power. There was no reason to think that the simple gesture was an attack, but the hybrid instantly dropped to the ground.

  The new arrival stepped up to the cab of the truck and I finally realized why he'd looked so familiar. It was Oblivion.

  I started to scream as he reached for me, but it didn't do any good and I was left to wonder whether it would hurt to have my memories torn out of my mind.

  "He remembers nothing. He's like your friend Jessica."

  The chorus of voices that I heard inside of my mind was exactly as I'd remembered it from the one and only other time when Oblivion had touched me. Each word was spoken by a different voice and they ran together with odd, choppy intervals between them.

  "I don't understand…"

  "He doesn't belong to the Coun'hij anymore. He's a child once again; you have an opportunity to win him to your side now if you show him kindness and are fair. Don't punish him for his past sins, that person is already dead."

  "You're giving him to me like he's some kind of puppy? What am I supposed to do with him?"

  "You can make him yours or you can cut him loose and let him return to what he was. His name is Drake."

  I'd been light-headed before I'd started talking—now I felt like I was floating on a cloud. I wasn't sure if I asked my next question verbally or if Oblivion just plucked it directly out of my mind.

  "Why are you doing this?"

  "I was sent here."

  I weakly shook my head. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

  Oblivion reached forward and ripped a swath of material off of the bottom of my shirt. He was surprisingly gentle, but he still jostled me enough that it sent lances of pain through my chest. I gasped, partly from the agony, and partly from the realization that I wasn't paralyzed. Apparently my mind had just been trying to cushion me from the tide of agony I'd been experiencing.

  The gasp sent another tsunami of pain through me and I lost several seconds. By the time I was able to focus on anything more than just the burning, Oblivion had tied the scrap of fabric around my leg, using it as a makeshift bandage. I wanted to laugh again. That wasn't going to save me now, not after all of the blood I'd already lost, not with a collapsed lung. I was still going to die, all Oblivion had done was stretch out my suffering a little.

  "Why are you here? Why are you helping me?"

  "I'm doing this because out of all that is bad in the world, there is nothing quite as wasteful as killing."

  "You've killed before—I saw it in the memory you shared with me."

  "Indeed I have. I've done many terrible things so far in my life and I know as surely as I know the sun will rise tomorrow that I will do yet more terrible things before I die. Some of them worse than anything I've done so far."

  "If you know they are terrible and you do them anyway then you're no better than Dream Stealer or any of the rest of them. I only wish that I had the power to stop you."

  "You do, Adriana Paige. You have had it for weeks now, but after tonight you have it more than ever. If you want me to be stopped simply let it be known far and wide inside of the resistance that I helped you not once, but twice. Puppeteer and the others will see me dead within hours of a rumor like that reaching their ears. You are uniquely placed to stop me now. There are no other witnesses of tonight's events. Now you must ask yourself how much of my guilt you'll share if you don't stop me."

  Oblivion pulled his hands away from me, making further communication impossible, and then turned and walked away without looking back.

  I wanted to yell after him, to beg him to call an ambulance, to plead for his help, or failing that
to curse him for leaving me here to die, but I didn't have the breath to spare for any of that. I watched him walk away and felt myself getting weaker with every shaky, weak beat of my heart.

  The fighting from inside the building had nearly died down now, but I could hear other sounds from further away in the darkness. The howls of approaching wolves and hybrids were something that I'd been expecting, but there were other sounds that I didn't recognize, foremost among them a kind of hissing cough that made my blood run cold.

  I could hear sirens again too, but I knew the police were never going to make it to me, not with one or more Coun'hij kill squads in the area. I'd be dead—from natural causes or otherwise—long before the police ever made it to me. There was just one thing left for me to try and do before I died.

  This wasn't how I'd planned to try and rescue Alec. None of the necessary pieces were in place to turn him into a religious figure, and I probably wouldn't last long enough to even find him inside of the jungle—let alone fight and kill Dream Stealer—but I had to at least try.

  I pulled myself over so that I fell lengthwise across Alec. As the darkness came for me I remembered that I didn't even know how to connect with Alec's dream. Everything I'd done inside of the dream up until now had been nothing more than an accident.

  Chapter 21

  Adriana Paige

  Unknown Dreamscape

  I sucked in an experimental lungful of air and not only did it not hurt, I wasn't short of breath. I couldn't think of any better proof that I was either dreaming or dead. All that was left was to open my eyes and see which it was.

  The dark jungle surrounding me was similar to what I'd seen the last time I'd shared Alec's dreams. The plants had the same long thorns and razor-edged leaves that I remembered from before and they gave off the same light-eating darkness, but everything felt colder than it had the last time. My breath clouded the air before me, and the aura of decay that had turned my stomach was even worse now.

  I dropped down to my knees and sank my fingers in the cold dirt, hoping against hope that touching more of the substance of the dream would make my special vision reappear and confirm that this really was Alec's dream, albeit a darker, more chilling version.

  No such luck. The dark loam sucked the warmth out of my hand without sparking the threads of light into existence. It wasn't until then that I realized my left arm still wasn't working. I shouldn't have been surprised, but somehow I'd been hoping that it would be back to normal, that it would be healed just like my ribs and legs were healed.

  Apparently that particular injury had been a part of me for long enough that I subconsciously expected my arm not to work. That was too bad—it had been all I could do to survive my last fight with Dream Stealer when I'd had the use of both of my arms. I stood even less chance this time around, but then again it didn't actually matter whether I survived—all that mattered was that I kill Dream Stealer before my wounds back in the real world killed me.

