Spliced

Cat returned back to her garage. She had considered going back to Baz’s to ask him where Natasha’s body was buried. She figured he’d show her. He knew she was smart enough not to visit it too often or do something stupid like leave flowers on it or anything else that might mark it as an obvious grave. Not that anyone would look for her. People disappeared from Little Rock all the time, aristocrats no less than any other. Her position in this world actually made it less likely any of the local police would investigate, not unless someone specifically asked them to. But no one would. If some other aristocrat missed her, well they had their own ways of dealing with things like that. Cat would ask Baz later. Besides she’d just told him about the pregnancy and she figured they both needed some time to ponder the implications of it, or to avoid pondering them, as Cat was so apt at doing.

She threw herself back into her work with vigor. It gave her mind something else to focus on and the physical work was calming. She got so wrapped up in what she was doing that the next thing she knew it was well after dinner time and everyone else had gone home. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she’d forgotten to eat lunch.

She left her tools where they were, mostly out of the way but easy to pick up again, locked up the shop, and then trooped upstairs to wash the oil off her hands and set about making dinner. She threw a steak in a pan and fried some veges, nothing fancy. She considered fancy sauces a waste of money. She didn’t even bother with salt, she couldn’t taste much of a difference when she added it and she lacked the skills to know what or when to mix to get the different flavours. She could taste the difference when Baz cooked things but how he did it was a mystery to her. She mostly just ate for sustenance anyway.

Once she was done eating she retired to her own room. She didn’t bother with a wash, she wasn’t that greasy and she’d probably head out for a run or to the gym in the morning anyway. She sat on top of the bed, cross-legged, left with little to think about now but for the events of the day. She wasn’t tired but she should sleep if she wanted to run before the sun got too high tomorrow, not that it mattered much, now the elemental festival and all the crowd that had come with it had left town the temperature of the days had dropped significantly, enough to not be walking around without a jacket anymore. There was one sure fire way to make Cat tired, and that was using magic. Dreamwalking in particular had the side effect of making one feel extra drowsy, plus it would be useful. She could take another look for their lost dreamweaver, and without Wolf staring at her asking questions or making suggestions every five minutes.

She lay back and closed her eyes. She could dreamwalk standing up but lying down was easier, she didn’t need to keep half her mind distracted by the waking world. Mist clouded in around her and moments later she found herself in a familiar place. The dreamworld could become whatever she wanted to make of it. There was darkness and demons hidden out there in the fog but Cat knew enough to keep them away, or at least how not lure them closer. Tonight she didn’t make her surroundings into much of anything. She let the fog shift around her and settle near her feet and she listened. She couldn’t explain how it worked but if she paid enough attention she could feel the others who were sleeping. The longer she listened the further she could reach, right out over the town. Keeping track of time was difficult in here but she wasn’t worried. She had all night.

She floated about, almost like she was flying across the town, a town coated in thick fog. She dipped down and close to some sleepers but nothing seemed out of sorts. It was all based on feeling and of course this town was too big to search all at once. The things in the dark could hide from her just as well as she could hide from them. She could look more actively, send out a beacon of sorts and see what responded but she really didn’t want to draw that much attention to herself. There were worse things than dreamweavers out here and a detailed search was impossible to do quickly. A proper good search of the town would have taken weeks for someone like Cat and would have been extremely draining. Plus there were places she just couldn’t look. She found her way to approximately where she thought the Milton house might be, but she couldn’t be certain. Time and space didn’t always work as one thought in this place, especially as one drifted further from one’s own body. There were also spells that would keep dream creatures, including dreamwalkers like herself, from getting too close. She couldn’t see anything where the house was supposed to be but that wasn’t unexpected.

She travelled to Baz’s next, a much more familiar location, but she couldn’t sense him. He probably wasn’t asleep right now. Feeling like she’d looked the best she could, despite still coming up empty handed, she pulled herself back awake. It had been quite the trip. Visiting even one dreamer was enough to lower her energy levels. Feeling much more tired than she had before, she kicked off her jeans, threw her top and bra onto the floor, and slipped in among silk sheets to drift off into an entirely different type of sleep.

