Shattered (27 page)

"Yes,
but…"

"What did
you think was going to happen when we showed up to get you out? We
are up against a bunch of vampires who kill people for breakfast. I
can't send the police in against that, they wouldn't last five
seconds."

I wasn't being
fair to my dad and I knew it, but the pain in my head was growing. It
wasn't just behind my eyeballs anymore, it was taking over my entire
brain and it was edging into excruciating territory.

"I guess I
didn't think everything through, Adri. I just don't want you to do
things that you're going to regret later."

"Is that
it, Dad, or did you just assume that I wouldn't be the one doing the
killing? I'm not going to ask my friends to do something that I'm not
willing to do myself. If it's a question of going in with guns
blazing so there's a chance you'll get caught in the crossfire verses
my friend and I killing the vampires one at a time over the next few
nights then I'm going to go with option two. It puts the fewest
number of people in danger, it puts the fight on my home turf, and it
means that if we do have to go in after you there will be fewer bad
guys which means my friends will be in less danger."

"I'm
sorry, Adri. You're right. All of the things you're saying are
exactly the kinds of things that I would be saying in your place, it
just makes me nervous to think of you as some kind of cold-blooded
assassin. I've always thought that killing someone exacts a price on
a person's soul."

"Maybe it
does, Dad, but sometimes not killing has a price of its own. I killed
Pamela because I didn't have any other choice. She was going to take
me away and turn me into a weapon, so I stopped her. I'd do it again
in a heartbeat, and I still wouldn't lose any sleep over it. The
three of you are just as important to me and I'm not going to just
sit here and let them hurt you, not if I can stop them. This isn't
just a big misunderstanding; they are monsters and if I don't help
put them down now they are just going to keep hurting people. Now are
you going to help me by visualizing them, or are you going to stack
the deck even further against us?"

My dad opened
his mouth to respond, but he didn't get a chance to get the words out
because at that instant the pain in my skull hit a crescendo. I
grabbed my head and screamed even as I tried to hold onto my dad's
dream, but it was just too much. The dream shattered around me and I
fell screaming into the darkness.

Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming

I woke up with
a pounding headache that made me want to throw up, but I forced
myself to eat from my stock of junk food despite my nausea. I didn't
have a choice, not once I turned on the bathroom lights and saw the
way my clothes were hanging off of me.

It shouldn't
have been possible to lose this much weight so quickly, not after
such a short dream, but there wasn't any arguing with my own eyes. If
that had been the only oddity it would have been enough to rattle me,
but once I'd been awake for long enough to see how much weight I'd
lost, I also realized that I shouldn't have been able to function
inside of the dream with my dad at all.

Taggart and I
both recognized the fact that there were a number of differences in
how our respective gifts operated, and we'd spent some time mapping
out most of the differences, but there was one thing that we hadn't
ever tested before now. If I didn't die while dreaming, then the
worst I had to look forward to in the real world was some phantom
pain while my subconscious mind worked through the fact that I wasn't
actually damaged.

That was
markedly different from the way that his dream wounds became
real-world injuries, and he'd always maintained that there was a
chance that I wouldn't suffer from the same difficulties with regards
to re-entering someone else's dream after being injured. The fact
that Taggart's shape shifter constitution naturally bounced back
quickly from anything that didn't kill him meant that it was rare for
him to have to lose more than one or two nights dreaming, but I
didn't have that advantage.

Despite the
rest of the changes I'd gone through during the last few months, I
still healed human-slow. That meant I'd always assumed going back
into someone else's dream too soon after a major injury would have
serious, potentially even fatal consequences.

It only made
sense. My dream injuries had enough of an impact on my subconscious
that I experienced phantom pain, so it was natural to assume that
going back into someone else's dream after being badly hurt would
result in me still suffering from the same injury until enough time
had passed for my subconscious to adjust to the fact that I really
wasn't critically injured. Only that wasn't what had happened.

I was actually
surprised that Taggart hadn't thought to forbid me from trying to
contact my family so soon after our fight with Kaleb. I should have
been in constant pain the whole time I'd been with my dad, but
instead I hadn't even remembered that it might be an issue until I
woke without the sharp pains that had followed me around the day
before.

I
experimentally stretched and twisted, exploring the limits in my
range of motion, but there wasn't even a dull ache in my chest. I
should have been in for another day or two of pain—it was hard
to believe that the sleeping pills could have metaphysically healed
me at the same time that they burned through most of my physical
reserves, but I couldn't think of any other cause.

Being able to
bounce back from dream injuries in less than twenty-four hours would
be an incredible boon over the long haul, but only if the pills
weren't doing something else to me—like burning out my ability
to dream walk.

I wanted to go
talk to Taggart about what had happened, but I knew I couldn't do
that.
I
was scared out of my mind that I might be doing some
kind of long-term damage to myself by dream walking with the sleeping
pills in my system, which meant that Taggart would be even more
worried.

I wasn't sure
that I'd ever been this skinny before. My reserves were basically
gone, which was dangerous even without the question of what else the
pills might be doing to me. As much as I wanted to just stop and let
myself bulk back up a little, there just wasn't time. My dad had only
showed me one person last night and there had to be more vampires
than just that involved. I would have sent Taggart in my place to
talk to Cindi and my mom, but it had to be me. Taggart might take as
long as a month to establish a connection with just one member of my
family, and then we would still be faced with fighting the vampire
in
their
dream rather than
mine
.

I figured we
needed all of the advantages we could get, but it was more than that
even. I'd held Pamela in place inside of my dream to kill her. I'd
never tried holding someone in place inside of their own dream—there
was a chance that it wasn't even possible.

