Dreams of Shreds and Tatters Part 13

"His having a knife in you wasn't reason enough?"

She shivered, hunching tighter. "He was-" Only trying to write it down.

"Dead?" Lailah said instead. "Yes."

Rae swallowed. "Am I... dying?" She couldn't be dead yet: her pulse beat too hard in her throat.

"No. But something's not right, either. I can still smell the mania in you." Her mouth pinched at the corner.

Rae stifled a sigh at the familiar disapproval. This wasn't quite the same as arguing about smoking pot with straight-edgers. "The taint. Is that what Rabia meant?"

A dark shape flickered in front of the car, skirting the edge of the lights. Lailah swore and tapped the brakes, but when she flipped on the brights the road was empty again. Rae's neck p.r.i.c.kled as she clutched the shoulder strap; she knew that liquid darkness.

The car slowed, engine quieting. Wings rushed softly overhead. "Bat country," she whispered.

"They're following us. Hunting."

"Hunting what?" She swallowed hard in Lailah's silence. "Me?

Why don't they do something?"

"Traveler's luck. Motion gives you purpose, purpose gives you strength. If we stop, though..." The shape pa.s.sed them again, light teasing a lithe oil-black body. "Should I give you to them?" It sounded more an honest question than a threat, but wasn't any more rea.s.suring.

Rae's fingers poked through the weave of the yarn. "You saved me in the alley. Doesn't that mean you're responsible for me now?" Lailah laughed, low and bitter. "I guess it does. All right then- hang on."

She floored the gas.

11.

Black Horizons

ALEX TRIED TO convince Liz to go to bed a dozen times, but sleep was the last thing she wanted. Hours past midnight she still sat curled on the sofa while he paced, picking at a mangy grey gum scar on the blue upholstery and breathing in the faint mustiness left by the dozens of people who'd sat there before her. If she kept her left hand still in her lap, she could almost ignore the pain.

She couldn't ignore the memory of the woman lunging at her, bearing her down. Sharp teeth closing in her flesh. Heat and pain and pooling blood. A dead woman's flesh leaking across wet asphalt.

Open the door .

A shadow pa.s.sed between her and the lamp and she flinched, but it was only Alex. By the way he looked down at her, one eyebrow c.o.c.ked, she realized he must have spoken.

"What?"

His lips thinned. "I said, what was that woman talking about? You understood her."

His accent was thicker, the words too precise. She could smell the liquor filtering through his skin. When she didn't answer he started pacing again.

"Dreams," she said at last. "She was talking about my dreams."

He stopped and his mouth opened and shut with a snap. Then he fell into a chair. A coin appeared in his hand and he began walking it across his knuckles. His unoccupied hand clenched against the arm of the chair.

"How?"

"I don't know." She sat up straighter, wincing as her hand shifted.

"Liz-" He shook his head, gla.s.ses flashing. "I want to understand this, but you have to give me something to work with."

"Like what?" Her voice cracked, leaking frustration. "I dream of Blake, see him drowning over and over again. There's a door in my head that leads to him, but I can't hold on long enough-"

"To what? Save him? You can't keep doing this, blaming yourself. You're making yourself sick."

"This isn't a delusion! And that woman saw it too."

"That woman was drugged out of her f.u.c.king mind." He stopped over-enunciating and the edges of his words softened and slurred. "She saw whatever the h.e.l.l it is junkies see, and you latched onto it because you can't let this go. Because you care too b.l.o.o.d.y much."

Her scratched cheek stung with her flush. "It's a h.e.l.l of a lot better than the alternative."

The coin fell from Alex's fingers, winking as it rolled under the table. He uncoiled from his chair before it stopped moving. His hand closed on her left forearm and she squealed in pain.

"You think I don't care? I care about you. And this"-he shook her arm and she squealed again-"is no dream." His eyes narrowed, red and glossy behind his gla.s.ses. "We were lucky. I didn't come here to see you end up in the hospital too. Or worse."

She jerked her arm away, rubbing the red mark his fingers left. The bite throbbed, sharp and nauseating. "I know that," she snapped, fighting back an angrier retort. He was worried, and scared, and that bothered her more than any anger or disbelief.

