Yep, it was back to business as usual with his trainer. At least one thing in his life didn"t totally suck.
Chapter Five.
With very little air traffic, Hervey Bay Airport was closer to the size of a small bus station than a plane depot. You could sit alone in the place for hours without encountering a single soul. Luckily, Zoe"s ride was already waiting for her.
"Over here!" A hand waved from the window of a familiar Land Rover. Zoe"s fellow researchers, Dani and Elizabeth, sat in front. Her best friend, Adriene, opened the back door and patted the empty seat beside her. Zoe tossed her bag in the trunk and slid in next to Adriene.
"Where"s Gavin?" Adriene asked as Dani pulled away from the curb.
Zoe rubbed her forehead. "You gonna start the lightning round before I even get a chance to concoct a good story?"
Adriene turned on her-as much as she could with her broken leg stretched straight out, eating up half of the backseat real estate. "Don"t start that mess with me. I know you"re upset about the calf, but you better not have p.i.s.sed off your boyfriend. I"ll never speak to you again."
So not spilling the rotten, ugly truth. "He"s coming back to town tomorrow."
Adriene narrowed her eyes and frowned. "There"s something you"re not telling me. Your cheek is doing that twitchy thing. What happened?"
Zoe glanced at the rearview where Dani snagged her gaze. "Nothing. Everything"s fine. How many tags did you get today? Anyone heard from Iri?"
Elizabeth turned around. "Haven"t seen or heard a peep out of him. But guess who scored two tags while you were gone?" She flashed a grin and pointed at herself. "This chick."
Zoe laughed and high fived her. "Kick-a.s.s, girl. Where were the whales?"
"Every one of them was heading north, same location as before-in and around Platypus Bay," Dani piped in.
Something big was happening up there. All the data they"d collected over the last few weeks had indicated an unusual migratory pattern for this time of year. The whales were heading north instead of south where the food was. And Zoe knew it had to do with Lily.
"Yeah, same travel trends we"ve been tracking," Adriene said. "Weird s.h.i.t. I guess shifts in currents, upwellings, or water temperature could be influencing the phytoplankton blooms to proliferate farther north. If the phytoplankton have moved, the zooplankton and fish have no choice but to follow."
All true, but the real cause of the whales" unexpected detour had nothing to do with science. At least not the kind that governed the Wyldling world.
Zoe nodded. "Maybe. It has been insanely hot this winter."
As the girls chattered about some of the behaviors they"d seen on the water that morning, Zoe dove deep inside her mind for answers to the Waeter Archelemental dilemma. Once she caught up to Lily, maybe she"d get some ideas about how to help the whale rise to the position. All Zoe knew was that her "translating" ability would be needed. Beyond that, she was flying blind.
She"d head into the Dreaming tonight and see if she could find answers there. She needed a goal to focus on anyway. If she gave herself plenty of mental busy work, there wouldn"t be any time to think about Gavin.
Zoe was mentally and physically exhausted by the time Dani pulled into the drive at the research house. Tired of deflecting Adriene"s questions about Gavin, she claimed she had a headache and needed sleep, which was sort of true.
Adriene relented, but that wouldn"t be the end of it. She"d wheedle the story out of Zoe sooner or later.
For now, bed was the only thing on Zoe"s mind.
Bed.
She cringed at the memory of walking in on Gavin having s.e.x with Scarlet dressed in Zoe"s flesh. The rumpled sheets on the bed she was supposed to share with him haunted her almost as much as the actions that had put them in their state of disarray. But the worst part-the unforgettable snapshot that taunted her brain on a never-ending loop-had been their hands. Out of all the images from that gut-wrenching scene to fixate on, her subconscious had chosen Scarlet"s-not Zoe"s-long, elegant fingers woven between his big, tanned ones. And him squeezing.
Should have been her, d.a.m.n it. She pawed at the tear slipping down her cheek.
Enough of that. You"re gonna have to deal with it at some point. Get the lame-a.s.s crying out of your system now.
Lame was right. But the hurt little girl inside just wanted the bad stuff to disappear. To wake up tomorrow and realize this had been nothing more than a nasty nightmare. Maybe even laugh about it with Gavin over a pot of coffee.
You know I"d never do anything to hurt you, Zed. I love you, he"d say with that sparkle in his eye.
She"d lay a hand on his rugged cheek and kiss him. Of course you wouldn"t. I trust you.
She scrubbed her face. Trust was a luxury she could no longer afford. It cost way too much.
Screw it all.
