She held out her hand and he was suddenly standing next to her. Max gasped and looked around. “How the hell did you do that?”
“I am a dreamwalker. Don’t you know what that means?”
“Clearly, I’m not fully aware.”
“In the dreamworld, I am in charge. I am whatever I want to be or need to be. Including a witch, a demon, a ghost, or a superhero. Whatever I need.”
Max stared at her. She was luminous in this dreamworld. She was powerful like he hadn’t ever expected. She had always been self-possessed, but this was pure, raw power.
“Your father taught you how to do all this?”
“This world you see is his construct. His mother’s dream construct was weak, and he had to rebuild it. She was a good woman, but typical of the era. She was quiet and timid, and as my father realized how powerful a dreamwalker was, he rebuilt the dreamworld he used bit by bit. It’s sort of like building a computer program.
“The day we realized that I was a dreamwalker like he was, he began to teach me all about what it meant to be a dreamwalker, what powers we had and how he had built it. I spend a night each month organizing my dreamworld. Patching, correcting, reconstructing things.”
He was in awe. This was hers, she had the ultimate power here. “You said you could give people nightmares…how on Earth would you do that? This place is so serene.”
“This is my dreamworld. We can pass into yours at any time, and that’s where I would trigger or build nightmares.”
A wave of disorientation washed over him, and the image of the room changed. It was more bland, less interesting. There was a lot of beige and shadows. Amy smirked. “We need to redecorate your dreamworld, Max. Do you have a thing for beige?”
“No. I hate it. I never really paid attention.”
“We’ll fix it another day. We’re here to see if you put anything interesting in your vault in the past six months.”
He nodded and she took his hand. Without a whisper of sound or motion, they were in the main vault area, still in his dreamworld. It wasn’t beige here—it was gray. Almost as if someone filmed it in black and white. “I’m boring.”
“No,” she said and held up a small mirror. “Look.”
His eyes were blue-white and glowing. His skin was a rich, warm color and his hair was a dark, vibrant brown. He was confused that he couldn’t see that without her mirror. His own hand in front of his face looked dull gray.
“There are things that just won’t make sense, Max. You just have to roll with them.” Amy nodded to the vault. “Show me. Open the vault and show me everything in there that you’ve touched or moved in the last six months.”
Nodding he walked to his also dull gray vault and pulled it open. The great door groaned, and a strange sensation filled his head. It felt almost as if a giant rock wall had been erected by the dragon there. He peered inside, and…
Nothing.
There was nothing in the vault. It was empty, but his dragon wasn’t freaking out.
“Max?” Amy was right next to him. “Where did it all go?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I can’t show you.”
“I was in there just the other day. Why wouldn’t you be able to show me?”
Max closed the vault and opened it again. Still nothing.
Not our mate yet.
“What did you say?” Amy squinted at him.
“That…was my dragon.” Max shook his head. “He’s never said anything before. Ever. Just pushing and angry and always wants to fly.”
“What did he just say?”
Not our mate yet. No secrets for non-mate.
Max staggered back at the voice. His dragon, in one hundred and twenty-five years, had never said shit to him. Bullied him around, forced him to shift and fly, made him eat way more than he ought to have, but never, ever put anything into words. And for those words to be the first was devastating.
“But I’ve already seen it!”
Max closed the door again and opened it. Still nothing. “You stupid fucking dragon. Let her see what I have! Show her what I’ve put in there!”
Not our mate.
Max’s eyes popped open, and he was staring at his ceiling, alone in the bed. He looked around and found no sign of Amy. He grabbed his sweats from the chair and walked out of the room. “Amy?”
The house was quiet, and it was disheartening. He padded down the stairs and down to the kitchen. She was standing on the back porch, wrapped in a blanket, staring out at the cold and the softly falling snow. “Amy?”
“Your dragon isn’t going to let me in, Max. It’s not going to show me what I need.”
“Mój cenny, he’s being an ass.”
“Is he?” She caught his eyes with a glare. “Is he, Max? Isn’t that what you’ve wanted all along? Me to mate with you? I can’t help anyone in Pine Valley until you finally claim me?”
“I would wait the time it took for the sun to die, if that was what you needed to be ready. Amy, this is the dragon, not me.”
“But aren’t you the dragon, Max? He’s part of you, he lives in you.”
“We have been, and will continue to be, separate from each other until we mate. His thoughts aren’t mine.”
“There’s that mating requirement again.”
“Amy, stop it. Yes, for fuck’s sake, I do want you to mate. But that doesn’t have to do with why he won’t let you in. He knows you’re the right person, he knows you. So this doesn’t make sense.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Let’s just go back to bed for now, and you can try with Niko tomorrow night. Maybe he’s being an asshole because I’m giving you time. But I’m always going to give you that time, so he can fuck off.”
Max walked her back upstairs. He could tell she was upset—he hoped his stupid dragon didn’t scare her off. He knew she needed time—he was immortal, he could afford to wait for her.
The familiar ding hit the phones, and Max watched as all the people in the diner looked up and around to see who was in there.
