Into Dreams: A Gina Harwood Novel (Gina Harwood Series Book 3) Read online

  “Seems strange to suddenly be asking me personal questions,” replied Morgan. “I thought you wanted to know as little about me as possible.”

  “I do.” Eliah sighed and pursed her lips. “Well, if you drink a little, you will feel good, it gets rid of pain. If you drink a lot, you see things, hear things.” She shrugged. “The world becomes translucent and you can see through it to the beyond, and you can speak to your ancestors. I don’t know how to describe it better than that. We use it sparingly, as it can kill you in sufficient quantities.”

  “Why do you want me to do it?” he asked.

  “As I said, we use it sparingly. All of us do on our Hunting day, when we are first eligible to become Hunters. But it is also used medicinally. You are still very weak. Perhaps your ancestors can help you heal faster. You should ask them. So, I give you ebene.”

  “Do I have a choice?” asked Morgan.

  Eliah narrowed her eyes at him. “We all have a choice. I am not trying to poison you. I just…” She stopped suddenly, and Morgan turned to face her, confused by the sudden pause. “Look, I know I haven’t been very hospitable. I’m sorry. I am,” she said, waving off his look of incredulity. “My nana passed into the waves suddenly, we were unprepared. Ila found you only because she ran off during nana’s tribute fire. Nopah was sent to find her, but they found you.” She crossed her arms tightly. “You interrupted her tribute, which is a serious thing. You have terrible timing.”

  “I am sorry that you lost your mother,” he said sympathetically, desperately wanting to add that he didn’t choose that moment to wash up on her shores. He bit his tongue to keep from speaking.

  “Yes. But I will not be seeing my mother tonight. Hopefully you will see your ancestors, and they can help heal you. I have not been very hospitable,” she repeated. “And ebene is not something we usually trade for, or share outside of our village. It is my apology to you, my gift.”

  “Does this mean you’ll start using my name now?” asked Morgan playfully.

  “You make it difficult to like you,” she said, frowning and resuming their walk. The Spirit Hut loomed in front of them. “Ila does not understand that the spirits do not need slips of paper to hear us, but she is still young.” Eliah opened a latch on the door and swung it open, waving Morgan inside. The hut was much larger than the others, and almost empty except for benches lining the walls. There was a roaring fire in the center of the room, and several lit braziers with small pots of water encircling the room. Morgan began to sweat immediately, and he noticed Eliah unlatching her armor.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, as she pulled her remaining pieces of armor off and hung them on hooks over the nearest bench.

  “Take your clothes off,” she said, now completely nude and walking toward the fire. “It is customary to approach your ancestors with nothing but your heart.”

  “This is a very literal interpretation,” he mumbled, but gruffly pulled his freshly washed pants off and hung them on a small peg. He walked to the nearest bench, concentrating on nothing at all, and sat down, staring at the fire. He lay his walking stick beside him on the bench and looked past the naked huntress walking towards him, and into the fire instead.

  “Drink,” she said, and placed a round ceramic cup into his hands. The ceramic was warm, but when Morgan brought the liquid to his lips, it was surprisingly cool. He sipped at the cup.

  “How long does it take?” he asked.

  “For some it takes all night,” she replied evenly. Morgan raised his eyebrow but said nothing.

  <><><>

  “Naked and crazy, we need to stop meeting like this,” tsked Pan, hopping forward and backward with his hands spread. “Does it look weird when I do this?”

  Morgan grimaced up at the faun, whose erratic movements were filling his vision with neon tracers. He heard the scratch at the wall again and a shiver ran up his spine.

  “I’m hurt that you don’t look happy to see me,” pouted the halfman.

  “Fu--”

  “Yes, I know. ‘Fuck off.’” Pan shook his head in mock sadness. “You humans. How do you ever make friends?”

  “What did you do to her?” panted Morgan, clutching his chest. His heart was beating too fast and the scratching was filling his ears with shrapnel. Eliah was still motionless beside him.

  “I can recommend some clinics, if you ever want to jump off this horse,” said Pan, sitting on the opposite side of Morgan and putting his arm around him.

