And suddenly it was just like it had been at the campsite: I was telling myself Don’t. My whole body was trembling with attempted resistance, but in the end I couldn’t stop myself.
I was inching closer and closer to the edge.
“What are you doing to me?”
“I’m not doing anything. This isn’t even real, remember? You said it yourself.”
“Not real,” I repeated, breathless, as I glanced over my shoulder.
Somehow, less than a foot now separated me from the long fall to the sea below. I’d gotten here too quickly for it to be real. He was right. I was right. This was just another nightmare. I’d been here before, and I’d woken up, and I’d been fine.
The wind tangling my hair felt real, though.
The salty air smelled real as it sank heavily, tangibly against my skin.
I tried putting a hand against that skin, shifting my fingers to claws and sinking them in deeper and deeper until blood welled up and the pain made my teeth clench and my eyes water and I thought, Surely, if I’m living in a nightmare, this would wake me up.
A hand grabbed my arm and pulled the claws from my skin. I jerked away, and there was fire in the movement—literal fire magic that flew instinctively from my hands to try and drive away my attacker. Even if it was only a dream, I wouldn’t let myself be thrown off of this cliff.
But I had a very sudden, very clear image of myself jumping.
Not stumbling, not falling the way I had the last time I’d dreamed of being trapped on an edge like this. But leaping of my own freewill, diving gracefully, and waking up just before I hit the rocks.
Because in dreams, you always woke up right before you hit the ground.
Right?
“Go ahead then. Jump.”
The words were so hushed, wrapping so intimately close to me that I might have mistaken them for the wind if they hadn’t keep repeating, over and over…
Jump, jump, jump. It’s a dream, and you can fly here. So jump.
And I did.
Eighteen
torture
Despite the fire magic still protecting my body, a pair of hands still managed to catch me around the middle and haul me in again, straight out of the flame-filled air. They threw me back to the solid ground behind— threw me hard enough that I slid several feet and slammed my head into a moss-coated rock.
Things began to flicker to black, then. All of the sights and sounds and smells around me coming and going in a way that reminded me of the hellish magic fever I’d endured a week before. My own painful groan was the first clear sound I heard among my confusion. I held onto it, to the sound of my voice, and I tried to cough up actual words, too.
“I wanted to jump,” I mumbled.
“No. You didn’t.”
The reply startled me into opening my eyes.
Kael was sitting next to me, chest heaving and tiny beads of sweat trickling down his forehead. There was blood on his face and throat. Burn marks on his arms. I stared for a long moment, trying to make sense of those things. Desperately wishing I could come up with some other explanation than the one that seemed most obvious.
“Kael…”
“Listen: Don’t freak out on me, okay?” he said, his breathing a little more relaxed and his eyes watching me carefully as he scooted closer. “You’re awake now. And you’re safe.”
“What did I do?” My hand moved to my mouth to cover its horrified gaping as I studied the burn marks on Kael’s arm a little closer. “Kael, what did I just do to you?”
“They’re just scratches, basically, already healing—”
“And what did I almost do to me?” My wide eyes looked to the cliff’s edge. I could see the bent blades of grass and overturned dirt where I—and apparently, Kael— had scuffled. Where I’d been planning to leap from, and where I’d heard that voice….
I started to my feet. Stumbled. Kael caught me, and the second his arms wrapped around me I officially lost my battle to ‘not freak out’ on him. The tears rushed down my face. My breathing was hitched, and my fingers dug into Kael with such desperate, frustrated motions that I’m surprised he didn’t protest. I had to be leaving marks.
More marks.
“I don’t understand,” I said through clenched teeth.
“Neither do I.”
“He’s not supposed to be able to get in my head like this. To control me. This is wrong. I have magic, we’ve done spells to protect against this, and I…I don’t…”
Kael tilted his head back a little so he could better see my face, and he wiped away a few stray tears on my cheek as he said, “He…?”
“…Carrick,” I clarified. The name left a dry, nasty feeling in my mouth. It made Kael visibly tenser, too.
“It was only a nightmare,” he said.
But I shook my head. “I saw him. Felt him. Smelled him. And the nightmares I had before—of you, of him, and everything else—they never made me do anything like this. There was magic involved this time. I’d swear on it.”
Kael still looked like he wanted to disagree, but before he could, we were interrupted by a more of our pack—Vanessa, Will, and Joseph—racing up to us. They were all red-faced and breathless.
“What in the world is going on?” Vanessa huffed.
After a moment of hesitation, Kael explained. “I saw Alex leave her tent, and I followed her.”
“You watched me leave?” My voice trembled.
He nodded. “You were calmly walking away, and you ignored me when I tried to get your attention. I figured you just wanted to be alone; I didn’t get worried until you seemed like you were panicking…and then you started to run. And when I tried to catch you, well…” He motioned toward his nose, to the bits of dried blood he hadn’t managed to wipe away. “You tried to break my nose,” he said drily. “And that’s when I called back for the others.”
“Ugh. I’m sorry, by the way,” I said, using the sleeve of my jacket to try and clean up those lingering blood spots.
“Yeah…Definitely still confused over here,” Will said.
