Nightmares and Daydreams (The Blood Falls Book 4)

Dray and I sat on the couch in the Wren living room. He had his hand in mine and looked like he regretted that much distance existing between us. He had taken overprotective to a whole new level and I was actually totally fine with it. The fireplace had a small fire lit to keep the chill off the air. Across from us Gigi fidgeted, pulling at the seam of her perfectly tailored slacks or fiddling with the button on her sleeve or twirling a curl around her index finger. The fidgeting never stopped. Her exact opposite sat beside her in the other armchair. Ryddyck didn’t move a muscle. Not even a blink-twitch.

“It imprinted on you,” he said simply.

“Yeah. I mean, I suppose you could put it like that.” It was actually a really good way to describe the feelings and instant knowledge.

He frowned. “Wait. It was open long enough to imprint on you.” Blink-twitch.

I really didn’t like the look on his face. “Yes…”

His eyes moved around, flicking back and forth, his head cocked to the side and then his eyes filled with what I could only describe as abject terror. “I am not the first.” His gaze locked with mine. “The door was open too long. I am not the first.”

As usual, I didn’t fully understand what he was trying to say.

“Your fucking riddles hurt my brain!” Gigi hissed.

“No, wait. Let’s talk this out.” I almost understood what he was trying to say. I was so close. “When I described the memory and the sensation of knowing what was on the other side, Ryddyck said it was open long enough to imprint on me.”

Ryddyck nodded furiously, waving his hands in a hurry-up gesture.

“Then he said the door was open too long and he wasn’t the first,” Gigi huffed. “What the hell does that mean?”

A sinking feeling of dread crept through my veins. “The door was open long enough for me to get a look at the other side. Which means anything waiting on the other side also had time to get a look at our reality.”

“Yes! Yes, she understands!” Ryddyck clapped. “I am not the first!”

“Ryddyck,” Dray said, “you think someone like you came through the door that day? Someone has been here all these years?”

“It answers the questions,” Ryddyck said with a shrug and a blink-twitch. “The One is here. Has been here.”

The One. What a terrible and accurate name. “The One?”

He nodded and blink-twitched some more. “It is like your…your…myths. Or prophecies. The One is the warrior who will cross first and begin the new war.”

“That’s all they wanted,” Gigi murmured. “To get the door open for long enough to get through.”

“And the moment that happened, time had to be rewritten. Destiny had to be recalculated.” I squeezed Dray’s hand. “And it changed all our lives.”

He placed his other hand over mine, locking it between his. “So it was this ‘One’ who gave Helena the idea for the Dreg Army. And Rhine…”

“Tried to murder Rain,” Gigi’s gaze locked with mine as she spoke, “and Rhysa.”

“Do you think you can find this One?” Dray snarled.

Ryddyck blink-twitched. “Perhaps. Maybe. But it’s probably too late. We need to find his army.” He glanced up. “The One will enter the world we lost and build an invisible army.”

Dray blanched, right along with the rest of us. “Army?”

Ryddyck did that thing where he became impossibly still. “Somewhere in this world, The One has been preparing for the war. While we look to the war ahead we have missed the one behind.”

Atsila shifted in the chair in the library, the movement slow and deliberate, as if he were cognizant of the fact that the furniture might snap beneath him. “My Queen has sent me to speak with you all.”

The once-and-future-king of the Heida was here often, but rarely in an official capacity. By the uneasy way he held himself, his news wasn’t good.

“What’s wrong?” Dray asked, wrapping his arm around my waist, his hand coming to rest possessively on my hip.

Atsila unfolded like an origami animal as he stood up. His size always surprised me. I thought Dray was big, but the bear shifters were another level. “Things are deteriorating in the North and we may need reinforcements sooner than later.”

I felt sick to my stomach. We have missed the war behind. No matter how I wished it weren’t true, Ryddyck was right, and his words wouldn’t stop ringing in my ears. We weren’t preparing for war. We were already squarely in the middle of it.

“The rifts?” Kris asked.

Atsila nodded once. “They continue to open more. Once they establish a stable rift, they expand them faster and faster. We’re closing them as quickly as we can, but if they keep up this rate of aggression, we won’t be able to match them much longer.”

“Then we need to get reinforcements up there immediately,” Dray said. “Have you learned anything new about them?”

“Much.” Atsila widened his stance and crossed his arms over his chest. If he were human I would wonder why he felt defensive, but as I learned more and more about samhain psychology I understood that not everything translated behavior-wise. For instance, Atsila more than likely had activated the protective part of his brain and the stance was a reaction. He was ready to fight. “These pocket dimensions they create are fascinating. A bubble between our realities. The Doctor has studied Rever and the salishan extensively. His findings are consistent with the pocket dimensions. We continue to believe Rever was the first and only successful subject, which is why they’ve accelerated their incursion into our reality. They want to do it again.”

If they couldn’t come through the door they were going to make a window to climb through. Great. Just great. “Do you have any good news?”

“Possibly.” His gaze locked on Rain. “The psychics have been hard at work. Malachi has learned something. It’s the real reason I’m here now.”

An electric jolt hit me, the hair on my arm stood up as my brain got hijacked by a vision. I had no idea where the images came from or why, but they flashed through my mind anyway. A snow-covered tundra that went on forever. It wasn’t the North though. I just knew it wasn’t. It felt wrong. Different.

It was a rift.

I didn’t know how I knew, but once the idea formed in my mind, I was absolutely certain of it. Another jolt hit me, shivering down my spine. The vision turned and a scream ripped through the air. Banshees.

In the background I could still hear Atsila speaking. “Malachi saw Rain, Leena, and Rhysa linked, surrounded by the rest of you.”

