Wildblood

Chapter 16

16

Miya twisted as gnarled tendrils slipped over her, groping for what she guarded. She was far from the material plane now, the dreamscape coaxing her to a different kind of wakefulness.

Follow the roots , Gavran’s voice reminded her, and she reached for one of the snaking things, grabbing hold of it as though clutching the reins on a wild beast.

It hauled her deeper into the darkness, a carriage bound for the bottom of an abyss. A cacophonous shriek warped the air around her—all bluster. She ignored it and clung to that writhing serpent.

Miya descended until she crashed into something hard and grainy. Stone? No, concrete. She blinked away tears, her vision narrowing on a large crack in the cold gray floor.

Miya groaned as Gavran fluttered down next to her with a playful caw. She pushed herself to her feet and shook the shock out of her limbs, then retrieved Caelan’s journal. She knew she was in a nightmare. The dreamscape absent of dreamers rarely had walls; enclosed spaces were the artifice of troubled minds. If she couldn’t see the sky and the hanging star cresting the horizon, then she must’ve stumbled into another’s dream…or in this case, their nightmare.

Stained cinder block walls half-bathed in murk surrounded her, and metal beams sprawled across a poorly lit ceiling. A gymnasium or a factory, perhaps? A sliver of light stole out from a fissure in the fa?ade, alerting Miya to a way forward.

She splayed her hand over the gravelly wall and pushed. The light expanded, and the concrete crumbled, revealing a gymnasium with basketball hoops on either side. The netting on the hoops was tattered and brown, the banners along the walls rotted with age. The words on them were illegible, the fabric singed. It was impossible to tell if the gym belonged to a school or something else; the logo was scrubbed from the floorboards, and the paint on the walls had flaked away.

The sound of a basketball hitting the floor reverberated through the empty space. Miya turned in the direction of the dribbling to find three young men frozen in the middle of a game. Arms outstretched, muscles taut, it was as though someone had hit pause on a recording.

Miya felt Gavran’s three-pronged grasp on her shoulder, his feathers ruffling in her periphery. She tucked Caelan’s journal under her arm and circled the three men, still unmoving, then swallowed a gasp as she jerked back.

They had no faces.

The slopes where their eyes, noses, and mouths should’ve been were burnished into blank slates. Indiscernible. Unidentifiable. It was as though the nightmare was removing any traces that could lead back to the dreamer.

Gavran’s head tilted, and he thrust his neck out. No eyes to peck , he said wryly, his mischievous voice echoing in Miya’s mind. He dove from her shoulder, wings sprawling into a robe made of plumage, and his beak retracted to form the angles of a human face. A boy landed on his two bare feet, his inky black eyes and hair stark against waxen flesh. Gavran skirted around the figures, his torso bending sideways as he evaluated them.

“What are they?” asked Miya.

“Memories,” Gavran replied. “Muddy like the bottom of a puddle. Faint like a dying breath.”

“Maybe she’s dreaming about her high school,” suggested Miya.

The raven wearing a boy shrugged. “Trifles.” His hand shot out from under his feathered poncho, and a bony finger prodded the basketball from the young man’s grip.

It hit the floor and rolled toward the bleachers. They were carved out from the rest of the gym by a dark shadow, cast from an unknown source. It was unnatural, defiant of the light. Swallowed away like that, the bleachers seemed more a cage than a boon for eager spectators. Miya trailed the trundling ball with her gaze as it stopped at someone’s feet.

A scrawny teen sat on the first-row bench. Short, copper hair cropped midway past their ears grazed heavily freckled cheekbones. Their head hung low, leaving their face obscured. Slouched shoulders fell forward, their elbows resting on grimy flannel pants with holes torn at the knees. They were alone.

“This one’s different,” Miya said to Gavran, who nodded in agreement.

“Not a wraith like the others. This one has bones.”

