Garnet Lacey - Dead If I Do Part 19

I walked away without answering. I started putting on my jacket, which hung by the front door. When I had one boot on, Sebastian opened the door.

"Where the h.e.l.l is she?" he stomped through to the kitchen, going right past where I knelt by the door. "There's no one in the barn."

"What?" Matyas's voice had none of his usual smarmy self-righteousness.

"You stupid boy. She's gone."

"We have to find her."

I was halfway to the kitchen, when I heard the back door slam. "Sebastian?" I called. I expected to see Sebastian sitting dejectedly at the kitchen table or pacing back and forth in front of the door. But the room was empty. Barney padded after me, looked around, and sat down in front of her food bowl. "Sebastian?"

Walking over to the door, I pulled aside the curtain to try to catch sight of them. The barn stood like a shadow in the breaking dawn. Snow fell in thick sheets. I opened the door. The snow flew in. My shout was m.u.f.fled by the storm. "Sebastian?"

Barney mewed pitifully.

"They left without me," I told her.

She licked her whiskers and looked at her bowl.

"I can't believe they left without me." Shutting the door, I poured some kibbles into her bowl. She started crunching wetly. I petted her head, even though she rippled her back in clear indication that she would like to be left on her own with her breakfast. Even my cat didn't want me.

Yawning, I sat back on my heels. I rubbed my eyes. They felt scratchy and sore. I hadn't slept at all, and I had an afternoon shift at the store tomorrow, no, today. I should go after Sebastian and Matyas. My eyelids closed for a moment, and I nearly fell over.

I pulled myself upright, determined to at least pa.s.s out in bed for a couple of hours. Halfway up the stairs, I heard what sounded like a cow lowing. Then I remembered my parents were having noisy s.e.x on the second floor. Turning around, I flopped down on the couch. I pulled the comforter over my head. "I can't believe they left without me," I muttered. I was angry and hurt but too d.a.m.ned exhausted to do anything about it. Barney hopped up to settle on my shoulder just as my eyes closed.

Matyas was waiting for me in my dreams.

He was sitting in the seat next to Orlando Bloom on the number six city bus. Meanwhile, I was in a full Princess Diana wedding dress, stuck in the standing room only crowd with my hand on the overhead bar. I was desperately late for a fitting or the wedding or a high school cla.s.s I forgot to take, but as soon as I saw Matyas sitting there in that black trench coat, I knew it was all a dream.

Matyas is the boogeyman.

His people have some kind of fancy name for him that translates into "moon thief" or something like that. All I know is if you get that creepy feeling that someone is watching you in your dreams, it's probably Matyas.

I sat down next to him. Orlando, sadly, disappeared with little more than an I 'll-see-you-in-another-dream wave. The bus became a park bench in the Como Zoo's Conservatory in Saint Paul. It was a favorite hangout of mine when I lived in the Twin Cities, because no matter what the temperature outside, inside the Conservatory it was always eighty degrees and steamy.

Water dripped from palm fronds. Condensation covered the plate-gla.s.s ceilings. The place smelled of warm dirt and green growing things. I tucked a bit of the dress under my legs and lifted the veil to peer at Matyas. "I didn't think you could come into dreams unless you were sleeping too."

"Unconscious works too."

I nodded. Then a few seconds later I caught his meaning. I stood up and started pacing around the bronze fountain of a woman pouring water from an amphora. "Unconscious! As in knocked out! Oh my G.o.d, are you okay? Is Sebastian okay?"

I almost fretted myself awake, but Matyas put his hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me back onto the bench. I felt myself settling deeper into sleep. "I never saw you stand up," I told him. "How did you . . . ?"

"Dream logic," Matyas said. "It's kind of cool; once you get the hang of it, you can do almost anything."

"Are you okay?" I asked him. "I mean, where are you? Are you lying in a ditch somewhere? Will you get hypothermia?"

"I don't actually know," he said. "We followed my mother's magic trail across the cornfield."

Suddenly, the scene shifted, and we were standing out in the snow-covered field behind Sebastian's house. The nubs of tough, sheared cornstalks stood in orderly rows. Blowing snow made it difficult to see, but Sebastian raced ahead of us at superhuman speed.

Somehow, we could nearly keep up. I'd never run so fast in real life. It was kind of invigorating, the supple way my muscles felt as I athletically bounded across the ground.

"Is this how it feels when you run?" I asked Matyas.

"Only in dreams," he said with a wry smile. "In real life, I'm a lot more chuffed. My side aches, and I sweat. I can nearly keep up with him, but it's a lot of work."

