Ascension (25 page)

To her surprise, she heard a chuckle.  “I will tell you that when you get back.”

The pull increased, and Laura fell inside.

~~

Laura spun through an inescapable void.  She knew where she was, this time, and knew what to expect.  She slowed herself, coming to a stop in mid-air.  Darkness surrounded her, broken weakly by hundreds of pale little lights.  She reached out for the lights, pulling them closer.  The darkness receded, and in a flash all the millions of stars representing every living being sprang into shape.

Laura knew how to navigate, and this time, there was no uncertainty.  She closed her eyes, and felt all the
need
she could summon within her.

Swish
.

The darkness shifted away, the stars going with it.  Laura opened her eyes, looking around.  There, far in the distance, she recognized a familiar cluster of stars.  They were the ones that belonged to the elders.  But even from afar, Laura could tell they were different from last time.  One was missing, first of all, but she could easily attribute that to what she had done.  The real difference was that all of them looked
weaker
.  The darkness did not shy away from them anymore. 

She did not repeat the mistake of floating toward them as she had the first time.  Instead, she closed her eyes, and felt the same
need
that drove her here.  The need to see her friends safe, to see the elders wiped out, and to see revenge exacted for the angels.  The need that made her sacrifice everything for the smallest chance of success.

Swish
.

Opening her eyes, Laura found herself face-to-face with the cluster of stars.  She could – if she had hands, here – reach out and touch them.  However, despite the proximity, she was unable to see within them, as she thought she might.  They were just the round glowing shapes she remembered from before.  Though the glow was duller.

She was close enough to reach them, but now what?  Gabrielle had given her no hints.  She could not enter any of them.  That would not help.  Somehow, from where she was, she had to direct enough energy at them to destroy them.

Only where that energy would come from, or even what shape it would take, Laura had no idea.  There were unseen rules to this place, and overstepping even one might have horrible consequences.  Laura racked her brain for ideas.  Here she was, outside the stars, able to see all of them at once.  Yet she did not have the physical presence to do anything about it.  She could not touch them, she could not hit them, she could not bind them.  She had no body, not in the same way as she did in the outside worlds, and would have to rely entirely on her mind.

She shifted her gaze around her.  All the other stars she could see meshed with the darkness quite well.  There was an equilibrium here, she remembered.  A delicate one, and it could be upset by the smallest thing.

And yet the cluster of the elders’ stars somehow seemed to exist outside it.  The darkness shied away from them, though definitely not as much as before.  Still, it seemed to Laura that the elders’ stars were not…
welcome
… here to the same extent that others were. 

In fact, there was more to it than that.  It was like the elders’ stars had carved out this space by themselves.  It was not given to them naturally, as it had been to everyone else.  They forced their way into it. 

Maybe that was the key to the whole thing.  If the elders’ stars were not wanted here, perhaps this entire realm, or abyss, or whatever it was, could aid her somehow. 

She took another look around, and her eyes stopped on the darkness that tried to surround the elders’ stars but couldn’t.  What if she could strengthen it, somehow?  That way, she wouldn’t be fighting against the equilibrium, but rather enhancing it.  It was worth a shot.

She had to go fast, too.  She didn’t know how time flowed here, but suspected it did not align with the dream realm or the human world.  Seconds here could be hours for Gabrielle.

She concentrated on the darkness.  The edges by the cluster looked like they were stretched thin.  She could not pull them in further.  Rather, she had to build on them.

But, how?  Always, she had to be careful of the equilibrium.  She did not think she could make more of the darkness form by itself, but if she added from somewhere else…

She reached out with her mind, stretching as far away as she dared, and picked off a speck of darkness from some distant place.  It was a tiny speck, and it came with her easily.  She brought it back, placed it on the edge of the cluster, and waited.

Nothing happened.  The world didn’t explode, the equilibrium didn’t tip, and she didn’t die.  Instead, everything was as it were before. 
Except
that the darkness was now a sliver closer to reaching the cluster of stars.

That was it!  In a flash, Laura started working as quickly as she dared.  She reached out and brought tiny pieces of darkness from far away to her.  She pulled from different places, bit by bit, in tiny amounts that would never be noticed as missing.  And yet, together they would add up to make an immeasurable difference here.  She reached in all directions, as far as she could, and built upon the darkness.  Little by little, she closed in on the elders’ cluster.  Their glow was suppressed even more, and the darkness came closer and closer to overwhelming them.

And then, the most magnificent thing happened.

It was like this realm had noticed what she was doing, and decided to help.  She saw flashes of black moving through the air and settling to augment the dark around the stars, all without her help.  She kept going, picking up the tiniest specks of dark, from places she didn’t even know exist, from the deepest nooks and crannies within the
torrial
, and placing it on the edge, building it up like a brick wall.  And the realm around her kept going too, adding to her momentum, until the darkness started moving toward the elders’ stars much like a rising tide.

The cluster of stars tried to fight back.  Their shine doubled, tripled, but the wave of black was too much.  It did not retreat under that glow.  Laura kept building, and the realm kept assisting her, pressing in on the light of the stars.  Laura did not know what would happen when the black finally reached the very surface of the stars, but suspected it would be very bad.  For the elders.

Abruptly the shine from the stars vanished, like a popped balloon.  And Laura could see through the translucent surface that made up each of the stars.

