Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (19 page)

I wanted to sleep. Lunch was still hours away, and even if I didn't chicken out and call Lupe to cancel I had plenty of time to try and dream again.

The problem was that I just wasn't tired.

Well, not really. Mentally, I was absolutely exhausted. The last brief dream I'd had with Darius had seemed to go on for hours and hours, and it had left my mind ragged and unbalanced. Somehow that hadn't affected my body, though. I didn't feel the urge to yawn or nap, and having just woken up, the thought of crawling back into bed wasn't immediately enticing.

Because the truth was that I was scared. It was hard even to admit it to myself, but there it was, staring me in the face. I'd always been so closely connected to Darius, and I'd taken for granted the fact that I could share at least a little bit of his life practically any time I liked.

I wondered now if I’d already lost him. If I couldn’t dream about him whenever I liked, had I already seen the last of him?

Since it didn't seem like I'd be going back to sleep anytime soon and I didn't have to get ready to go out of the house for a while, I decided to hit the computer.

Over the years, I'd researched Darius on the Internet. He always seemed so real, it had been difficult to convince myself that he wasn't. I knew a billion little details about him, but that age-old question when it came to dreams kept rearing its ugly head. Were the things I ‘knew’ about him actual knowledge, or were they simply my subconscious spitting out random facts and minute details that it wasted time absorbing over the course of your life?

Even though I knew a lot of small stuff, the big parts of his life were still mostly a mystery to me. I mentally ticked off the things I was certain of:

His name was Darius. He had two brothers Luke, and the impossibly named Timber. He had a father as well, and the four of them were a Clan in the Alaskan wilderness. The Aniakchak forest, which according to the map had been practically as far north as you could get and still have thickly growing trees.

That was it really. Whenever I asked if he had a last name, he had smiled sadly at me and told me that I was being “very human".

Wait a second.

I checked my email again, hoping against hope that would be something new in there from Rachel.

There wasn't.

But there had been something in that first email she sent me last night, hadn't there?

I'm not crazy
, I told myself,
at least I don't think I am
.

I had the computer read the emails back to me again until I found the right one. And then I listened to it again, even though I was sure that I wouldn’t be getting any new information from it. It was all basically exactly as I had remembered from before.

The narrator didn't care, though. It kept plodding along, reading the email word for word in its emotionless, uncaring robot voice.

“I'm with his brother Timber, and tell him Luke is here too.”

The realization hit me so hard it almost hurt. Rachel knew their names, and there wouldn’t have been any way for her to do that unless she was really with them.

But how could that be? Had I used their names in the blog after all?

With shaky fingers I reached out and finally found the right key to point my computer in the direction of my own blog, and began the long, tiresome process of making it scan every page for the words Luke or Timber as I searched the forums for any mention of them.

Two hours later, it was done. I'd been right after all. I’d never used Darius or Timber’s names I the blog, which meant that Rachel couldn't have gotten those names from me. However unlikely it was, Darius and his family were real.

The man of my dreams was exactly that. And worse, he was stuck in a dream world. I didn’t know how I could save him, but I had to try.

Maybe if I were closer to him. I didn't think I could be any more in love with him than I was, but perhaps if I was physically nearer to Alaska our bond or connection or whatever the hell it was we had would be strong enough for me to be of more assistance. I thought about it for a moment or two, and the longer the idea sat in my had the more I thought there might be something to it.

I realized that I was shaking. My heart was racing, and my breath was quick and shallow. I could feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins, and all of a sudden I was lightheaded.
Don't faint
, I warned myself.
Sit down before you fall down, you idiot
.

I'd been moving between the rooms in a daze, one hand on the wall to steady myself so that I knew where I was. I was practically pacing with excitement at the fact that I could somehow prove Darius was real, at least to myself.

But all of a sudden, I didn't know where I was.

The best thing you can do when you're blind is to have a blueprint of wherever you are constantly in your head. You have to memorize your own home, every wall, every doorframe, every jutting piece of furniture and sharply angled table or desk. You can ignore the light switches, obviously, but God himself would need to help you if you wanted to move your phone charger from one outlet to another.

I'd always loved my house, mostly because of how much sun came in to join me. The walls had been decorated with what I considered to be timeless, classically beautiful little works of art.

I'd sold them all the day darkness claimed me. Lupe had done it for me actually, after I called her in the middle of the night from the hospital ranting and raving that I wouldn't set foot in that place until all that shit was gone. It was like I could imagine it all still hanging on the walls, mocking me.

I still had a blueprint of the house in my head, but now I didn't know where I was on it.

“It's okay, Grace,” I said out loud, desperate for the sound of my own voice to calm me down. “You’re just going into shock. Take a deep breath. Get ahold of yourself. You’re not gonna do anyone any good if you fall over and hit your head and bleed out before you can find your phone, so stop it.”

