Coyote Dreams

CHAPTER 32

Back in January it’d seemed like every time I went to sleep, that little death drew me into the realm of Other. Letting it find me now, deliberately, seemed awkward after slipping in and out of the astral realms so much. The world of dreams, though, was not quite the same one I skimmed through when I left my body, and very much not the crisp, clear-aired Upper World or the red-skied Lower World I’d made my way to a few times. They all shared a commonality, but in the same way France and Germany shared a border: it could be crossed, but I didn’t want to expect that the same rules would apply on both sides of the border. And I’d spent very little time in dreamworld, using it mostly as a transitory point. Now that I wanted to stay, I found myself with almost no idea how to travel or bring forth the things that I sought. Trusting my subconscious, which was usually how dreams were traversed, seemed both time-consuming and potentially dangerous.

I held on to all of those thoughts for what felt like whole minutes, maybe even longer. It was far more likely they’d formed and dissolved between the third and fourth drumbeats, in that pseudo-waking moment between dreams and the living world. Some brief, eternal time later the darkness of sleep began to take shape. A blaring voice, only half intelligible, echoed against forming hallways, the overhead lights both flickering and too bright. People rushed by me, knocking into me without setting themselves or me off balance, as if I wasn’t there. Gurneys and wheelchairs were pushed against the walls, which faded out suddenly, leaving me standing amid rows and endless rows of hospital beds.

The people in the beds thrashed in their sleep, all of them opening their mouths to let out soundless screams. As if the silence carried their life, like a cat stealing a baby’s breath, they weakened as they cried out.

Harried, faceless medical workers kept crashing by me until I realized I was shouting, too, my hands trembling as I stretched them out toward the agitated sleepers. My protests went unheard, caught in my mind: I can help! Just let me help! No one saw me, no one heard me, no one believed me. Nor should they have: for all my wordless calls, I couldn’t help, not from amid this chaos. The noiseless shrieks from the sleepers pounded at the small bones of my ears, making me nervous and twitchy, like I waited for attack.

Bradley Holliday appeared in the middle of the hall in front of me, holding a patient chart on a clipboard and a distasteful expression on his mouth. “You don’t belong here. Leave now.” He looked and spoke directly to me, so unexpectedly I nearly glanced around to see who was behind me. “I’m talking to you,” he snapped. “Joanne Walker, police officer. This is a hospital. You don’t belong here.”

It was like his words were an eraser, sweeping at me with wide strokes that wiped me away. I leaned forward against the urge to disappear, shaking my head. “But I can help.”

“How?” he demanded, encompassing a thousand hospital beds in one wave of his clipboard. “What do you think you can do that all these doctors can’t?”

Uncertainty washed through me, since I hadn’t been that much use so far. “I—”

“You see?” He put on a very good sneer, the sort my younger self would have tried to emulate, and flapped a hand at me. “You don’t belong. Leave now.”

“But I’ve done okay,” I whispered. “I got Mel to not drain herself fighting this thing. Begochidi. I kept Gary awake. I got Begochidi off Mark’s back.” Even as I made the argument it felt hollow to me. Too many people had fallen asleep, their strength drained to bring a god back to waking. I hadn’t done enough to keep Morrison awake.

The flickering white light closed down to a pinpoint and left me in darkness for just long enough to realize it was happening, then came up again inside a hospital room whose four walls were as solid as reality. Morrison lay resting on the bed there, vague figures holding shape in the background. Billy and Melinda, sharing a room with the captain. But they weren’t what had called me to this space of the dreamworld.

A shield, glittering blue and silver, spun over Morrison’s skin. When I reached out to touch his shoulder, that shield danced up my fingers, becoming one again with its originator. “I can’t fight, boss,” I heard myself say. “Not with you in here like this. I’ve got you all mixed up with me. Even Begochidi’s nice side went after you when I opened up.” I sat down on the edge of his bed, folding his hand in both of mine. What the hell. It was a dream, right? With him so still and asleep, I didn’t expect his fingers to be warm, but mine felt icy, wrapped around his. “I wish you’d kept the topaz. I wish you hadn’t given it to Barbara.” That seemed the greater insult, all things considered. Not just because I defined her as some kind of rival in my little world, but because I was half afraid gifting her with it would ruin any protection all of it offered. It didn’t seem to work that way, but the fear was there regardless.

The fact that boys weren’t supposed to go around giving girls gifts other girls had given them was, if not beside the point, at least a heartache I didn’t want to dwell on. Morrison hadn’t considered the topaz a gift, anyway. More like a burden.