Miya gingerly approached the bleachers, but the teen suddenly stood. Eyes still fixed on the floor, they sped toward the gymnasium doors. Miya cursed under her breath and followed, surprised by how nimble they were.

“Wait!” Miya called after them as they reached for the handle.

The teen half-turned, features bathed in an impending fog. Their mouth opened, but before they could speak, the door whirred ajar. Charcoal brume wafted from the gaping maw. It coiled around the teenager’s arm and yanked them into the darkness, their scream snuffed out by the awaiting black.

“Shit!” Miya sprinted after them. The wall warped like a wet painting, the gymnasium melting into a psychedelic mural of brown brick and gray cinder blocks. A navy plaque with crumbling white letters flashed in Miya’s periphery before she slammed through the double doors, leaving Gavran behind.

Morton , it read.

She skidded to a halt when the gymnasium disappeared, replaced by a massive factory floor with conveyer belts snaking throughout. Drifting mist devoured Miya’s lower half. Rusted metal screeched as the belts jolted to life, and a panoply of shapes emerged from the haze, carried by the assembly line.

Limbs. Arms and legs and torsos and heads. Smooth plastic mimicking human flesh. They bent at impossible angles, mocking the skeletons they lacked. Funneling through monstrous machinery, they vanished only to re-emerge as something resembling a whole. They still lacked features, each of them a carbon copy of the rest.

Miya rotated in place, her breath catching when one of the lifeless figures began to convulse. An elbow snapped, a knee buckled. The neck twisted too far, and something white webbed over the mouth. A muffled shriek caught on the milky film, and the doll tumbled from the line. It crashed to the concrete, and whatever was inside thrashed to break free.

The moment Miya took a step toward the flailing figure, the conveyer belt ground to a halt, and the army of replicas jerked to face their wayward sibling. Fear crawled up Miya’s spine, and she snatched at the dream stone hanging from her neck.

“Gavran!” she called, the labradorite humming with a soft lavender glow.

A raven sliced through the fog like an obsidian knife. Wings beating, his talons latched on to the keening doll’s jaw. He plunged his beak toward the viscous gag over the would-be mouth and tore it apart like stubborn cobwebs. The scream rang clearer now—sharp and pained. Gavran chipped away at the plastic husk until he met flesh, excavating the prisoner beneath fleck by fleck. Miya glimpsed ruddy, freckled skin, blood pumping eagerly through swollen capillaries. The doll’s hostage sat up and ripped at its captor carapace. The bird retreated, evading the frantic swipes of the mannequin come to life.

As the body shambled to its feet, it raised its head and stared at Miya. A jagged line carved the face in two. One storm-colored eye rimmed with tears darted wildly on the human side of the face. Half a mouth was exposed, pink flesh trapped against the confines of the rigid shell. Strands of coppery hair tickled a freckled cheek, and Miya knew she’d found the teen from the bleachers.

Miya raised her hands in a calming gesture, squeezing the journal against her side. “It’s okay, I’m here to help ? —”

A wrinkle formed on the bridge of the teen’s nose, and a throat-rending shriek erupted from their barely open mouth. They lunged at Miya, feral in their fear.

The Dreamwalker grabbed the teen’s wrists. The sudden collision threw her off balance, and the journal tumbled away. Violet smoke cascaded over her in a protective shield, then morphed into a mantle of iridescent feathers. The tip of her bone mask curved over her chin, the teen’s elongated nails striking ivory. Wisps of shadow peeled from her shroud and twined around the assailant to cast them aside.

With a shallow gasp, Miya righted herself before she hit the ground. The factory with its hellish assembly line was gone. Silence—then, the hollow echo of the basketball hitting the gym floor. Cold sweat beaded Miya’s temple as her vision closed in on the figure sitting in the stands. Elbows pressed to ripped flannel over bruised knees, head hung like a broken marionette’s.

Beside Miya, Gavran gave himself a bewildered once over. He was wearing the boy again. Eyes like pools of ink slid to Miya. “The music here is maddening.”

