Liquid black gold—coffee, that was, not oil–filled my cup in a steady stream as I took a moment to think over what I had to say next. It was becoming all too easy to turn on each other, to lay blame at everyone else’s doorstep when that was the exact opposite of what Kit would have wanted us to do.
“Look, I’m not saying it’s pointless.” I clarified my statement before the twins could get any more worked up. “I’m just saying that when her magic returned, it seemed to come with a certain level of control and expertise you’re not giving her credit for. Not to mention River’s powers, whatever they might be.”
“So, what do you suggest then?” Caleb bit back, his jaw tight with frustration. “Just give up? Move on with our lives and pretend she never existed?”
“Meanwhile, she is doing fuck only knows what to fuck knows who,” Austin added in a dark mutter.
I rolled my eyes and dragged a hand through my shoulder length hair. There hadn’t been any time to trim in since getting back from Caora… and Kit had seemed to kind of like it.
“That’s not what I was saying either,” I corrected them, taking a sip of my coffee to gather some patience. “She has both of your powers. Maybe not quite as strong as you guys, but she’s damn well got enough. So, I just think that if we’re going to find her—them—then it won’t be by using magic. Not yours, anyway.”
“He’s right,” Vali’s voice crackled through the loudspeaker of my cellphone sitting on the kitchen table. “It’s been over four weeks, and she’s still three steps ahead of us.”
The twins both glanced at the phone, then turned to look at me with arms folded. Damn those identical assholes for doubling the intensity of that glare.
“What’s your idea, Wes?” Cole’s voice came down the phone. The dragons had been continuing with their undercover work in shifter fight clubs in the hopes that someone might lead them to Bridget, but so far, they’d had no luck.
“Mine is the only magic she’s not tapped into, right?” I raised a brow at the twins, and Caleb gave a grudging nod. “So, it’s the only magic she can’t counter. You already know I’m the only one that has been able to catch even those small glimpses of her as it is.”
I wasn’t bragging, it was the truth. Using my ability to borrow crow-sight, I’d been able to catch sight of Kit and River a handful of times in the past month. She knew too. Every time, I managed only the shortest glimpse of her before she spotted me and portaled to a new location, usually one where no crows were in the vicinity.
“I thought you’d been trying to reach out to her via dreamscape already?” Vali asked, the phone speaker jostling like he was running.
“I have,” I agreed. “She hasn’t been sleeping. Or at least not at any of the times I’ve reached out to her. I was thinking of trying River this time.”
Austin scowled at me, and I ignored him to take another sip of my coffee. Three years without it in Caora had seriously turned me into as big an addict as Kit.
“If Kit hasn’t been sleeping, what makes you think River has?” he challenged me, and I sighed. Trying to explain the intricacies of dreamwalking to someone who had never experienced it was… tedious.
“I don’t,” I countered instead. “But I’m sort of wondering, River was really concerned about being changed because he identified that hellhound part of himself as a separate entity, right? Like he would lose control and the hound would take over?” The twins nodded, but still weren’t following my train of thought. “Okay, so if that is the case, then I’m wondering if River—the human part of him that we know—is lying dormant inside the back of the hound’s consciousness, sort of like how he was keeping it locked up.”
“Sort of like he’s sleeping, even though the hound is awake?” Caleb pondered aloud, and I nodded.
“Exactly. Or hopefully. Worth a try, though?”
“Anything is worth a try at this stage,” Cole agreed, also sounding slightly out of breath like his brother. “Guys, we need to hang up; we ran into a spot of trouble here and need to fly.”
Caleb snorted a laugh. “Literally.”
“I’ll be back at the house tomorrow; Vali is heading to Omega to check on things there,” Cole informed us, then hung up the call before we could respond. Typical.
“Looks like it’s past your bedtime then, kid,” Austin teased me, and I glared at him.
“Except we’re the same age now, douchebag,” I pointed out, and he shrugged.
“Time passed in magical realms doesn’t count; you’re still the youngest.” Austin placed his own empty mug down on the bench and headed for the door, grabbing his keys as he went. “I’m going for a drive; call me if you have any luck.”
