In shadowed dreams, p.1
IN SHADOWED DREAMS, page 1
Published 2023 by Trickster Cat Publishing LLC
This book is a work of fiction. All characters and events are
the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual
events or to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
In Shadowed Dreams
Copyright © 2022 by S. Judith Bernstein
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For more information please contact
https://www.trickstercatpublishing.com/contact
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN 978-1-959825-00-5 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-959825-01-2 (ebook)
For My Dragons,
for always being the Alex to my infuriating Raven.
I could not have written this without you.
“A word is dead when it is said, some say.
I say it has just begun to live that day.”
EMILY DICKINSON
Prologue
Part 1 The Sleepers Wake
Part 2 The Waking Sleep
Part 3 In Shadowed Dreams
About the Author
Prologue
“We need allies.” Liza was pacing again. The dark red long slitted skirt flowed around her as her bare feet beat indents into the soft carpet of the small library reading room. “We can’t do this on our own! Grace and Charlotte are on their way, but it’s not enough and we’re nearly out of time!”
She spun on her heels, fast enough that her dark brown hair whipped out behind her as she continued leaving markings in the antique rug.
“I think . . . I think I know someone who could help us.”
Liza spun on her heels again, this time coming to a complete stop, staring at Alex where he sat hunched over in his armchair, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.
“You know another awake mage?”
And you didn’t tell me. She didn’t say the second part of her thought out loud but she might as well have.
“Not exactly. I mean, I know two, but they’re not very strong and they’re both trying to let it go . . .”
Liza’s shoulders slumped.
“Then . . .?”
Alex reached into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and stared down at the lock screen.
“Lorie’s not a mage . . . not exactly . . .”
Curious, Liza padded over to stare down at Alex’s phone. His lock screen was a photo of two people laughing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. Alex was immediately recognizable—short brown hair standing up in the back in untidy spikes, and brown eyes shining with amusement. The other inhabitant of the photo was a girl. She had dyed-black wavy hair streaked with silver and black eyes that, even in photograph, seemed slightly unnerving somehow.
“Is that Lorie?” Liza asked quietly. She wasn’t quite sure what was going on with Alex, but she could tell that something about this Lorie person was a very sensitive subject for him.
Alex shook his head. “That’s Raven.” He shook his head again. “That was Raven.” He sighed. “I guess, in a sense, it’s Lorie now.”
“I see . . .” She didn’t, but it was clear that Alex had cared deeply about this Raven and that, one way or another, she was no longer a part of his life. Liza wasn’t sure whether she should be pushing him or not, so she settled for trying to bring him back to the topic at hand.
“So, this Lorie isn’t a mage then?”
Alex shook his head.
“He’s a hitman, a really good one.”
Liza blinked, then she blinked again.
“A. Hit. Man.” She spoke the words slowly, enunciating every syllable, as though she was trying to find some secondary meaning within them.
Alex nodded. “Have you ever read Shadows of the Silver Towers by A. B. Levinson?”
Liza shook her head.
“It’s an ongoing series of crime dramas. Lorie is, that is, the protagonist is a hitman who goes by the name ‘Lawrence Rain.’”
Liza blinked a third time.
“So this Lorie is just a fictional character?”
Alex sighed. “Not anymore.”
This time Liza didn’t blink; she just stared. “What?”
Alex took a breath, then shakily let it out.
“Did you hear about some unsolved murders that occurred in New York City about nine months ago?”
“Murders? In New York City? No. I’m from Massachusetts so I’m not really familiar with the goings-on in . . . Wait!” Liza paused midsentence, her eyes going wide as her mind finally caught up with her mouth. “About nine months ago? You mean the last incursion?”
Alex nodded.
“So that’s how you were awakened and how you already knew about them?”
It wasn’t really a question, but Alex nodded an affirmative anyway. Liza walked heavily to the armchair facing Alex’s and sank into it.
“How did you survive?” she asked.
Alex opened his mouth to answer but she shook her head before he could speak.
“No, wait. You’d best tell me everything from the beginning.”
Alex’s eyes flickered from her back down to his phone’s lock screen. He stared at it for a long moment before he raised his head again, nodded slightly, and began.
Part 1
The Sleepers Wake
(Now)
“It was a complete coincidence. We were all just in the City to see a stupid movie. I mean it wasn’t a bad movie but what were the odds? We didn’t live in the city. Any other day we wouldn’t have been there, but Raven was too impatient to wait till it came out on DVD, and it wasn’t coming to theaters in the suburbs.”
“We?”
“Me and Raven Colman and Sean Tyler and Ari Sarpa. The college in the suburbs where you found me, we all go there. Me and Sean and Ari were all juniors. I guess Raven was too. She used to be the year above us, but she had to take medical leave for a year because of her migraines. Anyway, it was an afternoon movie, and we were on the subway back to Grand Central that evening when things started to get weird . . .”
