Frost & Bothered (31 page)

“C
ordi, wake up. He’s going to hurt your mom.” Ginger shook my arm. “You have to stop him.”

“What?” I rubbed my eyes.

“He has your mom, and he’s a vampire. Get up,” she pleaded, her hair mussed and tears rolling down her cheeks. We wore our matching, oversized purple T-shirts, and our Halloween costumes were hanging over my desk chair.

I groaned and rolled over. “I told you not to eat all your candy tonight. Now it’s giving you nightmares.”

“No, this is real. I went to get a drink of water, and he has her.” Ginger pulled the covers off me. “Cordi!”

“Gah, all right. Jeeze, we’ll go look.” I knew she wouldn’t leave me alone until we did. Sleepovers with Ginger didn’t involve much sleep.

“Take this.” She shoved something at me when I rolled over and sat up.

It was a stake. “What are you doing with this?”

“Hurry. He might already be drinking her blood.”

“Yeah, right.” Rolling my eyes, I slid off the bed. We crept out of my room and down the hallway to the living room. The light came on, and we shrieked.

Dad grinned. “Thought I heard something. Do you girls know what time it is?”

“She had a nightmare. Again.”

“Did not. There’s a vampire in the kitchen.” Ginger shoved me. “There really is, Mr. Jones.”

“Oh.” Dad winked at me, and I winked back. “Well, we’d better go check things out.”

We met him at the swinging door. Dad put his finger to his lips before pushing it open. The light was on, and when we looked inside, Ginger screamed. So did I, at the sight of a man with his teeth buried in the side of Mom’s neck. Her eyes were open and vacant.

“Sunny!” Dad charged into the kitchen. “Get away from her!”

The man let go and stood, letting Mom flop to the floor. I stood there, open-mouthed and staring, as he hit Dad, smashing in the side of his head. Dad fell on top of Mom, and neither of them moved.

“Run!” Ginger yanked on my arm, and I dropped the stake. “Cordi, run!”

I shook my head, my gaze captured by the man’s red eyes. He smiled, revealing bloody teeth. “What beautiful little girls.”

“You’re not real.” Ginger was crying, begging me to run. I shook her off. “This never happened. You’re not real!”

Silence fell. He smiled again. “I’m not, but she is.”

“You should’ve run, Cordi.”

I slowly turned around, the living room morphing into a shadowy cavern. Ginger’s eyes were red, and she was all grown up. “First you didn’t save me, and then you killed me.”

I shook my head while backing up. She glided toward me. “You killed me, Cordi. Why?”

“I thought that was what you wanted. I didn’t know it was him.”

Ginger flickered closer, her gray face mottling with black veins. “You murdered me.”

It hurt to hear out loud, and I flinched. “I did what you asked me to do. I didn’t know he was making you say those things.”

“You should’ve known,” she shouted right in my face before swinging her fist. It struck my left cheek, snapping my head to the side.

I’d done enough to her, couldn’t fight back as she hit me again and again, until I went down. Curled in a ball, my arms over my head, I did the only thing I could think of. “Leglin!”

Ginger screamed and screamed again, the second ending in a gurgle. I cautiously uncurled, searching the darkness, and swallowed a scream of my own as a shape slunk clear of the shadows. “
Cordi?
”

“Good boy.”

Leglin’s tail wagged. I sat up and hugged his neck once he was close enough. “I don’t know where we are, or what happened.”

“
I was chasing deer
,” the hound said. “
With a great pack. You called me
.”

Chasing deer? What...oh. “We’re dreaming.”

“
We are?
” Leglin sniffed the air. “
This smells real
.”

“The last thing I remember is falling asleep. Then I was here. We have to be dreaming.” I paused. “They said we had to wake them.”

Which meant we’d fallen under the same spell. But the elves hadn’t found the Unseelie. Crap. Was someone dragging off all of us to wherever they’d hidden the Unseelie? I shuddered at the idea.

The bad guys had missed a beat, because being unconscious and at the mercy of others was a much bigger nightmare. I’d lost three years of my life with that happening while I was comatose.

Anger tightened my voice. “We have to find the others.”

Leglin stepped back as I climbed to my feet. My nightgown flapped around my legs in a sudden breeze, and I looked to the side to discover old Henry advancing. Invisible moonlight shone off his straight razor.

For a second, I cringed. Only a second. “You’re dead, dude. You’re just a memory, and I am not a helpless girl.”

Henry’s maniacal smile wavered.

“Go the hell away before I blow you to bits.”

The serial killer flickered, lowering his weapon, and faded from sight. I sighed. “Discord Jones, Dream Warrior.”

The nightgown had to go. All my favorite movie heroines tended to dress way bad ass.

This was a dream, and thanks to Mom, I knew once you were aware you were dreaming, you could change things. It was called lucid dreaming or something.

“Wardrobe,” I muttered and nodded as my nightgown became jeans, black combat boots, a black tank top, and black leather jacket. My hair rearranged itself into a ponytail. “Much better.”

Ready to kick ass, I grinned. “This may turn out to be fun. Let’s go.”

“
Where?
”

“To find the others first, then we’ll look for the Unseelie. Come on.” I set off for the darkness with a confident step. Right now this was my dream. I could do anything I wanted to in my own damn dream.

A
familiar place formed as we walked: The ravine where the dog fight and my first face-to-face with Dalsarin had taken place. As we neared the ring, transparent figures ran past.

One wasn’t transparent. Logan ran ahead of us, his ebony, white-striped body straining for every step, as though he were running through quick sand.

I remembered nightmares like that, and stopped to watch for a second.

