Waking Dreams (A Soul's Mark Novella) (5 page)

Mitchell eyed him again, and Eric figured
that Mitchell had finally realized that Eric had no idea what he was talking
about, because he let out a deep sigh and leaned back in the chair, letting his
arms dangle over the armrests.  “Eric, I’m asking if she had the soul’s mark.” 
His tone was crisp and clipped.  “But clearly, you must not have been listening
when I told you about it.”

A frustrated growl rumbled through Eric. 
“Well, tell me now,” he said through clenched teeth.  “What is the soul’s mark
and what does it have to do with Megan?” 
Darn it! Why did I say her name!

Mitchell arched an eyebrow and smirked. 
“Megan?” he questioned.

Eric growled in frustration, and all he
could see was red.  “Just get on with it,” he spat venomously.  Mitchell’s
smirk was irksome.  Maddening.

Mitchell sighed, and shook his head in
disappointment at Eric’s lack of control, Eric assumed, because the look he was
getting was definitely the one Mitchell gave when he lost control over his
emotions.

After what felt like ages, Mitchell cleared
his throat and said, “It’s a witch’s curse.  As I told you before, about fourteen-hundred
years ago, a vampire killed a witch’s lover.  Out of revenge, she stripped all
vampires of their souls, leaving them as soulless monsters with no humanity. 
Mother Nature corrected it.  She linked our missing souls to our soulmates
through the soul’s mark, the alchemy symbol for soul, which would have appeared
on our soulmates necks when we became vampires.  The mark gives us a connection
to our humanity and ultimately to them.”  He said the whole thing in one breath
with a methodical air, as if he was reading a well-rehearsed speech.

Eric’s throat was tight and his mouth,
dry.  There was something in Mitchell’s little speech that sounded vaguely
familiar, and Eric was pretty sure he should be drawing some kind of
connection, but he wasn’t.   His mind was a blank slate.  “What does this have
to do with my dream?” he asked.

Mitchell smiled—a little.  “Everything …
and possibly nothing at all.”

Eric jumped up from the bed and advanced on
Mitchell, towering over him as he sat, relaxed, in the armchair.  “Do you
realize how infuriating you are?” he yelled down at Mitchell.  “Can’t you just
give me a straight answer?  Why does everything have to be a bloody secret with
you?”

“Calm down, Son,” Mitchell said, and rolled
his eyes.

But Eric couldn’t.  Suddenly, terror spiked
through him, rushing through his veins in a burst of heat.  Lightheadedness
overtook him, and he stumbled.  Eric reached out, gripping onto the window
ledge as he fought against the dizzying blast.  His head spun, his heart raced,
and darkness began seeping in around the edge of his vision.  He blinked
furiously, fighting against the gray fog that was settling over his eyes.

Someone screamed.  It was loud and quiet all
at once.  An echo vibrating through his brain.  And it was familiar.  The
voice, even with the panicked screams, sent shivers and sparks through his
body. 
Megan.

“Eric,” Mitchell said, his voice filled
with concern.  He shot out of his chair and began inching towards Eric slowly,
cautiously, as if he was scared to move too fast.

Eric opened his mouth to say something, but
his voice lodged in his throat.  Megan screamed again and again and again, and
in the back of his mind, Eric swore he could see her running.  Her face was
tear stained, and her hair was flying wildly around her shoulders.  Her eyes
were wide and terrified, and she kept glancing over her shoulder as if someone
was chasing her.

She stumbled, falling to her knees, and then
clenched her hands to her chest.  Looming shadows were closing in on her.  Big,
dark figures, wearing cloaks.  “They’re going to hurt her,” Eric blurted.  What
was happening to him?  How could he be seeing her as if he was standing right
in front of her?  The image in his mind was so crisp that it was as if he could
reach out and touch her.

“Who?” Mitchell demanded, and for half a
second, Eric looked at him, and when he did, he was sure he saw trepidation in
Mitchell’s eyes.

“The … the … I don’t know,” Eric wailed in
frustration.  “She fell, and there are shadows …” Eric caught a glimpse of a
hand, and he growled.  “They have bows and arrows.”

