Dream Killers - Complete Season 1 (The Dream Killers Book 3) Page 12

  He gestured to the ground, an open question on his face.

  I couldn’t tell if it was dangerous or not. The hairs on the back of my neck weren’t—Holy fracked up dreams! Chills laced my back like a net.

  He must have seen something on my face. He pulled in his lips and punched the air beside him, his eyes roving the immediate area for a way around.

  We needed to get out of there quickly. The network of ice spread from my back, down to my legs and around the front.

  The ground opened up around Violet’s feet and she disappeared.

  Zoe’s mouth fell open as she clutched at Bo.

  He wrapped her in his arms and side-stepped quickly.

  Harper frowned, but didn’t stop playing.

  I peered down the hole Violet had fallen. Aether stared back, but there was more. A tunnel of sorts, like the roots of the willow the caravan had traveled through. Only this one was darker, lacking the alga to light the way. Streams of white light twisted in and out of the walls like tubers, tangled in the earth.

  Violet’s eyes were wide, her mouth moving, her feet dangling.

  I had to do something. I motioned for Bo to take Zoe and Harper and get out of there.

  Harper let down her bow and lowered her fiddle. Her face grew in intensity, her dark eyes narrowed. Wind whipped her fiery hair into a frenzy.

  She obviously wasn’t going anywhere.

  Zoe looked from Harper to the hole and back again. She pulled away from Bo and nodded once.

  I shook my head.

  The wailing of the trees rose again.

  The ache between my ears increased as I leaned forward. “You need to go!” I couldn’t even hear what I’d said.

  Zoe turned her attention to the hole and ignored me.

  I sighed at Bo.

  He shrugged.

  Right then. I edged my way to the rip in the dreamplane. A feral wind shot up through it, taking my breath away and raking my hair back.

  This was going to be a difficult climb. One wrong move, and we’d spin into the aether. What did that mean? It was to Dreamland what outer space was to Earth. I’d seen the commercials of Gravity. Without air? Without a propulsion source? Sure, this was Violet’s soul, but what would aether do to that?

  I tried to make Zoe leave again, but she refused to go, sending me an emotional punch in the face along with her defiant expression.

  Fine. I crawled to the edge as the ground shuddered again. I didn’t need the rift widening as I was attempting to lower myself into it.

  The wind kept me sucked to the ragged walls of the tunnel. It pulled at my shirt, tugging at my pants. At least it wasn’t trying to throw me off the wall. I held onto the glowing, pulsing white roots. As soon as my head dipped below the opening of the dreamplane, the sound of the trees disappeared.

  “I’m down here!”

  I twisted to see where she was. “I’m coming to get you. Just stay where you are.”

  She whimpered.

  I twisted toward the top of the shaft, and waved with one hand.

  Zoe was the first one down, the back of her afro pushed tight to her small head. She stopped next to me, holding onto the vines with a white-knuckled grip.

  “You didn’t have to join us, you know.”

  “I’m not leaving you.” She sent a jolt of emotions—fear laced with desperation and more fear.

  I gave her shoulders a quick squeeze.

  The root in my left hand jerked free.

  I let her go and grabbed hold with my right. Dirt crumbled around me, getting in my eyes. “Careful of what you hold onto.”

  A freezing cold finger touched my ear. “You’re bleeding.”

  I looked up and watched Harper descend, her fiddle strapped to her back. She stopped at Zoe and smiled before continuing her descent.

  Bo’s progress was nimble. It had to be due to his life on the sea.

  “Violet,” I yelled as I carefully found my next toe-holds, “how are you doing?”

  “I don’t want to die today.”

  I hadn’t met anyone who was ready to die. I concentrated on finding my footing.

  Zoe stayed above me. I helped her with her foot placement. She kept me in sight.

  The wind slammed me hard into the wall. I let out a puff of breath and blinked the pain away. “You okay, Zo?”

  She didn’t answer, but her foot lowered.

  Bo stayed even with her, keeping a watchful eye on her hands.

