Recognition filled Valerie’s eyes, recognition and hurt. Snakeman was her uncle.
He turned to me. “And it was me who murdered your companions. I knew you’d come here to her, that you’d try to stop me. I saw it in a premonition. So I broke you first.”
Fury filled my veins. I wanted to tear him apart.
“It’s been me, all this time, leading you down the path to finding the book. I watched and waited until my little Buttercup came of age, until you were capable of walking between dreams. I led you to the journal, to the white orb and your mother. It’s always been me.”
“No,” Valerie said. “It can’t be true.”
“You’ll give me Liber Somnia. Now. Return to the dream realm and deliver to me what is meant to be mine.”
“Fuck you,” Valerie said.
Her father’s body went limp, convulsing as he fell to the floor.
“Stop, please!”
She handed me the book and knelt beside her father. “Please, please stop this.”
I looked at her, and my anger at Snakeman took a backseat to the compassion I felt for my mate. We needed to save her father. The rest was past, he was dying now.
“We’ll do it,” I said.
Color slowly returned to Mr. Carlisle’s face. “One hour.”
With that, his eyes slid shut, and he remained still.
His chest rose and fell, so he still lived, but what was supposed to happen next—I had no idea.
Chapter Thirteen
Valerie
Dazed, I could only stand there as Deckard clicked the lock into place and slid the key into his pocket.
Dad was in the shed, securely bound. I wanted to feel confident that it was enough to keep him safe, and to keep him from harming himself or others. But I couldn’t shake the worry that I couldn’t save him—that I’d lose him just like I had lost my mother.
She’d been twice the witch that I was, and Snakeman had defeated her. Her very own brother had killed her. As soon as he’d said it, the pieces fell into place—Uncle Bernard. He used to call me Buttercup, and he used to argue with my mother. I had been so young when he left that I’d completely forgotten him. My father could have told me that my uncle had wanted the tome. He could have warned me, but I couldn’t ask him why he didn’t. Not now.
Instead I had to face my uncle, try to succeed where my mother had failed.
What chance did I have?
Joey yawned and stretched his arms.
I wasn’t thrilled about leaving him to watch my father, either. Not just because it had been his fault this had happened to Dad in the first place, but because Joey believed eating glass marbles was a good idea. How could we trust his judgement?
“You stay here,” Deckard said to him.
“Can do, partner.” Joey saluted with a smile.
“How do we know he can’t still be re-possessed?” I asked. “Do you have any more candy, Joey?”
“Nope,” he said. “I’m all out. Plus, you wouldn’t want to eat it anyway. You saw what it did to me. I think it’s gone bad.”
I gave Deckard a pointed look.
He glanced at me then turned away without a word. I might have been pissed if Joey hadn’t turned and looked the same way. Someone was coming, and I just couldn’t see whoever it was yet.
“I heard a lot of noise out here.” I recognized Roger’s voice before I made out his approaching silhouette in the darkness. “What’s going on?”
Deckard’s shoulders squared.
We’d been through this—Roger was not the bad guy.
“Roger,” Deckard said.
“Yeah?” He reached us and he and Joey smiled at each other and shook. “Good to see you.”
“You, too,” Joey said.
Deckard’s jaw tightened, and I touched his arm softly.
“Are you busy?” he asked Roger.
“Nope,” he said. “I should probably be sleeping, but I’ve been having trouble lately. What’s up?”
“What happened with Ms. Albright,” Deckard said. “It’s happened to Mr. Carlisle, too.”
“What?” Roger’s eyes went wide.
Joey looked down at his feet.
“We need your help,” Deckard said. “Can you stay with Wafflick to watch over him? He needs to be guarded and protected.”
“Of course.” Roger saluted, just like Joey had. The two of them really were an awful lot alike. “You can count on me.”
“Good,” Deckard said.
“Is he going to be okay?” Roger asked.
“We’ll make sure of it,” Deckard said.
