Two paths branched out, at last, from the one he was on. Briefly, he paused. They looked identical, leading into old-growth forest. He chose the one on the right for no other reason than a vague familiarity coupled with the sensation that he was prey, and that the predator was never far behind. Run he must, and his gut told him this was the path most likely to help him survive.
Twenty-four
Vivian sat on a fallen log by the campfire Weston had built, toasting her front while her back turned to goose bumps with the cold. Poe stood across from her, his white patches glowing reddish in the flickering flames, the crimson mark where a sword had once pierced his breast seeming to move and change into different shapes. No stars tonight—the sky was opaque blackness. Weston had been muttering about the need for rain, the forest so dry that they shouldn’t really be making a fire at all, but she prayed to all the powers that be to leave well enough alone. Bad enough to sleep on the cold hard ground without rain to make matters worse. Maybe that made her a wimp, but she was bone weary and not inclined to further misery.
Weston’s tried-and-true door had not worked. Vivian couldn’t even see the damned thing, although she sensed it clearly enough. A small buzz of energy when she was near it gave her its essential size and position. But she couldn’t open it. And when Weston opened it, or said he did, he simply vanished from her view and she was unable to follow him.
A long time she stood, eyes closed, hands moving over the current of energy that eluded her, searching for a way through. It felt like trying to shift the course of a river, and she gave it up at last as a lost cause.
“Maybe if I shift,” she’d said, staring at the bushes and rock that she knew marked a door into Dreamworld. But she felt cold and empty, the dragon fire far away, and she couldn’t seem to remember why shifting had seemed to her a tenable idea in the first place.
Weston pulled supplies out of his backpack and set up a rough camp. He got a small fire going, explaining that he didn’t dare make it any bigger because of the need for rain. He dragged over a length of fallen log for her to sit on.
She watched the fire rise and fall, the flames making ever-shifting picture patterns as they consumed their fuel, dying away in one place to arise in another. Poe pressed up against her and she laid one hand on his head. She startled some time later to find Weston standing at her side bearing a tin cup full of something steaming hot. Expecting coffee or maybe tea, she accepted it thankfully, but when she raised it to her nose to inhale the fragrance she sputtered and almost flung the cup away. A greenish wave washed over the side and burned her fingers.
“What the hell is this?”
“Plan B.”
“Poison?”
“No, peyote.”
“What?”
“Peyote. You know, the sacred medicine that allows you to see into the otherworld.”
“You mean the hallucinogenic drug that makes you crazy.” She tried to hand the mug back to him. “I’m not drinking this shit. Where did you get it, anyway?”
He shrugged. “You ask a lot of questions for a woman out of options.”
“You drink it.”
Weston laughed. “Yeah. I get high, see some pretty colors, and that’s about it. But some people—not even Dreamshifters—have been known to have real dream quests on peyote.”
“You’re actually serious.”
“I am. Don’t give me that law-abiding holier-than-thou look. The natives were doing this stuff years before you were born, all as part of spiritual journeys. Their version of dream walking.”
“It’s still a drug. A hallucinogen. People get stuck and can’t find their way back to reality.”
“For real? You’re telling me you killed a sorceress in the Between and now you’re afraid of a little peyote?”
She sniffed at the tea again, skeptical. “How do I know I can trust you?”
“Do you have a choice?”
“What if—I drink your peyote tea, and then I turn into a dragon while I’m high? What then?”
“Well, that would be quite a trip, I’d think. One for the books.” His face was tight, belying the lightness of his tone. “Look, there’s a ceremony that is supposed to go with this. I don’t know the whole thing, but I can try. Maybe it will help.”
He pulled his cooking pot out of the backpack, turned it upside down in front of him, and started beating out a rhythm with his hands. His voice rose in an odd, wavering chant that ran a shiver down the center of her spine.
“Where did you learn that?”
He paused in the chanting, but his hands kept the rhythm. In the firelight his face had taken on a remote, mysterious look. “I have a friend who brought me in to the ceremonies. I always sat in the corner and listened, which is why this won’t be quite right. Well, that and the fact that I’m playing a pan instead of a ceremonial drum. Play big or go home, right?”
Vivian looked into the cup and back at him, believing despite herself. If there were Dreamshifters, why shouldn’t there be shamans, and who was to say what mysteries existed in the spirit world?
“But if it matters—if you get it wrong. I mean, couldn’t the spirits or whatever take offense? They might not take kindly to us messing around.”
“If your heart is pure and your intentions clean—”
“But what if it’s not?” A few minutes ago she’d felt beyond emotion, even fear. Now something very close to panic set her heart to fluttering. Pure? She hadn’t been to church in years, and she didn’t think pure was an adjective that would have ever fit. An image of Jared came to mind again, his hands on her unwilling body. Not your fault, she told herself reflexively. But no amount of logic served to wash away the lingering shame and loathing that was always waiting, just below the surface.
“Either it works or it doesn’t. If not, I figure we’re shit out of luck. Take a few deep breaths, clear your thoughts, and drink the damned tea.”
He went back to chanting, his voice rising high and quavering into the night. She’d heard native chants and knew he didn’t make the mark, although his efforts definitely qualified as eerie. The shadows seemed to thicken and coalesce around the fire, as if other presences were moving in, crowding her a little. Poe puffed up his feathers. Somewhere in a tree branch close by the raven croaked, softly. It sounded like encouragement.
Vivian took a sip and gagged.
The brew was bitter and a little slimy; not a beverage made for pleasure. Maybe if she thought of it as medicine she’d do better. Holding her breath she drained the entire mug in several long gulps, shuddered, and waited. Too late to back out now. For a time nothing happened. Weston continued to beat his makeshift drum and sing.
And then the nausea struck. Her stomach cramped and convulsed. No time to move away from the fire before her body rejected the tea with a vengeance. “You poisoned me,” she muttered, as soon as she could speak, but Weston didn’t hear her. Pushing her hair back behind her ears with shaking hands, feeling limp and fragile, she resumed her seat beside the fire, watching the flames expand and contract to the rhythm of the drum.
Mesmerized, she breathed in the melody of smoke and pine, the scent of warm orange flame filling her ears. The shadows stretched and turned inside out, transitioning into color while the flames went dark.
Her brain insisted that this was all wrong. The fire was orange and hot, it flickered, it made the shadows by casting light. In response to the logical thought, the music lurched, the shadows bent and twisted, and nausea squeezed her stomach again. A deep breath, and she let the logic go, let the music and the fire and the color do whatever it was they wanted to do.
“It’s beautiful,” she murmured, lifting a hand to pluck at a strand of yellow light. It quivered beneath her hand, making a sound that smelled of lemon and sunlight. With both hands she played with the symphony of light and sound and fragrance, lost in a purity of sensual pleasure she could never have imagined.