Dreamfever

by Karen Marie Moning

  “I thought Cruce’s curse corrupted everything. ”

  “The Silvers change. IFPs don’t. They’re static microcosms. ”

  He grabbed me beneath my armpits, stood up, taking me with him, and set me on my feet.

  I clutched his arm. “My parents?”

  “I don’t know. I came in after you at LaRuhe. ”

  “Barrons?”

  “He was trying to get to Ashford, to go after Darroc. I was the only one able to get in before the tunnel collapsed on our end. It took me a while to find you. I found this, too. ” He tossed my backpack at me. “Your spear’s inside. ”

  I could have kissed him! I grabbed my pack and swiftly consolidated possessions, then yanked out my spear and caressed it. Holding it in my hand made me feel like a Travis Tritt song—ten feet tall and bulletproof.

  “The creature will attack anything in your vicinity. At the moment, that’s me. I can get you out. It can’t. It only kills. Remember that. ”

  Ryodan took my hand and led me close to the river, much nearer the sheer drop of the gorge than I was comfortable with, but I understood why he did it. The crushed-shale edge was soft as sand and made no noise beneath our feet. I looked up at him.

  “How did you track me? Do you have a mark on me, too?” I whispered.

  “I can follow Barrons’ mark. Another word and you’re going over the edge. ”

  I said no more. If it came down to my survival or his, I was pretty sure he’d choose his. I wondered why Barrons hadn’t done anything to keep Ryodan safe from the monster. Given him a Barrons-scented shirt to wear or something.

  As if he’d read my mind, he murmured, “It’s the tattoo he put on you that keeps you safe from it. No fucking way he’s branding me. I came in armed. I hunted it all night through the rain. It ran me out of ammo. It’s one clever fuck. ”

  I had heard automatic gunfire! “You were trying to kill it?” I breathed, aghast. What a weird paradigm shift. It had been protecting me. Ferociously. Now it was my enemy?

  Ryodan gave me a sharp look. “Do you want out of here or not?”

  I nodded fervently.

  “Then keep your spear handy, shut the fuck up, and hope it doesn’t kill me. I’m your way out. ”

  When the monster attacked—and I guess there never really was any doubt in my mind that it would—it did so with the same explosive suddenness with which it had hit the wild boar, blasting out of nowhere, crashing Ryodan to the ground, a fury of fangs and talons.

  I watched helplessly as they twisted and rolled, watching for an opportunity to do something. Anything.

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  The monster was much larger than Ryodan, but Barrons’ mysterious brother-in-arms was pretty savage himself. His wristbands sprouted knives and spikes.

  As I watched them battle, it speeded up into something very close to Dani’s freeze-framing and blurred beyond my vision’s ability to follow. I could no longer separate their forms. Ryodan seemed to be every bit as preternaturally agile as the monster.

  I was able to snatch only brief glimpses as one or the other flashed into view, momentarily slowed by a wound.

  Snarls filled the air as they rolled and fought, battling to the gorge’s edge—so near I held my breath and prayed they wouldn’t both go over—then back again.

  I caught a glimpse of Ryodan, bleeding from dozens of wounds.

  Then a flash of my monster, flesh torn, jaws bloody and snapping.

  They rolled into a blur again at the river’s edge.

  I watched, wide-eyed, leaping this way and that, trying to find a moment, an angle, an opportunity to help. I felt strangely torn.

  The monster had saved my life repeatedly. It was my savage guardian demon. It had protected me.

  But, as Ryodan had pointed out, it could do only that.

  It couldn’t help me get back home. And it was going to kill my “way home,” if it could. Leaving me protected but stranded. I couldn’t allow that. I had to get out of here.

  I caught another glimpse of Ryodan. The monster was tearing him to pieces!

  Then Ryodan must have injured the monster, because it flashed into view and stayed a moment. Before I could blow what might be the only chance I got, I steeled myself, lunged for it, and jammed my spear into its back, right where I figured its heart was, if its internal anatomy was anything like a human’s.

  It jerked, whipped its head around, and roared at me.

  Ryodan seized the opportunity, plunged a knife into its chest, and ripped upward, slicing the monster open from gut to throat.

  Its head whipped back around and it shoved Ryodan so hard it drove him to the cliff’s edge. As I watched, horrified, he stumbled on the soft shale lip and slipped over the side!

