Second Skin (Skinned) (26 page)

The Hour Grows Late

“Someone get a straitjacket,” Janie said.

Had she figured out I wasn’t Paige? I jumped back from the girls, crashing into a rack of designer jeans.

The blonde trio didn’t notice my stumble. They were too focused on the tall, gangly girl walking down the center of the mall, glaring at the other shoppers as if she expected a coordinated attack.

“The psycho’s headed this way.” Janie crossed her arms, watching the girl.

And that girl was me. The
me
not currently inside my cousin’s body. Convoluted dream realm, or what?

I sneaked another glance at myself. Or Paige’s dream impression of me. I cringed. Did I really look like that? That wary? That angry?

That alone?

Janie shot me—Paige—a look filled with the promise of bad things to come. “I think it’s time we showed your cousin a little Redgrave hospitality, don’t you?” She withdrew a Swiss army knife from her jacket pocket and flicked open the short blade.

Since when did cheerleader wannabes carry concealed weapons?

Clearly, I’d underestimated their true level of evil.

“Leave her alone, Janie.” Paige took over. No longer actively moving Paige’s body, I’d drifted to hover near the ceiling, a silent witness as her dream unfolded below.

Was she actually defending me?

“I told you, making Eryn’s life miserable is
my
job. She’s my family, I have first dibs.” Paige flipped through items on the racks, looking completely disinterested in the fact that one of her minions had threatened to gut me in the middle of Redgrave Mall. Yet fear spiked around her. The fingers gripping the metal hanger were white with tension.

When dream-Eryn passed them without incident, Paige’s relief drifted to me, cotton candy sweet. With her back to Janie, she never saw the blonde plunge the blade deep into her shoulder— but she must have felt it. She shrieked, her hands flailing, clawing at her back, unable to reach the blade.

Paige wasn’t kidding about the backstabbing. Dream Janie was a monster. I bet she was worse in real life.

Paige might be the biggest victim of all.

She wasn’t the leader of this pack—she was their domesticated prey.

Find the others.

A woman’s sharp voice echoed through the mall’s expansive halls, familiar, yet out of place. The shock of it had me floating away from Paige, who spun in circles trying to get the knife out of her back. I sought out the voice. Drifting until I heard it again.

Destroy the night mare.

No one in the world below reacted to the power of it. They continued to shop and gorge themselves on food-court grease. The tile floor beneath moved faster, blurred like I’d become a jet plane coursing along a runway, about to lift off. The ceiling faded.

I had to take control. The woman was right. I had to find Alec and Wade. We had to end this. I’d wasted enough time already.

Where are you?
I pushed the thought with everything in me. Projecting to the one who could help the most.

Where else?

I walked for miles in blistering heat. My lips were as cracked and dry as the crumbling earth under my feet. Dust cycloned around me, sandblasting the landscape. Grit crunched between my teeth. I spat, only to suck in more sand with my next breath.

A shadow appeared in the distance. A house, shaking on its foundation with the wind’s brutal force. I crossed the distance in an instant, in a lifetime. My hand on the doorknob. Turning. Pushing the wooden door open.

Blinding light. The smell of mint. And I stood beside Wade, watching as his past self drained the life from his mother.

Of course this would be his nightmare.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Wade said. He hadn’t turned or acknowledged my presence. Before us, the figures twisted in the final moment between eternal life and damnation. Wade flew at the vampire, his intent clear. He wanted to seize the thing he had become, wrestle it away from his mother, and destroy it once and for all. I cringed when his momentum was cut brutally short. His body slammed into an invisible barrier with the force of a battering ram.

Wade’s face twisted with grief. I couldn’t look away from his pain, and he made no effort to hide it. He tilted his chin toward the ceiling in a silent prayer, or perhaps a curse of the heavens. Either way, I understood at least a fraction of what he felt and could barely breathe. At that moment he was in his own world of sorrow and suffering. He’d returned to the time of his turning, only to be as helpless as I’d been when Elizabeth had called me back to act as her witness.

Wade surged to his feet, bashing his fists repeatedly against the veiled wall. Energy waves rippled from the barrier, blasting back at us with each of his strikes. On the other side, Elizabeth’s face shifted. Her eyes became maggot-infested sockets, her skin sagged with rot. She mouthed cutting words.

You did this to me.

His shoulders shuddered. I knew if he turned, he’d be fighting back tears. But his mother hadn’t blamed him, not once did I sense that from her. This was the night mare playing its tricks.

“Wade, you’re in a dream. You can make it stop.” I grabbed his arm, but he shook me off. “She doesn’t blame you for what happened. She never did. She’s sent you on a great guilt trip, I admit, but don’t get sucked into it. That’s what the night mare wants, all of us at our weakest. Then we won’t be able to fight back.”

I focused my power, sought his mind, and found it defenseless. Everything Wade had ever felt or experienced lay open like the pages of a treasured book, or a sacred grimoire. The power there invited me to linger. Turning away from the temptation, I merely projected a single thought,
I believe in you.

By the time he regained control, the skin had shredded from his fingers, revealing blackened bone. He rested his forehead on the wall of energy as if it were a pane of glass dividing him from the deeds of his past.

“Forgive me,” Wade said, his voice a whisper. Only I could hear his plea.

