In the Dark of Dreams

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Slow. Easy. Gentle. Jenny lost herself to him again, letting Perrin explore her body, speaking only to tell him yes, or there, or please, don’t stop—and he did not stop, and he made her feel safe, with every touch, every kiss and caress. The parasite pulsed in the base of her neck, like a heartbeat. No pain. It felt . . . natural. As natural as being with him.

  But something else rose inside her, too. The old hidden place inside her heart—shut away and crusty with pain.

  No, she thought. No, please. I don’t want to think about it now.

  But her heart, bathed in peace and safety, was already unfolding the old hard sorrow. Or maybe that was the kra’a. She didn’t know or care. She just wanted it to stop.

  It didn’t, though. Tears leaked from her eyes. Perrin stilled. “What is it?”

  Jenny shook her head, fighting herself. But she couldn’t hide from that sting—or the memories. She clung to him, holding on with all her strength as a terrible sob wracked her entire body.

  “I did hurt you,” he whispered.

  Jenny shuddered. “No.”

  Perrin forced her to look at him. “Tell me.”

  She tried to stop crying, but the tears rolled down even harder. She buried her face in his neck, shaking. Not now. She didn’t know why, now, she had to ruin this. But the pain wouldn’t go away. Her belly ached, empty and cold.

  “Jenny,” he said raggedly.

  “They killed my baby,” she said brokenly, and it was the first time she’d said those words out loud, ever. Felt like ripping open a wound and letting it bleed.

  She choked, and Perrin’s hands froze against her back. “The Consortium killed my baby.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They killed my baby.

  Perrin had not let himself think about whether Jenny was married, or single. He hadn’t cared, to be honest. She was giving herself to him, he was giving himself to her—and that was all that mattered. Anyone else could go to hell and stay there.

  But that she had been a mother . . . that was something he had not imagined. And now that he could, now that he could see her with a baby in her arms . . .

  They killed my baby.

  Rage trickled into his heart. A simmering, transcendent fury that he had never experienced. Quiet, raw. Hungry for blood.

  “Jenny,” he said, and his voice sounded strange to him, distant and deep, and barely there.

  “She had two months left to go,” Jenny whispered against his throat. “She was an accident, but a good one. The father was an old friend from school, and it was just . . . it happened. I used protection, I didn’t mean for it . . . but there she was. After I got over the shock, I was so happy.”

  “Jenny,” he said again, holding her tighter. “Jenny.”

  She burrowed deeper into his body. “I was home. Family reunion. I knew something was wrong early on—I’d known since I was twelve—but no one would listen. And then, that day, they made their move. Men came with guns, and the fight . . . there was so much blood. I had to kill one of my cousins. I shot her in the head. I don’t even remember doing it. Just that I picked up the gun and pulled the trigger, and she was dead. And when I did that, the pain started, then someone hit me—hit me so hard in the stomach—and my water broke.”

  Perrin trembled. He tried to calm himself into stillness, but hearing those words burned through him, and the fury curled hotter, brighter, more terrible. “You had the baby.”

  “A friend of the family saved me. A shape-shifter named Serena. She got me away to a place where I could hide. She tried to help, but she . . . it was too soon, and there was no hospital. No way to get help. Everyone was just trying to survive.” Jenny’s voice broke, and so did Perrin’s heart. “She was so tiny.”

  He rocked her closer, holding her as tightly as he dared. Wishing desperately, furiously, that he could squeeze the pain from her. To lose a child, like that—helpless to stop it, surrounded by violence—and if that had been his child—

  Perrin didn’t let himself finish that thought. He knew what they’d done. He knew what could already be growing between them. Fool that he was, given the circumstances—but no one had ever accused him of being careful, or even remotely intelligent. All he had known beforehand—and during—and now—was that he would protect her. He would give his life for her. He would live for her, so that she would live.

  Because they were bound now. They had always been bound—dream bound—but now it was different, and he’d felt something new humming inside him with that first slick thrust into her body.