Darkness fluttered through the room, a whisper of silence like feathers on the air. I closed my eyes, lowering my head toward my hands tangled with Morrison’s. Guess I shouldn’t have said Begochidi’s name out loud, though now that I thought about it, that was pretty obvious. Nothing like sending up a beacon to the bad guys saying here I am, come and get me.

I could feel, though, the protective amulets I carried. I could feel the connection of three points to protect my body and spirit, and the fourth, the weapon at my hip. I didn’t need to look to see it there, though I hadn’t noticed its weight here in the Land of Nod. I was armored, ready for battle. My weakness lay in Morrison, sleeping beneath the shield of my making.

The funny thing was, I thought maybe my strength lay there, too. “C’mon, Cap. You’ve got to wake up. I need you to be safe so I can do what it takes to stop this sickness.” I poured a little more into the shielding, looking for the weak point that allowed Begochidi to keep my boss asleep, trying not to invade his psyche while I did it. Power sparked against my skin, running under it like silver-shot blood, until I found the one narrow fissure I hadn’t closed off.

The Dead Zone lay on one side of that fissure, black starry eternity less a threat than a fact. I could clip the thread Begochidi held into Morrison’s heart, but it would change sleep into death.

On the other side lay me. My power. My magic and my healing skill. Life, which struck me as not a little ironic. And suddenly it was very clear what I needed to do, and I felt foolish for not having seen it before.

All I needed to do, as it were, was change drivers. It was one of those film stunts nobody ever needs to do in real life, clambering awkwardly from the passenger seat into the driver’s seat without ever letting the vehicle lose power. Usually it meant dodging bullets and firing guns at the same time, and if you were lucky, you got to jump a sixty-foot gap in the bridge ten seconds after you made the switch.

That, right down to the bridge jump, struck me as an alarmingly good analogy for the situation. I gave myself a heartbeat to wonder if Petite could make that kind of jump, then put my faith in her solid steel soul and let my dreaming consciousness slide under Morrison’s skin.

I had never tried to be aware of a body without being aware of the person residing within it before. Snooping was bad enough. Snooping on Morrison was beyond the pale. I thought maybe I could slither along the surface and cut into that drainage point without going deeper.

I should have known better. It was his life force—his soul—that was at risk here, and that sort of brought me to his garden whether I wanted it to or not. It wasn’t like trying to work with Billy, who had shields as solid as the day was long. The only reason Morrison wasn’t already hung out to dry was my shielding, and I could get through my own creation easily enough.

His inner world was nothing like I would have imagined. I’d have guessed his garden might be like mine, clean lines and short-cropped grass, with everything in its place. Hedges trimmed, pathways paved, all ordered and restrained.

The place I stepped into was breathtakingly tumultuous. I stood on a craggy ledge above evergreen wilderness, wind strong enough to push me off balance. The sky above whipped with clouds that did little to dim the brightness of the day, a hard white sun blazing heat down on me. The horizons were faint with blue mountains, snowcapped peaks catching the sun and setting it free again. The air buffeting me scented of the outdoors, earth and rain and green things.

A whitewater river crashed far below me, enough that its rush only came up on blasts of wind instead of being a constant. It bent into the woods, glimpses of it visible in low points where valleys spread with low-brush meadows instead of trees. Irritable squirrels chittered at me, a bird of prey circling overhead as I gaped. It wasn’t the lush jungle that Gary carried in him and it was further from my own small, ordered garden than I could have dreamed. It was a place of confidence and raw beauty and stark challenges.

And there was a darkness in it, behind me where bare, broken stone became pristine forest again. The sleeping god drew strength through that point of darkness, and that was where I had to go and cut him off. I took a deep breath of the clean air, feeling regret prick at my eyes, and turned away from the vista to face the woods.

Morrison was waiting there, behind me. He leaned against a spruce tree, its rough grey bark between his shoulderblades, with one foot kicked out and crossed over the other, hands in his pockets. Even in his own mind, he wore a button-down shirt, solid slate blue and soft-looking, like brushed flannel. He wore jeans, not slacks, and boots sturdy enough for hiking or working. I looked at my feet, wondering which of us would have the height advantage. He would: I wore tennies.

I looked up again to catch an indecipherable half smile on his mouth. His hair was as silvered in his self-perception as it was in reality. Either there was no vanity about graying, or he knew the look was attractive on him. He didn’t say anything, so I said the first thing that came to mind: “What’s the J stand for?”

Morrison actually laughed, glancing away as he let go a burst of chuckle, then pushed off the tree and walked up to me. He had the height advantage by at least an inch. I restrained the impulse to stand on my toes, or change my shoes. “James,” he said, completely to my surprise. I didn’t think he’d tell me.

