Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1)(70)

“I don’t want a monologue,” Ronan said.

All around us the world is falling asleep, but no one’s looking out their window anymore to mark it. Dreamers are dying. Dreamers are being killed. We are not immortal. And the things we dream … What is a dream without its dreamer? It’s an animal in a room without air. It’s man on a dead planet. It’s religion without a god. They sleep without us because they must.

Ronan called, “Why did you save me?”

Bryde said, “Why do I have to get something out of it?”

This

was

different.

Ronan spun in a circle, looking for someone else in the forest. This voice had not been amorphous, coming from everywhere. This voice had weight and timbre. This voice had moved through space to get to him. This voice belonged to a body.

“I’m not going to show myself,” Bryde said, his voice sharper, either through reality or circumstance.

“I could make you,” Ronan said, and knew it was true. When he felt like this, dreaming on his ley line, dreaming of his forest, he could do nearly anything.

“I believe you,” Bryde replied. Ronan turned just in time to see the edge of a shadow, the movement of mist. Something had just been there. “But do you want to see each other or do you want to trust each other?”

Ronan didn’t know what he wanted.

Overhead, he heard Chainsaw caw. He knew it was not really his Chainsaw; it was another dream version of her. It didn’t matter; he liked hearing her, and he was in no danger of manifesting anything he didn’t want when he was dreaming like this.

“Would you save a dying dreamer?” Bryde asked. “Even if you didn’t know them?”

“Yes,” Ronan answered immediately.

“There are factors affecting that yes. There are costs, you know. Emotional costs. Philanthropy is a hobby for the emotionally rich.”

Rain pattered down on the leaves around him and onto Ronan’s shoulders. He could feel its wetness but his clothing remained undampened: dream rules.

“Next box,” Bryde said. “Next box. Throw a pebble. Hop. Jump. Closer to the center. There’s another dreamer, and she’s dying. Or she will be. Will you save her?”

Another dreamer. “Yes.”

“Don’t just say yes. Think about it. Think about what it means.”

This was stupid. Ronan was no hero, but he knew fucking right from fucking wrong. It didn’t matter if it was another dreamer. The answer was the same either way. A child knew the answer to this question. “Yes.”

“It is not as easy as you think,” Bryde said. “It’s not pull a lever receive a prize. There are a lot of ways to die.”

Ronan was getting impatient.

“You want me to trust you?” Bryde asked. “Save her. Really save her. It’s going to mean telling her what you are. It will cost you, emotionally.”

“Did it cost you to save me?”

There was a long silence. The mist shimmered darkly in the trees. The rain sighed.

Bryde said finally, “You are the most expensive thing I have ever saved.”

An address dropped into Ronan’s knowledge. Just like that. McLean, Virginia. He could see the shape of the drive there. He could see the house the address belonged to. He could see a red Supra in the driveway. A garden designed by a frantic and frustrated chess set designer. A back door, unlocked, a back staircase, a long hallway, a room entirely in black and gold.

“Is that where she is?” Ronan asked.

Bryde whispered, “Better drive like the fucking wind, boy.”





44

The air in the bathroom was gone.

It was hard to tell how long it had been gone. Long enough that Jordan was already drowning. She had begun dying at some point before she opened her eyes and she was already well into the process now.

Her lungs were howling.

Water was everywhere. The room was full of it, tile to ceiling, complete with it. Towels undulated like sea slugs, toilet paper kelp thrashed in a receding wave. Jordan was just another thing floating in it. Hennessy, too.

Hennessy looked dead.

She was expressionless. Her arms and legs drifting like a corpse.

But she wasn’t dead, or Jordan wouldn’t be awake. She was paralyzed. She must have brought back a copy.

Focus, Jordan told herself.

Her body screamed for air, but the priority was getting Hennessy air. If Hennessy died, it was endgame for both of them.

She swam to Hennessy, kicking off her boots on the way, pushing off the edge of the shower glass to propel herself. When she gripped Hennessy’s wrist, her pulse was slow and violent, palpable even in this situation. Dreaming another copy was working its foul consequence on Hennessy, even though the paralysis meant she couldn’t react to it yet.

She was dead weight. Jordan had already moved past the lights sparking in her vision part of dying and straight into the darkness shuttering either side of it part. She tried to get some momentum by kicking off the ceiling, but everything was strange and unfamiliar, too hard, too impossible to remember.

Suddenly Hennessy jerked, nearly pulling out of Jordan’s grip. Jordan tightened her fingers and was towed. Forward. Down.

Hennessy’s legs still drifted, paralyzed.

But still she jerked forward through the gritty water.