Wildblood

Chapter 5

5

Miya

“I’ve got a bad feeling.” Miya fumbled with her phone, smacking the touch screen until the flashlight winked to life.

Ama swiped aside a low-hanging branch. “Too bad you’re ignoring it.”

It was well past sundown, and Kai was probably neck deep in bourbon and bar bets. Restless, Miya told Ama she’d decided to take on the Caelan Carver case and would spend her night digging around Boston Common where the teenager had appeared three years ago. Ama tried dissuading her, oscillating between amicable reasoning and maternal scolding, but it only cemented Miya’s prerogative. In a gesture of peevish resignation, Ama joined her on the misadventure, poised to mock her poor eyesight.

“You’d think a park would be better lit,” Miya grumbled. Boston Common was a spiderweb of walkways that cut across a hilly, tree-speckled field. The paths were lined with benches and lamplight, though half the bulbs were out, leaving the grass between the trees shrouded in darkness. The park was stunning during the day—vibrant gold and vermillion canopies brightening the space as leaves fluttered to the ground with the breeze. But at night, the clouded autumn sky muted those welcoming hues.

Ama flipped her dazzling white hair over her shoulder. “You humans are truly a marvel. So frail, and yet so destructive. You can level an entire city with the push of a button, but you can’t even see three feet in front of you.”

“To be clear, it’s fortunate humans don’t share your freakish senses,” said Miya. “It must be hard, perceiving so much of what others are oblivious to.”

“I enjoy being a wolf among sheep.” Ama snapped her fingers to get Miya’s attention, then grabbed her elbow and guided her away from a trunk disguised as a shadow.

Miya stumbled past a protruding root. “Sometimes I’m shocked you and Kai live in human bodies, given your contempt for them.”

“Kai didn’t have a choice for most of his life, and now he has you.” Ama glanced her way. Her honey-colored eyes reflected light even in the darkness—one of the many peculiarities Miya first noted about her and Kai. “I prefer this body. So much more fun than romping through the woods. Infinite possibilities to express myself.”

Ama—the white wolf with sunlit eyes—had acted as a distant protector since Miya was a child. She still remembered their first encounter: a dreary summer day at the farmer’s market, her parents preoccupied with fruit baskets while she propelled herself skyward in a rusty old swing. A wolf had poked its head out from the trees on the border between town and wilderness, seizing Miya amid her desperate flight. She spent years waiting for that wolf to return, to restore some semblance of magic in her life.

But it was Kai, not Ama, who breathed life back into Miya’s world. She mistook him for the wolf from her childhood, but while Ama’s fur was white as snow and soft as fine silk, Kai’s was obsidian black, wild and coarse like bristles. Even their human bodies boasted the same shades and features as their animal selves. Ama, a picture of refined wintry elegance, and Kai, the embodiment of ravening instinct, brazen and full of mettle. They were so alike and yet so different, repelling one another like magnets with the same polarity.

Miya’s phone buzzed then, and she swiped past the home screen.

About to break some teeth. Don’t hex me.

“Always so ceremonious,” Miya chuckled as she composed her reply.

Don’t get punched in the dick.

“What did he say?” asked Ama.

Miya shook her head and locked her screen. “Nothing special.”

“Does he know you’re out here?”

There she was—the devil’s advocate. Kai and Ama’s baseline had always been hostility, but they were eager allies in one regard: Miya’s wellbeing. Yet she hated being coddled. She’d spent her life feeling squashed by expectations of propriety and good decision-making. The freedom to live unfettered had been cudgeled out of her from an early age, and that was precisely why she’d found Kai so attractive; he was everything she’d been denied by her upbringing—a wayward firecracker ruled by raw intention, consequences be damned. Kai emboldened her, and because he liked emboldening her, he rarely stood in her way. Ama, however, was a creature of cold, unyielding logic. Costs and benefits; risks and rewards. She was driven by calculation—by the probability of a desirable outcome. Their approaches couldn’t have been more divergent, consensus as rare as a cosmic event.

“He doesn’t,” Miya replied quickly, shining her flashlight between two trees so she wouldn’t trip on a root.

When they stepped into the clearing, Miya was grateful for the level ground and towering lamp posts. Ama stopped next to her, ogling the side of her face with an arched brow. “You’re hiding it from him.”

“No, I just don’t want to worry him right before a fight.”

Ama hummed, unconvinced.

Irritation needled Miya’s chest. “Maybe I don’t want you two ganging up on me.”

The mirthful smile fell from Ama’s face. “Regardless, I’m glad you didn’t go alone.”

Miya routinely took risks Ama disapproved of, but the white wolf’s tolerance was so low that a turtle could trip the wire. Kai was brash by nature, so if he had a bad feeling, maybe this was reckless. Whatever the case, three was a crowd, and the last thing Miya wanted was to feel corralled by two stubborn, overprotective wolves.

A mass of black feathers swooped down from a branch, the tell-tale caw of a raven signaling Gavran’s arrival. Miya extended her arm, and he accepted the roost, his talons biting into her skin as he steadied himself.

