Marked

by Dean Murray

  I collapsed to my knees as James let go of me and wrapped his arms around Dom. It seemed impossible that we'd come so close to losing Dom such a short time after Alec being shot. Part of me wanted to rage against our string of terrible bad luck, but I was careful to keep my mouth shut.

  James seemed convinced that Dom was fine now, but I wasn't so sure. People didn't just stop breathing for no reason. I was pretty sure that we hadn't seen the last of the fallout from me having pushed Dom to try and heal Alec.

  **

  I lost some time after Dom's brush with death. For several days everything felt like it was completely up in the air. Dom was still alive, but she could barely get out of bed. Andrew on the other hand woke up a few hours after we put Dom in the bunk below him. He was still weak and more than a little disoriented, but he was awake, which was definite progress compared to when he'd first been carried onto the RV.

  Donovan was having a hard time tracking down a suitable replacement for the communication equipment that had stopped working after the sniper had shot Alec. Apparently it wasn't as off-the-shelf as I'd thought. Even the fact that it was more or less restricted hardware wasn't the full extent of the problem. The real holdup was trying to get the equipment to interface with the custom software or firmware—or some kind of ware—that was a key part of the magic that made everything work.

  It meant that we were still dreadfully out of contact with Tasha and the rest of our people, which was bad, but it was also the only thing that saved me as I spiraled into a kind of dark haze like nothing I'd experienced since my panic attacks had stopped.

  It was all that I could do to function well enough to stop rumors from starting on the few times that we stopped the convoy to refuel or grab something to eat. Everyone in our RV knew I was struggling, and I was pretty sure that Mallory knew that something was up, but the rest of our people seemed to still be on a high over the fact that we'd managed to get out of Denver without having to fight the Coun'hij.

  I tried to smile in the right places and ask after their welfare. I didn't do an especially good job of it, but everyone seemed to think that I was just preoccupied over all of the things that still needed to be done to keep the rebellion from falling apart.

  It really was a critical time. I needed to be cementing my control over our people—preferably over all of our people, but at the very least the shape shifters in our group. It was only a matter of time before people started asking after Alec again, and when they did it wasn't going to reassure them in the least that he was still bedridden. Even without knowing that Alec was being attacked by Dream Stealer, people were going to start panicking if Alec didn't make an appearance soon.

  I knew all of that, but just couldn't seem to make myself function beyond the bare minimum required to keep the wheels from coming completely off. Donovan didn't say anything recriminating, but then again he didn't have to. I could feel his eyes on me no matter where I went inside of the RV.

  I tried early on to apologize to Dominic for nearly getting her killed, but I couldn't really get the words out, not like I wanted to, not with James standing protectively nearby. It wouldn't have made much difference if I'd managed to say what I'd wanted to say, not given how out of things Dom was, but maybe it would have made me feel a little better.

  As it was, it was just one more failure to be thrown across my shoulders and carried forward into a future that was going to be nothing more than more failures until the weight of them finally crushed me. More than ever I wished Alec were around to talk to. I needed to be able to talk to someone else who really understood what it meant to have the ultimate responsibility over so many lives.

  At some point after we got Dom's heart started again I moved completely into the master bedroom. I could still feel Donovan's worried eyes looking my direction, but it made things a little bit easier. I cut my interactions with the rest of the pack to the bare minimum. Food, when I remembered that I needed to eat, a shower each morning, and a status report from Donovan each day to find out how close he was to getting a new set of communications equipment in. I simply couldn't manage anything more than that.

  I started sleeping a lot too. Not just more than was normal, more than was probably healthy, but in that too I didn't seem to be able to stop myself. Mostly I fell asleep while sitting in the chair next to Alec's bed. Usually it wasn't even something that I meant to happen. I'd be sitting there trying to convince myself to get up and go out where I could interact with the rest of the pack and then the next thing I'd know, I was waking up from a six-hour-long nap that left me feeling not at all rested.

  After the second time that happened I started to worry that maybe I was being attacked by Dream Stealer. I tried to blame it on the fact that I was only catching snatches of sleep here and there. I even tried to explain it away as the result of sleeping fully dressed while sitting up in a chair, but after it happened a third time, I realized that I was doing the same kind of thing that Alec said happened every single time Dream Stealer went after someone.

  I had to know. I changed into some shorts and a tank top and after making sure that Alec was okay I lowered myself down on the bed next to him and closed my eyes. If I woke exhausted yet again, then I was going to go straight to Donovan and tell him that he couldn't trust me anymore, that he needed to lock me up until they managed to kill Dream Stealer…if they managed to kill Dream Stealer.

  Right before I finally drifted off to sleep I reached out and took hold of Alec's hand. I was asleep within seconds of touching him.

  I knew I was dreaming again. It wasn't just the fuzziness of my surroundings, it was the way that just as I'd dropped into slumber I'd felt like I was dropping down a long, dark chute. For the briefest of moments, as I felt myself start to be sucked down into the dream, it almost felt like I was dying. I landed in the dream with my adrenaline flowing and my heart pounding.