I appreciated his confidence. I wished I had more.
Deckard gave me a small smile and took my hand. We started back toward the house. I was lost in thought, going over the events that had happened over the last few days again and again in my head.
Uncle Bernard—no, he wasn’t family even if he was blood. Snakeman had used Ms. Albright to take the journal, and what, used the journal to learn about Liber Somnia? I’d read the journal, and there was no mention. Maybe he didn’t know that ahead of time. Maybe he was just lying and trying to get inside my head. If that was the plan, it was working.
“Want a piece of candy?” I heard Joey say to Roger.
Oh hell no. Deckard and I turned.
Joey froze, hand in his pocket. He lifted both hands in the air slowly. “It’s only gum, see? Just gum. Nothing bad, I swear.”
I should have felt relieved, and I did a little, but as we walked back to the house, my stomach was in knots.
I’d followed along, doing everything my mother’s killer had wanted. I’d played into his hand, and now we were just going to give him what he wanted? No fucking way.
Deckard led me inside and up the stairs. He said nothing as we walked, and neither did I. I wasn’t sure what to say.
But when we reached my bedroom, the time for thinking things over was past. We needed to act. We had to dream.
I had no idea how I was going to make myself fall asleep, though, and the clock was ticking.
“Do you want to talk about what he said?” Deckard asked.
“No. We should focus. What’s our plan?” I dropped my shoes to the floor and pulled my legs up onto the bed. “Do we just give it to him? No, we can’t give it to him, but I don’t see any other option.”
We could try to trick the witch, but I couldn’t imagine taking the risk. What if he killed Dad?
“How does the book work? Can you bring anything you want with us to the dream world? Do you need to read a spell somewhere in those thousand pages to make it do whatever it does?” Deckard sat down beside me.
They were good questions, ones I didn’t have answers to.
“Well, I didn’t actually do anything to bring it with me from the dream realm. Otherwise, I don’t know anything more than you. Let’s see.”
I opened the cover and found the title handwritten on the first page. “Liber Somnia.” I flipped through hundreds of pages of worn, yellowed paper covered in a tightly scrawled script. In what looked to be Latin.
But something strange happened as I looked over the words. They moved.
It wasn’t like they swirled around the page, but instead changed order every time I started sounding them out.
“That’s a lot to read,” Deckard said.
“I don’t think the words are important,” I said. At first I wasn’t sure why I said it. It was just a feeling, and I blurted it out. But it made sense. Sometimes reading in dreams meant the words became a jumbled mess. And this was a book of dreams.
Deckard just looked at me. I must have sounded crazy, but that’s not the look he gave me. Instead it was a face of interest.
I considered the feel of the book in my hands, of the energy that coursed through me as I held it. It didn’t matter what the book said. We weren’t looking for a spell. It was an object of power, in and of itself.
“It’s not the words,” I said, this time more confidently. “It’s like the orb
s.”
“If you know this...do you know how it works, now, too?” he asked.
“No, I’m not sure.” I looked into his eyes, and squeezed the book tightly to my chest. “I don’t think we have time to guess.”
Deckard put his hand on my thigh, and I took comfort in his touch.
“We’ll figure it out as we go then,” he said. “And that starts with falling asleep.”
I didn’t think I could. I felt too agitated, too awake. But when I lay back and closed my eyes, I clung tightly to Liber Somnia, and it didn’t take long before sleep came.
Startled, I opened my eyes.
I stretched my arms and legs, soothing stiff muscles. The sheets were pleasantly warm, and my arm stopped when it hit the giant beside me. I rolled over and looked at Deckard.
He, too was stirring. His eyes cracked open, and he peered at me through heavy lids. The corner of his lips curved up to one side, in a grin that made me fall in love with him all over again.
But I wasn’t here to admire the way his arms looked when he reached up and rested his hands behind his head. No, there was something else…
I looked around the room, my bedroom. Everything was cast in a gray haze. That’s when I remembered. This was a dream, and we had a mission.
