Grave Visions

by Kalayna Price

  I waited for the charging figure to draw close. Then I lunged to the side, slashing out with the dagger as I moved. Unlike my hallucination, I had an enchanted dagger that liked to draw blood and was very good at it. So I let the dagger’s mental prodding push me.

  The blade sank into flesh, catching momentarily, and then slid free. A hot gush of blood spilled over my hand, and the blade sang in triumph.

  But, while the blade guided my arm, it wasn’t watching out for the rest of me. The lunge scored a wound in my opponent, but the impact with his body killed my forward momentum. Instead of sailing straight past him, I came down short, slightly to his side. One of the bone clubs slammed against my calf. It was only a grazing hit—not full impact—but pain exploded along my leg.

  I rolled aside, a move that was not good for my spinning head, but the next swing of the club missed. When my roll ended, I tried to climb to my feet, but the room lurched, throwing me sideways. Or maybe I just fell.

  Rawhead charged. Shit. I scooted backward, my butt and boots leaving streaks in the sleet-covered floor like a demented snow angel.

  Rawhead was moving too fast, or I was too slow. Whichever way, if I stayed on the defensive, I’d lose. My own damn hallucination would kill me.

  No, damn it. I couldn’t let that happen. I wouldn’t.

  I gripped the dagger tight. It sung in my hand. It didn’t care if Rawhead was glamour or real, it just wanted a fight. I hope you know what you’re doing, I thought at it. The dagger, of course, didn’t respond. Though, with as much of the drug as Ryese had introduced to my system, I wouldn’t have been shocked if it had.

  Blood still poured down Rawhead’s side, turning his brown pants a sticky crimson color. The wound was deep, maybe mortal for a human. I wasn’t so sure for a fae, especially one who was already dead and only a figment of my imagination. Still, it was a lot of blood. If I could keep him occupied long enough to bleed out . . .

  He charged again, the clubs swinging. I got my feet under me enough to skitter aside. We’d circled enough that I was now near the bone pile, and I dove around it for cover as a club crashed into the space I’d been a moment before.

  Rawhead followed.

  I grabbed a long bone from the massive pile and gripped it between both hands, using it to block his next swing. The bones crashed together with a splintering crunch. My arms vibrated with the hit. His club and my makeshift shield both snapped, the top half of his flying off to my side and me left holding two splintered ends. I kept one, dropping the one in the same hand as my dagger.

  Having blocked his first blow, I was unprepared for the swing of his off-hand club. It crashed into my stomach, slamming me backward. The air rushed out of me in a loud whoosh, and my back crashed into the bone pile.

  Rawhead stalked forward, a short, jagged bone in one hand, a long club in the other, but he was moving slower now, his movements jerkier. Blood still poured from his side, the wound clearly hurting.

  If he could be hurt, he could be stopped.

  I tried to push out of the pile, but my feet dislodged an avalanche of bones that tumbled down the side, onto the floor. Rawhead kicked them out of his way, never stopping. I grabbed a skull, cupping the forehead with my palm, my fingers in the eye sockets, and then hurled it at Rawhead. He batted it aside with his club, but it slowed him, marginally.

  I threw another bone, followed by a third, a fourth. I wasn’t doing any damage, just annoying him and buying time, but I kept hurling skulls, arm bones, a whole foot—whatever my hand landed on. Then he was right on top of me, and I was out of time.

  He lifted his arm to swing and I pitched myself forward. It was a desperate, almost blind, move, but I had no other options.

  The dagger slammed into his chest, sliding through clothing and flesh with no resistance. Rawhead went rigid. Then the rest of my body weight hit him, knocking him off his feet, and I rode him down. My hands were wet, slick with blood, but I didn’t let go of the dagger. By the time Rawhead’s back hit the floor, he’d stopped moving.

  I sat there, straddling his body, panting from exertion. Dizziness swam through my head, leaving black dots across my vision in its wake. When I could see again, I looked down. The dagger was hilt deep in Rawhead’s chest, just left of his sternum. I’d hit his heart.

