Chapter 12
My mind hiccuped and I gasped, shocked to have eyes again. They flashed open, closing immediately as I was floundering, submerged in dirty water. The flood filled my ears with a muted rumble as I struggled to the surface. It was a dream. I was in Cameron’s mind, and it was a dream.
Nightmare, I amended when I broke the surface, coughing as I treaded water. “Cameron!” I tossed my head to get the hair from my eyes. I could feel my pulse hammer, and somewhere in the distance, my hand gripped Cameron’s. But here…Here I had to find her.
“Cameron!” I called again, working hard to keep upright amid the frothing current. I tried to imagine a shore, but one never appeared.
“Petra!” someone shouted, and I choked, blinded by water when I turned.
Something bumped into me, black, hard, and shiny.
I grasped for it, unable to find purchase until a sun-browned hand reached for me.
I grabbed it, body shaking as I coughed out water and stardust. Blinded, I flailed, hitting whoever was hauling me out of the torrent and onto the hood of a black SUV.
She’s dreaming of a flooded wash…frothed faintly through my mind, and then I blinked, shocked not at the sudden appearance of the ragged edges of desert bracketing the floodwater, or the black SUV that I was now half lying on, but at the green-eyed man staring at me as if he cared if I lived or died.
Brown hair plastered to his head, clothes soaked from the river: I’d never seen him before—but I knew him.
“Pluck?” I whispered, and his lips parted.
Clearly surprised, he looked down at himself.
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” he said, obviously embarrassed as he wiped the grit from his face.
But again, I knew the cadence of his words, the slight twang of sour humor.
It was Pluck, and I tried to look at him even as I coughed another spate of water from my lungs.
The car slowly spun, carried down the flooded ravine as trash and dead animals banged into it. Finally I managed to stop coughing. “This is Cameron’s mind?”
Pluck sniffed, and my mind went back to the feel of his hand in mine, warm and sure as he pulled me from the water. “It is. Her fear has taken the form of a flood wash.”
My eyes flicked over him. “And she sees you as a person?”
He stared at nothing, avoiding me. “Ah, no. This isn’t coming from her. Or you,” he gushed. “I, ah…” His gaze flicked to me. “It’s, ah, been a while, but…”
“Grady!”
I looked down as a muffled thumping sounded on the window, cutting off Pluck’s stammering statement. “Cameron?” I blurted, seeing the small woman hammering on the front window for my attention with her fist, water to her armpits. “Cameron! Put the window down. Get out of the car!”
I yelped as the SUV crashed into something submerged and my hands smacked the top of the roof to keep from falling off. Cameron gasped, her face pale as the car made a dramatic bob and swoop and broke free.
I suddenly realized that Pluck had an iron grip on my arm to keep me safe.
“This is a trap,” he said, expression grim.
“It’s as real to Cameron as any dream she can’t wake from.
You must get her to come out of the car.
The river is her fear and she is hiding from it, falsely thinking the car is safety, that her coma protects her.
If she leaves the car, the barrier Thoth has put around her mind will fragment and she will wake. ”
I stared up at him, wondering if it was that easy. “You’re sure Thoth did this?”
“Very.” His gaze was hard on the muddy river. He looked both terrible and wonderful: unkempt, wet, and bedraggled. It was odd not seeing him misty at the edges.
“I’ll try,” I whispered. “Don’t let go of me.”
Never, fizzed in my thoughts, so deep I almost imagined it.
Holding tight to his arm, I leaned over the front of the SUV. “Cameron?” I tapped on the glass, and she looked up at me, her fist red and swollen. “Pluck says if you come out of the car you’ll wake up. You’re in a coma.”
“You don’t think I know that?” she shouted, angry and afraid.
I edged out even more until Pluck’s grip became almost painful. Don’t go misty on me now…“You have to come out,” I begged. “Put down the window!”
“I can’t!” she said again, and then, in a fit of anger, she pounded on the dash. “I’ve gotten onto the roof like six times already. Every time I do, that damn shadow shows up and puts me back here!”
Shadow? Thoth is here? I thought, gaze darting to Pluck.
“Thoth is a fiend!” Cameron shouted through the glass. “He wants you dead. I wouldn’t let him possess me so he stuck me here. He’s going to tear the university apart to bring you down. And when you’re gone, Marty is next.”
Marty! Breathless, I turned to Pluck, only to have every last thought vanish from my head.
Behind Pluck stood Thoth, an ugly smile on his long, narrow face. “Look out!” I shouted, and Thoth shoved Pluck, sending him off the roof and into the wash.
