In the Dark of Dreams

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Jenny closed her eyes. You’re shit. You could have saved her.

  She understood, repeated the kra’a. Some things cannot be changed. Pelena was not . . . right . . . for what we needed. Her dreams were weak. And dreams can never be weak.

  I’m not any better, she told it. Go to Perrin.

  We are already with him, it whispered. Two is better than one.

  Jenny rubbed her eyes. Perrin said, “What is it?”

  “You have to take the kra’a from me. You have to. There’s no other choice.”

  The parasite twitched, but no dry voice filled her head. Perrin remained silent, as well.

  Jenny drew in a deep breath. “We need to warn people, just in case this doesn’t work. There’s no way to evacuate everyone, but if I can reach my family—”

  “Doesn’t matter who you are or what connections you have,” Rik interrupted. “Millions will still die. Those waves are going to crush the coasts and go miles inland. Not just one or two miles, either. We’re talking fifty, a hundred. Never mind the earthquakes. Infrastructure will break down. Disease, starvation, panic—”

  “I already got the rundown,” she snapped, and reached around, digging through her tangled hair until she touched the parasite. Felt like a hard flat knot in the base of her skull, smooth as bone, as tightly bound to her as if it was part of her body. And it was, she realized, feeling sick. Deeper, even. Much deeper.

  She thought the parasite would stop her when she tried to dig her trembling fingers under its edges, but instead Perrin grabbed her hand. He did not speak and she could only feel a ghost of his presence against the wall inside her mind. She wanted to feel more of him, right then. She was so afraid.

  Sajeev appeared from the control station, scuttling into the sunlight with a wincing squint. He reminded her of a bald, leathery, tattooed crab. Beady black eyes, included.

  “Trouble,” he said.

  Eddie walked to the rail, joined by Rik. “Where?”

  Jenny looked, as well. Perrin crossed the deck to watch the sea behind her. Not a thing in sight. The engine was still running, motoring them along a northerly route, according to the position of the sun.

  Sajeev did not answer Eddie. He reached inside the bridge to tap an MP3 player taped to the wall. Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust” began blasting, so loud Jenny winced.

  Swinging his skinny hips, singing to himself in a strange falsetto, Sajeev slid open a large panel in the outer wall and pulled out a sniper rifle. Bolt-action. Telescopic lens already mounted.

  “Whoa,” Rik said.

  Sajeev ignored him, still dancing—thrusting, grinding his pelvis so vigorously, he should have dislocated his hips. Joints popped instead. Jenny vomited a little in her mouth, but she couldn’t look away. She hoped the parasite was memorizing this moment for its future hosts, because damn.

  Sajeev dirty-danced the sniper rifle to the side of the boat and dropped down on one knee. His ass twitched in time to the music as he propped the rifle on the rail. No bipod support, but there was a suppressor.

  Suddenly, he didn’t look very funny anymore.

  When the song finished, nothing followed. Just a moment of pure dead silence, filled in seconds later with the sound of the engine spitting and rumbling, and the swell of the waves, and the wind.

  Sajeev knelt perfectly still, staring through the scope. Jenny began to wonder if he was crazy.

  Until he fired his weapon into the sea.

  Fifty yards away, a jet of blood spurted into the air.

  He pulled the trigger again. More blood, though not as much. Just enough to confirm a hit.

  Sajeev leaned back, eyes narrowed, head tilted. And then he smiled.

  “Better,” he said.

  Perrin leaned hard on the rail, staring. Without a word, he tossed his sunglasses to Jenny and leapt into the sea. She leaned over, staring. Eddie’s fingers grazed the back of her shirt.

  “Not jumping,” she told him irritably.

  “Course not, ma’am,” he replied smoothly, still hovering.

  Perrin did not resurface. Not right away. Two full minutes ticked by. She knew, because she kept checking Eddie’s watch. His presence was quiet on the other side of the wall in her mind—quiet, except for a brief flare of fury that flashed through her like a bolt of red lightning. She almost dropped the wall to see what was in her head, but the parasite whispered, Wait.

