S
omething struck the outside of the door with the force of a battering ram. A tremor ran through the wood, and Vivian backed away, expecting the door to crack beneath the assault. The penguin slipped out of her arms and belly flopped onto black-and-white marble, letting the momentum carry him forward where he vanished beneath a leather recliner.
Another blow sent Vivian across the room to crouch behind the chair where the penguin had taken refuge. The tiny part of her brain that was still rational commented that this was an act of futility. If the predator made it into the room, there would be no place to hide and the chair would certainly not offer any meaningful protection.
A totally different part of her brain pointed out that she was naked in a dream that did not belong to her, accompanied by a penguin.
Silence, just long enough to acknowledge the thunder of her pulse, her ragged breathing, to notice that this dream she’d blundered into was an elegant apartment with a hint of familiarity about it. And then came the horrific sound of something sharp and vicious rending the door, top to bottom.
Vivian cowered, waiting for flames and claws and teeth, but once again the door held.
A bloodcurdling cry of rage and loss, followed by the rumbling, dragging sound of something heavy moving away from the door.
Clasping her knees against her chest, Vivian closed her eyes and rocked, trying to release the chemicals of fight-or-flight, to stop the shaking and calm down so she could think.
A rustling sound, a slight vibration of the chair she leaned against, startled her onto her feet, heart pounding all over again. It was only the penguin, which stood staring at her, black eyes bright and unblinking. It was the most penguiny-looking penguin she had ever seen. Too big for an Adélie, too small for a King, with a breast a little too white and a beak a little too yellow and obsidian eyes that glittered with unnatural intelligence. White patches marked each cheek. There was something unsettling about the way he looked at her that made her think of Poe’s eternally silent raven.
“Quoth the penguin, nevermore,” she muttered, fumbling for the pendant and finding it missing. Still in Dreamworld then. This did nothing to make her feel better. Once there had been a sense of safety in the words
only a dream
, but she knew better now. The dragon was gone, but there was no guarantee it wouldn’t be back, maybe with reinforcements. Besides, this was somebody else’s dream, which meant she and the penguin were not alone here. The dreamer might not appreciate a dream invasion by a freakish penguin and a naked woman.
Somehow she needed to get from this dream and into Surmise, but walking back through that door and into the Between was not an action she was prepared to take, not with the dragon nearby.
An inventory of her resources was not helpful: two dreamspheres, one that would take her to a small and dusty room, and one that had brought her the company of an unsettling and completely useless penguin.
It occurred to her that maybe she could use something from this dream, and she began to pay closer attention to her surroundings. The room was luxurious, but cold and
sterile. Thick, woven rugs softened the marble floor. She and the penguin had taken refuge on a little island of furniture. Pristine, sculptured, uninviting furniture, upholstered in bold geometric patterns of black and white. The recliner was leather, brand-new, not softened or worn with use. The sofa was meant for cocktail dresses and fancy drinks and was not at all friendly to a naked, dusty woman and an inquisitive penguin.
An island separated the living area from the kitchen, which was also stark and cold. Black marble countertops, sleek black inset appliances. Above, a cathedral ceiling with a skylight, dark now. A scratching sound brought her eyes back to see the penguin setting out across the floor, wings spread a little, his body swaying from side to side with every step.
“Hey, you! Poe! Come back here!”
He ignored her, and she pursued him across the open space and down a hallway. More doors. Vivian cringed a little, but they looked like normal, ordinary doors painted spotless white. All were open, revealing a bathroom, a study, and a master bedroom.
The penguin waddled into the bedroom, Vivian following. This room, too, was done in black and white, even the wood of the dressers aged to a dark brown that was nearly ebony. A king-sized four-poster bed was spread with a black coverlet.
