Dreamscape (24 page)

Calm and quiet reigned. The terrain had changed. Dry sand gave way to bare rock. This she knew. The cold, so cold, and the dampness that had engulfed them in the swamp was replaced with neither warmth nor cold. Darkness encompassed both females. Illuminated only by a reflection of the moon that hung in the gloomy sky, Ramona focused. The girl lay motionless beside her. Her body shivered, her only movement. Ramona could now work on the girl’s bonds.

With every bit of energy she had, Ramona finally untied them. She rubbed the girl’s shoulders, her face, in an effort to revive her. The girl shifted her foot, and her head swung from side to side. She gradually opened her eyes and jumped back, not familiar with her environment or Ramona.

“Callie, Callie, it’s okay. Jackson sent me. My name is Ramona. It’s going to be okay.”

“Where am I?” she asked, her voice weak. Her body trembled uncontrollably. She rubbed her wrist. Her eyes reflected the confusion, the fear within her. She managed to utter, “Jackson, where is he?”

“Well,” Ramona hesitated. In the distance, a cry of pain sounded as if falling from the sky from an opening in the lining. A moaning serenade proceeded. Ramona nervously surveyed the area, checking the surrounding background. “Jackson couldn’t exactly come the way I came. It was the only way to get to you. Do you remember anything that happened?”

She shook her head. “It’s fuzzy. Your name, you said Ramona. I remember the name. They were talking about that name.”

Ramona inched closer to the girl. Callie shivered, and her face drained of all color. Her eyes rolled back. Ramona grabbed her. “Callie, are you okay? Listen to me. Don’t leave me. Are you hurt?”

She nodded slightly and pointed to her leg. Ramona looked down. She pulled up Callie’s mud-coated pants leg and flaked off the mud around Callie’s ankle. It was swollen, red with flange marks embedded within the inflamed area. Red lines streaked up Callie’s legs.

“A snake bite? Callie, is it a snake bite?”

The girl nodded again. Her breathing grew labored, hard, as if each breath took an effort to make. She whispered again, “Jackson. Is he okay?”

“Yes, he’s fine. Hang in there, Callie. Give me a minute and I’ll get us out of here.”

“Tell him I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry. Tell him I love him. Please.”

Ramona shook her head. “Listen, Callie, you can tell him yourself. It wasn’t your fault. I know who you were dealing with. It wasn’t your fault. It’s what he does. He makes you believe you’re doing what’s best for the one you love and then he uses it against you. He did it to me. I’m not going to let it happen again.”

“It was you he wanted, wasn’t it? He was talking about someone he wanted. He was…,” she took a deep breath, “waiting for you to come. He thought he was going to capture you.” It seemed a thought dawned on her, and she tried to stand, to move. “He’s going to follow us. He can come out of thin air,” the frightened girl cried.

Ramona nodded. The girl calmed, relaxed. Her eyes closed; she grimaced in pain. Ramona swallowed hard. She didn’t have much time to make this work. She wasn’t even sure it would. She didn’t have time to work through the intricacies of the plan either. How could she tell Callie where they really were? How Damien couldn’t follow them in and that this was what he wanted, this ability?

Callie began catching her breath. Ramona felt her pulse. Rapid. She wouldn’t make it much longer. Ramona turned her eyes upward as she struggled to her feet with Callie under her arm. She limped toward a field that had an opening, praying it would be the way out she sought.

She had to be careful. If she picked the wrong soul to backtrack they could end up in the middle of the ocean, falling off a mountain, or in the middle of an earthquake, wherever that soul had lost his physical form. She walked in a dimension between life and death, before the last breath or the last chance to live. Her father, the one that gave her life, gave her the ability to walk among the undead—not living, not yet dead.

Her grandmother had instilled in her the story of how her father saved her mother and walked her through the path to life, a walk filled with unbelievable horrors, playing upon one’s worst fears; terrors that take only a strong will to live to walk through. Her father had done that for her mother; unlike Ramona, who on her try, on her chance to save the father of her child, she had failed. She couldn’t fail this time.