It was late, so it was only the magical locals in Zav’s restaurant. So when the power outage flowed through, there were mostly humans, a harpy, and an angelica sitting in the booths. Nothing out of the ordinary. The harpy sipped her coffee.
“This is too normal now.” Niko grimaced. “We’re getting too used to it. I don’t like the way it feels without my dragon.”
“Mine’s an asshole.”
Keni rolled her eyes. “So you’ve said.”
“Look, we’re really going to need to get this done and soon,” Max said.
“Oh, shit!” came Amy’s voice. They all turned to find her standing next to the Harpy’s table. “Oh, damn. Brindy. Sorry. Power outage?”
“Yup.” She sipped the coffee again. “We’re going to have to make Zinter close this place off so we can all get food.”
“Learn to cook, Brindy!” Xav yelled.
“Learn to fuck off, Xavier!”
Amy sat back at the table with them. She looked around. “So, we try Niko tonight?”
Niko held up a cup of coffee and nodded. “We do.”
“Should you be drinking caffeine?” Max asked.
He looked at the mug in horror. “Oops.”
“I ordered you decaffeinated,” Keni said. “Because you can’t find your ass with both hands.”
Niko ignored her and grabbed the check as the waitress dropped it off. “So, how does this work? Do I have to sleep in the bed with you? Or can I just be in the same area?”
“I’ll find you in the dreamworld.”
They all stood and headed for where the angelica was waiting behind the counter so they could pay.
“You’ll find me?”
Max put a hand on Niko’s arm. “Dude, wait until you see this dreamworld. It’s not like you think it is at all. And she’s amazing in there.”
“Did you two screw in the dreamworld?” Keni asked, waggling her eyebrows.
Max looked at Amy, who just shrugged. “No. We did
n’t.”
It was killing him that she was so angry about what the dragon said. She had been cold all day, and now it was extending into the night. He didn’t want to rush her—she just didn’t understand that what was said in that dream was the dragon. Not him. Never him. But she just kept shrugging it off, which was infuriating.
She’d slept next to him, but she wasn’t there.
Niko paid and the group of them walked out to the cold night, heading for their cars. Keni sighed. “Power is still out.”
There was no time for anyone to comment. The car came careening down the road and they all saw the ice patch it hit before it started to spin wildly out of control. The driver compensated well and it looked like they were about to get the car under control.
That was when the other car came flying up the road, flipping on its headlights. There was no doubt the driver of that car was in complete control and was heading straight for the group of them at the front of the diner.
The car tossed out of control by the ice flew right into the path of the new oncoming car. The crunch of metal on metal was deafening, and Keni tried to stop the cars from careening at them with her magic.
But there was none.
Niko dove at Keni and Raissa and shoved them out of the way as Max grabbed Amy and pulled her toward him. They were all just barely out of the way as the cars came to rest, hard against the front of the diner.
The driver of the second car kicked his door open. He climbed out and pulled his hoodie up as he did so. He glanced around and took off back down the road, into the dark, away from the massive accident he had just created.
Niko and Raissa tried to run after him, but they still didn’t have their powers back and weren’t able to keep up in the dark. Max was ready to go after the driver with them when Amy put a hand on his arm. “Brent.”
He whipped around. “What?”
“That was Brent. That was his hoodie from school. I’d know that stupid patch on the back anywhere. Help me with them.” Amy pointed to the two people in the car as Keni came running around.
“That’s Geoff and Victoria!” she screamed. “Oh my God! Geoff!”
Max pulled the passenger door open—which was a lot harder than he’d expected without the dragon’s strength to help him. Victoria was unconscious, slumped in the seat, and visibly pregnant. Amy shoved him out of the way and felt for a pulse. Nodding, she put a hand on Victoria’s stomach and nodded again. “Baby kicked me.”
Max looked across the car at where Geoff was—he had to choke back the vomit.
“Get her out,” Max whispered. “Get her out before she wakes up. Oh, God, she doesn’t need to see this as her last memory of him.”
Amy made a little ‘hrk’ noise before she reached over and was able to unfasten the belt. He reached over the seat and slipped his hands under Victoria’s arms, and did his best to make sure her head wasn’t going to be jostled. Sliding her out, Amy grabbed her feet and lifted them out as they pulled her from the wreck.
Keni had a makeshift pillow of her purse as they laid Victoria down.
Max ran around to the other side of the car and pulled the door open as best as he could. The view from here was even worse—the glass from the impact had cut him and sliced him to ribbons. There were pieces of skin hanging off. Geoff opened his eyes.
“…can’t shift…”
Max swallowed and put a hand behind his head. “Power outage.”
“Victo…”
“She’s alive, and the baby is kicking.”
“Mmpf. Jugular cut. Feel it. Make sure Vic is taken care of.”
Max wanted to scream at the sky, beg anyone or anything listening to let the magic come back before Geoff’s heart stopped. But he still couldn’t find the power. “Just hang on, man. Hang on.” He glanced at Geoff’s neck, and the glass shard was imbedded in his neck, the blood pulsing out.
“…make sure Vicki is...”
