“More than I can count since I was a child. But it’s always the same dream—an overwhelming sense of betrayal. And the knife.”
The knife. He swallowed. “What was the dream now? What could be worse than dying so many times?”
His stomach turned. He had no doubt that she remembered it all accurately—the feelings, both physical and emotional. They wouldn’t be normal dreams, created from imagination and suggestion. They would be ingrained memories, which in Boudica’s case were full of tragedy and misery.
“I’m tied up and being carried over the shoulder of the same man who holds me while I die. I couldn’t… I couldn’t control any of it.” She pushed away from him and climbed out of bed. It was cold in the room, but she didn’t seem to notice as she began to pace, her eyes distant, with the waxy look of a person about to be ill.
“It was cold. Raining in a never-ending drizzle. I was so angry with him, probably because he was abducting me, and I was screaming at him, trying to reason with him. But he wouldn’t listen, and carried me to a small round house in the middle of the woods. I could only think, Not now. He can’t keep me from this. I must be there. Everything depends upon this.” She stopped by the window, her hands tightly gripping the stone sill as she gazed out.
“But he left me there. Tied up and alone.” She drew in a ragged breath. “While my daughters needed me. God, I was scared. And mad. Maybe that’s why I felt betrayed when I died.”
“You won’t die again. I’m going to protect you, lassie.” His voice, his vow, was fierce.
She turned and gave him a wan but appreciative smile. Then her gaze turned questioning. “But why did he lock me up? Make me a prisoner?”
Cadan looked away.
“Tell me. This is something you know, isn’t it? Who are the girls? Did I really have daughters?”
“You know that I canna say, lassie.” Would he if he could? He knew now how much her dreams must bother her, how much she hated being out of control. This was the worst iteration yet of her nightmares.
“No, I know that you won’t say.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Esha tapped her foot and scowled at the zero that popped up next to Missed Calls on her phone. As if he could sense her anger, the Chairman stalked around her workspace, tail twitching. It had been two days since she had gone to Warren with her information about the underground. She hadn’t heard from him, and who knew what could be happening down there?
“Doesn’t he realize this is important?” she asked the Chairman as she paced.
He hissed absently, as if he were saying bastard. At least, that’s what she liked to think. He was probably just sweetening her up for potential tuna.
“That was the biggest mess of evil I’ve ever seen.”
She was fed up. Fed up with not being taken seriously, fed up with being an outcast, and fed up with Warren. She was done playing Little Miss Nice Soulceress, and she was going to do something about it. The Chairman looked at her balefully.
“All right. I guess I’ve never been Little Miss Nice Soulceress. But let’s go. I want to check out the underground again.”
She was feeling good today. She’d passed by a huge contingent of witches this afternoon—off to some party she hadn’t been invited to, probably—and she’d picked up an enormous burst of power from them. They would barely notice the lack, and it would regenerate anyway, but she was ready for anything that came at her. She was almost drunk with the power.
“Get a move on, Chairman, we’re blowing this lemonade stand.”
She grabbed her keys off the table near the door and sailed out of the room, heading for her car. She didn’t want aetherwalking to burn off some of her power and the Chairman loved the ride, often standing with his front paws on the dash while he stared intently out the front window.
Soon, they were creeping through the underground gloom once again. Only this time, they knew where they were headed. The Chairman stalked ahead of her, not bothering with minor scents scattered here and there. He was hunting big game, and this mysterious evil was the biggest they’d ever found. They reached the large chamber in less than thirty minutes, anxious to see if it had changed.
“Slow down, Chairman,” Esha whispered.
They hovered in the entrance, peering into the darkness as she made her fireball glow brighter. It smelled just as stale and rancid as it had the other night. Once again, she had to amp up the power to the orb of light in her hand. A flashlight would have worked as well, but it wasn’t nearly as cool. Apparently she only cared about wasting power when it came to things that made her look less like a badass. Oh well, a girl had to have her priorities.
As the light expanded, Esha made out the edges of writhing shadows. The Chairman hissed when one leapt out toward them, but they were still a good twenty feet away. Hadn’t the shadows been farther from the entrance the other night? Yes, definitely.
Yet these shadows were big and strong enough that she could almost get a feeling for the nature of the evil. She breathed deeply and exhaled with a shudder.
“Chairman, come here.” Contact with her familiar would amplify her powers and possibly allow her to figure out where the shadows were from.
The Chairman wound himself around her legs, staring intently, ceaselessly, at the shadows. His citrine eyes glowed, and when Esha closed hers, images and feelings began to fly at her from the tangle of shadows. Desperation, fear, rage, and a sick kind of joy made her stomach turn. Souls gathered and writhed around one stronger force.
Images began to form behind her eyelids—not of a person, as she expected, but of a place that was gloomy gray, broken only by details of black and red. A river. A boat, with a ferryman standing in the bow, punting his way across the river. People—no, souls—huddled behind him in the boat.