One True Mate: Shifter's Solace (Kindle Worlds Novella)(3)
First of all there were the dreams. Dreams about completely mundane things – a broken coffee cup, a brief conversation, the specific piece of muzak playing in an elevator. She’d certainly had much weirder dreams, but the thing about these particular dreams was…she thought they were coming true. She remembered the feeling of numb shock as her coffee cup had slipped from her fingers and seemed to be falling in slow motion, before hitting the floor and cracking down the middle, spilling its contents in a constellation of fat droplets just so, just like it had in her dream.
But they couldn’t be coming true, of course, because that was nuts. Which meant she was nuts.
She shook the thought away. She’d got a busy few hours ahead of her, and spending the time fretting wouldn’t make it go any faster.
*
Two hours later, and she’d cleared away most of the stacks of paper between the cooker and the couch. Her hands and forearms were filthy with newsprint, and her hair was sticking to her sweaty face. She ran the back of her hand over her forehead, then swore when she realized she’d probably just smeared herself with ink. She flumped down onto the couch. It coughed out a cloud of dust, making her choke.
Next to the couch, she spotted a pile of clothes – relatively clean; presumably the things her mom had actually worn day-to-day rather than “stock”, which was how she’d referred to the rest of the junk she hoarded. Ivy reached down, intending to find something to tie around her mouth and nose before she tried to tackle the couch, but instead her fingers encountered something cool and smooth – a little wooden box.
She picked it up and looked at it curiously. She knew it wouldn’t contain a wedding band - her parents had never been married. In fact, she didn’t know very much about her father at all. Usually when she’d asked about him, her mom had changed the subject, or got either snappish or sad. The only times she’d talked about him had been when she was off her meds, and then the things she’d told Ivy had been… Well, obviously unreliable. Delusional. She’d said he was an—
She opened the lid of the box and gasped as she hooked her finger into the delicate chain and lifted the pendant from the box. It looked like real gold. It depicted the shining form of an angel, its head bowed, a glittering crystal sphere cradled between its tiny hands. Its wings swept up behind it, as if it was preparing for flight.
As the jewelry spun on the end of its chain, she saw that the other side of the pendant depicted the towering form of a bear, rearing on its hind legs, its jaws open in a ferocious bellow. Its eyes were tiny chips of the same crystal.
She lifted the piece, watching as it twisted on the end of its fine gold chain, first the angel, then the bear, then the angel. She felt hypnotized, as if an old-timey stage magician were swinging a watch in front of her eyes. Angel. Bear. Angel.
Ivy let the pendant dangle just above her hand, hesitating for a moment, then lowered it onto her palm. It felt cool and heavy.
She jerked as though a bolt of electricity had gone through her, and her fingers spasmed shut around the piece of jewelry. Her hand locked into a fist. She tried to cry out, but the sound choked off in her throat.
The room disappeared – the stacks and sprawling piles of paper, the battered old stove, the dusty couch – and was replaced by darkness and a sensation of dread. She couldn’t move, and she didn’t know whether she was bound with ropes or by fear. She was blind and helpless, and there was a wild, pungent scent in the air – musk and fur; something feral and unpleasant. Like an animal.
But worst of all was the feeling that came over her. A sense of being held against her will. Of helplessness, and impotent anger. And beneath that, vast and dark, like a gigantic rising shadow under the waves, a sense of great evil.
It was so strong, so fundamentally wrong, that it made her retch. The world slammed back, like a blow to the face, and she gasped for breath, the pendant dropping from her suddenly nerveless fingers and falling into a pile of papers.
She stared down at it, her heart banging in her chest, trying to slow her breathing from panicky gasps to something more measured. Had the pendant given her a…a vision? Or was this another delusion? Was she losing her grip on reality?
She hesitated, then she reached down for the golden angel, wrapping the chain around her fingers, careful not to touch the pendant itself. Okay, so probably she was going crazy, but she didn’t intend to take any chances. The vision, or delusion, or whatever it had been, had rocked her.
As she picked up the pendant, a spider ran over the back of her hand, all skittering multi-jointed legs and jerky stop-motion movement. She shrieked and jerked back, dislodging the spider, but now there were more. Another six, another dozen, running over the pile of papers and scattering across the room, fast and erratic on their eight spindly legs.
Ivy turned, then stopped in her tracks, frozen to the spot. The stacks of paper around the room were swarming with fat spiders, their bodies like glistening blood blisters, their legs spiky and horribly quick. There were hundreds of them. Thousands.
And where their legs brushed the paper, it started to smoulder. As the spiders scurried over the stacks, sparks and tiny flames started up, spreading quickly until ribbons of fire crackled across the stacks.
Ivy whirled around, panicked. Hadn’t she thought earlier that the place would go up like dry tinder if she dropped a match? Had that been another premonition? But how were the spiders spreading the fire?
She shook her head to clear it. She was hallucinating. She had to be. What was happening made no sense. But the choking, acrid scent of smoke was all too real, and something inside her – some deep instinct – told her that she couldn’t afford to believe it was all in her head.