Into Dreams: A Gina Harwood Novel (Gina Harwood Series Book 3) Page 42

  “Morgan,” she reminded, her voice dangerously low. “You’re in his chair.”

  “Ah, Morgan.” Crowell leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk; he wore the same style and color shoes that Morgan did. “We had some good times, Morgan and me. You missed ‘em. You might have been more useful, in the long run, but Morgan?” He considered it for a moment. “Morgan’s my favorite, I think. For the moment.” He leaned in to give an exaggerated aside. “I’m fickle.”

  Gina rose from her seat, her muscles shaking with barely controlled anger. “Crowell. Where is my partner?”

  “He’s fine, calm yourself,” waved Crowell. “He bit me, so I swatted him back to your world. Bad puppy. Needs trained.”

  She blinked. “He bit you?”

  “Metaphorically. Not the point.” He sighed.

  “Why are you here?” she asked. “To finish the job?”

  Crowell raised his eyebrows and placed a hand over his chest. “Why, you wound me, truly. I’ve taken care of my dear little brother. He’ll trouble you no more, for a while anyway.”

  Gina sank back down into her chair. “You… you did what?”

  “My kingdom for an intellectual equal,” snarled Crowell, leaning in close. “You realm. Safe. Safe realm. No bad guy.”

  “Why?” she exclaimed, honestly taken aback. “I never said yes.”

  “I know,” he shrugged, and then was leaning in close, nose-to-nose with her as quick as a flash. She swallowed hard. “But here’s the thing. I could kill you in a heartbeat. So could my brother, if he’d gotten just a leeeeetle bit further, or was a whole lot smarter.” He lifted an eyebrow in disgust. “Yet like a tiny heroic ant you shake your fist at the boot coming down to stomp you.” He leaned back and wiped an imaginary tear from his eye. “It’s beautiful. Really.”

  “Then why don’t you?”

  Crowell considered the question for longer than Gina would have liked, and she fought against fidgeting in her chair. “Agni, son of Skula, was interesting to me for many, many years,” he replied eventually. “Many years. But all games come to their eventual end.” He shook his head, looking genuinely sorrowful, which was a strange expression on his hawklike face.

  Gina remained silent, waiting for him to continue.

  He stood with a fluorish. “Ta-ta, Ms. Harwood. Until we meet again.” He gave a deep bow, and she woke with a start, sitting up in her hospital bed. She leaned over, feeling her body frantically, clawing at the IV in her hand.

  Ms. Gina, cooed a familiar voice, and Victor was above her, pressing her shoulders gently back into the mattress. You’re safe now. Keep calm.

  “Where’s Morgan?” she asked, and Victor’s expression was strangely blank. Gina felt her eyes widen in anticipation of bad news, when she saw movement behind him.

  “Hey,” he said, and she closed his eyes at his voice. He was alive. And here. “How are you feeling?”

  “Not so great,” she admitted, falling back against the mattress. She noticed his arm was in a splint and frowned, glancing under the sheet to see rows and rows of black stitches. “Jesus,” she breathed, setting the cloth down carefully. “How long were we gone?”

  “Mr. Morgan was out for roughly 48 hours,” replied Victor evenly. “You have been unconscious for two weeks.”

  Gina blinked at this, unable to process it. She wasn’t sure which number was more shocking. “Morgan got in before I did,” was the most rational sentence she could settle on.

  “Do you remember what happened?” asked Morgan, and she nodded.

  “I think so.”

  “This,” Morgan pulled his shirt back to reveal an ugly yellowish bruise under a set of stitches that looked a lot like her own. “Was where I got stabbed in that last battle. Apparently damage there carries over. You came through in much worse shape than I did.”

  “The mind is powerful,” counseled Victor. “And that is, as I warned you, no ordinary dream.”

  Gina coughed weakly, feeling her senses soften. She glanced up at her IV. Painkillers, she surmised. “Are we safe? What happened? What did I miss?”

  Morgan opened his mouth to answer, but Victor tapped him lightly on the shoulder and indicated for him to back away. “Not quite yet, Ms. Gina. You should rest. There is time to get caught up when you are well.”

  She desperately wanted to argue this point, but her eyes refused to stay open.

  85

  Gina Harwood considered herself in the mirror, and took a deep breath, practicing her morning mental exercises to strengthen her walls before she left her apartment. Today was her first day back in the office, and she knew she’d need to hit the ground running; Hanagawa’s brief was long but not quite the happy ending she’d envisioned. According to both Victor and Hanagawa, Crowell had done exactly as he’d said, but only in Victor’s case did he banish the attacking creatures. They had spent the last several weeks sending teams out to take out escaped aberrations, and reports kept piling in.

  She finished with a sigh and a nod to her reflection, turning to enjoy one last cup of coffee. It was early; she doubted Morgan had even begun his morning run yet, but she wanted a headstart on the day. It felt like she’d missed too much work already.

