Wakeworld (2 page)

H
ey, sleepyhead, we’re here.”

Vivian thought she felt a hand stroke her hair and rest warm on her shoulder, but by the time she got her eyes open Zee was checking his weapons—slamming a cartridge into the .38 he’d found at her grandfather’s cabin, loosening the sword in its sheath.

It was a good four-hour drive from the cabin to the town of Krebston, and she’d lost the fight against sleep within about the first thirty minutes, drifting on the margins of dream without ever going under. Or so she’d thought. Now she wasn’t sure whether she’d dreamed the hand stroking her hair or if it had been real.

Yawning, she stretched and surveyed the situation. They’d both been worried that Finger Beach would be crawling with uniforms, but the parking lot was empty except for one black-and-white, a county car, empty. Yellow crime-scene tape marked off the path leading down to the river.

“I wish you’d stay in the car,” Vivian said, knowing Zee’s response.

“Yeah. Something in there about beggars and horses and genies.” He grinned, lopsided and sweet, and then just as rapidly sobered. “Besides, that’s what I was wishing about you.”

“Not likely.”

He opened his door and she followed suit. “But Zee, there’s probably a warrant out for you. And there’s a cop around here somewhere.”

She filled her lungs with the clean cold air. It smelled of snow. A vee of geese flew across a morning-tinted sky, their haunting calls tugging at Vivian’s heart as they always had, with a longing for flight. Beyond the beach, still under cover of darkness, flowed the Pend Oreille, a steady background susurration. Even though the Finger Stone was screened from her sight by trees, she could clearly feel its power, could have found her way to that massive red thrust of rock blindfolded.

Letting her mind reach out above and away beyond the stone, she found the dragon. Her thoughts met his and at once the world took on an extra dimension, crystal edged and bright. In that moment her consciousness split into two: one body shivering in a cold wind, clinging to the open door of the van with rapidly numbing fingers, while the other flew above the clouds in a world bright with the first rays of the rising sun.

In the distance she could hear Zee calling her name, his voice sharp-edged with worry, while the dragon spoke directly into her mind.

Hail, Dreamshifter. Will you fly with me?

Almost as if they were her own, she could feel the beat of his wings, the free flow of cold air over scales, the star-bright pleasure of flight.

“Vivian?” Zee’s hand was on her shoulder, drawing her back into a body restless with the call of the sky. Her heart felt too tight, her thoughts too hard-edged and sharp to fit back into the soft human brain.

As she came back to herself, she knew she should tell Zee about the dragon hidden in the mist, but a reluctant loyalty silenced her tongue. Zee was a slayer of dragons, and all at once she didn’t want this one killed.

As it turned out, there was no need to tell him anything. His body stiffened, his chin swung over and up, and he snuffed the air like a hunting animal. His eyes followed the invisible flight path that she could sense but not see. Without a word he strode off toward the beach, ducking under the crime-scene tape.

Vivian dashed after him, stumbling a little in the dark, her senses still divided between earth and sky. “Zee, wait—the cops are down there.”

“Please go back and stay in the car,” he said. The first rays of sunlight cleared the tree line and glinted on the naked sword in his hand.

“Zee,” she protested, trailing along behind him. “You can’t kill a dragon with a sword.”

He didn’t answer. His eyes were on the sky over the river, where a dark blot emerged from out of the mist.

“Just because you slay them in your dreams it doesn’t mean you can do it here. Not in Wakeworld,” Vivian called after him.

He stopped and turned. His face looked fierce and wild, no trace of the softness that had always been there for her.

“Zee! We have to do this together. Listen to me!”

His eyes focused on her face, gradually warming into recognition. “I swore to keep you safe. And you’re asking me to give you the chance to become blood spatter.”

“He’s not going to eat me. He’s young. He just wants to play.”

“So does a tiger. A dragon isn’t a house pet, Vivian. One mouthful, and that’s the end of you.”

“I want to call him back into the Between,” she said. “Please. Let me try.”

The doubt in Zee’s face nearly broke her. Feeling suddenly very weary, she said, trying again, “Let’s go. Together, Zee.”

“One chance.”

“What?”

“One chance to talk this monster through a door. And if it makes one wrong move, or so much as looks at you funny, I kill it.”

In the sky, the dragon continued to call to her. At play in this moment, perhaps, but she knew he was built to be a fighting machine, armored and dangerous. As was Zee. She didn’t want either of them dead.

If she put the Voice on Zee, she could stop him in his tracks. Protect him from himself and, more importantly, from all that she was capable of. But the thought of interfering with his free will sickened her. If she ever once did that, any trust they held between them would be shattered forever and there would be no going back.

“Fair,” she said, holding out her hand to seal the deal.

Zee took her hand but didn’t shake it, his clear agate eyes searching hers for what she worked so hard to keep hidden. Her breath caught in her throat; her knees went weak. “You’re wrong, you know. About us.”

She was still searching for the right words to respond to that when he released her. “Your hands are cold. You should wear gloves. Let’s go.”

Vivian needed time to get her breath under control and to stuff her heart back where it belonged, but Zee had already turned and was striding away from her. She followed. The path was heavily shaded by cedars and the dim light hadn’t yet penetrated the thick boughs. Tiny needles of freezing mist pricked the exposed skin of her face and hands. Her muscles tightened and clenched against the cold.

As she emerged from the trees she could see the river flowing placid and smooth across an expanse of sand, silvery under a sky now lightening to gray. Both the geese and the dragon had turned and vanished into the mist rising off the river.

Nothing else moved as far as she could see.

To the north, the Finger Stone thrust up out of the sand, red and raw. Power zinged through the nerves of her body as she approached it. She could feel an awareness of doors, so many doors in all the worlds. Some stood open, some were closed; all of them called to her. At the same time the inner dragon stirred and she felt the beginnings of change: the tightening of skin, the itching at her shoulder blades.

