“Dreams are weird.” Nicole is watching her expression. “Especially the headachy kind.”
“Can’t shake this one.”
“What was it about?”
“Well, there wasn’t really a plot or anything, but …”
“… what?”
“… it was, like, perceptions. Something in my head, like fingers in there, searching around for something. Stirring things up. Weird.”
“Ewwww.”
“Yeah.”
Nicole takes the soap into her slippery hands. “I have to call my mom,” she says.
Felicia can’t see Nicole rolling her eyes as she speaks of her high-maintenance mother, but she knows she’s doing it.
“It’s her birthday,” Nicole reminds her. “Then we can go. Get an early start. It’ll probably be crowded up there.”
“Okay, yeah.” Felicia can feel a small frown at her eyes. “Did you call to me this morning? Like, yell out my name?”
“What are you talking about? You’re starting to creep me out.”
Felicia is shaking her head.
“That dream still bothering you?” Nicole whispers. “Really? It’s nothing else?”
“Nope, promise.”
“Well, I can help with a headache.”
“I’m sure you can.”
Nicole does indeed help.
CHAPTER 2
In the Honda, winding up toward Horsetooth, around the reservoir, and twisting up and around toward the trailhead, Felicia is pensive. For the past few minutes, she has been catching glimpses of Horsetooth Rock through the trees—the geometrical blue spruces, the verdant Douglas firs, the majestic ponderosas, the otherworldly bristlecone pines—and feeling its presence up there like gravity. Now that she’s up here beyond the city, she can’t imagine that she might not have come. And yet …
Nicole has asked twice about her mood, but Felicia has merely shrugged. She’s staring out the passenger window at the scenery, and for some reason she’s recalling those long-ago days in her youth during summer camp up in Estes Park. There was a counsellor—Mindy was her name, Felica’s pretty sure—who taught her pre-teen charges about the different pine varieties. How they had all touched the trees’ needles, their cones, had tasted them on their tongues. Sticky and sharp. Had used them in tea around a campfire later.
Felicia is unsettled by the memories, which come at her with a strange power. She’s hungry, for some reason, even though while dressing in their hiking gear she and Nicole had made a healthy meal of a new breakfast cereal that a vendor gave away as samples for the store last week. Some high-fiber thing with oats and blueberries. But it’s not the cereal she’s thinking of now, nor any thoughts of what her future store might stock, but rather a mountainside so green and succulent that it looks edible.
“Are you not into this?” Nicole asks. “You want to go back?”
“No, I need it.”
“Well, cheer up, why don’tcha? It’s fuckin’ beautiful up here.”
Felicia laughs and shakes herself out of her funk. At least, she tries to.
In moments, Horsetooth Rock is looming ahead, closer than ever as they wind up the final mile, Fort Collins behind them and the small mountain town of Masonville to the southwest. The distinctive “teeth” of the rock—jutting pillars of weather-gapped stone—seem to suck at her, drawing her in. Below the rock, a fertile evergreen expanse of forest sprawls in all directions. Felicia can make out a couple of trails leading off in several directions through the trees, like the edges of paint strokes in a work of art.
The trailhead is busy this morning, as expected. There are a couple dozen vehicles already parked in the lot, and she can see the colorful dots of hikers making their way up the trail. With the Civic’s hatchback flung up, Felicia and Nicole pull on their small hydration packs and help each other with sunscreen on their necks and shoulders. After a mutual thumbs-up, they’ve locked up the car and are on their way.
The hike up the gradual ascent feels good in Felicia’s lungs, as if the deep breathing is cleaning her out, invigorating her. Energizing her. Blowing out the carbon, as her father might have said, years ago when he was part of her life. The clean mountain air and particularly the smell of pine is intoxicating today. She lets her eyes wander out into the distance, savoring the great swaths of timberland.
Ahead of her, Nicole jumps up onto—then off of—a large boulder in the middle of the path.
“You’re thinking about that teacher, aren’t you?” Nicole calls back. “Accounting?”