  I think I screamed, or maybe I’d been screaming for a while, I don’t know; things that day got a little blurred for me.

  Ryodan’s hands locked around a rock that protruded from the bank. I prayed it was embedded deeply enough in the shale to hold him.

  The monster rose to its full height, baying with rage and pain, my spear stuck in its back.

  I held my breath as Ryodan inched back up onto the bank. There was so much blood on his face that I could barely make out his eyes. How was he still moving? His cheek was sliced open so deep I could see bone! His chest was a mass of bloody crisscrossed slashes.

  The monster staggered then, and I think I must have made a noise. Relief that it was going down? Sorrow? Maybe shame for my part in it? I had a whole mess of emotions going on.

  It turned its head and looked straight at me, and there was something in its feral yellow gaze that made me gasp.

  For an awful suspended moment, I could have sworn I saw an accusation of betrayal in its gaze, of disbelief at my foul duplicity, as if we’d had some kind of agreement, some unspoken pact between us. It stared at me with reproach; its yellow eyes burned with hatred for my treason. It flung back its head and bayed with desolation and despair, an anguished cry of grief and madness.

  I clamped my hands to my ears.

  It took a step toward me. I couldn’t believe it was still standing, flayed as it was.

  When it took a second step, Ryodan managed to stagger to his feet, launch himself onto its back, wrap an arm around its neck—and slit its throat. “Get the bloody fuck out of here, Mac,” he snarled.

  Gushing blood, the beast reached back, dug its talons into Ryodan, ripped him off its back, and flung him straight into the gorge.

  “No!” I exploded.

  But Ryodan was already gone, falling down, down into the river, a hundred feet below.

  I stood, staring stupidly at the monster with the flayed body and slit throat.

  It was still standing.

  I was hot and cold, shaking. I felt like I was in some fevered dream, a nightmare from which I couldn’t escape. I could feel myself detaching from the world around me, turning to stone inside, shutting down all emotion.

  The monster staggered toward me. Went down on one knee and stared up at me. It shuddered, then collapsed to the earth, facedown.

  My spear stuck out of its back.

  The forest was silent and still.

  As I watched the monster’s blood run into the soil, I took distant, unemotional stock of my situation.

  Ryodan was dead.

  Nothing could have survived that fall—assuming he’d been able to recover from his wounds, which was a pretty far stretch.

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  The monster was also dead, or very near it and would be soon, lying in a rapidly growing pool of blood.

  I’d lost my way out.

  I’d lost my protector, too.

  Somewhere in this realm, the Lord Master was hunting me, tracking me by a mystical brand he’d etched on my skull.

  Somewhere in this realm was an IFP that contained a dolmen that would take me b
ack to Ireland. Unfortunately, I had no idea which one it was, or in which direction, or how many there were to choose from on this world.

  My pouch of stones was still attached to the monster’s horns, and the tatters of my sweater were still tied by its sleeves to a leg. When it was dead, I would reclaim the stones. That was a plus of sorts in the ledger of my life, assuming I overlooked that they were really nothing more than a slow boat to hell.

  The monster gurgled wetly and seemed to deflate.

  I waited a few moments, picked up a stick, took a cautious step forward, and poked it.

  There was no reaction. I poked harder, then nudged it with my foot.

  I tested the spear in its back, jostling its wound. Again, there was no reaction.

  It was definitely dead.

  I crouched beside it and had begun to untie my pouch when suddenly its horns softened and melted into a river that flowed past its head, puddling like an oil slick on blood.

  I snatched my pouch from its matted hair.

  The shape of its head began to change.

  Webs and talons vanished.

  Matted locks became hair.

  I stumbled backward, shaking my head. “No,” I said.

  It continued to change. Slate-gray skin lightened.

  “No,” I insisted.

  My denial had no effect. It continued to transform. Height diminished. Mass decreased. It became what it was.

  What it had been all along.

  I began to hyperventilate. Squatting, I rocked back and forth in a posture of grief as old as time.

  “No!” I screamed.

  I’d thought I’d lost everything.

  I hadn’t.

  I stared at the person who lay dead on the floor of the forest.

  The person I’d helped kill.

  Now I’d lost everything.