  “When did this happen?” he asked her, because he didn’t know what to say, how to express any of the feelings burning through him.

  “Six years ago,” she said quietly. “More or less.”

  “We stopped sharing dreams when I was exiled,” he said. “I think . . . I think I would have known you were hurt if we’d still been with each other in our sleep.”

  Known, and fought to find her. Fought with all his strength. He would have tried at the beginning of his exile if he’d had a clue where she was.

  Jenny tangled her fingers in his hair. “Not having you in my dreams . . . it made me wonder if I’d finally grown up. If it was my mind’s way of telling me to . . . move on. So I tried. It wasn’t easy to let go of that obsession with your memory. But it was that or never have a life.”

  It hurt a little, hearing her say those words. But Perrin understood. He had never expected to find her, either. And that was knowing, even, that the dreams were real.

  “You never received justice,” he said.

  “Never,” she told him quietly. “And I never went home. I got on my boat and just . . . sailed away. Looking for mysteries, again. Taking jobs writing articles for science magazines. Just . . . doing anything I could not to remember. The sea felt safe. The sea always felt safe.”

  “The sea is anything but,” Perrin replied, more harshly than he intended. “If I could change things—”

  “I know,” she said. “I miss her, and I didn’t even know her.”

  “What was her name?”

  “I didn’t have one yet. I liked Harriett, for some reason. Everyone told me that was awful. And there was Lucy, and Chloe, and Bridget. I wanted to get it just right, but nothing ever stuck. So on the gravestone, all I had inscribed was: MY BABY. No date. Nothing else. I didn’t know what to say. It hurt too much.”

  Perrin buried his lips against her hair. “You would have been a good mother.”

  “I would have been a mess,” she muttered. “But I would have loved her.”

  You did love her, he wanted to say, but silence seemed safer. Nothing he said could make this better. He understood now why she hadn’t wanted to talk about what the Consortium had done, and he was glad—desperately so—that he hadn’t pushed.

  Jenny tried to pull away. Perrin held her close.

  “We don’t have time,” she said, voice muffled with tears.

  “If we don’t have time now, we never will,” he replied.

  She hesitated, then relaxed again in his arms, very slowly. Warm and small, and strong. His girl. His woman.

  He was not alone anymore.

  Perrin pressed his lips against her brow, listening to her breathing steady. She wasn’t asleep, but she was resting, her presence warm inside his mind.

  Are you angry with us? whispered the kra’a, also in his thoughts.

  No, he told it, wanting to say more, but unable to do anything but throw his emotions at that too-familiar presence that skimmed now along the bond between him and Jenny. The bond felt like a rope around his heart. Physical, throbbing. Hot.

  For a moment, he thought about the Frenchwoman who had died on the island, and the dead man on the boat, her husband. Perrin wondered what it had been like for them to be torn apart from each other.
/>   Chilled him. Made him nauseous. Afraid. He felt the surrounding sea, soft and vast, buoying the ship as though it sat upon a curved palm; but all that did was make him feel like they were trapped inside a coffin. Or a hand about to close, and crush.

  Perrin closed his eyes and forced himself to take deep, steadying breaths. His body still ached from lovemaking—“lovemaking,” what a word—and it didn’t take much for him to want to be inside Jenny again. Covering her with his body, sheltering her, holding her safe and full while those green eyes stared into his with that half-lidded pleasure and need—and that trust he craved so badly, he didn’t know how he had survived this long without her.

  He could survive another eight years on land, twenty, fifty, a hundred—if she was there with him.

  All because of one moment on a beach, sixteen years ago.

  The only other bonded pair Perrin had ever known was so old, their bodies had practically floated through the sea as shriveled husks. He had been very young. All he remembered was that they were always holding hands. And they died together, one last breath ending another.

  Maybe it would make a difference that Jenny was human.

  Maybe she would survive his death.

  If they kill me, make sure she lives, he told the kra’a. Promise me.

