In Graves Below Read online

  She tilted her face into his hand and swayed toward him, suddenly drowning in need for him. He groaned, then swooped in and kissed her.

  Desire sent her blood racing as she opened her mouth and met his tongue with her own. She clung to him like a life raft for a long moment, reveling in the taste of him. His hands glided down to her bare sides, then back and down. She gasped and tilted her head back when he pulled her hips firmly to his groin, where she felt his promising erection against her abdomen. She undulated her stomach muscles to tease him. His ragged breath near her ear sent shivers through her, and she ground her taut, aching nipples into his chest. He felt so freaking good.

  “Riya,” he breathed. “We should slow down.”

  The words slowly penetrated her sensation-swamped brain. “This is bad?”

  “Not bad, just…” He caught her wrist before her questing hand could find out if he wore anything under the loincloth. “…unwise.”

  He knew more about the dreamwalk than she did, so she had to trust him, but her body was definitely not on board. It almost hurt to lose contact with his chest. “Like, finger-in-a-light-socket unwise?” She reluctantly pulled her wrist free of his encircling fingers so she could step back. “Or cosign-a-loan-for-your-cousin unwise?”

  His mouth twitched with amusement. “More like, what-the-hell-was-in-that-drink unwise.” His never-still tattoos glowed more brilliantly where her hand rested on his muscular shoulder. “Dreamwalk makes it too easy to do something we’re not ready for in the real world.” He took a small step back, and she let her hand slide off him. The fiery passion in her subsided to a manageable level. She still wanted him, and the bulge in his loincloth said he still wanted her, but their physical connection no longer fanned the flames.

  It made her ineffably sad that they couldn’t have that in the real world. She turned away before he noticed the sudden tears that threatened. “What are all these windows?”

  Now that she was looking anywhere but at him, she noticed they were in the middle of a big field of irregularly spaced mounds of varying heights, like ski-slope moguls made of earth. On top of each was a window embedded facedown in the earth. They felt inhabited to her, which made no sense, because they were weathered and dusty.

  “Each dreamwalker experiences them differently. I feel them as living rock formations. My cousin, who is a musician, hears them as songs. They’re the graves, for lack of a better word, of the dreamwalker warriors, and the medicine men and spider women of my ancestors. Those that are still spirits in the real world have a presence here, but they can’t move freely anymore.”

  “Can you tell which one belongs to which spirit?”

  “No, I don’t know how. I’m not the medicine man my grandfather was, and there’s no one left to teach me.” He sighed, and she had to turn and look. His expression was bleak. “We’ve lost much. My proud, stubborn ancestors waited too late to accept dreamwalk partners from outside the tribe. My cousin and I are the last of this generation. I’m the only warrior left.”

  She morphed pockets onto her sari skirt and tucked her hands into them, to keep herself from hugging him like she wanted to. Touching would derail her thoughts, and she wanted to learn all she could about Idrián. She suspected he was ordinarily a private person. “What about your parents?”

  “My father was a Mexican national who died in a highway accident when I was seven. After my grandmother died, my mother signed custody of me to Black Fox and moved to Phoenix.” He crossed his arms and put his hands under his armpits. “It hurt at the time, because I didn’t understand. She had magic but no dreamwalk talent. I did, so Black Fox focused on me. So for my mother, in three short years, her mother died, her husband died, and her father abandoned her.” He looked down at his taloned feet. “After the VA hospital discharged me, I wrote and told her I didn’t blame her for leaving, and still loved her. We talk, now, from time to time.”

  She wanted to hug a woman she’d never met, and she couldn’t stop the tear that dripped down her cheek, even though she wasn’t usually a crier. “Does dreamwalk magnify feelings?”

  He tilted his head. “Not exactly. Here, there’s nothing holding them back. Dreamwalk is our potential, without the limits or the moorings of the real world. It takes practice to stay off the emotional roller coaster.”

  She pondered that a moment. “Is that what the fear-eater demon we fought wanted? Potential?”

