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I plodded on. The echoes of my steps drummed on my body.
My burden hardened.
Became rock.
I pushed through a wall of invisible resistance, my passage becoming as cloying and sticky as septic mud.
Black streamed from my eyes, oozed from my pores.
I froze, and then I burned.
Staggering, I stumbled to some unknown milestone...one final hardship, that’s all it was.
One final test.
I stopped so abruptly I stumbled.
Oh my God, a test.
I could save him.
Could.
But I shouldn’t.
I sank to my knees under the weight of my burden, crying as my fingers opened and he flowed away from me.
There was a cosmic tug, and then a rush, the force of his going blowing me backward until I bent like a hairpin, doubled back onto my knees, arms stretched out over my head.
All I could do was watch him—a dwindling upside-down silhouette, going to whatever waited in the beyond.
If death came for me, would I know my way back?
I woke up gasping, an invisible weight crushing my chest.
The dreams had been real. I’d walked someone in this motel to their death.
I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. Empty. At some point, Val had left.
Slipping to my feet, I padded to the window, the curtain so threadbare I could see the lights out on the street. I pushed the material out of the way and looked out into the night.
It bothered me.
It bothered me that I hadn’t saved the dreamer.
Some things had to happen. Some things were fated.
My teeth snagged my thumbnail, and I chewed.
Whyhadn’tI saved him?
Right at the end, I’d had the sense that for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. I needed more of whatever the C had learned over the centuries. Why had the C had this power? How could I use it wisely?
Next time there would be no touching, not until I had the answers.
I slipped my fingers from my mouth, and the cold steel of the dangling handcuff hit my thigh as my hand fell.
More questions. Was I Val’s prisoner or here of my own choosing?
