In The Dark Of Dreams Part 11

She did not move. "Are you real? Did I imagine all this?"

Perrin slid around her, studying the plastic strip binding her hands. "Your wrists are raw. Are you imagining the pain?"

He received no answer and set the blade against the restraint. Her skin was so warm. Definitely a fever, he thought.

"You're sick," he said.

"Later," she replied, voice strained. "I need to be free."

He cut the plastic carefully but caught her hands in one of his before she could pull them apart.

"Slowly," Perrin said, swallowing hard as her scent filled his nose. Fresh as the sea, and clean. He set down the knife and drew her back against his chest, wrapping his free arm across her upper shoulders. Her feverish warmth flowed into his body. "How long have you been bound?"

"Days," she said, stiff inside his embrace.

He wanted to kill A'lesander. "This is going to hurt."

She nodded, and he loosened his grip on her hands, just a little. Her breath hissed, and he held her tighter, bracing her shoulders against his chest as she spread her hands farther apart. Another small sound of pain escaped her.

"Easy," he murmured.

"You act . . ." she swallowed hard, breathless, " . . . like you've done this before."

Perrin smiled, knowing she couldn't see him. "You'll be sore for days, but it'll pa.s.s."

She was silent a moment. "I know your voice."

He stopped breathing and closed his eyes. When he did that, when all he could count on was touch and sound, it felt like the dream again, on the beach in the cold sunlight.

"How do I know your voice?" she whispered, trembling beneath his arm.

He didn't know how to answer her. Except, after a moment of dead quiet, a melody coursed through his head, and he hummed it. Just a few bars.

That was enough. The woman sucked in her breath, leaning hard against him-and then, with a hiss of pain, pushed away. She staggered across the room, arms hanging limp at her sides. Tangled red hair covered half her face, but he could see her eyes-wild, haunted, as though he had cut her with that song.

"You," she whispered.

"Me," he said, just as quietly.

She shuddered, backing away. He did not follow. His feet were frozen to the floor, just like his heart. All he could see were her eyes, the eyes he remembered from childhood and his vision-wide with wonder, then wide with rage, and now stormy with emotions he could not name, but feared. He was so afraid of her, of what it meant to find her. Now, of all times.

"I don't . . ." she began, and touched her head, swaying. She tried to speak again, looking at him with an urgency that made him step toward her. She held up her hand as though to stop him but didn't. Her eyes were turning gla.s.sy, blood draining from her face-which was hardly enough warning when her legs buckled. He dove to his knees and caught her. The base of his skull throbbed.

He cradled her close, breathing hard, pressing his hand against her brow. Her skin burned him, and she wouldn't open her eyes. The pain worsened in his head. So did panic.

"Come on," Perrin whispered, pulling her tight against his chest as he found his feet, awkward and unsteady. He didn't know where to take her, and the helplessness that hit him was almost too much to bear.

He finally remembered seeing a bed in some room he had pa.s.sed while dragging A'lesander. He made his way down the corridor, and the bed was where he remembered it: unmade, rumpled, thick with the Krackeni's scent. Turned Perrin's stomach to lay the woman on those sheets, but he did, and rushed to the nearby bathroom to wet a rag. He placed it on her brow. She never stirred.

Fevers killed. He knew that about humans. About himself, too. He had suffered terrible illnesses for his first several years on land. No immune system. Common colds were devastating. The seasonal flu, before he had learned about vaccinations, had nearly killed him.

Perrin rummaged through the bathroom drawers but found nothing useful for bringing down a fever. Nothing in the main cabin, either. The drawers were full of clothes and maps-cash in one, books, a pa.s.sport with A'lesander's picture in it-all the trappings of a normal human life, one that had been lived with ease and safety. Put a bitter taste in Perrin's mouth.

He checked the woman, flipping the rag to the cool side, and left the cabin. He needed to find aspirin, ibuprofen-even antibiotics. After that, radios. She needed a doctor.

Perrin pa.s.sed a metal door with a gla.s.s insert. Inside, he saw lab equipment. He entered, scanning the room, opening drawers. No first-aid kit, no medicine. He didn't give much thought to anything else he saw, though it seemed to him that this must be some kind of science vessel.

There was another door at the end of the room. He pulled it open, got hit with a blast of cold air-and stopped in his tracks.

A dead woman lay on a stainless-steel table. Not just a woman. A Krackeni.

He knew without getting close. Blood knew blood. She was long and white, and her hair was silver. He stared, breathless, leaning hard against the doorway. He could see her face where he stood. Not well, but enough.

Bile pushed up his throat, and he bent over, gagging. He couldn't stop. He vomited nothing but air and spit, so long, so hard, his throat and chest felt like they were going to crack open. Tears burned his eyes.