  “Close. When people with dreamwalk potential are sleeping, their stronger dreams sometimes manifest here. Warriors are easiest for me to sense. By ancient treaty, fear-eater demons are allowed here to feed on excess fear, and dreamers wake up feeling better. Lazy demons cheat and send nightmares to the dreamers, then feed on the resulting fear.”

  She snorted derisively. “Like lazy choreographers steal work from others, which gets the lazy choreographer a hotshot reputation and other people’s jobs?”

  He smiled crookedly. “Yes, like that.”

  “Will I have to fight demons?” She shuffled her feet uncomfortably. “I’m not a warrior like you. I’m just a dancer with a knack for doors.”

  “I don’t know. We can ask the non-warrior ancestors.” He frowned. “Speaking of which, you should know there’s a prophecy about you. Well, us. It says that my way to the earth is with the dreamwalk woman who conjures the key. They sent me to find you.” He didn’t tell her the part about her being in danger, because he didn’t want to worry her. Besides, he was there to protect her.

  “Oh, that’s helpful. Sounds like something my grandmother would say.” Riya rolled her eyes. “I bet there’s a secret oracle’s handbook somewhere on how to be obscure.”

  Idrián laughed. “I think you’re right.” He looked to his left, then back to her. “I want to teach you about illusions, but this isn’t the place for it. Are you up for another trip? We’ll go slowly this time.”

  She held out her hand. “Lead on, MacDuff.”

  Riya sucked at creating illusions. Idrián’s were convincingly solid and detailed, probably because he was a professional artist. He said he could create small ones in the real world, too. Her illusions looked like random blobs of spray paint in the air, probably because her artistic talent peaked with scribbling on the wall.

  On the other hand, she could materialize real objects, like her slingshot, just by thinking about them. It had to be small and something she knew well enough to visualize. She could make her objects vanish, but couldn’t do the same with objects that were already in the dreamwalk world, or anything Idrián was holding, no matter where it came from. After a few tries, she figured out how to materialize objects directly into Idrián’s hand, such as a spoon. She wondered if she was robbing objects from the real world.

  “Back on Earth, what are our bodies doing?”

  “Sleeping. Dreamwalkers have natural defense mechanisms that wake us up if something is happening to our bodies.” He laughed. “I got a black eye once because my cousin woke up suddenly after I put ice down his shirt while he was in dreamwalk.”

  “What happens if we get hurt here?”

  “If you leave dreamwalk before you’re healed, you’ll have a killer hangover. I’ll teach you dreamwalk healing magic.” He smiled. “You’ll like it. We dance.” He raised his hands to the sky and executed an intricate series of steps that she wanted to see again.

  A high-pitched sound tickled her ears, like a mosquito at night. She shook her head, but the sound didn’t go away. “Do you hear that?”

  He closed the distance between them with a powerful leap and put one hand on her shoulder, probably ready to take her out of dreamwalk if needed. Awareness of him flared, but so did the volume of the keening sound that grated on her nerves. He cocked his head and looked left, and she did the same. Some impossible-to-measure distance away, the air distorted like the heat shimmer from desert sands.

  “What’s that?” she asked. “It looks like someone opened a furnace door.”

  He shook his head. He didn’t seem inclined
to go investigate, for which she was profoundly grateful. The keening sound was starting to sputter, like a motor shorting out. Just when she thought to materialize a set of earplugs for herself, the sound dropped in pitch as it faded to nothing. The distorted air smoothed out to clear, lavender sky.

  “Maybe we should call it a night,” she suggested. She looked up at the now bright yellow sky. “Day. Whatever. If you have to fight, I’d just get in your way.”

  He gently turned her to face him. “You will never be in my way.”

  It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to her. She put her hand on the tattooed side of his face and stroked his cheek with her thumb. The tattoos brightened where she touched him. “Thank you.” She loved the feel of his skin. “I’ll try not to make you regret saying that.”

  “I won’t. We have a connection. I feel you, even when we aren’t touching.” He put his other hand on her waist and smiled. “But it’s better when we are touching.”

