The Dreamwalker's Path

6/ Tampa, Florida

The mortuary was empty when Cavan arrived, and that suited him fine because he wasn’t in the mood to lie about why he was there. Sure, if he met anyone, he could wipe the memory from their minds afterward, but he had certain acquaintances who disdained at the practice, so Cavan did his best to avoid making it a necessity whenever possible. Today, at least, the stars seemed to align themselves in his favor.

Running his hand through his hair, the vampire looked at the rows of drawers along the back wall. There were at least a dozen bodies currently lying behind those metal cabinets, and it took Cavan a long moment before he remembered the name of the woman that he was looking for.

“Right. Let’s take a peek at these and figure out where the hell we are...” He glanced over his shoulder a bit self- consciously and rubbed the back of his neck. Ghosts, he realized a moment later. Ghosts too weak to be seen by even his blind eye, and they were being nosey.

If he closed his good eye, he could just barely see the remains of their auras lurking inquisitively behind him.

Rolling his eyes and heaving a sigh, Cavan held out his hands. “What?”

He waited a moment and then, not receiving any sort of response, turned back around to study the cabinets again.

“That’s what I thought.”

Starting from the top left and working systematically downward, Cavan read the index cards that labeled the bodies behind the doors. Jasmine Barrow’s body was the fourth row down, two doors to the right.

Thank the gods, Cavan thought as he studied the woman’s face, that they found you when they did. Her pretty face wouldn’t have lasted too much longer in the Florida heat— as it was, it looked like something had begun to nibble at her ears and finger tips. Curious as to what, Cavan picked up the woman’s hand and eyed her shredded fingertips. Tiny, needle-like impressions scattered on the swollen flesh.

Cat.

Oh, that’s exactly what I need to think about when I go home tonight.

Somehow he doubted that his ghast—the feline shaped, guardian spirits that he’d charged with protecting his apartment while he was away—would be interested in gnawing off his fingertips while he slept, but he had a feeling he’d be asking the ghasts to remain incorporeal for a few days.

Placing the hand gently back down on the slab, he pushed his hair from his blind eye and took in the sight of the mingled psychic signatures that still lingered on the body. Here and there were impressions of the mortician’s hands where he had moved or lifted the body, and under that, only barely perceptible, there lay a whispered echo of the soul that had, until recently, occupied the body.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary for the situation. The sternum and ribs had clearly been crushed by some great force, and her skin remained bruised due to the damage that had been done, but there was nothing...

The thought faded as his eyes moved farther down the body, and he circled around the slab to stand on the other side so that he could better see.

Yes. There on her hip was a tattoo: a pentacle about the size of a two dollar coin, etched from what Cavan suspected were supposed to be droplets of water.

“If it were a duck it’d of bit me,” he muttered, touching the tattoo lightly before heaving a sigh and pushing the slab back into the drawer. He closed the cabinet just in time to hear someone approaching the door with a purposeful, ground eating stride.

“Okay, Cavan, let’s make like sheep and get the flock out of here.”

He paused only for a moment when one of the stronger spirits tugged pitifully at his sleeve, just to brush it aside, and then he was off to report his findings to the one person that he thought would be able to do something about this little fiasco.

As the door to the mortuary opened, Cavan eased back into a corner of the room. His body joined with the shadows there, and he became part of them, incorporeal. With one last sigh he disappeared from the morgue and headed North.

7/ Florida

It was highly unfortunate that the witchy didn’t have the right sort of magic to bring the alp into the world, but somehow the alp had managed to console herself.

Perhaps it was because the witch had proved herself useful in other ways: though the alp lacked her body, she could still travel into the depths of Dream; she could still reach the mind of the witch who could not help her gain back her body, and through that connection she could access the witch’s dreams.

Witches usually had some sort of social connection with magical critters like the alp and her kin, so the alp had expected that eating the witch’s dreams would be easier to do than not, but who would have thought that a witch’s dreams could be so tasty? And she had so many dreams, each tastier than the last; it had been the alp’s first meal in many centuries, and it had been a good one—so good, in fact, that she did not stop eating until the dreams themselves stopped, until the delicate body of the witch had collapsed upon itself so that the witch’s heart could no longer beat, so that her life itself had seeped from her and into the alp through those wonderfully terrible, fear inspired dreams. And those last few, terrible nightmares that the witch experienced as she was dying, as she realised that she would never wake up again, they were the tastiest of them all.

The alp had never killed before—not witch nor mortal, but she longed to do it again.

And she would.

The witch did not give the alp her body back, but somehow, with the power of her dreams, she had passed on to the alp a sort of new awareness for those individuals with a mind of similar ilk—witches and vivid dreamers.

There were many of the latter in this busy, bustling world, many in this one particular area, and a handful in particular...they shined like fireflies against a star-spattered backdrop: part of, yet somehow distinct from the night sky. And then there was one that outshined them all. One dreamer who burned so brightly in the mind of the alp that the dreamer almost blotted out the bright dreamers around her. The alp would find her eventually, certain that that bright dreamer would be the key to getting her body back, but for now…

Now she would gather her strength by eating the dreams of the bright stars around her.