The dreamworld slipped into her unconscious anyway. It often did, especially when she was sleeping alone. Her own mind called it, mixed with it, and summoned visions of horrors and memories she’d rather have forgotten. Sometimes she’d wake up tangled in the sheets or if Baz was there she might find him holding her and whispering reassurances. But other than that he never asked. Always in the morning it was like it never happened. The first time she’d had a nightmare in Zeph’s bed he’d spent the next morning interrogating her, well maybe it had only been a few questions but it had felt like an interrogation, combined with unwanted suggestions. The worst though, was when she found herself back in the dreamworld, fully and completely unintentionally and when her mind pulled things back from it into the waking world.

Cat had never been skilled enough to transport items via the dreamworld but on occasion she’d accidentally pulled things from it. Something real could be made a dream and something dreamed could be made real. Unfortunately for Cat, the things she made real weren’t usually very nice things.

She dreamed she was home, her childhood home, the place Amanda and Sirius now called their own. It had been abandoned by her father over 15 years ago, yet another unexplained disappearance, one of the better ones this town had seen. Cat had never understood why her brother would want to live there again. He’d explained that he was making new memories, reclaiming it as his own, rebuilding it, but Cat would rather forget. She had forgotten it for a time, along with the town itself, until she’d been forced back. The town itself was one thing, and she did like Little Rock, or at least her own little corner of it, the garage and the neighbouring race track. She had happy memories here, but that house was another thing entirely.

In her dreams the house was empty. For that she was glad, but as she made her way into the room that had once been her parents, the room where her mother had died, and which in the present waking world belonged to her niece Gemma, the far wall vanished. The room itself was empty, taking on neither its appearance in Cat’s memories nor it’s modern day one. Instead she was presented with bare walls and bare floors, and despite being on the second floor the far wall opened into an expanse of green grass which stretched into an eternity.

It looked pretty enough but Cat was not fooled. Where else was she to go though? Her sleeping mind did not consider other options but to press forward. She did not look back. Soon she found herself in a graveyard. It was no ordinary graveyard though. There were no headstones, but Cat could tell from the look of earth that dead things had been buried here, and some of them not quite so well. She could make out hints of flesh among the dirt and tiny limbs, far too small to belong to an adult. She didn’t look too closely at those. Then she came upon a larger face, one she recognised. Natasha’s. Her body was buried in the dirt, only her face remained above ground. She opened her eyes and croaked out a few words.

“Cat, help.”

And then she was yanked under, disappearing beneath the soil. Cat felt nothing but distance as if a part of her identified this as not being real even though the active thought never crossed her mind. It was as if she wasn’t the one in control of her emotions. She felt nothing up until when the soil started to shift. It turned and toiled and rolled and waved, almost as if it were a liquid.

Drowning featured often in Cat’s nightmares. It wasn’t unheard of for a dreamwalker to be killed by one of their nightmares and Cat had regularly wondered if that was how she would one day go, if instead of waking up, she’d suffocate in her own sleep.

The soil darkened. It splashed against and stained her legs a blood red. She started to sink, and as she sank, the feeling of terror finally hit her, rising up like tidal wave. It pulled her under. Around her she could feel limbs banging into her. Hands grabbed at her feet. Voices whispered her name. Voices that shifted into the sound of a baby crying. Then right as she was sucked down into the darkness she woke up.

For a moment she was disorientated, unsure of where she was but then she recognised her window and the bright rays of moonlight shining through it. It was a full moon tonight or near enough to and cloudless enough to let the external light brighten the whole room. It took her a few seconds before she realised she was cold and wet. Even her hair clung to the side of her face. The air around her smelt like iron. She’d pulled water from the dreamworld before, woken up to find her mouth full of brine and the sheets and sometimes surrounding floor soaked. It wasn’t common and it only ever got that bad when she was sleeping alone. But this wasn’t water. She could tell that much already.