  I pulled the blade free, and it slid out with a sickening slurping sound I knew I’d be hearing in my nightmares for months to come—if I lived that long. Rawhead was dead—again—but I was still full of the drug. I tried not to think as I wiped the blade clean on the dead hallucination’s shirt. Then I clambered to my feet.

  I didn’t put the dagger away.

  Think happy thoughts, Alex, I told myself. Rainbows. Bunnies. Unicorns.

  Ever notice how when you try to make yourself think one thing, your brain rebels and circles back to something else?

  The image of Rawhead standing back up, coming at me again, kept trying to claw its way to the front of my mind. I kept banishing it, but my gaze moved to the prone figure, half expecting it to jump to its feet and start swinging at me again. I had to get farther away from the body.

  I crossed to the other side of the room. The door hadn’t reappeared. Damn. I sank into the corner, burying my head in my arms and trying to think happy things. Puppies. Fast cars. Ice cream.

  “Alex.”

  I knew that voice. I knew that deep, masculine voice very, very well.

  My head snapped up and I found myself staring into the brilliant hazel eyes of Death.

  “Hey,” he said, flashing his perfect teeth in a smile.

  I returned the smile. “Hey back at you,” I said, and then stopped. “Wait. I’m in Faerie. You can’t be here. Your plane doesn’t exist here.”

  “Are you sure?” He reached out, cupping my face with his hand.

  His palm was warm against my skin, gentle. I wanted to sink into the comfort he offered. I was so cold. My clothes were soaked and the sleet kept falling. It was so tempting to embrace the warmth he offered. To let him keep the darkness threatening to spill out of my mind away. To trust he’d guard me from the effects of the drug.

  But I wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t be here. As real as my eyes told me he was, as my skin swore he was, he wasn’t real. He was another hallucination. A glamour pulled from my Glitter-addled mind.

  Which made him dangerous.

  I squeezed my eyes closed. Tried to ignore him.

  He made it difficult.

  He leaned in, and I could feel his presence along my skin. His breath moved my damp curls. I could even smell the clean fresh-turned earth and dew scent that always clung to him.

  “You’re not real.” I told him.

  His lips pressed against my forehead. “I love you.”

  “No, you don’t. The real Death does. You’re an illusion.”

  “I’ll break every natural law to be with you. It will put us both in danger, and I don’t care.”

  “You’re a bit of glamour.”

  “I love you. And you don’t even know my name.”

  My head snapped up. The fake Death was inches from me, those hazel eyes so close. But while the real Death’s eyes typically held a secret smile that couldn’t seem to help but shine through, this one had mocking eyes. Eyes that bore into me.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I told him. “I know Death. I don’t need to know his name.”

  “Do you?” He asked, scooting back slightly so I could see that the haughty, mocking expression covered his whole face, not just his eyes. “Do you know my favorite color? How about the names of my friends? Or how old I am?”

  “None of that matters.”

  “Why have I hung around all these years? Are you anything more than a novelty to me? A reminder of what I lost when I ceased being mortal?”

  “Shut up. You aren’t real.”

  The fake Death stood, dra
gging me to my feet with him. “When your mother was dying, why did I allow you to decide that her soul shouldn’t be collected? Why did I allow such a young child to watch her mother’s body continue to decay from a disease that should have long since killed her? Collecting her would have been a mercy. Why did I make a five-year-old have to finally ask me to release her soul from the dying prison of her body? Why did I feel that was a lesson that had to be taught just because the same frightened five-year-old had begged me not to take away her mother?”

  My blood turned cold, an icy sweat breaking out on my body. “Stop it. Shut up.”

  “What is my name, Alex Craft?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What is my name?”

  “I don’t know!” I shoved the fake Death, and he stepped back, laughing. I wanted to scream. I’d thought maybe my brain had spit out a good hallucination this time, but no. This fake Death may not have been attacking me with clubs, but his words pierced me deeper than a sword. They cut into my fears, my doubts.

