Authors: Dean Murray
It was the
wrong reaction to the news, but I couldn't help myself. I sucked in a
chest full of air so that I could say something else, but Alec had
already covered the receiver on the phone with his hand.
"Don't
push him, James. We need him right now.
You
need him right
now."
We locked eyes
for several seconds before I finally nodded. "Fine, I'll
behave."
Alec took his
hand off of the receiver. "Sorry, Jack. I was picking up a
peculiar kind of static there for a second."
Nearly a full
minute passed before Jack finally responded. "See to it…I
mean I hope that you'll see to it that the
static
doesn't
repeat itself. Maybe if you guys had kept up with the operational
security on your end of things I'd feel differently, but I doubt it.
The honest truth is that I've been fighting these
things
for
longer than any of you. Even if it wasn't James' mom who was in
trouble I'd still want to see them stopped. This has the potential to
get very, very ugly. Both for the rebellion and our race as a whole."
"I know.
Believe me, I know. Do you have any other ideas on how to get bodies
on the ground there more quickly?"
Jack thought
for several heartbeats before finally clearing his throat. "Not
any way to get either of our people onsite in the time frame you're
after, but we could look into contacting one of the other packs.
Dream Stealer's people possibly, or someone like Jaclyn. She'll know
what she can get away with there in her neck of the woods, or barring
that she's a darn sight closer than we are."
Alec pursed his
lips. "I'll give Dream Stealer's people a call, but I'd bet
money against them being within a close drive to an airport. I'm not
sure it's even worth calling Jaclyn or any of the others. I've been
in talks with them for a while now and none of them are willing to
work with us. They're refusing to believe that Ulrich has decided to
side with the Coun'hij, so they aren't willing to do anything that
might rock the boat."
"There's
one thing that you could tell them that would bring them down off of
the fence. Tell them that you've finally manifested an ability."
"I'm not
going to lie to them, Jack."
"It's
always possible that by the time you see them it will have actually
manifested. It's certainly past due. Mallory has been saying that
when it came it was going to be a real doozy of a power since almost
before you were born."
"Yeah,
it's possible, but it's also possible that it wouldn't, and if they
find out that I lied to them I'll lose all credibility. That's game
over as far as being able to work with them in the future. Even if I
do manifest some incredible power later on it won't mean anything in
the long run. If they don't trust me then whatever we replace the
Coun'hij with will be worse than what we're replacing."
"That's
what I like about you, Alec."
"That I
think long-term?"
"No, that
you're an idealist. I'll call as soon as we land in LA. Tell James
that I really do hope we manage to get his mom out of there alive. It
doesn't look like there's anyone else to help this time around."
Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming
I'd dropped off
to sleep even easier than normal. I'd eaten until I felt like my
stomach would split over the last forty-eight hours and although it
hadn't been enough time to put back on the weight I'd lost, I was
pretty sure that I had enough extra calories saved up to make it
through the night.
Dream walking
was inherently dangerous. Normal people couldn't be hurt while
dreaming, but as soon as Taggart or I stepped into someone else's
dream we gave up a large measure of control over our surroundings. A
normal person wanted to live—on a subconscious level if nothing
else. That meant that they would often manipulate the fabric of their
dreams without even realizing it.
Falling from a
great height, about to strike the ground with enough force to shatter
every bone in your body? No problem, at the last second your
subconscious would take over and change the dream. You'd impact on an
impossibly tall mound of feather pillows, or the ground would simply
disappear, or more commonly you'd just wake up.
Taggart and I
didn't get that kind of protection, not inside of someone else's
dreams. Dream walking inside of a normal person's dreams was still
dangerous, but much less so. A normal person likely wasn't homicidal,
but even if they were, they probably wouldn't believe that you were
really there, that you weren't just another figment of their
imagination.
Even more than
that though, normal people didn't usually have the mental discipline
to make wholesale changes to the fabric of their dream. Dream walking
to a normal person's dream was like jumping in your car and heading
off on a cross-country trip. There was a lot that could go wrong and
there was a decided element of danger, but it was an acceptable risk.
What Taggart
and I were about to do was like deciding to bungee jump without
stopping to double-check the ropes first. It wasn't the kind of thing
that I would have done just for thrills, but apparently it was
something that I would do when there wasn't any other way to protect
someone who was important to me.
We weren't
about to enter the dream of a normal human, we weren't even about to
enter the dream of a run-of-the-mill hybrid or vampire. We were about
to enter the dream of Kaleb Graves, possibly one of the most
dangerous men in the entire world.
Taggart and
Kaleb had run into each other a number of times over the years, and
to hear Taggart tell it, Kaleb had learned something from each
incident.
Kaleb was
smart, ruthless and had the mental discipline to force his dreams to
take on the form he desired. In the real world he was dangerous, but
inside of his own dream he was practically a force of nature.
Taggart had
presented two possible courses of action and allowed me to choose.
Option one was for Taggart to join me inside of my dream and then
wait while I pulled Kaleb into my dream where he would have less
power. Once he was there with us, then we would in theory be able to
subdue him and torture him for information. If we couldn't get the
information that we needed out of him, then we would kill him to sow
chaos inside the ranks of the Coun'hij and eliminate a powerful
enemy.
If that had
been the only idea that Taggart offered up then I probably would have
gone for it, but I would have done so reluctantly. Luckily Taggart
really did care about me and he wanted me to be happy more than just
about anything else.
Taggart
presented another plan, one that was only a bare step up from what
he'd spent the last couple of centuries doing. In option two we would
just sneak into Kaleb's dreams and spy on him. It had the potential
to pay off in a major way if we happened upon an unguarded dream
where Kaleb mentally ran through some key element of the Coun'hij's
plans. Under the right circumstances it was even possible that we'd
get better information that way than we would by torturing him.
