Yarrow (29 page)

Tomorrow, she thought as she killed the car's engine, I'll apologize to Peter and talk to Ben. He's coming over for dinner, anyway, so I'll just talk to him. I'll try to be real in this world. Maybe he can help me do it.

A hesitant whisper of hope stirred in her. She stepped out of the car feeling less lost for the first time since she'd woken earlier and realized her dreamworld was a sham. It was time to make a turn around. It was time to stop pretending and be real. If it wasn't too late already, she had to—

Something slammed her hard against the side of the car, spinning her shoulder bag and car keys from her hands. A big hand gripped her jaw, forcing her to look up. Eyes like ice stared into her own. Cold fear shoved panic through her like a knife. The eyes glittered with their own inner light, drawing her into them. A jackhammer pounding started up behind her temples. She could feel herself falling into those eyes, as though they were sucking her in.

She struggled in her assailant's grip. He slammed her hard against the car again. Spots danced in front of her eyes, a whole kaleidoscope of tiny sparks that pulsed and spun in an incoherent rhythm. And beyond them, feral as a nightmare, the eyes bore into her— demanding, taking, ripping her consciousness from her.

This wasn't happening to her, her reason told her. There was no one out to get her. No dreams for a dream thief to steal.

She wished someone would tell her attacker that. Then a black wave came washing over her and she went limp in his grip.

Rick shifted Cat's weight and slung her over his shoulder. Success danced inside him like the shifting reflections from a mirrored disco ball. It was so fucking easy. With this kind of power what could stop you?

Nothing, he thought as he wrestled his burden to where his car was parked.

When he gave Rick the power, Lucius had shown him the way things went. You had to lull your prey. You had to deceive them with shifting lies so that they never had a chance to believe that the threat to them was real. That was how Lucius and his kind survived.

Lucius played it slow and easy, but Rick was beginning to realize that you didn't have to sneak around in the shadows. You could just step out, bold and easy, and if anyone got in your way, just squash them. Otherwise what was the point of having this power? You didn't hide, you got right out there. On a talk show maybe, or set yourself up like one of those TV evangelists and get yourself a few million followers with just a snap of your fingers.

He dumped Cat unceremoniously into the passenger's seat and closed the door on her. Rounding the car to the driver's side, he realized that Lucius simply didn't understand the potential of what the power had to offer. His values were centuries out of date. You didn't have to go out looking for prey. These days people were so stupid, they'd line up to have their souls sucked out of them. It all depended on your PR. Hell, look at the Moonies. Or L. Ron Hubbard's people.
They
knew where it was at.

Starting the car, Rick was already planning his campaign. If he could sell computers to people who neither wanted them nor could afford them, this'd be a piece of cake. He'd set it up as a self-awareness gig and just watch the suckers and their money come pouring in.

"It's a whole new ball game," he said, patting Cat's limp form. "A whole new ball game. And I'm going to make the rules. Too bad you're going to miss out on it, babe, 'cause it's sure gonna be some show."

Peter pulled into Cat's driveway behind her VW and was out of the cab almost before it had stopped. The bug's door stood ajar. Cat's shoulder bag lay on the gravel. A half dozen feet away her car keys lay glinting in the glow thrown by the car's interior light.

"Oh, Jesus…"

Peter picked up the shoulder bag and turned it over in his hands while his gaze went from the car to the darkened house. They were too late.

"It has her," Tiddy Mun whispered, edging from the car. Tears glistened in the little man's eyes.

Numbly, Peter turned to face his companion. "How could we be too late?" he demanded. "The cavalry's never too late. We're the bloody cavalry, aren't we?"

Tiddy Mun shook his head, understanding only the words "too late."

"It can't end like this," Peter said. He dropped the bag, then hit the roof of the VW with his fist. "How can it end like this?"

The vampire— the enemy, whatever the hell he was— had stymied them at every turn. He was always one step ahead of them. Mick was dead now. Ben and Becki were sitting in the car like a couple of zombies. And now he had Cat.

"If we could only find him," he muttered.