I was a little disappointed because with each of Matyas's's words, I got the same sensations. Running was no longer easy. By the time we came to where Tereza and Sebastian stood together, we were nearly bent over with exhaustion.

Tereza was angry. Her fangs had dropped, and her eyes flashed with barely contained fury. As we recovered, we could hear her yelling over the wind, "You betrayed me."

Not good. "I don't know what you did to her in the barn," Matyas said to me, "But she wasn't happy about it. She thinks that Papa was complicit and that he was too cowardly to face her alone, so he sent his errand dog."

"Actually," I said, watching Tereza's lips move silently as Matyas gave his voice-over recollection of the conversation, "I think the word she used was 'b.i.t.c.h.' "

"Believe it or not, I was being nice," Matyas said.

"That's hard to believe," I said. "Now I know I'm dreaming."

"Ha-ha."

"So what happened next?" I asked.

"They started to fight," Matyas explained just as Tereza pushed Sebastian. I could see Sebastian straining not to hurt her, but Tereza wasn't holding anything back. She bit him in the arm like a shark closing in on a kill. Blood flew . . . and then everything went black.

"Wait," I said, standing in an unearthly darkness. "You're missing something. What happened? Did you faint?"

"I suppose I could have," Matyas said, "But it's not like I've never seen a vampire bite someone. I think . . . I'm not sure, but I think something explosive happened when Mother bit Papa, something neither of them was expecting."

"Something magical," I said. Lightning flashed in the darkness. "Because Sebastian's blood isn't normal vampire blood, it's magic. And partly Lilith since, well, since that night you and your Vatican pals tried to kill us."

Matyas gave me a raised eyebrow as if to remind me that he could have told the Vatican what he'd seen that night but didn't.

"Right," I said. "Have I ever thanked you for not, you know, telling them we weren't dead?"

"How do you know I didn't?"

I pursed my lips. "No one has come after us since. Besides, I know you have your problems with Sebastian, but you still-"

"If it is something magical," Matyas cut me off sharply, "it could have affected mother too. The sun will be up very soon."

"I need to find you," I said out loud, as I pulled myself awake. I'd fallen asleep the second my face hit the pillow. I hadn't even bothered to take off the one boot I'd gotten on.

Stumbling from lack of sleep to the coatrack, I pulled on the other boot clumsily. I grabbed my coat. I jammed my hat on my head and pulled on my mittens. If Matyas's vision of the weather outside was right, there was a serious storm raging out there. I pulled open the front door to near whiteout conditions.

Great. My fiance, his lover, and their son were all caught out in a blizzard. And the sun was about to rise.

A good farm girl knows that the dumbest thing you can do in a blizzard is go anywhere. Even walking a short distance like from the house to the barn can result in disaster. People have gotten lost in the blinding conditions of a blizzard and frozen to death before anyone found them.

Good farm girls, however, didn't harbor the G.o.ddess Lilith. I stepped outside and put my back against the door, even though the porch provided a bit of shelter. The wind whistled through the railings. Huge drifts of snow covered the area where the front steps should be. I closed my eyes and tried to calm my beating heart. Luckily, as tired as I was, it was fairly easy to fall into a trance. The hard part was actually staying on my feet and staying conscious.

That gave me an idea. Though I'd never tried to contact Matyas on the astral plane, I wondered if I could reach out to his dream self while in a meditative state. Matyas's bogeyman persona was a bit scarier than the real-life version. His face was often shadowed, and he always wore a long trench coat the color of a raven's wings. I imagined him appearing out of the whiteness, striding with that certainty and presence he seemed to only have in dreams.

"You rang?" he asked.

"The weather has gotten worse," I told him. "I need your help to . . . uh, find you."

"Aren't you asleep?" "Not entirely," I said. "I'm in a trance."

"Sleepwalking," he said.

I was hardly going to argue semantics with the bogeyman when Sebastian and company were lost in this storm. "You could be right," I said. "Does it matter as long as I'm mobile?"

He laughed at that, showing off crooked, sharp teeth. "No, I suppose it doesn't. Just make sure you stay upright."

"That's the goal," I said. I gestured for him to get going with a "Lead on, Macduff" half bow.

He stepped out into the whiteness, and suddenly we were at the scene of the fight. "You fell asleep," he said.

"What? Uh," I roused myself from where I'd slumped down against the door. "c.r.a.p, I wonder if I'm too tired for this?"

Matyas reappeared. "We don't have much time. I can feel myself fading."

"Fading?" I asked. "But you're already out cold."

