The Dream Cages #13

Sorry for the long wait.

Adam froze to his chair, but Ronan shot up and out the door without hesitation. The piercing noise sounded not at all human, and Adam didn't even comprehend at first what he was hearing. Even when the truth sank in, he couldn't move for several seconds more. By then, Ronan had begun shouting as well.

"Leave him alone, you ugly bastard!"

Finally, Adam unstuck himself from the chair and forced his feet to take the steps to the screen door. His legs didn't want to. They were stiff, leaden. Not from fear; it seemed like Cabeswater itself was trying to hold him back. Like a huge, invisible hand pushed back against his chest as he advanced. But he was stronger—or his will was. The place that usually worked to help him struggled when his desire ran counter to its own.

Adam made it to the door, though the seconds it took to get there felt like minutes. The screaming had stopped, but Ronan continued to yell no longer intelligible words, just angry sounds of vexation. When Adam stepped out, Ronan shouted one word: "No!"

Adam didn't even have time enough to see what had happened, was happening. A shadow fell over him, and then a searing pain like light and heat penetrated his shoulders.

His feet had left the ground, he realized, but whatever had its claws in him seemed unable to climb very high. Adam heard the snap of huge wings like an oversized flag in a fierce wind.

A night horror?

If so, it was either injured or incompetent. Or perhaps Cabeswater was trying to restrain it, too. Adam's feet dangled no more than a foot from the ground, and they'd only traveled a yard or so when Ronan hurtled into his legs and pulled him free.

The pain was immense. Almost intolerable. The creature's talons ripped through Adam's shirt, his flesh, then he landed hard on his back in the dewy grass, Ronan on top of him.

"It got Matthew," Ronan said in a strangled voice.

Adam turned his head, trying to see the field where the cows dawdled, where Matthew had been, but he was at the wrong angle. And what did he expect to see? A rent body? A heap of torn clothes and bloody blond curls that had been Matthew?

Except it wasn't Matthew. Not really.

If they died here . . . Their wandering consciousnesses would what? Disappear? That didn't happen to Ronan. He woke with wounds but didn't die.

Except that one time.

Could he, would he, create a second self? (A third self, if Adam counted the one already dead and buried.) Could Ronan make another Adam, another Matthew?

Adam thought about the old superstition, that if you died in a dream, you died in real life.

He looked up at Ronan, not sure of how long his mind had been loose. Ronan's eyes were squeezed shut, his arms on either side of Adam as he held himself up. And blood . . .

Blood . . .

Pouring off Ronan as the creature ripped at him. Not a night horror. At least not any kind Adam was familiar with. But something nightmarish all the same. Four clawed feet, two leathery wings that extended beyond Adam's limited view. The whole thing the color of dried blood. It didn't screech like a night horror, either. It roared like a T-rex in a movie.

Adam knew he should be afraid, but he felt oddly detached. Outside of himself. Which, he supposed, he was.

He studied the lines of Ronan's face, pinched with pain. Jaw set to keep from screaming. Ronan's sweat dripped onto Adam's face—maybe tears, too, though it was hard to tell—the blood onto Adam's shirt. Ronan's breath came in gasps and went in gusts. This was Ronan, saving him, protecting him. Dying for him.

And for what?

Adam reached up and put his hands on Ronan's cheeks. Ronan's eyes tightened.

"Ronan."

Ronan shook his head just a little.

"Ronan, open your eyes."

A sliver of blue appeared between the eyelids.

"I'm not here," Adam told him. "And neither are you."