Someone being
tortured wouldn't necessarily tell you the truth to get the pain to
go away. By the end they'd simply tell you whatever they thought you
wanted to hear.
That was the
main plus to option two, but it came with a couple of major
downsides. If Kaleb noticed us then we would be fighting him on his
home turf, inside of his own dream where he would be the most
dangerous. Throw in the fact that it was far more likely that we
would simply observe run-of-the-mill, unimportant dreams rather than
anything revealing, and option two really boiled down to an
incredible amount of risk for a very small chance of getting a
worthwhile reward, but I couldn't bring myself to select option one.
Bless Taggart
for understanding, for not pressing me to become the second half of
the perfect weapon he knew we could become if I ever decided I was
really onboard with assassinating the Coun'hij. Doing what we were
about to do could very well result in Taggart and me being injured—or
even killed—but he was holding strong to his commitment not to
push me into doing anything that I didn't want to do.
Part of me felt
bad for refusing. It felt like I just kept promising my support and
then backing out after only going halfway, but mostly I was just
grateful that I'd ended up with Taggart rather than someone else.
There weren't very many people who could have put my ethics above the
goal that he'd been striving towards for more years than I had been
alive. It wasn't just the action of a friend, it was the action of
family.
Once we'd both
acknowledged that I wasn't going to be able to bring myself to select
the first option, the plan had practically written itself. The most
dangerous part of the entire operation was the moment of insertion.
The instant between when you first arrived inside of someone's dream
and when you masked your presence, either by making yourself
invisible or taking on the appearance of someone who belonged in the
dream, was the time when you were most vulnerable.
I'd offered to
go into Kaleb's dream first, but Taggart had refused to even consider
the idea. In the end, he won that argument because while Kaleb
wouldn't recognize me and shouldn't react negatively to my arrival,
there wasn't any guarantee of that fact. Besides, Taggart—Dream
Stealer—had centuries of practice at doing exactly this kind of
thing.
Taggart would
go in first and then I would follow along as closely as I was able
to, even though the passage of time was hard to nail down inside of a
dream. I would hopefully arrive soon enough to help bail Taggart out
if Kaleb saw him during the insertion phase, but enough later that
Taggart could help mask my arrival. Hopefully.
As soon as I
drifted off to sleep I started dreaming. This time I was back home
again, sitting just outside of my parents' house during what felt
like springtime. It was one of the few glorious times of year in
Minnesota where you could go outside and just linger there without
quickly becoming too hot or too cold.
I sat down on
our front step and enjoyed the near silence of an empty sub-division.
There was a breeze, a warm one that took the faintest hint of a bite
out of the air, which made the trees around me rustle and sway, but
other than that the houses and streets were deserted and silent.
There was a
vividness, an incredible level of detail to the dream that was
probably at least partially because this was a place that I knew so
well, but I knew that wasn't the only reason. I was growing stronger.
I'd been demonstrating more and more control over my dreams lately,
which should translate to more control over other people's dreams. At
least I hoped so. A lot might depend on that in the next few minutes.
I felt
Taggart's arrival even without seeing him. It was odd, something that
hadn't ever happened before. I wasn't sure if it was a sign of
further growth in my abilities, something that he'd done on purpose
so as to avoid startling me, or just another sign of the bond between
us. I'd occasionally known when my dad or Cindi had stepped into a
room I was in, even when they hadn't made any noise. This felt a bit
like that.
"Are you
ready, Taggart?"
"I was
just going to ask you the same thing, but I didn't want to startle
you."
"Yeah, I'm
as ready as I'm ever going to be. I guess it was nice that my
subconscious put me here rather than somewhere else. If the worst
comes to pass then at least it's almost like I got to visit home one
last time."
"You
shouldn't talk like that, Adri. Everything is going to go just fine.
I've visited Kaleb's dreams dozens of times. The odds are decent that
he'll never even know we were there, and even if he does detect our
presence, I can nearly fight him to a standstill most days all by
myself. With two of us there it shouldn't be too hard to overpower
him."
I nodded as I
turned to look at him, but there was something on his face that told
me he had something else to say, something he didn't think I would
like very much.
"What is
it, Taggart?"
"You know
that I hate to make you feel bad, Adri…"
"Yes, it's
one of your most endearing traits, but I also know that sometimes
there are more important things going on, things that don't allow for
the kind of tender consideration that you think my feelings deserve.
Go ahead and say what you were going to say. I'm a big girl, I can
handle it."
"I know
that you miss your home, but it's not safe for you to come here, even
in your dreams. It's easy to say that you and I are the only dream
walkers, that you're safe here inside the privacy of your own dreams,
but it wasn't that long ago that I used to tell myself that
I
was the only dream walker, that I was completely safe inside of
my
dreams."
It was a valid
point, but that didn't necessarily make it any easier to accept. No,
that was wrong. Knowing he was right made it easier to accept, but it
still hurt more than I would have believed possible after all this
time.
"You're
right. There is no guarantee that the two of us are the only ones,
and if another dream walker shows up they could just as easily be
with the Coun'hij as with us. Even without worrying about dream
walkers, there are other threats out there that could take advantage
of this. Pamela seemed to have an easier time reading surface
thoughts than she did memories that I wasn't actively thinking about.
My coming back here, even in my dreams, puts my family in danger.
It's a selfish, careless thing to be doing and it's going to stop
now."
I visualized a
featureless black plain and reshaped our surroundings with a wave of
my hand.