Shattered (31 page)

"Okay,
Adri. You say that you want us to show you what the…vampires
look like?"

I visualized a
perfect replica of Dad and pushed it into existence as I nodded. He,
or rather an illusion of him, shimmered into existence a split second
later and Mom's mouth snapped shut.

"Adri,
that's absolutely amazing. How did you do that?"

"It's like
I said, I just visualize what I want and then push with my mind. You
should be able to do the same thing—it's your dream after all."

"Can you
make him even more lifelike? Could you make him breathe and shift
around?"

If I'd been
more exhausted I would have told her to take a flying leap, but
somehow my energy reserves had been replenished, so there wasn't any
reason not to humor her. I imagined my version of Dad taking a deep
breath and tilting his head slightly.

Once I started
him breathing and moving my subconscious mind took over and kept the
process up. Over the next few seconds I added to the realism, causing
him to sway back and forth slightly, adding facial expressions and
making his eyes track back and forth between the three of us.

"Adri,
would it be possible to create anything while we are here?"

I shrugged.
"Yeah, basically. I mean, the bigger the object you create and
the more detail you add to it, the harder it is to manifest and the
more strength you'll burn up maintaining it, but theoretically
anything is possible here."

A look of
intense concentration flashed across Mom's face and then a trio of
softly glowing butterflies fluttered into existence and started
circling us. They were a little unfinished around the edges, but it
was an astonishing result for a first attempt.

I manifested a
green-gold dragonfly made out of what looked like crystal just behind
Mom's butterflies and made it chase them around. The look of delight
on Mom's face was childlike. The sight of something beautiful being
added to our surroundings brought her such simple, pure delight that
I couldn't help but smile at her as she looked away from our
creations.

For a second
she'd looked at Cindi, as though expecting that it was my sister who
had created the dragonfly, but then she looked at me and shook her
head. "I never realized that you have the soul of an artist,
Adri. All this time and it turns out that you just needed to find the
right medium. And what an impressive medium it is. Adding the level
of detail I'm used to from my photos is difficult, but you're
obviously better at it than I am, so it must be possible.

"Having
this level of control is nothing less than amazing. If I were given a
chance to practice until I was good enough to add in the detail I
might never be able to bring myself back to working with a camera."

I wanted to
just sit there and soak in the first moment of unadulterated approval
that I could remember from my mother in years, but I knew we needed
to get back on track before I lost her completely to some flash
project that she hadn't come here anticipating being able to do.

"It is
nice, Mom. I hadn't thought of it in quite that way before now. I'm
usually focused on spying on someone or running for my life while I'm
here, but you're right, it has some really incredible potential when
it comes to creating something beautiful. As much as I'd like to let
you continue to just experiment, I really need as good of a likeness
of the vampires as you can manage."

Mom nodded
absently, and for a moment I worried that she hadn't even heard me,
but then the ground in front of me surged upwards, forming a humanoid
shape that quickly sharpened into a good likeness of a real person.
It probably shouldn't have surprised me that Mom was so much better
at this than my dad was. He was great in almost every way, but he
didn't have an artist's eye.

Even our
surroundings bore witness to that simple fact. Dad had dreamed with a
minimum of detail when it came to his surroundings. In fact, if it
wasn't for the fact that that clearing meant a lot to him, I probably
would have found myself in a featureless room. For him the important
thing had always been the people rather than the setting they were
placed in.

Mom, on the
other hand, had placed us in a park, complete with the smell of fresh
wood chips and a breeze sufficient to make the swings sway back and
forth. I unobtrusively ran the toe of my shoe back and forth across
the ground and was rewarded with grass that consisted of individual
blades that moved independently of each other. I'd known that my mom
was driven, but I hadn't realized quite how disciplined her mind was.

"Wow, Mom,
that's really good. Who is this guy?"

The grin that
had popped onto her face at my praise faltered a little. "I'm
not sure."

Cindi jumped
back into the conversation at that point. "I heard someone call
him Jenkins. I think he's somewhere towards the top of the pecking
order."

"Okay,
that's good, I can use that. Mom, can you do the woman who is in
charge—you know, the short blonde Dad showed me? I'd like to
compare your view of her with Dad's view."

We went through
six more vampires before Mom reached the end of the people she'd
interacted with since they'd been abducted, at which point Cindi
tried to create a likeness of the only other person she'd seen whom
Mom hadn't seen yet. Her effort didn't go as well, but that wasn't
entirely a surprise. Controlling your surrounding when you were in
someone else's dream was tough. I still wasn't as good at it as
Taggart was.

As Cindi
started shaking from the effort of keeping her shadowy, half
constructed version of a slender Asian guy from disappearing, I waved
for her to let the illusion go.

"Okay,
thank you both. I think that will help. As soon as I wake up I'll
give the head vampire a call and then my friends will concentrate on
searching the area north of the city."

My mom smiled
and then pulled me into a hug. "You're welcome, Adri. I hope
that the police artist is able to make something happen with the
sketches now that you've seen our captors. I'm so grateful that you
showed me how to do this. It's kind of funny that it took us being
abducted for you and me to finally see eye to eye on something."

Given that
she'd just incorrectly assumed that I was going to go to the police
just minutes after I'd explained that there wasn't anything the
police could do to help us, it was tempting to blow off her hug, but
I didn't. My mom had a lot of faults. In my world her refusal to face
reality head-on would have been an incredible liability, but in her
world it was what kept her going against terrible odds.

Anyone who
pursued any kind of living that involved the arts had to be at least
a little blind to reality, but maybe that wasn't entirely a bad
thing. Maybe it took a touch of blindness, a special refusal to
acknowledge certain aspects of the world around you in order to
create beautiful art. It was particularly hard to deal with that when
it was your own mother who was off in a world of her own, but the
world has needed more beautiful things for as long as I could
remember.

