Dreamfire (47 page)

He shrugged nervously. “I … just don't know.”

“Look,” Ian said. “I don't know what's going on here any more than you do. All of my memories are mixed up with these dreams I had, that I was back in the World.…”

“You were,” Haley told him. His voice grew halting again, as if whatever confidence he had gained was lost in his twin's presence, and he reverted to being the Haley he had been when Ian was alive. “You stayed with me there, sometimes you…”

“Used you,” Ian finished, and he ground his teeth. “God, I did, didn't I?”

He sounded so disgusted with himself, so honestly affected that Josh marveled. Every tiny detail, imperfection, trademark, was right there. And yet she was afraid to believe.

“Josh,” Will said from behind her. “Sorry to interrupt, but I really do need a doctor.”

He sounded irritated, and Josh felt bad for forgetting him, even for a moment. His face was so pale she could see freckles she hadn't known he had, and blood dripped steadily from his shirt hem.

“Yeah,” Ian agreed, walking toward him. “You definitely do.” He paused a few feet from Will. “I know you. You're Will—you're Josh's apprentice.”

He glanced over his shoulder at Josh. His eyes were slightly tilted, questioning and accusing at the same time.

And Josh knew he was back.

Only Ian could produce that particular jealous and yet conspiratorial look. Only Ian would think he had the right. Josh felt as if a light had come on inside her; something warm and bright was filling her up with joy.

She smiled at him, and he lifted his eyebrows again.

“I never let go of your hand,” she said.

He took her hand then and held it tightly. “I know. Now, let's get out of here. I have…” He dug in his pockets. “I have Josh's lighter. Why do I have your lighter?”

He held out the rose-gold lighter he had given her years before. Josh hadn't seen it since she dropped it in the Dream.

“I'll explain later,” she said. “Will has a compact.”

Will didn't move. He was studying Ian with the same intensity he had often turned on Josh.

“Will?” she asked.

Slowly, he shook his head. “No.” He took a step back, straightening up with a wince. Keeping his eyes squarely on Ian, he said, “This is why he didn't kill us flat-out, Josh. He has a lighter but no mirror, so he can't leave the Dream without our compact.”

Josh felt her heartbeat quicken like a car engine revving up. Will was right—Ian couldn't use the mirrors in the basement because they were all part of the Dream. He needed a World mirror.

Ian swore and then said, “This is ridiculous.”

So quick to anger, so Ian-like.

“You don't trust me?” he asked. “Fine. You open the archway—I won't even touch anything. I'll just follow you through. Here.” He handed Josh the lighter.

“No,” Will said again. “I'm not letting you out.”

Ian's lips parted in outrage. “Josh?”

She put the lighter in her pocket, as if having it out of sight would calm the argument it had started. “Will's just being careful.”

“He's being paranoid.”

Ian walked back to where she stood and took both of her hands. Josh jumped when she felt his fingers against her palms and his thumbs on her knuckles. She had forgotten how firm his touch was.

“J.D.,” he said, lowering his voice, “look, this is nuts. I know you're probably pissed off about the whole thing with Winsor, but now is a lousy time to get into it. Somebody beat you to a pulp, and Haley looks like he's going to pass out, and this guy”—he pointed to Will—“is standing there bleeding to death.”

Over his shoulder, she could see Haley and Will. They were both moving slowly toward the stairs and exchanging silent glances.

What do you see that I don't?
she wondered.
What's got you so scared? It's just Ian being Ian.

She didn't understand why there were tears in her eyes. Ian was still speaking, still trying to convince her that he was who she wanted so badly for him to be, and she barely heard him until he said, “Josh, look at me.”

She did. His hazel-green eyes were filled with concern.

“I just don't want us all to die in here.
I
don't want to die in here. I want to go home, and take a hot shower, and get my life back. And I want to be with you, Josh, okay? All this time floating around without a body, I got a lot of thinking done, and the thing I thought most was,
Wow, I can't believe I blew it with Josh
. But this is our second chance, J.D., I see it so clearly now.”

