A Trace of Moonlight (38 page)

My head rushed with the power, making me dizzy. I had to pace myself. Last time I’d tried to break through the Dreaming to the CrossRoads, I swam through it, trying to escape my nightmares.

Which were strangely absent. I didn’t get it. What the hell was he trying to do?

Oh.

Teeth emerged out of the darkness with a monstrous alacrity and I skimmed out of their way, the skin of a shark grazing my tail with a sharpness that cut to the bone.

Blood in the water.

But the animal lacked something vital. Without the driving force of my own mental issues behind it . . . it was only a shark, in the end.

Which meant Maurice was slipping.

Enough of this. I pushed down and down and down. The shark followed me, making halfhearted attempts at bites, but I found the more I ignored it, the less it made itself known. The wrongness of this inability grew stronger, but I focused on the task at hand. If I could make it to the Shadow Realm . . .

Deeper and deeper. Down and down and down . . . and there was no end to it. Pity filled me. How empty and awful his life must be to have a Dreaming Heart so empty.

And then I heard it. A ripple in the Dreaming. A song in the darkness.

EarthSong . . .

 . . . but so very faint.

I blinked. Maurice’s dreams weren’t empty because he was dying. They were empty because he’d been feeding them to that offshoot of Eildon Tree. My brain recoiled at the thought. He’d been purposefully distracting me, buying himself time. It all snapped into place—by destroying Eildon Tree and saving a small bit of it, he’d been hoping to create one of his own . . . fueled by his own personal dreams and corruption.

The CrossRoads would be at his mercy, skewed beyond measure. Even if he died, his legacy would live on . . . as the very foundation of the CrossRoads itself.

Fury flitted through me and I stopped short, the shark almost slamming into me.

“Bullshit,” I hissed at it, shunting out a white-hot line of anger. It exploded into pieces, shattering in a pink mist of teeth and bits of skin.

I sent out my shield as far as it would go, shoving the water back and lighting up the whole damn place, even as I shifted into my normal form. My teeth cracked together audibly. I’d been in one small room the entire time.

I laid my hands on the obsidian walls, my fingers digging into the glassy rock. “Open.”

Open!
my inner voice snarled at it.

“You will fucking open to me. You will open.” I said it again and again, like an odd little mantra. My fingers sliced open on the rock, the blood billowing around the pale skin of my wrists.

An odd little tweak shunted through me like the chiming of bells.

The TouchStone bond. Where was Brystion? I couldn’t bring him here . . . but could I tap into his power? I tried to send some sort of reassurance down
the line, but I couldn’t tell if he got it. And there was no time to really experiment.

I tried again, pouring every last bit of anger I had into it, the rock cracking open with a last creak before exploding before me. There! I jumped into the hole, the familiar webbing of the Dreaming wrapping around me as I pushed and pushed, the hollow remains of his Heart leaking like water running down a drain.

Another shark wriggled by me, a mere figment. I grabbed the dorsal fin, punching it in the nose. “Your maker—take me there.”

It wriggled away, but I didn’t let go, and we hurtled downward. In the distance I caught the hazy, fuzzy cobblestones of the CrossRoads far below us, stretched out like spiderwebs. If I let go and headed toward them I could escape the Dreaming . . . but I needed to find that Shadow Realm.

The shark slowed. My limbs moved as though they were encapsulated in Jell-O, the Dreaming growing thick around us. The shark shivered, its body slipping from my fingers as it faded away.

On my own, then.

I wriggled forward, a tiny opening emerging beneath me. I dug my hands into it, scrabbling at to make it larger. And then I fell, floating down and down and down, the last of the shadows parting as I sank . . .

Putrid flesh and rotten eggs. The stench filled my mouth and I gagged. The hum of the EarthSong thrummed in my head, its tone seductive, but with an underlying sadness, as though it were resigned to its fate.

I rolled over, blinking in the dimness of the candlelight.
A body lay on its side nearby and I recoiled, recognizing the half-eaten form of a daemon, blood and ashes all around.