“A broken record,” Miya murmured, catching on to his meaning.

“We need to leave,” he said with uncharacteristic urgency. “Or we’ll become one with the scratches, spinning on and on.”

They were in too deep. Caelan’s nightmare was a depthless vortex, and it would swallow them if they couldn’t find a way to swim—or fly. Miya scrabbled for her pendant, but where she expected the warm, fang-shaped stone with its smooth angles and familiar cracks, she felt only cold, rough edges. Lumps riddled with tiny craters. Miya’s gaze darted to her breastbone where she found a knob of coal hanging from rusted wire. It crumbled between her fingers, a soot-like residue staining her skin.

“What the hell?” She staggered back, her breaths ragged as her stomach lurched with panic.

Miya wasn’t just in the nightmare anymore; the nightmare was in her, warping her perception.

“Too far, too far,” Gavran chanted as the gymnasium began to rumble.

The figure on the bleachers remained unmoving, head bowed, limbs rigid. Miya cast them a cursory glance. Her desire to communicate with the lonesome teen had shackled her to the nightmare. She had to let it go; this was a battle she couldn’t win. But how?

Something tender brushed against her thigh, soft pressure kneading into her sore muscles. Miya remembered the domovoy standing guard, keeping their home safe. The King of Spades was their fortress, and the domovoy was its sentinel just as Gavran was the Dreamwalker’s.

Who would provide offerings and companionship if not Miya—the one person who could see and hear him? He was counting on her, and he’d already lost his family once. She had to find a route. There were people who depended on her—not just the domovoy, but Crowbar, Ama, and Kai.

Kai. So fiercely independent, and yet they were inseparable, two pieces of a plaited whole. They were bound, as the sky and sea are bound by the horizon.

Miya squeezed the pendant in her palm. It was not a lump of coal, no matter what her senses told her. She focused on where the edges should’ve been, those sharp cuts forming the lustrous fang. She visualized the brilliant sheen—meadow green, sunset gold, and deep purple melding together as black lightning streaked throughout the labradorite.

“Yes,” Gavran encouraged her, his small hand on her back. “Make the world as you envision it.”

“This isn’t my world,” Miya reminded him, the words strained as she fought to preserve the image of the dream stone in her mind’s eye.

Talons curled against her spine. “Then take it.”

Miya’s eyes snapped open, realization surging through her. The realm of dreams was her playground; she could do with it as she saw fit. Violet and midnight shadow spiraled up her limbs, then coalesced at her heart where the dream stone rested. The feathery tendrils swallowed the labradorite, caressing it back to life. Satiated with her magic, the dream stone sang against Miya’s palm, and she dropped into a crouch. The wooden floorboards decomposed where she touched them—mere moments rendered into eons—and her fingers sank into the earth, seeking the roots that would lead her home.

They rose like a leviathan from the depths of the ocean, unstoppable as they plowed through soil and concrete alike. Now close to the surface, they mapped a path at the Dreamwalker’s command. Lavender light spilled from the pulsing dream stone and seeped into those eternal roots like molten liquid, illuminating the way. They thrummed with life, and Miya wasted no time grabbing hold of that vitality as it pulled her from the quicksand of Caelan’s nightmare.

The gymnasium doors split open as the roots roiled beneath the floor, rattling Caelan’s conjured world into begrudging submission. Thrusting an arm out to her side, Miya called for Gavran, who’d morphed into his smaller form and dove after his Dreamwalker. He clutched her arm, wings flapping furiously as he fought against the surge. Together, they rode the ancient arteries from beneath the earth’s flesh. Miya risked one final gander toward the teen on the bleachers. As their waifish figure shrank into the periphery, she could’ve sworn she saw them look up, that one storm-colored eye spearing her.

Miya jerked away and ducked as she and Gavran were foisted through the entryway, the momentum sending them sprawling through the air. Gray cinder blocks flashed with white, dissolving into a smooth haint blue ceiling—the color of shallow water. Miya launched upright, rasping for breath. The dreamscape was a sea with no bottom, and no matter how hard she tried staying close to the shore, she wound up tangled in the reeds with nothing but murk below her.

