Marked (2 page)

Was
I dreaming? Suddenly I wasn't so sure. Maybe I'd simply had some kind
of psychotic break from the stress of dealing with the attack on the
estate. It was possible for multiple psychological blows to send
someone over the edge like that.

First
there had been Dad and Cindi dying in that car wreck and then I'd
nearly died more times than I could count. Really, it was a surprise
that I hadn't completely melted down when Alec and I had broken up.

It
hit me with a suddenness that took my breath away. What if everything
that had happened since the accident had all been nothing more than
some kind of massive hallucination? What if none of it had been real?

The
universe felt like a crystal goblet vibrating a hairsbreadth away
from high C. All it would take was the slightest change in pitch for
everything to shatter. Life had gotten a lot harder since the
accident, but that had always felt like a fair trade in exchange for
having Alec in my life. The thought of going back to how I'd been, a
broken little doll with nothing to look forward to, no purpose other
than just getting through the day, was more than I could handle and
something in the depths of my mind started to unravel.

I
probably would have blacked out again, returning to the welcome
oblivion of one of my panic attacks, if not for the warm, tingly
energy flowing through me. That energy was Alec's. It had been one of
his defining characteristics for as long as I'd known him.

I
could very nearly feel his arms wrapped around me and that pulled me
back from the edge of insanity. Alec was too amazing to be nothing
more than a figment of my imagination. Even in the middle of the
worst kind of psychotic break, I still wouldn't have been capable of
imagining a version of reality where I ended up with him.

People
sometimes say that someone—or something—is too good to be
true, but this was the exact opposite of that. Alec was too good
not
to be true, and that was all the reassurance that I needed. Besides,
I wasn't sure that it was possible to feel this much pain in the
middle of a hallucination.

Then
again, it wasn't supposed to be possible to feel pain in the middle
of a dream either. That was worrisome. Alec being real didn't
necessarily prove that I wasn't falling. In fact, it actually made
more sense that a mind facing death would come up with reasons why
nothing it was experiencing was real. There were probably lots of
people who fell to their deaths convinced that they were just about
to wake up from a nightmare.

No,
I could see myself doing that, but everything that had happened
during the last few minutes was too far outside even the normal dream
craziness for me to believe it was all real. This had to be a dream.
Maybe the pain was just a side effect of the dream power that Mallory
was convinced I had.

I
was still falling; my brush with insanity had taken no more than a
second, but I was moving impossibly fast and the ground wasn't very
far away.

This
wasn't my first falling dream and I relaxed as I fell the last
hundred feet, expecting to wake up in the instant before I would have
crashed into the ground. I started to drift free and then some kind
of heavy pressure pushed me back into my body.

I
screamed again, my mind clawing desperately for some escape, and then
another wave of energy crashed through me and my eyes popped open.

I
was safely in my bed at the back of Alec's massive RV. The chase and
fall had been nothing more than a bad dream, a dream that was swiftly
slipping away from me despite my best efforts to hold onto it for
analysis.

There
was something about what I'd just experienced that put it in a
category all of its own. It was more than just seeing the world in
shades of glowing white or the fact that I'd felt such intense pain.
There was something fundamentally different about this dream,
something that felt important.

It
was right on the edge of my mind, like I'd started to say something
and then had the word I'd wanted to use dissolve out of my memory.
Maybe I would have managed to pin it down if I hadn't realized a
second later that Alec's warm, muscular arms were wrapped around me.

"Are
you okay, Adri?"

I
couldn't think of a better surprise to wake up to. Alec and I were
still sleeping separately despite the temptation to do otherwise.
Waking up and finding Alec in bed with me sent thoughts of my
nightmare tumbling out of my skull.

"I
think so—what happened?"

"I
was about to ask you the same question. You started screaming a
little while ago. I came back to check on you and saw that you were
thrashing around hard enough that you'd broken the bookshelf."

I
didn't want to give Alec a reason to let go of me, so I didn't move
very far, but I turned my head enough to see the pile of books on the
far end of the bed.

"Wow,
I'm lucky I didn't get brained by one of them."

"Yeah.
In hindsight maybe it wasn't the best idea to mount a shelf above the
bed like that. I was worried you were going to break the other one as
well so I immobilized your arms. I've been trying to wake you up for
nearly five minutes. Bad dream?"

"Yeah,
I guess."

"You
want to talk about it?"

"Actually
I do, but I don't seem to remember much about it. I think something
was chasing me, but that's about all that stuck with me."

"You're
sure there's nothing else?"

"I
don't know…maybe the sense that it wasn't a normal dream, but
I couldn't tell you for sure what made it special. I'm sure exhausted
though. I feel like I've been running for hours—I was less
tired than this when I went to bed."

"There's
a lot of that going around."

It
was the kind of casual remark that I'd caught Alec making from time
to time lately. I wasn't even sure he was aware of what he was doing,
but it almost seemed like he was trying to give those around him a
heads up without actually coming right out and saying point blank
that there was a problem with something.

It
was the kind of thing that could be problematic in a leader if he
wasn't doing it on purpose, but I hadn't been able to bring myself to
point it out to him. Most everyone else didn't know him well enough
for it to be a problem and I was reluctant to make him any more of a
closed book than he already was.

I
opened my mouth and then decided once again against saying anything.
Instead I turned in his arms so I was facing him. It was a calculated
risk. There was always a chance that he'd take my moving as a reason
to let go of me and sit up, but I kept his right arm trapped
underneath my body and this time he didn't move.

Looking
into his eyes was like entering an entirely new universe, one where I
was completely happy. Alec could fake a lot of emotions on those
occasions where it became necessary, but he couldn't fake the level
of love and commitment that I saw reflected back at me in the quiet
moments when it was just the two of us.