  “Rik,” she said.

  “No way I’m helping him,” he replied, but Eddie gave him a sharp look, and the shape-shifter began stripping off his shorts.

  He didn’t need to enter the sea, though. Perrin appeared, hauling someone with him. Jenny ran to the stern, getting down on her knees and reaching.

  But she pulled back when she saw who was bleeding and unconscious in Perrin’s arms.

  Les.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Perrin wondered if being directly responsible for the end of the world was justification enough for an impromptu execution. Like in human movies. One last word, then bang. Dead.

  He had drowned those pirates for less.

  Jenny touched her bruised face and studied A’lesander like he was a wet, dirty stain on an even dirtier pair of underwear. Blood oozed from his shoulder where a bullet had ripped away a chunk of flesh. Part of his upper arm was missing, too. He still wore his water-body, iridescent blue scales turning a sickly gray. The swelling on his broken nose was slightly improved, but his nose had been set badly and was still crooked.

  Perrin gave Sajeev a sharp look. “How did you know he was there?”

  The old man gave him a yellow-toothed grin. “Why didn’t you?”

  He struggled to keep his voice even. “Is there anyone else in these waters?”

  Sajeev shrugged, but that smile still played along his mouth. “You tell me.”

  Eddie cleared his throat, very deliberately stepping between them to kneel beside Les with a first-aid kit in hand. He opened a white packet and squeezed a liquid, granular substance over the shoulder wound. He packed it deep into the torn flesh, and it seemed to congeal, thickening on contact with the blood. He followed a similar procedure with the tear in A’lesander’s arm.

  “What is that?” Perrin asked.

  “Clotting agent,” Jenny answered for Eddie. “Military grade, for battlefield wounds. Stops bleeding, and then just . . . pulls out . . . when you finally get to a hospital.”

  “A’lesander isn’t going to make it to a hospital,” Perrin replied, ignoring Eddie’s speculative glance. He was tired of the young man looking at him like that—as though he were a bomb, just ticking away.

  But you are, Perrin told himself, glancing around. He saw a crowbar hooked into a nook near some fishing nets. He grabbed it, and before anyone could say a word, brought it down hard on Les’s right hand. Same hand he’d used to punch Jenny in the face.

  Bone crunched. Les jerked awake, screaming. Perrin slammed a foot down on his chest, holding him in place as his tail flopped wildly. He made terrible, guttural noises of pain and tried to hold his hand against his stomach. His fingers bent at strange angles.

  Eddie fell back, staring—heat rolling off him in throbbing waves. Rik leaned hard against the rail, grim-faced, golden light flaring in his eyes. Jenny wore no expression at all. For a moment he wondered if he had gone too far.

  But then he looked at the bruises on her face, and the shadows around her eyes—rope burns fading on her wrists—and he thought of how he’d first seen her, drowning, with A’lesander merely looking on—and then punching her—

  “A’lesander,” he said, just loud enough to be heard over the Krackeni’s shuddering pants. “A’lesander. You are very desperate, or very stupid.”

  “You crazy fuck,” he whispered, raggedly. The sounds of yet more cracking bones fil
led the air, and the iridescent scales on his muscular tail rippled and flexed like a waterbed. Scales receded into flesh, then split apart, folding as those long muscles tore into legs and feet. Ugly to watch, and the blood of his human ancestor made his shift more difficult than it would have been for Perrin.

  “Just a little crazy,” Perrin replied. “Did you lead anyone here?”

  A’lesander bared his teeth in a hissing laugh. “Don’t need to. Eyes everywhere.”

  Perrin crouched, balancing the crowbar over his thighs. Silent. Sinking into the dark place. He held A’lesander’s gaze, and saw the exact moment when fear began to replace the anger.

  He looked past Perrin. “Jenny.”

  Perrin almost grabbed his broken hand and twisted. “Don’t look at her.”

  “Let him look,” Jenny said, her voice low, cool. “My good friend.”

  A’lesander shuddered, closing his eyes. His right arm trembled violently, his broken hand hovering over his stomach.

