“You will.” The woman, for the first time I could remember, was earnest. “You’re her mother. You’ll find her when the time is right. You need to be more careful, though. If Emma gets her hands on that child ...”
“Then I’ll kill her,” Zoe hissed. “I’ll rip her entrails from her stomach and feed them to her over and over again, healing her each time so I can make her suffer.”
I cringed at the visual she painted while the dream interloper stood straighter.
“You have a creative mind, mage.” The woman smirked. “Perhaps Cernunnos was right about you after all.”
Now I was really confused. “Cernunnos? Are you talking about the horned god of fertility?” I’d studied mythology a bit in my down time — who didn’t love a good legend? — and he was always one of the gods who stood out to me.
“That would be the one,” Zoe gritted out.
I was flabbergasted. “You know him?” A story niggled at the back of my brain. “Wait. He’s the one who razed Covenant College for you.”
“Cernunnos is one of the overseers of this realm,” the woman explained. “He’s wise of words and deeds. He deserves respect and reverence.”
Zoe rolled her eyes. “He lives in a hole in the ground and talks in riddles. Bob is not all that.”
“Bob?” I asked. “Who is Bob?”
“The god,” Aric replied. “He’s not important to this story. If you want to talk about him later, more power to you. I want to talk about Sami right now. Do you know where she is?”
“No, but the good news is that Emma doesn’t know where she is either,” she replied. “She’s determined to get that book. She’s convinced herself that Sami is the only one who can deliver the tome to her. That’s why she wanted the girl in the first place.”
Zoe’s head slowly dipped back and forth as she moved in a circle. “Emma wants the book because ... well, it doesn’t really matter why she wants it. She wants ultimate power, or to smite some enemy. All the excuses are the same. The vampires from Covenant College joined with the vampires who settled here. She took control of the survivors from your massacre and mine and made a new army. Then she threw in some displaced shifters for good measure because that allowed her soldiers who walked in the day. She sent the vampires after us in an effort to get us to come here. She leaked the information about the vampire army because she knew we would want to fight it rather than sit back and wait. She set all of this up.”
“Not for Sami,” Aric noted. “She never wanted Sami.”
“She understood that Sami was the one thing that would get you to act,” I surmised. “It’s all been about the book.”
“A book that no longer exists,” Zoe muttered, shifting from one foot to the other. “Somehow she found out that we had the book and assumes we still have it.”
The woman arched an eyebrow. “Are you saying you don’t have the book? If so, that would solve a lot of problems.”
“I’m saying that I understand what’s going on now,” Zoe replied, forcing a smile that resembled a grimace more than anything else. “I appreciate the warning. You didn’t have to insert yourself into the situation and you did. Because of that, Sami is safe. Sure, she’s still alone and plotting some fantastical prison break to get her vampire back, but she’s alive. We have to figure out a way to find her that won’t tip off Emma. If she gets Sami, she’s going to have all the power.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” the woman agreed. “What are you going to do now?”
Zoe rested her head against Aric’s chest and closed her eyes. She looked exhausted, as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. “We’ll figure it out, like we always do.”
WE WOKE IN THE SAME POSITION as when we’d drifted off. Aric was already consoling his wife when I opened my eyes. My dream stalker hadn’t said goodbye. She’d merely offered up a wave and a nod and sent us on our way.
Now we were back on our plane and had no idea how to find Sami Winters. It was the middle of the night and yet we were a long way from respite.
I jerked when the storage room door swung open and Raisin entered. A quick glance at the clock on the wall told me it was well past four in the morning, which meant Raisin should have been returned to her grandmother’s house hours before.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out, confused.
Raisin pulled back in surprise and gave me a long once-over. “Are you just waking up from that thing you were doing? That was like six hours ago.”
“Time isn’t always a flat line,” Zoe said as she stretched. “Is something wrong, Raisin?” She didn’t sound impatient as much as curious. “Did you remember something?”
“No, but I heard something.” Raisin lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I heard something in my head.”
“What?” I asked, curious. “What did you hear?”
“Sami. She’s been talking to me. At first I thought it was a dream or something, but now I’m not so sure. She wanted me to find you and tell you something. She said it was important.”
If Zoe was dubious, she didn’t show it. “Lay it on me.”
“She said the eclipse is coming and that everything would happen then. She said to look to the sky when it happens because the moon is going to turn red. Then she said a bunch of other stuff that made no sense.”
Aric leaned closer to Raisin. “Are you sure that’s what she said?”
Raisin gnawed on her lip and nodded. “Yeah. She said the moon is about to run red and to take shelter. She said her mom would know what to do.” The look the teenager shot Zoe was hopeful. “So, do
