by Ponce, Jen
“I want him here but I know what Harrison is like. I know him. He’s evil, Devany. And when he comes—and he’ll come—he’ll kill Zech.” She slid her fingers into her hair at the scalp and tugged. She admitted when she first came to the Caring Shelter that she had a hair pulling problem. It made her feel good to pull her hair out, helped her cope with the extreme emotions she dealt with. She wasn’t pulling out hairs so much as just tugging on the strands so I didn’t say anything.
“He wants to stay, Danni, and with lodestones, he could access magic to protect you. Harrison might be a nasty asshole but he’s never gone up against magic.”
Her hands dropped to her lap. “I just don’t want anyone to underestimate him. I know I make him sound like he’s the embodiment of evil, that he can somehow watch my every move. I know that he’s human and not an all-knowing mastermind, but he’s extremely smart. He might not be able to see into the future, but he has an uncanny way of predicting what people are going to do. ” Her eyes locked onto mine and I saw the absolute truth in them. Had I not already come face to face with so many other evil things, I might have been chilled. But a mere human male, no matter how sociopathic or evil, just couldn’t compete with between-world demons or swamp-dwelling nightmares.
“Let Zech stay. Let us both help you.”
Danni blinked. Time stretched between us and then she finally turned away. “Okay.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“I could take you both to Midia. As a last resort. Even a guy like Harrison couldn’t get there. I have friends who would take care of you until the jerk is back in prison.” She didn’t answer. I stood. “I’ll go get lodestones now. We’ll make a plan to keep you and Zech safe.”
“And anyone who helps me. Work. Jeff and Adam down at Thrift Thrills. He’ll go after everyone I care about if he can’t find me.”
A superstitious fear zinged through me. With more conviction than I felt, I said, “They’ll catch him before he goes that far.”
She didn’t say anything and I knew she didn’t believe he would be caught. I wasn’t sure I believed it myself now. She had me worried. “I’m going to go grab the lodestones,” I repeated, as if they were the answer to all our prayers. “I’ll bring them back here in about an hour.” It wouldn’t take long for me to hook to Midia, gather the stones and get back, but the hinky way time slid between the two places would put me at least an hour out before I was done.
***
I hooked home first and checked on the kids. They were both asleep. My brother, who quit his job in Alaska and moved back to Omaha after Tom died, slept in the basement with Arsinua. Until they found a place of their own, they were with me and I had to say I didn’t mind it. Sure, my brother could be annoying, but having Arsinua around was like having a wife. She cleaned and cooked and did all those things that fell behind with me working. I tried paying her but she refused the money. “You’re giving me a place to stay and feeding me,” she’d said, and I’d realized it would be impossible for her to find work here. She was from another world; worse, she was in a body made by Tytan and I doubted it was anything like a human body on the inside. She didn’t have a birth certificate, social security number, anything that would prove she belonged here. If she got arrested, what would happen? No one would have a record for her. Would she sit in limbo, in a jail cell, forever?
I changed into jeans and a t-shirt, pulling on socks and boots. Then I went to the basement where I found my brother sitting in front of the TV, squinting at an alien landscape as his fingers worked a controller. “Did you stay up all night or get up really early?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” He glanced over then did a double take. “What are you doing?”
“I have to get some lodestones in Midia. I’ll be hooking back here.” To overcome the pull of the stones through the hook, I had to hang on to the pull up bar Tom had long ago installed in the corner of the basement main room. If I didn’t have something to hold, something I could wrap my legs around, the lodestones would yank me back through the hook and toss me to the ground. It wasn’t fun.
Travis’ lips thinned. He didn’t like to hear me talk about other worlds. I’d taken him to the Slip once as a way to quickly get him up to speed on what I could do and he flipped out. I guess alien worlds needed to stay on a big screen TV for him to find them palatable. “Danni’s abuser escaped from prison and she thinks he’s after her,” I said, not sure why I thought I had to explain. “The lodestones will help her boyfriend protect her.”
