Shattered (30 page)

There had been
an odd feeling earlier when I'd pulled myself into my mom's dream,
but I'd still been so high from talking to Alec that I hadn't really
even tried to get a lock on it. I could feel it now though as I
started spinning out threads of energy to try and connect with Cindi.

There was a
lethargic feel to everything I was doing. I would have said that I
was just tired, but I'd just spent three-quarters of the last two
days sleeping. Besides that, I didn't really get tired when I was
dream walking. Sometimes I thought in those terms, but it wasn't
really true. The feeling was a little hard to categorize, but it was
closer to being weak than anything else.

This was
different, although once I stopped to think about it I was feeling
weaker than normal as well. It was like my little searching filaments
were having to fight their way through jello. Nothing was actively
resisting them, but there was a kind of passive resistance to what
they were trying to do.

I pressed
forward, determined to get Cindi there with Mom and me so she could
play referee and never stopped to consider that doing so might be
dangerous for her until after my filaments had already found her and
I'd started pulling her towards me. I was weak—a lot weaker
than I'd realized, and it was almost more than I could do to get her
started moving.

I heaved with
everything I had left, but she wasn't accelerating like she should
have been, and suddenly I realized that I'd never even considered
what would happen if I ran someone into the wall between dreams and
failed to pull them through. Would they bounce back to their dream
with no harm done, or would something worse happen to them?

The sudden fear
over what would happen to Cindi if I couldn't get her moving fast
enough to cross over into Mom's dream helped me find new strength. I
pulled on the cable between us with renewed determination. I was
pulling harder than I ever had with anyone else ever before, but I'd
started so late that I wasn't sure it would be enough.

I felt Cindi
hit the wall and knew at that moment that I'd failed. She didn't have
enough momentum to make it through. The wall started to tear, I felt
her start to slide into the odd, impossible space inside of the
wall—the between—and I panicked.

I could feel
the cable heating up, somehow being affected by the rift that was
just sitting there open rather than resealing behind itself like it
usually did. It was starting to fray as the component fibers that
made it up gave way before a heat that was simultaneously cool and
hotter than the heart of any star.

I wrapped what
was left of the cable around my right arm, but we'd gone beyond just
pulling on the link between Cindi and me if I was going to save her.

My left hand
traced the path of the cable, a cable that didn't exist, that even my
dream eyes couldn't see, but which I could feel. The cable became
less substantial the further away it got from me, but I forced my
left hand to follow it, to become insubstantial in the same way that
the cable became insubstantial.

What I was
doing didn't even make sense. It was like nothing I'd ever done
before, but somehow I was doing it. My index finger pierced the veil
between where I was and where Cindi was, and suddenly it was burning,
but I didn't let myself recoil from the pain. I forced my entire hand
through the rift on my side of the wall, still tracing the path of
the swiftly disintegrating cable. Just as I was about to lose hope, a
split second before the cable gave way, my hands closed around
something and I pulled with everything I had.

Cindi popped
back into existence on our side of the wall, but her eyes were closed
and she was glowing. The effort nearly caused me to black out. In
fact I would have said that I did lose consciousness, but when I
finally opened my eyes back up I was still in my mom's dream, which
wouldn't have happened if I'd really blacked out.

There was a
sound that I was having a hard time understanding. It was something
that was at once familiar and alien, but I put it out of my mind for
a second and steeled myself for what I knew needed to be done next. I
hadn't been able to bring myself to look down at my arm before now,
but I was obviously in shock. It was the only explanation for why I
was no longer feeling the pain from my charred arm.

I knew even
without looking that it was going to be bad. The heat and pain had
simply been too strong for my arm to have escaped with anything less
than severe damage. To be honest, I was surprised that there had even
been enough of it left to pull Cindi through to us.

I finally
looked down, but rather than the charred stump that I'd been
expecting, my arm was a whole, undamaged appendage that was glowing
with the same soft, white light that Cindi was giving off. I was
wiggling my fingers to confirm that they really worked when Mom
finally grabbed me by the other arm and pulled me around so that I
had to look at her.

"Adri,
what just happened? Is Cindi okay? Is it safe to touch her?"

I finally
realized that the sound I'd been filtering out was my mom and that
she'd been freaking out since the moment that Cindi had appeared. I
turned towards Mom and she practically tripped over herself trying to
get away from my glowing hand.

"I don't
know, Mom."

I walked over
to Cindi and picked up her wrist so I could check her pulse. Other
than the glowing she seemed to be okay. Her heart was beating and she
was breathing. Mom was standing just out of reach, looking at me
expectantly.

"I think
she's fine, probably just in some kind of shock. I tried to pull her
into your dream, but I almost didn't have enough strength to get her
through the boundary between her dream and yours. I've never had that
happen before so I don't know what it will mean for her…or
me."

Cindi suddenly
gasped and sat up. "Adri, Mom. I just had the oddest bunch of
dreams. We were kidnapped by vampires and then I got pulled into this
ocean of light and…actually I'm not sure what happened after
that, but it was almost like I was in heaven. I could see for
forever."

"It wasn't
a dream, Cindi. I mean some of it was, but you guys really were
kidnapped and you're still dreaming. I tried to pull you into Mom's
dream just like I pulled Tristan into yours, but I was too exhausted
and almost didn't make it. You got stuck in the between, the boundary
that separates different people's dreams."

For a second it
looked like Cindi was going to cry. "You mean it was real? Could
you send me back there?"

I opened my
mouth to tell her that I was too tired to do anything of the sort,
but that wasn't true. I was actually feeling the best I'd felt in a
really long time.

"I don't
think that would be a very good idea, sis. I don't think I could just
send you there again and reliably pull you out again—you might
get stuck there forever."