“Should I offer you some? I could maybe even heat it up for you,” Maurice coughed. My stomach roiled and I dry heaved against my palm.

I staggered away from the body, gingerly avoiding a still-damp puddle of . . . something. Maurice crouched around a small flowerpot that contained a sickly sprout poking through the dry soil. He sneered at me, moving his hand from his side.

“Little bitch, you gave me a mortal wound.”

“I stabbed you . . . but not hard enough to kill you.”

“Well, it got infected. And so here I am.”

The death odor grew stronger. Necrotic tissue. Corpse flesh. Something wriggled through his fingers and dropped onto the floor, pale and white. This time I did vomit, though how the hell a Shadow Self had anything in its stomach was beyond me.

He let out an amused chuckle. “You are so pathetic, Abby. All this power at your fingertips and you waste your time coming after me.”

“I need that plant,” I said, gritting my teeth.

“Take it,” he retorted. “But you won’t be getting through the Door anytime soon. It only works for the bearer of the Key.”

“You’re going to die anyway. Why do you care?”

“That’s not what I meant.” He snorted. “Even if you get the Key . . . you’re not really here. You’re a shadow. A piece of a dream. And a fool . . . in a place where your DreamWalker powers don’t work. How could you possibly take it? Wear it? And when I die . . . the way to the Dreaming will be shut as well.”

Technically he was right. I wasn’t an incubus who could just pop in and out of the Dreaming at will. But I wasn’t alone.

“I’ve never been one to let technicalities stop me,” I said dryly, pulling the vial of succubus blood from my pocket and rolling it around in my hands. “As you ought to know by now. And quite frankly, I’m tired of your bullshit.”

He cocked his head at me, his eyes narrowing dangerously. “What are you up to?”

“You really ought to tie your threads up better than this.” I hurled the vial at the floor, the glass shattering, the blood spilling out . . . and time slowed down.

This Shadow Realm wasn’t quite like the ones that had comprised the paintings before. Those had been contrived and planned out, each work of art specific to each of its captured souls, but the power of the blood filled me with a heady rush. Maurice’s face paled and he hunched over the dimly singing plant. The blood kept coming and coming, spreading to fill every dark corner with its shimmer.

And yet there was something seductive about the blood as it slipped past my feet. Hungry. Angry. The succubus it had belonged to was no longer alive, but her sorrow and regret and brilliant fury were seeping all around us.

And I could tap into it. “Let’s see what you’re afraid of, shall we?”

I called the Dreaming power to me. While it wasn’t quite the same as actually being in the Dreaming itself, I had a hell of a lot more control this time around.

I felt a tug on that little bond with Ion.
Now,
I thought back at it.

But Maurice wasn’t going to let us walk over him
quite yet. He stood up to face me, the tattered remains of his shirt black and sticky against the slash in his abdomen.

“I killed your mother, you know. Watched her shatter on the windshield. Heard you whimpering inside.” His mouth twisted mockingly, ugly and hard. “I didn’t know who she was at the time . . . or who you were, for that matter. But I knew what she had.”

The words cut, but like everything else about him, it was an illusion, meant to disarm. To knock me off balance. And I’d already made peace with my mother. I wasn’t going to drag her memory in here.

“Too easy. If so, why not take it from her when she died?” I took a step toward him. “For someone who makes such a big stink about power, you seem to have so very little.”

Manipulation was his talent, but in a direct confrontation, it wasn’t going to help.

Blood trickled from his mouth when he coughed. A momentary sense of panic ran through me. Bad enough if I became stuck in this heinous place without an immediate way out, but I also had to keep Maurice alive long enough for Nobu to collect him as the Tithe.

“I think you’re afraid of death. But most of all, I think you’re afraid of being forgotten.” I gestured toward the plant at his feet. “Trying to remake the essence of the CrossRoads so nobody will ever forget you? Pathetic.” Then I spoke softy, “You want to see what I’m afraid of? You’re welcome to it. All of it . . .”