“Will do,” I replied as he breezed out of the house and left Cal and I alone. “How about you? Plans tonight?”
He nodded, not looking particularly happy about the answer. “Mage shit. I never realized how many issues Yoshi and Jackson had to deal with.”
I grinned; the idea of Caleb in any position of responsibility still made me chuckle. “Just keep your fangs to yourself and you’ll be fine. I’ll let you know what I come up with in regards to River, anyway. Hopefully something.”
Caleb clapped me on the shoulder in an encouraging way. “You’ll figure it out, Wes. You’re smart as shit, remember?”
I rolled my eyes at his teasing, but I was hoping he was right. Could I outthink this situation we’d ended up in? I needed to, really. Every day that passed without Kit and River was driving tensions between the five of us higher and higher. I hated to think what the state of our “team” would be if it went on much longer.
No, I needed to get a location on them fast. I didn’t spend three years in an alternative realm only to come back and lose both Kit and the team I considered family.
Draining the last of my coffee, I rinsed out my mug and then headed upstairs to my bedroom. It was time to get to work.
Opening my eyes into the familiar mist that was my dreamscape, I waved a hand and didn’t bother to form my surroundings into any particular landscape. My objective wasn’t to bring anyone else into my dream; it was the other way around. I was seeking to enter River’s dream, if he was indeed in a sleep-like state. It made sense in my logical mind, so hopefully I wasn’t wrong.
My fingers outstretched, I plucked at the dreamers’ threads, sorting through all the dreams around me. Searching.
As usual, Kit’s was nowhere to be found. Could she really survive on no sleep for over a month? Possibly. We really had only begun to understand what her species was capable of.
River was another matter. While his hellhound may not need rest, I was confident I would find him tucked away in sleep. It was likely to be the hound’s version of payback for all the years he’d been contained in a cage within River’s mind.
Sure enough, after sorting through countless threads, I touched on one that rang with familiarity and kicked myself for being idiot enough not to try this sooner.
Tweaking the thread with just the right dose of my badbh magic, I dove headfirst into whatever River was currently dreaming.
Which was… nothing?
“River?” I called out into the pitch black, hearing my voice echo as a chill ran down my spine. No response met me, so I tried again, “Alpha?”
This time something other than my own voice bounced back at me. From somewhere in front of me, a low, humorless laugh carried through the darkness, and I flicked my fingers to bring some light into the dream.
Manipulating someone else’s dream was nowhere near as easy as manipulating my own dreamscape. It was doable, but I needed to work within the confines of what the dreamer’s own mind would allow. In this case, the best River’s subconscious allowed was a naked light bulb hanging over his cage, casting all sorts of terrifying shadows.
“Hey, boss man,” I cautiously greeted the scruffy man crouched within the cage. The cage couldn’t have been more than four feet high and wide, so he had no choice but to sit or crouch; there was no possible way he could stand or lie down. Was this how he had been since we’d seen him last?
River raised his head, peering at me with bloodshot eyes as he scoffed. “Wesley, huh? This is new. Usually it’s just memories of Kitten that haunt me here.”
“Oh fuck,” I whispered, quickly working out that River wasn’t inside this dream of his own volition. This was revenge, no doubt, from the hound. And had he been deliberately sending memories of Kit to taunt River? Or were they a creation of River’s own guilty conscience?
“Hey, so, this doesn’t look like much fun. Want me to break you out?” I offered in a bright tone, hoping to give him a little hope. The desperation in his golden eyes was all but killing me inside. How could I not have thought to reach him sooner? We’d all been so focused on Kit…
“You’re here on a dreamwalk, huh?” River asked, scratching at his month-old beard. At least he still had his wits enough about him to know I wasn’t a figment of his imagination or something. That would have annoyed the crap out of me.
I nodded as I inspected the cage he was in. “Yup, I took a guess that although the, uh, other you was still awake, this part of you might be ‘sleeping’ so to speak. Looks like I was right.”
