by Allison Pang
Emptiness answered my metaphysical probing, like I was shouting in an empty room. Please, please, please . . . I shoved in deeper, even as I realized what little contact we had would not be enough.
“Thirsty,” he mumbled. “So thirsty.”
Not for water, I realized. Dream-eater, he was named. But he couldn’t drink my dreams while we remained here in his . . .
“Come on.” I tugged on him, staggering to my feet. “We have to go.”
He blinked up at me blearily. “Go where?”
“Someplace you can eat. You can’t sustain yourself on your own dreams . . . you’ll just be devouring yourself.”
A frown crossed his face as he worked it through. He gave me a weary smile, his golden eyes taking on an odd humor. “That actually makes too much sense.”
“It explains a lot,” I agreed. I held myself steady as he pulled himself up, his arm thrown loosely across my shoulder. “You’re going to have to stop the fire in the trees, though. I’m not sure I can carry you and shield us both at the same time.”
“Amateur,” he snorted.
“Look who’s talking.” I pulled my shields around us as tight as they would go, trying to reduce their circumference.
“Anyone ever tell you how beautiful you are?”
“It’s been mentioned a time or two.”
We limped out of the cottage, his face squeezed in concentration. The flames wavered and then damped down.
“Won’t be able to hold it for long,” he said hoarsely. His feet were bent at an odd angle, as though he’d tried to transform into his daemon form and failed. I shifted beneath him to try for a stronger grip around his waist.
“Sonja is waiting for us outside the gate.”
He nodded, hissing as his naked foot crunched on an ember. “Feels so real.”
“Well, it’s not. Remember, you control this place.”
“Mmmph.”
“Yeah. Now you know how I feel, every time you guys spout off about relying on physics too much.”
“Everyone’s a critic,” he muttered, but the flames died down a little more as we retreated from the cottage. He spared a single glance back at it and sighed. “It was nice while I had it.”
“I know.” I squeezed his hand and tugged him forward. Time enough later to figure out what to do about it . . . if there even was a later.
Which led to another interesting thought.
The previous times he’d drunk my dreams had always required some form of sex . . . or at least my orgasm. I was hardly in the mood for that sort of thing at the moment. Not that it would have mattered, before. Being an incubus had its perks, and one of them was to emanate a sort of sexual desire that could override most sensibilities.
He no longer had that . . . but maybe I did.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’ll tell you later.” We were at the gate of his Dreaming Heart. Sonja paced outside of it with a restless flap of scarlet wings.
“There you are.” She yanked on the gate until her brother stroked it and it rolled open. The succubus snatched at him, pulling him into her arms. “You asshole.”
“Nice to see you too,” he coughed.
“You look like shit.”
“Surprise,” he retorted dryly. “I feel like shit.”
I snorted. “Come on. Family reunion later.”
The three of us carefully walked the threaded path back to my Heart, Brystion leading the way. His legs continued to bend at an odd angle, not quite in full daemon mode, and a stubby tail twitched as we approached the rocky road that led to the sea.
He paused, raising his head as though to sniff the wind, an eerie light emanating from his gaze. Immediately I felt an answering thrum within me. Whatever he’d put inside me before wanted out.
Now.
Sonja glanced at me, her mouth compressed as though she were trying not to chuckle. “I think I’ll leave you two alone for a bit, shall I?”
I let out a shaky laugh. “I don’t think this will take long. Why don’t you see about scouting the edges of my Heart. We’ve still got to find Maurice.”
She rolled her eyes at me, but there was good humor lighting up her face and for the first time in a while I felt as though we might actually have a chance.
Brystion turned toward me, his hand upon the gate. A fierce desire burned within his gaze that had very little to do with civility. “Hungry.”
“This is going to hurt, isn’t it?” I’d already resigned myself to the fact that having his essence ripped out of me wasn’t going to be overly pleasant, but hopefully . . .
His face gentled. “I’ll try not to . . .”