My sharks exploded into being, shoving their way from the Dreaming into this Shadow Realm, buoyed by the succubus blood that allowed them to manifest. They circled us, and I reached out, my fingers casually sliding over a dorsal fin.

There was no water here, and yet they glided easily, dark eyes rolling as they passed by. “It took me a while to figure it out. But there’s something rather freeing about accepting your fears. They’re not always helpful, but fear can also keep us whole.”

“Spare me your platitudes, girl.” Maurice’s eyes became dull. “You’re stalling.”

“No.” I snapped my fingers and the sharks shot toward him, mouths open and eager. One actually managed to snag him on the shoulder, yanking him back several steps. He cried out, a crimson spatter crossing the floor.

Another one, a hammerhead, darted forward to circle him, its belly scraping over his head. A rivulet of Maurice’s blood mingled into that of the succubus and I was plunged into visions not my own . . .

 . . . Brystion whimpering beneath my foot as I sliced through his antlers and cut out his eyes . . .

 . . . Moira on her knees before me, weeping and naked.

 . . . Benjamin hanging from the ceiling, screaming as I pulled out his feathers . . .

Fury erupted within me, overtaking all my senses. My sharks reacting by converging upon Maurice in a frenzy of flesh and teeth and the need to slaughter. Detached, I barely reacted when the shredded remains of his hands bounced past my feet.

“Abby.” Ion’s voice cut through my own inner madness. “Call them off. Abby . . .”

“Why? This is what we’re supposed to do, isn’t it?” The sharks spread out, flanking the now balled-up Maurice.

The incubus emerged from the shadows above me, his antlered form feral and terrifying. “This isn’t you.
His hatred is flooding the Shadow Realm.” He laid a clawed hand on my shoulder even as he gestured at Maurice, a glittering bubble of a shield encircling him. “I can feel it, Abby. Sorry it took me so long to find you . . .”

I glared at him. “What else are we supposed to do? We can’t let him get away with this!”

“Call off the sharks. Ease down.”

“But—”

“If you don’t, I will . . . and it won’t be pleasant.” A flicker of regret crossed his face. “Don’t make me do that. Please.”

The truth of his words rang hollow in my ears. He’d do it. And I didn’t want to be that person. I swallowed hard, pulling the nightmares back inside. Pulling them into me, my anger and angst weaving back into my psyche, where it belonged.

Maurice lay in a ball, his breath shallow, his arm stumps over his head. He wouldn’t make it through the next five minutes, let alone long enough for us to figure out a way out of here.

Brystion sighed, his tail flicking in irritation. “We need his soul for the Tithe. He’s no good to anyone dead.” He stomped a hoof. “I’ll have to take it.”

No. No. No. No.
My inner voice was screaming at the thought of having that man’s essence inside the incubus.

Wondering if we had any other way.

Which we didn’t.

He’d never done this before—not since I’d known him, anyway. The fear that it would change him forever remained written in every quick movement he made.

And in the end, Brystion knelt gently beside the rattling husk of a body. Maurice’s chest rose and fell in a shallow slowness.

“Open the Door, Maurice,” he coaxed. “Open the Door so we may leave.”

The old man cracked an eye, his face wrinkled and worn. “Go fuck yourself, incubus. I should have killed you when I had the chance.”

“Yes. You should have.” Brystion bent lower, and the flush of lust fluttered at the base of my spine as a wash of heat filled the room, the intensity magnified by the succubus blood still coating the place. I bit down on my lower lip as I remained rooted to the spot, staring in fascinated horror.

The antlered head lowered until his dark lips nearly touched Maurice’s mouth. The old man struggled feebly, but Brystion merely pressed one hand down on his chest and he stilled.

Regret filled the dark shadows of Ion’s face, a shiver running over his ebony skin.

I wanted to turn away. Some memories were not worth keeping. But if he would do it, then I would bear witness.