Kerry Schafer - Wakeworld

“Let me go—”

“No! You haven’t earned a death! You have to save the Key. That’s why you’re here. That’s why she saved you. Both of us. Well, that and because she’s Vivian. We have to do this thing. It’s the only way to make right the wrong.”

A part of Zee stood here on this ledge, and the rest of him, the part that mattered, had plummeted into the water with the dragon. She had gone down never knowing how much he loved her, or how deeply he had betrayed her. And she had gone out of her way to save him, to save them all.

“Come on,” Weston said, turning away. “If we survive, there will be time to grieve later.”

Zee knew he was right. Still, he stood, head bowed, in a moment of silence for the sacrifice and all that was lost.

The weight of the dragon body spun Vivian down through the black water, careening off stones, deeper and deeper until she knew that even a dragon could never hold its breath long enough to reach the surface. Especially a dragon weak from blood loss and poison.

This was it, the end.

Without any conscious agreement of her will, she shifted. Her bursting lungs were no longer dragon lungs; her frantic heartbeat was far too rapid. And she knew that what had been impossible for a dragon was beyond impossible for a human.

Sheer obstinacy kicked in. Impossible or not, she wasn’t just going to accept death without a fight. She began to thrash with her legs and arms to stop the downward trajectory and thrust herself upward, even though it was impossibly far and the rocks would kill her if she ever did make it to the surface. Her lungs burned. Another few heartbeats and she would open her mouth and let the water flood her lungs, weigh her down. Her heart would stop beating. And that would be the end.

Just as all conscious will was fading, a black-and-white form appeared at her side, and then passed her: Poe, flying through the water. Mindless, Vivian followed him through a stone archway, but that was the end of her endurance. She could hold her breath no longer. Her mouth opened. Instead of the expected inrush of water, she gulped in air.

Stale, mineral-smelling air. Her feet touched solid ground and she realized she was standing in a calm pool, only waist deep. Poe scrambled up onto a flat surface, paved with red stone. Weak and exhausted, she staggered after him. There was pain in her chest and she remembered, a little dazed, the unhealed knife wound. It throbbed but wasn’t bleeding.

Poe waddled away across the chamber and she dragged herself after him through yet another arch, which led out onto the edge of a flat plain. Mist swirled around her feet. A dim red light filtered down from an indifferent sky. She blinked. There should be no sky here, deep beneath the earth. Wonder gave way to an awareness of a throng of people, silent, waiting. She could feel the intensity of the eyes, all focused on her as though she were the single most important thing in the universe.

Naturally, she stood before them naked. Like everybody else, Vivian had experienced dreams of appearing naked at a crucial moment. This wasn’t one of them. She had no need for a pendant to realize that this moment was real. Banishing the impulse to cover her breasts with her hands, to turn her back and flee the way she had come, she forced herself to stand tall and face them down. Only her knees were all wobbly and in a minute she was going to collapse, in which case she’d be naked and unconscious.

It was not to be thought of and she pushed away the encroaching darkness.

A figure separated from the mass and approached. An old man with a long white beard and eyes keen and blue despite his obvious age.

“Vivian,” he said, his face alight with a fierce and savage joy. “I barely dared to hope, but you have found us.”

Swaying, barely able to support herself, she clung to his proffered hand. “Grandfather. I’m in so much trouble. Can you help me?”

All the joy ran out of his face at her words, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry, my child. Your burden is already heavy, I know, but it is we who need help from you.”

“I won’t be much help to anybody if I’m dead.”

“Then you mustn’t die.”

She snorted. It was precisely the sort of thing he could be expected to say. And also an appropriate, if acerbic, response to her overdramatic words. At this moment, at least, she was in no danger of dying. Exhausted and hungry, maybe. But thoroughly alive. Poe pressed up against her side and she felt energy flow from him, strengthening her a little.

“What is this place—hell for Dreamshifters?”

“Close. We are trapped here when we die. Between life and the beyond.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. Why?”

But there was no humor now in his blue eyes, or in the hard-set lines of his face. The Ferryman had warned her— Death has no favors for one such as you. She looked from him to the others, women and men of all ages and nationalities. Her grandfather wore blue jeans and a button-up flannel shirt. Those farther back wore homespun. Beyond that was a mélange of clothing styles that should never have been seen together in one place: ball gowns and animal skins, togas, armor; there was even a man wearing a Viking helmet.

“There is no joke, child, unless it is a joke of the gods.”

She closed her eyes, remembering the people Jehenna had trapped in cattle pens to serve as dragon fodder. Some of them had been torn apart before her eyes. The rest of them had been freed, thank God, and now here she was again, being asked to do the impossible on behalf of a crowd of people she didn’t know. Her shoulders ached beneath the familiar weight of responsibility, but she said at last, “What do you need from me?”

“Find the Key—”

“That? Get in line. Everybody wants that freaking Key.”

“Find the Key,” he repeated, ignoring her interruption. “Open the Black Gates, travel through the shadowlands into the Forever, and bring back a cup of water from the fountain at the foot of the throne of the Dragon King. Only when that water is spilled on this plain will we be released.”

“You have got to be kidding.”

He shrugged. “As I said, this is beyond a joke. Here we are trapped, and here we will remain until it has been done.”

“And then what? If I succeed in this task—you all acquire eternal life and there’s an army of indestructible zombie Dreamshifters loose in the universe?”

“No,” he said softly. “If you succeed, then we will be able to truly die. Look around you. All are in some kind of hurt. Some for thousands of years.”

For the first time she noticed the jagged, bloodstained tear in the breast of his shirt. Looking beyond, she saw a hard-faced old man with a crater in his chest. She’d seen an image of him far too recently, trying to shoot his son with a rifle.

“Edward Jennings,” she said. “The man who destroyed his entire family. For you I have no compassion.”

“I regret,” he said. “I’ve had a long time to think on what I have done.”

“We are able to see,” her grandfather said. “To watch the struggle, but unable to intervene. He has been punished beyond measure already, Vivian. As have we all. If you do not help us, there is no hope.”

“I have the will,” she whispered at last. “I’m not sure I have the strength.”

“You must find it, child.”

“I need food, water—”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but we do not eat or drink. And I fear the water of this place would keep you here if you were to drink it. Now come. I will lead you to the path you must take.”

A woman stepped up beside him and touched his arm. She had been drowned, Vivian saw, water dripping endlessly from her clothing, her hair. “Perhaps it would be permitted for us to carry her, as far as the path. She is much wounded. Surely this much we could do to help her.”