It was good advice, but that didn't make it easy to take. I felt my way slowly along the wall, realizing that I was in a hallway.

Was I headed toward the bedroom? I hoped so, but if I wasn't, then I was going toward the stairs. I slowed down, inching my way along, wondering if it would be this step or the next one that I would feel my toes find nothing but a void that was ready to break me as I tumbled down the stairs.

But the stairs weren't there. With a little more confidence, and my hand on the wall for support and guidance, I let myself take a little bit of a bigger step forward, and I heard the rumble and felt the house shake as the floor twisted and fell away just in time for me to miss it.

Earthquake
, I told myself,
that's what you get for living in California
. The house rattled all around me, and the railing slipped through my fingers as I reached for it. The ground was making a growling noise like the Bear in my dreams, and even when my head hit something hard and shoved me into unconsciousness, the noise didn't back off at all.

“Are you alright?” He asked me as I swam up from the depths of unconsciousness.

“I think so. Is that you, Darius?”

“Of course.” There was certainty to his voice that made me smile in spite of myself.

It couldn't be. Even though it obviously was, even though I'd know his voice anywhere, he couldn't be.

Because I couldn't see… I still had my sight in my dreams. Even if Darius wasn’t in them, there was still no doubt that dreaming would still be my favorite thing simply because I was whole there.

But if I could hear him, why couldn't I see him?

“You’re hurt,” he said. “I don’t know what happened. Try and relax Grace, and don’t do something stupid like try to get up.”

“I’m blind.” I blurted. I don't know if it was a confession or not, but I felt a little flare of anger and pain when I heard him laugh that went through me like a burning ember.

“You’re not blind. I've got a cool cloth on your face. Can't you feel it? You hit your head, somehow and I’m doing my best to make you feel better.”

I reached up and batted away his hand when he tried to stop me from pulling the cloth away from my eyes. Sure enough, once I did I could see that we were in a dimly lit room. I was laying on a bed, an old-fashioned but sturdy one. The moon cast silver lined shadows along the thick logs that made up the walls. “Are we in a cabin?” I asked.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Darius nod. “We are. I'm very much hoping that you don't have any follow-up questions though, because I won't be able to answer them. I woke up here. And so, it seems, did you.”

Instinctively, I reached up to touch his face. It was good to see him again, but it was even better to be recognized by him. As frightening as the Bear had been in those earlier dreams, the thought of Darius forgetting who I was held a terror that the Bear could not. And now that I knew that he was real, that he was flesh and blood somewhere else in the world, there was no way I was ever going to let myself lose him.

Even when I'd assumed he was simply a part of my psyche, I'd known that he was important. Now that I knew he was more, I felt like he was a pillar in my life that I built my world around.

If something happened to him, I didn't know what I would do. And I wasn't going to make myself find out, either. Rachel had said I needed to heal him. Well, I wasn't going to get that particular job done by sitting here doing nothing.

I sat up, and even though the room tilted and gave a couple little spins, it didn't take very long for it to stabilize. In the light of the moon I could see my own blood on the cold cloth that Darius had pressed to my forehead. A little bit of ginger inspection with my fingertips showed me that I had a bit of the gash just below my hairline on the left side of my forehead. Nothing too major, most likely.

“Did you see me hit my head?”

“No,” he told me sadly. “I didn't even know I was in this room until I felt your weight beside me on the bed. I was lost to the world, unknown and unknowing.”

Despite myself, I felt a little thrill go up my spine at the thought of Darius and I in the bed together. My dreams had often taken us in that direction, but they'd far too often either faded to black or skipped ahead when the actual lovemaking had been about to occur. At the time I thought it was because I was simply embarrassed by the amount of affection I held for a figment of my own imagination, but now I wondered if it was something more. I refuse to believe that Darius didn't want me. We've been through too much for that by far. I wasn't going to start second-guessing myself now, not when I could clearly see the way he looked at me.

“Back in my world,” I told him, “in California where I live, I think we just had an earthquake. I’d put money on the fact that my body is lying at the bottom of the stairs right now, and that I’ve got a gash just here/” I told him, laying my finger alongside the wound. “It must have knocked me out cold, which obviously is as good as sleep for the type of dream I need to get to you.”

“This isn’t a dream,” he said gruffly. Darius was many things, and I loved them all, but everything he did was weighted with the duty and sincerity of a man who knew his actions had consequences. He wasn't quick to laugh, though you could sometimes see the sparkle in his eye when he found something funny. In his heart, he was a protector.

“Wait a minute,” I said, my heart suddenly my throat. “You know me, right?”

“Grace, of course I do.”