  Gina flipped through the files on her kitchen counter, and smiled as she sipped from her mug, landing on a picture of Mama LaVey. That part of the story had been her favorite, as Charlie had come in to debrief her on the Locke situation. The distaste for LaVey was clear in Charlie’s retelling, but Gina could see it in her mind and couldn’t help but laugh in front of an unimpressed Charlie Parker. “She kicked her flamingo,” chuckled Gina between sips, and flipped forward, shaking her head. Charlie had had a rough go of it too; she didn’t require surgery, but she said she’d been suffering debilitating migraines regularly since the incident. The strain of them was evident in her face, and Gina wished she could do more. Charlie had resorted to asking Victor for help, which meant that whatever residual juju she had hanging around from Snow Hill must have been pretty bad indeed. Gina understood they were making progress, just as she was slowly healing into her patchwork scars.

  Gina flipped to a picture of the boys from their life before Locke, showing two happy, relatively-normal young men who had no idea what the next years of their life would bring. Hanagawa had interviewed the boys and LaVey, but Gina wanted to revisit; the story about how Nathan Jones defeated Locke, she wanted to hear that for herself if she could. She was especially concerned about the fact that there was an entire group of people with Locke in the memory; were they sealed too? Were they still waiting somewhere to continue their soul-eating pyramid scheme, or were they powerless - even gone - now that the seal was closed, and presumably their connection to the shadow severed?

  She sighed and closed the folder, setting her empty mug in the sink. Snow Hill, that was certainly on her list. Gina didn’t trust Crowell to enact a permanent solution to their problem - certainly not for free. Gina didn’t like being indebted to a creature so powerful, and the number one item on her list was to try and figure out what he was. Who he was. She would be prepared the next time they met, and she was certain there would be a next time. She felt her good mood evaporate as she pulled on her jacket and shut off the light, walking out the front door with her head down. Gina pulled the collar tighter around her neck, the light breeze traveling down her still-sensitive scar tissue along her abdomen and shivered as she walked quickly through the gardens.

  “Whoa,” exclaimed Morgan, skidding to a halt as he nearly collided with her. He was dripping with sweat, and she noticed with amusement that he’d kept a beard since returning, though it was more maintained than the wild thing it had been in the desert.

  “Oh, sorry,” she apologized, putting a hand to her head. “I was lost in my own world.”

  “I hope not,” he grinned. “We just got out of that predicament.”

  They laughed together and he fell into step beside her. “You know, it’s weird, I can’t even talk about it with
anybody,” she commented, meeting his ice-blue gaze. “It’s like, there’s no way I can really make them understand, so why try? It’s this massive part of my life that feels like it didn’t even happen.”

  “I’ll always understand it,” he replied, his voice low and velvety. “But I get it. I just wish I’d been able to say goodbye to Toma.”

  Gina had retold her last vision with Crowell in exacting detail, multiple times, and Morgan had always tried to find more information on his friend. She wished she had some to give. She knew his pain. “Me too. Kyrri was…” She bit her lip and felt tears spring to her eyes.

  “Still haven’t been able to get back?” he asked, glancing sidelong at her.

  She cast her eyes down. “No.” Once her body began to heal, it had been her sole purpose at night to recreate the hole that let to the jet black staircase. She tried everything, visualizations, lucid triggers, Victor had even been kind enough to try guided meditation, though he wasn’t exactly pleased with her insistence. She was desperate just to get back for a moment, see that her friend was alright, and then she’d bounce right back up. Gina hated the concerned look Victor gave her every time she mentioned it. “It’s the only thing I regret. The only thing I didn’t do. He gave everything for me. I just want to say thank you, and good bye. How much time has even passed there by now? Years?” She shook her head in sad amazement. Years.

  They walked a few paces in silence. “I do wish I’d gotten to say goodbye to Toma,” said Morgan slowly, and he seemed to be choosing his words carefully. Gina stopped and cocked her head at his tone. “But there is another thing I wish I’d done.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  Morgan snaked his arm around her and gingerly brought her close, being careful of her healing wounds. Gina blinked and allowed herself to be reeled in until she was nose to nose with him, his breath hot and familiar on her lips. His scent was the same she remembered, and it brought the memories into sharp focus; she let her eyes flutter closed and breathed him in. “I don’t think your doctor would approve of me showing you,” he said, brushing his lips against hers. “At least, not while you’re on desk duty.” Morgan stopped and looked up in thought. “Actually, I’m not sure he would approve at all, ever.”

  She sighed and pushed him; he knew she was on heavy physical restriction until she was fully healed up. “Not nice to be a tease,” she replied, walking toward the building without him.

  “See you at 8, Harwood,” he called with his sideways grin evident in his voice, and she heard him resume his run along the path.

  A small smile played on her lips as she pushed open the door and stepped inside the building. It was a new day, and Gina Harwood was ready to get back on a case.

  Epilogue

  Gina stared at the hole in her wall, and her heart leapt for joy.

