He nodded. “Thank you.”
As everyone dissipated, Carl grabbed Max’s arm and pulled him aside on the porch. “Max, she’s afraid.”
“I realize that—”
“No, it’s not the obvious reason. This isn’t really my place to tell you this, as it’s her history, but you need to know. She told you her father was killed in investigating a case, I’m sure.” Max nodded. “He wasn’t. His mother stabbed him.”
“What?”
“His mother had always been very unstable. A good-hearted person, but easily offended and she could swing her mood faster than a playground full of kids. But when Amy was ten, her tenuous hold on reality started to slip badly. All the doctors assumed it was just late onset schizophrenia. They medicated her, but it never seemed to do any good. More meds, progressive treatments, different meds, sedatives. Her demands grew and grew as well, up to and including Sean move home with her and divorce Patricia.”
“And they couldn’t control her?”
“Nothing but sedation worked. And realize that the descent was rapid. She went from nice to awful in less than six months. Sean refused to move home. He had no interest in his mother’s mad ramblings. He had a wife and family. And when he went to her house to confront her about this demand, she stabbed him in the neck. He bled out on the floor and she left him there until Patricia showed up demanding to know where he was.”
“Holy shit,” Max mumbled.
“Amy was a girl, and she only knew that her father was killed by her insane grandmother, and she has always feared becoming that same insane woman and hurting someone she loved.
“But, Max, her mother did her an injustice by not telling her the whole truth of her grandmother’s illness. After they arrested her, put her in a criminal facility for the mentally ill, Suellen died about a year later. Realize that Suellen was young, really young. Just fifty. Schizophrenia won’t kill you like that—but she was utterly incoherent at the end. She was restrained at all time. She was fed. She was sedated. And she died from a seizure.
“Patricia had moved on and didn’t care about the woman’s death, which was understandable. I was relieved as well. But I wanted to know what had happened, and I requested the autopsy results as soon as they were available.
“She wasn’t insane. Suellen was riddled with cancer. Metastasized glioblastoma. Her brain was nothing but a mass of cancer when she died. The doctors were astonished that she had held on to any of her higher functions. At all. She had been driven by the pressure of the mutant cells on her neurons.
“I tried to tell Patricia a few times that her daughter was under a mistaken impression of her own insanity. She used to talk to me about how she was even afraid to marry Brent because of this.”
Max blinked. “She doesn’t know. And here I am offering immortality. She thinks she’ll suffer that fate forever. She’ll lose her mind and have to spend her immortality sedated and incoherent.”
Carl nodded. “I didn’t feel it was my place to tell her. I also felt it was wrong for Patricia to never have seen the report. I understood, but I didn’t agree. Now there’s you and Pine Valley, and this needs to come out.”
Max stared at the porch stairs for a moment. “I’m going after her. Tonight. She needs to come home. We need her.”
West. She drove west.
Amy was pretty sure that no one expected her to go west. But after only a few hours, she turned south and drove down through South Dakota, aiming her car whatever way it wanted to go. She didn’t care. She needed to just go.
There was so much on her mind, she didn’t want to think at all.
Then again, she could barely help it.
She loved Max, so much. She wanted to stay with him forever. But the reality was he meant literally forever. Immortality.
Maybe she might be ready to face that in a few years, when she got used to all this magic and power being around her. This was so different a world from the one she grew up in, even if she was part of the Sectorum her whole life. Even if she was a powerful dreamwalker.
Even if she was a locus, like she now suspected.
There was so much magic. There was so much more than she knew—and she was no fool. She had so much more to learn.
And Max.
Good God, Max. He was everything she wanted. He was sweet and caring. He was the best thing that had happened in her short life. She just wasn’t ready for something like mating. She knew how permanent that was.
Asking her to save an entire population by sacrificing her freedom, her choices was unfair to her.
She couldn’t promise him forever until she told him everything about her past. Carl had assured her, time and again, that she was not her grandmother. But it didn’t help. She had wondered, often, if she should have been engaged to Brent. It was a horrible feeling to be afraid of her own mind, her own motives.
Patricia had assured her that she was nothing like her grandmother. She had half of her own blood, plus the huge measure of her father’s. And that was the part that counted. Still, she feared it.
Was running the right thing to do? No, of course not. It was the coward’s way out. And she was a chicken at that moment because there was too much to think about.
The next day of driving and not thinking brought her to Casper, Wyoming, and a night in a cheap motel. She didn’t relish staying somewhere as questionable, but she didn’t dare sleep in the car on the side of the road. Bright and early the next day, she was on the road again and her instincts kept her heading south and southwest. She had no idea how big and empty the west was until she was driving through parts of Utah and Wyoming.
Why was she doing this? What was this way that she was wandering? Was she being random, or was she being guided by something else that wanted to tell her what to do?
The hotel in Jacob Lake, Arizona, was no more impressive than the one in Casper or Ogden. It was just a place to stay that wasn’t the inside of her car.
Passing out for the night, she promised herself she wouldn’t drive anywhere the next day, but just take time to think and relax. She had no idea what she was doing in Northern Arizona, but stopping and thinking for a while seemed the best use of time.