“I was having a nightmare. Or something. I thought Kael was… somebody else.”
“She thought I was Carrick,” Kael said, and then he looked at his father for an explanation. “In the woods, and then here on the cliff.”
“The cliff that I swear he was trying to make me throw myself off of. And he wanted me to take the Solas with me; he was in my head, and I don’t know how he got in. He never managed it before.”
Joseph had been silent, looking deep in thought this whole time, and he was slow to answer. But then he finally lifted his gaze to mine and said, “Dreamwalking.”
The way he said it made my spine tingle. “It is some kind of magic then, isn’t it?”
He nodded, looking grave. “And a sign that he’s getting stronger, maybe. And that the spell I used to protect you before might be wearing off. Dreamwalking isn’t as powerful as soulwalking—it’s possible to shake, to wake up from, as you did—but it’s also different… subtler, I suppose. Though it can still be incredibly dangerous.”
“He’s not supposed to be able to mess with my head like this,” I said, massaging my temple. Something was giving me a headache. Either the lingering effects of the dreamwalking magic, or the realization of what it meant—that the feral had found a crack in my armor. I wasn’t sure which. But it felt like the beginning of a migraine.
“The mind works differently when it’s asleep, particularly when it’s as exhausted as yours likely is. It’s more vulnerable. Easier to confuse. And if he’s only trying to get you to perform simple tasks, such as jumping from that cliff…well, he doesn’t have to fully take over your mind. He just has to fully influence you for a few deadly moments.”
“Perfect,” I muttered. “So all I have to do is never sleep again, and I should be safe, right?”
“We’ll just have to guard you closer when you sleep,” Vanessa said, her voice soft and tinged with a tired sort of sadness. Will an
d Kael nodded in agreement.
“It likely won’t stop the nightmares,” Joseph said, “but yes—we’ll need to keep you from doing anything you might regret while you’re asleep.”
“He’s going to come back, you think, every time I try to close my eyes?” It sounded like a question, but I was mostly talking to myself. Thinking out loud. And I already knew the answer, I was pretty sure.
“He’s being tactical,” Joseph said. “Attacking you however he can, mentally, from a distance, while they prepare whatever physical assault they’re going to meet us with...”
“He’s being a giant coward, is what he’s being,” Will muttered. “Attacking her where none of us can follow. I wish I could figure out a way to dream-kick his ass.”
You and me both, I thought.
Kael was watching me in a way that made me believe he was thinking the same thing as Will, though he didn’t say it. He just took a deep breath—an obvious attempt to calm his frustration over the whole situation—and he stepped around me and walked to the edge of the cliff.
“Did anybody else see me leave?” I asked, turning after him.
“I don’t think so,” he said, so quietly that he was difficult to hear over the waves and wind. “If they did, they probably didn’t think anything of it. You looked normal.”
“Good. Let’s pretend everything about tonight was normal. Don’t tell Lora, don’t tell anybody…I don’t want anybody to worry about this.”
I don’t want anybody to know I was weak.
That’s what I meant.
Because attacking people in your sleep and nearly throwing yourself off a cliff didn’t exactly scream “leader and savior-of-the-shifter-world” material.
And I don’t know if they all understood how I felt or or not, but everyone—except Kael, who seemed too preoccupied with the ocean below— nodded as though they agreed that keeping quiet about this was the best plan.
Vanessa suggested heading back. So we all did, though Kael lingered at least a half mile behind the others, and I eventually slowed my pace to walk with him.
“Are you okay?” I asked, after enduring several minutes of silence and trying—unsuccessfully—to listen in on his thoughts. I wasn’t sure if he was purposely guarding them from me, or if they were simply too unclear for my tired self to unravel.
“Me? I’m fine.” He glanced sideways, giving me a small smile that didn’t quite light his eyes the way his true one did. “I mean, aside from the possibly broken nose.”
“I’m never going to live that down, am I?”
“You could have done worse, I suppose.” His grin faded abruptly.
“…No,” I said, “I don’t think I would have. Because you woke me up.”
“Barely.”
“Still.”
“I almost didn’t catch you.” His voice grew quieter. “And it was a long way down to those rocks.”
I grabbed his hand and pulled him to a stop, turning his body so we were face-to-face. “Hey. I’m fine now, okay? And you did catch me. Through fire and all.”
He nodded, even though the look in his eyes was still pained. “Will was right, though,” he said, “I can’t follow you when Carrick does this. I can’t know what’s really happening. He could be torturing your mind, and I won’t know…maybe not until it’s too late, like it almost was tonight.” He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me against his chest. His strong arms and woodsy scent were comforting, but his cursed-and-wrong heartbeat was too fast, and it gave away how upset he really was about this—which made me upset, too.
“I can handle a little bit of mind-torturing,” I mumbled into the folds of Kael’s shirt. “It’s the physical control that scares me, is all. But I can just fight it harder next time.”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe you can just tie me down before I go to sleep. It could be kinky or something. I mean, if that’s what you’re into.”
