Broken Wings: Genesis (10 page)

I jumped up and Chaz sat forward.
Ke was awake. He labored to roll over, but only managed to lift himself
partially to his side.

“You’re awake.”

“Yes.”

“How do you feel?”

He moved a little and winced.
“Like death warmed over.”

“Well, you don’t look much
better.”

He managed a grin. “Thanks.”

Okay, so the guy
did
know how to smile.

“You want to clue me into what’s
going on?”

“Do I want to? No.” He shook his
head. “I don’t think that you’re ready to hear what I have to say. Is there any
other option? No, again, or else I wouldn’t be here.”

That sounded pretty arrogant in my
book.

“Who are you to say what I am and
am not ready to hear?”

Ke closed his eyes. He was still
dealing with the combined strain and pain of whatever his body was doing to
him. “I’m not ready to deal with it either, Ithane.”

I frowned. He was delirious. “My
name is Yeshua.”

Ke opened his eyes and looked at
me. I was partially right. There was a cloud of pain over his awareness. But
there was also a light of clarity. My frown deepened.

“You––” he started and then shook
his head. “Yeshua.”

I could see him struggle for
focus. My whole body was guarded, inside and out. He wasn’t going to hold onto
consciousness for long. That was apparent. Going over and shaking the answers
out of him wasn’t an option at this point, so I waited for him to work through
it on his own. My expression was closed and calm, but I was wound tight with a
desire for answers.

“Ithane. That was the woman from
the dream.” I tried prompting him back to clarity.

“No.”

“Her name wasn’t Ithane?”

He looked surprised and then
frowned, shaking his head. “No. It wasn’t a dream.”

“Then what––”

“It was a vision, an imprint of a
past life on your subconscious.”

I may have been wound tight, but
this guy wasn’t wrapped tight enough. Shrugging my shoulders, I decided to
humor him.

“So I was an angel in a past
life.” My voice was flat and devoid of emotion.

“Not just an angel,” Ke was trying
to focus. His clarity was slipping and I could see the struggle to pull his
thoughts together. “A Guardian. Ithane watched over the Thirteenth Gate.”

“A Gatekeeper?” Chaz was almost
bouncing in his seat with excitement.

Great. I frowned, shaking my head.
“No. Angels aren’t physical. They don’t have bodies.
You
were in the
dream.
You
had wings. You’re not looking all that angelic to me right
now.”

Ke didn’t answer. His body slumped
in the bed, rolling back to his original, unconscious position. My eyes went to
his back. There was a slight reddening at the shoulders, where it looked as
though the blood was starting to come to the surface again.

My frown was back. That’s where
the strips of blood were showing up. It was the exact place where wings would
have been attached to his back if he had them. Maybe that’s what was going on.
Psychosomatic production of physical trauma brought on by an internally
fractured psyche? That had to be it. I wasn’t buying the other answer he was
trying to sell. There were too many holes.

“Yesh––”

“I see it, kid.” I took off my
jacket and tossed it to the empty spot next to him. “I knew it wouldn’t hold,
but I thought it would’ve lasted longer than this.”

“What if he’s right?”

I didn’t even bother to look at
him. “He’s not.”

“But what if he is?”

This time I did look at him as I
settled myself in to sit next to Ke on the bed. “He isn’t, Chaz. Hey, it’s a
cool theory. This guy just has his reality and theologies all mixed up in a
nutball shake. He’s over the edge of tolerance on the pain scale and it’s
confusing his brain.”

“If you say so––”

“I do.” My response was firm. I
waited a minute, dreading to call the energy right now. My levels were tapped
and I wasn’t sure how much I had left to pull on. “Chaz–”

“Yeah?”

“Keep a good eye on me, will you?”
I hated admitting the weakness, but I wasn’t going to be
totally
stupid
about it. “If I start to drop, put me to bed, okay? I’m not sure how long I’ll
last.”

“Be careful, Yesh. Don’t push past
your reserves.”

“I’m already past them.” My smile
was rueful. “But we all do what we have to do.”

