The Nightmare Dilemma (Arkwell Academy) (10 page)

Bright colors swirled and danced around me, vivid and hyper real. There were colors in here that didn’t have names, colors that defied imagination. His dream tasted so much sweeter than Britney’s, his fictus so much more satisfying. It had been such a long time since I’d dream-fed on anyone else that I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d grown to him until now. Like an addiction. For a moment as the dream world formed around me, I felt completely at peace and safe, all the worries about Paul and Britney and Marrow nothing but a distant memory.

The good feeling evaporated as I took in my surroundings. I appeared to have arrived in some medieval torture chamber. Strange metal devices sat on a row of wooden shelves nearby while more devices hung from the walls, including several pairs of manacles. In the center of the circular room stood a rectangular stone table inlaid with an assortment of gems and engraved with mystical symbols. Eli was lying on top of the table, seemingly asleep or unconscious. He was shirtless. Again.
Great, even more distraction.

But at least Eli wasn’t the only person present. Three other people stood around the table, two men and a woman, all of them wearing long robes of light blue. One of the men held a clipboard, the other a stethoscope. The woman held a wand that she was waving back and forth over Eli.

The clipboard and stethoscope gave me pause, and I turned in a circle, taking a closer look at my surroundings. This place wasn’t a torture chamber. It was a science lab. The marbled walls had thrown me off, but the instruments on the shelves were the kind we used every day in my alchemy class—glass beakers and vials, jars of herbs and magical ingredients, even microscopes.

Feeling a little calmer, I approached the table, sidestepping around the trio of scientists. “Hey, Eli. Wake up.”

His eyes fluttered opened, and he stared up at me, confused at first. Then he smiled and sat up, giving me a nice shot of his muscle-covered backside. He swung his legs over the side of the table and peered around.

“Wow,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m dreaming about this place. Thought I’d had enough of it.”

I took a step back, making sure we kept a safe distance between us. “Is this where they did all those experiments on you today?”

“Uh-huh.” He jumped off the table and pushed his way through the scientists who remained oblivious to his presence. He examined the room. “Well, more or less.”

I didn’t bother asking him what the differences were. Now that I knew the place, it didn’t hold much interest.

I clapped my hands. “Are you ready?”

“Yep. Take us to the scene of the crime.”

Ignoring the cheese factor in his words, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the library tunnel alcove. I drew on my memories of both the actual place and the way I’d seen it in Britney’s dreams. For a while, nothing seemed to happen. I could still hear the scientists murmuring behind me. I focused harder, willing my imagination to set the scene.

Finally, I felt the dream world respond, and I opened my eyes to see a gray mist swirling around Eli and me. Then without warning, the mist vanished and the world snapped into place. It happened so hard, I staggered forward, just managing to catch my balance. I straightened and looked around. With a horrible swooping sensation, I realized we hadn’t arrived in the tunnels.

We were in
my
dream. My nightmare.

I stood on the top of that tall tower again, the black blanket of sky overhead seeming near enough to touch. A ferocious wind buffeted my body, forcing me back and away from the stone plinth set at the tower’s center. The moment my eyes saw the plinth all reason fled my mind as the need to read those letters took hold of me. I lurched forward, throwing my weight and the force of my will against the wind. It screamed in answer, blowing harder, determined to stop me.

I dropped to my knees and began to inch my way forward. Somewhere, as if from far away, I heard Eli shouting. “Dusty! What are you doing? Where are we?”

I glanced up long enough to see that he wasn’t far away at all, but standing over me, completely unaffected by the wind or those hidden letters on the plinth’s surface.

I tried to respond but couldn’t. Speaking would require too much effort, effort I needed to reach the plinth.

With agonizing slowness, I made my way to it. Eli’s voice and all his meaningless questions and concerns were nothing but a dull hum in my ears, a noise barely distinguishable from the wailing of the wind.

“Seriously, Dusty, you’re scaring me. What’s going on? Why aren’t you changing the dream?”

I stretched my hands toward the plinth, my eyes fixed on the faint imprint of letters. I ran my forefinger over them, again trying to read it like Braille. I could almost make out the first one.