Cold. Vivian clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering, and when the penguin vanished into the walk-in closet she followed, determined to find something warm—even if it was just a blanket. The bed was too pristine to think of stealing the comforter. What she found in the closet was better than a blanket—a long, terry cloth robe, black like everything else in this place. She wrapped herself in the robe with a little hum of pleasure. It was warm and soft and fitted her perfectly. She slid her feet into a pair of slippers—heeled, which was not exactly comfortable but certainly warmer, surprised to discover them an exact fit. Something about the rest of the clothing—business suits,
evening gowns, designer jeans and silk shirts, nudged at her like something familiar, and yet they were totally foreign to her usual comfortable attire of faded denim, T-shirts, and sneakers.
The other side of the closet was masculine: a row of tailored suits, shoes polished to a mirror gloss. These clothes she knew for certain she had seen before. Somebody wore these suits, somebody she knew.
A whiff of cologne drifted into her nostrils, a musky scent she also knew.
Jared. Jared wears that cologne. He also wears suits like these…
Even as she recognized this thought and her heart convulsed with understanding, she heard familiar footsteps in the hall. She looked up to see Jared standing in the bedroom doorway. “Vivian—you’re not ready for dinner.”
Words failed her. What she guessed could be a good dream for Jared was fated to become a nightmare for her. Clenching the crystals into a fist, she rubbed her naked ring finger with her thumb, remembering roses on the floor, a splash of crimson.
There was a feeling of inevitability as he approached, as though she lacked will and substance, a flimsy creature without a life of her own. Which made a rudimentary kind of sense. This was Jared’s dream, after all; this cold, stark reality was the creation of his subconscious.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“I—nowhere.”
“You’re lying. What do you have in your hand?”
Vivian put her hands behind her back, took a step away from him. “Nothing. Please—let me get dressed, we’ll go for dinner. Where did you want to go?”
But he refused to be sidetracked, continued to advance. His face was all hard angles, no warmth, no softness anywhere. Jared could get angry, had an undercurrent of potential violence, but underneath there had always been a softness, missing now. She had hurt and rejected him, and now she had intruded on a dream driven by primal emotional constructs.
“Let me see.”
“No, Jared, please.”
Another step back. She tripped over the hem of the robe, twisted her ankle, and almost fell. He caught her, turned her, grabbed the hand that clutched the dreamspheres, and pulled it up behind her back, pinning her.
She wanted to kick, to scream, but the pervading feeling of unreality stopped her. Just another nightmare. Unable to run, unable to scream, powerless to change the course of events. This was the nature of dreams. No point in fighting. Sooner or later, you always woke up.
But this wasn’t just any dream. All the rules had changed, and there was no guarantee that she would ever wake up. She remembered with an unexpected flash the book on lucid dreaming that Zee had lent to her, wished she’d done more than skim through it. People modified their dreams all the time, and she was a Dreamshifter. That had to mean something.
And so she searched for the words that seemed so far away, and gasped, “Jared, you’re hurting me—”
He ignored her, pried her fingers open one at a time, took the globes from her. She heard him draw in his breath in a long inhalation of surprise, felt her arm released. Vivian almost expected him to vanish into some other dream. But after a short moment he brushed by her and began shifting hangers, looking at dresses, as though he hadn’t just wrested the crystals from her by force.
“This one, I think, with the Jimmy Choos.” He handed her a flimsy bit of fabric in stop sign red.
Over my dead body.
Out loud she said, “Yes, of course.”
And as he stood waiting, watching, she slipped out of the warm comfort of the robe, letting it fall to the floor at her feet. His gaze burned her naked skin, and when she took the dress from his hands she turned her back to pull it over her head. She smoothed it over her breasts and hips with dismay. Not much dress to start with, and she had nothing on underneath.
When she turned back to him, Jared held the robe in one
hand, digging in the pockets with the other. Finding nothing, he turned it upside down and shook it. “You have something else. You’re hiding something from me.”
“No, the globes, that’s all. Please give them back. You don’t understand what you’re doing…”
His only answer was to grab her arm and drag her out into the bedroom. Without transition he held a small velvet box in his hand. For just a split second his eyes flickered from green to hazel; the shape of his face wavered. She blinked and his eyes were green again, his face familiar.
A dream, she reminded herself.
Over his shoulder she caught a glimpse of Poe, exploring, climbing with great determination up onto the high bed. Jared turned to see what she was looking at. “What—the hell—is that?”