Blocking out all dreams that night, Amy just let herself sleep. She hadn’t blocked off the dreamworld in years. She didn’t want to dream, and she really didn’t want to see anyone, like Max or her grandmother. Or her mother or Carl.
Or another dreamwalker.
She slept like the dead, from total exhaustion, and it was the worst sleep she’d had for months. She missed Max in the bed with her.
The very reason she was there.
The next morning, she wandered down to the continental breakfast set up and had a fresh waffle with syrup, some fresh fruit, and the biggest cup of coffee she could find.
It wasn’t impressive, but it was coffee. It was all she needed at the moment.
Wandering over to the tables, she sat and glanced out the window.
Holy shit.
A massive branch of the Grand Canyon was spread out from below the window. The whole hotel had a stunning view of the striated rocks and the water running through the depths of the cut rock.
And a stunning view of the fucking dragon that was flying through a nearby canyon.
“Max.”
The massive creature alighted on a promontory several miles away. Most people wouldn’t see him, with his clever coloring, but most people had no idea that dragons were a real thing.
“You followed me here, didn’t you, asshole?” Amy knew he couldn’t hear her, but it was satisfying that she could curse him out. Staring at the promontory, she decided to eat and enjoy her breakfast and deal with him after. There was no reason to run out on a perfectly good meal.
That was her father’s attitude. Eat when you have food, pee when you can, drink water, and the rest would fall in place.
Amy kept an eye on the dragon, but enjoyed her waffle. It looked like her idea of having some time to think wasn’t goi
ng to work. She could hop back in the car and just go, but Max would end up following her through the country, all the way back to NC, just so they could talk.
Stupid giant lizard.
Walking back to her room, she grabbed a jacket and some sturdy boots, and headed out the back door to the closed pool area. It was cool this high up, and being mid October already, it was likely the wind would be biting.
Walking behind the pines at the edge of the property, she couldn’t find the massive, pale purple dragon on the rocks of the canyon. Sighing, she walked a little farther to see if she had just been standing in a bad place.
“I’m here, Amy.”
She turned and peered into the trees ahead on the path and found Max standing there.
Naked.
“Did you not come with clothes?”
“Where am I supposed to put them? I don’t exactly have pockets.”
“Ugh. Wait here. I’ll get you some sweats. You need saddlebags.”
“I don’t even have a saddle.”
Amy was back from the gift shop in just a few minutes with a pair of pants that had Grand Canyon emblazoned down on the leg. She tossed them to him and he emerged, half dressed, a moment later.
“No shoes?” Max asked.
“Unless you want to wear women’s pink trainers.”
He was suddenly very near her. He was radiating heat like always and he was gorgeous in the morning daylight.
“Didn’t take much to find you, mój cenny.”
“I didn’t do a good job of hiding myself. I just left.” Amy shrugged. “Are you slightly mad flying around the world’s largest tourist attraction?”
“This isn’t a main branch.”
“You’re a damn dragon, Max. I know people aren’t looking for you, but that was a pretty damn stupid thing to do.”
“No one saw.”
“I saw.” Amy held up her hand. “Why are you here? I assume you’re not sightseeing.”
“I wanted to talk to you. Talk you into coming back and helping us. Pine Valley is in deep shit. Everyone keeps losing their powers. It’s a nice relief to know I won’t lose it out here, and it shouldn’t be like that.”
Amy folded her arms. “Did it occur to you at any point that I might just need time alone to think?”
“I know you do. Amy, I wouldn’t be here if we didn’t need you, desperately. Rijn’s prophecy is a warning. You saw what happens when a magical can’t reach their powers. Geoff’s wife is a mess now, and thank God she didn’t lose the baby. Brent is there. He’s going to cause more trouble. No one can figure out what’s going on.” He pulled her hand out from her folded arms and held it. “We need you.”
“You want me to mate with you. That’s why you’re here.” She pulled her hand out of his carefully.
He let out a deep sigh and took a few steps away. “I don’t know how to explain this to you. Yes, I do want you to mate with me. I want you to marry me. I want it all with you. I also understand that you want time. I don’t want to push you into this at all.”
“But you’re here. Pushing me into this.” Amy let out a breath.
“Amy, if…I left you alone after we solved this, to give you time, to let you think about all of this, would you consider it?”
“Max—”
“All I see in my head are those cars skidding and crashing and what Geoff looked like when I opened that door. The pain he was in. The way Vicki sits in her hospital bed weeping. The way all the vampires become lifeless rag dolls when these hit. The way I can’t feel my dragon, the way Niko can’t feel his mate. I do not want this to be the only answer, but no one, including Carl, can come up with a different solution.”
“Carl is there?”
“Yes, of course. You said he would be, and most of them now believe the Gray Eminence is there to help. That the Sectorum is now on our side. We’re starting to trust you all. Which is why I’m here. We trust you. I trust you, Amy.”
Amy stared out at the millions of years of rock that lined the canyons beyond the trees. “Forever is a very long time, Max.”