  She stepped in and dropped her cheek to his chest, and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Much better.” The scent of him made her lightheaded. She slithered one of her hands lower and under his loincloth to rest on the bare skin of his butt. “Much, much better.”

  “You’re incorrigible,” he breathed. “I like that about you.”

  She started to laugh, but the ground shook under her feet, and Idrián tensed. She backed away to give him room to move. The ground shook again, harder, and she heard a sound like something hitting the earth. Idrián pointed toward the direction of the heat wave. “There,” he said.

  Something was bouncing toward them. It took a couple more vibrations for her to realize it was the demon named Moth Dust they’d fought the first night they’d met. The demon landed with a final, earth-shaking thump and focused on her. Its head extended forward on a jack-in-the-box neck. She swallowed.

  “Debt acknowledged,” said the demon in its incongruously high-pitched voice. From under a flap of skin on its mid-section, it pulled out the red bandanna she’d given it to stanch the blood from its nose.

  “Er, yes?” She glanced at Idrián for help, but he was focused solely on the demon.

  “Payment offered by Moth Dust.” One of its arm-like appendages thumped its hollow-sounding torso. “The T’dzgyiue Existence is missing an onatec, who has feet in the Human Existence. It wants not to go home, but instead to bring another of its line into your existence. It rides its steed to open the gate through this plane to invite its enalpi-ramwo.” It extended the triple-jointed appendage that held the bandanna toward her.

  “Ok-a-a-a-y,” she said. “Not to be insulting or anything, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Idrián came to her rescue. “Onatecs are soul-eaters, like Moth Dust is a harshua, a fear-eater. One somehow got to our world, and is working with someone there to bring in a buddy, using dreamwalk as the conduit. Soul-eaters are notorious oath breakers and banished from dreamwalk. They prefer corrupted souls, but they aren’t picky and have impulse-control problems. Humans and spirits have few defenses against demons that consider them midnight snacks. One is bad; two could eat stadiums’ worth of people.”

  “What’s an enalpi-ramwo?”

  Idrián shrugged, so she looked to Moth Dust. “Like family.” He sneered in disgust. “Vermin. No honor. Always hungry.” It waved the red bandanna at Riya again. “Payment offered.”

  Riya started to reach for the bandanna, then hesitated. “How do we evict the onatec we have, and prevent it from bringing its whatever?”

  “No knowledge. Not my Existence.” From which she took to mean that fear-eaters and soul-eaters came from different demon dimensions.

  She turned to Idrián. “Warrior.” Name magic was powerful in some traditions, so she avoided using his name in front of the demon. “Are we safe if I end this debt?”

  He nodded. “Safe enough.”

  Riya turned back to Moth Dust. “Payment accepted by me, uhm, Dances With Eagles. We are done.” She gingerly took the bandanna from Moth Dust’s weirdly jointed fingers.

  It hissed and bared its lips to reveal crooked, fence-picket teeth, then without warning, bounded up and away, shaking the ground with each bounce as it departed.

  The bandanna smelled so bad it made her eyes water. “Someone should explain hygiene to Moth Dust.” She held it as far away from her as she could. “Do I need to keep this?”

  Idrián winced and waved his hand in front of his nose. “No.” She blinked it away, then hastily materialized a wet-wipe towel and scrubbed her fingers.

  “So what do we do about the soul-eater?” She blinked the towel away and morphed her clothes into jeans and a T-shirt. “I say ‘we’ because I’ll lay odds this is what the prophecy is about. I’m not really keen on Denver becoming an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

  He nodded and frowned. “I need to talk to Black Fox.” She longed to kiss away his worries, but knew it would only postpone them.

  She stepped close to him. “Thank you for showing me all this.” She waved to encompass the dreamwalk world. Even without touching, she felt the radiance of him, like the welcome warmth of a fireplace in winter. “Let’s go home.”

  He looked startled, then smiled. “I like the sound of that.” He put his hands on her shoulders, and they floated through the sliding-glass door.