Not one to put anything off she reached out and flicked on the light. Her sheets were dark but her skin was not and as she looked down at herself she wasn’t surprised to find her arms were now red. Blood. A lot of it. She touched a hand to her hair and squeezed a few drops from it onto the palm of her hand. Also blood. Carefully she got out of bed and checked herself over for any wounds. She didn’t remember getting injured in this last dream but it had happened before. After dreams where she’d fought monsters she’d woken up with claw marks on her skin in the same place they had scratched her in the dream.

She grabbed a towel from a nearby drawer and cleaned off the worst of it. She wiped her feet as best she could, not wanting to trail blood throughout the rest of the house. In the bathroom she glanced at her reflection in the mirror. She looked like a walking crime scene. Anyone else would have jumped straight into the shower, but Cat hated even those. She did however, turn the water on full blast, and then she grabbed a washcloth, or several. She pointed the shower head toward the wall so she could stand in the shower without being hit by it. Then from head to foot she cleaned herself up using the washcloths.

There had been a time when a very young Cat had refused to shower at all. She’d kicked and screamed and her father had broken her arm once trying to force her into the bath. Kids at school had teased her for being smelly and Cat had fought back at them with all the fury of a cyclone. It at least had the benefit of them leaving her alone. None of them dared tease her after that, at least not to her face. They had still whispered. But by the time she’d reached high school Cat had found her own way of doing things that at least allowed her to keep clean. And over time kids had forgotten why they used to tease her but not that they were afraid of her. She’d been branded a wild child, prone to fist fights and injury.

The boys had gotten over their fear of her faster than the girls had, what with her long legs, vibrant green eyes, and contrasting jet black hair. Cat had eventually made friends of a sort, a mix of boys looking for adventure and kids too weak to stand up for themselves who found in Cat a weird sort of guardian angel. She was the girl who liked any excuse to fight, and bullies were a satisfying target.

It took her some time to get all the blood out of her hair. It didn’t help that it was so long and thick, falling to her mid back, or that she didn’t like to put her head too near the full blast of the shower. Usually she washed her hair over the sink and only when it really needed it, but there was so much blood everywhere that she thought it best to keep it confined to as few places as possible.

Once she was fully clean and her hair smelt damply of pine instead of blood, she was faced with how to get the rest of the blood out of her bed and carpet. She briefly thought of calling Baz. Baz could get blood out of anything. It was after all what he spent many of his nights being paid to do. But she still wasn’t quite ready to face him just yet. She had learnt enough from him over the years though. The first thing she did was dump everything that would fit into the bathtub and soak it with cold water. Normally you weren’t supposed to use too much water but given the amount of blood Cat wasn’t worried about spreading it about. Once the colour of the water coming out was more dilute Cat filled the bath and left it to soak a little while longer while she dealt with the mattress. Wolf probably knew a spell to clean things but Cat didn’t really fancy telling him why she needed to get blood out of a mattress. He might not pry as much as Zephyr would but he’d give her that curious look.

Left with nowhere to sleep other than the couch Cat considered where to go. Not to Baz, not yet. She considered showing up at Zeph’s but he’d have questions and besides it seemed like he’d just started to get over her. She didn’t want a return of the pitiful looks he’d given her after she’d last broken up with him. Why couldn’t he just enjoy the moment without needing more? She had once fequented Wolf’s bed but that had been sometime ago now. She’d been younger then and Wolf wasn’t really one for giving comfort, nor had she particularly enjoyed the sex with him. She could go to a bar and find a nice stranger, one who wouldn’t mind just a night but she didn’t find herself much in the mood for that. So instead, she threw on a pair of jeans, a fitted t-shirt, and a jacket, wandered back downstairs and picked up work on the car right where she had left off. She worked through until the job was finished. And then she climbed back upstairs and fell asleep on her couch, warmed by the comforting rays of the sun.