She kept building, but at the same time peered into those stars.  It was like looking at individual tiny planets.  The details were very small from afar, but Laura could see representations of land and water and other terrain elements that made up the elders’ representation of the dream.

The darkness was getting very close to the stars.  Laura prayed that Gabrielle had warned the others by now.  She did not think that she’d be able to see their representation out here as they fled, so there was no way to be sure they left.  They needed to get out in time.  If she destroyed the elders’ stars from the outside, and anybody that she knew was caught inside…

Laura was abruptly overcome by a terrible feeling that something was very wrong.  The feeling first began when the stars became transparent, but now, as the darkness was getting closer and closer to overtaking them, roared into something so large Laura could not ignore.  She stopped what she was doing.  But the building of the black continued by the elements of this realm.  The feeling of wrongness did not go away. 

Laura panicked, and tied to stop the flow of darkness.  She felt resistance against her, and the darkness pulsed around her, pushing in on her, threatening to overtake her as well as the elders’ stars.  She fought against it, and just when she thought she was going to lose herself, ripped free from it.  The building stopped.  But the darkness did not retreat.

The feeling that had alarmed her did not go away.  And Laura knew that here, of all places, feelings were of the utmost importance.  Had she done something wrong?  Was building the darkness toward the stars the wrong action?

Laura looked at the stars again.  For the first time, she
really
looked at them.  None were distinguishable from the others, save for one.  That was the one that was farthest away from her, all the way across the cluster.  For some reason, she felt a draw to it.  But that particular star had always been on the other side of the cluster from her.  As if it were hiding.

But, why?  Laura tried to move closer, and everything shifted in protest.  She jolted back to where she was.  Things came back into place. 

She couldn’t get any closer like that, and she should have known so.  But the strange feeling that was radiating from that star compelled her to try.  She realized that if she focused, she could see enough of the star from where she was.

She concentrated on it.  And to her immense surprise, realized that she
recognized
it.  It was like seeing somebody you swear you’ve seen before, yet not knowing where or when.  It was the most uncomfortable feeling, and it didn’t make any sense.  Yet she was sure she knew that star.

She focused on it any more.  And abruptly, she realized why she recognized that star.  Because it belonged to
Logan
.

Her head spun.  That made no sense!  But she knew, just by looking at the star, that it was true.  Much the same way as she had known Gray’s star was his after he revealed himself to her.  But, what was Logan’s star doing here?  Why was it in this bunch?  Had the
torrial
malfunctioned when Logan came in somehow?  She couldn’t take any chances.

She made sure the swell of darkness had ceased.  It had.  She could not destroy the cluster, not like this.  Not if Logan’s own star was caught in there.  She had to find out what it was doing there.

Against Gabrielle’s warning, she threw herself at it.

Chapter Nineteen

~Succubus~

Laura shut her eyes.  The need to figure out what Logan’s star was doing here superseded everything else.  She felt it intensely in her mind. 
Need
.

Swi
—

Something else yanked at her.  From another direction.  Laura thought she would be entering Logan’s star, but instead she found herself being stretched thin beyond hope.  Part of her was already inside, but another part was being pulled elsewhere.  She did not know if she could handle the pressure.  She was thin, frail, fragile.  And getting thinner by the second  She was going to snap in two.  She was—

Laura blinked, and found herself inside a dark but familiar room.  She stood up cautiously, feeling her body with her hands.  She was whole, and still alive.  What was the interference she felt, and how did she end up
here
, of all places?

She looked around.  The room was in exactly the same state she remembered it.  It was small and still barren.  A few tables and shelves stood in various places, but all were empty.  Their contents had all mysteriously disappeared overnight, in a time that felt so very long ago.  Laura was in the room that used to be the second floor of Selaine’s shop.

But it wasn’t
that
long ago.  And, as far as she knew, Logan had never been here.  So if she entered his star, if she was now within his dreams, how could she possibly have ended up here?  How could—

“You are wondering what you’re doing here, girl?”

Laura spun on her heels.  She hadn’t heard anyone approaching.  But sure enough, out from the corner stepped Selaine.

Laura’s jaw dropped open.  She didn’t know what to think.  She had always suspected there had been more to the elderly woman than she let on, but she never thought it would manifest itself like this.  “Selaine…?” Laura gasped.  “What are you doing here?  What is this?”

Suddenly Laura noticed a swirling glass globe on the table.  She didn’t know how she possibly overlooked it before.  It was just like the one Gabrielle used.  But there was only one of those in existence…?

“I brought you here,” Selaine said simply.  She motioned idly to the globe.  Then, she turned her head to look back around the corner.  “Come on,” she said to somebody there.  “You can come out.  There’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Laura heard footsteps against the wood floor, and a figure emerged slowly from behind Selaine.  Laura gasped when she saw who it was.

Logan
was there.  At least, she thought it was him.  She had been tricked in the dream before.  His head was down, and his long hair covered most of his face.  Briefly, he rose his eyes to meet hers, and Laura felt an explosive surge of emotion rise within her.  Those eyes could not be faked.  It
was
him!

She started to him, but Logan recoiled as if hit on her first step.  Laura stopped.  Logan’s eyes were glued to the floor.  He wouldn’t look at her.

“Logan…” Laura began uncertainly, “…what’s going on?  What are you doing here?”