He yanked his hand back, as if realizing what he'd done. "We can't stay here forever. We have school, jobs. Lives, even if yours isn't as dear to you as it should be."

She swallowed the sour taste of nerves, her stomach roiling. Argument was just as sickening as her swollen hand. "I know," she said softly. "We still have a few more days."

Alex stared at her as if he could read her unspoken thoughts beneath her skin. "Would it be so easy for you to give up everything? To throw your life away to help someone else?"

"Not easy."

He nodded slowly. "But you'll do it anyway."

"Alex, please. You're drunk, and we're both exhausted. Can't we talk about this in the morning?"

A muscle twitched in his jaw. "You're right," he said at last, his diction sharp as a slap. "I am drunk, and I'm going to sleep it off. I'd suggest you do the same, but we know how much good that would do."

Before she could think of a reply, he walked away. He didn't slam the bedroom door, but it echoed in her chest all the same.

ANOTHER HOUR CREPT by, and another. Liz huddled under the scratchy blanket, all the lamps turned off but one. Her eyes ached, dry and raw, but sleep wouldn't come. Beneath the churning growl of the heater, Alex's breath rasped from the other room.

She wanted to go to bed, to curl into his warmth and to h.e.l.l with dreams, but she couldn't. Not pride-not only pride, at least-but a sick dread. He would leave. If she didn't find Blake soon, didn't do something, he would leave. She couldn't blame him-she was still amazed he'd come with her at all, that she hadn't had to face this alone. But it couldn't last.

Blake couldn't last. Even if the thing in the darkness didn't swallow him, how long could machines keep him alive? How long would the hospital bother?

The curtains swayed in the heater's draft. Wind whistled past the windows and her thoughts chased their tails.

Blake's painting, Carcosa, the King, mania. There was a thread in all of this to lead her though the maze, she just had to find it.

The girl at the cafe and her scattered tarot cards. The Hanged Man-sacrifice and resurrection-and the Tower.

I have seen the towers of the lost city, Yves said. She saw his face as Blake had painted it, his eyes seared and empty. Aldebaran is his star.

Aldebaran. She tried to remember her astronomy cla.s.s, wishing she had Alex's memory. Part of Taurus, she thought, or maybe the Hyades. And weren't the Hyades the nymphs who watched over the infant Dionysus? She straightened, a tiny burst of endorphins pushing away her fatigue.

Liz stood, wincing as blood tingled back into her feet, and wrapped the blanket around her shoulders. The wind was a razor's kiss as she opened the balcony door, slicing through cloth and flesh. She pulled the blanket tighter and peered up at the sky.

The rain had stopped and a tattered lace of clouds drifted over the sky, stained orange-grey by citylight. Through the gaps Liz found the three bright stars of Orion's belt and followed their line to Taurus and the vermilion gleam of Aldebaran. The bull's eye.

Concrete numbed her bare feet and the blanket snapped in the wind. What did it mean? What did that furnace of hydrogen and helium have to do with Blake?

Her good hand tightened around the ring. Open the door. The star pulsed brighter and she couldn't look away. Aldebaran drowned the lesser lights, drank them down, and she heard the song that echoed in the blazing fusion of its heart.

The world slipped.

Buildings shivered and changed, steel and gla.s.s twisting into stone. The railing in front of her vanished and she stood on a narrow ledge, her toes brushing empty air. Her stomach gave a vertiginous lurch as she looked down. It was a long way to fall.

She stood above a twilit city, beneath a bruised and lowering sky. Towers still rose around her, tall as Vancouver's skysc.r.a.pers. But sc.r.a.pe was too mild a word for these spires and steeples. Sky-gougers. Sky-renders. Clouds bled darkness where the summits ripped them open. Beyond the buildings, black water stretched to the horizon.

The light brightened by inches. Not a grey or golden dawn, but blood-red and burning. Aldebaran rose, swollen and simmering, and a breathless sound slipped between Liz's teeth. An ancient star, a dying star-it would swallow everything in reach before it spent itself and cooled. Fire-opal brilliance seared away the ocean mist and hot incarnadine light spilled between the city walls. The air was harsh with brine and a sharp chemical tang.

