“And there they are. Unfallen after all. Depending on your definition of that word, of course. Hardly innocents, the lot of you.”
“Give me my pendant.” Deep down Vivian knew that the other things were more important, but the reaction was a primal thing that boiled up out of the depths of her.
“Or you’ll do what? Take it from me?”
Vivian darted forward to do exactly that, but the old woman raised a filthy, gnarled hand in a casual gesture and she bounced off an invisible force field.
“Now, now, young one. That will never do. Remember what happened to your brain when you fought me before.”
And with those words the pain began, Vivian’s skull in a vise, tightening bit by bit; her brain was going to explode under the pressure like a ripe melon. She tried with all of her strength and will to fight back but found herself doubled over, gasping, both hands clutching at her head.
“Release her.” Zee’s voice.
“Or you’ll do what, lover? Have you told her about you and me?”
The pain eased, enough so that Vivian could stand up straight and watch as the wrinkled old face smoothed and tightened. The bone structure altered. Brown eyes turned to gray. Her hair waved and curled and brightened to auburn.
A mirror image of Vivian’s own face and body before the dragon marked her, except that the belly swelled out in the soft curve of pregnancy. Her brain still felt scrambled with the pain, the words and the visual not connecting.
“Don’t even think about using the Voice on me,” Vivian’s own voice said from that other body. “It won’t work now. I’ve got your pendant and your hair and skin. I have the power over you, and you will do as I say.”
Zee had the sword in his hand. “Take whatever form you wish—I will kill you.”
But he hesitated.
“Would you take the life of an unborn baby then? Your own child, Zee.” One of the woman’s hands went protectively to her belly.
“It’s not possible.”
“Blood of your blood, Warrior. Flesh of your flesh.”
Zee’s arm dropped to his side. “It’s an illusion. It has only been a matter of days—”
“Time passes according to its own whims in the dark realms. And there are Dreamworlds where time passes even faster, if one has earned such passage. You’re not going to kill your own child, no matter how you might hate the flesh that carries him.”
Vivian looked up into Zee’s stricken face and knew that it was true. He had made love to this thing and it was pregnant with his child. She shuddered in revulsion, pushing away the inevitable heartbreak for later.
“Stop this,” Weston said. “Enough. This is cruel, Gracie. There’s no need to hurt anybody—there’s been too much of that already. You of all people know this. What do you want?”
“You are wrong,” she said, and the voice was cold as ice, neither Vivian’s nor that of the old hag. “There can never be enough pain to make up for what I have suffered.”
Silence hung absolute. Even the wind died away and a darkness seemed to hang over the sun. But then she shrugged her Vivian-shaped shoulders and held out a black cylinder, carved all around with symbols. Vivian felt herself step forward in response to an invisible pull from the Key, only to be pushed back again by the woman’s power.
“What happens next is that the Chosen One is going to open the Gates.”
“You’ve got the Key. What do you need me for?” The ongoing push and pull of both brain and body and emotion was beginning to produce a blessed numbness that was beyond pain. A little piece of Vivian’s brain wormed itself free and began putting together one piece after another of the puzzle.
There were flaws in the image the woman wore. The shape of the face wasn’t quite right. The eyes were a little too close together, the nose a shade too aquiline.
“It turns out that it’s not only the Key that’s needed. It wouldn’t work for me, even in this body. So you are going to open the Gates for me.”
“No,” Vivian said. “I am not.”
“Oh, I think you will.”
Again the pain overwhelmed her. When she was able to focus her eyes, the woman’s body was shifting again, this time to that of a child just on the edge of womanhood. Dark hair braided in two pigtails; an innocent face with knowing eyes. Worst of all, a rail-thin child body and the abomination of a pregnant belly. Vivian had seen that face before on the dream construct back at the Cave of Dreams. But again, it was subtly wrong.
Tears streaked Weston’s cheeks. He didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“A lot of people are dead on account of you, Weston,” the girl said. “Help me now, and you can make it right.”
Vivian wanted to warn him, but she didn’t yet know of what. Zee’s knuckles on the hilt of the sword were white.
Weston gasped, as though he’d been struck. His face set in lines of determination. He took a step in her direction. “I owe you,” he said.
Grace smiled. It should have been a sweet child smile, but it was too knowing, too calculating. “Kill the Warrior. Then we’ll talk. Don’t look at me like that—you have a gun.”
In slow motion, as though he were sleepwalking, Weston bent and picked up the shotgun from where it lay beside him. He chambered a shell. Vivian stepped sideways to put herself between him and Zee, and Zee shoved her out of the way, hard enough that she fell to hands and knees.
The muzzle of the gun came up. Zee hefted the sword and launched himself toward Weston.
Vivian watched, helpless.
And then both trajectories changed just before they met at the middle.
Poe stepped directly into Zee’s path and tripped him. A sharp curse, a tangle of legs and feet and feathers and Zee went down.
Weston swung the gun to the right and pulled the trigger. A shot rang out and blood blossomed on Grace’s breast.
“You’re not Grace,” he said. And pulled the trigger again. The child staggered backward, her eyes huge with shock and pain. An inarticulate cry burst from her throat, outraged and inhuman. Her skin rippled and expanded as her mouth elongated into jaws and her nose into a snout. A long, serpentine neck grew to support the massive horned head, Vivian’s pendant dangling incongruously from a chain that had expanded to accommodate the new bulk. Talons sprang out of what had once been hands but were now feet on the ends of legs as thick as tree trunks.
Before Weston could reload, the dragon pinned him to the ground with one foot and held him there.
“Let him go!” Vivian shouted, moving toward the fallen Dreamshifter, but a warning jet of smoke from the dragon’s nostrils stopped her in her tracks. The wound in the creature’s breast was a small thing now, not even bleeding. She towered over Vivian, as black as the Gates themselves, sucking up all of the light.
It was all Vivian could do to stay on her feet.
Words formed, soundless, in her mind.
You will take the Key. We will fly to the Gates, and you will open them for me.
“And if I don’t?”
All of your companions die.
Weston wasn’t moving, and Vivian couldn’t tell if he was still breathing. Zee inched forward, flat on his belly. His arm was bleeding again. If he took on a sword battle with this dragon at this time, he would die. He simply wasn’t strong enough. She also knew that he was planning to try.
Somewhere there was dragonstone. In Weston’s pack, probably, and she felt a flare of anger that he’d chosen the familiar gun over much more effective magic. Still, they might find the dragonstone, get a chance to use it, if she could buy some time. Her mind was still putting together pieces to try to get to the only acceptable outcome. Nobody dying. Getting her hands on the Key. Stopping the disintegration of the dreamspheres and finding her way to the water from the river so she could free all of the trapped undead Dreamshifters.