“Come on, Dusty, talk to me. Talk to me or I’m going to kick you out of this dream, I swear it.”

His warning registered in my brain. I couldn’t let him evict me. Not until I saw the letters.

“Got to read this,” I said, panting.

“Read what?” Eli squatted down beside me. I recoiled from him, afraid we would touch by accident.

“The letters.” I clawed at the plinth, my nails quickly wearing down to nubs. I pressed on, frantic now, uncaring of the blood streaks I left on the stone as I scraped away the flesh on my fingertips.

“Stop it, Dusty. Stop it right now.” Eli stood up, looming over me.

“Don’t touch me,” I hissed, and on some distant plane I heard the insanity in my voice. It frightened me somewhere deep down, but not enough to break through the plinth’s spell.

“If you don’t stop I’m going to touch you.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eli clenching his hands into fists. “Dammit, Dusty, what’s wrong with you?”

I shook my head, using my palms now. I could almost see it. A straight edge and a curved top, a P and yet that didn’t feel right. It could be a B or an R.
P or B or R or P or B or R. Which one?
Eli stooped toward me again, and I sensed his hands reaching for my frantically clawing arms.

“Don’t!” I screamed.

Boom.

Something struck the tower, and it gave a violent lurch as if from an earthquake.

Eli stumbled backward while I fell forward into the plinth, my forehead smacking stone. Dazed, I pushed myself back into a kneeling position as the tower gave another shudder.

“What the hell?” Eli turned and ran to the tower’s edge, looking out at the night sky surrounding us.

Only as I struggled to my feet, I realized the sky wasn’t dark as it had been when we arrived, but was suddenly bright, as if lit by an unseen sun. The unnatural sight of that brightness broke the plinth’s hold on me at last. With my limbs trembling as hard as the tower, I hurried to the edge, wanting to see what was happening.

I looked down at a sparse forest, populated by giant, ancient trees, some of them nearly as tall as the tower. At once, I found the source of all the shaking as a giant fireball shot up from the ground and struck one of the trees. It exploded on impact. Fire and debris spewed outward.

Boom-boom-boom.

The explosions were everywhere now, closing in around us.

Another fireball struck the tower, this one from far below, at its core. It rumbled upward, almost slowly. The ground shot up beneath my feet like a sinkhole in reverse. I pitched forward and slammed into the wall. The fissure spread and widened. The wall broke, huge chunks of stone falling over the edge. For a second I struggled to catch my balance, but then I lost it completely, helpless to stop my forward propulsion. Helpless to do anything as I plunged over the side.

The rush of wind ripped the scream from my throat. My body was beyond my control, my limbs locked in place by the momentum of the fall. Even still I twisted and turned through the air like a performance skydiver. I tried to pull back from the dream, but I was too afraid to concentrate. Far above me I saw Eli leap off the edge of the tower. He dove toward me, arms stretched forward. No fear showed in his face, only determination.

Several long, terrifying seconds later, his body struck mine with the force of a meteor. The dream world exploded around us. Pain tore through me, my entire existence seeming to shatter.

The next moment we were back in Eli’s dorm. I tumbled sideways off the sofa. My head cracked against the stone floor, Lance’s designer rug doing little to soften the impact. Starbursts covered my vision, and a sick feeling expanded in my stomach. I lay there, motionless, but I could still feel myself falling through the air, plummeting to my death from that tall, crumbling tower.

I kept my eyes open, afraid to shut them as I willed away the pain and terror. I’d never been afraid of heights before, but I had a feeling that might change after this.

Eli’s face filled my vision as he leaned over me. “Are you all right?” He reached for my arms.

I tried to nod, but the motion made my head pound even harder. Eli took hold of my wrists and pulled me upward. I let him, but only because I thought I would get sick if I opened my mouth to speak. When I was in a sitting position, he let go of my wrists. At once I began to fall backward, my equilibrium still screwed. He grabbed me, cursing beneath his breath as he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around my shoulders.

I sagged into him, vaguely aware of the tears wetting my face.

“Shhhh.” He stroked my hair. “It’s okay. It was just a dream.”

