I willed my arms to wrap around my midsection the way my host wrapped his, tucking them in place. It was probably bad manners to walk around with sharp blades at the ready, like walking through a shopping mall with a bowie knife in your hand. Other creatures like us floated by, trilling conversations about math that I couldn’t understand.
A sudden stabbing pain in my guts startled me. Was I sick? I slowed down. My host matched my new pace and played a short melody of sympathy. I knew immediately that this body was dying, and it was impossible to tell the difference between my host’s pity and self-pity.
What kind of screwed-up dream turned other people’s opinion of you into your own thoughts? I didn’t want to be here anymore. Maybe it would be better to wake up in the Hummer now.
We quickly reached a narrow opening in the ground. To my dream senses it was as impenetrable as any well or cave. My host told me to enter. Before I realized that it had been his thought, not mine, I was too close. Suction caught hold of me and dragged me inside, into the darkness.
Then I popped out like a kid at the bottom of a slide. I scuffed along the gritty stone floor and painfully managed to rise into the air again. My host popped out of the tube behind me with more grace. I felt clumsy and vulnerable, and that made me angry.
My host asked if I was well, and I snapped back that I was fine. It wasn’t offended. Maybe that’s what it meant for one of these creatures to go to war; it’d had other people’s dying thoughts in its head without dying itself.
It led me down a tunnel into a room as large as a tennis court. I stopped just inside the entrance at the top of a long slope. Indirect “light” shone through gaps in the wall, but the room was dim to my dream senses.
Then other creatures like me entered the room, although the dim light made them little more than silhouettes. They filed in from somewhere, casually falling into ranks like soldiers.
God, it was so much like the food bank in Washaway that I couldn’t breathe. My dream body wanted to broadcast my panic but held it in. I’d had dozens of nightmares about the pets—no, people—I killed in Washaway, but none of them had been like this. This was too much. I backed toward the entrance.
One of the creatures moved toward me just the way the pets had, and I lost control.
The hooks around my torso untwined, and a loud trill whistled out of me. I knew I was beaming fear, fury, and the memory of what I’d done in Washaway directly into the minds of the creatures below me. I backed away from them, holding my “arms” out like a cobra’s hood to warn them away.
They fell into a panic, crowding toward the exits and trilling in fear.
My host came toward me and, over the blare of panic and confusion, unleashed a single blast of noise. It was almost above my range of hearing, and it turned my mind into a still, dark nothingness.
I awoke in the same alien body, feeling myself being pulled down the hall. I felt the gritty stone floor and suddenly knew that this wasn’t a dream—it wasn’t a vision. I was here, somehow, in this body and in this place. The liquid I’d found in that statue had transported me here, and …
My host loomed above me. It placed a single barb on the center of my body and at the same moment made a sound like a soothing, sustained note. It was telling me I had nothing to fear, unless I lashed out. I understood and was still.
Then it asked for the story at the source of my fear, and the tones it used were impossible to resist. I answered, and the sounds that came out of me told everything—every nuance—in a startlingly short time. It felt like opening up my mind.
My host kept putting questions into me, and I kept responding. I couldn’t hold back. These creatures didn’t seem to understand secrets, and they certainly didn’t understand shame.
It stole my entire life story within ten minutes, maybe less. I tried to make it stop, but it pressed its long spike a little harder against my flesh and urged me on. It couldn’t understand that it was taking something from me.
Then it promised to “fix” me.
It told me that I could keep my memory of the pets—of the people I’d killed, but it was going to erase the awful feelings that came with it. It couldn’t grasp why humans felt guilt or shame, and it was certain I’d be better off without it.
The Twenty Palace Society would make me its new poster boy.
No, I told it. No. I was a human being and I didn’t want to be changed into something else.
It said I was too damaged to make this choice for myself.
I swung one of my hooked arms at it, aiming for its center. I knew my attack was feeble, but I didn’t expect to kill the creature. I expected the creature to kill me.
And that’s what it did. There was a sudden sharp pain as the hook went in, then I was back inside the Hummer, staring down at the milky-blue liquid in my hand.
I carefully poured the liquid into the thermos and twisted the lid back on. I set the thermos into the cup holder. Spilling any of it would be a terrible thing. Terrible.
Then I began to scream.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I didn’t scream for long. For one thing, it didn’t make me feel better, not even a little bit. For another, it was a waste of time. I had predators in the back of my car. I didn’t have time to freak out.
I looked over at the thermos on the seat next to me. What the hell had just happened?
There was a sudden knock on my window. A chubby guy with a thick Vandyke was standing by my door.
The windows on the Hummer were electric, and I didn’t want to fumble with the controls trying to lower them—that would be a sure sign that the vehicle wasn’t mine. I opened the door a crack.
“Hey, man,” he said. “You okay?”
And here I thought nobody in L.A. cared. “No,” I answered. “I just got fired.”
“Oh. Um …”
“Thanks for asking.”
He accepted that and, his good deed accomplished, walked away. I was going to have to be more careful where I had my meltdowns.
I put my hand on the key in the ignition, then put it back into my lap. Where was I going to go? I had no plan, and no idea where to find Wally, Arne, or the others. I picked up the thermos again.
The liquid inside had sent me to some other place. Not the Empty Spaces, though—there was no air, no stone chambers, no caves there. It was all mists and nothingness. Another planet? This planet in the distant past or far future? I had no way to know for sure. What I did know is that those creatures were going to put thoughts into my head.
I have the Book of Oceans. The realization hit me like a medicine ball in the gut. The statue wasn’t a clue; it was a container. Every sorcerer and wannabe sorcerer in the world was looking for this, and 98 percent of them would be willing to nuke the city and sift the ashes for it.
Annalise wanted it most of all. The Twenty Palace Society was fading without its spell books; it was losing ground against sorcerers who summoned predators. If Annalise got her hands on this, she’d share it with the other peers. She’d share it with Csilla.
And she’d killed Lino without a second thought. She’d threatened the boat captain’s son. She wasn’t as big an asshole as Wally or Ansel Zahn, but could I hand over the spell book to her?
Hell, no.
I gripped the steering wheel with my left hand, rubbing it against the leather. That was my skin, touching. My face itched from the sweat and heat. My hair was damp. It felt good to be back in my own bones, and I was tempted to step out into the parking lot to dance, just to make sure everything worked. And yet, I could still feel those nine hooks wrapped snug around my middle, like phantom limbs.