No.
Gathering the strength of her will, she forced the dragon fire back into the by-now-familiar heat at her core.

The boundary was so thin here between Wakeworld and the Between that she could almost see the winding of the labyrinthine paths that traversed it between one Dreamworld and another. It pulled at her, the moon to the tide, and she thought maybe when the dragon came she would walk with him for a little way, at least.

An unexpected voice swung her around in dismay.

“Dr. Maylor. This is a crime scene. What on earth are you doing?”

“Deputy Flynne. You look better than the last time I saw you.”

“Answer my question. What are you doing down here?”

“Pretty much the same as you, I’m guessing.” She chose her words carefully, not wanting to set him off. Last time she’d seen him he was raving about an attack by penguins, and now he was back in uniform with a fully stocked belt of tools, including an automatic pistol and a Taser.

“I’m not a nutbag,” he said defensively, as if catching the tone of her voice. “I’ve had a whole psych battery and been declared fit for duty. Some sort of medical thing, they think.”

“And what do you think?”

“What else would I think?”

“It was a strange thing, Brett. You were so cold and there was no reason for it. I couldn’t warm you at all. And you were talking about—”

“Penguins.” His eyes widened and his gun was in his hand, level, aimed at something over her shoulder and behind her. She looked and took a step to the side, blocking the shot with her body.

His hands were shaking. “It’s a freaking devil of a—” He swallowed.

“Penguin. Yes, I know. He’s with me. His name is Poe.” She walked backward as she spoke, ever so carefully, stealing quick glances to maintain her trajectory until she reached the penguin and scooped him up in her arms. “Are you sure you’re fit for duty, Deputy? You seem a little edgy.”

“I dreamed them,” he said. “Giant penguins with sharpened beaks.”

“The penguins are coming.” He’d repeated the phrase over and over before succumbing to hypothermia and being too cold to speak.

“Through there—a place by the Finger. Thousands of them. All of them taller than me, with human eyes. Behind them—I couldn’t see it, but you know how dreams are—a giant ice field strewn with the dead, all with empty sockets—”

“Deputy!” She spoke firmly, bringing him back. “It was a dream. A nightmare. But you’re not dreaming now. This is a real, flesh-and-blood penguin.” Technically this was a lie—Poe might be flesh and blood, but he had walked straight out of a dream.

Poe wiggled and twisted and she bent and let him slide to the ground, still keeping her body between him and Deputy Flynne. She was going to have to tell part of the truth. The dragon was headed back this way, and she wasn’t going to let this man be killed because he’d been sucked into something by accident.

“Going to sound crazy, Brett. You know the thing that killed the teenagers, that was shooting firebolts around last night? It’s a dragon. It came through the same thin place where you saw penguins.”

“And they call me the crazy one.”

“You need to clear the beach, Deputy.”

“And leave you here, I suppose.”

“Yes.”

This earned her nothing but a look. “It’s my job to protect this town. Which includes you.”

“Actually, protecting her is
my
job,” Zee said.

Flynne’s weapon was drawn in a heartbeat, but Zee was faster.

“Ezekiel Arbogast, drop your weapon.”

“I don’t think I can do that, Officer. With all due respect.”

“You are under arrest.”

“For what?” Zee was watching the sky and not the gun trained on his heart. “It’s coming,” he said to Vivian.

“I know—how can you tell?”

“Vibration, a change in the wind. I don’t know how. But I know.”

“Excuse me,” Flynne said, “can we get away from discussing the weather and back to the arrest?”

“Right,” Zee said, still watching the sky. “Charges?”

Brett hesitated. “Well, suspected murder. Of Vivian Maylor.”

“Who is standing right here, alive and well. For the moment.” A definite bitterness in Zee’s tone let Vivian know he still wanted her off the beach and away safe somewhere.

“That’s for the judge to decide.” Brett reached for his radio.

“I don’t think you want to do that,” Vivian said. She edged closer to the stone. The dragon would be in sight any minute. She needed to call him to her and away from the others. “You want to explain to dispatch that you’ve found Ezekiel Arbogast, along with a penguin and a dragon?” She gestured with her chin, and he turned to follow her gaze.

Above the river, small yet, but growing rapidly larger, appeared a creature that couldn’t be a bird—four legs; a long, naked tail—winging its way toward them.

“One chance,” Zee said, in a voice she’d never heard him use before. He paced across the sand to the place where two weeks before a giant white bear had lain dead.

Vivian turned to Flynne, allowing a note of pleading to creep into her voice. “Deputy. Brett. This is more dangerous than you can imagine. Please move off the beach.”

He shook his head, stubborn, adjusting his grip on his pistol.

The dragon was close now, occupying all of her senses, and she had little thought to spare for anybody else.

Come. Dance with me. The sky is ours for the taking.

Vivian’s body responded to the call. Her blood ran hot with the memory of flight and power. She fought it down. She was not a dragon, she was Vivian. Still, the voice she used to return the call was full of an untapped power that exhilarated and frightened her all at once.

Not this time, little brother. Come here to me.

She settled herself with her back supported against the stone, letting its power flow through her, and opened the door into the Between.

The dragon flew in low over the river, sunlight striking glints of rainbow color off his scales. He flew a loop, a spiral, shot bright jets of flame from his nostrils.

Vivian called again, dragonmind to dragonmind,
Come, little brother. Come here to me
.

Wind gusted around her, raising a flurry of sand that scoured her face and hands. There was a thunder of giant wings. For a moment the sun was blotted out and then he landed, so much more lightly than expected, so much more beautiful. Mellisande had been old, her scales dull with age. This beast shone diamond bright. He dipped his head in respect and spoke into her mind.