He shrugged, not saying a word.
“Keep an eye on things, will you?”
“Yeah. If I’m gone before you get back, Arsinua will be here.”
“I might be a while.” I needed to check on Kroshtuka too. I had to see for myself that he was okay before I could do much else.
“You need to get out of this shit, Dev.” My brother had his game on pause and he had his serious face on.
“You say that like I have a choice. Like I’m doing this for fun.”
He snorted. “You may have fallen into all this by accident, but you haven’t done much to get out of it that I’ve seen. And you use that magic stuff all the time. Somebody who wanted to get out of it would be doing all in their power to rid themselves of it.”
“Well, one, it’s inside me. Magical explosion, remember? Two, if I rid myself of this magic, then how the hell would I be able to defend my family against the things that do have magic? Hmm? Do you think that the cops would be able to handle assassin spiders and demons?”
He shrugged, his mouth set in a grim line. “Arsinua says you’ve been hanging around with the demons.”
Would it be wrong to hit him? Of course it would. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and told myself to be calm. “She also tell you I am a demon? Technically?”
He didn’t answer, which meant Arsinua had been filling my brother’s head with all of her prejudices against the Skriven.
“Travis, what do you think I should do, then? Try to rid myself of the magic and let the world fall down around our heads?”
“Who says it will?”
“There are people stealing humans and killing them. They took Bethy and Liam, remember? They would’ve died if I hadn’t had magic.” I paused and took a breath. “They killed Tom.”
Travis flinched.
“I’m not sitting around waiting for them to hurt my family again. If that means I put myself in danger to try to stop them, then so be it. I didn’t ask for the magic or the explosion or any of it. I didn’t go looking. But it found me anyway and I can’t stay home, pretending everything is okay when it’s not. I can’t stay home knowing that there are things I can do to help people.” I squatted down next to my brother and took his hand. “Travis, Arsinua is afraid of the Skriven and yet she made a bargain with one to save her people. She may not like how I’m doing things, but she hasn’t been sitting idly by, either. We don’t agree on a lot of things, but we both at least try to fix things when we can. That’s all I’m doing. If you don’t want to be here, I’ll understand.”
He sighed. “I just don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want the squirts to get hurt.”
“I know. I don’t want them hurt either. That’s why I’m doing all this, even though it scares the piss out of me.”
“You need to figure out how to get rid of the magic, Dev. It’s only bringing danger and death.”
I rose and stepped away from him. “Maybe. But maybe the danger and death would have come anyway, and without the magic I could have done nothing at all.” I formed a hook and stepped through before he could say anything more.
Lizzie and the Elders were waiting for me.
TWO
My heart sank. I knew what they were going to say before they said it. ‘Don’t come into our Dreaming Place anymore. Leave. Kroshtuka is dead and you killed him.’ “I’m so sorry,” I said, wanting to get the castigation over with quickly and get on with the sorrow. “Kroshtuka?” I hoped to god he wasn’t dead.
Li
zzie stepped forward, catching my hands with her soft, wrinkled ones. “He has not woken. Something has blocked his return to the Real.” She squeezed my hand. “It’s not your fault. Though leading with an apology is a good strategy for most situations.” Her eyelid dropped in a wink. “We need to know what happened while you were in the Dream with him. It may be our only hope to get him back.”
“How did she get here? We didn’t give her an emiliometer,” groused another elder. His bushy white brows were pulled tight together so that it looked like there was a fluffy white caterpillar marching across his forehead.
Lizzie rolled her eyes at me then turned. “I gave her one.”
The cavern erupted in noise from their raised voices, all protesting Lizzie’s breach of policy and her blatant disregard for their sacred places. She weathered it with aplomb then held up her hands and said, “It’s a good thing I gave her one, isn’t it? My Dreams told me she would be the one to save Kroshtuka.”
Their complaints subsided, though Caterpillar Eyebrows muttered under his breath. “How can she help Kroshtuka? She isn’t one of us.”
