Kerry Schafer - Wakeworld

Now she had to wonder. What if this man lying dead before her was the one, at last? What if his help was needed and she must wait another age before another warrior would come to help her meet her long desire? Fury flowed through her veins and she felt herself begin to shift. She would kill the ones who had done this, one by one. And when she had slaked her thirst for blood she would take the Key and find her way to the Gates, Warrior or no.

A shout from one of the men barely reached her.

“He lives.”

She was nearly too far gone to care, but her vision, already transforming the world into a thing of sharply defined lines and colors, saw the man’s chest rise and fall. She pulled herself back from dragon to fully human, clenching the Key in her hand.

“Barely,” she said. The man’s face was bruised and swollen. A deep gash ran down his side, and another, still bleeding, ran the length of his sword arm. But he was breathing. Strong enough to kill seven of her best men and live. If he could survive this, there was a chance he could survive the other.

“Let him be put to the test.”

The captain looked at her, as though he wished to speak but did not dare.

“What?” she demanded. “Say it.”

“He is already very weak. It is a harsh death you decree.”

“If he is the one I seek, it will heal him. If not, he will die anyway. See that it is done.”

“And the other?”

She barely even glanced at the hovel. The face that had watched through the open window had moved out of sight, but she knew the man was still in there. A coward. She detested cowards. Not worth the sword thrust it would take to kill him and of no use to her, now that she had the Key. “Throw him into the Between and leave him to wander.”

Coming back to consciousness was a difficult thing.

Vivian’s heart pounded against her ribs as though her chest had grown too small to contain it. Breathing felt awkward and wrong. After several futile attempts she managed to get a full breath into her lungs. It hurt, but as she practiced the discipline of breathe in, breathe out , the pain eased and her body remembered the way of things and took over. Her hand sought the pendant and then she remembered, with a burst of panic, that it was gone. Stolen.

Fighting the inertia that pinned her, Vivian managed to roll over to her side, and from there up onto her knees.

She was just inside the front door of A to Zee Books. The store was dark and shadowy, the glow from the streetlamps outside illuminating the hanging sculptures that twisted and spun on invisible threads, the only moving things in the empty store.

Memory was tenuous, but she knew that she’d been hurt in some way; there had been terrible pain. The discipline of her training took over and she ran her hands over her head, checking for bumps and bruises and signs of injury, but her skull felt smooth and undamaged. No headache or nausea. Her vision was clear, no blurring, no distortion. No injuries other than a few minor bumps and bruises and the stiffness of long unused muscles. Nothing to worry about.

Except that she couldn’t remember what happened. There had been a dream door. She had walked through it with Poe and Zee and Jared. Flickering images came and went, bits of memory tied together with dream sequences.

Zee dreaming in the chair. That was real. The book lay on the coffee table where she had left it. She picked it up, solid and heavy in her hands, the dust jacket smooth and cool to her touch.

Jared, unshaven, his shirt untucked and his shoes unshined.

They’d gone to his house. That was right. Looking for the Key. That’s where the dream door was, so what the hell was she doing here? Where were Zee and Poe, and for that matter, Jared?

And then memory turned into a battering ram and hit her all at once. Zee attacked, wounded, overcome by too many warriors. Her own failed attempts to save him. The woman’s voice and the debilitating pain.

“Zee!” she shouted. “Poe!” She ran up the stairs to the apartment above, driven by fear.

His bedroom and kitchen were untouched and empty. No sign of Zee anywhere, but she found Poe in the bathroom, standing in the empty tub. He looked up at her hopefully and she flung herself down on the cold tile floor and hugged his feathery body, pent-up tears pouring down her face. He was bony and stiff and not at all cuddly, despite the softness of feathers, and he wriggled out of her grasp with an expression that rivaled embarrassed teenager.

“Where is Zee?” she asked him.

He stared back out of obsidian eyes, ever silent, then waddled over to nudge the faucet with his beak.

Vivian scrubbed at her tears with the back of her arm. “Fine,” she said. “As you wish.” She ran the tub, watching Poe carefully for signs of injury as he immersed himself in the water, but he seemed unhurt and little by little she stopped worrying about him. Leaving him to his soak, she walked to the end of the hallway, hesitating in front of a closed door.

It was an ordinary wooden door, unlocked, and she opened it to reveal a large room with a hardwood floor. Natural light flooded in through windows in the three external walls. Whatever wall space wasn’t taken up with windows was hung with paintings strange and wonderful. Recognizable mythological creatures featured in many of them. A manticore snarled at a knight wielding a familiar sword. A phoenix plummeted from the sky in flames. There was a centaur and a cyclops. But most of the paintings followed two main themes.

The first was a faceless man with a sword, engaged in the art of dragon slaying: small dragons and huge, dragons old and young and in between, in good health and bad, wounded and full of vigor. All that remained the same was the knight who fought them.

The second theme was Vivian herself. Her face, her eyes, repeated over and over again on at least a score of canvases. In some of them she was her old self, in that time so far away now when she was not a Dreamshifter or a dragon woman, but only Vivian. In others, she was part woman, part reptile, her eyes golden, her flesh covered in scales.

How had Zee painted all of these pictures and not seen what she was? Her breath a tangled knot in her chest, Vivian selected two paintings and moved them to stand side by side against the wall. In one, her face, still gray-eyed, her hair blowing as though in an invisible wind. And beside it, a sinewy dragon in purple and gold, the warrior clinging to its neck and thrusting a triumphal sword into one of its golden eyes.

To this grouping she added one more picture, this one of a creature part dragon, part human, with golden eyes and a reptilian face covered in iridescent scales.

Vivian stared at these paintings long and hard to imprint the message on her heart. Zee loved her. Zee was a dragon slayer. And the dragon inside her, wanting to come out, was ever present and growing stronger. This sort of conflict could destroy a man, his love set against his hate.

Sobs tore at her throat and she swallowed them back, her entire body shaking with the effort it took to contain the pain. She fled the room, checked in on Poe, went to the kitchen and ran a glass of cold water. Her hands shook so badly that water sloshed over the edges of the glass and she could barely get it to her mouth, but she managed to drink several long swallows.

The water steadied her, and the last bits of memory slid into place. Jared, watching through the window of the cottage. The dead warriors. Zee falling beneath the onslaught. The box taken from her hands.

There was a chance that Zee was still alive and held as a prisoner somewhere. She couldn’t assume that he was dead, not as long as there was the tiniest hope. She had gotten him into this mess, and she must find her way back to him. The best place to start would be where she had left him. Surely she could find it again. Three doors—into the Between, into the fountain at Surmise, and on into the Chancellor’s dream.