  Chapter 7

  Idrián rose into his sprawled body and opened his eyes, just in time to see Riya awaken with a shiver. The studio was dark and chilly, and he wished he’d remembered to warn her about the transition. The feel of her hand in his made him want to pull her into his arms to share warmth, but he was embarrassed by how he’d taken advantage of her in the dreamwalk.

  She fished one-handed under the couch for a blanket and drew it up over herself.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “Okay, I think.” She glanced at the railroad-style wall clock, then did a double-take. It was almost midnight. “We were lying here unmoving for four-and-a-half hours? No wonder I’m freezing.”

  He wished he’d thought to warn her about that, too. “Dreamwalk time is different for each of us. How long did it seem to you?”

  She shook her head. “I lost track. Maybe a couple of hours? I’ll pay better attention next time.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief as the tension in his shoulders relaxed. At her questioning look, he decided it was better to be candid. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to go back.”

  She gave him a big grin and squeezed his fingers. “You’re kidding, right? I’d go back just for the wardrobe choices alone.” She squeezed again, then let go.

  He covered his sharp sense of loss by sliding his legs off the couch and pivoting to sit up. “Bathroom?” He didn’t need to go urgently, but it was better to plan ahead. The narrow, antique wrought-iron spiral staircase that rose to her living quarters looked challenging for a man with unreliable legs.

  Fortunately, she pointed to a hallway along the far wall. “First door on the left.”

  When he returned, she was standing, wearing the blanket like a cape. “Do you have a place to stay tonight?”

  Yet another thing he hadn’t thought of. He was usually better at planning ahead, but the whole trip was rushed and improvised. He shrugged. “I’ll find a motel.”

  She made a face, but said nothing.

  “What?” he asked.

  “It’s just that…” She hesitated and frowned. “I’ve never had an ounce of my grandmother’s oracle talent, so maybe it’s because ‘soul-eater demon’ sounds scary, but the idea of me being alone, of you being alone in a strange town, has me spooked.” She pulled the blanket tighter around herself. “Could you be comfortable sleeping on my couch?” She pointed her chin toward it. “It folds out.”

  The request surprised him, but it was a good idea.

  “Tell her you prefer sleeping in her bed,” said Black Fox, whispering theatrically. Idrián jumped, then turned and glared at his grandfather’s ghost.

  Riya l
aughed. “Either something just bit you, or Black Fox is back.”

  Idrián nodded and smiled ruefully. “He has opinions.”

  She laughed and nodded. “I’ll just bet. That’s part of why I live in Denver and my parents live on the other side of the world in Perth.” She pulled the sagging blanket up again. “So, will you stay?”

  “Yes. The couch will be fine.” He gave Black Fox a warning look, not fooled by the assumed innocence. Black Fox looked disgruntled as he faded.

  Riya’s smile was full of relief. “I’ll get more blankets.” She handed him the one around her shoulders and made running up the spiral staircase look easy. He might have envied her ability, but he was too busy appreciating the perfect shape of her swaying ass as she vanished into the doorway.

  “If you’ll open the front door,” he called up to her, “I’ll get my bag from the truck.” He didn’t want to disturb her wards.

  She appeared at the top of the stairs with a bundle of pillows and blankets. “Give me a minute, and I’ll key it to you.” She threw the bundle over the stair rail onto the well-worn but smooth wood floor below, disappeared for a moment, then came back with sheets, which she carried quickly down the stairs.

  She dropped the sheets on the couch, then crossed toward the door and beckoned him closer. “Give me your hand.”

  He put his hand in hers and instantly felt the connection. She’d said she felt it in their dreamwalk, but he didn’t know if that carried over to the real world like it did for him. He’d already rushed things in the dreamwalk; he was determined to take it slower here.

  She put her free hand on the door handle, mumbled words he didn’t catch, then said, “Say a pass phrase.”

  He thought a moment. “Eaglefoot.”

  She smiled as she mumbled something else. He felt the surge of magic through her and the heavy metal door. She let go of his hand and stepped back. “Try it. Put your hand on the lever and say the magic word.”

  He did as she asked, and the mechanism audibly unlocked. “How do I lock it again?”