“I think that’s why she can help. She isn’t tied to the Dreams but she can experience them. We need new eyes on this. Someone who isn’t biased by all our bull poo.”
“You Dreamed she could help us?”
Lizzie nodded, her lined face calm. I had the strongest feeling she was lying but couldn’t put my finger on why.
“If you Dreamed it,” said one.
“Dream Mother,” said another.
Soon they were all bowing and talking—calmly this time—and I thought I might actually get out of the cave without getting mauled by a bunch of senior citizens. “Can I see Kroshtuka?” I asked once their musings had died down.
It was Lizzie who answered. “Of course, my dear. But first we need to talk about how we can help him and what you can do to help us.”
I nibbled on a cuticle, worried about the time ticking away back on Earth. “I hate to be a pain in the ass, but I can’t stay long. I could come back for a while later, but I only have a few minutes now.”
Lizzie nodded. “We’ll talk as we go to your mate.”
I felt heat creep into my neck. “He’s not, I mean. I’m not—” Mate was such a graphic word, even though I knew they didn’t think of it in terms of only sex.
“Kroshtuka’s heart is yours,” she said, her voice warm and reassuring.
The reassurance didn’t work. Kroshtuka couldn’t be in love with me. We’d known each other for what, three months? Four? “We’re both a little infatuated,” I conceded, too uncomfortable with declaring myself in a relationship without Kroshtuka there to confirm it.
“Dreams never lie,” she said in that airy way of hers. She led me on a winding path deeper into the caves, the other elders staying behind. “Now tell me, what happened?”
I had no idea. I explained what I’d seen and experienced, giving myself the heebie jeebies all over again when I remembered the voice that had intruded on our beautiful day. A nasty thought occurred to me. “Do you think a Skriven could get into the Dream?” I still hadn’t heard anything more from Amara, an Originator who wanted me dead. I didn’t know why she hated me, though the Skriven meddled when they were bored. Surely I’d pushed her far beyond boredom when our last confrontation ended with her losing her arms, though technically Ellison had been the one to slice them off, not me.
“A world-walker? No. Dreams are for the living. World-walkers don’t dwell in the Real or Dreams. They are outside of both realms.” She grasped my arm when we came to a rather steep step. Once she was balanced on the path she let go of my arm and we continued.
I wasn’t sure I was relieved. If it had been Amara or another Skriven, I would know what I was dealing with. I didn’t like the idea of yet another bad guy entering into the mix. “Any theories?” We edged around a fat stalactite, wet and coarse and yellowed with age.
“One. I can’t imagine it’s true but I’m not sure what else to think” She touched my arm. When I stopped, she gestured to a dark corner, lit only by a curved wall glowing in the darkness. Kroshtuka lay submerged in a shallow pool of water that sparkled with lights. “We have him here to keep his body safe while his mind is Dreaming. It’s where we go to have our big Dreams, the long visions that keep us here for most of a Moon’s time.”
I knelt by Kroshtuka who was naked in the pool. Even though there wasn’t any wind, the water rippled. “Can I touch him?”
“Of course. Perhaps it will help anchor him.”
I took his hand from the water and squeezed it in my own. It was warm, solid, the finger pads calloused. “Come back. I’m here and I’m safe. Come back so I can talk to you in the Real.”
He didn’t move, didn’t respond. Disappointment flooded me and I descended into my control room to see if I could find a solution to my problem there. Concentrating on Kroshtuka, I let my mind wander around the room, trying to figure out what contraption—whether lever, button, switch, or scope—might work to bring him back.
I noticed a black slime coating an instrument jutting from the corner. I smelled it first, a wet, rotten smell that wrinkled my nose. It covered what looked like the giant golden reel of a shark fisherman. The moment I saw it, I knew that was what I could use to bring Kroshtuka back. Except, I didn’t want to touch the slime. It was bad and it wasn’t supposed to be here.
‘Neutria?’
Corruption.
Yeah, okay. Thanks, Captain Obvious. ‘How do I get rid of it?’
