“No.” Zee was on his feet, eyes blazing. “Have either of you considered the condition the dragon was in before she shifted back to human? Have you forgotten the dragonstone?”
Vivian’s gut clenched around his words as though she’d been struck, and she saw Weston’s face drain of color.
“Correct me if I’m wrong—but if she shifts, she dies. Yes?”
“Oh, gods,” Weston whispered.
“I did that. It can’t be undone. But I won’t stand by and see her do something on purpose that is going to get her killed. Are we all clear on that?”
For an instant Zee’s eyes met hers, and Vivian read the depths of the guilt and grief that marked him.
Oh Zee. Oh, my love.
She would have gone to him then, would have made him see that she knew, that she understood, that she still trusted him with everything that she was. But before she could act or say another word, Zee stiffened. His nostrils flared as though he had caught the scent of something that disturbed him. In the same instant Weston was on his feet, pumping a shell into the shotgun.
Only then did she hear the rattling at the mouth of the cave. She tried to pick up Zee’s sword, but it weighed too much for her strength. She couldn’t get the tip of it up off the ground. Panic loosened her muscles, weakened her knees.
But it wasn’t the embodiment of her own fear that emerged first from the cave.
They shuffled out four abreast, despite all the laws of health and physics that decreed they shouldn’t be able to move at all. Vivian had seen such mutilations in the ER—declared dead on arrival, covered with a sheet, and sent off to the morgue with all due haste.
These bodies were different. Despite horrific wounds, their eyes were open and all of them pointed the index fingers of their right hands at Weston, all of their eyes turned in his direction. “You owe us our lives,” they said in chorus, even the one who was missing a jaw. “You owe us our lives.”
Weston aimed the shotgun in their direction, but his hands shook so hard he would never hit what he aimed at. Vivian’s brain froze in blank horror. Surely there was something she should do, could do, but she continued to stand there as the things shuffled closer, still chanting.
And then Zee was at her side. “I’ll take that,” he said, and the sword was out of her hands. He strode forward, already swinging, and struck the head off the closest figure. It sailed through the air and landed close to Vivian’s feet, eyes wide open, the same dark brown as Weston’s.
“Ellie,” Weston moaned. “I’m so sorry.”
At last Vivian recovered the ability to move and speak. “Weston!” She made her voice sharp to get his attention. “It’s not Ellie. You know this. Only the dream things.”
Zee’s second stroke took off the legs of the boy with the missing jaw. Vivian shuddered. They were so young. And if these were what walked in Weston’s memory, it was no wonder he had tried to kill himself.
She took a step toward him, but a movement from the decapitated head at her feet held her back. The eyes blinked. The mouth moved, soundlessly repeating the mantra. “You owe us our lives.” And then the neck began to elongate, formed a chest. Arms sprouted, and grasping fingers reached out toward the old Dreamshifter, grazing his knees. Meanwhile, a new head had grown on the body and now there were two Ellies, both crying, “You owe us our lives.”
“Zee!” Vivian shouted. “Stop! It makes it worse!”
But he had seen, was even now evading the second jawless boy that had grown from the body of the other.
“What do we do?” he asked, retreating, using the flat of the sword to swat away the outstretched hands, careful not to sever any limbs.
“I don’t know. Stay back. Let me think.”
But there was no time. Another figure emerged from the cave—a creature mostly dragon, but with Vivian’s hair and eyes. A familiar sword hilt stuck out between the front leg and the belly. Blood poured out of the wound, turning the earth black where it fell.
She stared at the thing, transfixed. But it had eyes only for Zee. It opened its mouth, not a dragon’s jaws, but a woman’s, hers, and Vivian knew it was going to flame.
“Zee, look out!”
He dove to the ground and rolled, coming up barely out of reach of the grasping fingers of the dead girl. But the Vivian Thing didn’t flame. It stopped in its tracks, shuddered, and fell to the earth. Once, twice, the dragon ribs drew breath, and then it sighed and went small and still, shifting into the body of a woman who lay dead with a sword in her heart.
Zee made a broken sound, as though somebody had thrust a blade between his own ribs. Vivian reached for his hand, grazed and blistered now, the nails broken. She wanted to kiss it, but he pulled away from her.
“Only a dream thing,” she said, but they both knew it wasn’t quite true. The healing wound in her own breast was evidence enough.
And any minute now the other monster would come out of the cave. Already red eyes glared from the entrance, so big it was clear the thing could never fit through the existing space.
“We have to do something,” Vivian shouted at the others, her voice shaking and desperate.
“What’s coming through?” Zee asked her. Calmer now, the worst over for him and a worthy foe emerging.
“Like yours. Only bigger and meaner and full of rage. Also, not dead.” She could sense it now, feel the tie with her own body. All of the pent-up rage of her childhood; the little girl who played mother to the woman and the anger that bloomed dark and quiet inside her soul. The fury about the hospitals and the blood and the insatiable, unfilled need to be loved and cared for.
That was it, probably. The way to stop it was probably to love it.
Which was, she knew, beyond her power.
The three of them retreated, dodged, evaded, did whatever they could to avoid the touch of the dream creatures already pursuing them. Weston clobbered one of his brothers over the head with his shotgun, and the thing slowed but did not stop.
The man with the hole in his breast and a face that was like Weston’s, only so much harder and colder, grew bigger and stronger. His hands had been empty, but now he held a gun. He aimed it at Weston.
Meanwhile, back at the cave, rocks began to fall as an enormous head forced itself out through a too-small space. It opened a mouth full of teeth and roared, a sound that shook the earth beneath their feet.
Only minutes to act if they were going to survive.
No time to discuss plan B, as it had come to her. No idea of whether it would work. Because Weston’s father was about to start shooting, and when that other Thing emerged from the cave, there would be no mercy.
“Give me the bloodstones,” she said to Weston.
“Vivian, no—”
“Give them to me.” She used the Voice. There was no time to argue.
He pulled a sock from his pocket, tied off to make a carrying pouch. The stones felt strange in her hands. Heavier than she had expected. Not quite inert, not quite sentient. Between states. Waiting.
For what? What would wake them?
Always retreating, faster now, she fumbled to untie the knot.
A shot rang out, spraying up dirt and rock to the left of them. Weston’s family was gaining. A sound of grinding rock and another bellow echoed from behind them.
“Quick—behind that rock,” Zee shouted.
They followed his lead, bent over, racing for their lives toward a large stone formation about fifty feet away. Another shot rang out, this time striking closer. But so was the shelter of the rock. Vivian reached it and dove behind it, knowing it would grant only a moment’s reprieve, and hoping that would be enough.