Mitchell grabbed his shoulders, and shook
him roughly.  “Eric, you have to stop thinking about her.  You’re going to pull
her to you.”

“I have to help her!” Eric shouted,
thrashing about as he tried, unsuccessfully, to get Mitchell’s hands off of
him.  All at once, he drew the lines that he hadn’t been able to connect before. 
She was real.  She was his.  And someone was trying to hurt her.  He didn’t
know why or how he knew this, but he did.  He could feel it in his bones, in
his heart, in his essence.  She was his soulmate.

As if Megan knew he was watching, in that
moment of realization, she shifted her head, giving him a clear view of her
neck, and it was there—the mark—a black figure eight with a solid line passing
behind the bottom loop. 
His soul’s mark.

“Then you have to let her go,” Mitchell
said sternly.  “She needs to keep running.  Trust me.”  There was desperation in
his voice, as if he was begging Eric to listen.  “You need to stop watching and
let her run.”  He paused for a second, and his eyes misted.  “Please stop,”
Mitchell pleaded.

But Eric couldn’t.  He had no control over
whatever was happening.  He didn’t understand it.  Why couldn’t Mitchell see
that?  Eric watched helplessly as Megan’s body began to separate, as if her
spirit was leaving her, and suddenly a wavy image of her floated above as her
body collapsed to the ground.

Eric cried out, terrified, and his body
began to shake.

“Mr. Carter?” Megan screamed, panicked. 
Her voice filled the room, and her erratic heartbeat hit Eric’s ears like a
punch in the gut.  He swiveled his head, following the sound, and he sucked in
a startled breath.  Her green eyes were piercing and full of alarm, and her
blood red curls, untamed.

Mitchell cursed.  And then, in a swift
motion, he grabbed Eric’s chin and twisted, and everything went black.

****

Eric woke up with a start.  His neck
snapped and popped, and he could feel his spine piecing together under his
skin.  His neck muscles tightened, and with another uncomfortable snap, they
loosened again.  He gasped, and the air burned through his lungs as if he had
been holding his breath for hours.  His eyes began to water, and he scrubbed at
his face. 
What the hell happened?

“Eric, I want you to check on Megan,”
Mitchell said.

Eric dropped his hands from his face, and
shifted his gaze to Mitchell.  He was sitting at the edge of his bed, with a
grim expression, and he wouldn’t meet Eric’s eyes.

In a split second, everything came racing
back.  The soul’s mark.  The curse.  Megan.  She had been scared.  She had been
here.  His eyes blazed, and his fangs snapped down.  “What did you do?” Eric
demanded.

Mitchell cringed, and shuffled around on
the bed uncomfortably.  After a moment, he took a deep breath and said in a
rush, “You pulled her spirit here, so I broke your neck.”

“You what!” Eric seethed.

“I needed to break the connection.  If
someone was chasing her, she had to keep running, and she couldn’t do that if
she wasn’t in her body,” Mitchell said, as if it was simple logic.

“Where is she?”  The words came out in a
growl, and Eric glared at Mitchell. 
I can’t believe he broke my neck!

“I don’t know,” Mitchell said, his calm and
controlled demeanor back in place.  He tossed up his hands and waved them
around. “Hence, why I want you to check on her.”

“How in the hell am I supposed to do that
if you don’t even know where she is?  She was just here!”  Eric had seen her. 
She had been here which meant, obviously, that no one was chasing her.

Mitchell nodded.  “In a way, yes.  I’ll
explain it all, but first you need to see if she is okay.  Take a deep breath,
close your eyes, and look for her.”

Eric did what he was told for two reasons. 
One: he really wanted to make sure Megan wasn’t just an illusion.  And two:
Mitchell was getting annoyed, and that never ended well.

When Eric closed his eyes, Mitchell said,
“Now, when you find her, try to pick out anything around her that will help you
track her location.  If she falls again, drop the thought.  I don’t want you
bringing her back here in case she is still in trouble.  She needs to stay with
her body.”