“Did you give Bastien a goodbye peck for me?” Miya teased as she wiggled her fingers through his blue-black plumage.

Gavran angled his head back, his throat swelling as he released a happy gurgle, then hopped from Miya’s shoulder down to Ama’s.

Ama leaned in as he nuzzled her neck, and she cooed, “Are you behaving yourself with the clientele?”

They’d always been inseparable. Ama claimed that Gavran had raised her—a careful truth blurred by omission—but it was clear they’d spent a lifetime together. Gavran now split his time between the Dreamwalker and the white wolf, though Miya could tell Ama missed him when he was gone. Fortunately, she had Crowbar to keep her company when pride kept her from seeking out her feathered friend.

Gavran chortled and beat his wings, then scanned the field, his head canting this way and that.

“All right, what are we looking for?” asked Ama.

Miya peered through the empty park. “I’m not sure yet, but this is the spot Caelan was found.”

“It could be a dead end. Three years is a long time.”

Miya’s hand wandered to the pendant around her neck. “I’ve got no other leads. Besides, if there are strange disappearances—or appearances—whatever’s causing them will leave a trace.”

Silence and darkness cloaked the grounds like an unfamiliar vesture, the space made alien without the daytime chatter of congregating denizens. Parks, stripped of their social purpose, revealed a forgotten underside of a city with ancient bones. They were repositories of grim histories—executions, massacres, riots. The soil on which Boston Common stood was anything but pristine—something the trees knew well. Their roots burrowed deep into the earth, drinking the blood of the slain, soaking up the vestiges of their agony.

During the day, parks hosted the living as they searched for solace; at night, they were where phantoms came to mingle, to revel in clandestine mysteries.

Miya traipsed along the grass, guided only by a sense she could neither control nor fully tap into. Then again, it was never about control; it was about trust. Her power would serve her when she required it. The common was mired in a low, fey frequency that quavered beneath her feet and caressed her face like a hyaline mist. It enveloped her, tugging on those ethereal threads that tethered her to the unseen. Her hand floated up as though steered by spectral breath, and she curled her fingers around the labradorite pendant.

The dream stone always helped her find her way. Dropping into a crouch, Miya laid her palm flat on the grass. Her eyes drifted shut, and she listened until the stone hummed to life, and she felt a slow, steady thrum beneath the soil. In the dreamscape, where all that was solid melted into air, and nothing remained in the same place twice, she’d learned to follow the roots. They were like veins beneath the earth’s skin—a map of the very domain that gave them life. That matrix of roads led her where she needed to go. The trick was identifying the correct root—the correct path.

Hunting specters from the waking world wasn’t so different. Emotions and energies clung to the land, and the same roots that soaked up agony soaked up other things as well. Miya just had to pick up the trail.

“That way,” she said, pointing with her eyes still closed.

Gavran squawked and took off from Ama’s shoulder, gliding forward. He circled overhead, then dove toward a rogue tablet in the middle of the grass, fluttering above it before landing.

Ama sidled up to Miya and offered her a hand. “Looks like you found something.”

Miya accepted the gesture and hauled herself up. “Let’s see what it is.”

A rectangular slab of dappled stone lay wedged in the soil, dying grass caressing its hewn edges. A plaque was fixed into it, marking the place where the Great Elm of Boston Common once stood. Miya swept her flashlight over the darkened brass, reading the inscription aloud.

Site of the Great Elm

Here the sons of liberty assembled

Here Jesse Lee, Methodist Pioneer.

Preached in 1790

The landmark of the common. The elm blew down in 1876

—

Placed by the N. E. Methodist Historical Society

A felled tree, its lingering shadow suffused in castaway histories. Miya wondered if a piece of it still skulked underfoot, pulsing with untold stories, clipping at the seams of another realm.

One little tear in the threads, and the whole boundary could unravel.

“It’s always a damn tree.” Ama sighed loudly, and Gavran thrust his neck out and croaked at her as if offended.

In Miya’s hometown of Black Hollow, British Columbia, it’d been a willow known as the Emerald Shade and an ancient redwood that Gavran called the Red Knot. Then there was the Gray Gnarl—a dead elm lost in the swamps near Orme’s Rest, Louisiana, from where Crowbar and Bastien hailed. It seemed they had another elm on their hands, though it no longer stood, and Miya had no way of feeling its breath beneath her palm. It was little more than a memorial now—a shade left behind by a living edifice.

Miya wondered if this one still had form in the dreamscape. It was true that things moved, but the sense of place remained. The woods surrounding the Emerald Shade always looked and smelled the same; it was the where that changed. Orienting in the dreamscape using laws of physics was like trying to capture mist in a jar. Miya had the roots to guide her, their pulse amplified by the dream stone. It was a fragment of the dreamscape gifted to her by Gavran and cultivated by the Dreamwalker’s will. Now, it was a part of her.

Look with different eyes , both Kai and Gavran once told her.