She nodded, even though a numbness had begun creeping over her. She really hadn't thought the night could get any worse.

“Let's go home,” he said, and hugged her.

His arms lifted her right off the floor. She let her chin fall onto his shoulder and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. Will, watching them, shook his head.

Ian's hand touched her hip. His fingers moved gently, searching.

“Haley?” she asked, still holding on.

She wasn't the only one crying. Haley, already near the top of the stairs, sniffled helplessly.

“He just doesn't feel right,” Haley said.

Ian's fingers found Josh's lighter and began drawing it out of her pocket.

She closed her eyes long enough to clear them of tears, letting go of one more beautiful, brief-lived dream. Then she steeled herself.

One hand grabbed his, the other grabbed his hair and jerked his head back.

No tense shock ran through his body. No surprise registered on his face.

He took a quick step forward and threw her up against the cement wall.

His eyes were a glossy black wasteland, his face vacant.

The charade was over.

 

Thirty-seven

“Run!” Josh shouted.
Gloves smacked her against the wall again, but she kept hold of his hair as she fell, ripping out a fistful on her way down.

He lost his balance and crashed backward into the arrangement of mirrors and candles in the center of the room. Glass shattered into long, triangular slivers that spun across the floor as if across ice. Blood streamed from a patch of his scalp.

Josh scrambled to her feet just in time to block a punch aimed at her face, but he countered it with a kick to her stomach. The impact knocked her into the wall again. While she was gasping from the pain in her gut, Gloves turned to look at the stairs where Will and Haley still stood.

“Go … go!” Josh told them, unable to say it louder than a hiss. But she was too late.

Gloves inclined his head and narrowed his eyes. The stairs and door vanished, replaced by another cement wall. There was no way to escape from the Dream version of the basement now.

Will jumped off the stairs before they vanished, but Haley was standing on the top step when it dissolved. The sudden, ten-foot fall caught him off guard, and he cracked the back of his head on the wall, then fell in a heap on the floor, unconscious.

At least, Josh hoped he was just unconscious.

But before she could even fear for him, Will hit Gloves from behind—an unschooled, openhanded, girly slap that did as much as blowing on him would have. Will knew Gloves was out of his league and jumped away as soon as the slap was delivered.

“He has to concentrate to change anything,” Will told her, ducking to avoid being crushed by Gloves's fist. “Keep him distracted.”

Josh struggled to get back on her feet. The pain in her stomach was retreating to a dull ache, but she felt how weak Feodor's torture had left her. Her remaining strength wouldn't last long.

Gloves came at her and they wrestled. A hundred memories of training with Ian came back to Josh. She used everything she had against him, but this wasn't the Ian she had grown up with. Gloves barely registered pain and never gave her an instant to breathe, not even a split second to rest between attacks. He fought entirely without reserve. Josh would have expected that losing his soul would diminish his motivation to live, but it seemed just the opposite—that only an animal desire to survive remained.

When Josh began to flag, Will jumped in to distract Gloves. But he swayed on his feet, and Gloves didn't waste any time in hand-to-hand combat. Head down, he rushed Will, not to hit him but to drive him into the wall and crush his wounded back against the concrete. Josh, on her knees a few yards away, saw Will's eyes roll back in his head and heard him make a sound—possibly a scream—muffled by a gurgle. He collapsed.

Not a good sign.

Gloves leaned down and pulled the compact from Will's pocket.

The sight of Will crumpled on the floor enraged Josh, and she sprang to her feet with newfound energy, but her rage only made her sloppy. When she sent a roundhouse kick toward Gloves's head, he caught her foot and twisted it so that she sprawled facedown with her hands on the floor. Then Gloves kicked her in the gut again, forced her onto her back, and climbed on top of her.

When she tried to hit him, his fingers caught her arm with inhuman speed. He brought her elbow down on the floor, and then again, and again, until the joint shattered.