  Only calling it a dream didn't do it justice. I'd landed in a nightmare that was beyond anything I'd ever experienced before. I seemed to be in a jungle, but the plants were all spines and leaves that were stiff and sharp enough to cut. I could hear something—or maybe multiple somethings—moving around just out of sight.

  For the first time in recent memory I was glad that I didn't have as keen of a sense of smell as Alec and the rest of the shape shifters. The stench that was assaulting me was strong enough to bring tears to my eyes and make me gag. The melody of scents I was picking up overwhelmingly smelled of death.

  All of that would have been unsettling enough if that was the only thing that was off about my surroundings. Unfortunately it wasn't. The plants all gave off a kind of dark light that was hauntingly familiar.

  When I finally realized what was so odd about what I was seeing, I almost wished that I hadn't ever put the pieces together. What I was seeing was almost the complete inverse of what I normally saw when I shared a dream with Alec.

  Rather than giving off the pure, soft silvery light of living things, these plants seemed to be eating the light. It turned the plants into malevolent entities, but that wasn't the complete story. I'd seen this kind of living darkness once before—in the nightmare from the morning before Alec had been shot.

  I'd forgotten most of the terror-filled dream that Alec had woken me from, but now that I was once again dreaming I was suddenly certain that this wasn't some kind of terrible coincidence. The dreams were similar not because they had both originated from the same dark slice of my subconscious but because they had both been created by an external force.

  I was being stalked by Dream Stealer just like Alec was, just like Kristin had been. That meant that there was no longer any question as to whether Dream Stealer was capable of breaking multiple people at once. He was. I just needed to remember that piece of information once I woke up, that or go through with my resolution to talk to Donovan about my recent lack of quality sleep. I wasn't very optimistic about either outcome.

  I looked down at myself and realized for the first time that all of the
light I could see was coming from me. It made the light-absorbing, darkness-emitting plants around me feel even more sinister. It wasn't just that they were absorbing the light, they were absorbing my light—they were devouring me one photon at a time.

  It was beyond disturbing, but it also meant that I would stand out like a bonfire for anything else that happened to be out there and able to see my glow. There wasn't any guarantee that the creatures I heard moving around in the darkness could see the light from living things like a shape shifter could, but I wasn't going to just blindly assume I was invisible to the things that I sensed were already stalking me.

  I'd been in countless dreams where I'd changed some aspect of the dream—often without meaning to—so it seemed worthwhile to try to change my surroundings to something less dangerous. I visualized the dark jungle morphing into a bright, cheerful meadow, but nothing happened.

  I tried concentrating harder, but it still didn't seem like anything was happening. I could hear something circling around behind me, setting up for an attack, but all my efforts so far had gained me was the beginnings of a splitting headache.

  It was time to change my strategy. I needed some kind of equalizer. The image of the massive sword that I'd seen so many times in Alec's bedroom came unbidden to my mind and this time when I visualized it as being part of my dream I felt an odd kind of…catch…as my mind grabbed onto something and forced the sword I wanted into existence.

  Only it wasn't exactly what I'd wanted. My focus must have wavered at the last second because rather than the dark, gleaming steel I'd imagined I got a weapon that was the same size, but which gave off the cool white light of a living thing. Luckily my faulty concentration had also resulted in a weapon that was much, much lighter than the real weapon I'd been using as my model.

  I wasn't stupid enough to think that having a sword meant I knew how to use it, but the softly glowing weapon still gave me a sense of power that I hadn't expected. I took a couple of tentative practice cuts with the sword and smiled as it effortlessly sliced through a spiky tree that was as big around as my wrist.

  I spun in place, using my weapon to clear an area more than ten feet in diameter. It wasn't much, but I wanted room to move around in and I now had at least a modicum of space. I turned my head from side to side in an effort to locate the creature that had been circling me, but the movement had stopped.

  A shiver worked its way up my spine as I realized that meant whatever I'd been hearing was ready to pounce. Silently cursing the stupidity that had made me spin around and lose track of whatever was out there, I put the point of my sword in the direction I thought I'd last heard movement coming from and steeled myself for what I knew was coming.

  I thought I was ready, but when it jumped out at me I still almost wasn't fast enough. I'd been wrong about where it was located and my sword was out of position, but I somehow managed to bring it around enough to score a long slash on the creature's side as it closed with me.

  There was an odd tugging feeling on my left arm as my blade cut it, but for a second, as it recoiled back out of range of my sword, I thought that I'd made it through the first exchange of the fight without getting hurt. It wasn't until I looked down at my arm that I realized the tugging motion had been the creature slicing into my arm with its claws.

  It was funny, but the cut didn't hurt until I saw the blood leaking out of it, but once it started hurting it was pure agony. I tried to force the pain to the back of my mind, but that didn't do anything about the fact that my left hand wasn't working quite right now.

  I could feel tears gathering at the corners of my eyes, but in that moment I couldn't have said for sure whether they were tears of pain, fear, or rage. I was scared out of my mind, and telling myself that I couldn't actually die from anything that happened inside of a dream wasn't doing anything to lessen my terror.

