Page 25 of Outside the Veil (Endangered Fae #1)

Chapter sixteen

One Step Too Far

R elieved and steadied, Diego returned to the house to assess the damage. Only one bedroom window had been shattered and only the one tree had come down. He had expected much worse.

“Miriam? I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“Damn right you did, kiddo. Who the hell’s up at this ungodly hour?” Miriam grumbled into the phone.

“Me, I suppose.” Diego winced at the stream of soft curses, probably Miriam levering her bulk up to a sitting position.

“Sorry, sorry. I just need some advice and I didn’t want to wait until too late in the day.

We had sort of a…freak windstorm last night.

Broke one of the back windows and left a huge tree across the drive.

Who should I call up here to take care of things like this? ”

“You and Finn okay, sweetie?”

No, Finn’s not. Know any good fairy surgeons? “Finn didn’t have the best night but he’ll be fine, don’t worry. I just don’t want to leave things like this since it’s a little chilly at night.”

“And I sent you up there to get away from the distractions.” Miriam snorted. “Don’t you worry your pretty head. I’ll call Jake and tell him what happened. He’ll take care of everything.”

“Jake?”

“Handyman, lumberjack, tow truck slash snowplow driver. Typical for up there, to have one guy who can handle just about everything. You don’t even have to be there. Just leave the door open for him.”

“Leave the— Miriam, I can’t go out and leave your door unlocked.”

“It’s Canada, sweetie. No one locks their doors.”

Despite her reassurances, he stayed to wait for Jake. The realization that their predicament might not have a solution spurred him to finish his manuscript. If he died because of this little jaunt into the woods, he wanted the book to live after him, his gift to Finn.

He settled down at the computer and shivered as a spider-feet crawl of chill went up his back.

With Finn piecing himself back together, he would have to face a night alone with the wendigo raging and howling around the house.

Maybe more than one night if the process took longer than Finn anticipated, or more still if he slipped away in the Dreaming too far to be called back. Oh, yes, that was the last part.

Chapter 20—The Dreaming

Thistle decides one evening the white wall in the kitchen will make a good canvas. Imagine my surprise when I wander in to find an abstract study in green and yellow in progress. This conversation takes place while I clean crayon off the wall.

“You’re angry with me.”

No, not really.

“You are. Your voice is soft but your forehead has that crease in the center and you won’t look at me.”

Okay, maybe I’m a little annoyed. But I never said you couldn’t use the walls, so how would you know?

“I do wish humans could express themselves more clearly. A simple ‘yes, what you did hurt me’ would be much preferable to hidden grudges that lead to unpleasant things.”

I’m not planning something dark and terrible; I’m cleaning the wall.

“Your pardon. Perhaps I should not include you in such statements. You do channel your anger somewhat differently.”

Would you like to tell me what made you say it? Obviously someone hurt you.

“Yes, they did, and no, I’d rather not discuss it. I spent seven hundred years in the Dreaming trying to forget, and you want me to dredge it all up again?”

You’ve mentioned the Dreaming before. Is it like the Otherworld, the place across the Veil? Could you find your way back to the court that way?

Thistle laughs. “M’dear, you are so delightful in your ignorance at times.”

So enlighten me.

“You mistake a planar shift with a state of mind. To cross the Veil is to be somewhere else. A place that shares the same sun and moon as this one, and exists in tandem with it, but is separate all the same. The Dreaming is simply another sort of consciousness. There is waking and sleeping and the Dreaming.”

Oh. So you weren’t asleep for seven hundred years?

“Not precisely, no. I wasn’t awake either.”

And I’m the one who’s supposed to be unclear.

“Try to explain sleep to someone who has no inkling of what it is.”

Good point.

Thistle gnaws on a sparerib bone while he thinks. “The Dreaming is a state of refuge. You wrap the magic tight around you, a shield against prying eyes and minds. It gives one time to heal, to reweave oneself.”

It’s a place to hide.

“No!” Thistle pulls his feet up onto the chair and rests his chin on his knees. “Yes. In dire straits and heartbreak. I never claimed to be terribly brave.”

Jake turned out to be cheerful, practical and completely unperturbed by the passage of a half-acre wide windstorm.

“That’s spring weather for you, eh? We get some weird stuff out here.

Small tornado, probably.” He shrugged and directed the two young men with him to get out the chainsaws.

“Billy and Mick’ll take care of the tree, Mr. Sandoval, don’t you worry.

And I’ll take care of the window. We’re gonna be making an awful lot of noise, though, y’know.

So if you wanna clear out for a bit, couldn’t say I’d blame you. ”

“I’m going to make a run to the post office while you’re busy,” Diego offered. With the winding, uncertain roads, a ‘run’ to the post office could take two hours. “Do you need anything out that way?”

“Oh, no, thanks for askin’, though. We’ll be out of your hair by suppertime. Ms. Thorpe says you need quiet so you can get some work done.”

“Oh, did she?” Diego chuckled. “Such a slave driver.”