If
his comment had been the slightest bit less concerning I would have
just sat there gazing into his eyes for as long as he was willing to
remain in one place, but I knew there was something important he
wasn't telling me.

"What's
going on, Alec?"

"This
isn't general knowledge, so don't say anything to Donovan or the
others, but it doesn't look like Dream Stealer has lost interest in
Kristin. All the signs point to him having singled her out as the
weak link in the pack."

"What
does that mean? I know a little bit about Dream Stealer, but
obviously not enough."

"It
means he's torturing her every night in her sleep in an effort to
break her. He doesn't do it often, but he's taken down entire packs
this way. He picks out a target, either someone he thinks is weaker
than the rest of the pack or someone who's got access to something
particularly important, and then he makes every night hell until they
finally snap. Once that happens they'll do anything to get him to
stop hurting them.

"For
someone who's been through that, there's no secret they won't
disclose, no ally they won't betray, no murder they won't commit.
Sometimes he only has to break one person, sometimes he has to break
half the pack, but in the end he's always managed to achieve his
goal."

"That's…well,
it's beyond terrible. Are you sure he's targeted Kristin?"

"Yeah.
Ash says that she's thrashing around in her sleep every night and
she's so tired that she drops off to sleep as soon as she stops
moving. It was questionable before, but it's become pretty clear
lately that she's his target."

I
closed my eyes to stop them from tearing up. Kristin wasn't my
favorite person. She was a little too pushy for the two of us to ever
be close friends, but she didn't deserve to be put through what Alec
was describing.

"She
mentioned that she was having issues with him before the attack on
the house, but she seemed pretty sure that he would leave her alone
if she could just tough things out for a week or two."

Alec
gave me a sad smile that told me he knew exactly what I was feeling.
"Yeah. So far that's all that anyone has been able to do where
Dream Stealer is concerned. He's not omnipotent so if you can manage
to fight him off for several nights running then there is a chance
that he'll reassess the situation and come at the pack through
someone else."

"So
if you win then it just means that he'll go after someone else close
to you? That doesn't seem like much of a victory."

"It's
not. For the last few decades he hasn't even had to break people to
accomplish his ends. Once it becomes apparent that he's decided to
target a pack, it usually just disintegrates as everyone tries to get
far enough away from each other that there's no reason for him to
continue to target any of them."

"He
turns families against each other."

"Yeah,
I'm afraid so. There's a reason that nobody has come out in open
rebellion against the Coun'hij since they killed my father. Between
Agony, Dream Stealer and Puppeteer there's never been any doubt as to
where the balance of power rests. Agony was their scalpel, Puppeteer
has always been a blunt instrument, and Dream Stealer is like a
virus, just looking for a weakened host he can use to create a
pandemic. Even someone like Jaclyn Annikov has had to be very
circumspect about disagreeing with the Coun'hij in public."

"We
can't let him do this to Kristin, Alec. There has to be a way to stop
him. You've already killed Agony and you proved that Puppeteer isn't
unbeatable. If we can find a way to neutralize Dream Stealer, then
the Coun'hij will fall overnight."

"I
wish that was true, Adri. I killed Agony, but we beat Puppeteer as
much by luck as anything else. It's going to be a long road to
defeating the Coun'hij, but I promise I'm doing everything I can
right now. There isn't anything I can do directly to protect Kristin,
so Ash and Isaac are going to take her somewhere they can keep her
isolated and make sure she can't hurt herself or the rebellion either
one.

"To
be honest, I'd hoped initially that I'd be able to stop Dream Stealer
from getting at any of my people. I seem to be able to nullify most
other powers. I stopped Agony's cuts from scarring like they should
have, I can stop Grayson from being able to send people into
convulsions, it didn't seem that much of a stretch to think that I'd
be able to nullify Dream Stealer's ability to dream walk, but that
doesn't seem to be the case."

"You
didn't stop Dominic from being able to heal people and you didn't
seem to do anything to nullify Shawn's gift either."

"Yeah,
unfortunately there's still far too much that I
don't
know about my ability. I need time to explore its limits, but time is
the one thing that we don't have. Many of the shape shifters who
gathered in Sanctuary before the attack did so because they thought
that my gift would protect them from Dream Stealer and Puppeteer. Now
that they know that's not the case we're going to have a much more
difficult time adding to our numbers."

"Are
you second-guessing the decision to split everyone up?"

"A
little, but I still don't see another way forward. Dream Stealer
always does more damage in bigger groups. It's harder for him to get
his hooks into someone unnoticed in small groups, and by
compartmentalizing our operations we can limit the amount of
information he has access to at any one time. When you throw in the
fact that Puppeteer can only be in one place at any given time, it
just makes sense to try to make sure we don't offer them a big,
stationary target to come after."

"So
we scatter and hide while Kristin suffers."

"For
now. It all comes back to us needing to find the Coun'hij's base. If
we can do that then we have a chance of forcing the fight on terms
that favor us. I can't fight Dream Stealer on his home turf, but if
we can pin him down in the real world then Jaclyn, Grayson or I can
easily make sure he never tortures anyone else again."

Alec
had been serious about compartmentalizing his plans, but so far I
seemed to be one of the few exceptions. I appreciated that fact
because it gave us one more reason to spend time together, one more
thing to talk about, but it created a potential problem that we were
going to have to talk about.

I
told myself that I wasn't bringing that issue up because there was
something else more important that I needed to ask Alec, but even as
I asked my other question I knew I was mostly just waiting because I
was scared of what his reaction might be.

"You
don't seem as confident in our ability to defeat the Coun'hij as I
expected you to be. I thought it has always just been an issue of us
not knowing where they are located."