Tyson: An Ariel Kimber Novella

by Mary Martel

  I pulled up my text messages and the most recent one had been from Annabell so I opened that one first.

  Wicked Bitch: I grow tired of this game, Ty. I want to play a different one.

  Below was a picture of Ariel standing beside her Rover with the driver’s door open. She had a big pair of sunglasses shoved up on top of her head, pushing her hair back from her face when the damn things should have been covering her eyes because she was squinting as if the sun were blinding her.

  She was such a damn crazy person, it wasn't even funny.

  I wanted to smile at how beautiful she looked even though she was a nut when realization slammed into my gut like a heavy fist and I was left with nothing I'd ever dare smile about. Not ever.

  The evil ex not only knew what Ariel looked like but she'd obviously been following my girl.

  I scooted to the end of the bed and got my feet planted firmly on the floor before it started rising up my throat, looking for a place to escape. I bent forward at the waist and reached out for the metal waste basket that sat beside my nightstand.

  Once I had the basket in hand, I threw up, emptying out the contents of my stomach inside of it. I was lucky I had lined the inside of the basket with a plastic grocery store bag otherwise all I would have succeeded in doing was making an even bigger mess of things and ended up with vomit on my floor.

  Inside, I seethed as my heart clenched painfully. That fucking bitch had gotten close enough to Ariel to take pictures of her. Who the hell knew how long she'd been following her around for. Or how close she'd actually gotten to my girl. Annabell knew how to do things Ariel had no knowledge of, like basic self-defense and how to fend off an attacker with magic. Ariel hadn't been taught any of that. I had no idea what she'd learned with Adrian outside of how to bleed herself for their gain, but I was almost certain it wasn't basic self-defense. They'd want her vulnerable and defenseless. And I had no idea what types of books she'd been reading on magic. I had never looked through the one's on her shelf that Uncle Quint had picked out for her out of his own private collection but I was also willing to bet that self-defense hadn't been on his mind when he'd picked them out. He would have gone more for general, basic info and steered clear of anything that might get her into trouble. Besides, he'd want her to be coddled and handle the defense part on his own.

  The vomiting had finally stopped, my stomach was empty of all contents and there was nothing left to purge. I set the basket down on the floor with a thump and swiped the back of my hand across my mouth.

  Who else was she following? Was my whole family now in danger because of this bitch or was it just Ariel? Something had to be done to get rid of her for good because I couldn't have her coming back and doing this again. There would be no hiding her from Uncle Quint if she kept coming back, he'd kill her if he found out she was taking pictures of Ariel and practically stalking her.

  My phone vibrated again with another text message. I wanted to ignore it but couldn't afford to now that she'd upped the game with pictures and was talking about wanting to play. I'd played with her before and lost horribly. I didn't want to lose anything else to her.

  I picked up the phone and read.

  Wicked Bitch: She left him outside all by himself. Doesn't he look lonely? If he were mine, I'd never leave him alone like this. That bitch doesn't know how to play with you guys the right way. I do.

  Below was a picture of Damien asleep and outside in his backyard. He was laying on a round rug that had been covered in pillows and blankets. He was tucked away under thick blankets and looked peaceful. I had no idea why he'd be sleeping in his backyard when I'd never heard of him having done such a thing before and it wasn't like he was in a sleeping bag or a tent or anything. It was bizarre and made no sense to me. What I did understand, however, was that Annabell had somehow gotten into his fenced in backyard and close enough to him while he was sleeping to take a fucking picture of him. This was different than being at the same gas station as someone even if you followed them there and taking a close-up picture of them that they weren't aware of you taking. This was way beyond that level of stalker and straight to the depths of fucking psycho crazy stalker bitch who was potentially dangerous. And she needed to be stopped.

  My eyes ran over Damien sleeping peacefully and knowing he'd been violated in some way by someone we'd once been with and my gut clenched painfully.

  I leaned over the basket and dry heaved.

  Nothing came up but I couldn't seem to stop even thought there was nothing to get out. When I was done, I nudged the basket with my foot, sliding it further away from me.

  I wrapped my arms around my stomach and laid back on the bed. My mouth tasted like shit and my stomach felt like I'd been knocked down and kicked in the middle over and over again.

  There had to be a way to get rid of her from our lives but not make the Council pissed at us and want to come at us with everything they had. If she were hurt physically and they couldn't use her body for their pleasure and gain anymore then they would take that out on my coven if we were to blame.

  There had to be a way.

  Think, Ty, think.

  My father had made me read every single day even though I'd hated doing it. I always wanted to be outside and doing anything but being locked up in the library with dusty old books. My father hadn't collected them to the extreme my grandfather had but he hadn't been too far behind him.

  He didn't make me read for hours and hours a day, every day. It was more like an hour every day on top of my school work and they were always books having to do with magic.

  Still, my mind blanked on what I needed to do to handle this situation with the ex. Magic was the answer, I just had to find the key.

  I blew out a heavy breath as I laid back on my bed. I forced my body to relax as I closed my eyes. I needed a break and I needed to step back from the problem in order to find a solution. If I kept at it tonight I'd only end up exhausted and with nowhere to go from here.