"I think cold is the problem," Matyas said grimly. "Unlike my parents, I'm not impervious to cold. I'm freezing to death."

That woke me up, or, rather, kept me from falling further asleep. For added strength, I called on Lilith. Her fire raced across my skin, warming me and rousing my magical senses.

Interestingly, with Lilith's added vision, Matyas's image softened. He appeared less demonlike, though he glowed with a pulsating purple aura so dark it almost seemed black. I got the sense that Lilith considered him a kindred spirit. Given that she was Queen of h.e.l.l, I wasn't sure that comparison actually flattered Matyas.

"Well," said Matyas with a look that swept me from head to toe, "Look at you."

I had no idea what he saw, but I didn't appreciate being gawked at by my fiance's son, no matter how old he might really be.

"Keep your eyes on the prize, kiddo."

"Yes, ma'am," Matyas said with a mock salute and a click of his heels.

This time, when we stepped off the porch, the first thing that happened was that I sank into snow up to my knees. Apparently, I missed the step entirely. Not that it mattered much in the drifts. I pushed through some that were hip high, only to stumble into patches only ankle deep.

Matyas led the way, sometimes disappearing as the cold momentarily jolted me out of my trance every so often. He was always there, waiting patiently when I returned, though his face was growing frightfully pale. "Hang on," I told him. "I'm going as fast as I can."

Although what I was going do with them when I found them, I had no idea. Then, I remembered: Matyas had left without his coat. I could at least cover him with mine, and maybe, if I could rouse Sebastian or Tereza, they could help me carry him back.

But without him to guide us, would we be able to find the farm?

At last we reached the spot where the fight had taken place. I knew we'd arrived because, in the trance state, Matyas indicated the spot with a freeze-frame of the last thing he saw: Tereza's teeth sinking into Sebastian's arm.

"I need to go," Matyas said weakly. "I need to sleep."

"No," I told him, reaching out the way he had in my dream. "You need to stay with me. Stay separate, if you have to. Then, if your body dies . . . Well, maybe we can find a way to reconnect you."

"Are you serious? What if you can't?"

"At least part of you would be alive," I said.

"Wandering around in people's dreams for all eternity? Sounds like h.e.l.l. I think I'd rather die."

"Don't die," I said. I wanted to tell him how fond I'd grown of him and how much he meant to me, but I was worried that if I got all sentimental, he'd shut down on me again, like he had when I'd tried to remind him that he still loved his father. So instead, I said the one thing I knew would p.i.s.s him off so much he'd refuse to die. "It would ruin my wedding."

He growled in a nightmarish way, and his image sharpened.

"Hold on to that thought," I said, shaking myself awake.

I could hardly see them. Someone's arm-I thought it might be Matyas's by the pale, almost bluish tint to it-stuck up out of the snow. When the fingers curled painfully slowly to give me the finger, I knew it must be. Frantically, I began to dig. Even as I pulled snow off his body, I wondered if I should let it blanket him. Was it worse to be exposed to the wind? Despite my doubts, I couldn't stop digging. I had him uncovered in a matter of minutes.

The snow had stopped coming down quite so hard. Though it still fell in furious sheets, I could now clearly make out a second, funny-shaped pile of snow that probably contained Tereza and Sebastian.

I shimmied out of my coat and tossed it over Matyas. I rubbed at his exposed skin to try to warm it. The vampires, I knew, would be safe under the snow. Tereza might even be mostly protected from the sun. However, despite the snow, the sky had begun to lighten. Dawn had arrived.

After what seemed like a lot of rubbing, I pulled Matyas upright and hugged him close to me. Lilith turned up the heat of my body until my nerves felt almost painfully scorched. Steam rose around us in huge puffs as the snow hit my overheated skin and turned to steam.

Matyas stirred.

"Oh thank the G.o.ddess, you're alive," I said. Tears came to my eyes. I didn't realize just how grateful I'd be at this moment. I think I even kissed his cheek and pulled him closer.

"Uh, I'm being mauled by my future stepmother."

Now I wept in earnest. Matyas hated the idea of my marriage to Sebastian; I never thought I 'd hear him acknowledge it, not even in a wisecrack. "I love you," I said.

"Stop," he said, pushing away from me. Even so, I saw him smile as he said, "You're going to make me sick, and I don't think my body can take that kind of strain."

"We need to get you to shelter," I said. "You're not out of the woods yet."

"But what about them?" He pointed to the place where I thought Sebastian and Tereza were buried.

"The snow is only going to get thicker. They'll be safe until nightfall."

"That's twelve hours from now!"