Step one complete—we were asleep. Now if only everything else could go so smoothly.
“That’s really you, right?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“How can I tell?” I asked. “What if you haven’t fallen asleep yet?”
He smiled and gave me a peck on the cheek. “If this was a typical dream, we’d be having sex, not hunting a snake.”
“Fair enough.”
Beside me on the edge of the bed, I found the giant tome—Liber Somnia. Part of me wished it hadn’t come with me to the dream world, because then the decision would be easy. We couldn’t give Snakeman something we didn’t have. But it was our only bargaining chip, and possibly our only chance to save Dad.
I climbed out of bed and slid on my flats. That’s when I realized—my pocket was warm.
I reached inside and pulled out the orbs. There were the broken black ones, and the blue one...and the white one. I hadn’t brought the white one to the dream world before. Did the tome do that? Did it bring the orbs along by itself or did I somehow do that using the book without realizing it?
“I have the book,” I said. “And these.”
“Good,” Deckard said. “We’ll need every advantage we can get.”
We needed all the help we could get because we were outmatched, outmaneuvered, outsmarted. We needed a backup in case the witch took the book and killed my father anyway. In case he tried to kill us, too.
He’d already murdered Ms. Albright, Deckard’s friends, and my mother. It wasn’t a stretch to assume he was untrustworthy.
“What if we copy Liber Somnia, using the blue orb, and then give him that?” I asked.
“It’s risky,” Deckard said. “If you can feel the power of the book, he probably can too.”
“Maybe it will feel the same,” I said, though even I didn’t believe it. Still, it didn’t hurt to try.
I pulled out the blue orb and placed my palm on the book. I told the dream there were two, and closed my eyes. When I opened them, nothing had changed. There was no copy, just the real Liber Somnia.
Crap.
“It didn’t work?” Deckard asked.
“No.” I sighed. It was too much to hope for anyway, so where did that leave us now? Maybe we could somehow use the tome to…what?
“The snakes are coming.” Deckard pointed to the floor.
Sure enough, there was a black shape slithering around the corner from the bathroom.
I rose from the bed, book held tight in my arm. I threw my palm into the wall. The drywall burst outward, the fractured shards dissipating into nothingness.
Standing on the precipice, I peered over the ledge.
Down below was exactly what I’d expected—the field of snakes. Big and small, red, black, brown, and green—they slithered around and over each other like a scaly living afghan.
But this time, he was waiting. He wasn’t just beyond the horizon—Snakeman stood just outside my bedroom, staring up at me. Waiting.
Worse, standing beside him was my father.
Dad’s face was pale and he stared blankly ahead of him. My heart ached. I had to help him.
With no plan, I dropped to the ground below.
My knees faltered on impact. As I scrambled to my feet, snakes slithered over my shoes and up my ankles. Fear rose, acid in my throat.
I kicked at the snakes and knocked them off of me with my hands.
And I looked to my father, into his vacant eyes. But he didn’t look back at me. I looked because I wanted to be wrong about what I saw. I looked because I wanted him to wake.
A massive form dropped down from the sky in front of me. I took a step back and blinked hard.
Brown fur, huge head, and sharp claws—it was a grizzly bear. My grizzly bear.
He glanced at me, then turned his attention to our enemy.
A deep sound trembled the world. Deckard roared, shaking everything in the dream, from my chest to the ground beneath my feet. The snakes recoiled.
My confidence was reignited. I’d banished the snakes before, but only when I’d known that I could. Power was mine, but only if I believed.
This time, I didn’t have to do it alone. I had Deckard.
I stepped up beside Deckard to face Snakeman. We’d do this together.
The serpents covering Snakeman’s face slithered away, revealing a small man with black hair and blue eyes. He wore a nice suit, but was otherwise unremarkable. He was a stranger to me, yet so familiar. He looked a little like me, but more like the reflection I saw in my nightmares. Seeing his face, I was sure. Snakeman was my uncle.