If the vampire meant to kill Cat, he'd, have done it here. The way he finished off Mick. But he wanted Cat for something else. For what? To feed on her some more? To steal her dreams? What would happen when he stole all her dreams? Would there be anything left that was still Cat? Or would there be just a husk with her face, her body, but no one home inside?

Can Cat come out to play?

Sure, Peter. At least what's left of her….

Christ, he wasn't going to make it through the night. Not in one piece. Not with any level of sanity left.

Think, he told himself. Where would he have taken her?

Just look for the castle on top of the hill….

A small hand plucked at his sleeve, and he looked down into Tiddy Mun's features.

"You'd know!" he said before the gnome had a chance to speak. "You knew he was going for Mick. You can take me to where he's got Cat!"

Tiddy Mun nodded. "But he's too strong for us. We need—"

"The hell he's too strong for us." Peter pushed the little man toward the cab. "You just show me where he is."

"We need more help," Tiddy Mun said.

"Where do we get it?"

The little man trembled. "This is your world," he began.

"There's just you and me," Peter said. "She hasn't got anybody else right now. In the time we'd spend trying to convince somebody we're on the level, Christ knows what he'll have done to her."

Peter backed the cab out of the driveway. "Which way?"

Tiddy Mun pointed north.

Measure by measure the blackness cleared.

Cat sat up, putting a hand to her head. A headache drummed steadily between her temples and her head still rang from where it had struck the car. But as awareness returned to her and she saw where she was, she shook her head slowly, setting up a wave of nausea.

"Please, God," she murmured. "Just go away."

But her surroundings remained, firm and real.

She lay in the middle of the circle edged by the three standing stones on Redcap Hill. In the Otherworld. The place of her dreaming that didn't exist. But she could see the topmost branches of the fairy thorn from where she lay. There was Mynfel's wood. The sky above was studded with the constellations of the Otherworld. The familiar wind of Kothlen's moors lifted and tugged at her hair.

"You're not real," she told her surroundings. "Not anymore. Just go away. Please!"

She willed the illusion to leave her. She might be crazy, but at least let her be crazy in a place that was real, where a doctor might help her or… or something. Then she remembered her attacker, and suddenly she wasn't so sure that going back was such a good idea. He was so much stronger than her, handling her like she was a toddler. Maybe the delusion was better. Because his eyes… in his eyes…

Nothing made sense anymore.

"Mistress Cat?"

No, she told herself when she heard that voice. I'm drawing the line. I saw right through him like he was made of… of glass. He's an illusion, just like everything else around me. If I lie very still and ignore him— ignore everything— it'll all go away. I'll wake up in my own bed and find that I was never attacked in my driveway, there was never a prowler or… or a dream thief, or whatever he was.

Toby Weye squatted in front of her. She looked away from him, staring down at the grass, and refused to speak.

"Mistress Cat…?" he tried again.

A hand— God, it felt real— reached out to touch her. Numbly she lifted her head to look into his face. He regarded her with a strange, guarded expression, snatching back his hand once he saw that he'd gotten her attention.

"Go away," she said softly.

"I can't."

Of course he couldn't, Cat realized. He'd be here for as long as she projected the illusion that he existed. You're not real, she thought at him. You don't exist anymore. Time to go
poof and
vanish. Bye-bye.

He stayed right where he was, still watching her. "One moment," he said, "we were by the pool in the forest, and in the next I was here. Alone. You told me I wasn't real, that you'd made me up, and then"— he snapped his fingers— "I was here." He leaned closer. "I
am
real, Mistress Cat."

"Okay," she said. Is this how it happened? Illusion and reality blended together until you couldn't make head or tail of it? Phantoms that expounded on their existence, that you had to accept or they just wouldn't leave you alone? "Okay. You're real. Now go away."

"I can't," he said again.

Cat sighed. Maybe if the pounding in her head would let up for a few moments, if things would just slow down for her…

"Why not?" she asked.

Toby pointed down the hill. She looked, and saw what she hadn't noticed before. She'd been too busy disavowing the existence of the Otherworld to bother with all of its details.