She could feel his heat on her back a moment later. “It is, mój cenny. I know. And I’m willing to wait. It’s just this situation is desperate. I will back off and let you take as much time as you need.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Don’t be mad at Carl, but he told me about your father. He told me that your grandmother killed him.”
“So you know my grandmother was insane.” Amy cringed. She could, to this day, see her father’s body on the floor when she and her mother walked into the house. “You know she killed my father.”
“I know she killed your father, but she wasn’t insane, Amy. I know that part of your fear about this, that you’ll inherit her insanity and I’ll have condemned you to a life like that.”
“So, what’s the problem? Why don’t you get why I need time?”
“Because your mother was wrong. Your grandmother wasn’t insane.”
Spinning to face him, Amy stepped back out of his arms. “What do you mean? She was babbling and incoherent. She stabbed my father in the fucking neck over a horrible, cruel request. She was insane.”
“She had a glioblastoma.”
Amy was gripped by a massive dizzy spell and staggered back, hitting a tree trunk. Everything in her world shook, trembling the very foundation of her fears. Her whole life was shaking—she had based every decision she’d ever made since high school on the idea that at some point, she could become a murdering psychotic.
She had hated her grandmother her whole life, and with everything she had. And now she was being told that it wasn’t true. That every life decision had been based on was false. It was a cancer in her brain that had destroyed her, that had destroyed her son. That had ruined Amy’s family. Cancer.
Just as she was about to fall and hit the ground, Max’s arms were around her, holding her up. She started sobbing and couldn’t stop. She could barely breathe. After a few minutes of great heaving sobs, she finally started to get herself under control.
“She was sick?”
“Very, very sick, Amy. It killed her. Carl told me the whole story. He went to get the autopsy after she died. That’s how he knows. He never told your mother, and he respected her decision to just move on. Amy, I’m sorry. But you needed to know.”
She stepped back and stared at him, shocked. “Did you tell me this just so I could mate with you? Did you destroy every decision I’ve made just to get into my goddamn pants?”
He shook his head. “No. No...well, no. I wanted to take a burden off your mind when you were thinking about this. I’m not going to give you eternity and condemn you to insanity.”
“So instead you wreck my whole fucking life!”
“No, Amy, I didn’t mean—”
“You know what, Max? Just fly home. Figure out another way to save Pine Valley. I’m going home. I’m going to go home and resign from the Sectorum and just be a goddamn plain old lawyer. Don’t look for me in the dreamworld either. I’m not going to be there.”
“Amy—”
“Shut up, Max.”
“You’re going to run again.”
“I didn’t stop running.”
He stared at her, his face blank. She stared back, anger on her visage. He had just ten seconds to say or do something before she walked away. And she started to count backward in her head.
Shocking her, he turned and started walking away.
“Max?”
He glanced back. “What? Isn’t this what you want? You don’t want me here. You didn’t want me to come after you. You want your comfortable, boring life in North Carolina and you want nothing to do with magic and Sectorum. You keep walking away. So this time, I’ll just get out of your way and you can go on.”
“Max…”
“I’m not chasing you again, Amy. I’m not going to beg you to help us. I’ll live my life alone. We’ll solve our own messes and we’ll save our own asses.”
She stared at him, shocked. �
�You…”
“Yes, I did come here to ask you to mate with me, in the hopes that you could see how this would help Pine Valley and all the people who live there. All those people who are being robbed of an essential piece of themselves every time that Deadening Stone fires. I would have walked away for however long you needed to figure out your shit.
“But, I have mourned my wife that I lost in childbirth. I have mourned a son I didn’t know survived. You think I can’t survive you walking away from me? Pine Valley has survived for close to four hundred years. The magicals who live there have survived for thousands. We will all survive. Perhaps not as we are now, but we will. So walk away. We’ll be fine.”
Amy stared after him, her jaw open, shocked. He was going to walk away and leave her there. She’d never see him again. She could get on with the life she wanted months before. But she wasn’t sure that’s what she wanted anymore… Max was amazing. Pine Valley had her friends now.
She felt her knees go out and she fell back on her ass. The sobs ripped through her again. Shaking and shivering, for so many reasons, Amy just sat and let the misery and confusion wash through her.
Max sat down in front of her on the ground. He’d had every intention of just walking away. He was tired of fighting her for her. He had lived without a mate. He had lived without a wife. He could go on alone.
There was a crisis going on, and they had to figure it out.
But when she fell, and he could feel the confusion rolling off her, he realized he couldn’t go. He couldn’t just walk away.
He let her cry, though. He was hurting, too.
“I don’t know what to do! I’m so confused, Max!”
“Tell me. Tell me what you’re confused about.”
“My grandmother. What I want to do with my life. Where I belong.” She looked up and smeared her tears with the back of her hand. “You. I’m confused about you. I’m scared of you, about you. I’m just damn confused.”
“What is it about me that’s confusing?”
“Why me? And immortality? That’s a really long time if we end up hating each other.”
Skydance Page 19
