CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
NIGHTFALL—AND SLEEP—COULDN’T COME FAST enough. We set up camp again, on our side of the border, but Archer opted for sleeping in his car—either because he didn’t like people watching him work, or because the idea of sleeping in close proximity to two werewolves, a girl he’d tried to kill, and a girl he’d been conditioned to think of only as a killer probably fell under the classification of “let’s not and say we did.” Or maybe a little of both.
Rather than sleeping myself, I practiced. I practiced taking everything I’d seen the past few days—every horror, every drop of blood—and locking it away, so deep in my mind that I could pretend that nothing had happened.
And then I practiced letting it out.
This time, I didn’t start with a specific memory. I didn’t walk myself step by step through a scene. Instead, I built a room inside my head—a tiny room with white walls and no windows and no doors. No way out.
In that room, I put the sound of screams, tearing flesh, and heavy breathing, the smell of rancid blood. Everything I’d been holding back, everything threatening to devour me whole was there—in the ceiling of that room, the corners, the floor.
In a way, I’d been building rooms just like this one in my mind my entire life—for fear and sadness and everything I couldn’t let myself want. But this time, it was different, because even though there were no windows or doors, no way out—there was a way in.
I just pictured myself there, surrounded on all sides until I could taste it, smell it, feel it in my pounding pulse. Fear. It was endless, infinite and overwhelming.
Copper on the tip of my tongue.
Chills on my skin.
A breath caught like sandpaper in my throat.
Can’t stay here, I thought desperately. Can’t. It’s too much, it’s all too much. Have to—
Escape. That wasn’t a thought. It was a feeling, familiar, but ancient.
Escape. Escape. Escape.
My eyelids fluttered.
Survive.
“Bryn?”
Archer made the mistake of placing a hand on my shoulder, and suddenly, it was like I was watching myself from outside my body. The world around me settled into slow motion, silence—
And the next thing I knew, he was down.
Realizing, on some level, that Archer wasn’t actually a threat, I jerked myself out of the room I’d built for my fears, slamming an extra set of mental walls up all around it.
Safe. The feeling—the instinct—the adrenaline subsided.
“I’m sorry,” Archer said. Coming from someone I’d just tossed through the air like I was training for the shot put, that was the last thing I’d expected to hear.
“Sorry for what?”
Archer tilted his head forward and rolled his eyes up to meet mine, his brows slightly arched. “Not entirely sure what the right answer is here, so I’m going to hedge my bets and go with everything.”
His tone was sardonic enough that I wasn’t sure whether he meant the words or not. If Devon had been there, he probably would have started crooning apology songs, just to break the tension.
“Well, I’m sorry—for kicking your butt,” I said finally.
He snorted.
“Did you find anything?” I asked, then amended my question. “Maddy.” I made myself say her name. “Did you talk to her?”
Archer shook his head. “She wouldn’t talk to me. She ran.”
I was fairly certain that when Archer had entered my dreams, I hadn’t been able to run. He’d been able to freeze me in place, or beckon me forward.
“I could force her,” Archer said lightly. “I don’t want to.”
My first instinct was to tell him to do it anyway, but the part of me that was still human couldn’t form the words.
Archer saved me the trouble. “I’m hoping that if you come with me, I might not have to get rough.”
“Come with you?” I asked. I hadn’t known that kind of thing was even possible. “How am I supposed to come with you?”
He shrugged. “I enter your dream. I enter hers. We hope I can splice the two together, and voilà.”
That seemed like the kind of thing he should have mentioned in the first place. He must have seen the irritation on my face, because a matching expression flickered across his features, and I remembered that, technically, he was the one doing me the favor.
“Do you need a piece of my clothing?” I asked, deciding this wasn’t worth arguing over.
Archer gave me a look. “You’re right here,” he said slowly, as if I were very dull. “Why would I need your clothes?”
Well, excuse me for not knowing exactly how his knack worked—I was just learning the ins and outs of my own.