Sighing, I slid my leg across his chest and sat down. Then I touched my fingertips to his forehead and felt the familiar, swooping rush as my consciousness left my body and entered the world of Eli’s dreams.
Bright colors swirled and danced around me, vivid and hyper real. There were colors in here that didn’t have names, colors that defied imagination. His dream tasted so much sweeter than Britney’s, his fictus so much more satisfying. It had been such a long time since I’d dream-fed on anyone else that I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d grown to him until now. Like an addiction. For a moment as the dream world formed around me, I felt completely at peace and safe, all the worries about Paul and Britney and Marrow nothing but a distant memory.
The good feeling evaporated as I took in my surroundings. I appeared to have arrived in some medieval torture chamber. Strange metal devices sat on a row of wooden shelves nearby while more devices hung from the walls, including several pairs of manacles. In the center of the circular room stood a rectangular stone table inlaid with an assortment of gems and engraved with mystical symbols. Eli was lying on top of the table, seemingly asleep or unconscious. He was shirtless. Again. Great, even more distraction.
But at least Eli wasn’t the only person present. Three other people stood around the table, two men and a woman, all of them wearing long robes of light blue. One of the men held a clipboard, the other a stethoscope. The woman held a wand that she was waving back and forth over Eli.
The clipboard and stethoscope gave me pause, and I turned in a circle, taking a closer look at my surroundings. This place wasn’t a torture chamber. It was a science lab. The marbled walls had thrown me off, but the instruments on the shelves were the kind we used every day in my alchemy class—glass beakers and vials, jars of herbs and magical ingredients, even microscopes.
Feeling a little calmer, I approached the table, sidestepping around the trio of scientists. “Hey, Eli. Wake up.”
His eyes fluttered opened, and he stared up at me, confused at first. Then he smiled and sat up, giving me a nice shot of his muscle-covered backside. He swung his legs over the side of the table and peered around.
“Wow,” he said. “I can’t believe I’m dreaming about this place. Thought I’d had enough of it.”
I took a step back, making sure we kept a safe distance between us. “Is this where they did all those experiments on you today?”
“Uh-huh.” He jumped off the table and pushed his way through the scientists who remained oblivious to his presence. He examined the room. “Well, more or less.”
I didn’t bother asking him what the differences were. Now that I knew the place, it didn’t hold much interest.
I clapped my hands. “Are you ready?”
“Yep. Take us to the scene of the crime.”
Ignoring the cheese factor in his words, I closed my eyes and concentrated on the library tunnel alcove. I drew on my memories of both the actual place and the way I’d seen it in Britney’s dreams. For a while, nothing seemed to happen. I could still hear the scientists murmuring behind me. I focused harder, willing my imagination to set the scene.
Finally, I felt the dream world respond, and I opened my eyes to see a gray mist swirling around Eli and me. Then without warning, the mist vanished and the world snapped into place. It happened so hard, I staggered forward, just managing to catch my balance. I straightened and looked around. With a horrible swooping sensation, I realized we hadn’t arrived in the tunnels.
We were in my dream. My nightmare.
I stood on the top of that tall tower again, the black blanket of sky overhead seeming near enough to touch. A ferocious wind buffeted my body, forcing me back and away from the stone plinth set at the tower’s center. The moment my eyes saw the plinth all reason fled my mind as the need to read those letters took hold of me. I lurched forward, throwing my weight and the force of my will against the wind. It screamed in answer, blowing harder, determined to stop me.
I dropped to my knees and began to inch my way forward. Somewhere, as if from far away, I heard Eli shouting. “Dusty! What are you doing? Where are we?”
I glanced up long enough to see that he wasn’t far away at all, but standing over me, completely unaffected by the wind or those hidden letters on the plinth’s surface.
I tried to respond but couldn’t. Speaking would require too much effort, effort I needed to reach the plinth.
With agonizing slowness, I made my way to it. Eli’s voice and all his meaningless questions and concerns were nothing but a dull hum in my ears, a noise barely distinguishable from the wailing of the wind.
“Seriously, Dusty, you’re scaring me. What’s going on? Why aren’t you changing the dream?”
I stretched my hands toward the plinth, my eyes fixed on the faint imprint of letters. I ran my forefinger over them, again trying to read it like Braille. I could almost make out the first one.
“Come on, Dusty, talk to me. Talk to me or I’m going to kick you out of this dream, I swear it.”
His warning registered in my brain. I couldn’t let him evict me. Not until I saw the letters.
“Got to read this,” I said, panting.
“Read what?” Eli squatted down beside me. I recoiled from him, afraid we would touch by accident.
“The letters.” I clawed at the plinth, my nails quickly wearing down to nubs. I pressed on, frantic now, uncaring of the blood streaks I left on the stone as I scraped away the flesh on my fingertips.