Kerry Schafer - Wakeworld

This was his fault. His. He had brought her to this place, had failed to protect her. Had been too slow—too slow—to find her.

Coward.

Grace’s face flashed before his mind’s eye, her face spattered in blood. It was not something he could bear to think about. Not now, not ever, and he shoved it away as he always did.

Jenn’s body was heavy with water, his arms rubbery and weak. It would have been easier to put her over his shoulder, but he wouldn’t do that to her, not after what she had been through. Instead he pressed her head onto his shoulder, the long wet hair tangling around his arm, and tried to warm her against his heart. He caught himself rocking her as though she were a frightened child and forced himself back to sanity.

His feet sloshed inside his boots as he splashed onto dry land. His arms ached with the weight of his burden. Pain was only the beginning of the penance that he would pay, and he embraced every signal of discomfort that his nerves sent him. One slow step at a time he retraced his path. It was now dark in earnest under the trees, and he stumbled over rocks and fallen branches, moving more by instinct than by landmark.

But it wasn’t far and his sense of direction was well honed. At last he collapsed onto his knees in the clearing and laid the girl on a bed of moss beside her grandfather. As he knelt over their bodies, still struggling to breathe past the tangle in his throat, a memory long suppressed fought its way past all of the guards and wards he had built against it.

Blood, everywhere blood. The sick sweet smell of it, thick and clotted on his own face, slick on his hands. The walls—whitewashed once by his own reluctant labor—now patterned with an indelible splatter of crimson. The bodies, so many of them, like empty containers discarded on the floor, emptied of their souls. Underlying the smell of blood the bitter tinct of gunsmoke. Only one living face, besides his own, dark eyes staring accusing into his.

His body shook with a sick palsy that wouldn’t permit him to take refuge in physical flight. The one scene played in his memory, over and over again, an old-time movie reel broken and spinning, tick, tick, tick. The room, the blood, the dead, Gracie’s face, alternating with flashes of light and dark.

Guilt was an unbearable torment.

He could put the barrel of the shotgun in his mouth and end it now, but that was a death too easy for the sins he had committed.

His hand went to the leather thong around his neck. In Wakeworld a pendant hung from it, a raven in a dream web, carved from strange black stone. He was a Dreamshifter. He had the power to re-dream this nightmare, to cast himself as a hero able to rescue both the girl and the old man. Or he could dream a dream in which the Sasquatch had never appeared. He could dream himself and the girl into ravens, flying high above the forest and looking down at a miniature Sasquatch far below.

One small problem.

In all the years of his life, Morgan had never used this power, not once, and had no idea how to do what needed to be done. Right now he would gladly have given up his life to know how to change this story, but that didn’t help a damned thing. The knowledge that would have helped him was buried with all of the rest of the memories from his childhood.

He’d spent more than eighty years avoiding anything that reminded him of his childhood, his family, or the Dreamshifter lore. It was too late to do anything to save Carpenter or Jenn, but as penance for his sins the least he could do was face up to his demons.

You’ve killed him.”

Aidan felt the rage building. Her awkward human form, vulnerable and inadequate to contain so much power, threatened to disintegrate.

“It was kill or be killed. He fought well.” The captain of her shadowmen, either very brave or foolhardy, dared to stand before her and say the words.

She smiled, letting all of her teeth show. “Do you think I care if you lose some of your worthless men? There were more than enough of them to take him down without a death wound.”

“We lost seven, to his one.” He too was wounded. A gash in the thigh, one in his side. The blood scent filled Aidan’s mouth with saliva, pushed her toward the shift. The captain was a creature of the Dreamworld, far from human, but he could still bleed and be killed.

Step back, if you value your life.

Like humans, the shadowmen never heard her when she spoke into their minds, but still she considered it fair warning. And while the captain may not have heard the words, her face and toothy smile must have told him something. He stepped back one pace, and then another. Not far enough, if she let herself shift. Still within easy reach of jaws and teeth. It was to his credit that he was able to contain the fear, keeping face and body under harsh control.

Aidan surveyed what had once been a neat little garden, now broken and trampled. Seven bodies lay in a row, no red spark in the empty sockets, limbs folded, given the respect of a death well won. One man lay crumpled next to the fence, green eyes wide and staring, his throat cut from ear to ear.

He would serve as dinner, once she was done here. The body was still warm. Not so good as a fresh kill, but it would do. It would also serve as a reminder to the remaining shadowmen of the tenuous balance of their service without inciting a rebellion by disrespecting one of their own.

One other body lay untended, the earth around him stained crimson with his blood and the blood of others. His right hand remained clamped in a death grip around the hilt of his sword.

This was the death that should not have happened. The man had fought well, well enough that it was possible that he might be the Warrior, but the years lay heavy on that old hope. So long had Aidan been seeking that she hardly remembered the reason she had begun.

“A Warrior is born in every age,” her mother had said. “Find him. Make him your ally. He will help to put the old wrong right. Only remember this: Once you find him, never, ever let him know that you are descended from the dragons.”

Ages had come and gone, one after the other, and the Warrior had never come. Aidan had seen men who were brave, men who could fight. A few of them had been put to the test, but not one of them had survived.

Of late she had begun to wonder if the Warrior was of any importance. She was used to a lone existence—the dragons of the Between were too uncouth and degenerate to be company for her. Humans were too soft, and so easily turned into prey. Trust and companionship had ended with her mother’s death, at least a thousand years gone.

But the Key in her hand sang to her now, bringing back all of the dusty old stories from her mother’s tales and making them shine like a ruby fresh from the river of gold. Funny how that image rested in her mind, solid and bright, as though she had seen the river with her own eyes and not only through childhood tales.

From the dream matter I made him, the first of the Warriors, fit to be a companion for me. But it was not safe for him in the Land—the King would have been jealous and one man, no matter how mighty, cannot fight against all the dragons at once. And so I sent him away into a Dreamworld.

When you find the Warrior, do not let him slip away. From the River he comes, as surely as do you, and there he is able to return.

The number of the years Aidan had been seeking this Key had been lost so long ago that she could not begin to count them. She had watched her mother, human, even though she could move between the Dreamworlds, fade and die. Had bided her time, watching the Sorceress Jehenna spin the web that was Surmise. Had been standing by, watching and ready for the moment Jehenna unlocked the Forever, but that attempt had failed and the Key lost once again.