  I blanked my mind, forcing myself to think of nothing but the darkness I saw behind my eyes. I focused on nothing as I willed myself to fall asleep.

  This was something my father had also worked hard to teach me how to do. He thought being able to fall asleep at will was a skill any good dream walker should be able to do. Uncle Quint could do it at will as well. Unlike me, he hadn't had a nice, patient teacher. Instead, he'd had grandfather who'd used physical pain as a means to motivate. My father had learned the same way, which is the only reason I knew what had been done to my Uncle. He never talked about grandfather or about his childhood. But my dad had shared with me, thinking one day I would need to know so I’d be able to better understand Uncle Quint. I was glad he’d taken the time to share with me and thought it made all the difference in our relationship because if I hadn’t known then I probably wouldn’t have put up with half the shit I did from him.

  I crossed my arms over my stomach and sank deeper into the mattress as my mind began to drift off.

  Sleep came quickly and before I knew it my world was incased in thick grey smoke that billowed all around me. It was so thick that my ankles disappeared and my feet were non-existent.

  I groaned internally as I shifted my weight heavily from foot to foot.

  Being here hadn't been my intention and proved just how sleep deprived and messed up my head was. I had simply wanted to go to sleep and dream of nothing, think of nothing, for a couple of hours max so I could start fresh and refreshed once I woke up again.

  What I wasn't trying to do was project myself out of my body and into a walking dream. I was too tired for this shit and didn't even want to know who I was subconsciously looking for and seeking out.

  I ran my hand over my tired eyes as I put one foot in front of the other and started making my way through the smoke like fog. Standing in one spot, waiting for someone or something to come at me was entirely useless and would do me no good. I'd still be tired but time would feel like it was dragging on against my will. I'd gone that
route before when I'd been dragged under against my will and only chasing after sleep and wound up right where I was now.

  Sludging through grey.

  It felt like I'd walked for hours before a noise to the right stopped me where I was. I cocked my head to the side and listened intently. My ears straining to hear the slightest thing.

  Silence greeted me.

  I clenched my fists tightly at my thighs and trudged on.

  On nights like tonight, I had to ask myself if this really was a gift or a curse. What if I never woke up and was stuck here to wander aimlessly? I shuddered at the thought. I never wished to know such a horror and wouldn't wish that fate on anyone, not even my worst enemy.

  Five minutes drifted by in a stupor.

  Then twenty.

  Twenty minutes turned into an hour.

  After a while, time really held no meaning for me. I was exhausted and my eyelids drooped heavily. I wanted nothing more than to wake up so I could try to fall back asleep again and maybe actually sleep for a change. I needed it, desperately.

  As time wore on, my body began to feel weighted down, as if I'd been drugged, and I almost sat down on the cold ground and closed my eyes despite the fact it would bring me no relief.

  A scream, high and filled with panic rent through the air as my tired body jerked back to life almost as if someone had flipped my switch back to 'on'.

  I took off, running in the direction of the scream as another one ripped through the air.

  I tripped over something I couldn’t see and went down hard. I lay on the ground, sprawled out on my stomach with my cheek pressed into the cold, damp dirt. I lay there for a split second as I blinked my eyes in stunned disbelief.

  Some unseen force pushed on my chest from beneath me, beneath the dirt, and my body flew backwards. I was airborne for a few seconds, my arms and legs wind milling uselessly through the air before my back crashed into the dirt and the breath was once again knocked out of me. My body seized as I struggled to draw in air.

  “What the fuck?” I grunted painfully as I rolled over to my knees. I put my palms in the dirt and shoved my upper body up out of the dirt.

  Once I had my feet under me again I tried to control my breathing enough to reach inside myself and draw a layer of my magic out and wrap it around myself like a comfortable blanket. A protective blanket, using my magic like a shield.

  Just what in the fuck was going on here? I had never been attacked in the dream plane before. It was always just me, whoever I brought with me, and the object of my thoughts. I hadn’t brought anyone with me and I didn’t think I’d been thinking of anyone when I fell asleep, at least no one who’d physically assault me.

  A chill crept down my spine and I whirled around, searching for the person I’d felt watching me. No one was there and nothing but the rolling fog greeted me. I didn’t need to see them to know they were there, I felt the eyes on me like a physical touch.

  Another scream rent through the air from behind me and I whirled around in that direction, momentarily forgetting the person watching me, the invader of my dreams. Completely forgetting I’d just taken a header and face planted right in the dirt. The only thing that registered to me being the horrifically shrill screams that continued to grace the air waves.

  My neck itched as I ran, letting me know that the person who'd attacked me with their magic and had been hiding away watching me was still watching me and likely following me. I had a feeling that whoever this person was they were the reason behind the screams even though they were following me and nowhere near where the girl screaming was.

  I made it to the edge of the fog where it abruptly stopped and I skidded to a halt, coming up short at the sight that greeted me. The clearing was as familiar to me as my own backyard. It was the clearing on the other side of Marcus's house, where we usually did our full moon rituals and drew energy down from the moon while offering up pieces of ourselves to it and Mother Nature. I'd been here hundreds of times before in reality. But I'd never been here before in my dreams, I'd had no reason to come here outside of my waking hours.

