Before I Wake (18 page)

And Noah just stood there, frustration etched on his face.

“Noah?”

He whirled around at the sound of my voice. I saw then that his mouth was cut, too, and there was blood on his T-shirt. Had the two of them fought?

“What are you doing here?” he demanded, coming toward me.

I didn’t know what to do, but the look on his face scared me. “I had to talk to you,” I told him.

“You shouldn’t be here.” Two splotches of color stood out on his cheeks. “You have to get out.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not like I could knock.”

The woman staggered to her feet. “Noah? Who is it?”

We both turned to look at her, and as soon as I saw her face, I recognized her. She was the woman in the painting called Mother that I had seen at Noah’s show. Now that I took a good look, the resemblance was unmistakable. This was Noah’s mother.

Had he hit his own mother? No. He always spoke highly of her. He hadn’t done this. Someone else had.

“What’s going on?” I asked. I was answered by the sound of loud, booming footsteps. It was as though someone was coming downstairs, but amplified to the point where it sounded like a giant stomping on every step. Noah’s head jerked up at the sound.

“You have to get out,” he told me, grabbing my arm. “Get out of here.” He was afraid of what was coming, and I had a pretty good idea of who that someone was.

I tried to hold on to him, but he wouldn’t let me. “Let me help you.”

“I don’t need you to protect me!” The anger in him startled me, but I had a feeling only a sliver of it was directed toward me.

“I just want to help you,” I told him.

His eyes were wild as his gaze met mine. “I never gave you permission to come into my dreams.”

Okay, this was nuts. “I didn’t mean—”

The pounding grew louder, and if anything, Noah looked more agitated. He didn’t want me to see what was coming. “Get out!”

And then it was like a door slammed in my face. I couldn’t believe it. I was standing there, staring at him, then nothing. I was on the other side of a huge black wall that stretched on for as far as I could see. Noah had shut me out—literally.

I would have slid down that wall and bawled were I not terrified of the things lurking in the mist. I woke myself up instead—or at least that’s what it felt like. What really happened is that I opened a dimensional portal between the realms and stepped back into the human world. Only when I opened my eyes, I was in my bed, with Fudge curled up beside me.

I wished I could cry, but nothing came. I couldn’t even cry for poor Nancy Leiberman. I was too scared and helpless to cry.

Crying meant you still had hope.

I was running out.

The next day was Saturday. I spent some of it Googling Nightmares. There wasn’t much that applied to the actual beings, but on the 232nd hit I found a small site on obscure mythology that had a couple of pages on Nightmares as guardians of The Dreaming.

They were said to be so powerful even the Terrors feared them. Obviously times had changed because I didn’t seem too terribly powerful.

I took a break from studying for food and an attempt at relaxation. I ordered flowers to be sent to the funeral home where Nancy Leiberman’s body was, and I sent a bouquet to her family as well.

I tried not to think about how much my life had changed in just a couple of weeks. In fact, I was trying really hard not to think about anything except what I had to. Otherwise, I started to feel like my throat was closing up, and my head was becoming a balloon. I knew anxiety when I felt it. I was also determined to run from it.

When Noah called at two o’clock, I let voice mail answer even though part of me wanted to hear his voice. I was still a little freaked out, but mostly I was hurt that he had shut me out like that. I hadn’t meant to intrude, but dreams didn’t have doorbells. I would have announced myself if I had known how.

And I had to be honest. As much as I liked Noah, reasons to stay away from him were starting to pile up. He was closed off and a little weird. I could handle weird if I knew the reasons for it.

He knew I was a Nightmare, for God’s sake. And I had been his psychologist. I should know way more about him than I did.

Why was it such a hassle getting him to reveal anything about himself? I assumed his father had been physically abusive toward his mother and possibly toward Noah himself. That wasn’t such a dirty secret anymore, so why would he hide it?

So let him leave a message. It might do him good to know I wasn’t sitting around waiting for him to call. Well, actually I had been doing just that, but he didn’t have to know it.

I made myself wait a full two minutes before dialing the mailbox to hear what he’d said.

“Doc? It’s Noah. I…” There was a lengthy pause. “Call me.” And that was it. He hung up.