She crawled in bed, rolled to her side, and pulled up the covers. Despite the blanket, she couldn"t get warm.
Being alone sucked.
Beating her wallowing thoughts into silence, Zoe drifted into a restless sleep and fell out of Realis into the Dreaming...
Tonight the parallel world looked different. The beach she usually tumbled into was dark instead of sunny. The air was hot. Stifling. Toxic. She wasn"t sure if the strange shift into night was something she"d subconsciously engineered for this dream or a product of the Dreaming devolving into chaos under the threat of Fyres taking over.
Faraway screams resounded in the distance, full of pain, fear, and panic. Zoe shivered. Without Gavin, she was powerless to stop any Fyres who might taunt innocent dreamers. The best she could do was trust the other Sentinels were on duty and taking care of business. Besides, her job was helping Lily and the Waeters. The quicker their Archelemental rose to power, the sooner Balance would be restored.
Remembering Gavin"s warning to keep a low profile, she looked around for something to conceal herself. Nothing but land, sea, and sky. That was okay. As a lucid dreamer, she"d make do with what she had.
She reached up to the starlit sky, tugged down a corner, and ripped off a piece of night big enough to cover herself. She fashioned a cloak out of the blackness, wrapped it around her shoulders, and pulled the hood over her head. Holding out an arm, she checked her handiwork against the sky. She couldn"t tell where she ended and the stars began. Perfect.
Zoe found a palm tree close to the ocean, sat down, and leaned against its bristly trunk. Whale calls surfaced from offsh.o.r.e. Though she was looking for Lily, another humpback occupied her thoughts and wouldn"t let go: the calf she"d euthanized in Sydney. Had he made it back to his mother?
Sending out a call of her own, she closed her eyes and sorted through the unique voices. Lots of deep-pitched tunes, but she couldn"t pick out the higher squeaks of a baby. She gathered her knees to her chest, folded her arms on top, and laid her cheek there.
Where are you, little one?
No reply.
As she processed the whale calls on autopilot, her heart dragged her attention in the opposite direction of where her brain intended to go.
Gavin. Again.
She loved him, plain and simple. But even if they could get past The Incident, the whole Sentinel-induced dream deprivation thing put a ma.s.sive crimp in their relationship. Every night she slept beside him was a night she couldn"t dream.
Could they get around it? Sure. They could keep separate houses. Maybe even separate bedrooms in the same house would work...
But partners were meant to be together. She didn"t want a long-distance relationship or to wake up alone every morning. She wanted...Gavin. All of him.
The whale songs got louder.
Zoe"s scalp tingled. She lifted her head and scanned the darkness. Hordes of goose b.u.mps stiffened the hairs across her flesh. She pulled the night cloak tight around her shoulders and stood.
Something she could only cla.s.sify as an amorphous force slammed the undercarriage of her skull and knocked the breath from her lips.
What the h.e.l.l was that?
Zoe...a "voice" spoke. It seemed female, but it didn"t actually have a pitch. More of a presence. Definitely not a whale.
Crackles of static filled her mind.
She spun around. A mental harpoon penetrated, hooked, seized her gray matter and electrified it with a jolt of lightning. The buzz stung like a thousand bees-imagined sound, but excruciating pain.
Jesus- "Please stop. It hurts." Words eked out in a garbled mess. Zoe fell to her knees. She reached out in vain for a handhold that didn"t exist. Her face crashed to the ground, sending a plume of sand and ashes up around her.
A force with spirit-akin to a powerful Elemental but exponentially larger-ghosted inside her. It coated her skin, saturated her cells, penetrated deep within her bones. The collaboration of millions of neurons lighting up her cerebral cortex at once paralyzed her until pain shocked her limbs into motion. She slapped one hand to her forehead and the other to her ear. Vomit threatened her tight throat with an acidic stranglehold.
The invisible gunner behind the harpoon still embedded in her consciousness yanked the line so hard, she lurched forward. Her limp body skittered ten feet through the ashes.
Dear G.o.d, she was going to die in her dream like all those Wyldlings did a few weeks ago.
Without Gavin. Alone.
Her arms and legs reacted in coherent thought"s stead. Desperate to avoid further agony, she got up and stumbled in the direction of the pull, toward a tall, white box in the distance.
"What do you want from me?" she screamed.
The unrelenting leash dragging her by the brain didn"t answer. As her feet brought her closer to the rectangular object, the pain ebbed, but only slightly. Whatever had a hold of her wanted her at that...