“I’ll watch over you. But if you
look like you’re fading, I’m pulling you out.”

“Fair enough.” I nodded and called
the energy. The dream fragment of Ithane leaped into my mind. This time, I was
going to try a different approach.

It’s one thing to wake up groggy
and disoriented. It’s a whole different thing to wake up groggy, disoriented,
and with hands roaming all over your body. I gave into the sensation of warmth
for a brief moment, wrapped in a cocoon of unawareness. Then the hand slid
lower, moving to a place at the top of my inner thigh. I went to brush it away,
but found I couldn’t move my arms. They were pinned above my head.

Awareness comes back to you quick
enough when it starts to sink in that things maybe aren’t how they should be.
There was no maybe about it. This was all wrong.

I struggled against the entrapment
of my wrists. My eyes flew open at a sharp, burning sensation at the top of my
right breast and the pain of fingers digging into my upper thigh. Cold dark
eyes stared into mine, filled with determination. It took me a dazed second to
figure out that those eyes belonged to Mack Black Wolf.

Shit. I had forgotten to ward my
dreams. So much of my energy and attention had been focused on Ke that I had
lost myself in the shuffle. As drained as I was of energy, this was not the
time for me to be unprotected. It was too late now. All I could do was to try
and fight him off and send him packing from my dreamscape. Or did I need to
leave his?

My struggles increased to make his
access to me more difficult. I needed to buy a few moments to sort it all out.
While my body wiggled around to avoid having him get a solid hold on me, I took
a quick look around.

The dreamscape was my living room.
That’s where Chaz must have out me to sleep after my work on Ke. And it
felt
like my living room, not strange and distorted. Good. That meant he was in
my
dreamscape and not the other way around.

Black Wolf leaned in close to
whisper in my ear. “This could be good for both of us.”

“Not likely.” I spat in his face.

My ears rang with the force of his
slap across my face. Morpheus had been right. There was so much more to this
guy than what was on the surface. It was one thing for a dream stalker to come
into your dreamscape and insinuate himself into the subconscious acceptance of
his presence by the victim. Knowingly or not, the victim became an active,
accepting participant. I was not accepting, and worse yet––he was beating me on
my own turf. Even Morpheus couldn’t beat me on my own turf. No wonder this guy
had disturbed him.

Tracker or not, playing into this
guy’s twisted need for domination wasn’t on my agenda. I pulled on the depths
of my outrage and let it build inside of me. When I couldn’t hold the overflow,
I let it escape in a chilling scream of raw, primal energy.

The look of Black Wolf’s face
might have been comical if the situation had any humor to it. But it wasn’t
funny––not in the slightest. It made him pause, though, and that’s all I was
after. His hesitation loosened his grip on my wrists for the split second
needed to exert all of my energy to ripping my arms from his grasp.

His eyes narrowed, and his other
hand came up to my throat. I could feel the blackness swimming across my vision
as his grip tightened. I went to pull the hand away, but a second set of hands
grabbed my wrists and held them at my side. Did he have a partner in the dreamscape?
That would explain his extra power in here.

But I didn’t feel the need to
struggle against the hold on my wrists. Another body stepped up to my back, and
warmth enveloped me, infusing me with power. My vision returned to clarity and
I met Black Wolf’s eyes with renewed strength. His grip on my throat loosened
and he started to fade from my dreamscape. Just before he vanished from sight,
he gave me the
look
. It was that look of determination, the one that
said he would be back. All of the bad guys give that same look. But that’s
okay. I’d be ready for him next time. I certainly wasn’t going to make the same
mistake twice with him.

I let my body slump against the
person at my back, thinking maybe it was Morpheus. But it didn’t feel like his
energy. This was different. My body began to tingle and I could feel the
empowering glow of violet light build and fill my emptied reserves. It was an
incredible feeling.

The rest of the dreamscape faded
away, and I found myself standing before a great tree. The branches of the tree
created a canopy overhead that stretched out of sight into the heavens. Somehow
I knew the roots beneath the surface of the earth stretched as far and wide is
the upper branches. There was a well near the base of the tree, with a large,
giant of a man standing next to it.