  He laughed again. “What is my name?”

  “Alex?” a new voice asked as hands closed on my upper arms.

  I twisted away, wrenching my body from the touch, and spun to face the newcomer.

  Falin stood behind me, just inside a door that was now visible. Or at least, it looked like it was visible.

  “Are you real?” I asked.

  He raised one eyebrow in question, the other dropping and bunching in confusion. Then his gaze moved to the fake Death, a frown cutting across his face. “What is going on?”

  I backed up another step. He could be an illusion. Just another glamour inspired by the drug. The door could too. Hell, everything in the room was suspect. I had no idea what was real. What wasn’t. Death kept thrusting questions at me. Questions I had no answer to but had wondered about.

  Falin held up his hands, moving slowly as if approaching a wild animal. “What happened?”

  I might be going mad. It was wholly possible Falin was just another hallucination created by the Glitter Ryese had force-fed me. But what if he wasn’t?

  Ryese was setting a trap for Falin. He’d said as much. For the trap to spring, the real Falin had to show up, right? Was I more or less crazy if I tried to warn a fake Falin on the off chance he was real? I’d already fought a hallucination, and argued with one. Why not try to work with one?

  “I’ve been drugged.” I told him everything. Well, almost everything. I told him about the struggle with Ryese and what he’d said, and I summed up the fight with Tommy Rawhead. I didn’t explain Death’s presence. “He’s not real,” I said, nodding to the fake collector. “Ignore him.”

  That statement didn’t make the fake Death very happy. He began bellowing his questions, pacing around me as he jabbed at my insecurities.

  “Let’s get you out of here,” Falin said, taking me by the arm and guiding me toward the door. “We need to find the queen. And Ryese.”

  Chapter 32

  “Wait,” I said, jerking my arm out of Falin’s grasp and stumbling backward.

  If Falin was another illusion, I couldn’t follow him anywhere. Things were dangerous enough trapped in one room, but what would happen if I left? And who else would my hallucinations endanger? And if this wasn’t another mirage, what kind of danger was I putting Falin in?

  Ryese had said I was Falin’s weakness. If I was the bait, where was the trap?

  “How did you find me?”

  Falin frowned. “I received a note. It said you’d left your quarters and were in trouble. Then it told me how to find you. I’m assuming Ryese sent it and I should watch my back.”

  Well, that seemed plausible. And coming here was definitely something the real Falin would do, but the fact I thought so meant my imagination could have conjured up the explanation.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  Falin’s frown deepened. “What?”

  “To prove you’re real. Tell me something I couldn’t know about you.”

  Falin stepped back, evaluating me, or maybe the request, I wasn’t sure which. Then his gaze cut to the fake Death still yelling questions at me. “Why does he keep asking you his name?”

  “Because I don’t know it.”

  “But aren’t you . . . ?”

  He didn’t finish the question. He didn’t have to. I knew what he was asking. Wasn’t I Death’s girlfriend? His lover? His something, at the very least? Hell, he was my oldest and dearest friend before he was . . . whatever he was now.

  And I knew nothing about him.

  After several moments of only the fake Death speaking, Falin sighed.

  “If I tell you something you don’t know, how will that prove anything? You won’t know if it’s true or not.”

  Shit. I hadn’t thought of that. I pressed my palms against my eyes. Then I stopped.

  My eyes. I hadn’t been able to pierce the hallucination of Rawhead, hadn’t been able to disbelieve him away, but his lack of soul had betrayed he wasn’t alive.

  I dropped my hands and opened my shields. I blinked, looking around. Death remained exactly the same as I opened my mental sight to the other planes, but Falin had a hazy silver-blue glow haloing his form. A soul.

  I smiled in relief. He was real.

  Unless of course, my mind could conjure up a soul glow around a hallucination. Why did I have to think about that possibility? I hated my brain right now.

