Marked (43 page)

Still
drinking down Alec's light, I let go of the threads I'd been holding
onto and conjured my sword with one clean motion. On one level it was
ludicrous to think that something as tangible as my sword could shear
through the intangible cable that Dream Stealer was using to drain
Alec, but my sword wasn't just a sword, it glowed with the same pure,
white light that I did.

Out
of the corner of my eye I saw Alec's light dim even further as a
blinding flash of energy shot down the thread I'd just released, but
most of my focus was on the silvery thread that connected me to my
sword. I pushed light down that thread at the same time that I
envisioned a weapon that was sharp enough to cut through spirit as
well as the coarse matter that I'd originally created it to rend.

The
light from my sword was blinding as I whipped it through the air, but
even through the afterimages it left on my retinas I was still able
to see it slice through the threads that bound Alec to this
nightmare.

I
started turning back around to face Dream Stealer, my sword held high
and a smile on my face, when I felt a slight tugging at my chest
followed by an inability to breathe. My impossible speed hadn't been
enough to save me, not when I'd held still to cut the threads, not
once Dream Stealer had—even momentarily—access to the
enormous well of power inside of Alec.

I'd
turned thinking I still had plenty of time to get set before Dream
Stealer would be able to turn around and attack me, but I'd been
wrong and the sight of his claws ripping through the right side of my
chest, my blood shimmering in the air, was enough of a shock to make
me lose my grip on the energy I'd been siphoning away from Alec.

The
light and power that could have saved me shot back down the thread,
racing to Alec and leaving me a weak, dying husk of what I'd been.
That jolt of energy, combined with the backlash from the thread I'd
just cut, momentarily turned Alec into a being of such incandescence
that I expected to feel heat coming off of him. I turned away, even
my unique vision overloaded as I heard the sound of fine crystal
shattering.

When
I was next able to look at Alec he was standing in front of Dream
Stealer, shards of obsidian still protruding from his body where he'd
cut himself free, and his fist inside of Dream Stealer's chest. The
two stood there frozen for several seconds, Alec taller and more
powerful than I'd ever seen before, and Dream Stealer a dark, tiny
shadow of the thing that we'd been fighting just seconds before.

"What
I do now is merely justice. The crimes you have committed demand
death to restore the balance."

Dream
Stealer laughed weakly. "I begin to see why he's so scared of
you. Again and again we underestimate you. We all thought Brandon was
merely a fluke, but then you killed Cyrus. I should have known
better, but I was so blinded by rage that I thought I could beat you
by myself."

"Who's
scared of me? Who are you talking about?"

I
wanted to smile, wanted to cheer for joy, but I just didn't have the
strength. I could feel my life leaking away from me, both inside the
dream and in the real world, but I forced myself to stay there,
forced myself not to go into the yawning void I could feel opening up
underneath my feet. More than anything else I wanted to see Dream
Stealer die, wanted to know for certain that I'd been successful,
that Alec was finally safe.

As
I watched I could see the darkness bleeding out of Dream Stealer. It
wasn't a burning fire any more—it was really little more than a
mist that evaporated away as it left his body. Only the longer I
watched the more I realized that wasn't right. It wasn't evaporating,
it was soaking into Alec. I felt a moment of terror at the idea that
Dream Stealer might be trying to possess Alec, but then I realized
that the mist was turning from darkness into light in the moment that
it touched his skin.

With
each droplet that Alec absorbed he became brighter and taller, and
Dream Stealer became smaller and more feeble. Dream Stealer started
coughing violently and then when he looked back up, Alec's hand still
buried in his chest, he was no longer a creature of shimmering
darkness, he was merely a man.

I
couldn't have said how I knew that the tired, old face was Dream
Stealer's, but I knew it. Even stranger, I felt as though I'd seen
those careworn, Native American features before now, felt as though
they were as familiar to me as my father's face had been before he'd
been taken away from me.