  Morgan twisted as hard and fast as he could and punched Pan in the face. Time telescoped inward and he watched his fist leave ripples in the air as it traveled toward’s Pan’s mouth, which was slowly morphing into an “o” of surprise. There was a satisfying slow-motion crunch as he connected with the faun’s jaw and sent his head flying back, the beads of sweat flying in all directions. Pan stumbled backward and away.

  There was a roar from beside him, and Morgan’s head snapped towards it to see Eliah lunging at Pan, her face contorted with hatred. Pan snapped his fingers and she was refrozen in mid-leap. Morgan realized something important. This thing is no joke, but it can be hurt, or at least distracted.

  “You know, I chose to come here,” orated Pan, flourishing dramatically. “I chose to come and tell you something I thought you might find important. Information that I felt - knowing what I do - that you needed to know.”

  “I don’t need anything from you,” growled Morgan, trying to discern which of the shapes blocking the fire were Pan, his vision blurring and clearing in alternating bursts.

  Pan turned to the fire. “I chose to come here,” he repeated, ignoring Morgan’s interruption. “And I get punched in the face. You know,” he continued, walking slowly toward Morgan. His form was a black shadow against the fire that undulated and oozed toward him. “You know, I’m not so sure this friendship is going to work out. You take, take, take…”

  This is the drug, Morgan tried to remind himself, but the black shape approaching him didn’t make any sense, and the eyes were a sickening yellow. The scratching behind him sounded louder than ever; it sounded like knives ripping through the leather.

  “Just once, Morgan Snyder, just once you should consider giving back.”

  The shadow was almost at his toes, and he snapped them backward.

  The leather behind him gave way with the sound of a wet paper bag, and a streak of light flashed past his shoulder. It circled the shadow, which withdrew from Morgan and coalesced back into roughly Pan’s shape before disappearing altogether. The light danced almost playfully in the center of the hut before leaping into the fire and dissolving among the embers.

  Eliah’s body hit the floor as her roar died in her throat. She leapt up to a squat and looked left to right. “What happened? There was a creature here, and then…?” She ran to the exit and looked outside.

  “I think he’s gone,” said Morgan, still staring at where the light disappeared into the flames.

  “Why is the wall torn?” asked Eliah.

  Morgan twisted to look behind him. The sunlight was streaming in from the massive tear down the center of the thick, multi-layered leather, and everything retained a bright white glow that made his eyes water. “I don’t honestly know how to answer that,” he answered.

  37

  “Where are we going?” panted Gina, following Kyrri at a breakneck pace through what seemed like telescoping alleyways, each feeling narrower and darker than the last.

  “I don’t know,” responded Kyrri, glancing back at her, the fur around his mouth still dripping with the dead man’s blood. He slowed to take a breather. This alleyway was clear of people, and Gina wasn’t sure if it was actually an alleyway, or a crawlspace between buildings. He padded over to a standing puddle of water and began to wash his face.

  “Do you know who those Men were? Did you recognize the cloaks or the swords or anything?” Gina bent to dip her hand in the puddle too and at least try to wipe some of the blood off of her skin.

  “No, I�
��m sorry, I didn’t,” he said, his voice low. “I will try to climb up to the roof and see if I can see a way out of the city.”

  Gina considered him. They were both in trouble now, it made no sense for them to split up. She would only worry that some hooded figure would stab him in his sleep during the voyage home, and that’s if she could dodge the cloaks and the now brotherless Captain Gage long enough to secure him passage. She winced. Hammer had been kind to them, and he’d paid for his kindness in blood.

  “That sounds like a good plan. Kyrri,” she added as he turned to scale the wall. “I shouldn’t have called you a kit.” He cocked his head and waited for her to continue. “You risked your life for me, and while I don’t like it, I appreciate it. You’re smart enough to make your own decisions, stay or go. I won’t try to send you away again.”

  “Thank you,” he said simply, and leapt up the wall. Gina crouched behind a waterlogged pile of boxes and peered at the passing figures. The sunlight was nearly gone, and the oil lamps were lit, giving the figures a sickly yellow glow as they passed underneath them. Gina shivered and grasped her knife hilt. No one looked her way.