As they got onto the subway, Raven was talking every bit as enthusiastically as he Ari and Sean. The movie had been everything they had hoped it would be, and they’d been discussing it nonstop since the moment they left the theater. Sean and Raven were arguing about the symbolism of the colors used in one of the movie’s most emotional scenes while Alex and Ari were still excitedly rehashing the fight choreography in another. But as the subway pulled away from the station, Raven became more and more quiet. Sean, who had joined in Alex and Ari’s discussion of the movies action climax didn’t seem to notice, but Alex did. It surprised and even worried him a little. These sorts of conversations were where Raven usually came to life, regurgitating dialog and details with an accuracy of memory that he could never match. He watched as she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees and pressing her eyes into the palms of her hands. Alex reached out, placing one hand lightly on her shoulder.
“You okay?” he asked.
Raven raised her head slightly and blinked fuzzily up at him.
“Headache,” she murmured. “Gotta sleep.”
He nodded. It happened with Raven sometimes.
“Do you need meds? Or do you want to put your earbuds in?” Sometimes when Raven wasn’t feeling well she took her onset medication, but other times just spending a few minutes listening to an audiobook seemed to be enough to revive her. This time, however, Raven just shook her head slightly.
“No, sleep.”
He nodded, even though she couldn’t see him with her eyes once again buried in her hands.
“I’ll wake you up when we get to our stop.”
She grunted her thanks and her shoulders relaxed a bit. Alex shook his head in wonder. He would never be able to understand how she could just do that. Whether it was in a restaurant, in the dining hall, in class, or sitting on a crowded New York subway, when Raven decided it was time for a nap, she was just out. Shrugging to himself, Alex turned his attention back toward his other two friends who were now laughing over recollections of some of the movie’s funniest moments. Alex joined in and he hadn’t even realized how deeply immersed he was in the conversation until he felt a hand closing around his upper arm. He twisted, tense and startled, to see Raven standing over him, a wild look in her strange black eyes. He stared up at her, surprised. Raven was awake? When had that happened? Her naps usually ran pretty deep and he’d been expecting to have to start shaking her awake well before their stop, so why was she on her feet? They were just pulling up at a stop, but it wasn’t theirs. Maybe she’d woken up and, still half asleep, mistaken their location.
“This isn’t—” he started to say but Raven cut him off, her voice crisp and not at all sleep muddled.
“We have to go.”
“What?” Sean asked. He and Ari were staring up at Raven too.
“Now!” Raven snapped.
She pulled Alex, who was too startled to resist, out of his seat and toward the now opening subway doors, shouldering her way roughly through the people who stood between her and the exit. Calling inquiries after her, Ari and Sean hurried to follow them. The four just barely made it off before the doors of the subway car slammed behind them, but Raven did not stop once they reached the platform. Still grasping Alex’s arm, she dove down the subway tunnel, moving along the platform so fast that Alex and the others had to jog to keep up with her.
“Raven, what the hell!” Alex asked, finally getting his bearings enough to yank her to a stop. He was panting slightly, and when she spun to face him, Alex saw that she was too.
“We have to keep moving” she hissed. “We aren’t safe here!”
“Aren’t safe?” Ari asked, tensing, her hand sliding automatically into the pocket of her denim shorts, and Alex knew that she had her hand around her switchblade. Unlike the rest of them, Ari had grown up in a city. From what she’d said about it they’d gathered that while the neighborhood of Chicago that she was raised in wasn’t the worst, it also wasn’t the best. Ari knew about not being safe. The switchblade was proof of that. Regardless of where she was going or for how long or with whom, Ari never left campus without it. She had also, as far as Alex was aware anyway, never had cause to use it, or even draw it since coming to college, but he didn’t blame her for taking the precaution.
Sean, however, had grown up in a lazy New York suburb and had no such instincts to be triggered by Raven’s words.
“What the fuck do you mean not . . . !”
“Not here!” Raven interrupted him. She tugged on Alex’s arm, trying to get him moving again. But before she could take more than a step, attempting to drag Alex behind her, another voice spoke from behind them.
“Well, well, what have we here?” it said in what Alex could only think of as a BBC accent.
They all whirled, Raven moving as fast as Ari, surprising Alex, considering that Raven was the least physically active of the group.
The man to whom the voice belonged was tall, wiry, dressed respectably, and appeared to be in his late twenties or maybe early thirties. A tourist maybe, or traveling businessman, not someone who should have had any interest in a few local college kids. That was when Alex noticed that they had come far enough down the tunnel that they were alone with the man. Perhaps it was just Raven’s fear catching hold of him, but Alex felt a chill down his back. Usually Alex hated crowds. They were his least favorite part of coming into the city, worse even than the smell, but suddenly he found himself wishing that another train would pull up, flooding the platform with people.
The man walked slowly toward them, a satisfied smile lighting on his face as he approached, and Alex noticed a glint of silver as the light from one of the tunnel’s few fluorescent bulbs caught on the brooch pinned on the man’s left breast. It drew Alex’s attention and he saw that the brooch, done entirely in silver, was of a sword standing half in and half out of a pool of water. There was something about the brooch that fascinated him, something that drew his eyes to it, something beyond just the way it sparkled in the light, something . . .
