Dream looked at Alicia. “I don’t care which of you is right. All I know is our odds of getting out of here alive are dropping by the second. Let’s get the hell out of Dodge, girls.”
Alicia grunted. “You see me arguing? Let’s go.”
They climbed over the guardrail and began to walk toward the empty car. The Accord’s trunk was standing open, Dream’s keys dangling from the lock. Dream slid a sidelong glance in Alicia’s direction, noted that her friend seemed a bit distracted, and said, “Alicia.”
Alicia blinked and looked at her. “Yeah?”
Dream strove to keep her voice nonchalant as she said, “Get Karen in the car. I need to get something out of the trunk.”
Alicia shrugged. “Sure.”
They arrived at the Accord. All four doors stood open, and its dome light was on. The empty car looked like an abandoned spaceship in the dim moonlight. Alicia busied herself with Karen, who was mumbling something else about monsters, and Dream went to the open trunk, where she began a quick inspection of its contents. Shane’s Eddie Bauer bag was tucked in a corner behind Alicia’s scuffed green suitcase.
Dream’s heart accelerated as she reached for the bag, grasped it, and pulled it closer. She peered around the open hood, saw that Alicia was in the backseat next to Karen, who apparently was again in need of comfort. Dream relaxed a little, tugged the zipper open, and began to sort through Shane’s things.
There was an array of typical vacation wear, ranging from Hawaiian shirts and sandals to ugly, floral-print boxers and droopy cargo pants. Wedged into a side panel was a porn magazine devoted exclusively to depictions of girls getting it on with other girls. Poor Karen. The deceased sleazebag didn’t merit her grief. She experienced a dark awareness-that she was bothered more by the manner of Shane’s death than the actual fact of his death.
She waited for a flicker of guilt.
She sighed.
It wasn’t forthcoming.
Forget about shadowy creatures lurking in the woods, she thought, the real monster is right under your noses, girls.
The gun was tucked into the same side panel. Dream carefully extracted it, set it down in the trunk well, and zipped up Shane’s bag. She put the Eddie Bauer bag back in the trunk, opened her own bag, and slipped the Glock beneath a pile of flimsy tops and panties. She zipped the bag shut, closed the trunk, took the keys from the lock, and got into the car.
Alicia said, “Find what you were looking for?”
Dream thought she detected an accusatory note in her friend’s voice. Alicia wasn’t dumb. She knew Dream was vulnerable, and she no doubt remembered Karen’s remark about the gun. It was a simple equation-suicidal friend plus availability of deadly weapon equals a ton of trouble.
“No.” Dream put a key in the ignition and started the Accord. “I was looking for Shane’s gun.” She amazed herself by keeping her voice steady as she slightly embellished the part of her statement that was a lie. “I thought we might need it, but I didn’t see it right away, so I gave up.”
She put the car in gear and pulled away from the shoulder of the road.
Alicia grunted. “Yeah, okay”
Dream was able to read Alicia pretty well after all these years. She didn’t entirely buy Dream’s story, but she wasn’t too concerned by it either. Or maybe she was just too tired to voice open skepticism. Whatever the case, she obviously wasn’t about to give Dream a lot of grief over it.
Dream relaxed a little.
Things were falling into place.
Soon they would reach a place where Shane’s death could be reported, and a little while after that they would retreat to hotel rooms. There, alone at last, she would open her bag and meet her fate.
She drove deeper into the night.
And tried to imagine how it would feel to finally be free.
The shapeshifter stepped through a line of trees and surveyed the access road that lead to Below’s primary tunnel entrance. There was no indication of shapeshifter activity in the vicinity, so it stepped onto the road, slung its unconscious human cargo over its shoulder, and began to run.
The creature experienced an echo of emotion from another lifetime. From the time before the change-before he’d come to this land of strange creatures and dark forces, a land where he lived a very different existence from the one he’d known before. Here he roamed the haunted woods, hunting and eating in the old ways, feasting on the flesh of unfortunate wanderers who’d found themselves lost in this place. It was a primal, sensual existence, exhilarating in ways savage and oddly wonderful. He loved the taste of raw flesh, of blood spurting fresh from severed arteries into his mouth.
Yes!
The glorious exultation of bloodlust indulged was a delight without equal. Something like sadness filled him now as he began to realize he had tasted human flesh for the last time. He regretted that his time in this nocturnal wonderland was nearing an end, but this angst was tempered by the promise of an even better place. An exalted place beyond this physical realm. A paradise. The word emerged from long-dormant memory banks, those reservoirs of human knowledge he’d rarely tapped since The Change.
Paradise.
That place promised him by The Other.
She’d come to him in the forest one night, naked and beautiful, long raven-black hair spilling over milk-white breasts. Walking into the clearing where he sat finishing his latest meal, the forearm of a man whose guts lay steaming on the forest floor. He didn’t experience the expected fresh flare of hunger, and he soon realized why-the woman, The Other, wasn’t human.
Not anymore.
The Master had changed her.
Her dark eyes instilled fear in him. He wanted to drop the food and run, to plunge deep into the forest and erase from his memory the image of the woman’s compelling countenance. He was guided by pure instinct most of the time now, ancient and primal urges, but the woman exuded a power that overwhelmed instinct-that overwhelmed, obliterated, any ability or desire to rebel or resist her will.
She was almost as powerful as The Master.
And he belonged to her the moment she projected that power Into his mind, telling him with images the things she wanted him to do. Tempting him with images of a reward so sweet his fear of The Master’s wrath was all but extinguished.
She had taken him on the forest floor.
Plying him with sex magic.
Inducing a temporary reversion to his human form.
Still, he’d howled at the moment of release, bucking into her like the wild beast he would again be when she left him, and the feeling was better than the taste of warm blood in his mouth. Better than anything.
And it was only the beginning.
She showed him this, too.
It was a promise of things to come.
A glimpse of paradise.
A glimpse that allowed him to put aside the dimmer sense of loss and plunge through the tunnel mouth without hesitation. Long legs took him through the winding tunnel at a rate even the fastest human couldn’t hope to match, taking him deep beneath the surface of the earth. He knew the terrain of the tunnel as well as he knew his hunting ground Above, and he moved nimbly through the darkness, never once stumbling.
Down he went.
His passenger light as a feather over his shoulder.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Until he came around a bend and saw light. The light illuminated a building surrounded by a chain-link fence. A human stood at an open gate. The shapeshifter’s nostrils twitched and his mouth filled with drool, but he