  We promise you, all of us, replied the kra’a. All of us, together.

  Which was not the comforting answer Perrin wanted.

  No one said a word when Perrin and Jenny ventured back on deck. The sky was bright with sun, but after a moment spent blinking hard, his vision adjusted. His eyes were getting better in the light.

  Eddie and Rik stood inside the bridge with Sajeev, staring out the window at the distant rise of the atoll. Eddie glanced at Jenny, stared a moment too long—as if he could see the grief she was hiding so well—and then looked away, rubbing his jaw.

  A yacht was anchored three hundred yards west. Perrin was no expert, but it looked large and expensive, with many windows and a sleek white hull.

  “Pleasure cruiser,” Jenny said thoughtfully, her voice still raw from her tears—though she held herself together with a calm that Perrin admired. “Large enough to require a crew.”

  “Your ship is the same size,” he remarked.

  “The Calypso Star was designed to be handled by only one or two well-trained people.” Jenny quirked her mouth. “I see a lot of skin over there.”

  Sajeev grinned and tapped the digital player taped to the wall. His finger scrolled down, then clicked. Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” began blaring over the stereos. Eddie frowned at him and turned off the music.

  The fishing boat drifted closer to the yacht. Everyone but Sajeev ventured from the bridge to stand on deck. Perrin glimpsed crisp white uniforms, and a lot of bikinis. In fact, most of the passengers seemed to be young women, who were lounging on lawn chairs, holding drinks, and laughing. Pleasure cruise, indeed.

  Some of the crew watched their boat with concern. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see guns, but none appeared.

  “Well,” Jenny said. “This is awkward.”

  Perrin frowned. “Go or stay?”

  One of the women on the vessel seemed to get a good look at Rik and waved. Her swimsuit was barely there, and she was tanned, long-legged, and lean as a cat. Her white teeth practically sparkled.

  “I’m torn,” he replied, waving back. “Very torn.”

  “Rik,” Eddie said.

  “If it’s the end of the world, and they’re some of the survivors?” Rik held out his hands, smiling—though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Come on, man. I suddenly feel like being a hero.”

  Perrin wasn’t fooled. Shape-shifters mated for life. And Rik, young as he had been all those years ago, had loved Surinia enough to claim her as his—if not in body, then in soul. A pretty face wouldn’t be enough to heal that wound, but there was nothing wrong with pretending.

  “The atoll is over a mile wide,” Eddie said. “If we anchor on the other side, no one should be able to see anything strange.”

  “I’m more worried about luring trouble here,” Jenny said, but even as she spoke, the yacht’s anchor began to crank up, and the engines purred to life.

  “I think we made them nervous,” Perrin said mildly, as the girl who had been waving to Rik screamed good-bye at him, then bounced back to her friends with a loud, delighted laugh.

  Sajeev turned the music back on. This time, no one stopped him. Perrin glanced at Jenny and found her rubbing the back of her neck.

  Her knees suddenly buckled. He caught her as a tremor poured through her body, from head to foot—deepening into a violent quaking shiver that made her teeth chatter.

  “What—” Rik began, just as Jenny’s entire body bent backward, rigid, seizing. Horrifying sounds tore from her throat.

  Her muscles relaxed just as Perrin began to lay her down, but the pain didn’t seem to ease. She cried out, a deep throaty sound that was part scream, part groan, and that rose from so deep inside her he imagined it was the sound of her soul.

  He saw, inside his head, a shimmer of darkness. A vision of terrible golden eyes straining to open, buried in the fire burning below the earth’s crust. Listening for dreams that would not come.

  Close, whispered the kra’a. We are still close. The dreams will come. Dreams always come.

  Perrin shuddered. And then the pain hit him, too.

  He went blind. Lost the ability to breathe. Fingers dug into the base of his skull, but his hands were firmly around Jenny, and it was only memory, terrible memory, though the pain was real and the same. Taking an ax to his skull would have been kinder, faster, than the prying, the sensation of someone trying to pull out his spine—along with a sudden liquid heat that felt like acid pouring into that old gaping scar.