“Surely, you knew this was here.” Miya frowned at the raven, who cocked his head in reply.

He beat his wings, protesting her accusation, then buried his beak into his thick plumage.

“The trace is too faint, even for him,” said Ama.

“I have a hard time believing that,” Miya grumbled. Gavran was a trickster, only ever offering partial truths. He liked watching mortals stumble to comprehension.

Ama planted her hands on her hips and squinted. “You’ve gotten better and haven’t noticed.”

If Miya had improved, she was unaware. Her journey from fledgling to fully realized Dreamwalker was tumultuous. Like the dreamscape that’d claimed her, her growth had been chaotic and replete with hurdles. She’d been unmoored, scrabbling for something sturdy to cling to in a torrential sea of unknowns. For the better part of five years, that something had been Kai. She eventually learned to withstand the current on her own, though he was there to anchor her when she needed him.

“That weird energy I felt is pooling here, under this plaque,” Miya told them. She ran her palm over the inscription, and something sparked against her skin—a wrinkle in the veil, a fissure in the stitching.

“Shit,” she whispered, feeling the crimp like a crack in glass. “The boundary is really weak here. It would take no effort to puncture it and waltz right through.”

Miya could access the other realm in two ways. Either she dreamwalked—her spirit temporarily leaving its container—or she ripped a hole through the barrier and physically let herself in. The latter was exhausting, her body screaming for rest before the journey back. This spot, however, was like wet paper. Tearing through would be easy.

Gavran hopped side to side and pecked at the dirt bordering the plaque.

Miya tilted her head toward him. “You sure you didn’t feel this?”

He peered up at her, silent, and she knew he wasn’t fibbing.

“I barely feel it,” Ama confirmed. “Now that you’ve pointed it out, I can, but I never would’ve detected it otherwise.”

“I guess that tracks. It took me a bit to find it, but now that I’m here…” Miya trailed off, her brow furrowing. “Do you think Caelan Carver might be like me?”

As far as they knew, Miya was the only one who could shred the border between worlds. The Dreamwalker was gestated in the womb of Black Hollow’s most intimate terrors, but folklore was vast and versatile; different cultures shared fears, conjured fiends of a similar ilk. What if Caelan represented the same to her own people, whoever they were?

“I need to get closer,” Miya declared.

“Dreamwalking?” the white wolf ventured.

Miya shook her head. “I’m going straight in.”

Ama’s eyes widened in a rare expression of surprise. “Is that necessary?”

Miya gestured toward the plaque. “There’s an open door right here. I don’t have to chip my way through the wall.”

“Do you simply eat a cupcake that’s been left on your doorstep?” Ama scoffed.

“Depends on if it’s sealed in a box or has a note or?—”

“Miya”—Ama pinched the bridge of her nose—“that’s not the point.” She tapped her boot against the ground and sighed heavily. “Dreamwalk first. Leave your body here and project your spirit through the fault line. There’s no need for you to go bouncing between realities. What if you get stuck or wind up somewhere else?”

“I’m not a fly trapped in a lampshade.”

“No, you’re a living nightmare to a town of benighted fools, but that doesn’t mean you can’t take precautions. Let me watch over you from this side.”

Miya’s rebuttal dissipated. She knew Ama was right. It was an unnecessary risk, and yet she still wanted to take it. Ama and Kai were always there to break her fall, robbing her of the opportunity to truly test herself. The wolves were a force to be reckoned with, but so was the Dreamwalker. Her methods were merely different.

Kai at least let her do what she wanted, and she sheltered him from his demons as often as he rescued her from her doubts. He was dauntless where she was incisive, and he trusted her to be as sharp as he was ferocious. They honed each other like blades, their conviction unwavering. Ama tempered that forging fire, barring Miya from potential harm.

And yet…she was right.

“Okay,” Miya conceded, then unzipped her mauve leather jacket and laid it over the grass. She was glad she’d layered up, her long cami and fleece hoodie keeping her warm against the autumn chill. Easing herself onto the thin cushion guarding her jeans from the frigid ground, she waited for Ama to join her—their ritual whenever she dreamwalked.

The white wolf plopped down behind her, then guided Miya’s head into her lap. Miya waved for Gavran, whose three-pronged spurs found their new perch on her arm. His head dipped, and he playfully plucked at a tuft of loose fleece.

“I’ll see you on the other side,” Miya told him, then turned her gaze skyward. She drank in the charcoal expanse, void of a single glimmer, then closed her eyes and replaced its darkness with her own.

“You know what to do,” Ama’s voice echoed all around her, and she tipped her chin in acknowledgment.

Miya’s palms flattened against the earth, and the dream stone warmed against her chest like a tiny hearth. The raven’s talons flexed against her forearm, and his low purr soothed her into a reverie. Soon, the world would rend open, and the umbral plane would swallow her up. She felt the pull, that limber tether that bound her to the dreamscape growing taught. It beckoned her spirit. All she had to do was answer.

Cradling the Dreamwalker, the white wolf incanted, “Descend, as only you can.”