One True Mate 3: Shifter's Echo

by Lisa Ladew

  His eyes shifted around the table guiltily and he leaned in close to her. “The burden of a kingdom is great. I do not have many good years left to me, and I must confess that I cannot stomach the thought of spending them in these walls anymore. On the advice of a traveler, I have begun planting seeds of a─what is the word?─a demohcrassy, in the ears of my closest advisors. We have even begun forming a parliament to function under the king. It is my hope that it will thrive if I happen to disappear.” His eyes grew bright. “There is a legend of a gateway to the north, ten feet off of a cliff face that will take you to another world if you can manage to get through it. A world with wagons that run by magic and magic boxes with puppet presentations showing constantly, even while you sleep.”

  Dahlia frowned. “How do you enter the portal if it’s ten feet off the cliff?”

  He smiled indulgently at her, like the answer should be obvious. “You take a running leap.”

  Dahlia’s hand went to her throat, wondering how many bodies were at the bottom of that cliff.

  Chapter 25

  Crew entered Dahlia’s house slowly, holding his grief at bay. She wasn’t dead. He would find her. If he could just keep that thought fixed in his mind, he could function.

  But oh, her scent! The citrusy-flowery essence surrounded him, calming him and incensing him at the same time. He had to find her now. Not knowing where she was, if she was safe or comfortable or scared, was killing him.

  The white bobkitten, with the black markings on its back that Beckett had described, entered the room slowly from a cat door set into the opposite wall, locking eyes with Crew immediately. Crew probed its mind, but found no intelligence other than ordinary animal. He walked toward it, hearing the other members of the KSRT following him into Dahlia’s house.

  When he reached the bobkitten, who was about the size of a regular cat, but still had a very kittenish look to it, he shook his head. The black markings on its back looked like angel wings, not stars. “Beck, this thing doesn’t match me.”

  Beckett hurried forward. “Watch.”

  He picked the bobkitten up. It twisted in his arms so it could continue to stare into Crew’s eyes, but offered no other resistance. Beckett ran his hand up the kitten’s back, fluffing the hair in the opposite direction and Crew grunted. That way, it certainly did look like Crew’s renqua.

  “Does he have a message for you?” Beckett asked.

  “No message,” Crew said, holding out his hands to take the kitten from Beckett. As soon as he had it pulled close to his body it sighed contentedly and snuggled into him, a sound like an idling chainsaw erupting from him.

  “Dude,” Beckett said, backing away. “Is it going to blow up?”

  “I don’t know,” Crew said, looking down at it, the noise vibrating against his chest. It felt good, soothing, and made him drowsy.

  “It’s purring, you nimrods,” Mac said, slamming the door into Dahlia’s home behind him, snow from his boots already melting onto the rug. “That’s what cats do.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. To hypnotize you or some shit.”

  Wade and Graeme stood just inside the door in an intense discussion. Wade grabbed Graeme’s arm and pointed him towards Crew. “Tell him.”

  Graeme nodded, looked around slowly, then walked to Crew, who was still holding the purring bobkitten. “I need to tell you about the role of echoes in dragen lore. It’s very different than what I understand you shiften to believe about them. Before I say a word though, I must tell you that none of this can be proven. It’s thousands of years of conjecture based on dragen belief and experience.”

  Crew raised his eyebrows, feeling time slipping away, but knowing he needed to hear this. Besides, he had no idea what his next move was.

  “Echoes are sometimes messengers, but more often, they can act as psychological and physical portals to other worlds. They normally are assigned to only one traveler, although in this case, I would guess that this echo is assigned to both you and your mate.”

  Crew’s heart twinged at the word mate. “Assigned by who?”

  “No one knows for sure. Rhen, maybe. The Light, maybe. Someone else, possibly. Or maybe it’s a natural phenomenon that has something to do with the very core of what a traveler is and does.” He leaned close to Crew. “Did you know that any traveler who sacrifices themselves so that another may live is offered a chance to enter another world, in lieu of retiring to The Haven?”