Josh felt her fingers relax almost before she felt the pain. Not just a physical pain, but a deep sense of brokenness, a crack in her foundation. Gloves's hands closed around her throat, and she would have gasped at the fire that shot from her fingers to her shoulder, but he had cut off her airway.

Time slowed while he choked her. With her left hand she cut deep scratches in his arms, the blood growing sticky under her nails, but he didn't respond. He was sitting on her thighs, immobilizing her legs, and because his arms were longer than hers, she couldn't reach far enough to gouge out his eyes.

So this is how it's going to end,
Josh thought. The fact that it really was going to end shocked her, despite all the evening's close calls. She stared into Ian's face, Ian's lovely face with the barren black eyes and no expression, too stunned to truly hate him.

No triumph showed on Gloves's face.

She could hardly believe what she saw behind him: Will was climbing to his feet. After that second injury to his back, she'd been sure he wasn't getting up, but here he was, gaining one foot and then the other. The maniacal smile on his face was one she'd never seen before, though, and it scared her. He didn't look like himself.

He staggered as he came up behind Gloves, his chest heaving as he struggled to lift one arm above his head. In his hand, he held an icicle-shaped shard of mirror. But with a burst of strength, he reached Gloves in two long, smooth steps and brought the mirror down into Gloves's back, the jagged, broken end cutting into his own skin as he forced the mirror between Gloves's ribs.

“Hands off the girl, asshole!” Will shouted and, like the smile, his voice wasn't his.

Ian?
Josh thought.

Gloves grew still with shock. Then his hands actually tightened further around Josh's neck, and he lifted her head, then slammed her down so hard that when her skull hit the floor she heard a sound like an eggshell breaking.

For a moment her mind shut down. She couldn't hear, or see, or feel her throbbing arm or the air rushing back into her lungs as Gloves released her. For just that moment, she knew perfect inner silence, and then a thunderstorm erupted at the back of her head, and she opened her eyes.

“Oh god, J.D., I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, oh god—”

Will's eyes rolled back in his head, and he passed out on the floor next to Josh.

Gloves was on his knees a few feet away. He twitched, twisting and arching his torso as if he were trying to force the mirror out. The way he jerked and the lack of expression on his face made Josh think of an android. When twisting didn't work, he searched blindly with his left hand and finally pulled the mirror out, slicing his hand and fingers. Josh couldn't see the wound, but through his legs she saw blood begin running onto the floor in a steady stream.

Gasping like a fish on the floor, she watched him toss the mirror away and inhale deeply. If he had been capable of emotion, she would have said that he was frightened, but maybe she only thought that because his whole body was trembling violently. He crawled to one wall, sat painfully back on his heels, and stared at the wall for a long, long time while blood ran down his back and pooled around his knees. Finally, he lifted the compact and lighter, and a blue door appeared in the middle of the wall, the sort of door one might find on the front of a home.

He's going to leave us,
Josh thought,
and the Dream will shift, and whatever nightmare we fall into, we won't be able to fight it.

But Gloves didn't leave. He started to rise, and then he swayed like a charmed snake and collapsed sideways, making no movement to soften his landing against the concrete floor. So much blood had collected around him on the floor that it splashed when he fell into it; Josh felt the spray on the side of her face.

Oh my god,
she thought.
I think he's dead
.

Ian had killed himself. He'd had to borrow Will's body to do it, but he'd managed.

He saved my life
. Her heart sang with a strange, astonished joy.
Ian saved my life.

If that wasn't forgiveness, she didn't know what was.

Then she thought,
I have to get us out of here.

But try as she might, she couldn't rise. She couldn't even roll over. Each time she moved her head more than an inch, the vertigo was so intense that her stomach rose in her throat, and she knew that if she vomited now, she would choke to death.

“Josh,” Will whispered. She turned her head that one inch to look at him, and the pain shifted toward her temples, easing a little near the back of her neck. His cornflower-blue eyes were dark, and the skin around one was swelling.