Alec
grabbed Dream Stealer's right shoulder, sinking his claws into Dream
Stealer's flesh as he shook him. "I want a name. Who's scared of
me? Whose orders are you taking?"

Dream
Stealer started to laugh, but that triggered another weak coughing
fit. "I don't actually know his name, none of us do. I call him
the Scientist, but I do have a name for you—mine. It's Taggart.
I want at least one other living person to know it now that Cyrus is
gone."

Dream
Stealer—Taggart—looked over at me and smiled. "At
least I deprived you of her. He's convinced that you can't win
without her."

Alec
shook his head. "You came very close to breaking me, but in the
end you gave me access to power I never realized was possible. Look
at her and see your hopes dashed as you dashed the hopes of so many
over the centuries."

It
started out small, no more than a feeling of warmth in my stomach,
but it rapidly grew into a fire of such heat that I thought I was
going to be consumed. I looked down and saw light pouring into me
from the thread that connected Alec and me—healing, life-giving
light.

For
the first time in minutes, I opened my eyes and saw more than just
threads and darkness. I saw Alec looking at me with gratitude and
determination. I started to pull myself to my feet and then nearly
fell when my left arm refused to respond.

Alec's
brow furrowed even more and the amount of light flowing down the
thread doubled and then redoubled again. It was far more power than
I'd been able to pull in myself and my form started to waver as
though I was nothing more than a mirage, but my arm still refused to
respond to my will.

I
looked up at Alec and shook my head, but that merely caused him to
send even more light to me. I was shaking now and it felt like my
skin was losing the battle to keep the raging energies inside of me,
but even through the euphoria I was still able to see Alec's light
faltering, was able to see some of the threads powering him begin to
flicker.

"Stop!
It's not worth it, Alec. I'll be fine like this."

Forcing
the words out was one of the hardest things I'd ever done, and not
just because being full of light was the most addicting feeling I'd
ever experienced. There at the end I'd felt sensations start to shoot
up and down my left arm. Now that I'd gone for days without the use
of my arm I wanted it back more than ever, but I was fairly certain I
knew what was on the other end of all those threads and I wasn't
going to sacrifice one of my friends simply to regain the use of a
limb.

I
looked up at Alec with tears in my eyes, but I forced a smile on my
face so that he would think they were tears of joy. I got a hesitant
smile back in return and then realized that I could feel Taggart
slipping away.

"His
heart! Now, Alec!"

Alec
ripped his claws free of Taggart's chest, but I could still feel
Taggart turning to metaphysical mist. I acted out of instinct,
willing him into place, refusing to acknowledge a reality in which he
was able to escape. What I was attempting was beyond me, but I wasn't
just relying on my natural abilities, I was still full of light and
energy. Not as much as I'd been holding just seconds before, but
still far more than any human should ever be offered.

I
clamped down on Taggart's essence and rooted it to this reality, to
the jungle where he'd tortured Alec and paralyzed me. He could feel
what I was doing—I could feel him fighting, but he was weak and
dying.

He
turned towards me and gave me a sad smile. "And so I am truly
bested and the world will be shattered as a result. Beware the
werewolves. When they start acting in inexplicable ways you'll know
that the end is near."

I
watched the light in Taggart's eyes go out and couldn't explain why I
was crying. Alec finally lowered the limp body to the ground and I
threw up an instant later.

Dream
Stealer had been a terrible person, but somehow my world felt a
little smaller and colder than it had been before his death.

Adriana Paige
Galt Oil Field
Western North Dakota

By
all accounts I should have died—or at the very least woken up in a
hospital under a police watch—and Alec should have died with
me. Alec and I had come back to ourselves at the same time,
surrounded by silence so profound that I'd been worried James hadn't
survived.

I'd
been wrong—James was okay, albeit a little worse for the wear
after having been electrocuted and then ejected from a moving
vehicle. Both Alec and I were healed from all of our injuries,
everything but the paralysis in my left arm—that was still
unchanged.