  Crew’s mouth dried up and his throat constricted. His Dahlia had sacrificed herself. Would she have chosen to enter another world and that was why he had a chance to retrieve her?

  “I see that you didn’t. Yes, it would make sense that your mate was offered such a thing. When a traveler chooses that, their echo acts as a kind of beacon so that they can find their way back to the world they died in, if they can locate a portal. Dream travelers also utilize their echoes in this way, using them to find their way to their one true world if they die in another.”

  Crew opened and closed his mouth, but could force no words out. Beckett draped a hand over his shoulder, clearly fascinated, and asked the questions for him. “What does a portal look like? How likely is it that she could find one?”

  “Portals are rare, like I said, but,” Graeme nodded to the kitten in Crew’s arms, “that little guy could act as one. That wouldn’t help her, but maybe it would help you get to her. Once you got there you’d have to find a way back. Generally, all worlds have at least one permanent portal and they are frequently a source of much legend and mystery, and always invisible, very small, and hard to go through accidentally. Some travelers can sense or see the energy of the portal, while others cannot, but are still drawn to them if their intention is to travel.”

  Graeme held out his hand, palm up. “There is also much speculation that an object small enough to carry in your hand could act as a portal, but only to the most powerful travelers, and only if it was something created specifically for their energy patterns by a powerful being. Rhen could make one. Khain, also.”

  Crew looked down at the bobkitten, feeling a sudden urgency to get started. He felt in his pocket for the pill again. There.

  Graeme looked around the room. “One thing everyone needs to know about travelers, is they generally exist in many fewer worlds than most of you do. Dragen are rare, in that we almost always exist in only one world, and that’s why we have our dimensional-cracking ability, but if any of you managed to travel to another world, you almost certainly would end up not where you were aiming for, or not where you crossed over, but rather in the mind of your counterpart that already exists there. Travelers usually only exist in two or four worlds, while the rest of you exist in many. Dreams for you can provide a glimpse into your parallel lives, but a true traveler can actually wake up in the body of one of their parallel lives night after night.”

  He looked back at Crew. “You, Crew, are a fractionated traveler. That is why your body disappears from world to world. True dream travelers don’t do that unless they actually go through a portal or die. Fractionated travelers can be created when the mind of a powerful being that has unrealized potential to be a traveler is split under great stress.”

  Wade crossed his arms over his chest and moved next to Crew. “How many worlds are there?”

  Graeme looked him in the eye. “Infinite, all carrying out infinite possibilities at the same time. You could choose to go left tomorrow morning at the light and get hit by a car and die, but your counterpart in another world could choose to go right and still live.”

  Mac whistled and Beckett pushed his hat back on his head and stared at the ceiling, rubbing his forehead. “Kinda makes our individual lives seem pointless.”

  Graeme shook his head. “All worlds have a purpose, and all beings in all worlds do, too.”

  Mac snorted. “What could that purpose possibly be? If we are playing out infinite possibilities, then everything that could possibly happen will happen, so what is the point of it?�
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  “You need a philosopher to explain that,” Graeme said. “It has never interested me. The only reason I know as much as I do is because my brother searched endlessly for the one true world before he died, convinced he could become a god if he found it and partook of the fruits that grow there.”

  Crew clutched the kitten tighter, his eyes traveling over Dahlia’s place, resting on her things, his heart missing her. He had what he needed and wanted to be done with this conversation.

  Beckett didn’t. “Wait, this isn’t the one true world?”

  “No. This world sits alongside all other worlds. In dragen lore, the one true world is above them, closer to The Haven.” He looked at Crew closely. “But that’s not important, now. If Crew is going to find his mate, we need to leave him alone with his echo.” He caught Crew’s eye and shook his head. “I don’t know exactly how it’s done, sorry.”

  Crew only nodded wearily. He had an idea.