  Eddie crouched behind him. Perrin expected to see pity on his face, or righteous outrage; but the young man stared at the back of A’lesander’s head with dead eyes.

  “Ma’am,” he said quietly. “Is this the man who hit you?”

  “Yes,” she told him.

  Eddie nodded. When he leaned forward to help A’lesander sit up, he dug his thumb into the shoulder wound. A’lesander made a strangled sound, then clamped his mouth shut. Red-faced, quivering.

  “We need to talk,” he gasped, when Eddie stopped putting pressure on the wound and finally had him sitting up.

  “Talk.” Bitterness crept into Perrin’s voice. The crowbar felt good and cold on his thighs. “You came here to talk.”

  “You were right,” Jenny said. “Desperate or stupid. I say both.”

  Perrin’s mouth ticked into a grim smile. “I left you tied up on that ship. How did you get free?”

  “A Priori.” A’lesander glanced at Jenny, then looked away like it hurt him to see her. “They came to The Calypso Star and let me go.”

  “They would have trusted him,” she said with disgust. “What did you tell them, Les? That Perrin kidnapped me?”

  He did not confirm or deny, which told Perrin all he needed to know. Someone else was out there who would want him dead. If they thought he had hurt Jenny, he didn’t blame them.

  A’lesander looked at Jenny again, but this time his gaze lingered. Perrin gritted his teeth as he watched grief and regret touch his face . . . right before slipping away into shame.

  Perrin was afraid to look at Jenny. Friends . . . those two had been friends, maybe more, no matter what she said. . .

  He looked. Jenny stood so still, staring down at A’lesander with her mouth set in a hard line, her unblemished cheek flushed red. The other side of her face was mottled purple, a sickly yellow. Her eyes did not match the hard bitterness of her mouth. All he saw in them was sadness, which held a strange, hypnotic power.

  “You hurt me,” she said, some question in her voice. Why? Perrin heard. Why did you do that to me?

  Her family had betrayed her, he remembered. She had suffered violence at the hands of family. Now this.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he began, but Eddie made a small sound of anger, and Perrin’s hand snaked out, grabbing A’lesander’s throat.

  “Don’t lie,” he whispered. “I suppose your fist had a mind of its own. You already killed one friend. Are you going to tell me you didn’t mean that, either?”

  A’lesander’s entire body tensed. Maybe there was grief, maybe there was shame inside him, and pain—but Perrin sensed burning rage when he touched the man, and he saw it when their gazes met.

  “They told me what happened,” he rasped. “But even they don’t believe it.”

  “Believe what?” Perrin asked coolly.

  His gaze flicked to Jenny. “That she has the kra’a.”

  Perrin tightened his fingers. “That’s all you want, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here. Like a shark for blood. You tried to kill Pelena for her kra’a, but it slipped away from you. Slipped away, or else refused to bond.” He watched the other man’s face, and his hand relaxed around his throat. “That’s it, I think. You had the kra’a, and it refused you.”

  Perrin was loath to admit that his father could be right about anything, but his assessment of A’lesander had been correct—then and now. A’lesander did not have the heart to hold a kra’a. Not the strength, in body and spirit, to hold the dreams of a Kraken.

  But the human woman does, said a quiet voice inside his mind.

  Perrin’s breath caught, and A’lesander’s expression darkened, no doubt interpreting his stunned realization as something else entirely. “Does Jenny have it?”

  Focus, Perrin thought, and dragged the other man to his feet. “She’s human. How the hell could a kra’a have bonded to her?”

  His old friend stared at him. “You always were a terrible liar.”

  Perrin glanced at Sajeev. “I need rope, duct tape, anything I can tie him with.”

  “I came to help you. And her.” A’lesander twisted around to look at Jenny. “His father will rip the creature from you himself, and he won’t care if you live or die.”

  Jenny hugged herself. If she had known how vulnerable that made her look, Perrin was certain she would have been humiliated. He wanted to wrap himself around her, too.

  “And you?” she shot back. “You already tried to murder one person for it. What makes me different?”