I didn’t have to lean back and look at his face to guess his expression: droll smile, slowly fading away as he took a deep breath and said, “As much fun as that sounds—and yeah, it does sound fun—I’d rather you just manage to fight him off somehow.”
“If I could figure out how this stupid thing works…” I said, pulling the Solas from my pocket and giving it a dirty look. “That would probably help.”
We reached the edge of our campsite, and I slid the jewel back out of sight and did my best to act calm and casual. Or as calm and casual as I could at two in the morning, while holding on to Kael— who still looked as obviously disheveled as me, even though he’d managed to wipe most of the blood away and heal the burns my magic had caused.
My acting wasn’t enough, though, to keep the curious stares away.
Alanna was the first one to approach me, regarding me with tired eyes and speaking in a quiet, clandestine sort of voice, “Out for a nighttime stroll?” she asked.
I should have prepared an excuse, maybe. Something that would calm minds and not add to any doubts that might have already been building around me. I was so shaken up that I hadn’t thought of doing that, though, so I just kept my voice as level as possible and said, “I couldn’t sleep, is all. So yes—we were just walking. Thinking. Talking. Nothing particularly exciting.”
She nodded. A slow, careful nod that made it obvious she knew I was keeping things from her; it was less obvious whether or not she was upset by it.
“I think I should try sleeping again, though,” I said, eager to escape before she could press me for more details about my nighttime “stroll”.
“Sleep well, then,” she said. She sounded like she might have meant it, too. But I could feel her staring after me as I walked away, and the weight of her eyes—of everyone’s eyes and expectations and fears—accompanied me into my bed.
And as I zipped the tent shut and sank back into its darkness, I swore to myself that I would find a way to fight through these newest nightmares.
Nineteen
heroes
Every night for the next week, I had an opportunity to practice fighting.
Because every night, he came back.
The nightmares all began the same way they had that first night: With me waking up. I would step outside, and Carrick would be waiting. Sometimes he was surrounded by emptiness. Sometimes he was surrounded by bodies, or by a village writhing in flame, or by the people I loved all crying and screaming my name and unable to see me.
Sometimes I stepped outside just in time to watch him kill those people, one by one, while I stood there, frozen and unable to look away.
I watched so many die.
And I began to feel tired all the time. It was a precarious balancing act for Kael and Vanessa and Will, who all took turns keeping me physically safe inside my tent while I slept. They couldn’t wake me up too soon, even when the nightmares caused me to struggle, because my body had to rest. But all the while my mind suffered, and I was beginning to worry that it might break completely.
Joseph tried to help me. Through magic he knew and that he could spare, and by trying to teach me to better understand the way dreamwalking worked so that I could shake off Carrick’s commands more easily. As the days passed, though, I found myself growing too overwhelmed and exhausted to put up a true fight during every nightmare. So eventually Joseph gave up—or at least tried a simpler tactic: repeatedly reminding me that it was all in my head, and things in your head can’t hurt you unless you let them.
I already knew that, though.
Sometimes knowing things wasn’t enough, though. It’s why horror movies still terrify people and keep them up at night, even when they know they aren’t real.
But still I kept sleeping.
I kept purposely meeting Carrick in these nightmares, because I was afraid that if I refused to face him, he might go after someone else. I wanted his focus on me, because, in the meantime, the rest of my team was busy preparing to fight.
The blood moon was less than a week away, now, and there were growing rum
ors that Carrick had been spotted—not in a dream, but in the actual, physical world. We were close to their stronghold. It was the reason, most likely, that Carrick was trying so viciously to attack my mind this way. I told myself it was because he was afraid. Because he wasn’t ready for me and my army, and he was trying to slow me down.
And then, on the eighth day since that first nightmare, the rumors were confirmed by Alanna. She had spotted him herself.
“Posing as a human, walking among the cliffs near Kilkee Beach,” she told me, along with Will, who had woken me up. I tried very hard to focus on what she was saying and to not give away my exhaustion. “Thirty miles from here, give or take. He had six wolves with him. They looked straight at us, knew we were watching them— I’d swear they did—but he just kind of nodded hello and then kept walking. Was spookier than if he’d started throwing magic at us, I think; it looked just like he was biding his time. Like he was waiting to put a plan in motion.”
“Because he almost definitely is,” I couldn’t keep my exhaustion from lacing my voice with grumpiness, and it made Alanna and Will both frown.
“And I suppose still no luck with unlocking the Solas, then?” Alanna asked, placidly.
I wished I could have surprised her by nodding my head yes, but the truth was that constantly fighting off nightmares and mental breakdowns had left little time for the things I wanted to be focusing on.
“She’s trying,” Will said.
“My pack is growing restless,” Alanna replied. By “her pack”, she meant the ones we’d originally found her with, along with several dozen others of the Kerry Ring pack. Dozens who had stationed themselves closer to me and the rest of my main group, waiting for the moment they might be called into battle.
“We’re all growing restless,” I said.
“If the luna fascinus curse holds true to the legends and predictions surrounding it, then our alpha will be dead within days,” Alanna said. “And my wolves want to actually do something about this, before it becomes too late.”
Ascendant (The Shift Chronicles Book 4) Page 16