My vision shifted again, moving over the white ground to a mirror where I saw exactly what Atsila just described. Leena, Rain, and I stood together, our minds on the Plane, our bodies protected by Dray, Kris, and Atsila. The scream of banshees was distant and the only sound I heard. I felt nothing else and couldn’t tell what we were doing. A feeling of deep dread filled me and then a blackness formed in the shape of a circle.

The vision vanished from my mind.

“Malachi says something is missing,” Atsila continued. “You’re all working together to do something but can’t because of that missing element.”

“Does he have any idea what it is?” Kris asked. He mirrored Atsila now with wide legs and crossed arms, plus a deep frown.

“Unfortunately no. Just that it is the key to making this work.”

“Great. Another mystery,” Dray muttered.

I shook myself. Visions made me feel foggy, like waking up from a deep sleep filled with intense dreams. Something Atsila said resonated with my vision. “No, the answer is here.” I just needed to figure it out.

“Rhysa?” Dray turned all that dark, broody energy my way, which didn’t help much. It just interfered with everything I was already feeling. “What do you mean?”

“The answer is on the tip of my tongue. Atsila, can you repeat what you just said?”

“The whole thing?”

The feeling grew stronger. The answer was so close. “No, just the last part. A word you used…” I shook my head, trying to make my brain work harder. “I almost have it.”

“You said Malachi thinks something is missing,” Dray prompted.

“And it’s the key to making it work,” Atsila finished.

Key. “That’s it! That word again! Key.” It felt so good to figure it out.

But everyone just stared at me like I was speaking gibberish. “I don’t understand.” Kris said slowly.

Was it really that hard to piece together? “Key. We keep coming back to the key. The answer is the key!”

“And what is the key?” Atsila asked.

“Me,” Gigi said from the doorway.

Relief flooded me. Finally, someone understood. But then that relief sank into a pit of worry. Gigi was the key. The solution to whatever Rain, Leena, and I were doing was Gigi and I hated that it dragged my very best friend into this.

Everyone turned at the sound of her voice. Gigi looked small standing there, twisting her fingers together and biting her lip. “The signs brought me here. They were very bright and insistent.”

That’s how Gigi saw the timeline—as a road with signs along the way. Some brighter and bigger than others. That’s how Gigi wound up in my bookshop. The timeline made it impossible to ignore the signs. The rest is history.

She stepped fully inside. “Rhysa is right. I am the key. The key to the lock in the door. And based on what I just heard, I think that means all you very gifted and powerful ladies have the ability to open a rift just like they have been.”

More things began to make sense. Except for the banshees. I still didn’t understand why they were included in the vision. “We open the door and what do you do?”

“I go through. Ryddyck and I both do.” She said it so quietly I barely heard her.

My heart began to pound in my chest as my fear took over. “How do you know you can go through?”

“You saw what it did to Rever,” Dray growled. “We can’t exist in their reality anymore than they can exist in ours.”

I felt Gigi’s certainty. She stood there still as a statue and completely resigned to the solution. “That’s because Rever can’t do what we can do.”

“Oh shit.” Leena covered her mouth and fell into the chair Atsila had vacated. “Oh shit.”

“Oh shit what?” Dray barked. “What am I missing?”

“The Severing of Destiny, you big dumb oaf.” She glared at her brother. “You and Gigi changed. Specifically. For a reason.”

All eyes swung back to Gigi, who shrugged again. “Butterflies are pretty but they’re also magical. Transitional. I can make the journey. I believe Ryddyck and I have been joined for this reason. He is also made to move between our worlds.” She came up to Dray and took his hand in hers. “You’re the dragon. The mythical creature from another time and reality. And I’m the key to the lock in the door, only it isn’t just the actual doors between our realities. It’s any door.”

Fragile, tiny, and inter-dimensional. Gigi’s butterfly half finally had a purpose. It was beautiful and terrible. I wanted to puke. Gigi was going through, and I might never see her again. “Ryddyck is from there. So we open the door and you can both pass through. Him as the guide and you as our Trojan Horse.”

She nodded, eyes locked on mine. “And Dray to stand guard. Our sentinel.”

And me as the go between. Whether Dray was in our reality or another, I could hold his place here. It didn’t explain everything, but it explained a hell of a lot.

“Wait,” Leena cocked her head to the side, “go over there and do what exactly?”

“Learn who they are,” Gigi shrugged, “what they are, and how they think. Right now we’re working with absolutely nothing.”

“Why can’t Ryddyck tell us?”

“He’s trying,” I replied. “But whatever it took to get him here makes it hard for him to remember his past or communicate the way we do. Gigi needs to go. To be our eyes and ears.” Even if I hated it with every ounce of my being.

“I fucking hate this,” Dray growled.

That made at least two of us. Gigi slipped under Dray’s other arm, hugging him hard. “Trust me,” Gigi whispered. “This is my Destiny.”

“Fuck Destiny.” His arm tightened around me.

“You don’t mean that.” But I knew that, in this moment at least, he absolutely meant it.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” Dray asked Atsila, ignoring my statement and the thoughts I knew he heard from my mind.

Atsila shifted and his jaw ticked. “There is. The wolves have been on the move. Packs have pressed up against our borders for the first time in generations. When we tried to speak with them we were turned away.”

Kris frowned. “Why are the Volci on the move? If they were coming to help with the rifts, wouldn’t they say so?”

“That’s why we are concerned,” Atsila spoke through his teeth with a clenched jaw. “Especially after last night.”

“What happened last night?” Dray asked, his whole body rigid against mine.

“One of our watchers on the Line observed two wolves meeting in the woods. When they were done, one wolf shifted back to the camp on the border. The other…shifted here. It is the Queen’s opinion that there is a traitor amongst us.”