Night Myst (25 page)

“Let’s get moving then. I’m chilled through. Walking helps.”

I sucked in a deep breath and headed around the mushroom ring, bypassing the danger by keeping to its edge. The tingle of magic followed me, reaching out to jar my senses but otherwise left me alone. One step over the line, though, and we’d be in big trouble.

Traveling was easier at this point, although we had to keep a clear lookout for hidden rocks and roots beneath the snow cover. Twice I stopped, holding my hand for the others to wait as I tuned into the wind, listening to noises coming along the slipstream.

Once, I caught the distinct impression of a shriek that vibrated down my spine, a bolt of fear hidden in the one, lone cry. I kept quiet, not wanting to alarm the others. Not ten minutes later, another noise set my alarms ringing, but what I thought might be another goblin dog turned out to be a rabbit loping by. It stopped for a moment, nose twitching as it stood on its hind legs to look at us, before it turned to dart back into the undergrowth.

“Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late
. . .
” I whispered under my breath. But since the rabbit carried neither a pocket watch, nor wore a waistcoat, I decided this wasn’t our rabbit hole. Too bad Myst wasn’t as innocuous as the White Queen.

Sure enough, at about twenty minutes to noon, the forest began to open out into a clearing and up ahead we could see a pair of oak trees, towering huge. The path led right between them, and beyond, the route blurred to the eye.

“A portal . . .” Kaylin said.

“What?” I turned to him as he joined me at the trailhead.

“The oaks—they make up the sides of the portal. From here, I can’t see anything but a barren mound, but want to make a bet we walk through there and bingo, we’ll be facing the Marburry Barrow?”

I nodded, slowly. That would account for the indistinct blur around the edges. “You’re right, I think. Grieve said they were a portal, that we had to pass through the oaks to find the Barrow. But now I’m wondering whether there might be members of the Indigo Court prowling the outskirts? We know they can go out in the daylight, so what’s to prevent them from being there? Maybe I didn’t think this thing through enough before suggesting we come out here.”

Rhiannon pressed close to my side. “My mother’s in there, and Peyton. They need me. I have to try.”

Leo frowned. “I brought a few things from Marta’s ritual gear that might help us.” He set down his pack and began to fish through it, bringing up a handful of what looked like vertebrae. “Snake bones,” he said. “I’ve studied enough to know that these can be used to create a cloud of poison—”

I looked at him. “Poison? I thought you were a healer.”

“Heather taught me from the beginning: A witch who cannot hex, cannot heal. The balance of light and shadow—there’s a place for the dark, Cicely. You know that from the life you led.” He shrugged. “We have to be willing to do whatever it takes, considering who we’re facing and what’s at stake.”

Blinking, I realized just how far down the road we’d come in just a matter of a few days. Danger was no longer a concept. We were staring it in the face. And the world needed both life and death, but in balance. The Vampiric Fae were upsetting that balance.

“Yeah, I get it. You think that the gas would work on the Indigo Court?”

“We don’t know, so save it as a last resort,” Kaylin said. “I know one way to slip in there and see what’s going on.”

“And what’s that?” I asked, glancing at him.

“I’m a dreamwalker. I’ll go in on the astral.”

Rhiannon shook her head. “No—it’s too dangerous. You could be hurt.”

“There’s always that chance, but if the odds are with me, they won’t notice me before I can get away. The key is, you guys have to be ready to run. You’ll have to run fast and hard because they’re stronger than we are. But if I can get in there without them knowing, I might be able to pinpoint how to actually enter the Barrow.” He handed me his backpack. “Keep this for me, please. It has some important items in it . . . just in case.”

“You aren’t serious about this—” I began to say, then stopped. Of course he was serious. None of us would be here if we weren’t. I’d been ready to stomp right in there and that would have been far more likely to get me caught than if Kaylin slipped in on the astral. “What do you need in order to go in?”

He glanced around. “We need to find a place to hide. I’m going to have to lie down to prepare for this.”

Ask if you can go with him,
Ulean prompted.

I blinked. Say what? I was no dreamwalker and while Kaylin had a century of experience, could he really take another person with him?

Score one for scaring me shitless. But Ulean could see farther than I could and she apparently knew something I didn’t. I tapped Kaylin on the arm. “Listen, do you know how to take somebody with you? Can you do that?”

He jerked around, giving me a hard look. “Why do you ask?”

I shrugged. “Ulean told me to ask if I could go with you.”

When Kaylin spoke again, his voice was cold. “I won’t risk your life, Cicely. There’s no guarantee that they won’t have some sort of anti-magic field that will negate the spell. What happens then?”

“Tell me exactly what it is that you do. Then let me make the decision.” I sucked in a deep breath.

Rhiannon shook her head. “Bad idea. Don’t let her talk you into it.” She scuffed her feet. Neither she nor Leo looked happy at my request.

Kaylin let out a long sigh. “When I dreamwalk, I go into a deep trance—and yes, I can drag someone along with me. At some point—it’s hard to explain how it happens—I see a door. When I go through it, my body turns to shadow. To the stuff dreams are made of. I can move around in shadow-form and so can whoever I have taken with me. I can spy on people, but I can’t take action. I can’t get in a fight, for example.”

I thought about it for a moment. “Is there a time limit?”

He nodded, slowly. “Of sorts. If I stay out on the astral too long, I run the risk of not being able to come back. I could be trapped as a shadow entity.”

“And how long is too long?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never been out longer than an hour. I believe it depends on the power of the dreamwalker, whether someone else is in tow . . . a number of varying factors. And there’s another little matter: There are creatures out there, and not all of them are nice.”