  I hesitantly stepped out of the fog as I cautiously looked around me. I was more aware of what could potentially be behind me than I was as to what was going on in front of me even though I was facing ahead. The danger was behind me and it deserved my attention more than some screaming female I did not know did.

  The screaming stopped as soon as I stepped out of the fog. I might have thought that weird if the entire dream hadn't already been weird in the extreme seeing as nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

  I was half way across the field when a twig to the right of me snapped and a person came crashing through the forest. A tall, thin figure dressed in something black with bare legs stumbled out of the woods and fell, landing on their hands and knees in the tall grass. It wasn't until her pale blonde hair caught in the moonlight that I realized it was Ariel who'd stumbled out of the woods and it had been Ariel who'd been screaming bloody murder all this time.

  My heart skipped a beat inside my chest.

  What the fuck was she doing here? She wasn't supposed to be here.

  "Ariel," I shouted her name as I took off running in her direction. No matter how hard I pushed myself, no matter how fast I ran, she never seemed to get any closer, always remaining a good twenty feet away from me. Always out of my reach. It didn't seem to matter to me because I kept on running towards her all the same, hoping that something would change and I'd finally be able to reach her.

  It never happened.

  I watched in horror as she climbed to her feet and didn't even twitch when I yelled her name over and over again.

  I hadn't noticed when she fell that she'd landed in a small puddle that happened to be the only one around. I didn't know who was controlling this dream but when I found out I was going to drag their ass over to that fucking puddle and attempt to drown them in it for this bullshit.

  Mud streaked down her bare legs and I finally noticed what she was wearing. A thin, long sleeved black thermal up top and short black shorts on bottom. Her feet were bare and I wasn't at all surprised by this because she was wearing what she'd gone to bed in. It wasn't her dream and she clearly wasn't in control of it so she had no control over what she was wearing.

  Then it struck me. This was my dream and I was supposed to be in control of it. Yet, somehow, I was not. I wasn't in control of anything.

  Dream walking was a rare talent. The ability to take control of someone else's dream? Even rarer. That took a whole wealth of magic that was on par with the kind of talent and strength a person had to have to be on the Council. It terrified me.

  The only thing I was sure of, the one thing this fucked up dream state I was stuck in proved, was that Ariel was indeed a dream walker, she wouldn't have been able to be sucked in otherwise.

  I stopped running, gave up on it entirely, and stood there stupidly as my body shook uncontrollably with rage and my chest heaved from the effort I'd put into running flat out to get to my girl and getting fucking nowhere.

  Ariel whipped around frantically, her eyes searching, scanning the woods she'd emerged from.

  "No, no, no." I heard her whisper desperately.

  My heart clenched painfully at her whispered plea and the frantic look in her beautiful green eyes. She'd been clearly running from something and she looked like she expected it to come bursting out of the forest from where she had come from and leap out at her and physically attack her.

  She absolutely needed me to be there with her, standing beside her and whatever the hell she'd been on the run from. She needed me to protect her.

  Even though I knew it was futile, I started moving towards her again. It felt like I was trudging through fucking quicksand and getting nowhere fast.

  I was tired of this bullshit and there was no way I wanted to sit here and watch as something came out of the woods and tried to eat my girlfriend. I would blast the fuck out of this goddamn dream with my magic if I had to, I
didn't care how bad that would hurt either of us and that we'd be painfully wrenched out of our dreams. Nothing in here could physically harm us in the real world. It could traumatize us to experience horrible things in here but it wouldn't and couldn't physically jack up our actually bodies that were sleeping at the moment. So, at least there was that. But I wasn't sure Ariel even knew that. As far as I knew, none of the guys or that old windbag Adrian from the perverted Council had explained anything to her about how dream walking worked. Which was pretty shitty now that I was thinking about it. That made the fear in her eyes and the terror on her face all the worse. She had no idea that what happened in here wouldn't hurt her in the real world. Hell, for all I knew she thought this was the real world.

  God damn it.

  She needed me to be there with her and to tell her what the hell was going on so she wouldn't have to look so damned scared.

  A surge or rage tore through me and I forcefully shoved out with my magic and stumbled. Heat surrounded me as the hair on my body rose, including my head and my body hummed with energy.

  I fell down to my knees as I breathed in the thick air that surrounded me. When I'd pushed out with my magic I hadn't expected that much of it to come pouring out of me, I hadn't even known I was capable of pushing out that much magic at one time. There'd be a price to pay for it later and my energy level would be dwindling soon until I ran out of steam. That meant there wasn't much time left and I had to use what little time I had to get my girl and get us the fuck out of here before whoever was playing with us stepped out from their coward’s place in the shadows.

  I climbed to my feet and wobbled forward on shaky legs. I was pleased when nothing held me back this time and I found myself free to move forward at my own pace.

  "Ariel," I shouted as I began running at her.

  This time she heard me and her head whipped around in my direction.