I stood under the stream, letting the heated mist curl around me, breathing in the steam like a balm, allowing the familiar pulse of the water to soothe the prickling unease that had followed me down the mountain. By the time I finished, I almost felt human. Quite a feat, considering I wasn’t.
The door opened and then closed. Beyond the filmy white shower curtain, the shadow of a man loomed. Though I assumed it was Sawyer, I leaned down and palmed my knife, which I’d laid on the lip of the tub.
“We need to talk,” I said.
The only answer was a long, rolling growl. Not a wolf. More like a big cat. Again.
My head tilted. “Luther?”
This time my answer was a roar that shook the mirror over the sink. Not Luther. A bigger, badder lion.
I glanced at the blade in my slick hand, wishing I hadn’t left the gun loaded with silver bullets in the duffel bag. The knife was going to be tricky in such close quarters.
Suddenly the shower curtain was yanked violently from the rod and I stood face to chest with a man I’d never seen before: tall and broad, his skin as dark as the continent his ancestors had roamed and his eyes as golden as his shaggy hair. Even without the rumble that continued to roll from his throat, I’d have pegged him for a lion shifter.
“Where is de boy?” he asked.
“What boy?” I stalled.
The man let out another roar, snatched the knife from my own hand with speed that blurred even for me and planted it in my chest.
Why did every evil thing want to stab me in the chest? I have to admit it was a pretty big target, but come on. Be original. Try a kidney, the jugular, something, anything, else. None of those shots would truly kill me anyway.
However, the pain made me drop my guard, and the still-roaring lion man knocked my head against the ceramic tile. I heard the thunk and watched as the world fell away. My temple conked the lip of the tub as I went down, and I slid along the smooth side, coming to rest with my neck at an odd angle.
The water that swirled past me ran a rainbow of reds—maroon to fuchsia, fuchsia to petal pink. My heart thudded, stuttered, almost failed, and the rainbow began all over again—maroon, fuchsia, pink.
I needed to remove the knife. I wasn’t going to be able to heal with that stuck inside of me. But I couldn’t seem to lift my hand.
I watched the water’s rainbow swirl and wondered absently what would happen next. I couldn’t die, but I couldn’t heal.
And by the way . . . where was that lion man?
Right before I lost the last thread of consciousness, I heard a distant roar, followed almost instantly by a sound that made me fight against the dark spots overtaking my vision.
A second roar, a familiar one.
Luther.
“No,” I whispered. But, as usual, no one was listening.
The kid wasn’t ready for this. Someone had to help him, and the only someone available right now was me.
I managed to grip the side of the tub, even pulled myself half over the edge before the dark spots dancing in front of my eyes collided, and then the whole world went black. But it didn’t stay black for long.
During most of the occasions when I’d almost died—yes, I did this a lot—I awoke in the dreams of others. The ability was known as dream walking, and I’d caught it from Jimmy.
In the land between life and death, the place where dreams live, I would be drawn to the unconscious meanderings of the one with the answer to my most desperate question.
Opening my eyes, I expected the darkness to end, but the world was black. The air was hot, yet I was so cold, and something smelled really, really bad.
I tried to sit up and rapped my head against a very low ceiling. Lying back, I felt along my prison, the sides, above, behind. Surrounded by solid walls covered with satin, and when I stretched my feet, my toes—oddly bare—brushed satin too.
“Hello?” I shouted, startled to discover I had an accent—melodic, deep and dark and foreign. How strange.
Usually when I dream walked, I found myself in a person’s head. I could talk with them. I could stroll through the corridors of their mind and peek at things they didn’t want anyone to know. This was the first time I’d actually been the person whose dream I’d invaded. I couldn’t say that I cared for it.
I was trapped. Closed in. Buried.
My mind spun; a chittering insanity threatened. I slammed my hands against the roof, and a loud crack split the silence. Dirt sifted across my face.
Arise. The word drifted through my head, a faraway, maddening whisper. The time is here.
A compulsion, sudden and impossible to ignore, filled me. Before, I’d desperately wanted to get out; now I just had to.
I clawed upward, a nearly impossible task, through six feet of hard-packed earth. My nails broke; my fingers ached, as did my legs, which I kept pushing against whatever lay beneath. My heart beat a rapid and painful cadence. My ears and nose, my mouth and eyes, were stifled by dirt.
This journey brought back memories of my descent into the Otherworld, confusing me a little, because that memory was mine and this was . . . not. I’d never been two people before. If the body I inhabited now actually was people, and I didn’t think so.