Had I been expecting something more substantial? Something a little more…oh, I don’t know…groveling? Yes. Granted, he sounded embarrassed and uncertain in his message, but just how sure of that can I be when all I had to base that opinion on was six words? I could be bitter and say screw him. I could count my losses and move on, write him off as a problem I didn’t want.

Thing was, I didn’t want to move on. I wanted Noah, and I couldn’t turn my back on him. I was going to call him back, but just not right away. No matter how much I both dreaded and wanted to hear what he had to say, I needed a little more time before I finally let him say it.

I went to bed and practiced putting myself to sleep and waking up again. If I sang one of my mother’s “dee-dee-dee” songs in my head, I could put myself under with startling ease. Maybe it was because she was rooted in The Dreaming through sleep that I found it easy to follow the same path. Or maybe it was because the God of Sleep was my paternal grandfather. Regardless, I was asleep within minutes and standing at the gates of my father’s castle. Waking myself up took less effort. All I had to do was concentrate on returning to this world, and my eyes opened.

Someday I’d be able to cross over awake. That was, if I continued on with this Nightmare stuff. Maybe once I was sure Noah and I were safe, I’d say screw it and go back to my normal life.

No, I didn’t see it happening that way either.

I played with the sleep thing a few more times before it exhausted me, and I had to stop for a real nap. When I woke up it was after five and the phone was ringing. It was Julie, wanting to know what time I was going to come over that evening. We were going to have a couple of drinks at her place before heading out to our favorite club.

“Were you asleep?” she demanded with a hint of laughter in her voice.

I slumped against my pillows. It was almost full dark outside now, the fading daylight little more than a smudge of orange peeking through my window. “Yeah.”

“Loser.”

If she only knew. “I’ll be over around nine.”

“Bring pineapple juice. I’ve got coconut rum.”

I grinned into the receiver. “Now you’re just talking dirty.” I love coconut rum. And by love I mean drink it like a thirsty fish.

“Now, if only I could get you to put out,” she joked. “See you at nine, Hoser.”

The etymology of the word escaped me. How the hell had Canadians managed to come up with such a pathetic insult anyway? I hadn’t heard anyone but Bob and Doug MacKenzie—brought into the American mainstream by the movie Strange Brew—use the term “hoser” in my entire life.

I shrugged it off and crawled out of bed, trying to shake off the sleep that wanted to reclaim me. For a second I saw Karatos standing in the mists on the shore of The Dreaming, a mocking smile on his lips. He looked dark and dangerous and repulsively sexy. I felt a pressure inside, as though there was a string attached to my soul, tugging.

I was still just enough in The Dreaming that he was trying to pull me all the way in. The son of a bitch. He had been waiting—maybe even watching for his chance to grab me unaware. Unprepared.

Vulnerable.

Rage seized me, and I pushed back. I could feel power ripple down the invisible tether between us. In my mind’s eye—that part of me still in the Dream Realm—I watched as Karatos staggered backward, then was gone.

That would teach him to fuck with me, I thought with a smug smile. But wait. He was in The Dreaming. How the hell could he be in The Dreaming without Morpheus knowing? Had the Terror thought to suck me into The Dreaming and use me as a bargaining chip? Or was Karatos acting with my father’s permission?

I couldn’t believe that—not totally. Unless it was all a ploy to get me back into the paternal bosom. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to believe that either. Regardless, the doubt was there.

Frig. Seems like I was doubting a lot of people lately. Naturally suspicious, that was me. My sister Anne used to accuse me of having a persecution complex, but then she was always picking on me.

I made French bread tuna melts with lots of cheese for supper and ate them in front of the TV while watching a Dark Angel rerun on the SciFi Channel. Jessica Alba kicked serious butt on that show. Was that what I was in The Dreaming? A Nightmare.

Guardian. Asskicker?

I’d be lying if I said the idea didn’t have its appeal. I’d love to bash Karatos’s beautiful face in until he looked as ugly as he should.

The fact that he was in The Dreaming still bothered me. I should have put myself under again and gone to my father, found out just what was going on, but I was afraid. What if Karatos was still there, and he got me? What if I wasn’t strong enough to save myself? In fact, I was pretty sure I wasn’t—not yet.

