The Dream Crafter (32 page)

Why couldn’t this be a dream?

…why
couldn’t
this be a dream?

Amana was awake, but her devil appeared before her, shadowy clouds in those blue eyes. “And now, you begin to understand. What would you have us do?”

The four men who had attacked Merc moved towards them, and Amana flung out her hand. The men flew in all directions, crashing against walls and falling to the ground.

“What do you want?” the doppelganger asked.

“Merc’s hand in mine, a beach outside our window, and Nakoa enjoying the sun.”

“Then make it happen.”

Underneath them, the crumbling sidewalk flowed into white sand, spreading out and pulling the surrounding buildings into itself, making gentle hills, and beyond them, the ocean began to fill, large and blue, a salty breeze tickling her nose.

“Now heal him.”

A pillar of sand formed underneath Merc and built up, bringing him up waist height. She placed her hands over him, but his wounds still seeped and bled, his skin growing ever colder. “He’s barely holding on.”

The other frowned, her eyes narrowing. “That shouldn’t be. He should heal.”

“He’s
not.
”

Before the other could speak, a reverberation hit Amana, like a sonic alarm on a wavelength only she could feel. “What is that?”

The other looked sick. “Fallon, perhaps others. The Dragon Slayer comes to stop you, and when she does, Merc will die.”

“No.”
Fallon had toyed and tormented her enough. She would not take Merc. “How do I
end
her?”

The other went still, and she said, blue eyes foreshadowing the end of times, “Let Fallon live up to her name.”

‡

N
akoa ran through
the streets, Fallon and Laire on either side. Fallon was running at a pace he had trouble keeping, while Laire floated across the ground instead of running. The question of Laire’s magics flicked across his mind before it was pushed aside, unimportant, the only thing which mattered was getting to his sister.

In concert, both Laire and Fallon’s arms shot out in front of him, bringing their trio to a halt. “What?”

“The Dream Crafter has broken the veil,” answered Laire, the words not so much an answer to his question as an observation that happened to be spoken aloud, wonder and fear mixing in equal parts within that voice. Fallon didn’t answer. Instead, she kept looking around, hunting for something.

“My sister, is she hurt? Is that what happened?” He couldn’t lose her. Not now, not when they were so close.

Laire shook her head. “I can’t tell, but something big happened for her to finally crack.”

A wild, echoing shriek made up of every horrifying, nightmare inducing sound surrounded them, and in lighting speed – impossible to believe for such a large creature – a dragon landed before them, the earth shattering underneath the weight, and only long training kept Nakoa balanced and upright.

Fear, visceral and sharp, pushed through him as the creature lowered its faces, neck elongating to take in the humans. Before it, he was an ant in front of a skyscraper.

Animal cunning shone sharp in the narrowed gaze, and its snout opened to release that terror-inducing scream.

“Wrong choice of guard dog.”

Fallon’s dispassionate words had Nakoa bringing his attention to the swordswoman. She was calm in the face of the creature…

No
, there was nothing calm about the way those eyes were lit or the small curve of her lip. This was excitement carefully concealed, this was thrill and release, and one fraction of the fear the berserker held for the creature in front of him shifted to encompass the woman at his side.

At the unexpected reaction, Nakoa turned to Laire. She was not as carefree as Fallon, her body strung tight enough that a touch might shatter her, but she held her face blank. “Amana is tracking down all enemies. It seems she doesn’t like us.”

“Who does?” Fallon began to move towards the beast, calling out without looking back, “Get to Amana. I’ll take care of this.”

“You can’t go after it
alone.
” Nakoa made to move forward, but Laire’s hand on his arm stopped him. He pulled at her hand, but she was surprisingly strong, her grip secure. “You’re going to let her fight a dragon by herself?”

“Considering she’s called the Dragon Slayer, it’s time she put up or shut up.” Fallon’s sword was in her hand and a glow emanated from the sword, infusing into Fallon. A scrollwork of fire tattooed itself into her skin, and Nakoa half-shielded his eyes over the sudden burst of light that flared from her weapon. “You and me got to take care of your sister before she destroys life as we know it. So,
priorities
.”

Laire seemed sure of the path they were running, no hesitation in the tiny woman as they dodged empty cars strewn through empty streets, hard broken asphalt that turned into soft sand, his feet depressing into the give, slowing him down. Nakoa turned around, searching a familiar beach instead of a destroyed city. “Amana, where are you?”

“Oh
gods damn
.” Laire’s breathy curse turned Nakoa, and his baby sister was sitting in the sand, the bloody, broken body of the mercenary beside her, his head in her lap and her hand on his bleeding chest.

Laire started walking, her gait even and steady, her eyes trained on Amana while she spoke to him. “Do you know why Dream Crafters don’t exist anymore?”

“What?” What the hell did that have to do with anything?

Her voice was the steady tone of a professor in school, nothing in her manner showing any surprise or fear over their predicament as she walked forward, straight for his sister, in the sand that was taking over a city, with an ocean forming a stone’s throw away. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely, right? It’s got a bit of truth to it, but overall its bullshit, at least the way it’s used most times. Petty kings with a few subjects they can rape and murder at will are nothing.
True
power, the human mind isn’t able to comprehend or absorb. Magic has limits, power has
limits
. Make them limitless, and it will drive a human beyond madness to horrifying depths.”

Amana sat at wrong angles, her body stiff and weird like a brand-new doll that a doll maker strung wrong. The effect had a chill running down his spine, a chill he felt even through the haze of the berserker which clung to him. “And Dream Crafters are limitless?”