Callie wasn’t an undead soul, not yet. She had to hurry. She dragged Callie along the barren ground. A soul fell in front of her. Hands extended up to her.

“Take me, back. I need to go back. I’m not ready.”

Cries, pleas. Ramona stepped by. The soul was injured, his head beat in. She knew what she searched for and prayed she reasoned correctly. They weren’t the undead. She didn’t want to walk through the path to life. She wanted a shortcut, where the souls of one’s life had been taken where it exited; she wanted to enter back through with Callie. A moment later, another soul fell in front of them. An old woman’s soul, calm, no cries, no pleas.

“I’m being pulled back. I can feel it. I told the doctors I didn’t want to be resuscitated. I’m too old. My daughter wanted me to stay. She has them trying. I don’t want to go back. I’m tired. I want to see my husband. He’s been gone so long, twenty-one years. Is Malcolm here?”

“I hope you find your Malcolm. But I need your portal.”

“Take it. Tell my daughter. It’s fine. She will be okay. In her heart I will always be there. I’m happy now.”

“I will.” Ramona didn’t have time to talk further, for the portal began to close. She grabbed tight onto Callie and closed her eyes. With every ounce of energy, she concentrated. Air swirled beneath her. They floated upward.

A wind blew. She felt as if she had been thrown into a layer of glass as she slammed through a barrier. Callie landed inches away. Momentarily suspended in time, Ramona regained her senses. Fluorescent lighting blinded her when she looked up. They’d landed against a wall—hard. Equipment within the small confines of the room banged against each other. A constant bleeping noise echoed from a monitor on the far wall. A stainless steel stretcher sat in front of her holding a lifeless body, an elderly woman’s exposed form, the last ditch effort to save a dimming life. Paddles hung down from the table.

Ramona’s eyes fully focused. An older man with gray-speckled hair in blue scrubs and a white lab coat stood beside the bed; to his side, a woman dressed in similar scrubs. A woman dressed in street clothes stared at them both.

Everyone remained where they stood, unmoving, obviously unsure what their next move should be. Ramona looked back over her shoulder. Mud matted her hair, her clothes covered in the same slime, soaked.

“Holy shit,” another voice exclaimed upon entering the room. The owner of it immediately ran toward Callie’s motionless body. “Where the hell did you come from?”

He didn’t wait for an answer but bent over and felt for a pulse. Faint, Ramona knew. He swept Callie in his arms. Ramona quickly found her footing and followed them to an adjoining room. Her own body ached with every movement.

“She got bitten by a snake,” Ramona offered. “On her right leg.”

A hustle of activity ensued. People, at least for the moment, forgot Ramona and Callie’s bizarre entrance. With a ripping of cloth, the man surveyed the bite area. The leg had turned a darkened color, though red still streaked up the thigh, swollen twice its normal size. The doctor turned to Ramona.

“What kind of snake, diamond back rattler?”

She shook her head. “No, I think it had to be a water moccasin, cottonmouth.”

“Look, lady. I don’t have time for this if we’re going to save your friend. We need to know what kind of snake it was.” He grimaced impatiently. “We don’t have water moccasin her in Scottsdale. We have quite a variety, but you’re in Arizona.”

“I know what it was. Trust me. Do we look like we were in a desert?”

He sighed and looked at the nurse across from him as Callie lay unconscious. “Get me Dr. Marshall on the phone at the university. We need to see if we can get anti-venom.”

Ramona disappeared. From the blackness, she watched the doctor turn back to find the space she’d occupied empty. He stared at the small puddle of water where she’d stood.

Chapter Nineteen

Ramona lay down, exhausted, but sleep wouldn’t come easy. She had to go back—with no idea how to fix the problem. Everything had built up so quickly, and she hadn’t had time to think through the situation, only to react. Now she prayed for Callie’s survival. She’d left her in bad shape and jumped back. Jackson slept on his couch. Well over twenty-four hours had passed.