“J—Jay—mmm—your parents named you Jim Morrison?”

Real amusement curled my boss’s mouth. He shrugged, easy casual movement I couldn’t remember seeing him use before, and said, “There’s a reason I go by Michael. Nobody in their right minds in 1968 would call a boy with the last name of Morrison ’Jim.’ I was named for my grandfather. So was Holliday,” he added, and it took me a moment to parse that he meant Billy’d been named after his own grandfather, not Morrison’s.

I said, “Oh,” reflexively, because that explained his unfortunate name. I’d never known.

“How’d you know about the J?” Morrison was alarmingly relaxed. Never, in four years of acquaintance, had he been so pleasant with me. Then again, I was quite literally and completely on his territory.

“I—you went to sleep.” My hand fluttered up to my forehead as I squinched my eyes apologetically. “I had to look at your driver’s license to fill out your insurance paperwork at the hospital. Sorry.” I meant it. Morrison pushed his lips out, then shrugged one shoulder again, just as easily as before. Apparently I was forgiven. If I’d known it was that easy, I’d have…I didn’t know what. Snuck inside his head earlier didn’t seem likely.

“I’m sleeping,” Morrison said, as if he’d just caught up with that. I pressed my lips together and nodded. His eyebrows rose fractionally. “So what is this? A dream?”

“Are you in the habit of dreaming about me?” My mouth bypassed my brain once more. I considered giving myself an emergency tonguectomy. Morrison’s eyebrows went back down, eyes turning stormy blue, and he didn’t answer, which was probably all to the good. “You’re not dreaming.” I cast my gaze at his workboot-clad feet and muttered the words at them. “I had to shield you, and now the only way I can get you loose of the shield is to take the thing that’s keeping you asleep and hook it up to me instead of you. And I have to do that from inside. I’m sorry. I’ve been trying not to snoop.”

“Hook it up to you,” Morrison repeated. That was the part I hadn’t wanted him to catch. I twisted my lip in discomfort and nodded. He said, “Absolutely not.”

“Morrison—”

“Walker!” Ah. That was the boss I knew. “This isn’t a negotiation.”

“No, sir,” I said with a sigh, “it isn’t. If I don’t do this, when I go to fight this thing it’s going to follow this link right into you and suck you dry. I would rather die. But if you’d like to not be pigheaded about this, for once I don’t actually think I’m going to die, so it’d be nice to just get this done and then I’ll be out of your head. I promise.”

“Why me?” And there was another part I’d hoped he wouldn’t pick up on. “Why not Holliday?”

“Because Billy can shield himself, and he wasn’t the one dating half the monster.”

I saw all the obvious questions and all their answers dart through Morrison’s eyes. What he said, after a measured few seconds, was, “Who’s dating the other half?”

Laughter caught me off guard and I said, “God, I love—” before my tongue fell down my throat and tried to strangle me. I choked, coughed and wheezed “—the way your mind works. Sir,” as I wiped tears from my eyes. “I am. Of course I am. Because what fun would it be if I was just having a normal social life.”

“What was that at the restaurant, Walker?” That was as abrupt a transition as I tended to make. My hands went cold and I skittered a glance toward Morrison. The wind around us still blew wildly, and the light had grown gradually dimmer.

I closed my eyes against the first spatters of raindrops. “Does it really matter, sir?”

“It might,” he said in such a peculiar voice I opened my eyes again. But he’d let it go, or moved on, stepping away from me to look out over the evergreen valley. I half turned, watching him. Lightning split the sky in the distance, and moments later a puff of smoke rose up from the trees. “Barb woke up when you called,” he said eventually. “She said I should be flattered that my officers worried about me that much. She said—” and now he looked back at me, though I wished he wouldn’t “—she said she’d have thought you were jealous, if you weren’t dating her brother. I told her she was being ridiculous.”

My chin came up a little, like I’d taken a hit. That, then, was what I should have said when he’d accused me of the same thing. Pounding on Petite’s horn and confessing to the green-eyed monster hadn’t been the right move. As if that was a surprise. For some reason I said, “Why’d you tell her that?”

“Because it’s what anyone would expect me to say.”

We weren’t high enough in the mountains for the air to suddenly be so thin. I clenched my fists and tried to breathe, not knowing what to say, or how to say it. After a little while Morrison looked out at the valley again. The skies went darker, and rain began to come down harder. “The next thing I remember is this conversation.”

