Twenty-six

The pain ended in a fireball combustion and then morphed to a sudden darkness that smothered every sense and took the nightmare with it.

Quinn opened her eyes. A black velvet sky full of cold, distant stars and a pale moon rolled above her, not the flames she’d half-expected. She scrambled up, brushing white sand from her palms. Dunes rose on every side, a gleaming reflection of the stars. The familiar dreamscape was encouraging, the same surroundings when Zaire entered her dreams...every time he appeared in her nightmares. She should’ve noticed it before. He must have purposely painted the setting for her, a subtle reminder that no matter how much of her dream she controlled, he was a part of them.

But he was nowhere to be found now.

Ignoring the spin in her stomach, she planted a hand on her hip, the cross chain a cool bite around her wrist. A self-help manual from Gwen or Kalila would’ve been nice, a hint at what to expect next, what to do. She’d even take some trite advice about not taking any wooden nickels from demons.

The ground trembled beneath her boots, and she tightened her grip on her cross. Cresting the sand dunes, surrounding her, an army of demons paused, as though to pay homage to what was to come. Some she recognized, others she didn’t. She had no doubt they all belonged to Zaire.

Blood pumped hard, jolting her senses to intense life, roaring in her head. This. This was what she prepared for all those years without Zaire. All those nightmares where she destroyed the things that sought to crush her. Prey turned predator. It was for this moment, the turning point she’d waited for so long.

To save her V’alkara.

Twirling her cross, Quinn grinned, and she suspected it looked a little crazy. Tonight, she wouldn’t just destroy. She’d burn the dream world to the ground and remake it.

***

Zaire jerked to awareness, chains rattling with the sudden movement. A deep silence filled his head, strangely empty of clamoring voices. He tried to rub his dry eyes, but the manacles stopped his hand an inch short. He sighed and sagged against the wall.

Every inch of him ached, weary and sore as if he’d finished a double triathlon with no rest. His throat burned, needing water. His mouth tasted of old blood and bile. But he came back. Somehow, someway, he had shed his form and returned from the deep.

A tingling sensation danced across his scalp, and he tensed. Something was…off. His cell seemed the same, clinically white, the wall cold and hard against his back. The chains were heavy as anchors on his ankles and wrists. And silence—in his head as well as beyond.

He sniffed. The air held a familiar scent. Apples and warm autumn nights. His heart faltered and set an irregular beat. Quinn. She drew him into her dream, and if she wanted to communicate, she’d be with him. And keeping him chained seemed excessive. Unease scampered down his scalp. If she kept him chained—alone—it wouldn’t be for any reason he approved.

“Quinn!” His voice echoed, unanswered. If anything, the silence seemed to deepen.

A low rumble ignited, all the demon voices gathering, muttering in that discordant language they used, so garbled and confused he couldn’t understand the message. The murmurs rose to shouts and shrieks, louder and louder, vibrating in his skull like hammers.

Zaire jerked at the chains, a desperate fight to escape. Blood trickled from his ears, wet and warm. No way out, no reprieve from the bone-shattering chaos in his head, he roared, adding his voice to theirs.

The chorus ended in a single, mind-splitting shriek, followed by deafening silence.

Panting, he opened his eyes. Only the chains kept him from collapsing to the floor. He knew enough about death to recognize the demon’s scream had been its final one. He lifted his gaze from the white tile to the white walls to the white ceiling. What was happening to him?

The sibilant voices resumed, not in his head, not scratching at his skull or clawing into his mind. They echoed beyond the walls, fury lacing every foul word in their deceptively beautiful language. Above the noise, a name rang free, uttered with hate. A name that made his blood run cold.

Quinn.

***

Quinn waded through an ankle-deep pool of black, steaming demon blood to meet the next assailant. Like so many of the others, it made her skin crawl and her mind stutter with terror, but she didn’t let that slow her down. When only a few feet separated her from claws glistening with poison, she flung out her cross and struck it in the throat. As it gurgled, dying, she pushed the cross deeper into the wound until the black edges disappeared. She looked the demon in its red pig eyes and repeated the same words she said to every other before it. “I claim you. You’re mine.”