...door.
s.h.i.t. It looked like the dream door Gavin had conjured before and tried to send her through. The one that also blocked her entry into the Dreaming when she slept beside him. She sucked a deep breath into her lungs and ran for the portal.
The great marble slab looked washed out, translucent. And its markings were different from the ones she"d seen before.
Was this how the Fyres got into the Dreaming? Surely it couldn"t be so simple...
Zoe laid her fingers against the cool surface. The door shimmered like ripples on water, and the throbbing in her head disappeared completely. Thank G.o.d. Now she could think.
Voices from the other side snagged her attention. She recognized one of them. Westbrook, a Waeter Elemental she met a few weeks ago in the Dreaming. She pressed her forehead against the semi-transparent stone, cupped hands around her eyes, and peered through.
Four Waeters stood on a nighttime beach. Ma.s.sive dunes sculpted mini-mountains behind them. Fraser Island. She drove past it on the boat every day. Were they here in the Dreaming with her or standing on the actual island in Realis?
"Lana is by far the better candidate. Most Elementals are human. Why would we want to extol an animal to such a powerful position? We can"t even understand them," one of the males said.
A secret meeting about the Archelemental?
"You"ve seen what the whales can do with Water." Westbrook"s aqua body shimmered like the stars above. "It doesn"t matter that we can"t verbally communicate. Their ideas will come across through the Element itself. The emotions, the flavors are there. Even Wyldlings sense it on some level. The whales possess invaluable wisdom, a quality every leader needs."
Westbrook was right. Having spoken with humpbacks at length, Zoe was privy to knowledge that far exceeded humankind"s understanding of communication, culture-h.e.l.l, life as scientists knew it. But she"d been warned not to abuse it. The whales had been the keepers of memory for millennia. A simple language barrier was the only thing preventing Wyldlings from unlocking the secrets of history-of mankind itself.
But there were some secrets humans weren"t ready to know.
"That may be true, but we still have to be able to understand them. Without a voice, they"re useless to us."
A whale sang in the distance as if to debunk the Elemental"s statement. The rich tone bubbled through the crashing waves and washed onto the sand like an offering of diamonds, sparkling under the moon"s eye.
Should Zoe try to talk to them? Prove the Waeters wrong? The thought had barely punched through her synapses before deafening, incapacitating static stormed her senses. Down she went again, clutching her ears, squeezing her lids tight. A slow decrescendo suffocated the intense crackling, eventually snuffing out its life.
In the ensuing silence, the presence she"d shared her mind with evacuated her heads.p.a.ce, and she was once again alone.
She struggled to her feet.
"Dear Aqua, what was that?" one of the Elementals said.
Zoe pressed her nose to the stone door again. She could still see through it, but it had lost its elasticity. The circle of four faintly blue figures parted.
She pushed off the hood of her cloak and banged on the door. "Hey, can you see me?"
Westbrook"s big blue eyes lit up, and he stepped forward. "Zoe?"
"Yes, it"s me." She grinned and pushed against the marble. It didn"t budge. No handle or k.n.o.b to turn. Well, s.h.i.t. Back to being ornery again.
One of the others shot a condescending smirk through the barrier. "Who are you?"
"Zoe"s all right," Westbrook said. "She helped me when I was inside the Dreaming."
They didn"t seem impressed.
Fine. "What are you guys doing out there? I heard you say something about Lana."
Westbrook reached a hand to her. It disappeared where the door should have been. He pulled back and studied his wiggling fingers. "Can you open this?"
Zoe shook her head. "This door-or one like it-and I have gone several rounds before. Trust me. It"s not happening." She kicked it for good measure. "But a few moments ago, something got a hold of me and dragged me here. Like a spirit. I think it wanted me to see the door."
Westbrook"s brows pulled together. Liquid worry lines etched the periphery of his round eyes. "I was called in the same way, but from the Realis side. It was how I got into the Dreaming before you and I met."
What? Then the summons had to have been from someone who had the power to open the door. But who was it?
Her heart raced. She leaned her shoulder against the barrier and shoved. Still solid as a rock. "Just before the static hit...the door felt different. Like it might have opened if I"d thought to try."
d.a.m.n it. She"d had a golden opportunity to let the Waeters inside the Dreaming, but she blew it. Seemed she had a habit of arriving on the scene a few minutes too late.
"Ahem." Hands on his hips, a tall, thin Waeter stared down his nose, bouncing his gaze back and forth between Zoe and Westbrook. "We have some business to discuss, Wyldling. Do you mind?"
Zoe couldn"t have felt smaller if she"d been an amoeba under a microscope.