Diego took the truck into the little gathering of houses and businesses that passed for a town and sent both signed contract and manuscript off to Miriam. He had ended with a couple of paragraphs on the last page cautioning the reader to keep an open mind when confronted with someone odd.

An inability to recognize common names or unfamiliarity with machinery may mean you have met one of the last of the fae rather than an eccentric psychiatric patient. Be kind, be patient, listen carefully, and you may hear secrets and dreams we humans lost long ago.

He stopped at the little grocery for cream, eggs and chamomile tea. If Finn did come back that evening, he might need to be coddled and fussed over.

When he returned to the house late that afternoon, Jake and his boys were cleaning up.

They showed him the neatly stacked woodpile by the garage and the new window, then said their goodbyes.

The huge trucks lumbering away into the woods seemed to Diego a last glimpse of companionship and civilization.

The sun dropped below the tree line without any sign of Finn, and he braced himself for another long night.

Shaman .

The chill voice yanked Diego from a light doze. He lay on the ottoman wrapped in blankets by the fire, since he didn’t have any illusions about a good night’s sleep. Had he dreamt it?

“Shaman, come and see.”

“I’m not going out there, you mangy scavenger,” he muttered, with more bravado than he felt. Why is it calling me that?

It called again and again, soft and coaxing, while the wind tugged at the house in little gusts and whistles.

“ Dios ,” he whispered, and got up with the blankets wrapped around him. “What do you want?”

Dread gripped him, but the soft persistence compelled him to look. What if— No, Finn had said he would be hidden while he healed. He crept to the front window and peeled back a corner of the curtain.

The empty front porch stared back at him.

With a slow exhale, he pulled the curtain open further.

Nothing…good…still nothing. A heavy object slammed against the glass.

He staggered back with a sharp cry. The wendigo leered at him, inches from his face.

He retreated another step. The glass between them suddenly did not seem enough.

Blood dripped from the thing’s decay-riddled teeth. Glistening lumps decorated its matted fur. It wore its own face now rather than Finn’s, more bear than human, but a bear that had been dead for some months.

“Go away,” Diego whispered. “Please go away and leave us alone.”

“Look, Shaman. I have a she. You know this one.”

The frigid, hollow thoughts pierced his head, scattering his wits. “You have…”

In answer, the wendigo held up its gruesome prize. A woman’s mutilated body hung from its grip. A ragged, gnawed stump was all that remained of the right leg. The head still dangled from the neck by a few flaps of skin. It turned the body so the head flopped backward and Diego could see the face.

“Tara,” he got out in a strangled whisper. “Oh…holy shit.”

“You are not pleased, Shaman.” The wendigo brought the body up to its face.

It opened its mouth wide enough to unhinge its jaws and bit down to tear a chunk from the Park Service officer’s side.

Gobbets of flesh fell with nauseating, wet sounds onto the porch.

“ You do not wish for me to eat this one. The flesh is strange. The taste. Sharper. But the bones—”

It opened its maw again and bit down on Tara’s ribcage. The bones snapped and crunched.

“Stop!” Diego shouted. “God…please stop!” Emptiness, such terrible emptiness filled his head with every thought, black, unceasing despair.

“Join with me. Calm your lightning and let me touch you. Let me live in your skin. Then we will hunt together. You will help me choose which ones to eat.”

“No, I can’t! I can’t eat my own kind! I can’t kill for you!”

“Hunt with me. Help me choose. Or I will choose another each night. One with your scent on them.”

Diego’s stomach lurched. Jake, Mick and Billy, the ladies at the post office and the grocery, the teenager at the gas station—they would all carry his scent. He would be their deaths. A sudden rush of anger swept through him, a forest fire of rage that rose from his belly to his head.

“ Hijo de puta! ” he bellowed as he grabbed the iron fireplace tongs in one hand and the poker in the other. “You won’t have any more!”

He flung open the door, heedless of the blast of frigid air, and strode out. “No more, you bastard! Put her the fuck down!”

The wendigo lifted Tara to his mouth again and bit off her head. It rolled along the planks to Diego’s feet where it stopped, Tara’s sightless eyes staring up at him.

“ Cabron !” he screamed. He swung for the monster’s head as it leaped at him. The iron connected with a ringing blow that numbed Diego’s arm. He lifted his right arm to stab at the thing’s heart at the same moment it seized his shoulder.

This time he heard the wendigo shriek in agony before the world exploded into a thousand falling shards.

“My love, it’s good to see you, but a bit shocking all the same.” Finn’s disembodied voice reached him from somewhere in the strange twilight.

“I don’t see anything. Where are we?”

“You’ve wandered into my Dreaming. Please tell me you are sleeping inside the house.”

“I—I think I’ve had a seizure. I’m out on the porch.”

“Ah, my hero. This you will need to explain to me, but later, when you are safe. I’m coming. Won’t take but a moment.”

Finn’s voice faded, and Diego found himself alone in the featureless, shrouded landscape. He wondered if he would be stuck there forever, without a house or tree or even a blade of grass to break the monotony. Then he looked up and saw the stars.