"Yeah,
okay. I guess you're right…"

I'd never seen
Cindi so out of it. Usually she was the person least likely to sit
around with her head in the clouds of anyone I knew.

"Cindi, I
need you to snap out of this. I need you, I'm scared out of my mind
right now, Mom is freaking out, and by now I expect that Tristan is
probably having mini-strokes."

"Wait,
Tristan knows that I'm gone?"

That was doing
the trick. Nothing pulled your average teenage girl away from other
distractions like the mention of a boy she had her heart set on.

"Yeah,
when I didn't get back to you guys fast enough via my messaging
service he sent Brad over to your house with his new phone number.
Brad found the back door ripped off of its hinges and the house
empty."

"So
Tristan sounded worried?"

I rolled my
eyes at her. She was still glowing slightly, but she was obviously
back to normal in all other respects.

"Yeah,
like I said, mini-strokes. I'm also worried, by the way. I've got a
bunch of friends looking for you right now, but the only thing that
Dad could remember was that you guys got carried away in a yellow
moving truck and you drove for about two hours before you stopped.
Can you give me anything else to go on, anything at all?"

Mom opened her
mouth to respond and then shrugged. "No, not really. What about
you, Cindi?"

"I'm not
sure. The lights were off when we arrived, so there wasn't much
light, not that that seemed to cause the vampires much of a
problem—wait, they are vampires, right?"

At my nod Cindi
sighed. "I was afraid of that. Anyway, it was super dark but I
got the impression that we were in some kind of really big building
that had like a series of big open spaces surrounded by offices."

It wasn't much
to go on, but it was better than nothing. I gestured for her to go on
and she rubbed the side of her head before shrugging. "I don't
know. I don't really have anything concrete, but I keep getting the
feeling that we drove mostly north. Maybe a little east too, but I'm
not as sure about that."

Up until that
moment I'd forgotten about the way that she'd gotten feelings about
the detective in charge of working my disappearance. Maybe I had an
excuse given just how much was going on, but it was still a massive
mistake to overlook something that could make such a difference.

"Is this
like when you got the feeling that detective was psychic?"

"Yeah, I
guess. It's kind of hard to be sure though. I mean it's just a
feeling, that isn't exactly the kind of thing you can really hang
your hat on."

"That's
okay, if none of you saw anything more concrete than that, then I'll
take whatever feelings you can pin down enough to share with me."

Cindi frowned
for a couple of seconds. "I don't know, Adri. I wish I had more
I could give you to go on, but that's really it. I kind of get the
feeling that it's cold outside, but even that is probably nothing
more than me guessing based on the fact that I think we drove north
after we left the city. If it turns out that I'm right and we really
did go north, does that make me some kind of psychic?"

"If you're
right enough to guide my friends and me to your actual location then
I think you can totally claim the title, but you're going to have to
practice being more confident if you want to have your own cable TV
show."

Cindi stuck her
tongue out at me. "Okay, so what next? I'm betting what little
bit we've told you so far isn't going to be enough for you to track
us down. Do I just go back to sleep and see if I can get something
more solid for when you stop by tomorrow night?"

"Sure,
that's not a bad idea, but I don't know if we're going to have enough
time to wait for the spirits to finish communicating with you or
whatever. As soon as I wake up I'm going to have to call back the
leader of the group of vampires and arrange a place and a time to
turn myself over to them. In theory I can get them to give me enough
time to drive to Minnesota from where I am right now, but even in the
best-case scenario where I convince them that I can't risk flying
that still only buys us one or two more nights."

"I can
tell that you have a plan, Adri, what is it?"

"I'm going
to need the two of you to create models of the rest of the vampires
you're being held by. This is a dream, so if you focus really hard on
what it is that you want to create and then sort of push with your
mind you can make it real here for as long as you can keep up your
concentration. It's Mom's dream, so she'll have the easiest time
manifesting things, but if you try hard enough I think you can
probably still create a model or a picture of the vampires that
you've seen so far."

Mom had spent
the last minute or so looking back and forth between Cindi and me
with an expression of shock on her face.

"The two
of you are serious. I mean, about the vampires and everything."

"Of course
we are, Mom. I told you that Adri is able to visit people's dreams.
Once you believe that, it's not that much of a stretch to believe in
vampires and psychics or pretty much whatever."

"I guess
that's the problem. I'm not sure that I really believe all of this is
happening. It's a lot easier to believe that this is all just a
rather odd but otherwise normal dream."

It was like Mom
was an entirely different person around Cindi than she was around me.
It had probably always been that way, but Mom was usually so
distracted that it was harder to recognize than it was when she was
forced away from her photography for long enough to remember that she
had a husband and two kids.

I wanted to be
mad at her, but I already knew that was a waste of time. My anger
either wouldn't register or if it did register for her then she would
just get really mad that
I
was being so selfish. Maybe I
should have kept my mouth shut and let Cindi handle things, but I
couldn't bring myself to be so passive.

I'd spent too
long around people who wanted my input, people who thought of me as a
valuable member of the team. Really I didn't even consider not
responding to my mom.

"I can't
prove
to you that this is the real thing right now, Mom. Once
we get all of you away from the vampires then I can jump through
whatever hoops you want to prove that I really can visit your dreams
at any time I want, but for now you're just going to have to take it
on faith."

Cindi jumped in
before Mom could get too indignant. "Mom, what do you have to
lose by cooperating with us? The worst-case scenario is that you
spend your time dreaming about us instead of something else. The
best-case scenario is that Adri and l really are here with you and
your cooperation helps her and her friends free us."

Mom didn't like
being double-teamed, but she also apparently wasn't going to argue
with us just for the sake of her pride.