There was always the chance that my father had caught Karatos during his little abduction attempt. Maybe right now, as I sat here, a lump of tuna and bread in my throat, Karatos was being slowly and painfully unmade by his maker. I liked that thought more than all the others. I might check in on that one later.

I finished my melts and put a pot of coffee on. If I was going out with Julie, I was going to need all the energy I could summon.

While the coffee brewed I ran a bath. I poured some scented oil into the tub, along with a bubble bath that smelled like chai, then popped my iPod into the stereo base I’d bought for it and pressed play. My clothes dropped to the floor as “Temptation Waits”

by Garbage began playing.

I slipped into the tub with a mug of sweet, creamy coffee and thought about conjuring weapons and morphing objects in The Dreaming. Morpheus had made certain that was one of the first things he and I worked on together.

I closed my eyes and leaned back against my tub cushion. Please, please, please. Don’t let him be a bad guy. I couldn’t tell you who I was praying to. Maybe God, or perhaps Ama, the great spider, weaver of dreams and spiritual mother of all Dreamkin. It didn’t matter. I was praying to anyone who would listen. I might not respect my father much given what he’d done to my human family, but I wanted to believe in him. I wanted to be able to trust him.

Many of the weapons my father had shown me looked like something used in martial arts. I knew nothing about martial arts except that the people who were good at it were beautiful to watch. How was I supposed to use these weapons once I conjured them? Would I instinctively know? That wasn’t a chance I wanted to take.

Noah knew some kind of martial art. We had talked about it before. Maybe, if we managed to work out this crap between us, he’d teach me. If not, I’d have to sign up for classes.

I shaved my legs and under my arms, pumiced my heels, and used a fruit-enzyme scrub on my face that always left me looking glowy. I took my sweet time, enjoying every second of this pampering session. I took a full two hours to do my hair and makeup, toying with primers, contouring, highlighting, and blending as my hair sat in a huge pile of hot rollers on top of my head. These were the moments that I loved being a girl.

By the time I was done and dressed, it was time to leave. I stopped by a grocery for the pineapple juice on my way to the train.

Julie lived on the Lower East side, in a trendy building that boasted at least one punky artist and goth drag queen. I really wished Julie would become better friends with the queen. Goth wasn’t a good look for me, but she was almost seven feet of incredible makeup, hair, and clothes, and I wanted to know her secrets.

I buzzed, and Julie’s boyfriend Joe let me in. Julie and Joe—too cute for words, right? Joe wasn’t going with us tonight as he hated the club we always went to, but he gave me a hug when I walked in and had a drink in my hand in under three minutes.

Julie was a petite brunette with thick curly hair and a big grin. I could tell just from the expanse of teeth she flashed me that she was already a drink or two ahead of me. I had to catch up.

Three Malibu rum and pineapples later, Julie and I left for Scritti’s—an eighties-themed bar within walking distance of Julie’s apartment. They had posters and banners of eighties pop and metal bands all over the walls, lots of neon and Day-Glo and a dance floor that looked like it was made out of Rubik’s cubes. My favorite table—which we managed to snag—was right below the huge poster of Bon Jovi circa 1986, with big frosted hair, animal-print jackets, and leather pants. I loved it.

I ordered a rum and Sprite as did Julie, and after the drinks arrived, we hit the dance floor—which was also very close to our table, so we could watch our stuff.

We danced to Madonna’s “Holiday,” laughing at our own silliness. It was the most fun I’d had in a long time, and I needed it.

Of course that all came to a screeching halt shortly after eleven, when Noah walked in.

My heart leaped at the sight of him, standing by the bar in a black Henley and jeans, a bottle of Corona in his hand. His hair was its usual sexy mess, and he hadn’t shaved this morning. His black gaze moved around the club. He was looking for someone.

He was looking for me. My heart leaped a little higher.

“Noah’s here,” I told Julie. Of course I had told her all about him—well maybe not all. She didn’t know anything about Karatos or the fact that I, her best friend, wasn’t quite human.

“Where?” She was up on her toes, peering through the crowd, weaving like a sunflower in the breeze.