Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(80)

Had I considered it beforehand, I would have envisioned roses or orchids, but maybe Stefan needed something less hothouse and more tenacious. That sounded right—because I needed him to be tenacious.

I put it to my lips and said, “Here is a bit of hope for you. Stay strong, my friend.” I would have said more, but that felt like all the words the little flower could carry.

I held the flower over the lacy ribbon and hesitated. There was no way to open this bond, which was already so fragile that it crumbled at my touch.

After a moment’s thought, I crushed the flower between my fingers and let the small bits of gold and green fall on the lace. When all of the flower was scattered in small bits, they melted into the bond—and a small spark popped and skittered from where the flower bits had been toward Stefan. Who now lay supine on the floor, though Adam and I had been alone in my otherness just a moment ago.

I slid out of the bed, knowing with certainty that Adam would not awaken here. I was still naked, but my bathrobe was awaiting me on the foot of the bed. I put it on and tied it securely before going to Stefan.

It took a lot more steps than it should have to cover the distance to him. And each step was weighty, as if I were traveling much more than the ten or twelve feet that lay between Stefan and my bed. Like dreams, the otherspace was sometimes richly symbolic and sometimes just weird. The trick was in figuring out which kind of weirdness I was dealing with.

As I neared Stefan, the carpet vanished between one step and the next, becoming the polished concrete of my garage auto bays, complete with the scratches from Adam’s monster’s claws. My bathrobe altered to jeans and a red T-shirt that said Scooby Snacks Forever in black letters across my chest. Little black bats began at the final “r” in “Forever” and concentrated over my left shoulder so that the shoulder of the shirt and left sleeve were black.

I didn’t own a T-shirt like that. Why my subconscious thought I should be wearing something so Stefan-like, I didn’t know.

Stefan himself was wearing all black, like a stagehand in a play. His eyes were closed and his face was tilted toward where the bay doors would have been if they had made an appearance here, but instead it was only inky blackness—like when I met Adam’s monster. There was a distant rumble of sound, and I forced myself to quit thinking about the monster.

Instead, I knelt beside Stefan and put my hand on his shoulder. The result was explosive.

He went from still to full speed in the blink of an eye, rolling away from me and up and onto his feet in what was obviously some sort of martial and practiced maneuver. But once on his feet he stood swaying, his hands to his face, covering his eyes.

“Stefan?” I asked tentatively. Because I suddenly had the worrying thought that it might not be Stefan. The smoke weaver could take his shape.

But as soon as the worry found me, I knew that whatever shape he wore in the real world, here in my otherness, he would still be the smoke weaver. And unless I summoned him, the smoke weaver could not visit me here.

Stefan let his hands fall to his sides and gave me a wild look. “Go,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“No,” I told him patiently without rising to my feet. “It’s okay. This is my space. You can come here because you are invited.” I indicated the coffee-colored lace bond that was tied around my right ankle and stretched to his left ankle.

He dropped to the ground as if his knees just quit working. If he’d been human, in the real world, and had fallen like that onto my concrete floor, he’d have been in agony. But it hadn’t seemed to have hurt Stefan—maybe because I hadn’t wanted Stefan hurt.

We sat there for a moment, about four feet apart.

Finally, he said, in a voice filled with wonder, “It’s so quiet here.”

“Yes,” I agreed.

His fingers played with a small place on the floor where Adam’s claws had left a stuttering arc. “Sorry,” he said, seeming to gather himself together, a mask suitable for social interaction forming on his face. “It’s been a long time since it was quiet in my head.”

“I need you to listen to me,” I told him.

He looked up—and there was such . . . despair in his eyes. “I killed people, Mercy,” he told me. “Innocents in the wrong place at the wrong time. I’ve done it before.” He opened his arms to remind me of what he was. “But I swore that I would never do so again. And until this, I kept my vow.”

I crawled over to him and put my hand on his jaw. “Hang on, Stefan. I promise you that there is help coming if you can just hang on.”

He said, sadly, “I am not a hero to be holding on for one minute longer.”

I recognized the reference, though I couldn’t remember the author—someone German, I thought.

“I disagree,” I told him. “Just hold on, Stefan. Help is coming.”

He shook his head. “Marsilia won’t let me die by his hand,” he told me. “But he will not let me feed. I weaken moment by moment until soon, there will be no more of me.”

I thought about that one. Then, wordlessly, I held out my arm to him.

Stefan bit my wrist—and I let him, just as I had let him before. The feeding wasn’t real except as dreams were real, or powerful except as dreams were powerful. He didn’t drink blood from my veins—he drank strength, conviction, and hope.