“This one in particular?”
Ignoring me, he leaned forward to explain. “They evolved along with dinosaurs. They have no brain, eyes, or feet, yet they have burrowed through centuries while those greater, grander, and larger around them have fallen.”
The bigger they are…
Which was the not-so-subtle point he was trying to make about the troops-the Tulpa and his relentless pursuit of power, Warren and his equally determined fight for the same. I sat down again, keeping my eyes averted from the glass. It was an invite to keep talking, but I still wasn’t biting.
“Night crawlers travel underground, hunkered deep and unseen by those who walk the surface. They help with decomposition, eating away the dead, aerating the earth with their movement, enriching the environment through this lowly work. Ask any biologist, and they’ll tell you everything on the surface thrives because of them. They ingest the old so the new can be born.”
I slid lower in my chair and eyed the drink warily. “All right. I get the analogy.” Worms and rogues, both underground, both working beneath the sight of those who ran the world. I’d have still asked if I could skip it, if not for the tracking device. Why couldn’t they have planted it in a chimichanga?
Carlos was gazing at me, dark eyes luminous in the tanned face, beautiful hands still as artwork on the tabletop. I knew he could force it down my throat, but he was waiting for my acquiescence. Not running me down with his desires and demands. “First rule of the cell. Do not underestimate the lowly.”
I see a woman with everything.
Why? I wondered, biting my lower lip. Because I was on my heels, back to the wall, helpless as a being without brains or eyes or feet, but somehow surviving still? The comparison didn’t repulse me as much this time around. Not with Carlos’s gaze on my face and his dark head dipped toward mine. He was a realist, rogues had to be, and my weaknesses were already laid before him like burnt offerings.
It made me feel more seen than at any time since donning Olivia’s flesh. My flaws were my only defenses now that I had none, but I suddenly felt myself lowering my guard willingly. Maybe they weren’t defenses after all, but pretense. Like a child sticking her fingers in her ears and saying she couldn’t hear.
I picked up the glass, eyed the death inside. Would sucking on it draw out the power to burrow to safety as well? If I chewed it into little pieces, could I then ingest the discarded bits of this world, pump life back into them, and create something new?
In the end, I swallowed it whole. Carlos was right about one thing. It was delicate, but for the device buried inside. That stood out like a wire ball of fury. It pierced the worm, took root in my throat, and stuck there like a metal spider until I forced it down. The tears along my esophagus were cold when I breathed. When my eyes had ceased watering, I looked up.
Carlos smiled, holding out a hand. I pushed to my feet again, then lunged for him as the room began to spin. I was in trouble, a teetering dreidel on the inside, but all Carlos did was hold my hand. Remembering the myth about tequila worms having hallucinogenic properties, I slurred, “Is this laced?”
And weren’t drugs supposed to make you feel a high before you hit a low? This one pulled me down to my knees, like a slap from on high. Right before my limbs numbed out, Tripp reached my other side. I imagined I could scent him as I once had in Midheaven, when he’d been sweaty and defiant and smelling of old burnt cedar.
Carlos, so forthcoming about the rogue agents and their desire to help me, about being the one to give me a chance to become “who I was meant to be,” not to mention a detailed history of the worm, simply dropped a silken kiss upon my lips, setting them to buzzing as he braced my arms. “Repeat after me, one word only: Midheaven.”
He whispered it into my opened mouth, his breath touching my tongue, tickling my throat. My lips moved around the sound, briefly touching his as they formed the word. Then my eyes crossed, there were three of him before me…and then there were none.
I hadn’t dreamed since Olivia’s lesson in trusting the T-Rex brain, and the knowledge that I was doing so now would have surprised me awake were it not for the narcotics sizzling in my system. They caught me like a firefly in a jar, and there was nothing I could do but wait until they wore off. So I opened my dream eyes…and found myself facing an endless ocean of desert terrain.
Not my beloved Mojave, I thought, looking around as the drug-induced sizzling increased. Blood was snapping in my veins, but the foreign landscape of sand sheets and shifting dunes was enough to distract from that. Ridges and mountains of filmy grit angled hard in the spotlight of a red sun. I shielded my eyes and took a step into the ever-shifting softness. I’d have felt weightless if each step didn’t shuffle beneath my feet. Licking my lips, I tasted lead, as if my body was made of metal.
Then a sound as bright and faint as a rainbow stretched overhead. I looked up, twisting as it whipped by, but it was gone as quickly as it came. “Hello?”
My voice echoed, but unnaturally so. Less of a reverberation off canyon walls than a CD that kept skipping until the volume was turned down. Meanwhile, the sand continued to snake around my feet, each fine, pretty grain winking as it shifted. Every once in a while I’d hit a sinkhole and was forced to flail just to remain standing. Was it possible to be buried alive in a dream? If I died here, would I still wake?
I slipped, abandoning the thought to catch myself with my palm, the imprint blending into nothingness as soon as I’d scuttled back to my feet. A moment more gave me back my balance, and I held very still, though individual grains still threatened to give way beneath my weight. Then there was the full pregnant sound again, like ghosts whispering over the dunes.
“So you’re back.”
Whirling at the scratchy echo, I found a Chinaman perched directly in front of me. Blinking, I rubbed at my eyes.
Yes. Chinaman.
He was dressed in silk, a green brocade that lay sallow against his skin. His wide-brimmed conical hat hid most of his features, but the brown skin at his neck and jaw was wrinkled with age, his braided queue shot through with strands of thick silver. He was curled tightly over himself, a walking question mark, and jutted his chin to peer up at me.
“You!” I accused once he did, but fear rushed me all the same. I’d left this man in the Rest House the last time I’d fled Midheaven, neither expecting nor especially eager to see him again. Shen hated me.
Panicked, I turned again, searching for a way out-and succeeding in only sinking some more. Though the desert terrain was unique, the magic in this place was known to me. Only Midheaven took something normal and turned it on its head. “I do not want to be here. I don’t, I don’t…”
I pinched myself as my voice scratched the air, but the chemicals in the worm kept me under. My bloodstream was burning, while my thoughts were vicious jabs, needles trying to wake me up. It wasn’t the first time my dreams had been invaded this way-and I didn’t mean my mind’s hopeful conjuring of Olivia either.
No, the Tulpa had visited me in my dreams before too, months ago, also under the influence of sleep-inducing drugs. Something about the altered state made the mind more susceptible to influence and suggestion. And, appar ently, gave the spirit the ability to travel between worlds.
“I don’t want to be here!” The echo married with the metallic taste, and I bit my lip to keep from screaming.
“Of course you do. One’s truest desires are always revealed in Midheaven.” I’d have thought the sand would mute Shen’s soft clipped voice, absorbing it like a sponge, but his dismissive tones stood up well, bright as bells. He hadn’t liked me since we sat together at a table of soul poker and I accidentally gambled away some of his personal information.