  She heard a light thump next to her and turned to see Kyrri, quickly rubbing more water on his face. “This one connects to the next main street, and we’re not far from the north gates of the city. Let’s cross the street and find another place to duck in and I’ll get another look.”

  Slowly, they picked their way through the sprawling city, with Kyrri canvassing their route from the rooftops before they completed their next jaunt to the next secluded space. Had they not been on edge looking for cloaked figures intent on finding them, Gina would have enjoyed the architecture and feel of the city. As it was, she was desperate to leave it. This labyrinth of streets and alleys was familiar territory to whoever was after them, she guessed, and she preferred a more level playing field. Kyrri landed beside her again, and she hoisted the bags and his armor on her back. “The gates are just down this street.”

  “Hold on.” Gina put the bags down and rifled through the larger one, pulling out her other shirt. Quickly, she pulled her bloodstained blouse over her head and changed into the clean one, stuffing the dirtied fabric behind a pipe. “Okay, this should be a little less conspicuous.”

  “Whoever those Men were, they may be watching the gates,” considered Kyrri, picking up and buckling his armor to try to cover some of the blood matting his fur. “We must be careful in case there are more of them.”

  “This is turning into a dangerous adventure,” she remarked, helping Kyrri affix the bag to his shoulders.

  “That is just called an adventure,” replied Kyrri. “But I didn’t much like today.”

  “Me neither,” agreed Gina, and together they walked into the lamplit street, their eyes scanning the shadows for threats.

  38

  The night was crisp, and dark, and Morgan glanced up at the strange yellow-green stars dotting the black canvas above him. The sand still retained a little bit of heat from the day, or was doing a pretty good job of reflecting his own heat back at him, but either way, Morgan was comfortable. The shores were clear except for him, and Eliah, who sat in silence beside him, and the nightblack water ebbed and flowed in front of them.

  There were no visions, and he was thankful that normalcy - or whatever passed for normalcy these days - had mostly returned. He was still queasy and nauseous from the drug, and he felt a nagging sense of otherness from the unintended look into her memories, whether real or imagined. He hadn’t been a big fan of the ebene.

  The Spirit Hut was behind them, looming, with one of it’s walls torn to shreds. Morgan noticed small cuts and tears along the bottom edges of the hut, and remembered the shadow of paws outside. The entire ordeal was already fuzzy in his mind, but he remembered that, and the giant black shadow of Pan that oozed toward him. He remembered enough.

  “I am not supposed to be able to see your visions.”

  He glanced at Eliah, who was staring at the horizon with unfocused eyes. She hadn’t spoken since they’d left the hut. She blinked slowly and a chill ran through her.

  “Pretty sure he wasn’t a vision,” replied Morgan hoarsely. His throat still ached from how unbelievably thirsty he’d been. At some point, he’d passed out on the bench in the Spirit Hut, and when he’d awoken, Eliah had left a large, full water cask next to his head. He’d drunk it all, donned his pants, and stumbled outside to find her sitting on the beach under the darkened sky in silence. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been sitting here, unspeaking, but it felt like hours.

  “It must have been,” she urged in a whisper. “It was there, and then it was gone. I leapt through the monster as though he were air.” Her eyes flickered to his for a moment, and then resumed scanning the horizon.

  Morgan studied the waves. He turned his experiences over in his mind and tried to translate them into coherent sentences. “I call it Pan, he never told me his name. He tricked me into drinking the water that made me crazy on shore, and it sent the gug that your village killed so he could talk to me. He showed up in there and seemed to stop time, until I punched him in the face. That’s when you saw him, before he stopped time again.” He shrugged. “Some white light tore through the wall and Pan disappeared. That’s the best explanation I can give you.”

  Brow furrowed in concentration, Eliah seemed to study the lapping waves that approached her legs. She was silent for a moment, her eyes following the waves’ path. “Why would it want to talk to you?” she asked, quietly.