"I'm glad
that we found something we have in common too, Mom. You really are
quite amazing. I'm not sure there is anyone else in the world that
could have created such stunning likenesses on their first try like
that."

Mom pulled
Cindi into a hug too, but she didn't let go of me, which was a bigger
shock than I let on. "I'm sorry I haven't been there for the two
of you like I should have. I never quite knew how to juggle
everything that I needed to be doing. I'm sorry that I didn't try
harder."

It wasn't much
of an apology, but it was something. It was a sign that Mom was at
least making an effort, and that was more than she'd ever done before
I'd left home. I managed a smile as she let me go.

"I guess
you've convinced me, Adri. This is all real, wonderfully so, which
means that you really are out there somewhere desperately trying to
find a way to get us back home. Thank you for that. I know I can't
take any credit for how you turned out, but I'm glad you're the kind
of strong young woman who is willing to make things happen rather
than just blindly sitting there waiting for life to take you
somewhere. I think that's one of the most important qualities anyone
can possess."

"You're
welcome, Mom. I really will do everything I can to rescue you guys."

Mom grabbed my
hand and gave it another squeeze before walking away to give Cindi
and me some room to talk.

"So, big
sister…"

"Yeah,
little sister?"

"You
didn't want to see likenesses of the bad guys so you could go to the
police, did you?"

"No."
I turned to look at Mom, but she was completely involved in the
creation of a miniature forest scene made all of pastel lights that
floated in the air just a few feet away from her. That was good;
there were a lot of things that my mom apparently still wasn't ready
to hear.

"No,
that's not what I had in mind. Starting tomorrow evening, Taggart and
I are going to try to pull the vampires into my dream and kill them
one at a time just like we did with Pamela."

"Isn't
that dangerous?"

"Yeah, but
it's still the best way of getting you all out of there. Keep your
eyes open and be ready to make your case to the vampires if they
start to seem rattled. The story you're trying to tell them is that
you all talk to me each and every night and between the three of you,
you've already passed me the descriptions of everyone that you've
interacted with. I won't kill everyone Mom showed me tonight, just
enough to hopefully make my point, but then it will be up to you to
convince them that I'll spare the rest of them as long as you aren't
harmed."

"Do you
think they'll buy it? Once you have us back what is to stop you from
just killing them anyway?"

"To be
honest, nothing, but I won't. You'll have to convince them of that.
You have to make sure they know I'll honor my word."

"Okay, I
can do that. Take care out there tomorrow night."

"I will,
Cindi. Just stay strong for a little while longer and this will all
be over."

Adriana Paige
Marauder's Gas Station
Central Wyoming

I woke to a call from Alec that came in only seconds before my alarm
started going off. "I spent the night worrying about you."

"It
was touch and go a couple of times, but I ended up being okay. Thanks
for last night, by the way. If you hadn't been there for me like that
I probably would have freaked myself out so badly that I really would
have overdosed on sleeping pills."

"You're
welcome. I'm glad that you felt like you could turn to me for
something like that. I helped you not overdose and you helped
convince me that my ability isn't the total letdown that I was afraid
it was."

"Hey,
that's what I'm here for."

There
was an awkward silence for a second as Alec tried to figure out how
to proceed.

"I
know it's not really my place to even ask you for this, but I want to
ask you to promise not to use sleeping pills like that again. I…well,
I was really worried about you. I know you're freaking out about your
parents and sister, but if something happens to you then the odds of
us getting them out of there go way down. Besides, you're awake now,
so you shouldn't have any problems going to sleep tonight—essentially
you're back on schedule."

I
bit my lip. "I want to promise that to you, Alec. I really do,
but it's more than just being in sync or out of sync with the rest of
North America. Things were different when I was on the sleeping
pills. I was strong, way stronger than I normally am. Last night that
was all gone. I was so weak that I nearly couldn't pull my sister to
my mom and me.

"What
if I need the pills now in order to do what needs to be done? I don't
need to be super strong most of the time, but I need it tonight—I
need it bad. If I go into a fight with this vampire and I'm as weak
as I was last night, then Taggart and I are screwed."

Alec
was silent for nearly a minute. "I don't have an easy answer for
you, Adri. You're up against a wall, there's no doubt about that, but
my experience has been that there is always going to be another wall
looming at your back. It's really easy to keep finding reasons to do
something that you know you shouldn't be doing.

"I
spent years thinking that there was more wrong going on beneath the
surface of the pack than I already knew about, but I didn't go poking
around where I wasn't supposed to because I knew it would cause some
pretty terrible fallout if I did so. To hear my mom tell it, Kaleb
wasn't always bad, but he started compromising what he knew was right
somewhere along the way and he's never even looked back to see what
he's lost since then.

"It
can't be my choice or Taggart's choice. I actually feel guilty even
saying as much as I have so far, because I don't want you to blame me
forever if you choose not to use those pills again and then something
happens to your parents, but I'm worried what this will do to you.
People like us, people who are under especially intense pressures,
have to be especially careful to stay away from destructive coping
mechanisms or we'll latch onto them so quickly that we'll never even
know what hit us. I guess the only other thing I can say is what
would your family choose for you? Would your parents want you to risk
death from an overdose so you could kill the person who has them
captive?"

I
nodded, even though I knew he couldn't see me. "Okay, Alec. I
can see your point and I don't hate you for saying it. I need to go
now if I'm going to get that vampire called before the deadline she
left me, but I promise that I'll at least talk to Taggart before I
decide. It's not just my life at stake this time, it's his too and he
deserves to know that I might be going into this fight at less than
full strength."