By the time Perrin stopped retching, he was on his hands and knees. He nearly had to crawl to reach the corpse. Reached up, tentatively, to touch a cold, still hand. He glimpsed her face-closer now, familiar-and looked away. He pressed his brow against the rim of the icy steel table. Scented death and rot.

"Pelena," he whispered, shaking. "Pelena, Pelena."

He finally managed to stand, his gaze falling upon gaping wounds, bruised flesh. A white sheet lay on the floor beside the table, as though someone had torn it off her body and not had enough respect to replace it.

I'm sorry, Perrin thought, suffering a trembling grief that he didn't know how to express. Gone eight years, and now this. He forced himself to touch that cold face, heart breaking as he traced a line against her familiar cheekbone.

And then, swallowing hard, he used both hands to turn her head-and felt the base of her skull.

He found a hole. But nothing else.

Perrin hadn't even realized he was holding his breath, but it left him in a rush. He picked up the sheet and very carefully pulled it over her body. He stood for a moment, staring at that long white lump-exhaustion bleeding into his bones.

He went to find A'lesander.

Still unconscious. Or just pretending. Perrin stood in the doorway, watching his old friend. He didn't have time for this, but he couldn't move. Too tired, in body and mind. It had taken him all night to get here. He was not as strong as he had once been, but being in the ocean was a better high than heroin, and the adrenaline that surged through his body was power enough to keep him going. Bittersweet though it might be.

He had been seen, of course. Sharks, small schools of fish-and from a distance, a pod of dolphins. He couldn't be certain any of them recognized him, but word would get around. Only a matter of time before one of his kind learned he had returned. No such things as secrets in the sea. Eyes everywhere. It pained him that he couldn't trust those eyes. Hurt more than he thought possible. Being home, in the sea, did not fill his heart with comfort as he had fantasized it would. It just made him feel emptier-and, perversely enough, homesick for land.

Perrin went to the bathroom and found plastic cups. He filled one with water, which he splashed on A'lesander's face. When that elicited little more than a twitch, he grabbed the Krackeni's broken nose and twisted. The Krackeni jerked awake with a scream.

"f.u.c.k," he gasped, tilting his swelling face to peer at Perrin. "Gonna torture me now?"

"Maybe," Perrin replied evenly. "I just saw my cousin's body."

A'lesander's gaze darkened. He had legs again, and lay on his stomach, arched backward to accommodate the rope around his neck and hands. No good way to hide his face, which he tried to do-jerking sideways, pushing his cheek into the floor. Perrin swayed closer, following him. Rage pulsed in his throat, but he swallowed it down. If he let go now, he wouldn't stop until A'lesander was dead. He couldn't afford that. Too many questions needed answering.

After that, anything was possible.

"Pelena," he said, voice breaking on her name. "She was always kind to you."

A'lesander's jaw tightened. "I don't know why you think I hurt her."

"Didn't you?" Perrin grabbed his shirt, hauling him close. "She was murdered. Any fool can see that from her injuries. Murdered, A'lesander. She was the only Guardian for this region, and her kra'a is gone." He jammed his fingers through the Krackeni's hair, feeling around the base of his skull. All he found was solid bone. No warm lump, no second heartbeat.

"I don't have it," A'lesander snapped, but there was a strangled note in his voice, like grief.

Perrin shoved him away. "But you tried. I know you did. What did you possibly think would happen if you harvested her kra'a? Did you think it would bond with you, simply because you willed it? You were rejected from the process for a reason. It takes -"

"I know what it takes!" A'lesander snarled, wrenching sideways. Not far, and the effort made him pant-but the hate and grief in his eyes was strong and too real. Perrin stared, and then leaned backward until his shoulders. .h.i.t the wall with a hard thud.

"You killed her for nothing," he whispered. "You must have known that. And you know, too, what happens next. What's happening even now. If someone-anyone-could find her kra'a, there might be time to bond another Guardian-"

"Like you?" A'lesander interrupted bitterly.

"No," Perrin breathed, head aching. "But there are always candidates. Even one of the children would be better than the alternative."

That earned him only silence. He stood, slowly, dragged down by despair. "I had a vision, A'lesander. I saw the darkness, and the awakening, and the end of things. I came here to deliver a warning-just in case. It was too important to risk doing nothing. And now I'm here, and the only person who could have prevented all those deaths is gone. Her kra'a is gone. Unless you do have it? Please . . . please say you do."

"I told you," A'lesander whispered, closing his eyes. "No."

Perrin wanted to kill him. Just looking at his face made him want to step on his throat until he stopped breathing. But he blinked, and looked again, and A'lesander was suddenly pathetic, broken. Not worth the effort, or stain, of becoming a murderer. Again.

"The woman is sick," he said. "I need to bring her fever down."

"Jenny?" A'lesander twisted around, finally meeting his gaze. "What's your interest in her?"