  I could feel something moving around in the darkness, no doubt drawn by the unearthly white light I was giving off, but it was surprisingly easy to conjure my dream replica of Alec's sword. This time I envisioned it with the monofilament edge to start out with, and as it flared into existence with the same clean glow as last time, I took an experimental swipe at a nearby tree. My sword sliced through the eight-inch trunk with only the slightest hint of resistance and I smiled.

  If Dream Stealer's shadow creatures with their compound eyes wanted to attack me then so be it. I was as ready as I could be.

  I closed my eyes and tried to reach out with all of my other senses. I could feel a slight tugging coming from off to my left, so I started off in that direction, first at a brisk jog, and then faster and faster as the weight of the passing seconds and minutes continued to bear down on me. It would be a cruel twist of fate for me to find Alec but die before I was even able to begin fighting Dream Stealer.

  I started breathing hard after only a few minutes—I'd never been any kind of distance runner and was actually surprised that I'd made it so far before the exertion started to catch up with me. Except as I stopped and gingerly leaned against a tree to catch my breath, I realized that I was still thinking about things as though I was in the real world.

  Back in reality I might be unathletic and easily winded, but there was nothing to say that I had to be that way here. In fact, I was starting to suspect that the only reason I'd manifested as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed seventeen-year-old girl was because that was how I thought of myself.

  I gathered my scattered thoughts and forced myself to envision an Adri who was stronger and faster than the one I'd actually spent the last seventeen years crafting for myself. I imagined hard, wiry muscles running up and down my legs and a left arm that worked. I imagined a me who could run for miles without getting tired, and then I pushed with everything I had, trying to force my vision into being here in this pseudo reality.

  For several seconds nothing seemed to happen and then all of a sudden I felt my mind catch on something and a jolt of pain exploded inside of my mind. I bit back a scream and then suddenly realized that I wasn't gasping any more. My body was different too, leaner and harder, but my left arm still refused to respond to my will. There had been a moment where I'd almost been convinced that I could feel a phantom pain out at the edges of my fingertips, but that was gone now and I didn't have any more time to waste trying to bring back a dead limb.

  Now secure in my ability to summon my sword back into existence whenever I needed it, I banished it so that I could run without worrying that I would trip and decapitate myself. It still wasn't enough though. The leaves and thorns were taking pieces out of my flesh and the faster I ran the worse that got due to the fact that I couldn't see far enough to dodge the vicious plant life.

  I considered a dozen different solutions, everything from replacing my skin with some kind of hard exoskeleton to trying to teleport myself directly to wherever Alec was being held, but in the end I just forced a clear, vegetation-free path into existence with my mind and continued to run.

  Each change I imposed on myself or my surroundings seemed to extract a price—an initial, heavy price followed up by an ongoing low-level drain on my battered mind—but it couldn't be helped, not if I wanted to get to Alec in the short time I had left.

  I let the jungle close back into place behind me as I ran, which seemed to help take away some of the load, but I could still feel my strength trickling away with each passing second. It felt like I'd been running for hours by the time I started breathing heavy again, but I knew that couldn't be the case, not at the speed I was moving, not unless the jungle had gotten much bigger than it had been the last time I'd been here.

  My legs were starting to burn too, so I slowed down to a walk, which was when they struck.

  Both shadows came out of the underbrush with a speed that was all the more incredible considering my altered time sense, but I heard them at the last second and when I held my hand out my sword flared into existence without any problem.

  I threw myself to the left in an attempt to get out of the way, but I let my sword hang in the air behind me like a glowing tail that traced the arc of my travel. The closest shadow managed to get a claw into the outside of my left leg, but it had too much momentum to bring itself to a complete stop before it stumbled into the impossibly thin edge of my sword.

  The pain of the shadow's claw tearing through my flesh was strong enough that I couldn't stop from crying out, but a split second later the shadow fell to the ground, cleanly sheared into two separate pieces.

  I hit the ground hard, but I had enough presence of mind to let my sword go and it flickered out of existence an instant before the actual impact, which is the only thing that saved me from the same fate as the first shadow. I'd known I was in for a rough landing—it couldn't be otherwise considering the fact that my left hand was unable to catch me—but the shadow getting its claws into me had thrown me even further off than I'd expected.

&nbs
p; My head collided with a rock hard enough that I saw stars and everything started to go dark, but I knew I couldn't afford to pass out. I clung to consciousness with every ounce of fight I had left, and rolled onto my back just in time to see the second shadow throw itself at me.

  I acted without thinking, and for once my instincts worked to my advantage. Rather than freezing up like I would have in the real world, I willed my sword back into existence and angled the softly-glowing tip so it took the shadow in the center of its chest, just below the base of its neck.

  I'd spent enough time around shape shifters to know that particular strike was a paralyzing blow. It did everything I could have hoped for—the shadow that hit me was paralyzed from the shoulders down—but that didn't do anything to reduce the force of the impact as it landed on me.

  For several seconds I couldn't breathe, partially because of the sheer weight pressing down on my chest and partially because I'd had the wind knocked out of me, but I finally managed to roll the creature off of me and draw in a huge gasp of cool, welcome air. I was bruised and there was blood trickling down the side of my face where the shadow's claws had come within less than half an inch of destroying my right eye, but other than that I was okay and I staggered off in the direction I could still feel the pull coming from.

  A few minutes and several miles later I got close enough to see the foreboding stone pyramid rising out of the jungle. I slowed my pace and forced my sword to reappear in my hand, but I couldn't bring myself to slow very much—not when I knew that Alec was probably suffering as he waited for me to arrive and free him.

  The pyramid was hollowed out in a way I wasn't sure was actually possible in the real world, with burning torches scattered around the perimeter and a pair of large metal braziers on either side of the stone altar providing a flickering, multi-pointed set of light sources.