  Wade turned to face him, his face grave. He put a hand on Crew’s shoulder. “Crew, I know you need your female, but we need you. Promise me you’ll find your way back here.”

  Crew could make no promise, but as he stared at Wade he remembered something important. The White Lady’s face entered his mind, grinning slyly.

  The rest is up to him, and his friends.

  “I’m almost certain I can’t get back. You guys have to come get me somehow. An augur told me so.”

  Graeme frowned. “Female or male augur?”

  “Female.”

  His frown deepened. “Female augurs can’t be trusted. They think nothing of telling you what will serve them while pretending it will serve you.”

  Crew shrugged, eager to be off to find Dahlia. “She’s been honest so far.”

  Graeme’s frown deepened and he watched Crew closely, then raised an eyebrow at Wade. Wade stared back, his face grim.

  “What else did she say?” Wade asked.

  “She’s the one who told me Dahlia could be found, and that I had to help the little girl and then I’d be told the way to Dahlia. She said I have to go to Dahlia and my friends have to recover the means to get us home.”

  He left out the part about him having a choice to go to either place, unwilling to engage in endless discussion about whether it would be better for him to retrieve the means to get Dahlia home instead.

  Graeme shook his head. “Did she say anything else? What this thing was? How we were supposed to find it?”

  “Nothing.”

  Graeme nodded thoughtfully and Crew could see his mind working.

  Crew left it up to him, only caring about finding Dahlia. Getting back was nowhere near as important to him.

  ***

  Crew circled Dahlia’s home, the echo at his heels, taking in everything. He picked up a sweatshirt from the back of a chair and smelled it, taking her scent into his lungs, savoring how it calmed him immediately. On the desk sat her notebook, the one she’d asked for at his place in his dream world, then wrote in so intently with the small smile on her face, while her other hand touched her throat lightly and her hair curled down to the mattress she’d been lying on. He touched his own throat in the manner she always did, imagining her hands on her skin.

  He picked up the notebook and paged to the very end to see if she’d written anything that would help him. On the last page were two sentences that hurt his heart and quickened his feeling of loss.

  Crew, how can I find you? I’ve only just met you but I feel like I’ve spent my life looking for you.

  He put the notebook down, unable to read another line. She’d summed up how he felt perfectly. He barely knew her, and yet he knew everything that was important. I’ll find you, Dahlia. I’m coming.

  He strode into the bedroom, thinking he knew what he had to do. The echo followed him. On the bedside table he found a packet of typed and stapled pages with red pen circling a word here, striking out a sentence there.

  He picked it up and leafed through it, realizing it was a short story titled Summer Storm.

  A few paragraphs near the bottom of one of the pages jumped out at him.

  He yanked my hair back, then curled his fingers around my throat. He wouldn’t go so far as to hurt me, and yet even as the thought crossed my mind, the truth was I didn’t know for sure. I’d given myself over to him willingly, told him to do what he wanted with me, both of us knowing his fantasies ran darker than mine.

  But did they? My body said otherwise.

  He shoved a finger roughly into me and I cried out as my inner core throbbed and clenched at him. He smeared my own wetness up my belly, then handled my nipples roughly, making me groan at the sensation. I went limp in his arms as the first spatterings of rain dropped onto my face.

  He lowered me to the ground and flipped me over onto my belly, pressing my face into the warm grass, then pulling my hair into a rough ponytail and yanking it until I lifted up onto my arms to alleviate the pulling on my scalp.

  He lowered his mouth to my ear and rasped, “That’s right, baby girl, you’re mine for the next hour. No one will hear a noise you make, so be sure to scream good and loud for me.”

  Crew jerked his eyes away from the paper with effort, dropping a hand to his cock that had gone rock-hard before he’d reached the end of the first paragraph. Was this typical of what she wrote? And what she wanted? He dreamed of finding out.

  He dropped the pages back onto the nightstand, not able to read more or he’d have to take care of himself before he could try out his plan. Which was unacceptable. He had to go now.