Around the hill, just beyond the protection of the stones, shadows… capered. There was no other word for it. There were dozens of them— sly, liquid shapes that conducted some cabalistic dance she could only watch for a few moments before she had to look away. They drew her gaze and repelled her at the same time. There was something in their movement, like the gliding gait of a reptile, that awoke primal terrors deep inside her. She couldn't watch them without becoming nauseous.

"What… what are they?"

Toby shook his head. "I've never seen their like. They were here when I arrived— not many at first, but enough to keep me penned at the top of the hill. Their numbers have grown since."

"But what
are
they?"

The creatures wove a sinuous dance just beyond the stones, trapping the eye. More than anything else they convinced her that, imagined or not, there was more to the Otherworld than what she could have created. Those things
couldn't
have come from her. But if they had… God, if they had… She couldn't follow the thought through. Better to pretend that the Otherworld was real on its own.

"I've had a thought," Toby said.

She dragged her gaze from the weave and dip of the shadows, glad to concentrate on him, on his face, on what he was saying, even if she had made him up.

"They belong to your dream thief," he said. "They're his power… manifesting in this world."

Like the time the black shape had dropped out of the sky a few nights ago. These things left Cat with the same impression. They lacked something. They hungered. They wanted her.

"Why don't they attack us?" she asked. But she already knew. The longstones on top of Redcap Hill were protecting them.

Toby shrugged. "My iron blade?" he ventured. "The hill's magic? You said it was hallowed, didn't you?"

"To Mynfel," Cat replied. "But she's…"

What exactly
was
the antlered woman? A manifestation of Cat's, just as those capering shadows were the dream thief materialized in the Otherworld? Or was she a being who belonged to this world, one who had withdrawn her favors? Cat had never truly understood just what it was that Mynfel represented. Mynfel had always been the silent companion, the sense of peace that Cat could draw strength from, the deepness that underlay the whole of the Otherworld.

"What can we do?" she asked.

"Try to break free?"

Cat shook her head. She couldn't bear the thought of being touched by one of those creatures, to have them crawling over her, clutching at her hair, the shadowy smoothness of them clammy against her skin.

"And go where?" she asked.

Toby nodded. "Then we can either wait, or take the battle to your enemy."

"You don't understand," Cat said. "I'm not in control of… of any of this. Ten minutes ago I was convinced it didn't exist. Even now I… I'm not all that sure…."

"But—"

"I'm not even sleeping right now! The last thing I remember is some maniac attacking me in my driveway."

The memory of her assailant's eyes floated up in her mind, chilling her. She tried to explain it to Toby, but the words came out in a jumble. The confusion was too complex to unravel in a few easy sentences. How could she explain it when she wasn't even sure herself what was real anymore? But Toby drew one fact out of her story.

"He wants you," he said. "He hunts you on both worlds, Mistress Cat. Now he has your body on one, your soul trapped here on another. You must wake up and face him."

"Wake up? I'm not even sleeping!"

"Wake, or you doom us both."

"You don't understand." No one understood.
She
didn't even understand.

"Wake!" Toby cried. He grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her forcibly.

"I'm not a hero!" Cat cried. "Going back won't do any good."

But it was already too late.

The drumming headache between her temples took on the rhythm of Toby's shaking. The Otherworld began to dissolve around her. The smell of grass and moor wind was replaced with the stale odor of old car leather and aftershave. She had a dim impression that she was underground somewhere. In a car and underground. The car wasn't moving. Her face was pressed against a man's leg that shifted as she moved away from it.

"Oh, no, you don't," an unfamiliar voice said.

She struggled, but she was in too confined a space. An arm went around her neck, cutting off her air as it dug into her windpipe. A hand grabbed her hair, twisting her head back so that she was looking up into her assailant's face. The eyes caught her gaze and she started to plummet again, falling into their depths. Desperately, she tried to look away, but only managed to squeeze her eyes shut.

"Look at me!" the man demanded. "It'll only hurt forever."