“Hey, that’s the guy who gave me the candy.”
No...it couldn’t be. I turned. And sure enough, there was Joey. And Roger. Had I somehow called them here? Why weren’t they awake and watching over my dad?
“We decided to take a best friends nap,” Joey said, and clasped Roger on the shoulder.
Someone had to be watching over my dad. Panic rose once more, tamping down my confidence, but not my resolve. We’d do this, and then we’d go to Dad. He’d be okay because he had to be. I needed him to be okay.
“I know him, too,” Roger said. “Yeah, he used to visit your mom, Val. She was always really angry when he came. You’re her brother, right? Bernie or Bart or something, right?”
I turned my attention back to Snakeman.
He smiled from ear to ear. “Time to give me the book.”
“No.” I squeezed it tighter to my chest. I didn’t know for sure that I wouldn’t hand it over until the moment I said it.
My father fell to his knees. His face contorted in pain.
Deckard bounded toward Snakeman. I grabbed the blue orb from my pocket and reached out. My fingertips brushed his rough fur as he passed, and just like that, there were two Deckards in grizzly form.
The bears dived at Snakeman, but as they should have tackled him to the ground, he disappeared.
Roger and Joey stripped as the Deckard bears looked around.
Where the hell did he go?
The true Deckard met my gaze, his eyes wide with terror. That’s when I realized where Snakeman had gone.
He was standing right behind me.
Thick arms reached around me, grasping for the book. I squirmed and fought and tried to pull away. Both Deckard and his clone tore across the grass toward me.
The ground quaked and the dirt in front of me rose up toward the sky, long shoots of earth like stone pillars circled around me, creating a wall between Deckard and me.
Snakeman laughed in my ear.
I shoved my elbow back into his stomach and pulled away, then put my back to the dirt wall. It was a complete circle, a cage that kept me in with him and kept everyone else out.
“I’m okay.”
“Oh no, Buttercup,” Snakeman said. “You’re not.”
He took a step closer. He was just a man. A witch, but not a monster. I could do this. I had to.
Snakes shot out from his palm, flying through the air toward me.
No.
I threw my hand out, summoning a shield, a guardian.
Blue smoke swirled between us. The snakes fell to the ground, motionless.
The air changed, and the blue smoke lit and glowed like flames. It twisted and bound together into a cohesive shape. It formed a protector, a great beast—my grizzly bear. It looked just like Deckard, except blue and wispy.
I stared in awe, unblinking.
I did this. I could do this.
Snakeman did his thing, throwing snakes, but this time I wasn’t afraid.
As the serpents touched the blue smoke, they froze midair. My bear slashed his heavy paw down onto the snakes.
They fell limply to the ground.
Snakeman shook his head and raised his hand, with it, the earth lifted him on a pillar just like the walls. The dirt beneath my feet trembled and bubbled like boiling water. Snakes burst from the dirt and covered the ground.
I squeezed Liber Somnia to my chest. What was I supposed to do now?
Serpents rose up my ankles, coiled around my calves. The blue grizzly swiped and stomped at the ground, but there were too many of them.
I looked at the wall surrounding me, for opportunity, for escape.
I could break a wall. I did it all the time.
I turned and pulled my hand back, my palm flat. I’d break the damned wall just like I broke the one in my bedroom, night after night.
I had the power here.
There was a rumbling sound behind me, and my wrist caught. I couldn’t move my hand forward.
My arm dropped, pulled back as a snake coiled around my wrist.
“There’s no use fighting, you’re too weak, just like your mother,” he hissed.
My wrist skimmed by my side.
And I knew what I had to do. It was instinct; it was survival.
I fought to keep control of my arm, but with the other hand, I wiggled my grip on the tome and reached into my pocket.
I Dream of Grizzly: A Werebear Shifter and Witch Romance (The Protectors Quick Bites Book 2) Page 9
