47

Gisela walked along a path through a forest, her mind as passive and receptive as the trees around her that dripped water to the soggy needle-carpeted ground. Her feet squished softly as she stepped around the many fallen branches. It was utterly dark, neither moonlight nor starlight gleamed through the heavy clouds, yet she could see reasonably well. Not that she could bear to look to closely at the battered trees, the long ragged scars where boughs had been wrenched off. Though the woods were spring-green, it was bitterly cold, and some of that dripping water was melting ice.

The wind picked up, howling eerily, and twined into it were inhuman voices. She didn't understand why, but pure panic sent a surge of adrenaline rushing through her veins, and she bolted. There was something behind her, something terrible, and if it caught her she would never escape it...

She stumbled over something in her path, fell painfully, and scrambled to her feet; her heart was pounding so hard that surely the bad thing would be able to track her on that sound alone. She looked down at what she'd tripped over, and pressed her hand to her mouth to strangle a cry: it was a small black wolf with its throat torn out, lying limply beside the path, eyes open and staring. Beside it lay a chain of dark glittering stones and metal links; she snatched it up and fled again.

With her back against a steep hillside of glacial rock, she paused to catch her breath and look at the chain. The links were tarnished silver; the stones were deep purple. It was about the length of a collar for a medium-to-small werewolf, but one link was broken, it was no longer a circle. Amethyst and silver on a black wolf that size... That could only be Jess, Jess was dead...

The menacing presence drew near again. She looked around wildly, spotted a deep nearly vertical crevice in the rock a few feet above her. She climbed up to it and wedged her body in with little difficulty.

It went much deeper than she thought. She edged carefully sideways along it, the collar tucked safely down the front of her shirt. Somehow, she was sure, it was more precious than anything made of metal and gems should be.

The crevice opened abruptly into forest again, and another path. The sinister thing was somewhere on the far side of the hill; it had lost her temporarily.

A sudden weight on her chest made her cry out... Then she recognized the thunderous sound as her cat purring...

She opened her eyes, shivering. The grey-brown tabby cuddled against her, purring hard; she stroked him with one hand, fumbling for the reading lamp with the other. The glare was bad, but the terror of the nightmare was worse. Another few seconds and it would have come over the hill and found her.

Gradually the panic faded, soothed by the dense soft fur under her hand, the vibration of his purr, the brightness and warmth of the room. Before the memory could fade as well, though, she reached for her notebook and wrote it down in detail. Tomorrow she could find someone to talk about it with. Kevin, or Liam, or Samantha.

Right now, she switched off the light, and went back to sleep listening to the tabby's purring.

* * *

Gisela knocked on Kevin's open door, quietly. “Are you busy for a few minutes?”

He looked up from the books spread on his bed. “Nothing that can't wait. Something wrong?”

“I don't know.” She came in, shifted enough books that she could sit down, and settled herself with her knees hugged against her chest, her notebook on her lap and pressed against her body. “I've been having a lot of very odd dreams lately, and since a phoenix turns up in some of them, I thought they might somehow involve you. The one last night was the clearest and most intense yet, but it didn't have a phoenix.”

She watched his expression turn thoughtful. “Chase dreams?”

“Mostly. You too?”

“About every other night. A few things keep repeating, although I can't make any sense out of them. There's a silver and amethyst key, and a black wolf I think is Jess, but he turns up howling a lot and doesn't usually notice me. Sad howling, or to call someone, not singing for fun. I can never see what's chasing me, but I know it'll be the worst thing possible if it catches me. Where it happens varies every time, but there's usually water around or involved.”

“I see a collar, like a wolf might wear for decoration furform, but it's silver and amethyst, and it's usually broken. And a black wolf sometimes, but not always. Most of the time I'm in a forest that looks like the mother of all storms just ended. A northern-type forest, mostly conifers.”

“No one else in my coven has been having them. I asked a while back, because spill-over dreams that refract back and forth can get intense like that.”

“Well, I asked Jess. He just says he has the usual kinds of dreams he's always had in Haven.”

“There aren't all that many all-black wolves in Haven, it could only reasonably be Jess. And the two of us are linked to him... it has to be connected somehow.”

“How is the question. I really hope they're symbolic and not prophetic. I've seen Jess, or at least whoever the wolf is, dead a couple of times.”

“Flynn checked and didn't get anything except that same unfinished-business thing he always gets with Jess. I'll ask him to check again, just in case. Sam apparently warned him that direct demon involvement could interfere with his ability to pick up on even immediate danger, and lemme tell ya, that's a thought that seriously unsettled our seer. And we are of course not going to ask how Sam would know that. Have you been writing them down?”

She nodded. “You?”

“Yes. Maybe we should take a closer look and compare notes? We might be jumping at shadows, but I think there's something to this. If nothing else, maybe if we bounce some of what overlaps off Flynn, it'll trigger something by association.”

“Now?”

“If it works for you.”

With more books cleared away, they settled down to see what they could find.

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