Marked (21 page)

The
rope running from Alec to the bars tied into their middle and then
from there the light fed out of the tops and bottoms of the bars to
the rest of the nightmare world around us.

"Cut
free the middle third of each bar. Hurry!"

My
sword was like a living flame in Alec's hand, and now that it was
further away from me I could see the silvery thread that ran from me
to the weapon. Alec lifted my sword in both hands and then lashed out
with it.

The
impact of my weapon against the metal bars was an event that happened
on multiple levels, some of which I was only vaguely aware of. It
sounded like someone had struck a huge bronze bell, but I barely
noticed because of the way the world around us seemed to quiver.

I
looked back at Dream Stealer and saw him stumble and fall to one
knee, in the split second before the white line of my sword
flickered. It was like someone reached into my gut and started
pulling my insides out. My headache reached new levels at the same
time that strength started pouring out of me.

There
was a split second there where I could have severed my link to the
sword. The temptation was almost overwhelming, but I forced myself to
feed more strength into it instead. Without the sword we weren't
going to be able to get out and I was willing to pay any price to
free Alec.

The
light flowing down the thread towards my sword grew to the point
where I could see it even when I looked away, but this time when Alec
slashed through the bar it cut much more cleanly and didn't flicker
in time with the blow.

The
second blow had cut one of the bars entirely free and I rejoiced as
all of the threads around us got a little darker. Alec gasped as the
bar hit the stone floor and disappeared. His glow was brighter now
and he stood taller as he cut through the top of the second bar. More
importantly the destruction of the first bar seemed to have slowed
Dream Stealer's progress. He was running more furiously now than he
had been before, but whatever advantage he'd enjoyed when he'd
arrived seemed to be gone—he wasn't any faster than a normal
hybrid.

Another
blow with the sword and the second bar dropped away. I thought my
head might split in two, but I managed to keep from crying out until
Alec made the first cut on the third bar. Each of the blows had taken
something out of me, and now that Alec was regaining some of his
strength he wasn't resting as long between blows.

My
scream brought Alec around. "Adri!"

"Keep
going, cut a big enough hole for you to get through."

He
took me at my word and sheared through the bottom of the third bar. I
tasted blood and realized that I'd bitten down on my tongue in an
effort to keep from screaming. I hadn't succeeded and Alec ran over
to me.

"Adri,
you're bleeding!"

Alec
had somehow shifted forms without me noticing. I tried to tell him
that I was fine, that the blood was nothing, that my tongue would be
okay, but there was too much blood hitting the stone floor for it to
be just coming from my mouth. Alec's fingers on my cheek came away
wet.

My
eyes were bleeding, but that was just a symptom. I could feel my soul
starting to tear free of my body as the stress of keeping my sword
from shattering pushed me beyond the limits of anything my ability
had ever been meant to do.

"He's
almost here. One more bar, Alec. Cut through one more and then you
can shift to human form and get us both out."

"Not
if it's going to kill you."

Alec
dropped my sword to the rock next to me and then shifted back to his
hybrid form. A few seconds previously he couldn't have gotten close
enough to attack the bars with his claws—he had barely been
able to get close enough to hit them with my sword—but with
each destroyed bar the amount of light being drained away from him
had decreased to the point now where he had no problems walking right
up to the grate blocking our escape.

Alec's
claws stretched out to full extension and then he hit the next bar in
sequence with a titanic amount of force. Whatever his claws were made
of was sufficiently hard and strong for the task and the top of the
bar was sliced away, but Alec staggered as though he'd been punched
in the stomach.

Contact
with the bar, even just once, had sucked a tremendous amount of light
from Alec. He staggered away from the grate, desperately trying to
catch his breath, but Dream Stealer was close enough now that Alec
could hear him crashing through the underbrush. We were out of time.

Alec
turned back towards the grate and slashed at the bottom of the last
bar we needed removed in order to escape. I grabbed my sword up off
of the stone floor and used it as a crutch to get myself back to a
standing position as I yelled for him to stop, but he was already in
motion by the time the words left my mouth.

Alec's
claws cut through the bar, which shattered as it hit the ground, and
then his body shimmered and he was back in his human form and falling
towards the metal spikes left at the bottom of the grate after he'd
cut the bars away. I felt something tear inside of me as Alec was
impaled through the stomach by two of the bars.

The
sight of the shards of metal sticking out of his back was almost
enough to make me vomit, but I steeled myself as I reached his side
and picked him up by his waist. I wasn't even close to being strong
enough to lift all of Alec's bodyweight—especially with my left
arm not working correctly—but Alec hadn't lost consciousness
and did what he could to help lift up his midsection.

"You
need to go, Adri. There isn't any time."

"I'm
not leaving you, Alec. You're dying, I have to get you back to the
real world—maybe Dom can heal you this time."

"I
can't die here, I'll just lie there until my body heals enough for me
to move again. It's happened a dozen times already."

I
pulled upwards as hard as I could and his body finally came free of
the metal spikes. I pushed him the rest of the way through the grate
and then picked up my sword as I heard footsteps behind me. The thing
that came around the corner was only slightly bigger than a hybrid,
but other than that and the fact that he was full of light instead of
darkness, it was the same creature I'd been running from in my
nightmare the morning of the ambush.

I
was meeting Dream Stealer for the second time and I was already
wounded and tired.

"You
should have done what he said, Adri. You're lower down my list, but I
will be coming for you eventually. You needn't be so eager to remain
in my care."

"I'm
going to kill you."

"You
hardly seem in any condition to be making threats, child. You can't
even open your eyes. How are you going to beat me without the use of
your sight?"

My
crazy laugh was back. It was the same borderline hysterical cackle as
from before, but this time I welcomed it.

