As Cora pulled her feet free of the dirt and came to rest on her knees, her eyes followed the tethers among the dead. Each one found a home at the center of her chest, bound to her heart.
***
Cora startled and sat up straight. Darkness surrounded her again. The moaning was gone, replaced by deafening silence. Her heart pounded fast enough to leave her breathless. Her head swiveled left and right, her eyes drawn to a small, pulsing light beside her. It was her Arcadia wrist computer, resting on a nightstand. The mattress beneath her, and the nightstand beside her felt every bit as real as the earth she pulled herself from not moments before.
“Caw,” Vincent squawked from somewhere in the room. Across their empathic link, his concern and worry filled her.
Somehow, the raven spirit’s fear eased her own. Terrifying though the dream had been, his feelings were real and the nightmare was not. Still, it was frightening enough that she had no intention of rolling over and going back to sleep. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness and the sense of belonging returned. It was the spare bedroom in Sitting Bear’s cabin, where she’d been crashing for two months now. Her uncle slept on the other side of the house, provided he could remain asleep through Vincent’s piercing form of communication.
Cora shook her head and let out a sigh. It was still inky black out the window, but she was probably up for the day. She hadn’t been able to shake the unsettling chill moving up and down her spine that last few times she’d had that dream, and tonight wouldn’t be any different. She swung her legs off the bed and rested them on the floor. Rubbing an eye, she scooped up her Arcadia from the nightstand and clasped it over her wrist.
Cora shambled out of the bedroom and down the hall. Neither at the kitchen table ahead nor the living room beside her was there any other sign of life. Since Still River’s death a couple months back, her father’s spirit enjoyed catching up with current events on GNN well into the early hours of the morning. Trapped in a coma for fourteen years, he’d missed some major milestones: the end of the Second Civil War he so desperately fought for, the birth of the Native Free Lands, the meteoric rise of the cybernetics giant Tetriarch, and all of Cora’s teenage years.
She stood aimless between the two rooms. She expected to find Still River here, and without him, she had no idea what to do with herself. She could think of a few places he might have gone, though she didn’t relish the thought of putting on shoes and going outside. She turned left and flopped into the loveseat, staring ahead at the wall.
“Holovid, bring up GNN, low volume,” she said, her voice above a whisper.
The wall illuminated with a burst of light that made Cora wince, before forming a three-dimensional stage on the far wall. A newscaster sat behind a large desk, finishing some puff piece about a wounded soldier finding a new lease on life thanks to Tetriarch cybernetics. She rolled her eyes. There had to be at least three of these stories a week on GNN. When they weren’t glorifying his company, GNN would just go to the source and interview the dragon Lucius about the company’s latest developments.
Under his tenure as CEO of the corporation, cybernetics became more than a source of life-changing prosthetics. They became mainstream, affordable alternatives to the bodies people were born with. Tetriarch proudly claimed over a billion implants were installed worldwide. The very thought of being carved up and having parts of herself replaced made Cora sick to her stomach, a trait most Native people shared.
She turned her head from the story. Lucius hadn’t contacted her since he demanded she cut her father from life support, and she’d rather keep him from her thoughts. She looked down to her Arcadia and swiped out a holographic screen to the back of her hand. The pulsing light meant a new notification, and there were only six people on the planet that knew how to contact her. A text message awaited her from Gideon.
Our new guest is safe and secure. Get some rest.
“Fat chance,” she scoffed to herself. She’d still have to deal with Michael in the morning. He had to be with Julian Penel’s outfit of Royal Army soldiers-turned-mercenaries, she was certain of it.
“It’s 4am, at the top of the hour, and these are our developing stories,” the plastic-looking blonde man on the holovid said. “A luxury yacht carrying famed musician DJ Thrice ran aground on an island in the Florida Keys. The Grammy-winning artist insists he was hypnotized by the song of a nude woman on the beach before his security team opened fire on the figure, scaring it off. No major injuries were reported. This marks the fourth incident of Siren attacks near the Gulf of Mexico this summer.
