Page 82 of Nightmare Rising

I plodded on. The echoes of my steps drummed on my body.

My burden hardened.

Became rock.

I pushed through a wall of invisible resistance, my passage becoming as cloying and sticky as septic mud.

Black streamed from my eyes, oozed from my pores.

I froze, and then I burned.

Staggering, I stumbled to some unknown milestone...one final hardship, that’s all it was.

One final test.

I stopped so abruptly I stumbled.

Oh my God, a test.

I could save him.

Could.

But I shouldn’t.

I sank to my knees under the weight of my burden, crying as my fingers opened and he flowed away from me.

There was a cosmic tug, and then a rush, the force of his going blowing me backward until I bent like a hairpin, doubled back onto my knees, arms stretched out over my head.

All I could do was watch him—a dwindling upside-down silhouette, going to whatever waited in the beyond.

If death came for me, would I know my way back?

I woke up gasping, an invisible weight crushing my chest.

The dreams had been real. I’d walked someone in this motel to their death.

I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. Empty. At some point, Val had left.

Slipping to my feet, I padded to the window, the curtain so threadbare I could see the lights out on the street. I pushed the material out of the way and looked out into the night.

It bothered me.

It bothered me that I hadn’t saved the dreamer.

Some things had to happen. Some things were fated.

My teeth snagged my thumbnail, and I chewed.

Whyhadn’tI saved him?

Right at the end, I’d had the sense that for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. I needed more of whatever the C had learned over the centuries. Why had the C had this power? How could I use it wisely?

Next time there would be no touching, not until I had the answers.

I slipped my fingers from my mouth, and the cold steel of the dangling handcuff hit my thigh as my hand fell.

More questions. Was I Val’s prisoner or here of my own choosing?