Before I Wake (37 page)

“How are you doing?” I asked, wanting very badly to switch the focus of this conversation.

He shrugged. “I’m all right.”

I arched a brow. “Why do I get the feeling you could be bleeding from the ears and still tell me that?”

He chuckled. “I’m okay, Doc. Not great, but okay.”

Those words made me feel so good I can’t describe it. It was like someone flipped a blind inside me and let a whole day’s worth of sunshine pour in. Probably I shouldn’t feel so hopeful, given what we were up against—given that I was all that stood between Noah and Terror-possession—but I did.

I was meeting Antwoine in a little while for coffee but didn’t want to make Noah feel like I was tossing him aside. “Want to come with?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got something I have to do. Call me when you’re done and let me know where to find you.”

There was something oddly guarded about his expression—more than usual. “What are you up to?”

“Bossy and nosy,” he muttered, then sighed. “I’m seeing my lawyer.”

He had a lawyer. As in, a lawyer he used on a regular basis. Sometimes I forgot he had major money. “Oh?” A sense of dread settled over me, as though some part of me already knew why he was seeing a lawyer.

“I’m making out my will.”

“Oh, Noah. No.” And suddenly, I wanted to bawl.

He took me in his arms and held me tight against the solid wall of his chest. “Shh. It’s not a big deal. If anyone can beat this thing, I know you can, but I just want to be prepared. Just in case.”

I raised watery eyes to his. “You are not going to die. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

He smiled slightly. “If you have to keep telling me, that means I’m alive to hear it. Promise you’ll call me later?”

I nodded, but I couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He kissed me at the door before leaving, and I watched him walk down the hall before shutting the door. His shoulders were back, his spine straight, so if his head was a little bowed, I wouldn’t make too much of it. I thought the both of us were holding up better than most people would in the same circumstances.

Of course, I was still holding to some small hope that I would wake up, and this would have all been a bad dream.

Unfortunately for me, it really was a bad dream. A potentially deadly one.

Antwoine was already at a table when I arrived for our meeting. He was very dapper in a black leather blazer, black dress pants, and a cranberry red turtleneck. He smelled good, too.

“Did you have a date?” The question came out sounding a bit more dubious than it had in my head.

He raised graying brows at my rudeness and pushed a large Styrofoam cup across the table at me. I picked it up and sniffed. A chai latte. Yum.

“Not a date, no,” he said in a low, cultured tone I didn’t recognize. He sounded different. Looked different. He looked like an older man of means—confident and regal, not like the strange little man I first took him for.

I scowled. “Why do you sound different?”

A secret smile curved his lips. “This is how I sound.”

“And your appearance?”

“This is how I appear.”

The liar. I didn’t know whether to hit him or laugh. “Why?”

“I thought it would be easier for you if I seemed a little…less in the beginning.”

I watched him, tilting my head to study him from all angles. “And?”

His smile didn’t so much grow as it deepened, became more intimate. “I didn’t want to reveal my true self until I could be certain you trusted me.”

Narrowing my eyes, I leaned forward. “Thought I’d be less likely to sic my daddy on a feeble old man?”

Now his eyes were sparkling, not the least bit sorry for the trick he had played. He looked like an impish Morgan Freeman.

“Something like that. Morpheus might relish the chance to smack me around again. I, on the other hand, am in no hurry to be smacked.”

I laughed. It was such a relief in some ways, realizing he was more than he had seemed. It gave me hope that he’d prove himself to be more still.

“So tell me,” he said after taking a sip from his cup. “Why did you call?”

“Do you know a Terror’s weaknesses?” I dared to ask. “Does he have any?”

Antwoine looked at me. “Some dreams linger. Most fade, even the bad ones.”

“Karatos hates fading away. He wants to be significant.”

He nodded. “You know it. And now you know his weakness. Exploit that, and you can bring the Terror to his knees.”

I thought of Jackey Jenkins and how I had made her ugly and twisted in her dreams. Every fear she had I used against her. I had been in her head, and all her hopes and fears had swarmed me like chickadees after a handful of seed.

I didn’t know if I could do the same thing to Karatos. It wasn’t just his mind I was up against in The Dreaming; he was a true being there.