  Falin watched my thoughts shift with my expressions, and then asked, “You want me to tell you just anything you don’t know?” He paused. “You know that I was switched with a human and grew up outside Faerie, right? Well, maybe the spells they wrapped me in weren’t quite good enough, or maybe I was just unlucky, because I was abandoned by the family who should have raised me. I don’t know. I was too young to remember. I grew up in foster care, but never really fit anywhere. I’d stay in a home for a few months and then they’d send me away, off to a new family. When I reached puberty, the spell began breaking down, my fae nature emerged, and a FIB agent brought me to court. I felt like I belonged for the first time. Faerie felt like the home I’d never had. The home I’d missed.”

  I studied him. I’d asked him for something I didn’t know, and he’d given me a doozy. I hadn’t known him when he was younger, and I knew very little about his past, but this information fit. In unguarded moments, I’d recognized the part of him that had spent too long without a home, that wanted to belong and be valued. It resonated with me, and had since I first met him.

  Well, okay, not when I first met him. The first few times we interacted I’d thought he was a major jerk.

  But after that.

  The story made me want to hug him, even though the pain he’d revealed was decades old and likely well scabbed over. I hadn’t grown up in foster care, hadn’t bounced around houses, but I’d felt unwanted. I’d felt alienated from my family because of my wyrd ability. Because my father had shipped me off for most of my childhood. Had made a point of disassociating himself from me. So while I couldn’t understand exactly what Falin had gone through, I could commiserate on some level.

  I could also understand what he meant about Faerie feeling like home. As terrifying as I found the courts, something felt right when I was in Faerie. It was like a drug I knew was dangerous, but craved. Since my awakening, I’d felt Faerie’s absence when I was in the mortal realm, but my healthy fear was strong enough to keep me away. So I could imagine what it must have been like for him as a teenager.

  And the fact that I could, and my reaction to his story, made me leery.

  Wouldn’t an illusion my drugged imagination had conjured want to make an emotional connection? And my own mind would be the best to provide the perfect outlet. The fake Death was proof of that fact.

  Oh hell. How was Falin supposed to prove if he was real or not? He was acting like the real Falin, m
y mind’s eye told me he had a soul, and he’d given me a believable story when I’d asked. None of it was definitive, but I had to trust something.

  Yeah, so let’s trust the guy who has told you point-blank to never trust him.

  But I did. With a healthy dose of caution maybe. But for better or worse, I did trust him.

  The sleet continued to fall around us, coating every surface and clinging to my wet, icy hair and clothes. If the drug didn’t kill me, I might die from hypothermia before I got out of the winter court.

  “Be on the lookout for Ryese,” I said, approaching the threshold that had reappeared when Falin entered the room.

  “Isn’t it usually me telling you to be careful?” Falin asked, a wry smile touching the edges of his lips.

  True. But I didn’t say it as I walked through the door, Falin at my heels. We emerged in one of the icy hallways, though at this point, it was more of a slushy hallway. The fake Death followed me a moment later, still yelling.

  I scowled at him, hating my own mind that had summoned him and made my insecurity public. Chewing at my bottom lip, I turned to Falin. “That spell you used on the queen earlier . . . ?”

  He glanced between me and my illusion. Then shook his head. “It wasn’t a healing spell, and it won’t help you.”

  I almost asked him what it was then, but he couldn’t lie, and there was no wiggle room in that statement. Hanging my head and doing my best to ignore the verbal barbs from the fake Death, I followed Falin down the corridor.

  Ice golems lined the hall. Once before I’d seen them come to life at the queen’s whim, but I wasn’t sure these particular golems would ever wake again. Their carved ice faces had melted, as had much of their heads and arms. I looked away from the misshapen forms. The winter court was dying.

  “Have you seen the queen recently?”

  Falin shot a grim look at the golems. “Not too long ago.”

  “Since the sleet started again?” I asked, and his silence was answer enough. No. He hadn’t.