  “River!” Harper’s voice sounded frantic. “She’s getting farther away!”

  I looked under my arm. Violet was a good hundred feet or more away. I turned my gaze to the top. We’d descended hundreds of feet already. What was going on?

  I gripped the roots and thought. What did I know about Dreamland? What did I know about the tunnels? “Everyone stop!”

  Dirt fell on top of me as Zoe and Bo found their last toe-holds.

  I closed my eyes and reached out with my mind, feeling the tunnel. This had to be the tunnel system of this plane’s willow. She had to be dead, but then why were there portions of roots dangling about? Maybe she wasn’t completely dead, just separated from the rest of her root system. If that were the case, then where could we go from there?

  Sluggish intelligence answered. A muffled voice, tired and in pain entered my mind with a touch of curiosity.

  How do I get us out of here?

  A vision formed in my mind’s eye of the bay at the sea where I’d last seen Rulak.

  Can we get there from here?

  The vision opened and became black. A question darted forward. Where?

  The single word held more than a question of an address or location. She needed our Who’s and how they related to Place.

  I pulled away from the wall. “Harper, I need you up here with me.”

  She paused, but climbed the few feet to my location.

  I’d never given anyone a Who that wasn’t my own before. “I need you to touch me.” I looked at Bo. “Touch Zoe. Make sure it’s skin on skin.”

  Harper frowned and shimmied closer to me. “Are you a pervert?”

  On the face of a wind tunnel to outer space, she wanted to know if I was a pervert? I said nothing as I reached up and grabbed Zoe’s ankle.

  Her wings vibrated in another gust of wind. Her eyes met mine and confidence filled me.

  The muscles in my neck relaxed. Harper’s hand fell on my bare arm.

  I had to do this. I closed my eyes, grabbed the willow’s question of Who and sent it down my arm, through Zoe and to Bo, touching all of us.

  That didn’t give her Place of Where, though.

  I leaned into the wall, balancing awkwardly on the roots at my feet, and dug my free hand into the dirt wall. This is Where. How do we get out?

  Overwhelming sadness washed over me. My legs folded as I lost the drive to hold on. A rock sat inside my chest, heavier than I could hold.

  Harper shouted.

  Bo was suddenly beside me, holding me up, pushing me into the wall. He said something, his mouth close enough to my bleeding ear that I should have been able to hear his words.

  I didn’t care. I wanted it to end. I could do nothing, wasn’t strong enough.

  A tiny, icy hand touched my shoulder. Warmth crept like a knot work of growing vines, working its way into my heart, chasing away the sorrow.

  The willow jerked, pulled back. I could almost see her blink even though all I saw was black. Her intellect twitched, and then she sent me an answer.

  A Place of Where, a landline out of there.

  I SWALLOWED, gaining my bearings, pulling my mind away from her. She was so much more than anything or anyone I’d ever met. My mind spun. I leaned my head against the wall in front of me, my fingers flexing around the roots Bo’s hands forced me to hold on to. A wave of exhaustion ran down me like a bucket of cold water.

  “River!” Bo shook me. “River!”

  I raised my head and took in a strengthening breath.

  Zoe smiled and
patted my arm.

  Bo lifted himself off me and peered into my eyes, concern etching worried lines into his face. “Are you back?”

  I nodded. “I know where to go and how to get to Violet.”

  “What happened?” Bo asked, his voice gruff. A thick frown marred his face as he gripped the back of my skull, his teeth clenched. “Are you all right?”

  Was he trying to kill me or help? “I’m fine.” I waved him off, trying to gather my strength, amazed at how little I had left.

  “What happened?”

  I met his gaze. “Grandmother Willow. She’s a little much.”

  “You let go.”

  I kind of knew that. I’d been there, oddly enough.

  He looked up at Zoe, his lips tight. “Fine. Are you good to move on your own?”

  I’d better be. We had no other way out. “Just stay close to me. I have to use a kind of Place in order to make it to her. Without it, we could be climbing for days without making progress.”