Antwoine must have seen the fear in my face because he leaned forward and put his hand over mine. “What does a Nightmare do, Dawn?”

I met his gaze and almost lost myself in the chocolaty depths of his wise eyes. “Protect dreamers.”

He smiled. “That’s right. You protect them from things like this Terror. You are stronger than him, you just remember that.”

Hearing him refer to Karatos as a thing helped, it really did. Silently, I vowed to do that once more myself. “I’ll remember.”

A woman juggling a tray of coffee and sweets bumped into our table, sloshing latte over the sides of my paper cup onto the table.

It made me angry.

I grabbed her by the wrist, looked up into her apologetic brown eyes, and whispered, “Spiders.”

Her tray dropped to the floor, spilling coffee and tea and food all over. She screamed and started stomping her feet, as though stepping on bugs.

Bugs that weren’t there.

She swatted at her arms as well, clawed at her clothes and skin. And her face was contorted into the most beautiful mask of terror I had ever seen. I smiled.

“Girl, what have you done?”

I turned to Antwoine. “What?”

His dark eyes widened—then narrowed as he looked at me. Picking up a spoon, he shoved the curved side of the bowl at me.

“Look at yourself.”

My eyes were pale and black again. Bright and scary in my happy face. I was happy that I made a woman hallucinate about spiders. WTF? Why would I be happy about that? How could I even do that?

I thrust Antwoine’s hand aside, fear souring my stomach. “What’s happening to me?”

He wasn’t impressed. “First you fix that poor woman.”

I glanced at the woman, who was openly sobbing now—people stared at her. “How do I do that?”

“Same way you broke her.”

I couldn’t do it without people noticing, so I stood up. “I’m a psychologist,” I told one concerned onlooker. “Maybe I can help.”

I went to the woman, whose arms were covered in red marks from where she’d hit herself. Tears ran down her cheeks as she sobbed and begged for the spiders to stop. God, what had I done?

I put my hand on her shoulder, cupped my other hand around her chin to make her look at me. “They’re all gone,” I told her, willing her to believe. “The spiders are all gone. It was just a dream.”

It worked. She struggled for maybe a couple of seconds, then went still. She blinked at me. “What happened?”

“You thought you had spiders on you,” I told her.

She looked confused as she glanced at the mess on the floor. “Yes. I thought there were spiders on me.” She chuckled self-consciously. “How foolish of me.”

I helped her replace her order—and made her take the money for it. It was the least I could do. She thought I was just being nice.

Finally, I sat down with Antwoine, who was still looking at me like I was that kid from The Omen.

“Something happen to you?” he demanded. “Did Karatos try to do to you what he did to your friend?”

I literally felt the blood drain from my face. “How did you know?”

He shook his head, looking at me like I was a damned idiot. “We’ve got to stop this thing. Tonight. And you—you had better get control of yourself.”

“What did it do to me?” I demanded, beginning to feel almost as hysterical as the woman with the spiders had been.

“He left some of himself behind, and it’s calling to your darker nature. Power like yours is a dangerous thing in this world. Can’t be brushed off here like it can be in The Dreaming.”

My darker nature. Great. That explained the snarkiness, the snapping. I had liked freaking out that poor woman. My mouth tightened. This had to stop. Antwoine was right. Tonight, I faced Karatos and put an end to this. He might have taken a little of me, but like Antwoine said, I had taken some of him. I could find him now.

I could beat him. Tonight, I took back myself. Tonight, I was going to save Noah and destroy a Terror. It wasn’t going to make me a favorite with my father’s enemies, and at that moment, the darker side of me didn’t care. Bring it on.

I met Antwoine’s sharp gaze across the table. “Will you help me?”

My eagerness continued into the evening, lasting until Antwoine arrived at Noah’s at exactly ten o’clock. Even then, knowing what was coming, I felt a positive vibe deep within myself.

I could do this. I wasn’t alone with this task. I had Antwoine and my father—who had Verek—and I had Noah. Together, we would beat Karatos. That was the thought I kept in my mind whenever I looked at Noah and realized that he looked even more tired and pale than he had earlier in the day.

He was slipping away.