The demon disappeared in a puff of noxious smoke, leaving only its sticky blood on her hands and the cross hanging from the chain twisted in her aching fingers.

The sky had blackened with each kill, the stars winking out hundreds at a time. Maybe the moon would be the last to vanish, abandoning her to a void. Hopefully not before she was done with the demons. Not that she hadn’t dealt with complete darkness before, but in her own nightmares, she could die and wake up.

Dying tonight wasn’t an option.

Quinn wiped something gooey from her forehead without looking to see what it was. Her legs shook, and the need to simply find a spot of unstained sand and lay down for eternity nearly won. She lost count of the demons she’d destroyed. After the initial showing didn’t scare her off, they’d hidden behind the dunes and come at her one by one, some strong, others weak, always full of venomous hate. Gwen had said Zaire absorbed hundreds, maybe thousands of nightmare creatures. How long could she keep this up? No, that was a pointless question. She’d deal with the demons until she couldn’t lift her cross anymore, until Zaire belonged to no one but her.

A deep, animal growl echoed from behind one dune. Dread rolled out like a carpet, reaching her long before the monster made an appearance, a little something to butter her up.

Quinn sucked in a breath and straightened her shoulders. As points of a black, dreadful crown rose from behind the dune, she wiped her hands on her leather pants and twirled the cross on its chain. The gentle whirr played a counterpoint to the bass beat of her heart. One more demon to claim, one more step toward her goal.

Bring it on.

***

Zaire wrenched on his chains yet again, the iron holding him as surely as the warded steel contained his demon form. The prickling awareness of Quinn’s dream still danced over his skin. The sounds of battle outside his prison and all the dark possibilities drove slow spikes through his organs.

The demon voices beyond the walls held less volume than before, each death-scream sharp and unmistakable, lessening the chorus one by one. The scraping claws that had dragged him closer to insanity for as long as he could remember grew weaker with each minute, and the sweet aroma of autumn and apples filled the room, a tangible reminder that Quinn hadn’t forgotten him. That she knew where he was—and wanted to keep him there. Whatever she was doing, she didn’t want his interference.

And that frightened him more than he wanted to admit.

He grimaced as he jerked on the manacles again, his wrists bruised and battered. Stubborn. His dreamcaster was the living definition. Yet even while she fought his will, she still managed to make him want to earn another of her glorious smiles. She was both sunshine and storm.

Stubborn, infuriating, magnificent woman.

A cry cut through the fading demon chorus, feminine and familiar, and his heart jackknifed. “Quinn!” Zaire threw himself against the chains. Had she been out there all this time? Alone with the demons? He strained against his manacles until his breaths came in harsh gasps. “Quinn!”

A new undertone of excitement infected the remaining demon voices, and his stomach rebelled. If the demons were eager, and Quinn was with them, it didn’t bode well for his dreamcaster. What could have possibly compelled her to do something so stupid and dangerous? Fury ignited, a wildfire burn twisting every muscle to the point of snapping. Why couldn’t she simply return to her life as it was before him, safe and full of people who cared about her?

Another yelp, this time one of definite pain.

He tugged at the chains again, gritting his teeth. The links on one wrist suddenly snapped, and he used both hands to rip the other chain out of the wall. The last restraints came next. No door marked the walls. He’d have to make his own exit.

With one punch, his fist split drywall and wood. He kicked the splinters aside and emerged from his prison to white sand stained with black blood. A demon stood against the backdrop of night, blacker than the sky, a formidable sword lifted high.

Everything inside Zaire went cold.

A demon he’d stripped from a dreamcaster’s nightmare.

A demon he’d barely survived while strong and healthy.

A demon prince.

And his dreamcaster lay at its feet, bleeding.