The sound of a trumpet rang
through the air, its note lingering as a rider on a pale horse rode up to the
well. The giant bowed before the rider, a look of deep sadness in his
expression. He looked at me and shook his head. The rider turned to leave and
the giant followed.

It felt to me as though they were
disappointed in something. Was that something me? Had I done or not done
something to elicit their disappointment? Normally what happened in the
dreamscape wouldn’t give me cause for anxiety, but for some reason this did. It
felt important in the scheme of things, and I didn’t understand why.

I wanted to understand. I took a
step toward their retreating backs, but the person at my back held me in place.
My attention turned toward the well. The water levels had risen, spilling out
of the stone basin. It stank of raw sewage and I wanted to step back from the
black, polluted substance pouring out like a waterfall over the edges of the
well walls. I couldn’t move back from that, either. Whoever held me, kept me
rooted in place.

As the foul water hit the ground
at the base of the tree, it turned to the color of blood. This dissipated into
the ground, as though being absorbed by a sponge. The roots of the tree must
have been sucking it all in, because the same color red––blood red––started to
seep up the base of the tree.

In minutes, the color covered the
height of the main trunk and began spreading out toward the branches. Where it
touched the leaves, they yellowed and withered, falling from the tree. The
pollution worked quickly through the branches, and the leaves were falling all
around me. When they hit the ground, they turned to snow.

The cold was building in the air,
but the warmth at my back was sustaining. A deep sadness came over me, and I
felt a tear slide down my face to crystallize in the frozen air. I knew what
the tree was. I just didn’t know what it meant.

I closed my eyes. “Yggdrasil––”

“Yes, the World-Tree.”

My eyes flew open at the voice
caressing my ear. Dreamscapes could be so disorienting and so real. It was
sometimes hard to discern reality from the stuff of dreams. I was back in my
living room, sitting on the couch. My hands were held to my sides and the body
was still pressed against my back. It took me a moment to realize what was
different. I was no longer in the dreamscape. This was my apartment, and I was
wide-awake.

I pushed away from the person at
my back, scrambling to get away. The hold on my wrists was released. I turned
to face the one who had held me. It was Ke. I was at a loss for words, still
sorting through the confusion of what had happened. Had he brought the
dreaming, or had he saved me from the dream stalker?

He pulled back even further,
giving me space. “I heard you scream in your sleep.”

I was still confused. My thoughts
went around in circles, trying to sort through everything. “What happened?” The
words were meant to come out a lot stronger, but it hurt my throat to speak.

He stared at me long and hard
before answering. “Your screams brought me out of the bedroom.”

“And?” I asked when it looked as
though he would leave it there.

“And I came to wake you, to calm
you down.” He added with a frown, “I thought it was because of what had
happened earlier––”

He seemed as unsure as I was as to
what had happened.

“So you didn’t do that to me?”

Ke looked as though I had slapped
him. “I don’t touch women. Not in the physical, and certainly not in their
dreams.”

“Oh.” I was surprised. “You’re
gay?”

I could see the confusion in his
face as he rolled the thought around in his mind.

“You know––gay. You prefer men to
women?” Who was this guy?

The look on his face was pure
shock. “No. I wouldn’t––I don’t––”

I almost felt sorry for him, but
not enough to stop pushing forward. I needed answers, and I was betting dollars
to doughnuts that he had at least a few of them in that pickled brain of his.

“Okay. So you’re not gay, and you
didn’t send the dream.”

“No. On both accounts.”

“You helped me, then.” My throat
felt raw and scratchy.

“I didn’t know what was happening
at the time.”

I got up from the couch and
wandered into the kitchen area, which was open space to one side of the room
with appliances, all closed in by a bar of counters and cupboards, above and
below. “It was a dream stalker that I had just started tracking when you showed
up at my door. After working on you, expending as much energy as I did, I
forgot to guard my dreams against him.”