Perrin stared. "Is there medicine on this boat?"

He almost didn't answer. He took so long, Perrin began to back out of the room. At the last moment, though, he cleared his throat. "Her bathroom drawer, I think. Try that. And there's a first-aid kit near the radios. But those . . . I destroyed those."

"Of course you did," Perrin replied, ready to rethink his resolve not to crush his throat. "Anything else I should know?"

A'lesander wet his cracked lips. "The earthquakes have begun."

Perrin went still. "More than one?"

"I don't think so, but I can't be certain."

"Maybe this was what you wanted all along." He forced himself to walk to the bathroom and watched A'lesander's restrained body in the mirror. "But I never would have imagined it. You were spiteful, but not insane."

"Still not crazy," he muttered, hoa.r.s.e. "But some things just have to be done."

Perrin gritted his teeth and closed his hand around a bottle of ibuprofen. It had already been opened, some of the pills spilled on the counter. He scooped them back inside, replaced the cap, and walked out-refusing to glance at A'lesander. As he closed the door, the bound Krackeni said, "Why Jenny? How do you know her?"

Perrin finished shutting the door and reached for the wood bar. On the other side, A'lesander shouted, "You don't know who she is. Men will be coming for her. She's marked, Perrin. Hunted."

"Won't matter in a week," he mumbled, uncaring if A'lesander heard him. She might be safer out here than anywhere else.

He walked back down the hall to the room where he had left her. She curled on her side now, and the wet rag had slid off. She was still too warm. He cooled down the cloth and dabbed it against her brow as a nurse had done for him, long ago when he was still living in Sweden.

"Jenny," whispered Perrin, her name strange in his mouth.

He found water, shook three ibuprofen into his hand, and tried to wake the woman. She remained deep in sleep, and he gave up-moving a safe distance away, near the door. It was difficult being close to her. Difficult, in so many ways he hadn't antic.i.p.ated.

Fate, he thought. All those twisted knots, binding him so tight he couldn't breathe. Grief made it impossible.

Pelena was dead, and her kra'a gone. The others must have realized by now that something was wrong, and perhaps-perhaps, by some miracle-the kra'a had been found. If that was the case, then Perrin needed to do nothing at all. And if that was not the case . . . then nothing he did would matter.

Guardians soothed the dreams of the beast. And the beast was waking.

Chapter Seven.

Her skull burned. Dreams, hot with fire. Jenny rolled through a vast darkness cut by rivers of lava. Fissures cracked open, split apart by a heaving body so ma.s.sive, even a fragment of its scaled flesh loomed in the night like a mountain. When it breathed, the earth groaned; and when it twisted in its sleep, earth shattered and broke her bones.

"Come on," said a man, in her dream. "Hurry."

Jenny knew his voice and reached blindly for his hand. Nothing reached back. Her fingers slipped through air.

"Hurry," he said again, louder; and somewhere beyond his voice, thunder rumbled into a growl.

Jenny woke. Pushed from darkness to shadows. She glimpsed hair so pale it was almost silver, and stared, and stared. Confused, thirsty, sweat soaking her skin and clothes. She was afraid to move, watching as all that hair shifted, revealing a man with ice blue eyes-eyes that were impossible to look away from, though small details stood out on the periphery of her vision: high cheekbones, a firm mouth; his size, immense and rawboned. Faint white scars covered the edge of his face and chest. One looked like a bullet wound.

She remembered a melody, hummed softly.

She remembered everything else, too.

"Your fever broke," said the man, and picked up a plastic cup that looked ridiculously tiny in his hand. "You need to drink something. And take these."

He showed her the ibuprofen tablets. Jenny stared, struggling to focus-but all she could think of was the beach and a silver boy with a silver tail, and those blue eyes-eyes like the ones looking at her now. That alone would have been difficult enough, but his voice, the deep familiarity of it . . . as though she had listened to him speak for more nights than she could remember . . .

It's him, she thought, and then: No, impossible.

Despite everything she had seen in her life, despite the fantasies that had driven her from childhood onward, this was the one thing she couldn't believe was real. No matter how much she wanted it to be. Maybe the parasite was messing with her brain. Maybe she had finally cracked. Maybe, maybe.

"Hurry," he said.

Jenny sat up. Her shoulders hurt, but the weakness was everywhere, in her bones. She took the cup-uneasy when their fingers brushed. That felt real enough.

The water tasted bitter, metallic. She almost spat it out, but thirst raged, and she couldn't help but wet her tongue again. It was better on the second try. She drank the whole cup and swallowed the pills. The man watched her with frightening intensity, and she felt unaccountably small and fragile beside him-more so in her heart than her body.

"The radios have been destroyed," he said.

Jenny froze, about to ask for more water. "Les?"