When Jackson first approached her, her first thought was to jump to Callie and get help from wherever she arrived. Her predicament hadn’t allowed that. She let Jackson sleep and jumped back home through her connection with Leila. Norah slept in her bed. Ramona hadn’t woken anyone. She needed time to think of her next step. She must get back to Callie. How could she get Callie out of there without being discovered? She had to get Callie out of there before she told them her name.

The desperation in Callie’s eyes had showed her desire to desperately right a wrong. Ramona had no doubt the master had duped Callie, playing on her desire to protect the one she loved, manipulating her into unwittingly betraying him and finally attempting to destroy her soul by revealing her fatal mistake. To reach his ultimate goal, he ensured that the one she loved would learn of her betrayal. Then, taking her from this world, he’d leave his intended victim to deal with the guilt every day they breathed. Damien had played his part well, having done so before in her own life. The difference only lay in that Rick had died, leaving her with unresolved guilt that the responsibility rested solely on her shoulders.

Her own weakness, her love for Rick. She should have never allowed the relationship to blossom. The reality of being alone, so totally alone, had made her give in. She’d loved him without limitations, yet when the time came it had been Rick who lost his faith in her. The look in his eyes when he’d held her shoulders and stared straight into her eyes asking, demanding if what he’d learned was the truth, remained embedded in her memory.

Her father, himself born with demon blood, a high priest of the occult, committed worse crimes than anyone Rick and Ramona had chased. That the baby she carried, Rick’s baby, would have that blood running through her veins…. Never having spoken one ill word to each other before, the words Rick and Ramona spoke on that last night cut through each other; words that she’d live a lifetime regretting; words that cost Rick his life. She’d begged him not to leave that night. She hadn’t been the one that insisted they marry and that nothing, nothing could come between them, but Damien had come between them. Somehow Damien had found a way.

The look in Rick’s eyes while she pleaded told her all she feared. He held steadfast that she’d deceived him. Did Rick know before he died that he’d been wrong about her? Had Damien teased him before thrusting a knife through him?

Envy rushed through Ramona. Callie would survive. Jackson would have his chance to make things right. Ramona lay by her sleeping daughter and rubbed the side of her baby’s soft cheek. Her little angel, the reason she pulled through the darkness. She’d lost everything else, her family, her brief span of happiness with Rick. She had no intention of losing her daughter.

Her shower may have washed away the dirt and mud, but it didn’t wash away the overwhelming sense of shame that gripped her. She suspected who Jackson really was. He’d lost his family yet had ended up with an adoptive, loving one, protected. The whole of the situation angered her, and resentment built. Yet again she’d been asked to perform to her abilities and yet again was left alone.

Pressure boiled. She took a deep breath. She didn’t have a doubt in the world she no longer had a job, was fired. Sacrifice to protect. How was she going to explain her absence? Couldn’t. How was she going to provide for Leila? Moreover, if Damien had resurfaced, she couldn’t face him. A bigger question nagged at her since she’d jumped to save Callie. If Damien discovered Jackson’s existence, if he sensed danger…he knew well where she’d been all these years. He’d followed her to Boston. Hunted her down, and when she was at her weakest, he’d disappeared.

When Rick died she’d been so sick, worried about losing her baby. She hadn’t thought about the relevance of the situation until after Leila’s birth. There was no pull to run. Her instincts said stay, and she had. For years, she didn’t deal with her visions except for one; that one, Ramona realized, came from the child herself and the child’s desire to relieve her mother’s pain; a desire so strong that it broke through the wall Ramona had built around herself to pull her into the vision.

She shook her head, had to stop this. Take one thing at a time. Callie was the one alone at the moment, no one around her except strangers. She closed her eyes and prayed for the first time in years.