  A’lesander straightened, wincing with the effort. “You know how I feel about you. I never made that a secret.”

  “Bullshit,” she whispered, and the hurt in her eyes killed Perrin. “You lied, Les. You lied, and you killed.”

  “He’s no better.” A’lesander tried wrenching free from Perrin, but the effort doubled him over, breath hissing through his teeth. “Don’t be fooled, just because you’re obsessed with nonhumans. You don’t know him. I don’t know why you trust him. He’s killed—”

  “Stop,” Jenny said.

  “—he’s killed,” A’lesander continued, his voice gaining strength as his gaze settled on Perrin. “Maybe he’ll kill you, Jenny. He killed another woman once. All she did was try to help him control his dreams—”

  Perrin drove his fist into A’lesander’s face. He didn’t even realize he was moving until his knuckles connected. The other man grunted, going down hard on his knees—catching himself with his broken hand. The grunt turned into a scream, and he folded over his hand, panting.

  Perrin stood there, breathing hard, afraid to look at Jenny. A’lesander started laughing though it was a breathless, pained sound.

  “Don’t tell me you actually care about her,” he whispered. “You don’t even know her.”

  “I know her,” Perrin said, grim.

  “You know her,” echoed the other man, mockingly. “You never met her until that day on the boat. So it’s some game you’re playing, Perrin. Better game than me, and I would never have imagined that.”

  “Les,” Jenny said, but the other man didn’t seem to hear her, not in the slightest, his head bowed, his shoulders twitching with his ever-ragged breath.

  “Don’t know how the hell you knew to come back when you did, or how you found us. But it’s done, Perrin. It’s done, and maybe you’re here for the kra’a, maybe it’s for something else, but you’re using her, and you’ll let her die when you’re done.”

  A’lesander finally tilted up his head, staring with bloodshot, cold eyes. “If the kra’a has bonded to Jenny, you’ll take it from her. The chance to put your broken, broken heart together will be too much temptation. But it’ll kill her. And I won’t let you do that.”

  Perrin exhaled. “You won’t . . . let me. Because you care . . . so much . . . about keeping her safe.”
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  A’lesander’s eye twitched. “She carries my bond. I don’t have a choice but to care.”

  My bond.

  Perrin heard a sharp intake of breath behind him, but he was still staring at A’lesander. Unsure what to say . . . or how to even wrap his mind around those words. It was impossible. Jenny was bonded to him, and he was bonded to her. He had always been hers, from that first moment they met, as children.

  Jenny drew near. He did not look at her, but he felt her warmth close in on him like the sunrise. He felt her warmth on his body and beneath his skin. He felt her, for a moment, in his mind, fluttering like a butterfly, sweet inside his thoughts.

  His girl on the beach. His miracle.

  “No,” he said to A’lesander, surprised at how calm he sounded.

  “You don’t know shit,” he replied, as if Jenny weren’t standing right there, listening. “How else do you think I’ve been tracking you?”

  Perrin’s fingers itched to hit him. “She does not . . . carry your bond.”

  He felt ill saying those words, the very idea of A’lesander being that close to Jenny making him feel as though something filthy was crawling around inside his soul—and hers.

  Then, like magic, Jenny leaned against him—and all that discomfort faded away. She wrapped her hand around his arm. Slow, deliberate. Comfortable. Staking her claim.

  A’lesander watched, and something . . . startled . . . slipped into his eyes.

  “Jenny,” he said. “I don’t know what he’s told you, but there are things you can’t understand.”

  She made a low sound. “Les. I promise you . . . sure as hell there are things you don’t understand about me. You never will. And if you try, I’ll kill you.”

  Dead silence. A’lesander stared. Perrin wondered uneasily if perhaps he didn’t truly believe he had a soul bond with Jenny.

  Sajeev turned to face the sea, and it was like watching a cobra move from sleep to strike. He held the sniper rifle as though it were an extension of his arm. Everyone tensed. So did A’lesander, though that might have been pain from his wounds. Or just pissy nerves.