“He didn’t know better, Zee. He was so young . . .” Young and beautiful and alive beyond imagining.
“Don’t cry, Viv. It was just a dragon.”
She laughed, short and bitter, as his words went home. “Blood of my blood,” she said.
Realization dawned in his eyes, too late. “No, you are not one of them, not really—”
“But I am. And you were made to hunt them. What are we to do about that?”
A low whistle broke the moment. “It really was a dragon,” Brett said in a voice filled with awe. “Thought you guys were kidding.”
Sirens wailed in the distance, drawing closer.
“You should go,” Brett said. He spoke into his radio. “Number three seventy-two on scene. All clear.”
Stiffly, Vivian levered herself to her feet. Inside her boots her toes had gone numb, and she stomped her feet to get the blood moving.
“You may have a slight problem explaining that away,” Zee said, eyeing the dead dragon.
Brett shrugged. “I found the creature already dead. I never saw a thing. Not that I’d mind taking credit for killing the murdering son of a bitch.”
“Are you sure?”
He shrugged. “I can’t tell them the truth. It’s the next best. Go.”
Vivian ran up the trail after Zee and they drove unhindered away from the beach, passing two police cruisers and a border patrol pickup on their way to a scene they couldn’t possibly have imagined.
Vivian felt a yawning abyss between herself and Zee. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, how much the dragon encroached already on the integrity of her self. The heat in her blood, the flashes of time where every sensory detail became extraordinary and three-dimensional, the desire to unfold powerful wings and take to the sky. Very small she felt, walled in by unbreakable glass, untouchable and afraid. More than anything she could imagine, she wanted to slide over beside him, feel his arm around her, relax into his strength. Instead, she wrapped her arms around herself and hunched into them, breathing past the pain of unshed tears.
“Cabin?” he asked.
“Too far. And my apartment’s trashed. We’ll have to risk the bookstore.”
He nodded, turning onto Main Street.
Vivian caught a blur of movement darting from the sidewalk to the street.
“Shit.” Zee spun the steering wheel and stomped on the brake. Vivian jolted forward against her seat belt as the van slid sideways and came to a stop, but not before it hit something with a dull thud that reverberated in the pit of her stomach.
An instant of shock, while body and mind caught up with what had just happened, and then she was out of the van, staring down in horror and dismay at the limp body crumpled beneath the tires.
Three
Dear God,” Zee said. His face in the glare of the headlights looked dead white. “She just stepped out in front of the van.”
An old woman lay on the asphalt, legs splayed, arms flung wide, palms up and open. Gray hair, unkempt and in need of a wash, straggled around a wrinkled face smudged with dirt. Her eyes were closed; her mouth drooped open over broken snags of teeth.
Vivian’s hand went to the pendant that hung at her breast, a penguin caught in a dream web. It was her talisman and served to help her mark the boundaries between one world and the next. In Wakeworld it was always there, warm and comforting. In Dreamworld, it vanished. Now it was all too solid and real. This was no nightmare.
She knelt on the wet pavement, long practice pulling her mind back into a cool assessment of the crisis. “We need to call 911.”
“Haven’t got a phone,” Zee said. “Have you?”
“Lost it, Between. You’ll have to go to the store and call.”
He hesitated.
“Go. We need an ambulance. Also, we need to not have Poe.”
The penguin had followed her out of the van and stood on the other side of the victim. His feathers were ruffled and puffed up, and he hissed once, the way he did when he felt threatened.
“Come on, you,” Zee said, picking up the penguin. “I’ll be right back.”
“No,” Vivian said, assessing her patient. Airway clear, chest rising and falling with a regular breath. Pulse steady. No visible bruising or lacerations.
“No, what?” Zee asked, lingering.
“Don’t come back. I was driving, not you. Understand?”
The old woman’s eyes fluttered open. They were the color of molasses, wide with fear. Pupils equal, neither dilated nor constricted. Her lips quivered. “Don’t hurt me.”
“Easy now. Nobody’s going to hurt you. What’s your name?” Vivian’s hands began, all on their own, to feel for broken bones or bleeding. She glanced up at Zee. “I’ll take care of her. You’re no good to me in jail.”
“It’s not just her I’m worried about.”
“I’ll be fine. You’ve already killed the dragon.” Her tone was harsher than she’d meant, the words hanging between them like living things, winged and dangerous. Too late she tried for softness. “Please.”
She’d hurt him. She saw his eyes shutter, even as he nodded and turned to run down the street toward the store, Poe clasped awkwardly in one arm.
A feeble whimper drew her attention back to the injured old woman. “Where does it hurt?”
The question earned her only a shake of the head and an attempt to scrabble backward and away. “You’re trying to kill me.”
“I’m a doctor. I’m trying to help you.”
“The man drove his land ship right over me. Intent to kill. He hates me.”
“He doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t even know you. Does your head hurt? Is it hard to breathe?”
Spittle ran down the old woman’s chin, slick and shiny. Dirt was embedded in her pores. Foul breath heated Vivian’s cheek, hotter than it ought to have been. She wondered if the old woman had been sick with a fever. Maybe delirium had driven her out into the street in front of the van.
“Where did he go, the killer man?”
“He’s gone to find help.”
“You’re sure he’s gone?”
“I’m sure. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”
The old woman’s eyes went cold, no confusion in them now.
Fast as a striking snake, her gnarled old hand grabbed at the pendant. Vivian tried to break away, but her head was pulled inexorably downward by hands that should not be this strong. The chain bit into the flesh at the back of her neck, forcing her so close to the old woman’s face that hot breath touched her lips like an evil kiss.
“So you’re the special one. Don’t look like much.”
“Let me go.”
A twist of the chain, and then another, cutting across her windpipe, restricting her breath. Vivian clawed at the tormenting hands. Fear and confusion and rage flooded through her. Black spots danced before her eyes.
And then a surge of power burned through her synapses, and without even thinking, with the last of her breath, she gasped in the voice of command, “Release me.”
The pressure on the chain eased and the hand fell away as the old woman’s eyes widened with shock. She snarled with hate and spat a blast of spittle into Vivian’s face. It clung, slimy and malign, blurring her vision, running over her cheeks.
Vivian swiped at her face and eyes with her sleeve. When she was able to see again, there was no broken old body lying on the pavement. Only the van, sideways in the street, and the freezing rain. She felt, more than saw, a closing door in the middle of nowhere, and then she was kneeling in the street alone.
In the distance a siren sounded.
Perfect. What the hell was she supposed to tell the attendants when they showed up?
What happened here, Doc?