“Clever,” Thoth snarled as he balanced on the car’s roof. “I thought it would take at least a day for you to convince your weaver to carry you in.”
“Pluck!” He was drifting away, expression grim as he tossed his hair from his eyes and began to swim after us. Hang on, Cameron, I thought, then gathered myself to jump in after Pluck—only to find myself yanked to a jaw-snapping halt.
“Let go of me,” I threatened, and Thoth’s grip tightened. In my mind, something snagged and caught. A bitter cold seeped up, chilling me. He didn’t have hold of just my arm in Cameron’s dream, he had my mind.
“I came here,” Thoth said, expression tight with anger, “thinking the first weaver of the new age had blown a full vault to announce the beginning of our rebirth. Imagine my excitement. Not only a weaver, but a weaver ready to return us to greatness. Who believes as I do.”
I tried to pull from him, failing.
“Imagine my disappointment,” the shadow continued bitterly, “when I found it was an accident and you would have shadows burn in the hell of your making. Petra, the yeth.”
“You need to let go!” I demanded again, but all the tugging in the world would not free me. The dream was a reflection of reality, and in reality, this shadow had me, trapped in not just Cameron’s mind but his.
“You put yourself here,” he said, and the icy chill in me deepened. “There’s no getting out. And now, no reason to keep the marshal alive. This is so much easier than the first time. But then again, Kahu is blinded by hope. He will curse you for giving that to him in the end.”
His fingers gripped harder, and I gasped, pain arcing through me as Thoth flooded me with cold, his mind wrapped about mine, crushing it. Groaning, I exhaled, hands shaking as I made a field around my core and stomped on his instep, shoving him away when he howled.
The pain vanished, and I stared at him as the SUV slowly drifted through the rain-soaked desert. I could feel him trying to find a way back into my mind, and I smacked his reaching hand from me. “No,” I said, voice trembling but sure, and his eyes narrowed.
“Kahu didn’t teach you that,” he muttered, mood bad. “Your fields will have to go first.”
His hand flashed out, ironlike fingers gripping my wrist. In my mind, I felt his strength swamp mine…
and pain found me again. Groaning, I fell to a knee before him atop the roof, my arm stretched between us, trying to breathe as his maggoty thoughts bored their way into mine.
With a dull crackle, he crushed my wrist, and I howled, trying to see past the pain.
“You use and you take,” the shadow said as he pulled me closer, the agony redoubling until I couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. “And for that you will die, Kahu’s weaver.”
In agony, I tried to pry his fingers off me. In my mind, I attempted to make another field to push him out, but something was wrong, and I felt it dissolve into a tangle of threads, falling apart as large holes grew, unstoppable. “Why are you doing this!” I yelled.
“Let her go!” Cameron shouted, hammering on the window, helpless.
And then the grip on my wrist ripped away in a flash of black shadow.
The pain turned to an unbearable throb and I held my arm close and looked up.
It was Pluck. He’d pulled Thoth from me and thrown him in the water.
Thoth’s hold on my mind was gone along with his grip on my wrist, and I felt tears of relief start when Pluck helped me stand.
In Cameron’s dream, his arm was about my shoulder. In reality, his mind cradled mine.
“Go!” Cameron looked up at us, her expression twisted. “Get out of here! You heard him. As long as you’re alive, he won’t kill me. Go!”
Pluck stood beside me, hunched in pain. “She’s right,” he said raggedly, and I followed his gaze to where Thoth broke the surface and began to swim for us, motions holding a murderous intent.
“If he reaches the car, I’m done for. He’s stronger than me.
Surprise gave us a chance to escape, not strength. ”
I stood within the shadow of Pluck’s protection, my broken wrist held close. In reality, my arm was fine, but whatever happened here was a reflection of the truth and I wondered what I’d wake up to. “I can’t,” I said as I looked down at Cameron.
“You will make it. I will carry you,” Pluck said. “Just hold on.”
He was inching us toward the edge, and I resisted. “I can’t leave Cameron.”
“Get out of here!” The marshal hammered on the roof, the vibrations coming through the soles of my feet. “I’m an etherologist. If I can put him to sleep, I can escape.”
What if she can’t? I thought, and a grimace pinched Pluck’s young face. I’d never seen it before, but it held the same annoyance as an ear flick.
“She’ll be fine as long as you are alive.” Pluck tugged me to the edge of the roof. “He will kill you if you stay,” he said, his grip on my shoulder tightening. “But I will die in front of you first. Is that what you want? Hold on to me.”