  She crept to the edge, where the concrete disappeared and the faint outline of the steps began, and she ran down, ran past the stone statues guarding the open gate. Her excitement threw her into the forest, and she retraced her steps quickly and carefully until she reached the Ulthar trolley tracks. They shone as brightly as she remembered, and she turned left and jogged until she hit the city, wishing a trolley might come along to pick her up with every step. It wasn’t the fastest mode of transportation, but it was fast.

  She reached the end and diverted from the tracks once the city outskirts began. The market was bustling and colorful, but she paid no attention to the hustlers and vendors that lined the streets. Gina beelined for the white stucco palace that rose in the center of the city, following the labyrinthine streets ever inward until she found herself at the main gate.

  Two sleek cats guarded it, armed head to tail in black plate mail, and each holding lances. They exchanged glances as she approached them, and cocked their heads at her curiously.

  “My name is Gina Harwood,” she explained, looking between them with her hands steepled in front of her. “I need to see Kyrri. Please.”

  The cats blinked at her in surprise. “You… speak Cat?” asked one.

  “She asks after the Battleleader,” murmured the other.

  Gina felt a smile paint her face. “The Battleleader?” she asked, and her face fell. “What happened to Kylvan?”

  “Please to wait,” mewed the lanky grey one before leaping through a door and disappearing into the palace, and the other regarded her curiously in silence until he returned, panting. “Come in, come in,” he said, his tone highly apologetic. “I am sorry for making you wait, Dreamer.” He ran ahead of her and back, pacing four or five steps for her every one in his anxiety. She sped her walk to appease him, and he looked slightly more at ease.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Really.”

  The guard led her through the familiar hallways of the palace and she wondered if she might say hello to Minah before she left. The grand doors of the throne room opened before her, and a line of Cats bowed before her as she approached the throne in disbelief. “Kyrri?”

  The Battleleader bounded toward her, nearly knocking her over, and he stood with both paws on her shoulders. “Gina-Dreamer!” he boomed, and his voice carried throughout the room. “It IS you! You’re alive!”

  Kyrri was clearly a much older cat, years past the kit she’d met in the forest, but he was undeniably the same Cat. She hugged him and scratched behind his ears, hoping it wasn’t horridly against protocol or anything. “Thank you,” she whispered, burying her face in his fur and weeping openly, tears streaming down her face.

  “I thought you were dead,” he mewed, his shoulders hitching.

  “Thank you, Kyrri. For everything. I’m so sorry I had to leave like I did.”

  He pushed her back with his paws, and his eyes were shining, his whiskers high and smiling. “It was an honor to serve a Dreamer.”

  FIN

  Author’s Note

  The first trilogy of the Gina Harwood series comes to a close with this novel, and it was a pleasure - if a challenge - to write. I’d always known I wanted to venture into the Dreamlands, which posed a lot of problems. There is an incredible amount of Dreamlands canon out there, by many different authors (including, of course, H.P. Lovecraft himself). While I certainly wanted to keep to what was canonically accepted, I also very much wanted to define the areas that our characters would be traveling with greater detail than had previously existed. What evolved was a canonically accurate traipse through the Dreamlands, to the best of my researching ability. I do want to call out Jason Thomson’s map of the Dreamlands (mockman.com); it proved an excellent reference (and is lovely to look at), so if you’d like to trace the paths that the characters moved, check it out.

  My gratitude goes out to many people, without whom this work would have struggled to come to fruition. Thank you to my Tortoise & Hare Creations cohort, William O. Billman II, who displayed unusual patience with the flighty mental state that always accompanies long writing binges, and read the novel in it’s shaky first draft. Thank you to the Collins family for their generous offer to let me write a portion of my novel in their remote mountain cabin - it was the perfect setting for grinding through the words, with electricity but without any level of connectivity, allowing an uninterrupted flow state with zero distractions and a lovely setting. Thank you to the Ultima Dragons community, who provided me with a lot of new social outlets at a time when I needed them most. Thank you to my beta readers for their tireless reviews and extensive feedback. Thank you to Tammi Taylor and Jerry Spickler, for their support and patronage. Speaking of patronage, a massive thank you to every single one of our patrons on Patreon (www.patreon.com/tortoiseharecreations), for seeing value in our creations and pledging their support. And thank you to every random person I encountered during those heavy writing months, when I could barely be classified as a functional human being.

  Writing can be many things. It’s chaotic, occasionally cathartic, aggravating, disorganized, and a shockingly difficult undertaking at times. There are days when the cursor blinks at me on a
blank page, and I want to scream. There are days when the words flow from my fingertips, and reading the prose later, I barely remember writing the story at all. Thank you to those days, to whatever energies align to make them happen. Those days are worth everything. And at the end of every day, the hope that one day it will be finished, ready, worthy, and read by others, so that the stories that spring from the squishy stuff behind my eyes take on a life of their own.

  So, thank you, most of all, to you for taking the time to delve into my brain and breathe souls into characters who could easily remain strange, black squiggles in an eternity of white. I can see Gina so clearly in my own mind, and Morgan, and Charlie, and Kyrri, and all of them - but it pleases me to no end that you will see them too, and they will be just different enough to make it fascinating. - Indi Martin