“Penguin,” she gasped, surprisingly close to laughter. Her breath came more easily; she felt more real.
“I can see that. What is it doing
here
?”
“I believe it’s making a nest on your bed,” she said, reveling in the grace of speaking words of her own.
Jared’s brows drew together, his hands fisted. “Is it yours?”
“Maybe. Or maybe the other way around.”
Jared’s face flushed crimson; a vein pulsed in his forehead.
“Get rid of it.”
“I can’t.”
“Fine. I’ll get rid of it myself. Later. Right now I have something for you.” His voice was too soft, his eyes like green glass.
He opened the box.
Vivian backed away. The ring was wrong. In Wakeworld the ring he’d offered her was gold, the stone diamond. This was a silver ring, with a black stone such as she had never seen. Black wasn’t the right word; it was beyond black, beyond the absence of light. Vivian shook her head and put her hands behind her.
“Put it on,” he said, and there was a threat in his voice.
It’s only a dream,
she tried to tell herself, but that logic didn’t work. Not anymore. Jared was all about gold, about diamonds. He loved expensive things, expensive symbols even more. Pure gold, that’s what she would expect in his dream. A diamond the size of his fist, maybe.
A door. She needed to make a door, to get away before he forced that ring onto her finger. Remembering how she had done this as a child, she closed her eyes and thought about home. Her apartment, cozy and organized. The dream catcher still hanging over the window, her favorite chair. Unbidden, Zee’s hands and eyes came into her mind and she pictured him sitting in her chair, a mug of coffee in his hands.
When she opened her eyes the green door was there, right beside her. Her heart lifted as she reached for the knob. Jared twisted her arm behind her back and held her.
“Where does the door go, Vivian? The house of your lover?”
She braced her feet, tried to twist away. He had the ring in one hand, only had one free to hold her. If she could just get the door open, surely she could somehow get through it. But he got both arms around her and pulled her body hard against his. “Too good for my ring, is that it?”
“Stop it, you’re hurting me.”
He tangled a fist in her hair and wrenched her head back, forcing her face up to his. “Put the ring on.”
“I can’t—” She didn’t recognize her own voice in the croak that escaped between her lips.
He tightened his grip, the tension between hair and scalp an exquisite pain that made her gasp for breath.
“You are mine, do you understand? Mine. To do with as I please.”
“No—”
“No? I’ll show you.” He dragged her toward the bed by her hair. It was all she could do to remain on her feet; no way she could fight or get away. Poe met them halfway across the room, hissing and pecking at Jared’s shins. Jared kicked hard with his foot. A dull thunk, a black-and-white form tumbling across the room.
“You bastard!” Despite the pain, Vivian kicked hard, felt her toes connect with his shin.
A backhand blow to her cheek, a flash of stars. Her legs turned to rubber; her body became a distant thing, held upright only by the agony of his fist in her hair.
From a great distance, she watched as he dragged her body to the bed and threw it down. It sprawled loosely on its back, the red dress creeping up over vulnerable thighs. Watched as he unzipped his trousers.
Floating above the bed, she felt a dim sympathy for the body below. It must hurt, that violent pounding, so far from an act of love.
At first she floated light and easy, but she began to feel heavier, to drift lower and lower, closer to the animal coupling. She resisted the pull, but it was stronger than she was; the bodies grew closer, closer, until she could feel hot breath hissing across her cheek, hands pinning her to the bed,
the thrust, the pain
his bed
his dream
his woman
trapped
NO.
Through the sensory assault she tried again to summon the door. Green. Cool green, the color of spring, of tamaracks when their leaves first emerge. An ordinary knob, cool to the hand, open this time. A door not vertical but horizontal, open not closed. A door beneath her on the bed.
And then she was falling. Her eyes flew open. Watched Jared’s mouth gape in shock as her body slipped from his hands. She tried to call out to Poe but had no voice. She crashed, her teeth snapping together. Every bone in her body jarred, her skull bouncing once, twice, with an explosion of light behind her eyes before the darkness came.