Felicia raises her eyebrows. “Actually, no. But now I am. Thanks!”
And it’s the truth. She hasn’t thought of that horrible woman at all for at least—what?—an hour? The cantankerous finance professor, who seemed to hold some kind of grudge against her, had consumed too much of Felicia’s energy since posting the letter C in her final grade book, and she refused to dwell on the woman today.
“Just thinking. Really, I’m fine.”
“Is it your dad?”
Felicia feels the itch of irritation but forces a smile. She appreciates Nicole’s efforts to help, but if she asks another question, Felicia thinks she might simply sprint away into the trees and get lost among them.
As for her dad, she hasn’t heard from him in over a year, when he called her drunk at midnight from Chicago, and even that felt unintentional, like a butt-dial. She can’t even remember telling Nicole about him—probably whispered deep one night, half-asleep at the edge of a dream—but it struck a chord with her. Both their fathers were almost completely out of the picture.
“No. I’m sorry. It’s—” The smile turns into a frown. “I’m not sure what it is. I’ll snap out of it.”
They both nod hello to a couple of older men making their way down the trail. One of them, wearing a ludicrously wide-brimmed sun hat and brandishing a walking stick, catches Felicia’s eye.
“Watch for a rattlesnake about a quarter mile up,” says the man with the hat.
“No shit?” Nicole says.
He nods, smiling. “Nasty-lookin’ fella, but a little guy. On your left, a little ways after the horse trail branches off.”
“Wow.”
“Just don’t step on him, and you’ll be fine.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one.”
“He probably won’t even move, but I wouldn’t poke him with a stick or anything.” The man smiles, and they continue on.
They don’t spot the rattlesnake, but something continues to dig at Felicia’s mood. She’s decided it’s not hunger, exactly, but she almost feels a little light-headed as she trudges up the path. As if she didn’t get enough sleep, or she’s still feeling the effects of the alcohol.
Something’s out of kilter. But it’s more than that. Her senses seem to be experiencing a greater potency than normal. The sun is overly bright, the sounds of her boots on soil and rock are louder, the smell of pine and earth is stronger. She feels as if she can sense pine sap exuding its aroma all around her, from individual trees, from the cells of their needles, and she comes to the odd realization that it’s almost inebriating. Like the pine oil of extreme aromatherapy. Overbearing and yet nearly sensual.
“Are you all right?” Nicole asks her, stopping. “Hey, what’s up? You look pale.”
Felicia stops, too, shaking her head out of a strange vertigo. “I don’t know, it’s weird, I feel okay, I really do, but my head feels a little off. It’s no biggie.”
“You’re hungover probably. You want to head back?”
“No, no, let’s keep going.”
The trees still seem to pull at her, and she’s again reminded of her nightmare. When she closes her eyes, she can see those blood-red tendrils reaching out for her, and something deep inside her conflates the tendrils with pine branches, except they’re willowy and undulating, wet, slimy, grasping. She blinks the imagery away, nearly barking out an involuntary sound, nearly staggering in her upward stride. She covers the moment by drawing out her water
bottle and taking a long swallow.
The cold water calms her, focuses her. She manages a grin, latching back on to Nicole’s conversation, forcing herself to take part. She adjusts her pack, taking deep breaths, and after a while she’s enjoying herself, helping Nicole up steep ascents and around occasional expanses of mud, finding makeshift walking sticks, checking out wildflowers.
They talk about school, and they talk about books and music, and—again—they laugh at the odd coincidence that they each have a 17-year-old brother named David. They talk about goofy childhood memories and longtime friends back home, and they talk about sex and marijuana, and they talk about past boyfriends and girlfriends, how one notion led to the other. And an hour into the hike, Felicia is back to her normal self, smiling as she trudges through the final stretch toward Horsetooth Rock itself.
She experiences only the briefest sense of foreboding as they arrive at the foot of the formation, gauging how best to scale it.