“Authorities in Paris are still investigating the theft of the Partisan of the Gardes de la Marche, stolen earlier this week. The priceless spear dates back to the 17th century royal guard. The reward for information leading to its recovery has been increased to half a million credits. This marks the fourth exhibition to have been stolen this month.”
An inset appeared beside the reporter. The silver-haired, glowing-eyed Lucius smiled for the camera.
“In other news, the long-awaited Optics 4.0 software has a release date of June 10th. For those with Tetriarch Optical Implants, new features will include an enhanced zoom and higher resolution recording to cranial wet drives. Tetriarch CEO-”
“Holovid off,” Cora said, clicking her tongue. She couldn’t even watch the news anymore without seeing the dragon’s face.
With a defeated sigh, she walked back to her room and got her riding boots on. She went out the front door and around the back, up the steep climb behind her uncle’s house that lead to the summit of Heaven’s Crest. Her Arcadia shined a light from her wrist as she reached for handholds along the trees. Almost a quarter-mile of trudging up the incline came to an end with a clearing for a campfire. Two massive logs served as benches on either side of the fire pit. Cora reached out and touched the blackened wood and found it cold. Her father hadn’t been here. There was only one other place she could think of to check.
Her calves thanked her for the level ground, crossing east over the clearing and down a rocky hill to a grove another quarter mile away. The darkness before dawn had come, and the light of her Arcadia no longer served her purposes. Rapid regenerative healing or not, breaking a leg in the dead of night would still make her a helpless target for the local wildlife. She searched within the pit of her stomach to the find the warm spark of magic at her core. Shutting her eyes, she summoned the energy as she imagined a wild cat stalking the forest. The magic manifested and became real, the low light of the forest now in detail no human sight could perceive.
A figure slumped against a tree a dozen yards ahead. Another knelt beside him in the grove. Cora approached without making a sound, another expenditure of magic to leave the forest undisturbed. As she drew closer, she shifted her sight from that of a cat to the dark and cold flipside, the power of Spirit Sight. Still River glowed like an angel in the Spirit World. Thousands of strands of beautiful blue and white light pulsed and weaved through him. She could only fathom the lives he had touched that connected him so completely to the world around them.
Still River’s arm laid across his chest, his shoulders elevating him off the forest floor. His eyes shut, the slow rise and fall of his chest indicated he was asleep. Beside him, a woman in her early thirties with wild, dirty blonde hair tended the garden that surrounded the perimeter of the grove. She wore a hemp skirt and a loose cotton shirt. A band of colored beads around her head was adorned with fresh flowers. Her spirit glowed a soft yellow. She bowed her head as Cora sat on a rock beside her.
“Hey Rhonda,” Cora whispered. She motioned to Still River. “How long as he been asleep?”
“A few hours,” the spirit whispered back to her. “I thought he’d be up by now, but I let him rest.”
“If he’s dreaming, I don’t think you could wake him if you tried,” Cora smiled back.
Her father’s prophetic dreams were legendary among the Sioux people of Heaven’s Crest, from back when she was a child and too young to understand.
Her mother was an Irish American lawyer from Chicago, and she used to excuse his powers away as though he were sick or had a headache. It wasn’t until her own powers began to manifest in her late teens that she could look back on her formative years and understand how powerful her father had been.
Rhonda pruned a plant, glancing over her shoulder with a hand-rolled joint in her mouth. “Care to join me while we wait?”
“I can’t,” Cora shook her head, tempted by the offer. “I have a lot to do once the sun rises. The last time I sampled some of your spirit weed, I didn’t get off my uncle’s couch for twelve hours, except to pay the pizza guy.”
“Spirit weed?” Rhonda giggled quietly to herself. “You are quite the character. These are Gaea’s gifts to us, free to take as long as we give back to her with love.”