It made no sense to Eric, but he did as he
was told.  He couldn’t say how long he sat there trying to visualize Megan.  It
felt like hours, but no matter how hard he thought about her, he saw nothing. 
Only blackness.  He was just about to give up when he heard a soft whimper. 
There was some crunching, as if someone was walking on gravel, and then a
thud.  A gasp and skin slapping skin.

“Eric, stop!” Mitchell said.  “Stop!”

The sun rose and then it set, and still
Eric didn’t have any answers.  Not that Mitchell hadn’t tried to give them, he
had.  It was just that Eric couldn’t concentrate.   He couldn’t seem to wrap
his head around the idea that the girl of his dreams was actually real, alive,
and out there somewhere.  And it really didn’t help that every five minutes
Megan was screaming, and each time she did, it wrecked havoc on his heart. 
Mitchell said it was a good thing that she was screaming.  It meant that she
was still alive, but Eric couldn’t stand her feeling so scared.

“So you don’t have any idea where she is?”
Lola asked for at least the hundredth time.

“No,” Eric said, and he ran his hands
through his hair.  Luke, Lola, Angelle, and Mitchell sat around the round oak
kitchen table staring at him.  They were all giving him a look that said they
didn’t believe him.  Did they really think he would be sitting here with them
if he knew where she was?

“Well, you need to find her,” Angelle
chirped, as if it was the first time it had been said.

When Mitchell said that the soul’s mark
gave a vampire a connection to their soulmate, he hadn’t been lying.  From what
Eric understood, his soul was in Megan, and the mark allowed him to use his
soul to, in a sense, push hers out of her body.  When that happened, he could
then call her to him.  Mitchell explained that this usually only happened while
the vampire and soulmate were asleep, like a vivid dream.

In the dream state, Eric could also use the
mark to force his soul out of her body for a limited amount of time.  And this
was exactly what Mitchell wanted him to do.  If Eric did, then he would appear
where she was, and he might be able to narrow down her physical location.

“I can’t try if we are both awake, now can
I?” Eric snapped, frustrated and annoyed, and maybe a little hungry.

Since Eric seemed to have absolutely no
self-control, Mitchell had insisted that he needed to learn some.  He claimed
that it would help find Megan, and self-control was allegedly the only way
their race could survive, although Eric thought his father was just trying to
punish him.  For what, he didn’t know, but there always seemed to be a reason. 
All he wanted to do was find Megan, but each time he did, Mitchell would force
him to stop, and Eric was really getting tired of having a broken neck.  Eric
knew Mitchell was doing it to keep Megan safe.  The only times he had been able
to grip onto her spirit was when she was running for her life, but still, it
was infuriating.

They had wandered around Willowberg for ten
hours in the frigid snow while Mitchell introduced him to fear, love, and
anger.  Forcing the emotions on him and making him breathe in the scents that
came from them.  And then, when Eric thought he would surely die of starvation,
Mitchell had forced him to walk away.  Walk away from the pounding hearts, the
sound of blood quickening in their veins, and not give in to the temptation.

It had been the worst lesson yet.  There
was something about the strong emotions that made the blood sweeter. 
Alluring.  Magical.  Just the thought of it made his teeth sharpen, ripping
through his gums like thick needles through flesh.  And with all the insane
emotions he was feeling with Megan’s fear rupturing inside him, mixed with the
lesson, he was famished.

But the lesson, not that Eric would ever
tell Mitchell, had worked.  When Megan screamed, it was easier to keep control
and let her run instead of bringing her to him.

“You actually saw her?” Luke asked Mitchell,
his hazel eyes questioning.

“No,” Mitchell said, shaking his head.  “I
didn’t have time to look.  But she was here, and as soon as I heard her voice,
I
stopped
him.”

“How?” Luke asked simply, before Eric had a
chance to spit out exactly what he thought of Mitchell
stopping
him.

“Before the fire …” Mitchell started, and
then stopped, swallowing hard.  He glanced out the window, but by the look on
his face, Eric was pretty sure Mitchell wasn’t actually seeing anything.  The
silence grew thick in the air, and Eric noticed that the others were looking at
Mitchell with deep sympathy.