  “You realize you didn’t make a bit of sense, right?”

  I grinned wryly at Bo and inched my way past him.

  He lifted himself out of the way so I could.

  I kept to a pace so that Harper and Zoe were never more than an arm’s length away. My soul latched onto the Place of Where Grandmother Willow had given me and held it like a safety line.

  The wind shot out at us again.

  Violet cried out and sobbed not far away.

  “Just keep holding tight,” I called. “We’re nearly there!” Looking at her from underneath my arm, I could see she was tiring. Her feet slipped off the roots. She kept resituating her grip.

  “I’ve been here for days! How much longer are you going to take?”

  I wanted to say that was a teenage exaggeration, but I knew where we were. It was extremely possible she’d been there longer than we had. If she’d been there for days, it was only a matter of moments before she lost the ability to hold on at all.

  I scampered down the chasm faster. With the Place of Where came other information, like just how dead we were if we fell off, which was entirely possible.

  We finally reached Violet. She was a sobbing mess, grasping for Harper’s hand. “What took you so long?”

  Harper resituated her hand on a root. “We’ve only been a few minutes.”

  I didn’t have time for hysterics. I could feel the tunnels tremble around me. We weren’t in a stable location and needed to get out quickly.

  Unfortunately, the quickest way out was down. The Where was tagged with “danger,” but what that was exactly, I wasn’t for sure. We’d just left a dangerous location. I only saw aether and stars, but according to Grandmother Willow’s directions, that was the best way out.

  I started the climb down. Violet babbled to Harper, but it took every ounce of concentration I had to maintain contact with where we were going. Place shifted with time. We moved a foot, and I watched as hours flew by just outside the rock walls. It was like staring through a filmy curtain.

  It made my head pound.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Bo asked, his boot nearly landing on my fingers.

  I grunted, but didn’t say anything else. I couldn’t afford losing the location. With the willow’s state of grief, it was possible I wouldn’t be able to get through to her again.

  “Shouldn’t we be going up?”

  I leaned to the side and looked past him. “Do you see the opening?”

  He followed my gaze. “Where the hell are we?”

  “In a wormhole. Kind of.” I really needed him to stop talking.

  I finally reached the Place of Where. The tunnel came to a stop, pale glowing roots dangling in space. We were met with aether. The tunnel itself curved upward a bit so that it wasn’t a straight vertical drop.

  Bo crouched beside me, staring into the great chasm of space. “Is this where we’re supposed to be? Seriously?”

  No. I looked around with a confused frown. My gut was solid with the fact that this was where we were supposed to be.

  What about when? Was this the When of Where?

  Not yet.

  Harper knelt behind me, Zoe next to her. Violet joined us, and we all sat, staring at the stars. There weren’t any floating dreamplanes, no towers of Dreamland. Just . . . stars.

  Something flashed—like an electronic pulse. A current rent through the air, crinkling and zapping along wires similar to the glowing roots in the tunnel.

  Only these were drawn together like a giant spider web.

  Bo reached out and touched one of the strings with his boot. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Nope.” I reached out my foot and carefully walked out, maintaining my hold of the roots.

  As soon as I did, the tunnel crept further away, the root with it.

  Zoe and Harper scrambled to follow.

  Violet stayed behind. She grew smaller and smaller as the tunnel grew farther away. “It’s not safe. I’m going to fall.”

  It was surprisingly stable for being a spider’s web in the middle of space. I bounced a couple of times, my arms out.

  Zoe put her arms out, her wings fluttering to life.

  Harper didn’t even bother with her arms. She simply stood, her knees half-way bent.

  Bo flattened his lips and leapt as the tunnel picked up speed. He grabbed Violet on the way out and landed lithely on the strong string.

  She slipped and screamed.

  He maintained a hold on her hand. The expression on his face was flat. He pulled her up and settled her on the webbing in front of him.

  The tunnel disappeared.

  “Where do we go from here?” Bo asked, frowning at Violet as she struggled to stand upright.