  On the other hand, I was so incredibly tired of living in a world where I was constantly outclassed. The thing I was up against right now wasn't Dream Stealer, but that just meant that it could be killed and I wanted it dead.

  Once again grateful that my weapon was so light, I shifted it fully to my right hand and studied the creature that was slowly circling me. It was vaguely humanoid, with a head, two arms and two legs, but even so it made my skin crawl in a way that was usually reserved for spiders.

  It was nearly six feet tall with the muscled body of a gymnast, but its skin was a rough, black material that made it hard to follow in the near darkness and each of its fingers was tipped with foot-long claws that looked purpose built for rending and tearing.

  That alone would have been enough to convince me that what I was fighting had no real-world counterpart, but it was its mouth that was the most unnatural. It opened its mouth to hiss at me and I saw rows of teeth emerge from the darkness. It was like getting a close-up view of a shark only much, much worse because its jaw was hinged in such a way as to let it open impossibly big. It also looked like its teeth must retract somewhat when it closed its mouth because there was no way that teeth that long would fit otherwise.

  I turned in place to keep my sword between the two of us, and the creature hissed at me again, multifaceted eyes tracking my movements. Just as I realized that it didn't have a tongue it sprang at me again.

  I tried to stab it, but it slapped my sword aside with its claws and slashed at my head. I should have died right then, but as I was backing away from it I tripped and my fall caused its claws to pass just over the top of my head.

  I slashed in the creature's direction with my sword as I fell and was rewarded with a strike to its arm. It was a weak blow, so much so that it barely qualified as such, but it was better than nothing. Luckily it was enough to make the creature back off again, which was a good thing because I'd reflexively used my left hand to catch myself and the pain nearly caused me to black out.

  I was shaking as I rolled back to my feet. I just wasn't fast enough. I needed to be faster if I was going to survive, which was impossible…except making a sword appear out of thin air was unarguable proof that this really was a dream.

  I went on the offensive, trying to buy myself time to think. I stepped forward and slashed at the creature, but it easily dodged my sword, darting backwards and then lunging towards me with the same preternatural speed it had demonstrated so far in the fight.

  There was no way I could possibly get out of the way in time. I was too slow but I willed myself to move faster, to match the fiend that was about to rip out my throat. It shouldn't have worked, I'd misjudged just how little time my attack would buy me and my mind seemed to be moving so slowly.

  I caught a dark flash out of the corner of my eye, something too fast for me to completely register and then I felt the same odd catch in the back of my mind at the same time that my headache exploded into something far more severe even than the pain in my wrist.

  It felt like someone reached inside my head, grabbed ahold of one of the hemispheres of my brain, and proceeded to rip a big hole in it. I screamed in spite of my best efforts to keep it all bottled up inside. It was the kind of pain you got when you'd damaged something in a way that you could never fully heal from. It was silly to worry about something like that when you were about to have your throat ripped out by some nightmarish creature, but somehow the idea that I'd somehow inadvertently ruined myself was scary in a way that dying wasn't. You could only die once, but you had to live with a crippled mind or body forever.

  I'd been screaming for what felt like forever, but the creature still somehow hadn't hurt me. I opened my eyes and found that the creature's claws were still headed towards me, but they were moving as though through molasses.

  It was impossible, but it was happening and I did my best to take advantage of it, but I was moving just as slowly as the creature. The air felt like it had the consistency of water and I simply wasn't strong enough to power my way through it faster than it wanted to let me move.

  I wasn't going to have enough time to dodge backwards, so i
nstead I stepped into the creature, angling my sword so that it would be correctly placed to block the follow-up strike that I knew would be coming as soon as my enemy realized that I was too close for its leading arm to get me.

  From there it was natural to let the momentum my sword already had send its hilt up into the bottom of the creature's mouth. In the precise instant when the hilt of my weapon collided with the thing I was fighting, the pain in my head hit a new crescendo.

  The impact of metal on flesh was still satisfying. I'd hit the creature hard enough to launch it into the air, but I hardly noticed all of that because I was too busy trying to clutch my head with my free hand.

  I staggered back to my feet at the same time as the creature. I reached past the pain and tried to speed myself up even more, but something inside my mind had been pushed as far as it was capable of being pushed. The creature opened its mouth to hiss at me again and I had the pleasure of seeing dark, black blood pouring out of the wounds its own teeth had inflicted on its mouth when I'd hit it with my sword.

  We circled, and this time I raised the point of my sword slightly so that it was pointed at the creature's head. That seemed to make the creature more nervous than anything else I'd done so far. It kept moving its head from side to side, changing the angle between it and my sword—much like I'd done earlier when I'd been trying to locate it based on what I could hear of its movements through the underbrush.

  I took an experimental stab at my enemy, the kind of half-hearted attempt that I thought would help me avoid getting too far out of position, but rather than missing by a mile like I'd expected to, I scored a shallow gash on the creature's cheek. It still seemed to be having a hard time following the movement of my sword.

  I stepped back and slashed at the creature, and nearly lost my grip on my sword from the sheer force of the creature's block. There was something there I could work with, but I didn't have much longer, not at the rate I was currently losing blood.