The gate tipped open and he pulled me through, cheek pressed against my ear. “Run,” he whispered.
I ran.
I pulled the Dreaming around me, my form shifting even as his own form changed, an incubus in his natural habitat. I became a deer, bounding away on cloven hooves. I half expected him to turn into a tiger, but he wasn’t interested in the hunting games Sonja and I had played in the past.
At least not in that respect. He shimmered into a stag with a roughness that belied his past grace and bolted after me. I lingered at the edge of the tree line until he caught up and then tore off again, but never too far.
This would have to culminate in the inevitable, but the chase seemed to revitalize him. His nose brushed my hindquarters, teeth nipping at my hocks, and I darted away, kicking up a clod of earth.
For a moment, he ran beside me and I could see the future stretch out before us . . . if we’d had the time to play . . . fox and hound, rabbit and wolf . . . and I finally understood what Sonja had been trying to teach me. What it meant to be a Dreamer in love with an incubus. The infinite playground at our disposal could lend itself to a lifetime and beyond.
But time was the one thing we no longer had . . . and I couldn’t pretend to be something I wasn’t. I slowed down as we crested a hill, the shadowed silhouette of my house down below, looming in a welcoming sort of way.
I didn’t want to go there just yet. This next part was for the wildness of the Dreaming, not the safety at the center of my Heart. The grass swished behind me and I shivered, throwing off the Dreaming so that I was human again. And naked.
I didn’t turn around as he approached, but a pulse of power skittered over my skin when he shifted—though what form he took I didn’t know.
And it didn’t really matter. The soft chiming of the bells in his hair called me home . . . called his power home . . .
I turned, melting into the warmth of his arms. His mouth met mine in a soft flurry of kisses and the swelling roll of need rippled in my belly. My chest ached with it. He let out a grunt as I pulled him down on top of me, my legs already wrapping around his naked back.
“This is not how it should be,” he said, shifting so we were forced to look at each other. His gaze was half-feral and gold, the pale markings on his skin faded and worn.
I arched a brow at him. “I’ll put it on your tab,” I murmured, kissing him again. This time he made no effort to pull away, stretching my arms above my head to brush his lips over the ticklish spot at the inside of my wrist.
And then there was no time left. He slid into me, his tongue probing my mouth. I squirmed at the sudden intrusion, but spurred him on with a nod and a sigh, tugging at his hair to pull him closer.
Heat bubbled beneath the surface of my flesh, skittering back and forth as it looked for a way out. I finally bit his shoulder, hard enough to break the skin. And still it wasn’t enough; some inner part of me wanted to rend him to his bones.
“Ion—” I gasped.
“I know.” He panted with an oddly inelegant sound, his usual suaveness shattered like the rest of him. “Give it to me. All that I am . . . that we are.”
The words took a moment to register. Perhaps in his effort to remove his own essence . . . he’d actually TouchStoned me. I didn’t ponder it for more than a few seconds, the orgasm rising to life within my bell
y. It rippled out in the arch of my back and the clamp of my thighs, the scrape of my nails down his shoulders, but he didn’t let go.
He swallowed it all. It poured out of me, wave after wave.
How the hell had I managed to take any of it from him?
His jaw dropped, his mouth half-open as he drank and drank. We were wrapped in golden light and the chiming of bells, the answering pulse of sex and something far deeper.
Yours . . . and yours . . . and mine.
I silently cried out as he continued to move, and his eyes flared with a halo of gold as he stared down at me.
“Mine,” he snarled. The Dreaming faded away until there was only the black of night left and the soft sounds I made each time he slid home again and again. Antlers sprouted from his forehead, catching my hands where they’d been snarled in his tangled hair.
“Dream-eater,” I murmured, laughing when he bit me, his teeth bared in a feral smile. The liquid skin became ebony and rich, the silver tattoos sparking to life with their own inner light.
“Abby.” He buried his face in my neck, his whole body shivering as he came. The snap of the TouchStone bond slid into place with an audible vibration, the twang of it almost painful. He blinked, stroking the hair from my forehead.