“Shit.” She bent over and raked her fingers through her hair, choking back a sob. The nightmares took a toll. It didn’t matter that they weren’t hers, that the darkness festered in another’s heart. Those fetid shadows still reached for her, inviting her into their domain. First Kai, now Caelan. It was too much too quickly—a burden too heavy for the barrow. The dreamers never knew the weight of what they carried.

A throaty croak to her left brought Miya back. Gavran plucked at her pantleg, his feathers ruffled as he too recovered from the unpleasant excursion. Shaky fingers found his plumage, and she felt him tremble beneath her touch.

To her right, the domovoy sat on his haunches, his little paws resting against her thigh as he stared up at her. She’d felt his touch in the dreamscape.

“Thanks, little guy.” She smiled and stretched her legs. He’d helped them escape. “I’ll get Bastien to fry you a whole basket of fritters.”

His ears twitched, and he perked up, his tongue darting out at the prospect of greasy dough. The domovoy backed up as Miya groped for the journal and shambled to her feet, steadying herself against the bar. She was about to call for her friends when the door at the top of the stairs swung open, the knob cracking against the adjacent wall. Ama came thumping down, her face stricken with worry. Like Kai, she awoke without an ounce of bleariness, her senses on high alert.

“What happened?” She strode up to Miya and grabbed her by the shoulders, inspecting her as though she were a prized vase that’d tumbled off its perch.

Miya lazily swatted her away. “I’m fine. I was just doing some investigating.”

“In the dreamscape?” Ama asked in dismay.

Crowbar appeared next, eyes half-closed as she clung to the banister for dear life. “What’s going on?”

“I didn’t mean to freak you out.” Miya looked between them, and it was clear that only the white wolf was fuming. “I didn’t feel right sitting around doing nothing, so I dove in.”

“You should’ve waited for me,” Ama chastised.

“I wasn’t alone.” The words came out clipped. “Gavran was with me, and the domovoy?—”

“This wasn’t just a stroll through some scenic knolls,” Ama cut her off, her tone waspish. “You awoke in serious distress—enough to rouse me on another floor! You should’ve anticipated that Caelan’s mind would be dangerous. You should’ve waited for me to anchor you. What if you’d gotten lost or stuck?”

“I have Gavran and the dream stone,” Miya asserted without qualm.

Ama turned her balefire stare on the raven, who hid his beak under his wing. “Gavran and the dream stone can guide you, but they can’t pull you out from this side. That’s my job—my only job. I’m supposed to protect you.”

“And is that self-appointed or divinely ordained?” Miya challenged, wielding the question like a blade.

Hurt flashed across the white wolf’s face, but she wrangled it back down, schooling her features. Ama was practiced in appearances. She was a trickster, never showing her hand. Still, she wasn’t unfeeling, and wrath was a difficult beast to tame.

“I’ve seen what the dreamscape does to you when you’re not careful—when you let yourself stray. Kai may be reckless with his body, but you’re reckless with your mind, and there’s nothing he can do to shield you from the damage. I, however, can.” She shifted her stance, her voice brimming with anguish that bloomed from her bones. “Every lashing you take in the dreamscape is a hairline fracture on your psyche. You may not notice the cost now, but one day, you’ll splinter like brittle clay.”

Sticky heat licked the back of Miya’s neck. She did notice the cost, but that was no justification. Harm was inevitable, and she refused to cede her autonomy to a mirage of what-ifs.

“Hey”—Crowbar touched her girlfriend’s elbow—“let’s just chill out, okay?”

Ama didn’t budge, her hair turning static as she glowered at Miya.

“Come on,” Crowbar coaxed. “Miya’s a big girl. She clearly got out in one piece.”