But we both knew that wasn’t true. His dreams weren’t normal dreams. Not the ones we shared together. If I had fallen all the way, if I had struck the ground …

I shuddered, my body convulsing with another surge of terror. He held me tighter.

Slowly the fear began to pass, and I forced my sluggish brain to start working again. How had we ended up in my dream? How could it be so powerful to make me lose control like that? I tried to remember all the things I knew about dream-walking. Some Nightmares were powerful enough to infiltrate dreams from afar. Was it possible someone was interfering with both my dreams and Eli’s? I couldn’t imagine what else besides magic could affect me like that. My compulsion to read those letters went far beyond the level of normal dreaming. Even now my head buzzed with the desire.

I heard Eli draw a breath, and I braced for the inevitable questions, but none came. He seemed to understand that I wasn’t ready to talk. He just held me instead, his arms a strong, comforting force around me, his hand gentle as he stroked my hair.

I don’t know how it happened, but sometime later, my body shifted toward his, and I felt his warm breath on my face, a slow in and out. Inch by inch, I turned my face toward that warmth. His lips grazed my cheek. And then he was kissing me, his mouth full on mine, hot, wet, and demanding, as if he’d longed for it as much as I had. His hands slid up my neck beneath my hair until he cupped the back of my head between his palms, locking me in place. Tingles coursed through my body, explosions of pleasure erupting over my skin.

It ended much faster than it began. One second he was kneeling on the floor, kissing me, the next he stood and backed away, leaving me suddenly cold and struggling to hold myself up.

“Sorry,” he said.

I blinked once, twice, my head swimming with sensation and emotional overload. He was sorry? What for? He was acting like there was something wrong with kissing me. Or maybe the kiss had been bad.

I stopped that train of thought before it could continue any further down the tracks. I was already straddling the crazy line as it was. The last thing I needed was that kind of self-doubt. I’d kissed boys before him, and no one had ever complained.

But none of them were Eli
.

Shut up
.

I started to push myself up, nearly slipped, but then felt Eli’s hand on my arm, steadying me.

“Are you okay?” he said.

I pulled away from him, refusing to look in his eyes, afraid of what I might find there. I turned and sat down on the sofa, dropping my head into my hands. Now that the thrill of the kiss was gone, the pounding had returned full force, made even worse by my embarrassment.

“Why are you sorry?”

Eli shook his head. “It was wrong. I shouldn’t have done it. You’re hurt … and…”

“Oh, okay,” I said, still embarrassed and wanting the subject over.

He sat down beside me, keeping a careful distance between us. “So what happened?”

“I … I don’t know.” I ran both hands through my hair, relishing the pain in my skull as my fingers caught on snags. “But that place with the tower and the plinth … I’ve seen it before.”

“Where?”

I turned my head toward him, risking a glance. But he didn’t seem embarrassed or flustered at all. The kiss might never have happened. His expression registered only concern and interest.

“In my dreams,” I said. “Last night and a couple of times before, I think.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Huh.” He leaned back against the sofa, his hands falling into his lap. “That’s pretty crazy.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” I crossed my arms and leaned back, too, hating the distance between us and yet wishing it was bigger. I wanted to be worried only about the dream, but that kiss and his reaction to it kept trying to press its way to the forefront of my mind. Was he really sorry simply because I was hurt and he thought it bad timing?

“Have you told Lady Elaine about the dreams?” Eli said.

“No, of course not.” An odd possessive feeling came over me at the idea, one I didn’t understand but couldn’t deny. They were my dreams and nobody’s business but my own. The word on that plinth was meant for me; I could sense it. A tinge of resentment went through me at the knowledge that Eli had seen it. I wished I could take it back. Never mind that he was forced to share his dreams with me time and time again. That dream was different. I knew it, and I could tell by Eli’s tense silence that he knew it, too.

“Well,” he said, stretching out his hand to pat my knee, “we’ll have better luck next time.”

“Sure.” I tried not to tense at his touch. It was hard. My lips still felt wet and swollen from our kiss.
Sorry,
he had said. Sorry.