There weren't
any good options at this point, but I just needed to hold together
for a few more days and then it didn't matter what else happened to
me. I crunched up my last bag of chips so that I could just pour them
into my mouth, and then changed back into jeans and a t-shirt. The
results weren't pretty; it was too easy to see exactly how much
weight I'd lost.

My wardrobe
wasn't exactly extensive, but I managed to find a long-sleeve, blue
button-up shirt that was dark enough to mostly hide how emaciated I
was, but thin enough that I wouldn't die from heat exhaustion.

I opened my
door a minute later and felt my heart sink. Outside my door there
wasn't any sign of the usual traffic of people headed back from the
pit to shower before grabbing breakfast. I turned back to my bedside
table and grabbed my phone. I hadn't thought to set my alarm, which
meant that I'd overslept again like an idiot. It was after noon and I
wasn't any closer to being back on schedule than I'd been yesterday.

I numbly
wandered down to the cafeteria and found Isaac and Taggart there.

"Adri, are
you okay?"

Taggart's
question made me muster up what I hoped was a convincing smile.
"Yeah, I've been up for a while, I just couldn't get myself to
roll out of bed. Good news though, I mean news that is better than
nothing. My dad said that they were carried away in a yellow moving
truck and he thinks that they drove for about two hours. He was a
little iffy about that though, so we probably need to give it
something like a half-hour margin either way."

It wasn't until
after I'd said it that I realized I'd just committed the cardinal sin
where deceiving shape shifters was concerned. I'd stepped beyond
misdirection and gone all the way to an outright lie. It should have
bitten me in the butt instantly, but apparently all of my vitals were
so far off of normal that neither of my friends realized what had
just happened.

Isaac nodded,
his eyes already distant. "Okay, that's something at least. Dom
and a couple of others left last night to see if we could turn up any
clues at the scene of the crime that the police might have missed.
I'll get the rest of my people moving towards Minnesota now so that
we're in place to act on any more leads you might turn up. If we
drive straight through then there's a chance that we can be there by
tomorrow evening so we can start acting on any clues you turn up when
you talk to your mom and sister."

"Great,
give me five minutes to grab my bag and I'll come with you."

Isaac shook his
head. "I really think it would be better if you stayed here,
Adri. You need to be able to sleep undisturbed tonight if you're
going to get anything useful out of the rest of your family and
that's way more important than getting to Minnesota half a day
early."

"Fine,
I'll drive separately and stop at a hotel to sleep. It's my family
we're talking about. I'm not going to just sit around here when I
could be there helping you guys."

Isaac opened
his mouth and then shut it again. Taggart finally stepped into the
breach.

"Adri, the
single most important thing you can do for your family right now is
buy us more time to look for them. The information you turned up last
night is worthless if we don't have time to follow up on it. When you
call the vampires back tomorrow morning you need a reason why you
can't be there in just an hour or two. The best answer is that you're
still here in Wyoming and need time to drive up to wherever they want
to meet with you."

"Fine, so
I come with you and when I call them back I'll just tell them that
I'm still back here."

Isaac decided
to jump back into the fray. "You're not a very good liar, Adri.
No offense, it's a good thing really, but the best defense in this
situation is for you to not need to lie. I'm sorry, but it really is
for the best. I'll bring my laptop and hotspot and work on the
technical end of things while someone else is driving, so I don't
lose too much time. I should be able at least to pull up a list of
people who rented a yellow moving truck around the relevant time in
that area. There's no guarantee, but that might get us to the
location where they are holding your family.

"Even if
it gets us to the right town that may be enough. If we can narrow
their location down to a town or two then I could flood the location
with wolves and pick up their scent trail in a matter of hours."

I looked over
to Taggart hoping that he would back me up, but I should have known
better after his earlier attempt at telling me no. I nearly told them
that I was a much better liar than they thought, that I was in the
middle of keeping a massive secret of my own, but that would have
just landed me in a different kind of trouble.

"Fine,
I'll be in the pit if anyone needs me."

Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming

It probably
looked like I'd stormed out in an immature demonstration of anger,
but the truth was that I'd known I wasn't going to win that
particular argument, so it had just made sense to pull back and deal
with the things that I could affect.

If I was going
to have any kind of prayer of getting to sleep tonight without taking
another dose of sleeping pills then I needed to wear myself out,
which meant I needed hard physical labor. The pit was perfect for
that—also, I
was
kind of pissed about the fact that
Taggart and Isaac were calling all of the shots despite the fact that
it was
my
family that was in danger.

I stopped off
at the store and grabbed something like four thousand calories' worth
of junk food before heading down to the pit. I never ate enough to
make myself feel like I was going to explode, but I took frequent
breaks to scarf down food in the hopes that it would be enough to
replace most of the calories that I'd burned up the night before.

I wasn't fast
when it came to moving the dirt around, at least not compared to the
shape shifters. It took me a long time to fill up even just one of
the small, human-sized wheelbarrows, and it was nearly all I could do
to manhandle a load of dirt up to the slope where we'd been dumping
the dirt.

Part of that
was the result of being a rather tiny human girl, but I suspected
that it also had to do with the fact that my body was essentially
malnourished. Heath and Isaac both stopped by to say goodbye before
they left and I came out of my angry funk to give them each a hug and
wish them luck.

I stopped for
long enough to wave goodbye to everyone else as they drove out of the
underground parking garage that took up one quadrant of the bunker.
It was the right thing to do considering that they were all about to
risk their lives for me. Besides, I was going to miss them, even the
ones I didn't know very well. The bunker was going to feel empty
without them.