She shuddered. A gigantic assassin spider shuddered. Great.
I opened my eyes and glanced around at Lizzie. “Whatever it is, it’s bad. And it’s going to take something more than me wishing him home to get him back.” The black stuff worried me. Was it inside me? Only in my imagination? How did something like that get there, something so alien to my own mind?
“It was worth a try.” Lizzie clasped her hands in front of her. “We will work on a solution from the Dreaming Place. Do what you can to search for an answer.” She studied me. “If you go looking for him in the Dreamscape, be careful. I don’t want to lose you there, too.”
***
I walked her back to the main cavern and hooked away, disturbed to the very core of my being. I gathered lodestones though my mind wasn’t on the task at hand. My focus wasn’t there, either, and I ended up tossed on my ass when I lost my grip on the bar the first time.
Cursing, rubbing my sore backside, I dropped to the floor in my basement on my second try. The living space was empty and bright sunshine shone through the basement window. Crap. I hoped I hadn’t missed the kids. I hooked to Danni’s house and gave Zech the lodestones. His eyes bugged when he saw them. “They’re so big. You did this in one trip?”
I nodded, unwilling to tell him about landing on my ass. “If you need more I’ll get them.”
He was hefting one in his palm, already imagining how he was going to use it. “I’ll be sure to ask if I need more. This, though, will give me more than enough power to help her. Thank you.”
“What will you do if he shows up?”
Zech studied the stone in his hand, not looking up at me. “I will place stones outside to warn us when a stranger enters the apartment building and I’ll have stones around the apartment to act as magical wards to keep everyone but Danni, you, or me out. Anyone else will receive a shock of electricity that should knock them cold. We’ll call the police if the stones are activated.”
“And what if he gets in anyway?”
His eyes locked onto mine. “He won’t.”
“But what if he does,” I insisted. “Plan for every contingency, Zech. You don’t want to make any mistakes.”
He considered for a moment. “If he gets in, I’ll kill him.”
“Can you?”
“For Danni? Yes. I could kill for her.”
I hoped, for his sake and hers, that it would never come down to making that choice.
***
I l
eft him to his planning and hooked home, then took the stairs two at a time to find the kids in the kitchen eating breakfast. Arsinua doled out pink pancakes to the kids and I felt a pang. Those were a family tradition and this time I wasn’t a part of making them. After Travis’ accusations, it felt like a kick in the stomach.
“Good morning, guys,” I said.
Bethy and Liam looked up from their plates. “Morning.”
“Hey, Mom.”
I kissed them both and thanked Arsinua when she pushed a plate into my hands.
“I was telling your children you were downstairs working on the furnace,” she said.
“Oh, yeah.” As if I had any clue how to work on the furnace. And why did she feel it necessary to lie for me to my kids?
“Have to start calling you Handy Manny, Mom,” Bethy said. She forked a big wad of pancake in her mouth and grinned around the pink stuff.
“Gross. Chew with your mouth closed.” I tapped her on the chin then settled down to eat with them. “How many days until school is out?”
“Fifty-four school days,” Liam said.
“Too long.” My daughter jabbed her fork into one of Liam’s pancakes and had it in her mouth before he could protest.
He jerked his plate away. “Knock it off, loser.”
“Liam, come on. Don’t call Bethany a loser.” I speared a bite of my own food and held it out. “Here. Take some of mine.”
“No. I don’t want yours. I want her to say sorry.”
Something in his tone made me take a closer look. His eyebrows were drawn tight on his forehead and the skin around his mouth was taut. “Bethy,” I said.
“Sorry. Whiner.”
“Knock off the name calling or I’m going to start charging you a dollar every time you do it.” They both looked at me with sullen expressions. I wasn’t sure if having them both angry at me was progress. “I love you both.” I kissed them on their heads and then dashed upstairs to get ready for work. By the time I was done, they were already walking to the bus stop, Liam trailing Bethy, both with their heads down, staring at their phones.