  I turned and took in the surroundings. I had no idea. Why would Grandmother Willow direct us here? There was nothing. Aether and spider web.

  If this was a web, where was the spider?

  In all directions, I saw stars, black void and webbing. The silk strands didn’t go in one direction, either. It went in all directions. We were in a cobweb.

  Where in the world were we?

  The answer didn’t immediately come to me. The Place of Where held no clues. The only thing I had was that this was the safest place the willow could lead us.

  I felt someone walk up behind me.

  Bo. He’d been several yards back thanks to Violet and her freak out. He stood behind Zoe on the same strand. “Where do we go from here?”

  I shrugged. “Does anyone else see land or something?”

  Everyone turned in different directions, searching.

  Bo hopped onto the thread next to us and grabbed another one at shoulder level to keep him upright. His body arched violently. His eyes rolled back. A strangled cry escaped.

  I hopped onto his thread and grabbed his arm.

  A million voices slammed into me, shoving visions at me faster than I could process. It was more than watching them, like in the sea of dreams. I lived them.

  I was about to turn thirty—the dirty thirty. All my good years were behind me and what did I have to show for it? Nothing. I had a car that didn’t work well. I had a DUI and had to blow in my car each time I put the key in the ignition. I had a boyfriend who thought the world of himself and nothing of me. But, man, was he good in bed. The things that man could do—

  I loved my dog. He was the coolest person I’d ever met. I didn’t get humans who thought animals weren’t people, too. I couldn’t respect them. Or those that made fun of me because I didn’t have pictures of kids in my wallet. I had pictures of my dog. Bucket and I went everywhere together. We really loved to hike and—

  My wife was the best thing that had ever happened to my best friend. I was so happy for them both, I could just about poke their eyes out—with an ice pick. The gall of Peter to tell me I needed to understand. That they hadn’t meant for any of it to happen. Right. Because they’d accidentally tripped into bed with each other. Like that—

  I hated my fathe
r. He was the biggest, most conceited human being I’d ever met. He was deceitful, manipulative. He was easily the ugliest person I’d ever met in my entire life. Not that I was that old. Forty wasn’t old, but I’d worked with assholes. People asked me where I’d worked before. I told them and they’d shudder. “How could you work there?” they’d ask. They’d never met my father. That’s—

  I couldn’t stand stupid drivers. Who in their right mind does twenty-five in a thirty-five, and why couldn’t people understand what a school zone was or why it was there in the first—

  A small, ice-cold hand landed on my shoulder, jolting me out of the—I didn’t even know what to call it. I blinked furiously, my gaze sharpening and glazing over again. Zoe stared up at me.

  Zoe.

  I dragged my mind out of the slush of dreams. My name was River.

  My name . . . was River.

  Harper had Bo. He wasn’t doing so great. He was folded over, barely balancing on the thin thread. Harper looked at me. “We have to get out of here.”

  Right. Just as soon as I figured out how. Tapping into the thread, I did learn a lot. It just took a lot to decipher what it was I’d discovered.

  We were in the dreamweb. Each thread led to a different dreamer. Different dimensions of Earth, different universes and dimensions of each planet. Billions and billions of dreamers. Gazillions. I didn’t even have words for the sheer number of threads I saw here.

  Each thread also attached to a location in Dreamland.

  Some led to dark places that made my soul shudder. I could only assume that was the Nightmare Realm. I didn’t need to escape the graveyard only to wind up in Dreamland’s version of Hell.

  Others led to dreamplanes. Living dreamplanes.

  From there we could get anywhere because Place worked. I mean, it really worked. Not like here where following Place meant taking a rope of Where and dragging oneself along it forever. No. Teleporting. Easy-peasy teleporting.

  Okay. I just needed one dreamer who could take us—

  A girl. Her name was Candace. Her friends called her Dice. She kind of liked it, but her mom refused to call her that. She’d named her Candace for a reason, and it wasn’t so it could be shortened to a game piece. She was stronger than a game piece anyway. She had intellect and smarts. Dice was luck with nothing else attached to it.