“You’re—” Damnit. I could feel it, a thread that didn’t lie flat in the weaving of his story. It’d bumped up and tangled when I’d found myself unable to speak. I curled my hands into fists and stared at the granite beneath my feet, frustration washing off me in waves. I felt them, and if I’d wanted to slide the second sight on, I had no doubt I’d see them, too, bright silver-blue splashes of power coming off me like a beacon in the dark. “What do I say, Morrison? How am I supposed to get out of this conversation alive? You’re my boss. What do you want me to tell you?”

“The truth,” Morrison said. “I wonder if you’ve got so much as a passing acquaintance with the truth, Siobhán.”

My heart twisted hard, drawing a rough small sound from my throat. My knees seemed to have stopped working, because I was abruptly on them, kneeling on hard rock and reaching for stone to grind my hands against. I still couldn’t breathe easily, or maybe it’d gotten worse. “Not fair, Morrison. Not fair at all.”

He looked down at me. “Isn’t it?”

I could feel more than the wondering, in the air of the wild valley. For a moment, as he asked that, something thin and hard pulled taut, a fishline that made a vulnerable space inside him. A space that the goddamned topaz was supposed to protect. Only he’d given it away, and I only saw one way to seal it up again.

“What kind of truth do you want?” I said, more to the view than to Morrison. “My name is Siobhán Grania MacNamarra Walkingstick. I—” I swallowed the next words, then clenched my stomach muscles, forcing myself to speak. “I got pregnant when I was fifteen—” I cast a quick look at my boss, almost an apology. “Out of stupidity, not violence.” That much, at least, I could give him, for the concern he’d shown more than once in the last couple of days. Every breath was an agonizing challenge to my too-tight throat.

“I had twins, a boy and a girl. Ayita, the girl, died right away. Aidan’s growing up somewhere in Cherokee County. I don’t date because I’m scared of repeating my mistakes.” New thunder rumbled, this time the sound of blood in my ears, and I raised my voice over it. “Which probably leads directly to—” I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t say falling for or loving, and I didn’t want to use a phrase as stupid as crushing on or its ilk. The weaker word I defaulted to was hard enough: “Caring. For someone totally unobtainable.” It took a long time to make myself clarify that further, to push the words out: “For you.”

“I’m dating Mark because he was the nearest cliff for me to jump off, after she turned up looking all cute and perky and…cute.” There was another cliff right in front of me that I could jump off. The idea held appeal. “It is ridiculous, and I’m sorry, and I’m also not particularly proud of my behavior. So if that’s enough truth, if it’d be all right, I’d like to just go get this monster off your back now so you can wake up and I can do my job.”

“I think you already have.” Morrison’s voice was light and hollow, unlike I’d ever heard it before. I looked up, then looked back toward the woods.

Black threads, flowing and alive with butterfly darkness, swam from me into the woods, and far beyond that. They danced beyond Morrison’s personal area and back into the battleground of dreams that I intended to fight in. I stared at the link without comprehension, unsure when I’d slipped myself between Morrison and Begochidi.

Oh, said the sarcastic voice, probably when you played ball and admitted, with your usual lack of grace, the truth. I didn’t know who was more surprised by my answers, Morrison or the sleeping god, but either way, I’d made somebody do a double take, and when the power reattached, it did so to the magical powerhouse instead of the police captain. I said, “Good,” in a harsh small voice, and flapped a hand at Morrison. “Go. Wake up. Get out of here, boss. You wake up and my dream of you will end and then I can go fight this thing.” There was no real reason it should work that way, except I wasn’t traversing the dreamworld as an ordinary sleeper. I could move in and out of my shamanic trances here, and generally when I wanted to wake up from one of those, I did. The rule should hold.

Except it didn’t. Morrison took a breath as if he were waking up, but it caught and held like the blankets were too heavy in the morning. Perplexity danced across his expression and I got the idea that Morrison never had mornings when the blankets weighed too much. “I can’t,” he said in some astonishment. “I never have trouble waking up.”

“You probably never sleep hard enough to,” I muttered. “Come on, Morrison. Wakey wakey.”

“I’m trying,” he said irritably. “I feel like something’s keeping my eyes closed.”

“Begochidi. Damnit!” The first word was under my breath, the second a shout at the skies. “He’s not yours, you redheaded bitch! You want a taste of something that’ll get you through the day, try me!” Power flared with my outburst, silver burning away the black threads that tied me to the dreamworld. Heat sizzled with a nasty dark smell, and Morrison himself flinched. I couldn’t fight from here, inside his garden. It would destroy his mind or his soul or something equally important. I swore again, taking two long strides over to my boss. “This always works in fairy tales.”

I slid my fingers into Morrison’s hair and brought his mouth down to mine for a kiss.