The standoff yawned out until the tension snapped like a tendon, and Ama sighed heavily. “By the skin of her teeth.” She circled the bar as Crowbar cast Miya a disapproving glance.

Miya slapped the journal down, though she made no motion to protest. What would it take for Ama to stop seeing her as a child in need of monitoring? She treated freedom of choice the way a parent treated a toddler at a ballot box.

“Want to share what you found in the infernal quagmire of misfit souls?” Crowbar prodded, gesturing for Miya to join her and Ama at the bar.

Gavran squawked in dissent at the descriptor of his homeland, but Crowbar only shot him a slit-eyed glare. “What? You’re telling me you’re not a misfit soul?”

He puffed up in irritation, then shook out his plumage before fluttering to his favorite beer tap.

Miya slid onto a stool and thumped her forehead to the counter. “It was awful.”

When Ama finished rolling her eyes in a wordless I told you so , Miya recounted the nightmare—the teen on the bleachers, the ghoulish mannequins, the gym populated by wraiths. Her audience listened as though she were telling a gothic tale, tensing the further Miya drew them into the hellish vision.

“I think I know where that is,” Crowbar said after Miya described the facility and the surrounding area. “You said it was a gym, right? Like, a basketball court?”

Miya nodded. “Yeah, like at a high school.”

“It’s a community center—or was, anyway,” Crowbar explained. “You saw a plaque with Morton on it, right? That’s a street sign. It’s in an industrial part of town. The community center there shuttered years ago, but it never got torn down. Neighborhood kids sometimes hang out there—drinking, playing ball, making out. You know how it goes.”

“How do you know all this?” Ama asked, looking impressed at her girlfriend’s sleuthing.

Crowbar shrugged. “Drunk patron went off about his kid’s favorite haunt—kept mentioning a condemned community center on Morton Street. Apparently, he had to rush his kid to the hospital for a Tetanus shot a few months ago after they got high on weed and cut themselves on something sharp and rusty.”

“We should check it out,” said Miya. “Maybe Caelan ran off with someone. A peer group her parents didn’t know about?”

“You think she’s slumming around in a defunct gymnasium?” Ama asked with a quirked brow.

“It’s more palatable than the alternatives.” Based on Caelan’s nightmare, Miya would’ve assumed far worse, but a runaway teen falling in with the wrong crowd was more likely than a supernatural kidnapping. Then again, it didn’t have to be one or the other. Caelan could’ve run away precisely because she knew something was coming for her, and she didn’t want her family around when it happened.

“I suppose that’s true.” Ama twirled a strand of ivory hair around her forefinger. “You’re right. We should investigate the old community center. The girl might need help.” Her eyes glided to Miya. “Are you well enough to go now?”

Relieved that Ama was cooperating, Miya fished her phone from her pocket to text Kai. “I think I’ll be sick if I don’t.

I’ve got a lead on Caelan Carver. I’m checking it out ASAP. Might be home super late.

Miya tapped her thumb on the edge of the screen after hitting send. She hoped he wasn’t tied up walloping some poor bastard into the floor.

Just as her screen went black, it lit back up and buzzed in her hand.

All good. I’m working tonight.

Working meant he’d be out until three o’clock in the morning, and he must’ve been occupied to be so curt. Regardless, Miya didn’t have to worry about him getting bored and cleaning out the pantry. Tucking her phone away, she stood from the stool and met Ama’s sunlit gaze, the kerfuffle from earlier forgotten. “Ready to go?”

After accepting a quick peck from Crowbar, Ama rose and stretched her limbs, her lips curving into a smile. “I’ll get dressed. Pity, though, there’ll be no one to compliment my shoes.”

Miya chuckled as she thumbed the dream stone around her neck. Gavran hopped down from the beer tap, but Miya stayed him with a look he’d come to know better than the city’s canopies. Stay here , it said.

As Ama joined her, she wove her arm with the white wolf’s and grinned. “Don’t worry. There’s always someone watching. Even if it’s only a ghost.”