The last words slipped out and he went unconscious. Max heard sirens coming in the distance and grabbed Geoff’s wrist, holding his fingers on the thready, uneven pulse there. He offered up a solemn prayer to anyone who might be listening to keep Geoff alive, or get the magic back now.
But a minute later, he knew it was too late. The pulse was gone, and Geoff’s lungs expelled what air they had left.
Amy saw the moment Geoff died. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know anything about him. All she saw was a man her ex-fiancé had murdered, trying to kill her. He hadn’t seen the car spinning out of control down the other road. He had turned on his lights just so he could aim for her and smash her against the wall.
Now, instead, a man was dead, and a woman was left a pregnant widow.
Not just a man. A shifter. Someone who could have saved themselves with magic.
And Brent had done this.
How was he involved? She never told him more than a few things about Pine Valley. Everything she’d told him was about Sectorum, and her abilities.
She stared at Max through the car, and an idea slammed into her.
Her father had once told her about a dreamwalker so powerful, he could pull people into dreams, even from wide awake. If Brent was here, she could grab him and pull him. She could make him talk and find out why he was there.
Even though she couldn’t get past Max’s dragon, she knew that she was strong. Was she strong enough to pull this off? She had been told by other dreamwalkers that she had a strength they’d never seen before.
Straightening up, she ran to the steps of the diner and sat. She took three deep breaths, dropped her head to her hands, focused on what she remembered about Brent and closed her eyes—
He ran through the woods in the dark, but the landscape wasn’t the one he remembered only seconds before. Skidding to a halt, he looked around, and Amy stepped out from behind the tree ahead of him.
“What the fuck?”
She walked toward him. “Don’t what the fuck me, Brent. You just killed a man with your stunt. Do you think I’m stupid and wouldn’t know that damn hoodie you wear all the time? What are you doing here?”
“I killed him? Shit. I meant to kill you.”
“Why would you want to kill me? Why would you want to kill anyone?”
His next few steps were threatening, and Amy reset his position in the dream. Narrowing his eyes, he measured his steps this time. “You exist. You use powers and abilities that shouldn’t be. You cavort with those who want to destroy humanity.”
“Who? The magicals of Pine Valley? You really think they want to destroy humanity? All they want is coffee in the morning and paper on Sundays.”
“Why would you ever understand this? You are a part of them.”
“I am a part of Sectorum Esse!”
“Sectorum Esse.” He spat the words. “The lap dog of the Pope, and now the lap dog of the monsters. Useless.”
Amy took a step back. “What happened to you, Brent? You used to be a kind, caring person. You wanted to help at the office with the pro bono cases. You…” She stopped and cocked her head. “You never wanted to marry me. You wanted the Sectorum secrets that I could give you. And now that I’m useless to you, you want to just be rid of me.”
He slid forward, and Amy relocated him away again. “You are sleeping with a monster. You are part of this evil now. I will see you dead. We will see Pine Valley, and the other strongholds like it, destroyed. No one in this world needs your magic. That creature in the car deserved to die like any other person dies. They don’t need a magical advantage to life. We are bound to finite lives, and those finite lives will be called to task. One. At. A. Time.”
She could see the literal anger dripping from his mouth. It flowed like a black stream down his chin, to his clothes, dripping to the ground. Backing up away from it, Amy was horrified. As it started to pool at his feet, he started laughing, the flow of black not slowing at all. She threw her hands wide and slapped them together, dropping him and—
and her out of the dream.
“I went after Brent.”
“Brent?” Keni asked, confused.
“He caused the accident. I recognized his stupid hoodie. I…” Amy started shaking violently. “I’ve never done anything like that before. I pulled him into sleep and into a dream. He wants me dead. He wants everyone in Pine Valley dead. He’s always wanted us dead. He was using me.”
Amy looked over and realized that the ambulance was already there and loading Victoria into the back on a stretcher. “Who is she?”
“Vicki Hillborn. She married Geoff about eight years ago. They’re both shifters and this is their first child.”
Amy turned back to Keni. “That’s what he doesn’t see. He doesn’t see the people, the stories, the lives…he just sees us as monsters.”
“Us?”
“You think an irrational mind like his would ever separate me out? Especially now that I pulled him into the dreamworld from wide awake?”
Keni nodded. “Come on. Doc wants to make sure you’re okay, since you got yanked out of the way.”
“He’s really dead?”
“The magic still isn’t back,” Keni said.
Amy felt her jaw drop. “But I just dreamwalked!”
Cocking her head, Keni pulled her to her feet. “You know as well as I do that the dreamworld doesn’t work the way our world works. So that you can still dreamwalk doesn’t surprise me at all. And falling asleep is just something that happens.”
Amy stared at her hands. She defied whatever it was that was stopping the magic to reach into the real world and pull Brent into another plain of reality. How the hell was she this strong? And why wouldn’t Max’s dragon let her see the vault?
Nikomedes: I’m just getting to bed now.
AimFire: Okay. I’ll be waiting for you.
“You’re sure you want to do this?” Max asked, sitting in the chair across from her.
“That disaster earlier could have all been avoided if you all had your powers,” Amy said, picking at the edge of the nightgown.
Skydance Page 17