Oh, this was just getting better and better. Ulean had really set me up. “So we go walking into the shadow and we might not come back. And there could be nasty critters. Can we fight them while we’re there? You said we couldn’t fight from the astral.”

“We can’t—not anything on the
physical
plane. But yes, we can defend ourselves against anything that’s out on the Dreamtime. That is, if we’re stronger than they are. Chances of that aren’t very good.” He gave me a quasi-grin. “You still want to come with?”

“Maybe . . .” Only I didn’t. But Ulean thought it was a good idea and she’d never steered me wrong yet. “You mentioned something about if the spell is negated . . . what happens then?”

“Then we run like hell. If we can. If the spell’s disrupted—whether by accident or design—we appear in body wherever we’re at. In other words, if we’re hiding out near the ceiling over a group of hungry Shadow Hunters and someone negates the spell, our bodies will resolidify and we’ll fall right into the middle of the group. And probably land
very, very
hard. This isn’t easy. Dreamwalking is dangerous.” He lowered himself to a nearby windfall and leaned his elbows on his knees, whistling softly.

I glanced at the Twin Oaks. If we went through in body and there were Vampiric Fae on the other side, we were doomed. We’d never get away from them. And nothing Grieve—or anybody—could do, would save our butts.

“Okay, I’m in! Let’s do this!” I sucked in a deep breath. “Rhiannon, Leo, you guys need to hide—and I mean hide but good. Whatever happens,
don’t
come after us. If we don’t come back—”

“Don’t say that!” Rhiannon bit her lip, on the verge of tears.

“If we don’t come back,” I said again, with emphasis, “then get your butts out of this wood, tell the vamps what happened to me, and don’t look back. Get out of town before nightfall.”

Leo slid his arm around Rhiannon’s shoulders. “Please rethink this. We can’t afford to lose either of you.”

“With a little luck and some common sense, you won’t have to,” Kaylin said. “But Cicely’s right. This is our best chance to find out what’s going on in there. We won’t stay long, just get the lay of the land so we know what we’re facing, and then come back. We won’t take any unnecessary risks, will we?” He looked at me, pointedly.

I shrugged. “I wasn’t planning on it, no. I’m not a lunatic. But Ulean thinks I should go with you, and she’s usually spot-on. I’ve come to trust her over the years—she’s saved my butt more than once.”

“Then let’s do it,” Kaylin said. “Get ready to walk into the shadows. It’s a cold, dark journey, and there’s nothing quite like it in the world.”

“You’ll have to lie in my arms,” Kaylin said. When I stared at him, a faint grin on my face, he shook his head, his dark hair swinging around his shoulders. “No, it’s nothing like that. I need to be holding you in order to help you shift over with me.”

“I kind of thought that’s what you meant.” I decided not to make him blush any more than he was. If we weren’t in the situation we were in, it might be
fun
to make him blush but I reined in that thought for later.

Kaylin lay down on the ground, on his back. He held his arm out and I snuggled against him. It was an odd feeling, cuddling up against a strange man. But somehow, he felt comfortable and safe and I actually relaxed as he rolled over to face me and wrap his other arm around my shoulders, too.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, his breath warm and minty against my face. “First, you’ll feel a shimmering inside your body—I can’t explain it, but like . . . like . . . when you see the lines fluttering on the TV—bad reception. Then you’ll feel like you’re starting to float. Keep calm. I’ll have hold of you; I won’t let anything happen.”

I sucked in a deep breath and nodded, closing my eyes. I wasn’t sure I was ready to see my body turn to vapor. Or shadow. Or anything resembling a nonsolid gas. I could deal with the concept, but to actually witness it might be more than I was up for.

“Keep breathing,” Kaylin said. “Don’t hold your breath. When we’re dreamwalking we don’t need to breathe so try not to panic if you notice you’re not.” He paused. “I still don’t think this is such a great idea but here we go. Ready?”

I nodded, forcing myself to inhale-exhale as though I had just laid down to take a nap. Kaylin began to chant, something low and deep and almost out of the range of my hearing. Within seconds, he went from being a geeky cute goth guy to radiating a power that felt far, far older than me. I fought to keep my eyes closed, wanting to look at him.

And then, my body started to melt.

It began at someplace in my third chakra—just above my solar plexus. A wave of water ran through me, emanating from that one spot, undulating through muscle and bone, blood and vein, like concentric ripples on a pond. My body was melting like liquid silver, like the Wicked Witch of the West, like the second Terminator dissembling.

But Kaylin’s arms were melting, too, mingling with the quivering pool that was my body. We were separate and yet linked, blending and yet two distinct beings. And then, the rippling spread out to my hands and feet, fingers and toes, and my flesh swelled and fell away as I felt myself diffuse and spread out. That was all it took for panic to set in.

Calm yourself.
Kaylin’s whispering thoughts found their way into mine.
As long as I brought you across, I can communicate with you. You’re fine. This is just the process of becoming shadow. Only another minute or two and we’ll be fully on the astral.

A gentle breeze blew over my melting form.
And I am here.

Instead of hearing Ulean’s voice on the wind, it rang through my . . . head? Mind, I suppose. Instinct taking over, I tried to breathe but there was no breath, no air to comfort me. Reeling, I turned head over heels, lost in the pull of the astral current that rose up to surround us.

See anything? I didn’t have eyes—wait. There was a light. Maybe just the sensation of light, but somehow I was aware of it. And then, I felt something shift and realized I’d just blinked. I glanced down and saw myself in silhouette, a shadow against the astral world in which we were standing. It was me, but in smoke and vapor, without distinct features. I held up my hands in wonder.