Drake,
the guy Oblivion had wiped clean and then abandoned, came back to
consciousness about the same time that James did. Interacting with
him was odd in ways that I was still getting used to. Oblivion seemed
to have taken more from Drake than he had from Jess. Drake knew how
to walk and talk, but other than that it was like dealing with a
small child. He had zero background knowledge, which meant that he
was very disoriented, but he was also incredibly trusting. I told him
our names and then gave him the option of coming with us or us
leaving him somewhere safe and he asked to come with us.

The
four of us took more than half an hour to walk back to the SUV that
James and I had ditched at the beginning of our run from the police.
Looking back at the trip, it wasn't the smartest thing to have done,
but having Alec back had made me feel so secure that I hadn't even
thought twice about the possible risks.

After
everything else we'd just been through it hadn't seemed possible that
the local police department or even a Coun'hij-suborned arm of the
FBI would be able to stop us, not when Alec was capable of dropping
them all in their tracks.

The
SUV was exactly where we'd left it. We drove through the night and
then once it was light outside James checked it for tracking devices
and pronounced it clean. I fell asleep in Alec's arms for the first
time in far too long and was content in ways that I'd never been
content before.

Alec
was back and I'd been key in bringing that about. Having him back was
the most important thing, but I was surprised to find that on some
level I'd been hungering for a chance to prove myself. Alec had never
uttered any words of reproach about the fact that I'd always been the
weaker partner, but it was still something that had unconsciously
been weighing on me.

That
weight was gone now. I couldn't stand next to Alec on the battle line
in the real world, but I had my own kind of strength, an important
strength. I'd held things together in his absence and I'd helped kill
Dream Stealer.

I
was still inexplicably conflicted about that last part. It made no
sense for me to feel the same kind of gaping hole inside of me now
that I'd felt when my dad and Cindi had died, but there was no point
denying that it felt almost exactly the same as when I'd first
learned of the accident—worse maybe.

There
were new shadows behind Alec's eyes that hadn't been there before
he'd been shot. It was all too likely that he was suffering from some
kind of post-traumatic stress disorder. The timing was bad—we
still had a war to fight. Puppeteer was still out there and while the
ranks of the Coun'hij's enforcers had been depleted, we'd lost a lot
of people too.

Part
of me wanted to tell Alec to take some time and put himself back
together, but I knew he would refuse, just like he would have refused
the behind-the-scenes role that I'd wanted everyone to believe he'd
assumed if we never came back.

Alec
started making calls that next morning when we stopped at a hotel to
shower and change clothes. Knowing that the Coun'hij could be
tracking us made me a little nervous, but Alec seemed to think that
the loss of Dream Stealer had probably thrown them into disarray.

Alec
still referred to him as Dream Stealer, but I couldn't think or talk
about him without using the name Taggart. Alec had noticed that, but
he seemed content to let me work through my demons on my own if that
was what I wanted. For now that
was
what I wanted.

We
started heading north once we got back in the car, but Alec was
unusually reticent about our destination. All he would say was that
Mallory, Donovan, Dom, and Addison were all still alive and that we
would be meeting up with 'them' soon.

The
where turned out to be a small group of oil rigs in North Dakota.
Contrary to what I'd been expecting, the first set of arrivals didn't
include a quartet of massive RV's. Instead the convoy that pulled
into the shadows cast by the pumps was a motley collection of
vehicles, most of which looked like they were on their last legs.

When
Isaac got out of the lead vehicle I ran to him and wrapped my arm
around him as a new set of tears started rolling down my face. After
a second Isaac returned my embrace, but there was a new hesitancy to
his movements, something more than just the normal concern that he'd
accidentally break me if he squeezed too hard.

When
Jasmin, Ash and Kristin got out of the next two vehicles I thought I
might start hyperventilating. Having so many friends I'd given up for
dead turn up alive and well was the best kind of surprise that Alec
could have possibly given me.