Bad idea. Dalsarin put two arrows through my doppelganger before the tiger broke free and leaped onto the dark elf. When Dalsarin shouted, flinging Logan away, the tiger couldn’t escape the wave of green fire. I hurried forward, dropping into the pit. “Logan! It’s not real!”

The tiger’s writhing and roars of agony didn’t cease. I had to put my money where my mouth was, running forward to grab handfuls of fur on either side of his jaws. “Dude, it’s not real. Look at me.”

No more tiger. A confused Logan peered up from the ground, his head at an awkward angle because of my double-fisted grip in his hair. “Cordi.”

“Hi.”

“Ouch. You’re kind of pulling my hair a lot.”

“Sorry.” I let go and the surroundings disappeared, leaving the three of us in a spotlight circle of light.

“We’re stuck in Dreamland. Or maybe Nightmare Land is more accurate.”

“Oh.” Logan sat up and climbed to his feet, smoothing his hair down with one hand.

I wondered if it was me in particular he worried about not arriving in time for, or if I’d just been a symbol for all those he cared about. Could’ve asked him, but I didn’t want to tell anyone about my nightmare. Fair was fair. “I think we’re under the same spell the Unseelie are. We need to find the others.”

“All right, how?”

I shrugged, “We just started walking once I realized what was happening.”

Logan nodded, “Okay, Which direction?”

“Have I ever said ‘thank you’ for how you just go along with my ideas?”

“I did argue once, and you took an arrow to the shoulder.”

Hm, that was right. “I’ll listen better the next time you argue.”

He smiled. “Sure. Which way?”

“Let’s go straight. That’s how we found you.”

“Have you tried waking up?”

“Nope. Sal said we didn’t have much time to wake them. This is the first real opportunity we’ve gotten to do it.“ Besides, what if we did wake to find ourselves being dragged off? Someone would get hurt. Maybe even dead. “Let’s take it.”

“Okay.”

Off we walked, into the darkness again.

“L
ook familiar?” I asked Logan as we stepped from dark to a sunlit meadow. He shook his head, scanning the immediate area. “I don’t recognize it either.”

“I smell blood,” he and Leglin said at the same time.

“Lead the way.” What would we find? Whose bad dream was this? I followed them through knee high grass, and stepped around Logan when they halted.

Thorandryll’s face was hidden as he hugged the limp figure of an elven woman to him. It took me a second to realize the prince was weeping.

Bloody froth dripped from her lips. Her dark eyes were glassy and staring. The remains of a picnic were scattered about them, including an overturned goblet close to her lax hand. Thorandryll rocked her, still quietly weeping, and her dark brown hair swayed.

“Son of a bitch,” Logan breathed. “She looked like you.”

“I guess.” She had to be his wife, the one who’d cheated on him with Dalsarin. ”He poisoned her.”

“Looks that way.”

I took a deep breath, “I’m going to wake him.”

“Okay.”

Two steps, and Logan said, “Wait.”

I turned around, “Why?”

“You’re in a dress. Her dress.”

Looking down, I discovered he was right. “What the hell?”

“I’ll wake him.” Logan walked past and stood looking at Thorandryll for a few seconds. He crouched down and grabbed the elf’s shoulder. “Wake up.”

The woman disappeared when Thorandryll lifted his head. He blinked at Logan, noticed me, and looked around as the scene faded from sight. “You will speak of this to no one.”

Releasing his shoulder, Logan stood, “Didn’t see a thing.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “Wardrobe, damn it.”

The long, blue dress turned back into my ass-kicking outfit. “Come on, we need to keep going.”

“Where?” Thorandryll rose. “What is going...”

“We won tickets to Nightmare land. Aren’t we lucky? Now move your butt. We have to find the others and the Unseelie.”

“No, we should wake ourselves.”

“Go right ahead. We’ll wait.” I was curious if we could.

Thorandryll frowned. “It appears I cannot.”

One by one we found the others. Kate was wandering, calling “Daddy?” in a little girl voice, Percy asleep in her arms. Dane was in a cage, huddled in a corner, his expression lost and lonely.

Connor was arguing with a faceless woman, storming away from her as we approached. Alleryn stared out a window in his clinic, and I had no idea what his nightmare represented to him.

Damian knelt at the foot of a pile of bodies, Ily asleep beside him. Each body had a toe tag with a big red X – Unsolved Cases. Kethyrdryll’s nightmare was familiar. We found him at his original camp, his mare asleep, and Leandra nowhere to be seen.

The rest of the elves’ nightmares involved loss or failure.

Finally, we marched into a meadow full of hounds, many of them playing or eating from several deer carcasses. “That’s way more than you came with.”

“The Unseelie Queen’s pack,” Thorandryll replied. He spoke in Elvish, calling them to order. The meadow and deer remains faded away.

We were making good progress. “Okay, let’s find her next if we can.”

“This is Spot, her pack leader.” Thorandryll gestured a hound slightly bigger than Leglin forward. “He should be able to lead us to her.”

“Spot? Really?”

“Maeve has a strange sense of humor.”

“Uh huh. Okay.” I focused on Spot. “Please do your best to lead us to your Queen.”

Spot sniffed. “
Humans do not order me
.”

“I didn’t order you, bub. I asked nicely.”

The hound tilted his massive skull, perking his ears. “
You understand me?
”

“Yeah. I was a dog for a while, picked up the language,” I said.

“
Interesting
.” His head straightened.

“I thought the same thing. Now, would you please lead us to the Queen? We’re here to help her and the rest of the Unseelie.”

Spot lifted his lips enough to show the tips of his fangs. “
There are shifters among you
.”