Shouts drew her attention downward, and she raised a hand to shield her streaming eyes. A wild procession leapt through the streets below, cries of euan euan eu oi oi oi carrying on the cloying breeze. The wind ripped at her hair as she watched, tugging at the blanket.

The procession wound toward the sh.o.r.e, where black waves lapped against the quay. The tide was rolling in. Two figures, one dark, one light, walked in the center of the panoply, a measured counterpoint to their companions' reckless caper. Leopards and other beasts prowled amongst the dancers, and the footsteps that echoed between the buildings sounded more like hoofbeats.

Euan euan eu oi oi oi! Ia ia oi oi oi!

"You're a long way from home, dreamer."

She startled at the voice and lost her balance. Warm hands caught her and pulled her back from the edge. She clung to Seker until the vertigo pa.s.sed, each panicked breath carrying the scent of sandalwood and bitter citrus.

"Careful," he admonished softly.

"What are you doing here?" She unclenched her fingers from his robes, biting her lip at the ember of pain pulsing in her hand.

"Watching the parade."

She looked back; the procession was nearly to the quay. "What's happening?" Seker only shrugged.

Steps led down to the water, and the dark figure and the light descended the glistening stair. Women, Liz guessed, from their slender shapes. One wore a white cowl; the other's hair spilled wild, tangled through with ivy.

Waves broke against the seawall, black as obsidian. When they rolled back, a pale shape lay motionless on the stones. The revelers howled and chanted as the women bent and dragged the flotsam away from the water's grasp. Naked limbs sprawled on the steps. Dark hair clung to a narrow white face.

"Blake!"

Seker's hand closed on her arm. "Quietly. You don't want their attention."

The chant swelled, echoing between the towers and across the water. Liz dragged her eyes off Blake for an instant to glare at Seker.

"You stopped me." Hearing his voice again, she was certain. "Twice I reached Blake, and twice you pulled me away."

He nodded, still holding her arm. She couldn't break his grasp. "It wasn't your time."

She looked down; the revelers hefted Blake's limp body and carried him back the way they'd come, the two women leading them. "Where are they taking him?"

Seker steered her around and pointed to a distant tower. More sky-wounding spires, taller than the rest, like carious yellow teeth piercing the clouds. Winged shapes circled their peaks, small with distance. "To the palace of the King." His breath was warm against her cheek.

Liz shuddered. Her hand throbbed in time with her heart. "I have to go there."

"Really?" He released her and she nearly fell. Her head swam. "Do you think you're in any condition to help him?"

"It doesn't matter. I won't leave him." The stone shook beneath her. Or maybe that was just her quaking knees.

"Already the dream tries to cast you out. You're not meant to be here, and you're not strong enough to stay."

She clenched her jaw and met his black gaze. "Then I'll have to be stronger."

His eyes narrowed. "Do you understand exactly what you're attempting? Every time some mad or foolish person finds their way here, the walls weaken. Every contact between Carcosa and your dreamlands-or your waking world-strengthens the King and his retinue that much more."

Liz swallowed. "So even now..."

Seker nodded. "Your presence here unravels the seams, even now."

Ice water filled her stomach. "I can't leave Blake."

"So loyal. So foolish." He smiled ruefully.

Her chin rose. "You can't stop me."

Now he laughed. "Oh, yes I can, dreamer. But I'll only give you three warnings. I won't hinder you again. For now, however, you must return."

"No!"

But he was gone, and Carcosa disintegrated under her feet. Red light burned her eyes and her mouth filled with blood.

She screamed as she fell.

IN SPITE OF his claims, Alex didn't sleep. Insomnia was an old friend. Sleep, like doctors' waiting rooms, was an unavoidable waste of time. He rarely remembered his dreams, save for the occasional anxiety nightmare. If he wanted to relive the awkward contretemps of adolescence he'd watch a teen comedy. Liz's oneiromancy was as alien to him as high school had been.