Whether or not her body was capable of supporting two or maybe three or more persons-who knew how many women's lives had gone into creating The Flood's creature-she was glad for the extra battery power. She focused her thoughts on taking the four of them away from the dreamlands and toward a woman (whom she did not know) and a hospital room half a world and a dimension away.
She heard a second pop as Lyse's blue orb physically pulled them out of the dreamlands, and her sense of "up" and "down" shifted as she began to somersault in the air, so fast she could hardly think straight-but then she realized that part of her consciousness recognized that she was still standing firmly on hard-packed earth, holding hands with two of her blood sisters . . . that the disorientation was only in her head.
Daniela. Take me to Daniela.
She thought these words but did not speak them out loud. She wished she knew what Daniela looked like, thought maybe it would make this whole thing way easier. But that was an impossibility, so she decided, instead, to craft a stand-in version of Daniela in her mind. She imagined a woman with icy blond hair and pale blue eyes-but just as the picture began to come into focus, it began to change, the hair morphing from blond to dark brown and finally to purple and pink, the wide face narrowing at the temples and chin.
That's not me, she thought. I'm not doing that . . .
WE ARE. AND WE WANT YOU TO FIND HER.
There was another voice in her head, a loud one that had nothing to do with her own unconscious. It belonged to The Flood's creation . . . the monster crafted from the stolen energy of all the broken women inside The Flood's underground lab. Their energy-which was really the essence of their magic-had come together, morphing into one powerful psychic creature. The Flood had been successful in making a monster, but that had not been their intention. This was obvious because The Flood's soldiers had been terrified of it, had even fled the lab because of it. The creature was merely a by-product of their efforts to build something else . . . but what?
Niamh had no idea.
The creature's voice echoed in her head again and the sound was cacophonous-almost as if there were a chorale of women speaking to Niamh.
WE WANT YOU TO SUCCEED.
Next, her sister's voice spoke to her from inside her head, Laragh's spirit riding the pulse of electricity that made up Niamh's life force.
-We want you to succeed. We'll help you go to Daniela.
Her head began to throb as she felt the creature tapping into her neural pathways, searching through her memories to find different images it could cobble together like it was building a jigsaw puzzle of a human face. It took Jenny Franklin's chin-Jenny owned the Seafaring Merchant, a junk store two streets over from the house Niamh and Laragh had grown up in. Next, the creature stole her Aunt Estelle's delicate upper lip. It borrowed Lyse's dark eyebrows and cadged the ears right off an unnamed trapeze artist Niamh had seen perform when she was eight, the woman sailing gracefully across the orange-and-red-striped fabric of the circus big top.
When the creature was done mixing and matching, Niamh realized that-though she'd never met the woman before-she now possessed a reasonable facsimile of Daniela Altonelli's face to help guide her to their destination.
Daniela Altonelli, we are coming for you, she thought as the swirling patchwork of images that made up Daniela's pixie face filled her mind's eye like a kaleidoscope.
And then Niamh felt someone squeeze her hand.
"We're here," Lyse whispered in her ear.
Niamh opened her eyes. She was standing in a pool of sunlight by a window, a hospital bed in front of her that held an achingly frail body tucked inside it like a chrysalis. Daniela was a wraith, so pale you could see the outline of her veins beneath the delicate flesh of her face. She looked almost nothing like the woman in Niamh's mind.
Maybe if she weren't so sick, Niamh thought.
But Daniela was sick. Really sick . . . her translucent skin was tinged a shade of purpley-blue, and she had shadowed hollows under her eyes and beneath her cheekbones that were so dark they looked like bruises. Her breathing came in shallow, ragged bursts. A quiet hiss in her throat.
It was apparent to anyone who looked at her that Daniela was not long for this world.
"Oh, God," Lyse said, her hands on the bed railing as she peered down at Daniela's lifeless body. "How did this happen?"
She hadn't even seen Lyse move. One moment she was standing beside Niamh, the next she was leaning over the hospital bed.
Arrabelle slipped past Niamh and joined Lyse at Daniela's side. She put her hand on Lyse's shoulder, but her face was ashen, too. She looked like she needed as much comforting as Lyse did.
Niamh took a few steps back, moving away from the two women in order to give them some space. She didn't know Lyse and Arrabelle well, but she understood the deep, familial connection that existed between coven mates.