“Who are you?” Sean’s question broke the spell the brooch seemed to be weaving over Alex, and his eyes flicked from the man’s pendant back to his face.
“Me? Nobody you need remember,” the man replied, still moving calmly toward them.
“W-What do you want?” Alex asked, and he wasn’t surprised to hear his voice shake a little. There was something about this man that terrified him.
“That should be obvious, little sleeper. Or is it sleepers?” the man asked, his eyes widening slightly as he focused briefly on them, first Ari, then Sean, before returning his gaze to Raven and Alex. “Yes, I can see that it must be. Well, well, isn’t this a lucky find. Although, I am a bit curious how you knew to ru—”
The man stopped talking abruptly as Ari pulled her knife from her pocket and held it, low and ready, in his direction.
“I don’t know who you are or what you want, but you’re giving me the creeps. I suggest you back the fuck off before I call the police.”
“Now, now,” said the man, coming to a stop and raising his hands in what seemed to be a placating gesture, although Alex noticed that the man was still smiling the same satisfied smile. “We wouldn’t want to do anything hasty.”
The man’s left hand began to tilt sideways and suddenly Alex felt Raven tense, her hand tightening convulsively around his arm. He felt a slight warmth in the air around him, like a current somehow connecting him to the man. Then Raven released his arm and leapt forward, faster than he’d ever seen her move, so that she was standing between Ari and the man, left arm flung out as though to shield her friend. The wrist and fingers of Raven’s open left hand twisted until her fingers were pressed together closed. There was something oddly familiar about her movements, like Alex had seen them somewhere, but before he could place them a loose brick, lying by one of the subway tunnel’s walls, flew through the air at Ari’s head as though of its own volition. It stopped abruptly as though it had crashed against something just before it could pass through the space directly above Raven’s outstretched arm. The air against which it had seemingly collided rippled like water and flickers of light traveled along it, and then the brick was rebounding backward. The man tried to dodge it but he wasn’t fast enough. It collided with his shoulder and he fell to the ground, cursing in some language Alex couldn’t identify.
That was when Alex recognized what he was seeing. It was a scene from the movie they had just watched . . . well, sort of. The location and characters had been different and the thing repulsed by the shield had been a battleax, not a brick, but the shield had been the same, so had the ricochet, and so had the way that Raven moved. And it was all completely impossible.
“What the . . . what the hell!” Ari sounded completely unnerved and just a bit panicky. In other words, she sounded exactly how Alex felt. A thousand thoughts were rushing through his head at once, most of them some variation of “Did I actually just see what I thought I saw?” and “Is this real?” but one traitorous corner of his mind murmured another question: “Does this mean that magic is real?”
They were all staring at Raven, trying to process what they’d just seen. For her part, Raven hadn’t spared them a glance. All her attention was fixed on the man lying on the tunnel floor and clutching his shoulder. He had ceased to curse and was just glaring up at them, panting from a mixture of pain and rage. Then the man’s hand dropped away from his injury. Alex saw torn fabric and blood, but that wasn’t what grabbed his attention, neither was the way the man pressed both of his hands against the tunnel floor. What caught Alex’s attention was the sudden sensation of heat once again tingling along his skin. It was coming from the man. He knew it. He couldn’t have explained how he knew; he simply did and with that knowledge came something else: the need to act.
He lunged forward, grabbing Raven by the shoulders and dragging her sidewise toward Ari. Less than half a second later, loose rocks and pebbles from all along the tunnel sliced through the spot where Raven had been standing, coming so close to her as Alex pulled her away that one of the pebbles grazed her cheek in passing, leaving behind a thin line of blood.
The combined sounds of the rocks hitting the ground just past where Raven had been and Sean swearing as they clattered to the floor directly in front of him nearly drowned out the man’s next words, spoken not to them but to his sword brooch against which the fingers of his injured arm were now pressed. Alex could just make out the words “two awake” and “backup” over the clatter of stones. Alex tensed, and he could tell by the sound of Raven’s muttered “blast” that she had heard as well.
Raven stepped away from him, her hands brushing together then moving outward to the sides, fingers rotating inward. A shadow seemed to move with her like there was another figure with shoulder-length black hair standing with her, and Alex knew what was going to happen, even if it was impossible. Raven had moved just like a character from the movie and, just like in the movie, metal began to move. Bits of scrap and rusted-off bits of track and drainpipe flew through the air, glowing the red of newly forged steel, coalescing in front of Raven into a thin staff with leaf-bladed ends. All Alex could do was stare, as fiction became reality before his eyes. He was so caught up in what he was seeing that he barely noticed the way that his skin warmed in response to Raven’s power. Then a new heat prickled through his feet and the ground began to shake. For a wild moment Alex thought that the next train must finally have arrived to save them, but a second later he realized that it was the platform, and not the tracks, that was in motion.