Straightening his shoulders, Wade turned, determination stamped in the sharp line of his jaw, the terse set of his mouth, and the blackness of his hair. His gray eyes shimmered with power, giving them a metallic sheen. He scared me with that look. I retreated, my back against the wall.

“The hour grows late, and we’ve got ourselves a doozy of a night mare to kill,” he said, his light tone a stark contrast to the shadows that flickered across his features.

The sky darkened above us. “It’s getting close, latching onto your location,” Wade glared at the golden cloak of whirling dust forming overhead. He grabbed my hand, black smoke already swirling at our feet. “I’ll take you somewhere safe, gather the others, and then we’ll destroy the night mare.”

Could Wade really vamp mist both of us?

I tugged back my hand, but Wade glared at me. His fingers dug into the sensitive flesh around my wrist. “Don’t let go, whatever you do, don’t let…”

Dust and black smoke filled my lungs. I coughed, gasping for breath. What if we got lost? Came back horribly wrong with a foot sticking out of our foreheads? Dread settled in stomach. My vision darkened. All I could see was emptiness. A vast nothingness. My scream echoed in both our minds as we vanished in a cloud of black smoke.

We ended up in the woods. Our smoking arrival caused a flock of chirping sparrows to abandon a large redwood. The world pitched and dipped.

What the hell just happened?

Wade spoke in my mind.
I smoked us around. A warning, the aftereffects may be unpleasant.

He wasn’t kidding. No sooner had Wade released me, than the tug of dry heaves began low in my gut. I dropped to my hands and knees, retching into the grass. Wade paced a few feet away, holding his hands out, chanting. Casting wards while I lost my lunch. The mint of his magic permeated the air, blending with the scent of evergreens, rotting leaves, and the earth’s deep musk. Not really helping my stomach issues.

“Was that necessary?” I grumbled and stumbled to my feet while Wade strode in an arc around me. Tendrils of smoke trailed after him, then sank deep into the forest floor. Returning from whence they came, I supposed. I gave a frustrated sigh. “Where are we? Hello, Wade, fill me in. Is this your dream, or mine?”

Wade faced me. “Neither,” he said. “I’ve moved us into a neutral zone. I have to find the others and bring them here. We’re stronger together.”

I slapped my hands on my thighs. “Okay, together.” I held out my hand. “Take me with you.”

Wade shook his head. “Can’t. The night mare is tracking you. If you slip into their dreams, we’ll put them at risk.” He closed his eyes, and smoke formed around his body. “Stay put. We’ll be right back.”

I bared my teeth.
Stay put, what was I, his dog?
I bolted forward, grabbing for his hand, but he’d vanished.

He really had to stop doing that.

I kicked the earth, sending acorns and divots of grass into the air. Had Wade even been real? Or was this the night mare working me over? Separating me from the others, where I’d be easier to pick off? I swallowed hard, reached for my athame, and choked back a curse when, once again, I came back empty-handed. What did the dream realm have against my dagger? Why was I always defenseless here when Wade had full access to his magic? I thought I was supposed to have superpowers while dreamwalking? Or was everyone’s faith in me misplaced, yet again?

A sudden stillness alerted me to danger. The ground beneath my feet rippled as a growl thundered at my back. I turned to face the beast. Inhaling deep, I rocked on my heels with shock. The scent of the creature was deeply familiar.

I tilted my head.

So did the massive black creature staring me down. She was wolven, larger than the average werewolf, tall as a grizzly bear, and as imposing as staring at the grill of a semi, barreling down the highway at full speed. The thick pelt of dark fur that covered her showed none of the bulbous hunks of human flesh I’d expected. There, ready to attack, stood a lean and muscular predator with a refined, yet deadly, blend of human and wolf features.

She had my eyes, only hers were filled with unholy bloodlust. I was about to duke it out with my own wolven-human hybrid self, gone dark side. And from where I stood, there weren’t any cookies. Just lots of teeth, and claws, and a twisted knot in my gut the size of a Thanksgiving turkey.

This was what I’d been dreading—having to face down my own wolf. And yet the accelerated knock of my pulse wasn’t from fear alone. The feeling that we’d both been driven to this moment—relentless, inevitable—had me rising to the challenge.

The beast opened its jaws and let out an imposing growl. I bared my teeth in response.

The beast shook its shaggy head, foam flying from its mouth.

I avoided mimicking that bit. Foaming mouths were where I drew the line.

It charged. So did I.

We Were to Be Feared

Airborne, arms outstretched, legs pumping as if riding a bike underwater, our bodies arched for maximum force, my wolf and I collided in slow motion. Fog collected around us, thick and heavy with moisture imbued with the absolute lack of sound or scent. Images projected onto the fog as if we were surrounded by jumbo screens of jumbled television clips. Each one a moment from my human life. My first run. My first taste of blood. The first slice of a blade along my flesh. Finally the barrage of scenes slowed and focused on a forested landscape. Through the trees, a clearing. Beyond that, nestled a cabin.

This was where I lost everything. The two wolves. My parents. Witnessed the impact of the bullets. Then Sebastian led the sobbing girl from the field.

My last thought,
if only I could remember why…

The beast and I merged with a contorted scream, flesh intertwining, bone meeting bone. An agony of togetherness.