“If they choose to be.” Several feet away, and now Laire stopped and turned to him. “You need to convince your sister to limit
herself
. It’s on you to bring her back, because if you don’t, the gods themselves will step in to destroy her. They can’t let her live otherwise.”

Nakoa stepped forward, and if there was fear, it still meant nothing. This was his beloved sister. He may have been the one in prison, but they both had spent the last decade joined together, living in hell and refusing to give up on the other. He wouldn’t give up on her now. They were together to the end, and he’d remain in hell with her forever if that was the path she chose. “Amana.”

Amana kept stroking Merc’s hair. “I can’t save him, Nakoa. It’s taking everything to keep him from dying.”

He kneeled beside her, hesitant in a way that had him hating himself, but again, it didn’t matter. He was hers always, and whatever she chose, he would accept. He sat, not touching, but close enough she could touch him if she wished. “Amana, you have to drop the dream.”

Violence he’d only seen hints of radiated from her, her head shaking in near epileptic fashion. “If I drop the dream, he dies. I
won’t
let him
die
.”

“You
love
him?” And only now did everything make sense, and Nakoa closed his eyes against the guilt of his part in this situation. He had hurt this man, taken him in front of her, pulled her away and tossed her around, giving her no choice like no one ever gave her. “Do you hate me for what I did?”

“No.”
Her voice was fierce and breathless and he near sobbed in relief.

Thank gods, her eyes had cleared with her response and he pressed on, needing to keep her with him. “You can’t keep this up, Amana. It isn’t real.”

“Why is my magic less real than others? Why should
I
toss aside what I want? That’s all I do. Bow and beg. Now
I
have power, and the rules change?”

A storm was forming, her skin near glowing with the power that was drawing close and focusing within her. There wasn’t magic in him, but Nakoa would swear he felt an answering force from without, as if others were gathering their own magics against Amana.

The gods themselves…

And it didn’t matter. “I’m with you, always. If this is your choice, I stand with you. My only question is what would he want, this man you love?”

“I don’t care what he
wants
.
I
want him to live.”

“Will you take away his choices like I took away yours?”

She stilled, her mouth falling open, and one of those warm, loving hands that always stroked his hair and calmed him throughout his life came up to cover her mouth as horror filled her gaze.

“You have every right to feel that.” Nakoa grabbed a handful of sand underneath him, holding his hand high and letting it fall through his fingers. “I thought it was the right thing. That’s my only excuse. All I could see at the time was if one of us had to be caged, I didn’t want it to be you. I was too young to realize I was damning you to something so much worse.”

“You didn’t–”

“I did,” he interrupted. “I’ll never ask you the details, but I know I did. In my selfishness, I forced that on you.”

Here, now, her hand covered his, fingers shaking and hand as warm as he remembered. “It was my choice. Everything I did was my choice.”

“No, it wasn’t,” he said again, squeezing her hand, delighting in their first true touch, without the berserker between them or screams of misunderstandings. “I don’t know him. I have no loyalty or love for him. I’ll follow your lead wherever you go. But I will ask you again, one more time, for
you
, because I don’t want you to live with what I live with, knowing what I did to you. Is this what he would want, and will you do it anyway? Because if he
loves
you, he doesn’t want this.”

She leaned into him, her head on his shoulder as her hand remained on Merc’s chest and his head on his lap, seemingly unwilling to lose the touch of either of them. “I’m selfish enough to not want to care.”

“Yet you do, because there isn’t a true selfish part within you. That’s who you are, who you’ve always been. My big sister always had too much love in her heart, and I will beat his ass again if he takes you away from me and doesn’t deserve that gift.”

She laughed, even as Merc’s blood covered her hand. “He deserves everything and more. He deserves the world.”

“That’s still not enough to convince me he deserves you.” He shifted and kissed her forehead, his heart beating in delight at the contact, the connection. “We make fearful decisions and end up damaging those we love most, who own part of us. You and I have done nothing else. Don’t you think it’s time to stop?”

Her skin was chilled under his touch, a fine tremor a millimeter under the surface, as want and need and desire and
truth
crashed within her, fought a battle as epic as any powers a dream crafter could summon, and as intimate as the enclosure of the human heart. Her gaze shifted, and she looked off into the shadows.

She broke contact then, shifting her gaze away from whatever had mesmerized her, and when she smiled up at him, there was decision and determination in the lines of her body. “How do we save him the right way?”

“If I may.” Laire stepped forward, the timing so perfect she must have been waiting for the words. She moved in slow motion, wary in the way people are around a rabid dog. “The Spellbook. What does the Spellbook say?”

“The Spellbook?” He and Amana asked it together, and he was sure, without looking, their faces had the same expression of dumb
not
-understanding.

“I know you’ve felt how it responds to him. I felt it through the twenty layers of magical crap your boyfriend threw at me – by the way, tell him never to do that again – so I know you know what I’m talking about. Ask it now to help him.”

Nakoa glanced at Amana, the mental note in his head to ask about Laire’s declaration written and signed. Indeed, Amana did know what Laire was speaking about, for her face cleared, and with a quick movement she grabbed at the bag at her side to rip the book out of her bag.

The book was glowing, magics swirling around it in a violent maelstrom he flinched from, but Amana brought it close to her, cradling it to her heart and leaning over it, as though it were speaking to her.

Nakoa rose and stepped back, but not more than a step away. He was with his sister until the end, and now, he would support her whatever happened next.

‡