“Yeah, well, her gifts knock me on my ass,” Cora replied. “Who taught you all this, anyway?”
“Two dear friends, Red Bear and Daniel,” Rhonda said. “We traveled here in the late summer of ’69. It was just the three of us, living out of our van. We came to Wyoming to live a simpler life, far from the cities we came from.”
Cora bowed her head. “I can relate. I don’t miss Washington or Berlin. Especially Berlin.”
“Daniel knew so much about caring for the land,” Rhonda explained. She smiled with the fond recollection. “We dreamed about homesteading and bartering for what we couldn’t make ourselves. Red Bear was our spiritual center. He spent years studying Buddhism and taught us to meditate and connect with Mother Earth. I learned so much from the two of them. I wanted to be at one with the world like they were.”
“She’s being modest,” Still River said, his eyes still shut. “Rhonda reached such a deep connection with these lands that her spirit lingered for almost a century before The Awakening allowed her to reappear.”
Cora did a double-take at the young woman and her humble smile. Ghost reports worldwide ran rampant since The Awakening, but most of those souls were twisted and corrupted within the limbo of the Spirit World. Rhonda was at the kind of peace that would make a Tibetan monk jealous.
“I’ll leave you two to talk,” she said, resting a frigid hand on Cora’s shoulder while she stood up.
Still River opened his eyes and pulled himself to a sitting position against the tree. His dark brown eyes looked at Cora with apology, filled with regret for the words he hadn’t spoken yet. “I...had a dream about you.”
“I figured,” Cora shrugged, her smile fading. “I had a dream about me, too.”
Still River leaned forward, sweeping his flowing black locks off his shoulders. “You did? Tell me.”
“It’s been the same for some time, now,” Cora sighed. She averted her gaze from him. “I didn’t want to tell you about it. I dismissed it at first as nightmares, but as they grew more frequent, never changing...I worried you’d tell me it was prophecy. That my abilities were manifesting just like yours did.”
Still River offered a reassuring nod. “My dreams came to me starting with a two-week coma when you were eight months old. I think your mother and I were in South Dakota, trying to find Heaven’s Crest. The gulf between science and magic was so wide back then, the hospitals had no idea why I was under.”
“Geez,” Cora shook her head. “Poor Mom must have been terrified.”
Still River raised a finger. “Not nearly as scared as she was when I came out spouting visions of the future. You’re avoiding the subject, though. Tell me of these dreams. Where are you?”
“Digging myself out of my own grave,” she replied. A chill swept over her, invoking the memories made it more real. “I know who I am, and where I’ve come from. I’m in a cemetery, and there are others escaping, too. They’re different, though.”
“Different how?” he asked.
Cora held herself, staring off to the blackness beyond the grove. “They shamble like zombie holovids. I use my Spirit Sight, but they have no souls, just bodies. It’s like the opposite of when I look at you. They’re devoid of any essence, and the only tether they all share is me.”
He sat back and took it all in, mulling over the possibilities. Cora feared he knew what it meant as much as if he had no idea at all.
“There was a date, too,” she said, her eyes lifting to recall the image. “My epitaph. The date of my death was April 8th of this year.”
“That was months ago,” her father replied.
“It was the date my team was murdered,” she said, her voice grim. “The day you first reached out to me.”
Still River nodded and paused.
“Strangely, I think this fits with what I’ve seen,” he said. He held up a reassuring hand to Cora’s immediate unease. “I don’t think your dreams are prophetic, but likely allegorical. This may come as a shock to you, but I’m terrible with spirits.”
Cora cocked an eyebrow. “Elder of Sioux, most powerful magic-user in the world...bad with spirits?”
A nostalgic smile curled up one corner of his mouth. “I wish I was kidding. When the tribe assembled to cleanse the lake, I accidentally offended the water spirit there.”
“I’ve bumped into him...skittish little thing,” Cora replied.