“Good guess, Crow,” River murmured, shifting his weight to lean on the bars. “Not that it does me any damn good. That bastard is having too much fun to let me out now.”
“You can’t let yourself out?” I asked, then felt stupid when River gave me a disparaging glare. “Of course not, or you would have done so already. Uh, okay well, where does this thing open? I’ll see what I can do.”
“It doesn’t,” he replied with a sigh. “Payback really is a bitch. This is the cage I constructed inside my own mind to keep him at bay when I first felt him back when I was a kid. There is no door or opening, I literally constructed it around him and just kept strengthening the bars. After Kitten…” He paused, sucking in a breath. “After she changed me, I had the briefest moment where I thought I had control and that it wasn’t going to be as bad as I thought. Next minute, the world went up in flames, and I blacked out. When I woke up, I was here.”
Running a hand through my hair, I processed what he was saying. “That must have been when Kit said you shifted into a white wolf… makes sense. That was when you were still fully in control, and then when the hound took over, you got booted out of the driver’s seat.”
“Sounds plausible.” River shrugged. He looked exhausted. Beaten and defeated. It was not a good look, and certainly never one I’d thought to see on our intimidating team leader.
“Are you aware of what’s going on in the world? Do you happen to know where you are right now?” He had just said he knew the hound was having “too much fun,” so maybe he had some useful knowledge.
River gave me a sad smile and shook his head. “I wish I did, Crow. You have no idea how badly I want to help you guys find him—me. Kit isn’t safe with him, despite the fact that he seems loyal to her. I’m scared for her safety, and I know you blokes are the only ones who can save her from herself.”
Frowning, I stared back at him for a long time. “I think you’re wrong.”
His brows shot up in surprise. “Pardon me?”
“I said, I think you’re wrong. Despite the fact that your hellhound form has manifested with what seems like a totally separate consciousness, you are, in fact, one and the same. His loyalty to Kit proves this. He won’t hurt her because you would never hurt her. I suspect the only way you’ll get out is by both of you accepting that the other is merely a different side of the same coin.” River scowled at me, and I awkwardly backed up a step. “But what would I know? You’re definitely the first hellhound I have ever met.”
He didn’t respond for some time, then his eyes softened somewhat. “Maybe you’re right,” he said softly. “But I don’t see that happening any time soon. In the meantime, will you visit me here? It has been a bit… lonely. To say the very least.”
“I can imagine,” I replied, glancing around the dark space. “Just all this blackness and the occasional visit from a Kit memory?”
“Trust me, they’re more painful than you think,” he muttered, and I didn’t press him any further on the subject.
He sighed heavily again and rubbed his face with dirty hands. “I’ll keep an eye out, in case he slips up and lets me see anything, but in the meantime, don’t waste your energy here. Report back to the boys and come up with another plan to find us. We can’t stay off the radar forever.”
“Yes sir,” I confirmed, falling back into old habits.
“How is the team?” he asked, just before I was about to leave.
I hesitated, not wanting to tell him we were all falling apart and at each other’s throats, but that small pause must have said it for me.
“I figured as much,” he responded to my silence. “Hard as it might be right now, the only way you’ll get her back is if you all work together. Tell Vali he needs to step up and take ownership with Omega, and Cole needs to cut his brother some slack. As for the twins?” He paused then. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hazard a guess that Caleb is the one being responsible, and Austin is sulking?” I nodded. “Well, tell Austin to pull his head out of his ass, would you?”
“You got it, Alpha,” I agreed with a grin. “Hang in there. I’ll come back and visit again soon, hopefully with news.”
“Just keep the team alive, Wes,” he implored me. “I’ll get out of here eventually.”
With a small salute, I released my mental grip on River’s dream-thread and bookmarked it, so I could find it easily next time I entered my dreamscape.
While he hadn’t given me the easy answers I’d hoped for, it was a huge relief to have spoken with him. He was alive and still sane. So far. It gave me a hell of a lot more faith that things would work out than I’d had earlier in the day.
