Between (39 page)

Watching him, she saw that he feared her anger, had anticipated it, but had done this thing anyway.

Which pleased her immensely. “One thing wrong with that plan, Tellar. They will have nowhere to go. Make sure
they are all safe in the castle by dark. Fed, bathed, and clothed.”

“Yes, My Lady. There’s one other thing.”

“Yes?”

He shuffled his feet and she saw his jaw tighten again. Still, he met her eyes and spoke in a clear and steady voice. “We discovered a man among the prisoners…” His eyes flickered away. “He is…” Again he broke off. “Perhaps you should just see him, My Lady?”

“Fine. Where is he?”

“We’ve been watching him.” He raised his arm in a beckoning gesture, and a small group across the meadow began to move in Vivian’s direction with purpose and military precision. Chain mail clinked. A tall man walked at the center, not in step with the rest. Instead of chain mail and breeches he wore blue jeans and a T-shirt. Long dark hair fell to his shoulders. His face was bloodstained, but familiar.

Vivian was on her feet and running before they’d taken more than a few steps. Over the grass, never feeling the stones on her bare feet, focused on one goal and one only. The guards parted before she collided with them, and she flung herself against Zee’s broad chest. His arms circled her, tight, tight, so that she could barely catch her breath. She could hear his heart beating, feel his cheek pressed against her hair.

“Vivian,” he gasped. “Thank God.”

Behind her, somebody cleared his throat. “My Lady, I’m not sure this is wise. We all watched the Warlord die. This appearance of a double can mean nothing good—”

Vivian looked back up at Zee and her heart lurched. “You’re hurt.” The right side of his face was caked with dried blood; his hair was matted, his clothes torn. But his eyes were the same clear agate, light filled, and his lips curved into a crooked smile, half mischief.

“Bear attack,” he said. “Not quite the same scope as a dragon, but it was a big bear.”

“Your wounds need attention.”

“My Lady—”

“What?” She whirled around to face the speaker, annoyed now. One look at the expression on her face and every one of the guards dropped into a deep obeisance.

Vivian took a deep breath, forced herself to speak calmly. “I am not going to hurt anybody, and you don’t have to bow. Get up; tell me what you need to say.”

“My Lady, he had this on him.”

Tellar held out a crystal sphere. It was larger than the others, the size of a golf ball, swirling with a play of color and emitting an audible vibration. Vivian touched the shining thing with the tip of one finger. Then she looked up at the changed landscape and began to understand.

“Where did you get this?”

“George left it. With a note that said, ‘Open only at the end.’”

“I think—it’s like he created his own version of Surmise. But I don’t understand how that is possible with the intersection of all of the other dreams…”

“I wasn’t sure when the end would be. So I waited. And then I thought I was too late.” His voice was raw, his breath uneven. He didn’t take his eyes from hers, those beautiful eyes.

She swallowed hard, steeling herself against another loss, the hardest of them all. “Zee…Things have happened.”

“I can see that.” His lips quirked in a half smile, but his eyes burned, and the way they looked at her, the way he breathed—

Hope, that most dangerous of emotions, flared within her as his hand, strong and warm, closed around hers. She pushed the hope away, remembering a thirst for blood, an enormous clumsy body, all scales and claws and wings.

“You don’t know what I have become.”

“Tell me.”

She shuddered. “A thing. Part sorceress, part Dreamshifter. Part dragon.”

“You’re still Vivian.”

The words undid her fragile control and she buried her
face in her hands to hide the rush of tears. The Warlord had named her so when she was first transforming into the dragon, had called her back from the edge with a kiss.

Zee cupped her chin in both hands and turned her face up to his. “I know what you are, Vivian Maylor. A closer of doors, a dreamer of dreams. And yes, a dragon shifter. I knew before I met you. I’ve been there with you, in every Dreamworld…”

“Don’t,” she said, placing one hand over his lips. “I can’t go back, Zee. I can’t be with you…”

He kissed her palm and moved her hand so that it rested against his chest, over his heart. “My sword and my soul belong to the Dreamshifter, and my heart was yours before I met you. Where else should I be, if not beside you?”

“But, Zee—”

“You have been the focus of my life. Would you truly send me away?”

And she steeled herself, then, to do what must be done. Put aside the possibility of joy. Took a step back and away from him and made her voice ring clear and certain, so there would be no mistake. “I am not free to follow my heart,” she said, watching the light fade from his eyes. “I must find the key and destroy it. Recover the spheres and restore the balance between Dreamworld and Wakeworld.”

Zee dropped to his knees at her feet. “Then permit me to go with you. To protect, to serve.”

Looking down into his upturned face, Vivian knew two things.

First, that granting this request would bring great heartache to them both. And second, that this was the one thing she could not deny him.

They came through the doorway onto Finger Beach just as the sun was setting. All the sky to the west burned red, and the river reflected it back. A dead bear lay not far away, white fur stained black with drying blood, twice as big as a grizzly.

Vivian held her breath, letting it out in a slow sigh. “You killed that?”

“It was a near thing.”

His ravaged face was proof enough of that. He was already changed, Vivian saw with some grief. More warrior than artist. Scarred and hardened by what he had been through, and they were only at the beginning of this journey.

Still, he laughed with pure glee as Poe waddled across the beach and flung himself headfirst into the river and began to play.

Above, somewhere in the sky, a dragon flew. Vivian couldn’t see him, but she could feel his thoughts like a distant wordless hum. Another task, to coax the creature back through the doorway and into the Between, away from this world where he did not belong.

“Where will we go?” Zee asked. “I’m wanted—the cops will pick me up on sight.”

“The cabin, I think. There is a room there—”

“I know.”

“How—”

He grinned. “A long story, but we will have time enough for tales. Now we should go, before the authorities show up. I drove his van here—still up in the parking lot, I’d guess. Shall we?”

Vivian looked at the hand he held out to her—the hand of a warrior, cuticles still stained with paint, defining all the contradictions of who this man was and could be. This much, at least, was permitted. She put her own hand in his, so small in comparison, and let him lead her away from the beach toward whatever would come next.

Kerry Schafer
lives in the town of Colville, Washington, with her family, which includes two cats, a rescue fish, and a preternaturally large black dog. A self-styled perpetual student, she earned an RN from Royal Alexandra Hospital in Edmonton, Alberta; an Honours BA in English from York University in Toronto, Ontario; and an M.Ed. in counseling psychology from Washington State University. Visit her online at www.kerryschafer.com.