What is this? I didn’t think I’d said it aloud, but his eyes answered me, the edges crinkling in a wondering amusement. He disengaged from me carefully, his gaze roaming over my naked form with a supreme male satisfaction. Inwardly I sighed with relief. He’d been transformed into his full daemon form, the lion tail twitching languidly by the sharpened hooves.
He wrapped the Dreaming about us like a cloak, the heat of his skin a beacon in the darkness. “Can you break it?”
“The bond?”
He nodded, a questioning hum in the back of his throat. I shrugged.
“I release you.” We paused as absolutely nothing happened. “Uh . . .”
“Uh, indeed,” he said dryly. “I think we just made that TouchStone bond permanent.”
“Well, that wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Is everything else the way it should be?” I waggled my fingers at him.
“You make it sound like it’s a bad thing,” he retorted, exhaling sharply. “But yes. There’s a difference. I feel . . . full.” His form blurred into his mortal semblance and back again. “That part’s in working order, anyway.”
His brilliant eyes narrowed as he captured my chin. Immediately heat swept into my limbs, lust rolling through them to leave me raw and aching. “Good to know that part works too.”
I pulled away from him, ignoring the flush crawling over my cheeks. “Yeah, yeah. Great. Are we ready to do this yet?”
He let me stand, turning around to observe his hindquarters with a nod of contentment. I pulled the Dreaming around me to fashion jeans and tank top. It was harder this time than it had been before and I sighed inwardly.
“What is it?” His ears cupped the night, rotating toward me.
I gave him a sad smile. “I kind of liked the extra power. Being able to do all . . . this without having to work at it. Makes the rest of it seem hopeless, I guess.” I scowled at my feet. “Stupid, maybe, but I guess I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle things like I did before.”
“It wasn’t honest, Abby.”
I glared at him. “You were the one who gave it to me—without my knowledge, let me add, so don’t go acting like I freaking stole it.”
“I’m sorry,” the incubus murmured behind me, one clawed hand drifting over my neck to rest on my shoulder.
I reached up to grasp it, my mouth going dry as I realized what we were about to do. “I know. I just don’t want to fuck it up.”
He let out a humorless chuckle. “Me neither.”
The admission didn’t make me feel any better, but there was something about his sudden rash of bashfulness that made up for his earlier arrogance.
When it came down to it, I didn’t want to die again.
“Are we ready?” I glanced over at silhouette of my house, suddenly wishing all I had to do was to find comfort in its inner sanctum. “Your sister is waiting for us.”
“Yes.”
The two of us strode in silence, making our way to the gate. The earlier fire of passion cooled and there was nothing left for me to hold on to except the awful bit of courage that swirled in my stomach like a wave of butterflies.
Sonja waved at us impatiently when we reached the top of the hill, but the relief in her face shone out at us like a beacon. In a moment, she’d vaulted over the gate, half gliding to her brother and into his arms. They stood there, yin and yang in their gleaming skins, her soft sigh muffled in his neck.
“Are you whole? Are you hurt?” She patted down his shoulders clinically, searching his face as though she might discern some hidden flaw.
“As whole as I can be.” His eyes slid sideways to me, but if there was some message written therein, it wasn’t for me to decipher.
Sonja looked at me then, her face unreadable. Hesitating, she reached into a pouch at her side. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to follow you where you’re going, though I’ll try the best I can.” She pulled forth a small vial and thrust it into my hand.
I held it up, frowning at the colorless liquid inside. “What is this?”
Her nostrils flared. “Succubus blood. The last of it.”
Realization snapped through me. “This is what Topher left you?” I blinked at her, trying to figure out what the hell had ever attracted her to the man, a slow anger erupting in my chest. I bit down savagely on my lower lip.
The succubus let out a shaky laugh. “Abby, in a strange way, I think he was trying to help us.”
“How?”
Brystion’s mouth opened in a snarl. “Maurice is holed up in a Shadow Realm . . . like the one you were in.”