They boost and pull each other up the rockface, passing a couple of hikers on their way down, finally reaching the flat top and joining a small crowd. They hold hands, staring out at Fort Collins to the east and then at Masonville to the southwest.
The sky is a clear cobalt blue, and there’s a shared joy among the people atop the rock that makes Felicia feel very fine indeed. The young women shrug off their backpacks and find a place to enjoy some Co-Op granola, some salami, and an energy drink. Felicia doesn’t voice this thought, but she feels that this is one of those moments we live for. She rolls her eyes at the notion that she almost skipped the hike this morning, because really she savors days like these. True to that notion, she settles back, palms anchored against rock, and closes her eyes, feeling the sun on her skin and a warm breeze on her cheek. It’s a perfect moment, and she smirks, knowing Nicole is watching her.
Nine months is a long time. She knows that. Earlier, she thought rather carelessly that neither of them probably assumed this relationship was anything serious, but that was a little bit of self-delusion. The truth is, it’s pretty damn serious. Maybe she simply doesn’t want to wreck it.
It’s only about four minutes later, as she’s clinking her plastic bottle against Nicole’s, that she hears voices raised in concern, coming from somewhere behind her.
“… see that?”
“What is it?”
“Over there.”
Felicia twists to see what’s going on. Hikers are pointing toward the skies above Masonville. And there’s something up there, some kind of weather disturbance above the cerulean blue. It’s faint, but it’s there. Like heat lightning—flickering bolts of energy tinged with red. Her eyes lock on it, squinting. Her heartbeat thuds.
She twists back to look at Nicole, but Nicole shakes her head. “No idea.”
“Have you—what is that?”
“I don’t know.”
She turns back. The energy is snapping in the blue, electric. It makes her shiver. She doesn’t want to tell Nicole that it is fully recalling her dream now—she’s definitely feeling that echo, but to admit it would feel silly. Wouldn’t it? Her heart is a drumbeat now, and she hides the shaking of her hands by planting them on her thighs.
And then the phenomenon fades out, leaving clear blue sky. Felicia watches the crowd react: a slow, curious emptiness in their gazes, which are still turned skyward.
How can this thing, whatever it was, be connected to her dream? She tries to rationalize the parallel imagery while craning her neck in an effort to spot it again. Perhaps she’d seen but not really seen the same phenomenon in the skies yesterday on her way home from work—say, in her peripheral vision—and she dreamed about it last night before seeing it again today? She locks on to the notion of familiarity with this thing, because there is an element of that. Something intimate, something only for her. She’s almost embarrassed to speak of it.
Especially with Nicole, who’s shrugging off the weirdness and already rooting around in her backpack for her bag of trail mix.
“Did I tell you my mom’s coming to town?” Nicole’s voice is a sing-song that attempts to dispel any weird vibes emanating from Felicia.
Felicia blinks and stares at her lover. Now there’s a way to get her attention and break whatever paralysis she’s feeling in her thinking.
“What?” she manages, swallowing off the end of the word.
Nicole nods. “Next Tuesday.”
“But—” Felicia’s breath is steadying, her pulse coming under control.
“I know.”
“Staying with us?”
“Ha!”
“I guess that means no?”
“She always rents a car and stays at the Marriott.” Nicole chews on some trail mix. “You know she likes to keep a safe distance.”
The one other time Felicia met Tiffany Bryson, the woman proved to be not only condescending but also pathologically high-maintenance. She expected the former but not the latter. In fact, she found it hard to believe that someone as laid-back and—let’s face it—gay as Nicole had sprung from Mrs. Bryson’s loins. Felicia’s first impression of Tiffany Bryson was that the woman was arch and unapproachable, although admittedly beautiful and funny in her way. One might even say Felicia’s first impression leaned heavily toward Christian conservative. Felicia hated to resort to generalizations, but after only a few conversations, it became true that this particular generalization held true.