  When it stopped, it was sudden—and felt like death. Or maybe heroin. The relief was bliss, sinking into his veins, pooling in all the parts of him that were still and quiet. He’d taken the drug only twice but had been frightened of how good it made him feel, how bereft of thought and any instinct to survive. He felt the same now.

  Except for Jenny. Fear for her crashed him down.

  Perrin tried to open his eyes, but it was impossible, at first. Nothing worked right. He felt Jenny beside him, his hand around her arm. Her skin was soft, cool. He heard the faint hiss of her breathing and wanted to press his ear against her heart.

  If he could even move.

  “Perrin,” Jenny murmured.

  “Here,” he whispered, relieved beyond measure to hear her speak.

  Eddie crouched, pale. “What just happened?”

  Jenny shuddered. Perrin said, “Earthquake.”

  Not the entire truth, but close enough. He was certain there had been an earthquake, just as he was certain that he did not want to explain the vision of a waking, increasingly restless, Kraken.

  Rik held a water bottle to Jenny’s mouth, and helped her drink. Her color improved, but the faint, reassuring smile she gave him was deeply shaken.

  “We’re running out of time,” she said.

  Less than fifteen minutes later, Perrin and Jenny were in the sea.

  The fishing boat was anchored less than twenty feet away. The atoll was another twenty feet behind them. If Perrin stood on his toes, he could keep his head above the surface. Jenny alternated between holding his shoulders and treading water. Every inch of him wanted to transform into his water-body, but he forced himself to stay human.

  Jenny’s face was pale and bruised, but her eyes remained intent. Focused. Perrin thought of everything they had shared, what she had told him, and a desperate love clawed up his throat, along with an equally desperate desire to protect her.

  Perrin could not help himself. He kissed her, long and slow, wishing he was in a time and place where he could
bury his body inside hers, and take her—in the sea, on the beach of the atoll—and watch her body, straining and naked beneath his, in sunlight.

  He got hard. Jenny sighed against his mouth and deliberately swiped her hand over him. It took all his strength not to groan in pleasure, or do something even more embarrassing. Like fuck her in front of the men standing on the boat.

  Jenny said, “I think I heard that.”

  Perrin cleared his throat. “When this is over—”

  He stopped, unable to finish that sentence. When this was over, he might be dead. Both of them, dead. But if he wasn’t . . . if they weren’t. . .

  Jenny grazed her fingers over his mouth, her eyes dark with understanding. “Tell me what to do.”

  Perrin captured her hand, kissing her palm. Unable to keep from noticing the tremor that raced through her. He wanted to pretend it was because of his touch, but the longer he looked at her, the more he sensed a wildness. Like some small part of her was ready to bolt.

  “When I was first chosen to be a candidate,” he said carefully, “I was forced to learn a series of meditations in an effort to prepare me for having another mind residing within mine. We don’t have time for that, and besides, it seems that you’ve merged quite well already.”

  “I think the . . . bond . . . between us helped,” she replied, and again, he sensed her trepidation in his mind. “The kra’a already knew me.”

  Such dreams, whispered that dry voice, and Jenny closed her eyes.

  Perrin said, “I heard it speak.”

  “Good,” she mumbled. “That should help.”

  “The key,” he went on, uneasy, “is in your mind, what you feed the kra’a. A Kraken must be soothed, and that can’t happen with violent thoughts. Its dreams must be quiet and gentle. You must lull the beast.”

  “We’re being watched,” she said.

  “Ignore it,” he replied, wondering if it was A’lesander or that strange cult that had gathered. This place wasn’t safe—but then, in the sea, there was no such thing as safety.

  They had to be in the water for this. At least no one would be able to ambush them from below or behind. Just to the sides and from under the fishing boat, where Sajeev and his uncanny senses—and impossible aim—stood guard with his sniper rifle.