“Yes, but a fearsome and powerful force of nature,” he said. He stood up and offered a hand to Cora. “There I was, leading about forty of us in the ritual, and I start using magic on the water. I never asked permission or told the spirit of my intentions. He hit me with a ten-foot wave.”
Cora snickered and stood up beside her father. “That must have been embarrassing.”
Still River laughed back and nodded. “It was a humbling experience. What I’m trying to say, Cora, is there is only so much I can teach you about the Spirit World. You have more power with it right now than I ever have, and my dream alluded to your power growing even further.”
The pair took the long route, from the grove back toward Sitting Bear’s home, circling around the steep hill to the summit. Cora lit her Arcadia to lead the way through the brush. Their conversation joined with the crunch of dead leaves underfoot and the din of insects all around them.
“There is someone who can tell you what I can’t. A teacher, of sorts. He’s trapped by the dragon, Cora. In my dream, I see you free him beneath of storm of lightning and fire,” Still River explained.
Cora’s heart sank. She knew it wouldn’t be long before she heard Lucius’ name come up. All of her father’s dreams, since the day he first reached out to her, revolved around keeping her alive amid the dragon’s traps and ultimatums.
“You’ve been avoiding this, Cora,” he continued, stopping to look into her eyes. “I’ve seen you, leaving the room when his name is mentioned on GNN. Drinking late at night to fall asleep. You have to face him.”
Cora shook her head and shrugged. “I don’t know how, Dad. He’s more intelligent than me, stronger, more powerful. I can’t imagine a way that I match him in anything. He would have torn me to shreds when I destroyed Project Phoenix if you hadn’t called when you did.”
“He can’t kill you, Cora,” Still River replied, continuing his walk. “At least not yet.”
Cora caught up from the side. “Now who’s avoiding things? You still won’t tell me what you said, will you?”
Still River took a breath, choosing his words. “What I can tell you is that I said little. I reminded him that fate showed a much larger battle between you. Even if I hadn’t called and stopped him from harming you, something else would have.”
Cora sighed. “Who is this person I’m looking for? This teacher?”
“I don’t know,” Still River replied, his expression dour. “I only know that our new guest will lead you to him. This cold war I’ve mentioned, with you and Lucius vying for control of these artifacts and their possessors...it begins with the man you brought here.”
Lost in her thoughts with the revelation, Cora narrowly avoided tripping over her Harley. She hadn’t realized they’d made such fast time of the trip back, but there she was in he
r uncle’s driveway. She turned to her father.
“Can I trust him?” she asked.
“You mean is he one of the 687 souls? I don’t know. But you can trust he will put you on the path you need to be on, and it isn’t here,” he replied.
A thousand questions tore through her mind like bullets. Only one thought crystallized, the one memory of Lucius she couldn’t let go. She clenched her teeth.
“He made me kill you, Dad,” she said.
Still River’s head dropped. “I was already dead, Cora. It’s true, he did impose his will over you. But, in these past two months, I’ve been able to share a meal with you. I’ve had conversations with you. We’ve spent more time together than we have in the past fourteen years. Lucius won, or at least he thinks he did. That doesn’t mean you lost.”
Cora rested her hands on the seat of her bike, propping her up even as she wanted to curl into a ball on the ground and weep. Vincent flew down from the darkness and perched on a handlebar, as if to reassure her. “I didn’t know that when I pulled the plug. I ran out of that room and fell on my knees, screaming at the top of my lungs. He made me do that. I felt powerless to stop him.”
“You have something he can’t ever possess, Cora. Magic,” he replied. He reach out and pulled her close to his freezing cold chest. Temperature aside, it was still the warm embrace she’d longed for most her life. He stepped back and met her gaze. “The dragons do not have magic and they certainly don’t understand it. Your dreams are about the magical power growing inside you. My dreams are about you finding the one that can help you harness it.”
The Pendragon Codex Page 2