I snapped my fingers. “The paintings . . . it was the succubus blood that allowed the nightmares to happen there. So you think . . . what? We could use this somehow to bring his nightmares to him?”
“What better way to force him out?” The incubus eyed the bottle grimly. “And it’s a rather ironic bit of justice, don’t you think?”
“Full circle, anyway,” I muttered, and gave him a wan smile. “Have I ever mentioned how much I wish you’d sucked out the bastard’s soul when you had a chance?”
“Not half as much as I wish I had.”
Our gazes met, that moment of shared history stretching out like a road made of regret and lost chances. The irony of it all was that if he had done it, none of this would be happening right now. It struck me as amusing, but in a sick, hysterical way.
“Spilled milk,” he said finally, taking my hand in his. “Let’s do this.”
We all nodded and silently left the inner sanctum of my Heart. I locked the gate tightly. I didn’t know if there would be any sort of backlash or not, but the thought of Maurice possibly tracking his way here was enough to give me the shakes.
I created as tight a shield as I could. It was easier now that I’d done it so many times before, but I definitely noticed less power at my disposal.
“So what now?” I swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth.
“This show belongs to you, I’m afraid,” Sonja said. “You’ve got the strongest connection to him at this point, so you’ll need to find him . . . like you did with Melanie before. We’ll shield you as best we can.”
Ion’s face sobered. “You’ll have to go in alone, but if you can break through to the ShadowRealm . . .” He tipped my chin up to kiss me. “I will find you,” he whispered fiercely.
“Okay.” I took a deep breath and cast out with my mind, calling up every bit of ugly and foul memory I had of Maurice. The beetle-bright eyes and the charismatic smile. The way he’d gloated over my naked body before Topher shoved me into the painting. Him stabbing me. How he’d finally broken my neck and killed me.
Fury erupted at the thoughts, lighting up the tenuous connections as they spiderwebbed through my mind
. For a moment I saw all of it, the strands of everyone I knew, pulsing with small beads of light. The beams were uneven, stronger on some and much weaker on others, and I could only assume the brightness represented the people I was closest to.
A few were nearly dark, surrounded with their own odd energy. Sonja had told me it would be possible to find my enemies and DreamWalk my way to them . . . and it only made sense these threads were my enemies. It wasn’t so much that they were weak as that they felt different.
Wrong.
“Beware the dark side of the force,” I muttered, giving a metaphysical tug on the largest. The echoing pulse swept over me with an ugly ripple. “That’s the one.”
Immediately, Brystion and Sonja stepped beside me, their shields locking into place. The tang of the sea rolled in on an acrid breeze and I tasted bile. The sharks were restless, the nightmares gathering their own power.
Somehow I took comfort in that. If they were truly my protectors, at least I wouldn’t be completely helpless.
“This way.” I stepped on a dark thread. It spiked when I touched it, vibrating like a fly in a spider’s web, and I had the feeling we’d just alerted Maurice to our presence.
No going back now.
We slid forward, the tightrope of the strand beneath us swaying oddly, but Brystion made a little shrug and the shield around us steadied. My Dreaming Heart faded away as we moved forward. In the distance I saw little pinpricks of light winking in and out, each one a Dreamer.
It irritated me that Maurice would be one of those lovely little things. The thought was irrational—after all, he was still technically a man and all men sleep sometimes. But the fucker didn’t deserve it, and climbing through a sociopath’s idea of the land of Nod wasn’t anything I really wanted to do.
I kept tensing, waiting for the line to snap, for us to go hurtling into the darkness, where I’d never wake up—but nothing happened. In fact, the journey was completely uneventful, which had me even more uneasy.
If Brystion noticed my discomfort, he didn’t say anything, but the long sweep of his tail curved around my calf, the furred tuft giving me a playful swipe as his hand slipped into mine. His face brushed my ear. “No regrets,” he whispered, and the sound of it carried into the void and disappeared.