"I
don't need these eyes to be able to see you. I can see you better
this way—I can see everything better this way. I can see the
way that you've been stealing Alec's light. You're weaker now that
you don't have as many bars funneling his strength toward you."

I'd
clearly caught him off guard, but it only took him a second to regain
his equilibrium. "Fancy tricks won't save you here, Adri. This
is my domain. I've been hunting here for longer than your
parents
have been alive."

"I'm
not scared of you, Dream Stealer. I'm coming for you in the real
world. You can beat me here, but it's only a matter of time before I
find you and when that happens even people who don't like me are
going to fall in line to make sure that they get a chance to put you
down. How many people have you ruined over the centuries? How many
packs have you forced to bend their knees to you? All of those
people, all of their friends and families are going to be gunning for
you."

"I've
touched more lives than you can imagine, but that's irrelevant
because you're never leaving here. You're not like Alec, you're like
me. You're here more strongly than a casual dreamer—it gives
you the power to change things you shouldn't be able to change, but
it means you can be hurt, means you can be killed."

I
hefted my sword and smiled. "Thanks, it's nice to know ending
you here will save me having to hunt down your body to make sure that
you're really gone."

He
looked at the six-foot-long jet of living flame that was my sword
with a trace of uneasiness and then shook himself and smiled. "You're
just a human."

His
attack was fast—much faster than Alec had been moving, but
enough of my altered time sense still remained for me to see him
coming. Even so, having something that big lunging toward me was too
intimidating for me to charge forward and meet him.

I
hopped backwards, easily clearing the spikes that were still wet with
Alec's blood, and stabbed him in the stomach with the point of my
blade a split second before he hit the grate with so much force that
the entire mountain above us shook.

I
was feeling quite pleased with myself until I stopped falling
backwards. For a second I couldn't figure out what had happened. I'd
made it safely through the grate and the opening I'd used was much
too small for him to fit through in his current form.

I
was safe and the fact that I'd managed to wound him in the process
was just an added bonus. If he tried to come through the grate I
would have no problem taking his head off before he could get through
and have space to move around again.

I
should be stumbling backwards, desperately trying to reverse my
momentum before I got too far away from the grate to stop him from
shifting forms and coming through.

Only
I wasn't.

Something
tugged me forward and I finally realized that Dream Stealer had hold
of my shoulder with his claws. It shouldn't have been possible, but
he'd somehow made his arm stretch at the last second. The claws on
the end of his fingers were gripping my shoulder blade like it was
some kind of dinner plate, while the claw on his thumb had punched
right through my upper chest. I could feel the razor-sharp edge of
his thumb claw slicing through my flesh, but I couldn't feel anything
at all from my left shoulder down. No pain, no pressure, no sensation
at all.

He'd
severed the nerve. He'd said I could be killed here in the dream…did
that mean that the paralysis was going to be permanent as well? I
pushed the worry out of my mind. It didn't matter; I was probably
going to bleed to death before I ever got a chance to find out.
Really, even that was a stretch given how fast he was pulling me
towards the opening in the grate.

I
wanted to give into the despair, to beg for mercy, but that wasn't an
option. Someone like Dream Stealer had to have been born without
mercy to have fallen so far, and I'd already given into despair once
since Alec had been shot. I wasn't going to do that again—I
wasn't going to go down without a fight.

I
tried to slice my sword upward through his body—tried to take
him with me—but I only had the one hand and the leverage was
all wrong. Contrary to what you see in the movies, it takes a lot of
force to cut through flesh—and to get at anything vital I was
going to have to go through more than just muscle.

Dream
Stealer was still pulling me forward and I used that to shove my
sword deeper into his stomach. My blade was angled upwards, but I was
still pretty sure there wasn't anything important in its path. My
suspicions were confirmed when I felt the tip of my weapon grind to a
halt between two of the ribs in his back.

I
pushed harder against my sword, trying now that it was stuck against
his ribs, to use it to keep my distance, but it was wasted effort. He
just kept up the pressure on my shoulder and I was faced with a
choice between moving toward him or having him slowly rip my arm off
of my body.

I
needed a miracle. I needed the rules to change in my favor…except
that was actually possible in this place. I'd been envisioning Alec's
sword when I'd conjured my sword out of thin air, but his sword
wasn't the perfect weapon I'd initially thought it was. I needed
something even sharper…something so sharp that even a puny
human girl could use it to slice through a hybrid—even if she
could only use one hand to wield it.

What
I needed formed in my mind. It was identical in all respects to the
sword I already had except the edge narrowed down to something
sharper than anything could possibly be. I'd heard some of the geeks
back in Minnesota talking about a monofilament knife, a weapon that
had an edge that was only a single atom across. I envisioned my sword
slimming down like that and then forced my desires to become reality.

I
felt the welcome, painful catch in the back of my mind and then a
pulse of light shot down the thread that connected me to my weapon
and I felt it shudder slightly in my hand. This time as I pulled up
on it—using the point, which was still stuck on Dream Stealer's
ribs, as a fulcrum—it started slicing effortlessly upward.

The
slight shudder as my blade had changed must have alerted Dream
Stealer; that was the only explanation for how quickly he sprang away
from me. I felt ribs part as my blade applied the slightest of
pressure on them, but then Dream Stealer was off of my blade and I
was falling backwards now that he wasn't pulling me toward him.

I
had just enough presence of mind to make sure that my sword was well
out to the side, far enough away from my body that there wasn't any
chance that I would cut myself, and then I crashed to the ground,
only it was a much softer ground than I'd been expecting. I turned my
head and found that I'd landed on Alec.

His
eyes were starting to go a little glassy from blood loss, but he
managed a smile for me just before my whole world went dark.