When Felicia had first met her on campus, it had been less than a year since Nicole had come out to her parents. By Nicole’s account, her brother and even her long-distance dad received the news with a slow, almost warm acceptance, but her mother changed the subject. Nicole’s relationship with her mother had never been warm, but ever since that day, it felt reluctant and bristly. The woman’s visits from Atlanta seemed performed more out of a sense of obligation than ever.
“She’s mostly in Denver for a business meeting, but she’ll stay up here for two nights. I’m hoping she takes me shopping.”
“Anything planned, or just winging it?”
“I don’t have anything, but I’m sure she has a schedule.”
Felicia nods, takes a handful of Nicole’s trail mix, and crunches it thoughtfully.
The hikers around them have mostly forgotten about the weird light in the sky. Felicia warily scans the mostly brilliant blue expanse but finds nothing.
“I don’t imagine she’ll want to see me,” she says, turning back to Nicole.
“She likes you.”
Felicia gives Nicole a withering look. “My ass.”
“Truth.”
“That may be what you’d like to believe, but I’m pretty sure what she really thinks is that I turned you gay.”
Nicole sighs. “Well, she hasn’t mentioned you.”
Felicia watches her girlfriend carefully. She’s got that faraway look in her eye that tells Felicia that there’s more to discuss but the words for that discussion aren’t coming anytime soon. Nicole’s relationship with her mom is complicated in ways that Felicia will never grasp, but despite all the frustration and hurt, there’s deep love there.
“Should we—” Felicia starts, stumbling. “—should we take the initiative and make dinner for her or something?”
Nicole remains quiet, watching Fort Collins below them. Life is going on down there, happily oblivious to the first-world problems of a couple of college girls. If Felicia squints, she thinks she can spot her apartment building. She takes a long swallow of her energy drink, finishing it off, thinking that she might have said the wrong thing.
“Sorry,” she says quickly. “I know you don’t—”
“Hey.”
“What?”
Nicole pecks Felicia on the cheek.
“I really dig you, you know that?”
Felicia feels warmth spreading across her face and can’t help but let a smile take her lips, despite herself. Nicole has the ability, with the tiniest touch, to make her feel wonderful, and she’s never really felt that before.
And today more than ever, because with that single peck on the cheek, she has banished all weird dream imagery from Felicia’s mind.
The two young women sit on the top of Horsetooth Rock for forty-five minutes before packing up and heading down to enjoy the final full day of life as they know it.
CHAPTER 3
Today, Felicia expects the early-morning wakeup.
The face of her clock radio reads 5:15 am, and it’s playing an old REM song she loves, so she lets it go for a minute or two, until Nicole grumbles from the couch in the other room. Felicia touches the top of the radio, and it goes silent. She sighs inwardly.
It’s Saturday, and it’s time to get ready for a busy day at work.
She stirs in the semi-darkness, immediately feeling a blessed, relative coolness coming from the window. This heat wave has been the worst. She sits straight up and yawns, then casts a forlorn gaze at the empty side of the bed. On the mornings when Felicia has to rise early and head for the store, Nicole prefers to sack out on the couch in the main room. They were too tired last night for any hanky-panky, and Felicia wanted to at least try to get a sound night’s sleep. Otherwise, she would probably be cranky at the store, and that’s a persona she prefers to leave outside work. If she wants to run her own store one day, she knows that the identity she cultivates for that role will be all-important.
She maneuvers herself out of bed, steps naked toward the bathroom. Eyes still gummy, she twists on the water and steps in. No surprise shower visitors this morning, unfortunately. She washes herself beneath the spray and mentally prepares herself for the day, clearing the sleepiness away. In the midst of the shower, she frowns.
There were no nightmares last night, but the one from the night before still nags at her. When she closes her eyes, she can still feel echoes of those blood-red fingers, those tendrils, clawing at her. She snaps fully awake, eyes open, shivering away this feeling that has somehow found a stranglehold deep inside her.
Blood Dawn (Blood Trilogy Book 3) Page 2