  He took the pill bottle out of his pocket, then sat on the bed. The echo jumped up next to him immediately, shoving its nose at the pill bottle. Crew lifted it over his head and opened it, taking out the pill and dropping the bottle onto the floor. The echo clawed its front paws up his shirt and tried to get to the pill, a strange yowling coming out of its throat but Crew popped the pill in his mouth and dry swallowed it, then lay on top of Dahlia’s covers with his boots still on.

  The echo climbed up his body and stared into his eyes. Crew got the impression that it was uneasy about something. He stared back, and the echo quieted, then laid directly on his chest, tucking its feet under its body in a way Crew found strangely appealing. The purring began. Crew concentrated on it, noticing how it had no beginning and no end, no rough edges, no intention.

  “Dahlia. I want to go to Dahlia. Take me to Dahlia.”

  His eyes slipped closed.

  Chapter 26

  Darkness. Doors. Time running past. Dahlia’s scent coming close, then whipped away from him as he traveled in an opposite direction. The echo staring at him with accusing eyes, then seven words echoing in his brain as he slammed through a closed door and tumbled into the world beyond.

  She tricked you. You needed no pill.

  Crew woke all at once, like he did in his real world, his senses clear and sharp, but still unable to tell what they were perceiving. He struggled in what felt like a dozen grips on his arms and legs and throat as vicious growling sounded in his ears. The first teeth penetrated his skin and he shifted into his wolf form, twisting out of the holds that gripped him, rising to his full size, snarling and growling his worst.

  The wolves that had pinned him to the ground with their teeth jumped back, then regrouped, the smaller ones covering the throats of the larger ones, as all advanced on him.

  Stop! Crew shouted in ruhi. I will not hurt you!

  The group lost their snarls as one, as most looked at each other uneasily. Crew probed at a few of their minds, finding animal instinct and cleverness plus rudimentary powers of ruhi, but little else. Which made no sense. If they were shiften, they should have intellect like humans, but if they were only wolves, they shouldn’t have any knowledge of ruhi. He would have decided they were shapeshifters, but he could tell none had the ability to shift.

  The largest male, who was still less than half of Crew’s size, spoke in little more than a whisper. Wolf-god Conri, come to save us. He dro
pped onto his belly and rolled over, exposing it to Crew. Crew watched as the rest of the wolves did as their alpha did, some whining.

  Crew shifted and stood before them in his human form, looking over the group as a whole, wondering why The White Lady had sent him here. The wolves were scrawny, almost all of them, as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks. Some were missing patches of fur and had listless eyes and white gums. He looked around at the concrete walls, dirt ceiling, and cell bars guarding the only way out. “What is this place?” he asked out loud, to see if they could understand him.

  The largest male scrambled to his feet and faced Crew, his eyes cast down to the floor. Conri. Humans dig traps. Fall in when run from basilisk.

  Crew found the hole that led to the open air above, noting the wolf skeletons at the bottom and the scratches on the concrete where many wolves had tried to climb their way out. He pulled on his clothes, then walked below it to look up. Blue sky.

  Will the humans come free you or kill you?

  No. We starve. Die.

  Black anger shot through Crew. No animal deserved to die in this manner.

  Do you fight with the humans?

  When the basilisk die, then we fight.

  Crew walked the length of each wall, stepping over cringing wolves who avoided his eyes.

  He glanced out the cell door, then turned back to the wolves, thinking hard. He did not know the situation here, and freeing these wolves could cause problems for whoever lived in this world, but he couldn’t leave them locked up to die. It was against his nature. The White Lady would have known that. He did not do this for her, but he would not abstain from the choice because of her.

  If I free you, you must promise to find homes far away from humans. You must promise never to hunt their livestock or worry their children or hurt even one of them. You must swear to tell every animal you meet of this trap, so another will never fall down here. Mark it constantly to keep those who do not have the power of speech away. Do you so swear?