  “I don’t know. He said I was interesting.” Morgan shrugged.

  Quiet stretched between them, the soft crash of the waves pouring in to take the place of their words. Eliah seemed lost in thought, her knees drawn up to her chin. Morgan watched her for a moment, waiting for a response, and then turned his attention back to the sea. His thoughts wandered to his life, his real life, but it was becoming harder to think of it like that. Nothing felt more real than the surety of death he had felt while leaping off of a cliff and into the frigid waters. His old life, he amended mentally, but that didn’t sit well either. It felt too permanent, and a chill ran up his spine.

  “Where did you come from, Stranger?” she asked at last, her voice startling him out of his thoughts.

  He pointed at the cliffs of the mainland, a barely visible line of black against the night sky. “I woke up up there,” he said quietly. “But before that I was in a different place. My world, I guess. With a different sky.” He leaned back on his elbows and looked up at the strange stars. “I was fighting something…” he shivered as he remembered the shadowy thing and its awful, flittering movements, seeing its terrible maw open into a starry void. “A… a monster,” he finished, sitting back up and wiping the cold sweat from his brow. “And the next thing I knew I was on that cliff up there, naked as the day I was born.”

  “That is a strange story,” she replied simply.

  Morgan smiled grimly. “Tell me about it.”

  Movement and light caught Morgan’s attention, and he peered out over the ocean waves. There was the tiniest flicker on the horizon, a single pixel blinking on and off, and then one or two more. He heard Eliah’s breath hitch, and she leaned forward with a relieved smile, whispering something Morgan couldn’t hear. “The vakas,” she said aloud, nodding toward the horizon.

  “I see them,” he replied, watching the half-dozen lights bobbing on the horizon.

  Her face was bright and happy as she sat there, her eyes locked on the tiny specks of light. Morgan lay back on the sand and listened to the waves, holding on to this moment of serenity before he began the next leg of his journey.

  39

  Holding her breath, Gina walked as calmly as she could through the gates, concentrating on remaining a few steps behind Kyrri so she wouldn’t rush and draw more attention to them. There were four guards posted, one at each corner of the massive stone arch that read “Calephais.” The city felt ancient, established, but Gina could notice no signs of wear
on the arch, or on the streets, whose cobblestones looked polished and new. The same couldn’t be said of the guards, whose armor was scratched and worn, the leather latchings rubbed and fraying. She sped her walk a bit as she passed the last guards and exhaled, trotting up to walk beside the Cat.

  “Maybe we should tell the guards what happened,” whispered Gina, but not changing her pace. Even after spending her life as a supposed authority figure herself, her instincts made it pretty clear that she wanted out of the city, not embroiled in their local police force procedures.

  “We don’t know who those men were, and Maestra Crow made fire by snapping her fingers,” reasoned Kyrri. “The only friend we had is dead. I think we should go, Dreamer, and stay gone. Hopefully the next town will be nicer.”

  “Yeah.” The hooded man’s eyes flashed in her memory again, wide in surprise and pain, losing their glow of hatred and life. All the blood.

  “I am so hungry,” remarked Kyrri, bounding a few leaps forward and holding his stomach for emphasis before rejoining her pace.

  “There’s some beef tins left in the bag,” said Gina, pulling it off her shoulder.

  “Nah,” he replied, but looked hungrily up at the bag as she shouldered it higher. “Let’s wait until we get a little farther away, at least.” His whiskers drooped.

  “Missing Ulthar yet?” ribbed Gina gently, remembering the constant offerings of food and ale the locals lavished upon him.

  “Hunger is part of the adventure,” he sighed sadly, his stomach rumbling loudly behind his words. “I just don’t like this part as much as some of the others.”

  They continued down the forested road, the trees pressing thickly in around them. Thankfully, the path was wide and seemed well-traveled, but even so, Gina was having a hard time making out her surroundings. The sun was now fully set and the trees were black shadows silhouetted against the slightly-less-black sky. “Kyrri, my eyes aren’t as good as yours in the dark,” she reminded him, stumbling forward off a rock she hadn’t been able to see.