He and Antwoine sized each other up as men often did, and obviously did not find each other lacking. In fact, Antwoine actually nodded at Noah, as if giving him some kind of approval or blessing, a gesture I found strangely endearing as well as amusing.

“Take this,” Antwoine said, as I slipped the sheath for the Marae dagger onto my left forearm. It was a jeweled cuff that he placed around my right wrist. It snapped shut, shaping itself to my arm as though made for it, the seam at the catch disappearing so that it was one continuous shackle.

“What is it?” I probably should have asked that before he’d put it on me.

“A succubi tether,” he replied, snapping an identical cuff on his own wrist. “In the old days—and I do mean old—the succubi were sometimes kept in harems. Each wore one of these bracelets, the master of which was worn by their keeper. Whenever he wanted one of them, all he had to do was think of the succubus he wanted and pull. The same worked the other way as well, and if any of the ladies was ever in trouble, all they had to do was tug, and he’d come running.”

I stared at the beautiful jewelry on my wrist, then at Antwoine. “How do you know this stuff?”

He didn’t smile, but he didn’t frown either. “I guess I’ve made it my business to know all I can about the Dream Realm.”

I smiled at him and held up my arm. “How can these survive in this world if they’re from The Dreaming? Nothing is supposed to last longer than a few hours outside of its home realm.”

“That’s true between The Dreaming and earth, but these cuffs weren’t made in The Dreaming or on earth. Just like your dagger, these were made in the Underworld.”

The immortal race that my father belonged to had many names. The Greeks had names and stories for them, as did the Romans and the Chinese, the Minoans and Aztecs. Every race has given these creatures its own names and identities, but at the core they are always the same. I don’t even know my father’s real name—or if he even has one. The Greek is the most familiar, so that is the one that often gets used the most. The Egyptians called him Serapis. In Hindu he is actually a woman—the goddess Maya. Try wrapping your head around the fact that your father is actually a cross-gender anthropomorphic being sometime and see how messed up you get.

Regardless, I was glad for whatever help Antwoine could give. “So if I’m in trouble, I just tug?” I made a tugging motion with my arm. “But you can’t come get me.”

“No, but hopefully I can pull you out.”

That would work. “Nice.”

Antwoine shrugged. “We probably won’t need them. I imagine your daddy will take care of things lickety-split if you start screaming, but it never hurts to be prepared.”

And prepared we were. In fact, ten minutes later, I couldn’t find a reason to delay the inevitable any longer. It was time to go.

I was nervous, and that worked against me, just as anger seemed to work in my favor. The fact that I had an audience didn’t help, and it took me longer to open a portal that night than it had in the past. I managed to get a small rift started with my mind, but then I had to pull it open like I used to. It wasn’t a huge setback, but a setback I didn’t need all the same.

Finally, when the portal was large enough, and I had beads of sweat on my upper lip from the exertion, I turned to my left and offered Noah my hand. “Ready?” I asked.

His fingers were cold in mine. All the warmth was leaving him, and more rapidly than I wanted to admit. He was almost totally white now, the golden hue of his skin bleached by the loss of anima—if Jung was right in calling it the source of creative ability—or the true inner self.

His gaze met mine, flat and black. “I’m ready.”

I turned my head to glance back at Antwoine. He nodded solemnly at me. This was it.

Noah and I walked through the portal together, into the mists of The Dreaming, and toward whatever was waiting for us there.

“Jesus Christ.”

Noah was looking around in awe—or maybe it was fear, I wasn’t sure. Could have been both since it was the swirling eddies of the mist that had his attention.

And the mist saw him as well. Those angry tendrils smelled human and writhed together to form rippling snakelike bodies. There were talons in swirls, sharp and brutal. The talons were for me—the anomaly. All they would do to Noah was set him somewhere else—somewhere not off-limits to dreamers.

I needed him with me, so I had to keep him close and not be distracted by fighting off the mist.

I tore my dagger from the sheath and held it aloft. Too bad it wasn’t bigger. This would go a lot faster with a sword.

The Marae blade hummed in my hand—hummed and shifted. I watched as it changed, felt the movement of the bone beneath my hand. The guard widened, as did the blade, lengthening as well. When it was done I held a sword in my hand rather than a dagger.