“But you more than
know
me…”

“You are being too vague, he said with a sigh. “If you want an answer to a question, you’re going to have to have the guts to ask it.”

“Right. Well I guess I mean this; I dream about you practically every night. For more than ten years the waking world has simply been something I had to get through in order to get to sleep so that I could find you again. I shared so much with you. Sadness, joy, passion. There isn't a part of my life that you don't touch now, and I wouldn't have it any other way.”

“I feel the same way about you.”

“So, do you dream about me too?” I asked, holding my breath.

“I do.”

I grinned. “I run a dream forum on the Internet. It's just a hobby, and at first it only existed to help me sort out my own thoughts about you, but now people come and we talk about our dreams. Some are uncertain and others are uncentered, but each of them has something in common.”

“What's that?”

“They didn't hold a candle to us. Their encounters are fleeting and often never repeated. And, to top it all off, they assume just like I did that their dreams were products of a waking brain trying desperately to find sleep, throwing the day’s events in odd, recurring themes at the subconscious as a way to camouflage the fact that it was shutting down for a while.”

“I’m real and so are you,” he told me, his voice sincere and his eyes widening ever so slightly. He’d told me before that he thought it was magic, and the magic did not sit well with him. Obviously, some things never change.

“Darius?” I had to be careful. Even when he appeared human like this, he was still very much a Bear. He didn't like to be proven wrong, and it was easy to rile him up. “I think we need to talk about what's going on here.”

“Go ahead,” he said.

“I mean, you know that we've been meeting in our dreams, right?”

“Up until now, at least. But if you hit your head in your house in California, why are you still bleeding now?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. Maybe it isn't real. You know how people can fly in their dreams? Maybe their mind is just giving them the power to do it, and my mind knows I am hurt and so it just dragged it over into the dream. That makes sense, doesn't?”

“Maybe,” he admitted.

“This cabin…” I looked around. It was a gorgeous old place, clearly made by hand. “Have you ever been here before?”

He shook his head. “Never. Never seen the place in my life.”

“Neither have I. So why are we here?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I think Timber and Luke brought me here. Maybe just Timber. Maybe the Wolves. But not my father. I watched him fall.”

I bit my lip. Did he mean that he'd watched his father die? “I'm sorry,” I told him. “I didn't know.”

“I think that's why I was sitting on the ground in the cave when you found me last time. I was stuck there. I couldn't drag my mind away from the fact that I’d failed him.”

“Luke's alive,” I told him. “I know that for a fact. Timber too.”

“Are you sure?” There was the merest glint, the smallest spark of hope in his eyes.

I was going to do my best to answer honestly, but there was no way I was going to kill that. “I am. They’re with a woman named Rachel. She’s sort of a friend of mine. She let me know. In fact… She kind of sent me into your dream after you, I guess you could say.”

“Things are different now”, Darius sighed. “I don't have the strength of the Bear with me anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Bear has always lived inside me. His senses aid me. His instincts are my own to use, and I can feel his thoughts in my head, guiding me. But not anymore. Something happened in that cavern when my Father died. It split the Bear and I down the middle the way lightning would gut a tree it strikes.”

“Are you saying the Bear’s gone?”

Darius shrugged. “Not gone. He's out there, angry and alone. And I'm in here, as human as you are.”

I shook my head. “That's just dream stuff, Darius. If there's one thing I know, it’s that the things that happened in here aren’t real. Listen, you've gone through a lot. They say you're in some type of coma, in the real world. It's deeper than sleep, and so I am sure that the dreams are far more powerful in here. Maybe your Bear really is running alone, off in the wilderness. I can probably vouch for that. It chased me off a little while ago.”

“It did?”

I nodded. “And even though it was terrifying, even though for all the world it seemed like the thing was about to rip me apart, these are just dreams. They’re symbols. They mean a lot yes, but if you can solve the things that are going on in your head I think you can wake up and help your brothers.”

That perked him up even more. “If I heal in here, I can help protect the rest of the Clan?”

“I think so. That’s what Luke and Timber told Rachel, at least…”

“And you can help me?”

“To be honest, I'm not entirely sure. But you and I are linked, always have been. I don't think I'd be here if I wasn't able to help you. Things happen for a reason.”

Darius scowled. “Now you really do sound like Luke.”

I shrugged. “Maybe you should listen to him more often. He doesn’t sound like so bad a guy.”

“Maybe. So where do we start?”

“I think we start by finding your Bear,” I told him. “If he's out there and you're in here, that just won't do.”

“Okay,” he said at last, standing up straighter and holding his hand out to me as he helped me off the bed.

I was relieved. I didn't know how I’d convince him to listen to me. You can't make someone trust you, and if the bond that we'd shared for so many years wasn't enough, then nothing I could say was about to sway him. “Okay. Let's do this.”