Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(63)

Adam’s ability wasn’t without its risks. It was a lot like dreaming, but dreaming using the whole world’s imagination instead of just his own. There were no limits. No memories to hedge the dreams in, no identity to keep the wandering intimate. Without someone to hold him close within the vast space, Adam’s mind could wander into the ether and never return, like the cow floating off into the sun. That was how his deck of tarot cards had become haunted. They were a gift from a dead woman who’d never come back.

“Ten, okay,” Ronan said. Reaching out, he twisted the watch on Adam’s wrist so that it faced him.

Adam tilted his head back, and Ronan realized he was steeling himself. This was new. Adam had always been cautious, but not intimidated.

“What?” Ronan asked.

“Things have been weird out there.”

This was unpleasant to think about; how long would it have taken Ronan to find out if Adam had been found dead in his dorm, his mind lost to the infinite while everyone else’s backs were turned? “I didn’t know you’d been doing it while you were gone.”

“Only twice,” Adam said. “In the first week. I know. It was stupid. I haven’t done it again. I wouldn’t do it again.”

“Why did you even do it?”

“Why did you drive after that person who looked like your mother?”

Fair.

“I just have to … I have to work myself up to it, is all.”

It was truly disconcerting to see him so intimidated by it. “Why?”

“Something’s changed. There’s something enormous, it feels like, watching us.”

“You and I?”

“People. Maybe it’s … listen to me talking like it’s something. Someone. I don’t even know what it is. I can’t really explore. I don’t have any armor out there. It’s just my mind floating around.”

All of this sounded unpleasant to Ronan. “You don’t have to do this now.”

Adam muttered, “I do. Me closing my eyes doesn’t make the monster go away. I’d rather know. And I don’t trust anybody else to spot me. You know what I’m supposed to look like. And I want to know if I can see your guy out there among that something. Or if it is your guy.”

Ronan narrowed his eyes.

“Don’t gimme that look, Ronan. All you know is that he told you he was a dreamer,” Adam said. “You can believe him, but nothing says I have to. Earlier today you had a gun on me. I’m just asking you give him the same shake as me.”

Again, just as when Ronan had been holding the gun on Adam, there was no distress, no anger. Adam would never judge someone else for their skepticism. His default setting was mistrust.

“Okay,” said Ronan.

Adam went in.

He cast his eyes down to the sun in his hand. For the first few seconds, he blinked, blinked, blinked. He had to. The light was searing; Ronan couldn’t look at it for any longer than a stolen glance, and even then, it left green contrails in his vision.

After a few seconds, Adam’s blinks grew further and further apart.

And then they were just open.

The sun reflected in his eyes, two fiery miniature suns contained in his pupils.

He was absolutely motionless.

It was an eerie image: this gaunt young man poised over the sun, his gaze unflinching and blank, something about the hang of his shoulders indicating vacancy.

Ronan watched the second hand count off time. He watched Adam’s chest rise and fall.

Five minutes. It was unnatural for someone to sit still for a minute, much less two. By five, it became truly unsettling.

Six minutes. The dark had begun to dance with many green orbs from Ronan glancing at the sun and then away as he checked Adam’s watch.

Seven minutes.

Eight.

At nine minutes, Ronan began to get antsy. He fidgeted, counting down the seconds.

At nine and a half, Adam began to scream.

It was such an awful sound that, at first, Ronan was pinned in place.

It was not a proper scream, anything that conscious Adam would have done, even in pain. It was a high, thin, reedy sound, like something being torn in two. It didn’t waver. It threw back Adam’s head and buckled his shoulders and let the sun roll across the comforter.

It was the sound of something that knew it was dying.

The dim walls of the room felt like they absorbed it. Somehow this scream would always be embedded in the plaster, needled into the supports of the house, gasping in the places no one ever saw. Somehow there would always be a thing that would never be happy and whole again.

“Adam,” Ronan said.

Adam stopped breathing.

“Adam.”

Ronan seized Adam’s shoulders and shook. The moment he released him, Adam slumped down and away. An unconscious body has an uncompromising feel to it; it is uninterested in reason and emotion.

“Parrish,” Ronan snarled. “You aren’t allowed—”

He pulled Adam up and held him close, feeling for breath, for pulse. Nothing, nothing.

The seconds tilted by.

Adam’s body didn’t breathe. Adam’s mind wheeled, untethered, through infinite dreamspace. Wherever it was, it didn’t recall Adam Parrish, Harvard student; Adam Parrish, Henrietta-born; Adam Parrish, Ronan Lynch’s lover. Adam Parrish, cut loose from his physical body, was fascinated by things so ephemeral and huge that these tiny human concerns didn’t even register.